Death.
For most players, death was nothing more than a short interruption. A flash of light, a moment of waiting, then a clean return to the battlefield as if nothing had happened. It was an inconvenience at best, sometimes even a joke. For many bots, however, death meant something else entirely. It meant deletion. A quiet end with no restart, no second chance, no record left behind.
For Reever, death was far worse than either of those.
It was not a reset. It was not a respawn. It was the loss of something finite. A life gone forever, shaved away with no way to reclaim it. One step closer to an ending he could not escape from, no matter how skilled he became or how many battles he won.
That truth settled heavily in his mind.
He had known for a long time that he was different from other bots. Normal bots dropped once and vanished, wiped clean like corrupted files. He did not. He had thirty lives at the start. No, twenty nine now. The reason was simple and cruel at the same time. He had a human conscience. Awareness. Fear. Thought. That fragment of humanity had earned him extra chances, but it had also cursed him with the knowledge of what losing those chances truly meant.
Unlike players, he could not die endlessly. Unlike bots, he could not be erased cleanly. He was trapped somewhere in between, counting each death like a ticking clock.
And with the kind of hell the system had dragged him into, he was no longer confident those lives would last very long.
His body dissolved into light.
When Reever materialized again, there was no wound on his head. No crack in his armor. No trace of the bullet that had ended him seconds ago. His systems were stable. His functions were normal. Everything about him looked intact, as if death had never touched him.
And yet, something inside him felt heavier.
"So this is death," he muttered quietly, his voice dull and hollow. "And respawn."
He looked down at his hands, opening and closing them slowly, as if expecting resistance or damage that never came.
"I thought it would be dark," he continued, more to himself than anyone else. "Cold. Maybe quiet. Not this instant."
His gaze lifted to the surrounding environment as the suspended state timer counted down. The system, at least, had granted him a short moment of safety. A pause to recalibrate, to reset his skills, to adjust to being thrown back into the same nightmare again.
"At least the system pretends to be reasonable," he said with a tired sigh. "A minute to breathe. Skills reset. No damage carried over."
He almost laughed, but the sound never came.
"What's the point of all that," he went on, bitterness seeping into his thoughts, "when I already know how this ends."
His bullets barely scratched the player. His armor could not withstand those attacks. His camouflage, once his greatest advantage, had already been countered. The enemy had tools. Knowledge. Experience. And worse, boredom.
Reever watched the timer tick closer to zero.
Across the training hall, the player stood on a raised platform, relaxed and composed, as if waiting for a show to resume. There was no urgency in his movements. No tension in his posture. He knew what was coming. Another wave of bots. Another round of slaughter. And somewhere among them, a single target worth hunting.
As soon as the countdown ended, the veil the system had placed on the bots vanished.
They became visible.
Once again, thousands of them filled the field, standing shoulder to shoulder, lifeless eyes staring forward, weapons clutched with no understanding of strategy or fear.
This time, the player did not bother scanning them carefully.
He had already made his decision.
The special bot was the only thing that mattered.
He searched the field, eyes moving slowly, methodically, but Reever did not reveal himself. Blended among the masses, camouflaged and motionless, he was just another shape in a sea of worthless bodies.
With that many bots present, hiding was easy. Too easy.
The player exhaled in mild annoyance.
"Guess I'll have to kill the trash before getting to the main meal," he sighed casually, as if discussing an unpleasant chore.
Then he raised his weapon.
Gunfire erupted.
Bots fell instantly. Some were torn apart by direct hits. Others collapsed after catching stray bullets meant for someone else. A few even shot each other in their blind panic, dying without ever understanding what had killed them.
Reever watched it all unfold.
"Such a pitiful sight," he thought, a quiet sense of remorse creeping in. "Bots really do suck."
They were brainless. Disposable. Thrown into the field as nothing more than moving targets. From the previous wave, he remembered spotting one or two bots carrying higher ranked weapons. He had even seen one wielding a mystique class weapon. That bot had died within seconds, never using its strength properly.
If a weapon like that had been given to a kill bot, the outcome of this training hall might have been very different.
But the system never cared about fairness.
Reever remained hidden, his camouflage active, his presence masked among the living shields surrounding him.
"This is my chance," he told himself quietly. "Before the field clears. Before he notices me again."
He steadied his weapon and activated Tag, locking onto the player.
The sensation was immediate. A faint pull, a confirmation deep within his systems that the mark had been set.
The player felt it too.
He paused for half a second, brow furrowing slightly, then dismissed the feeling entirely.
No bot could threaten him. That was the simple truth he believed in.
Reever fired.
The bullet vanished from the muzzle, teleporting instantly and reappearing directly in front of the player. It struck the same dent in the armor that Reever had created earlier, hitting the weakened spot with precision.
The impact echoed loudly.
The player staggered back half a step.
Silence followed.
Then rage.
"F**K you, bot," the player roared, his calm shattered. "I warned you about denting my armor."
Without hesitation, he summoned hundreds of green cylindrical objects, each marked clearly with a bold TNT symbol. They floated into the air and spread rapidly across the field, weaving between bots, embedding themselves into the environment.
"I'll blow this entire field apart," he shouted, voice echoing through the hall. "And you'll taste what happens when trash forgets its place."
Reever's chest felt tight.
"This is it," he thought, despair flooding his mind. "There's no way out."
Even if he ran, there would be nowhere to go. Even if he hid, the blast would reach him. The field was too enclosed. The devices were everywhere.
"I'm losing another life," he murmured quietly, eyes closing. "A second one."
The ticking began.
"If this is what training matches are like," he continued, his thoughts heavy and slow, "then I'm done."
Twenty nine lives.
Five could disappear in a single match.
At this rate, he would not even last long enough to dream of freedom.
"With this pace," he calculated bitterly, "I only get six more games."
The ticking grew louder.
A blinding light swallowed the room.
The explosion followed, shaking the entire hall.
And then, silence.
A system notification appeared.
[System notification.
Congratulations on the player for surviving the match.
Title gained: One Inch to Death, Epic rank.
One Inch to Death against all odds: When the player is about to die, a power surge fills him and forcefully raises his rank by a minor level for one minute.
Price paid for the title: An eighth of a life is shaved off from the player.
The title can be activated at will.]
Reever stared at the message, motionless.
Survival had never felt so close to defeat.
And death had never felt so patient.