Rewind With A Superstar System

Chapter 154: Battle Royale (2)

<🎧 Song Recommendation: Let It All Work Out by Lil Wayne>

...

Darwin frantically clicked his mouse, minimizing the main broadcast for a second to open a new tab.

He typed "KingVon" and "Aura" into the search bar, trying to figure out which professional esports organization had secretly signed them.

The search results loaded, and Darwin’s jaw nearly hit his keyboard.

They weren’t professional gamers at all. They were artists. Singers. They had gotten a special celebrity invitation to the tournament, completely bypassing the qualifiers.

Darwin stared at the screen in pure disbelief. Two pop stars were currently dismantling world-champion esports veterans.

He immediately switched his spectator POV over to Aura’s stream to see exactly how she was operating.

Through her first-person perspective, Darwin realized she was completely untouchable. Her basic anime-style character was perched on the very apex of the Central Spire, the absolute tallest structure in the entire map of The Sprawl.

It was a genius, high-risk play. The only possible way to reach that roof was to manually steer your parachute and land perfectly on it during the initial drop from the dropship.

There were no stairs, no elevators, and no grappling hooks long enough to scale the sheer glass walls from the ground. She was entirely safe from close-quarters ambushes.

But there was a catch. To ever come down and collect cores, Aura would have to free-fall off the side of the skyscraper, which would instantly kill her character upon impact and cost her one of her limited lives.

Given her terrifyingly precise aim, it was a shortcoming she was more than willing to accept. She didn’t need to move. She acted as a human radar, spotting targets from above and feeding the information to Von, after which they’ll cooperate to take them down.

Pfft!

Aura’s massive sniper fired again. Darwin switched his POV back to Von just in time to see the Ghost character slide out of the shadows and plunge his dagger into a stunned enemy’s back.

{Ding! Player Captain Pirate has been eliminated by Player KingVon}

Darwin had his mouth wide open at the sheer brutality of the duo. He became completely mesmerized, watching them effortlessly navigate the map.

Aura would shatter an enemy’s armor from a mile away, and Von would grapple in to finish them off and steal the Cores. They were a perfectly oiled machine.

As he watched, Darwin started to analyze their loadouts. He noticed something incredibly strange about how they had spent their pre-match credits.

Every player in the tournament was given a set amount of currency in the pre-game lobby to develop their characters. Most would spend it on skills, attack options or defense. But Starfall hadn’t chosen anything remarkable.

Aura had invested her currency into a single passive skill called Eagle Eye, which gave her character enhanced thermal vision while scoped in. She spent the entire remainder of her balance purchasing the massive, anti-materiel sniper rifle.

Her character itself had zero defensive buffs; she was just a basic anime girl she had customized with blue hair.

Meanwhile, Von’s build a bit more costly. He had purchased a basic Phantom character, customized it with dark purple streaks, and bought nothing but a grappling hook and a venomous dagger. He had no guns, no armor, and no shields.

’A zero-armor stealth build... maybe I could try this when I play next time,’ Darwin thought, taking mental notes. If you were fast enough, armor didn’t matter. You just couldn’t get hit.

Darwin also realized something else. The background music on their stream was different.

For most players in the tournament, Glitch played the standard soundtrack of the game by default.

But whenever Darwin spectated Von or Aura, a completely different song played over the feed. It was a catchy, upbeat pop track with a melancholic undertone.

Darwin checked the stream overlay. It was a custom sync license. The song was called Far Away. The UI gave him the option to turn it off and switch back to the default game track, but Darwin actually found himself bobbing his head to the rhythm.

The beat matched Von’s movement perfectly. He chose to leave it on.

The match timer ticked down. By the time the ten-minute duration had hit the halfway mark, the entire dynamic of the map had shifted.

Almost all the attention of the now five million viewers was focused on Starfall.

The live leaderboard flashed across the right side of the screen:

1. Starfall - 59 Cores.

2. Abyss - 27 Cores.

3. Nemesis - 24 Cores.

4. Rogue Syndicate - 22 Cores.

5. Speed Demonz - 22 Cores.

6. Ironclad - 20 Cores.

...

50. Kingslayers - 0 Cores.

Aside from Starfall farming the entire battle royale, there were very few upsets. This phase of the match was incredibly critical.

Killing someone who hoarded Cores meant they dropped everything upon death. Because of this high-risk mechanic, most of the pro teams knew to divide their Cores equally with their partners and stay properly distanced so a single ambush wouldn’t wipe out their entire score.

Some teams had even taken the initiative to stop fighting entirely, focusing purely on hiding in basements or alleyways to ensure they made it to the Top 32.

But Starfall momentum hadn’t slowed down for a second. They constantly searched for more targets to push their score higher.

Von zipped across the rooftops of the overgrown Bio-Sector, a zone filled with massive, mutated trees that intertwined with the city’s architecture. He had come there after realizing many players were hiding this zone.

He paused on a ledge, peering down into the thick canopy below. There, sitting perfectly still on a massive tree branch, was a small, green goblin character.

It wasn’t moving. It looked like it was either camping or the player had gone AFK.

"I see him, but the branches are getting in the way. I can’t hit him from over here," Aura’s calm voice echoed through the stream comms. The thick leaves completely blocked her sniper’s thermal vision.

"It’s all good. I’ll climb up," Von replied smoothly.

He pulled out his grappling hook, aiming for a high branch directly above the resting goblin. But just before he fired, his character paused.

Darwin watched as Von opened his minimap. There was a single red dot indicating the goblin’s position, but nothing else nearby. The area was completely dead. Still, Von hesitated. It felt too easy. An AFK player out in the open during a tournament of this size was highly suspicious.

’I’ll be careful,’ Von muttered, convincing himself to take the risk. Sixty Cores was a major milestone, and he wanted it.

He aimed his grappling hook at the highest, thickest branch of the tree. The cable fired, pulling his Phantom character high into the air. His plan was flawless: swing above the canopy, drop down vertically behind the goblin, and finish it with a single dagger strike before it could react.

Von reached the apex of his swing, detached the cable, and fell smoothly through the leaves. He landed silently on the branch right behind the target.

His dagger flashed purple as he drove it into the goblin’s back.

But there was no spray of pixels nor an elimination sound.

Instead, with a soft poof, the goblin instantly dissolved into a thick cloud of gray smoke. No Cores dropped to the branch.

It was a decoy.

"It’s a trap!" Von yelled into the comms, instantly firing his grappling hook to escape.

But he was too late.

From the dense shadows of the foliage directly above him, a second figure dropped down. He was playing a feral, cat-like class with long whiskers and razor-sharp metal claws.

They hadn’t been hiding because they were scared. They had been setting up the ultimate ambush. The cat-class possessed a rare passive ability: total radar invisibility.

He didn’t show up on the minimap at all. His duo partner played the illusionist class, creating realistic goblin decoys to lure aggressive players into the canopy.

"Aura, I need cover!" Von called out, trying to swing away.

"I can’t see you! The leaves are too thick!" Aura replied, her sniper firing a blind shot into the tree that missed by a mile.

The battle in the branches was chaotic and brutal. Von was a master of evasion, but the dense, tangled wood restricted his grappling hook. Every time he tried to swing away, the cable snagged on a branch.

The cat guy character was built for close-quarters canopy fighting. He bounced off the tree trunks with terrifying speed, his metal claws slashing through Von’s base health.

Von managed to land one quick strike with his dagger, but it wasn’t enough to kill him.

The goblin illusionist reappeared on a lower branch, casting a slowing hex that wrapped around Von’s ankles like heavy sludge.

Von’s movement speed dropped to zero. He was completely pinned against the trunk of the massive tree, blind to his sniper support, and surrounded by two highly coordinated pros who had spent the entire match preparing for this exact moment.

The cat guy lunged forward, both claws glowing with a lethal red energy. He crossed his arms and slashed outward in an X-pattern, tearing right through the Phantom’s chest.

Von’s character froze, then slowly dissolved into a shower of bright purple pixels.

As his avatar faded, a massive explosion of light erupted from his body. All forty-nine Cores he had been hoarding burst outward, scattering across the branches and falling to the forest floor like a rain of glowing coins.

"Nooo!" Darwin screamed at the top of his lungs, grabbing his hair and violently kicking his desk.

On his left monitor, Mr. Higgins paused his lecture, looking highly confused seeing him stand up. But Darwin didn’t care. He watched in absolute horror as the two players quickly dropped to the ground, scooping up every single piece of loot Starfall had worked so hard to collect.

{Ding! Player KingVon has been eliminated by Player OPVillain}

{Ding! Team Kingslayers has captured 60 Cores!}