Volume 7: Abandoned Sandstone City Chapter 334: A Poor Group
" No weapons?" Ke Lan suddenly felt a headache - if you ask what the most frustrating thing about chicken-eating games is, the first one must be that you searched four or five houses but couldn't find even a small pistol. You did fill a backpack with a mess of supplies, and then as soon as you go out, you run into a group of burly men holding black and hard weapons. You fall to the ground and are beaten to death in one go. You are definitely a hero among couriers.
To sum it up in six words: no gaming experience at all.
The three of them arrived at the supply point they had chosen at the beginning. It was a block that was almost razed to the ground. Several brand new equipment boxes were placed in the center of the ruins. Ke Lan went up to check and found that as Valentina had said, in addition to a set of modular light armor that was common to all skeletons, the only supplies in the box were a pile of energy crystals totaling less than a hundred units and a dozen bags of self-heating military rations wrapped in aluminum foil.
"Valentina, put on this set of armor first. You are the main force in the battle between mechas, and we must prioritize your equipment." Ke Lan said, "There are three supply points within 400 meters from here. Let's search them one by one from near to far."
Since the parachuting location they chose was at the edge of the safe zone, no other team except themselves and the Angres Club that came to seek revenge had landed in this area, so they didn't have to worry about encountering other contestants in the early stages... But despite this, the thing that Ke Lan least wanted to happen still happened to them -
There were also no weapons and ammunition at the other three supply points. Although Valentina's body was equipped with full body armor, external thrusters, and energy shield generators, the only weapon they could use was the standard combat dagger they carried when parachuting.
"Could this be done on purpose by the organizers of the event?" Ke Lan knew that the establishment of such supply points and the delivery of supplies were definitely not random. A large number of high-level supplies were concentrated in the central location of the safe zone. The closer to the edge of the safe zone, the poorer the supply points. In the most remote areas, there were even several supply points that did not even have a 12.7mm caliber anti-infantry machine gun.
For a moment, Ke Lan deeply felt the malice from the event organizer.
It was obvious that they wanted to force all the participating teams to squeeze together - Ke Lan clearly remembered the distribution of beacons he saw on the airship: almost all the second-level advanced supply points were around the three super resource points, and in a remote corner like the one where they were, there might be more supplies in more than a dozen blocks combined than in one supply point there.
By the second stage of the knockout rounds, I’m afraid that very few teams will jump to this place… This is the purpose of the tournament organizers: if the audience just stays in the game and passively avoids fighting, I’m afraid most of the audience will find it boring. If they want to make the game exciting, they must force all teams to participate in the melee… The best is the kind that keeps fighting from the moment they land until they win the game…
Guiding the tactical planning of each participating team through the distribution of supplies is obviously an effective method.
Ke Lan and his team still had nothing in their hands, but he had already heard the roars and explosions of various advanced weapons more than ten kilometers away. Those teams that dared to jump to the super resource point must have been equipped with top-notch equipment as long as they could get out alive.
Even if Ke Lan and his team could make it to the finals, the gap in equipment between them would widen to an extremely exaggerated level: if they could hit you with just one shot, you would be knocked down instantly, while the weapon in your hand might not even be able to leave a few scratches on the opponent's armor after a burst of fire.
No matter how good your operation is, it is difficult to create an extreme reversal of the plot with weapons that are too slow to even polish other people's armor.
Ke Lan took a look at the statistical data shared by the event organizer with every participant: the competition has just started for half an hour, and only 25 of the 48 contestants are left, with the number of contestants being reduced by almost half... However, the data did not list the number of surviving teams, so Ke Lan could not judge how many full teams were included in these 25 people, and how many lone wolves and incomplete teams there were.
There was another burst of intensive gunfire in the distance. When the noise subsided, only 22 people were left.
"From the sound, the battle should have taken place at the super resource point closest to us. Three people were eliminated, which means a full team should have been eliminated... There has been no movement for two minutes now, and there is probably only one last team left in that place. That team is very strong now, and we definitely can't afford to mess with them." Ke Lan said. He controlled the mecha to climb up a small hill made of rubble and gravel, and looked around.
"The nearest intermediate resource point to us is at the twelve o'clock direction, about two thousand four hundred meters away...but this resource point is only about one thousand meters away from the super resource point. If that team searches in this direction, they will reach this intermediate resource point before us." Ke Lan continued to analyze.
Although the weapons and equipment of that team should have been top-notch, there was no such thing as too much ammunition, energy crystals, and various tactical props. Especially in the final round, if a stalemate occurred, the encounter would easily turn into a war of attrition. At this time, the competition would be about the material reserves of both sides.
Unlike the PUBG game where the player character's backpack has a weight limit, the carrying capacity of the mecha is much stronger than that of humans. Even if the supplies in half of the competition area are concentrated together, three mechas can easily carry it away.
Ke Lan felt that if he were the commander of that team, after conquering the super resource point, he would definitely take the super resource point as the center and gradually plunder the surrounding areas - this was the purpose of the event organizer: if they didn't want to fight, the rich would only get richer and the poor would get poorer, until the gap widened to the point where the rich side could easily crush the entire field with their equipment advantage.
"We can't delay this any longer..." Ke Lan thought to herself, "If we delay this , the situation will only get worse."
"There's no need to search the low-level resource points nearby. Judging from the nature of the event organizer, I don't think there will be anything good. We can't waste our precious time in these poor places." Ke Lan said to the other two, "At least we have to start from the mid-level resource points, so that we won't be left too far behind in equipment."
"But there should be people at the nearest intermediate resource points," said Valentina.
"Then let's go to downtown."
