Prologue
It was, in the player's considered opinion, quite the experience. There's hunting game and there's The Hunting Game, and the latter was incomparable. He had scored 82 so far. A new record, he was sure. He still had a week to fully establish the high score to virtually unreachable levels. He would become a legend in the Hunting Scene. Still, you shouldn't celebrate a scalp before it was cut, so he had carefully checked his next target's habits. This one was a bodyguard in what was called a syndicate by some of the locals. Some kind of criminal organisation. He did not really care. What he did care about was that the man in question was armed and dangerous. This would be quite a challenge.
The game's difficulty had started quite low. Those firemen, construction workers and the like, were much too easy. The only problems they caused were by attracting the attention from the authorities. Luckily, the game moved him to a new city after each few kills. He didn't recall that feature being there before. The devs must have gotten complaints about the police being overpowered and put in a corrected mission structure in that last update. The targets quickly moved to harder ones, like gang members. People who led more violent lives, more alert, more trained and dangerous.
There was his target, he really should stop daydreaming. He checked his knife, cutting a small branch with its edge. Excellent. The bodyguard had just finished the routine checking of his car for trackers and explosives. The player quickly walked up to the car, cut the throat, and walked on. By now he knew by feel whether some extra action was required to complete the kill. Eighty-three. He relaxed as he walked up to his own car. Quite satisfying.
He frowned when he received the next target briefing. Another bodyguard? True, killing those only went so smooth thanks to his skill, but he had expected the game to select a higher level enemy by now. What the hell did presidential mean? He read on, wondering again why the game used paper for the briefings. Even the natives used portable electronics by now. Weapon of choice: a ricin pellet? He could see that he had some more research to do.