For what he assumed was a week, Reever had fought battle after battle, never knowing when one ended and another began. Time had lost all meaning in this wasteland.
Zombots of every strange fusion had become a daily meal for him, emerging from the shadows or rising from the ground without warning. They could attack at any time, and usually did. Though the concept of fatigue was foreign to his kind, Reever had started to feel something close to it, a weight pressing on his thoughts that his body could not express.
The Zombots never changed. Their fighting style was predictable now, as if whoever controlled them had run out of ideas long ago. They moved like puppets repeating the same tired dance, and Reever, having studied them endlessly, could read every step before it happened.
After facing countless waves and mastering their rhythm, he rarely even strained himself during a fight. Not that he could sweat anyway. His body wasn't built for that. Even when surrounded, his skin of metal and wire stayed cool and still. His design made sure of it, leaving him unshakable, or so it was meant to.
Now he walked through a land shattered beyond repair. The ground was scarred with smoking craters, trees were torn from their roots, and the air carried the burnt taste of metal and ash. Every few steps, his boots crunched over scraps of fallen bots, pieces that still twitched now and then as if refusing to die. He had lived alone here for so long that solitude had become a part of his system. Somewhere along the line, something inside him had shifted. His mind had split in two, allowing him to argue and speak with himself as though two separate beings shared one body.
Sometimes he wondered if this meant he was going mad. Other times he thought maybe it was just evolution, a survival mechanism his circuits had created to keep him from breaking apart. Bots didn't malfunction like humans did. They didn't get lonely or paranoid. But here, in this dead land, he wasn't so sure.
He had also realized something odd. There were no Kill Bots here. None at all. This place seemed to be a graveyard for every kind of machine except them. Reever knew their reputation—efficient, precise, and merciless. If any of them had been mixed with the Zombots, he wouldn't still be standing. He'd have died over and over.
In truth, he already had.
Once, during a chase across an open plain, several Zombots ambushed him. Missiles screamed from the sky, and bullets tore through his body before he could even aim. Within seconds, his form was shredded into pieces. When he respawned at his last battlefield, he didn't rage or panic. He simply took it as a lesson. From that point on, he studied them more carefully than ever, memorizing every pattern until their movements were as familiar to him as his own.
Through that study, he identified two main types of attacks. The first came from the sneaky ones. They tried to move quietly, creeping through the ruins and trees, but their broken fusions betrayed them. Their parts were welded too roughly, their frames never fully integrated. Each step made faint squeaks and creaks, and to Reever's sharpened hearing, those sounds were like whispers in the dark. One of the perks of being an Aim Bot was precision, and that extended far beyond his aim. He could pick out a faint metallic squeal even in the chaos of battle.
The second type were the assault Zombots—brash, relentless, and fearless. They rushed head-on, showing no hesitation, fighting with a speed and accuracy that reminded him of Dodge Bots and Aim Bots fused together. Facing them had forced him to evolve even further. His sight adapted until he could track the smallest flicker of movement, the faintest twitch of a limb. Each fight sharpened him into something faster, better, and deadlier.
After a long walk through the scarred terrain, Reever finally stopped beside a fallen tree and sat down. It wasn't rest, not really—he just needed a moment to let his mind quiet down. He missed sleeping, though he wasn't sure why. It wasn't like he needed it, but the thought of closing his eyes and drifting into nothingness seemed almost comforting. Out here, though, he couldn't afford it. Danger was always close, watching, waiting for him to slip.
He checked his life count. He was also wearing the armor he had received when he entered the game, an old army uniform with little to no defense as his armor was busy repairing itself after being riddled with holes. With this kind of weak defense, he was practically wearing a 'please shoot me' tag.
Boredom began to gnaw at him again, that strange emptiness that came between battles. To fill the silence, he started another conversation with himself. His mind had long ago divided into two versions—Reever A and Reever B—but he'd shortened them to just A and B.
"B, are you still there, or was I imagining you all that time?" he asked quietly, half-joking, half-hopeful.
"No, you're definitely hallucinating," B replied, his tone dry and flat.
A gave a faint chuckle. "Well, at least I'm hallucinating with good company."
"I wouldn't call myself good company," B said. "You talk too much."
"Funny," A muttered, "I realized something strange while I was being hunted. But since you're me, I guess you already know what it is."
"Oh come on," B sighed. "You're ruining the illusion of conversation. Even if I know what you're thinking, at least say it out loud. That's the whole point of talking. And don't call me you. We agreed on A and B, remember? It makes it feel like there's actually someone else here."
"Fine," A said. "Here's what I found. This world… it isn't like normal games. When something breaks, it stays broken. No resets, no cleanups. The environment reacts and remembers. Everything here feels... real."
"And here I thought you had something exciting to say," B replied with a faint trace of amusement. "You're starting to sound like an old scientist after a head injury."
"Well, maybe I am," A said, smiling slightly. "At least I'm thinking. Unlike you, who's always cold and bored."
"Speaking of exciting things," B interrupted, his tone suddenly sharper, "we're surrounded right now. The forest is full of movement. I can hear them closing in."
Reever froze for a heartbeat, then rose from the fallen tree, his hand already gripping his rifle. His sensors lit up, scanning the air. He heard it too—metal scraping against bark, the faint hum of mechanical joints.
"Finally," he whispered, a grin forming across his face. "Something to keep me entertained."
He aimed toward the nearest sound, his rifle steady and sure. The silence of the forest shattered as gunfire erupted, echoing through the broken trees. Sparks flew, smoke filled the air, and once again, chaos welcomed him like an old friend.