Systematic Survival

49 - Escape

Matt could feel the cold night air pushing against him as he fell into the darkness below the crane. The two men were shocked that he had just jumped off with no explanation. He seemed stoic as he fell, but in reality, he wasn't calm.

'Shit, this is scary!'

He was falling rapidly toward the ground, but it wasn't for no reason. This was part of his plan. As he saw the ground approaching him at an incredible speed, he quickly made a move.

Matt rolled in the air and positioned himself so that he was facing the sky and carefully counted the floors of the building he was falling from so that he could get the timing right.

Once he saw the fourth-floor pass by, he reacted as fast as he could and activated the dash power on his boots. His whole body accelerated vertically at a dramatic speed, causing his downward momentum to be canceled out.

Though he was still a dozen feet in the air when he used the dash, so when gravity caught back up to him, he hit the ground with a loud thud.

[-4 HP]

'Ow!'

While he did take a bit of damage, he knew it could've been worse. After having played around with his dash skill for the past few days, he had always noticed the instant acceleration that it had and considered it to be enough for this plan. It always seemed to work even in mid-air as well, which was how he dodged objects while jumping through the city earlier. He wouldn't have tried this if he wasn't confident in it.

Now that he was on the ground, he looked up toward the crane he was on just a few seconds ago, but it was too dark to see anything. If the two men regained their senses, he imagined they could scale down the building in a few minutes, so he didn't want to stick around.

'This is the only chance I have to lose them.'

He was basically out of tricks at this point, so he didn't want to push his luck.

Matt ran away from the construction site as fast as he could, trying not to make any extra loud sounds, in case they could track his direction from that. He had just used his dash so he sadly couldn't use its help to gain distance right now.

After being hunted for so long, he felt like it would be best to leave this city and return to his apartment. It was too dangerous here. If he left, then he could only guess which city he left to.

As he ran, the minutes passed. It felt like they couldn't pass fast enough. He wanted to be able to relax, instead of constantly being harassed. This was all too stressful.

Then 10 more minutes passed and so far he hadn't heard a sound or alert. He was hoping that trick had actually worked and they weren't closing in on him.

He decided it had been long enough and changed direction. He didn't want to only run in a straight line, since that was easy to follow.

'I think I'll make an arc to get back to my apartment. If I go straight there, they might follow me.'

He didn't know the first thing about strategy or stealth, besides what had rubbed off on him from the years he had played games. However, he never really played strategy games. So he was just using what he felt he had seen in a movie one time.

'I should probably read a book about that soon.'

The cold wind pushed against his face and body as he kept going. He had started on the roundabout path to his apartment. Now, it should only be around half an hour with his speed until he was back home.

He felt safe thinking about being back in the city he knew well for the past few months. It was much more populated, so he was also thinking that it would be harder for a player to attack him without repercussions. They would probably get jail time if they tried killing him.