The Bored Immortal

The place finally quieted down, and Viktor noticed many groups of five gathering around. He counted more than fifteen such teams and listened to what the announcer was saying while playing the game as well.

The announcer reiterated the rules and everything, even if everyone was made aware of them before.??

Viktor was finding this shooting game to be very fun, especially the parts where he was mowing down his enemies with guns that worked no different than real ones. In fact, he could feel the recoil from the sound of the gun's spray and was getting used to it.

Within just a minute or two, he got bored with killing the 'ultra noobs' bots. He felt that Tiana was right in saying that they were too stupid. He even decided to do a test and stood before one of the bots without doing anything, and the bot didn't even fire a single bullet at him.

Instead, it crouched before him and kept looking at his face as if he was waiting for candy.

Viktor sighed, thinking that whoever programmed these bots to be so stupid did well at their job.

He took the settings and saw five levels of difficulty for the bots— Harmless, Easy, Medium, Hard, Impossible.

'Impossible it is…' Viktor smirked as he checked that option and read the description of the difficulty level.

[

Impossible - Bots are controlled by advanced AI, which continuously learns the user's movement patterns.

Bots reaction time reduced to 0.10 seconds.

Attack delay is 0.0 seconds

100% Aggression and Skill.

]

'Phew...they really know how to make people scared of taking this difficulty. But heh, I bet they never expected an expert like me to play this. Let's see if their so-called AI is faster and smarter than me,' Viktor was feeling highly competitive, seeing how this difficult they were making it sound and wanted to know if a computer could catch up to him.

"Yo, are you mad to take the 'Impossible' difficulty?"

Viktor glanced sideways to see Butkus and his friends looking at his screen with a stupefied look.

"Dood, you barely started playing this game for the first time, and you are already taking the 'Impossible' difficulty. No offense, but don't you think you should take a difficulty suitable to your current expertise? I mean, there is no shame even if you play with harmless bots all day long. Heck, I even sucked at killing Easy bots for few days the first time I started playing this game," Skinny Jim said as he patted his chest.

Viktor had a perplexed look and asked, "Is this difficulty really impossible for humans to beat? I mean, surely there must have been someone in the world who won a game in this difficulty?"

"You are wrong, my friend. Very wrong...."

Viktor turned his neck a bit more around to see a guy of the same age as the other two. He was wearing square-shaped spectacles and looked slightly tall with a medium build but shorter than Butkus.

"Ah, forgive my manners. Let me introduce myself. I am Buckenry Darnell Kreitler, 3rd in the line—"

"Yo, shut it. Just call him Bucky, Dorian. He loves to flap his tongue too much," Butkus said with an exasperated sigh.

Bucky cleared his throat and pressed the bridge of his spectacles as he said, "Ahem, well, that is the short and easy way to call me. Anyways, Dorian, about your question. Let me give you a clear answer by saying that no human in this world had ever been able to win a single game against bots with Impossible difficulty."

Viktor didn't know if he should be surprised or not since he had already read how fast the reaction speed of the bots was.

"But still, won't there be some exceptionally talented people in the world with inhuman reaction speed and skills?" Viktor asked as he raised one of his brows.

Bucky nodded and said with the pose of a wisdom master, "You are right. There indeed have been such people who gave a try against these bots. But as you know, there are 30 rounds in a single game. And to win a single game, your team needs to win 16 rounds. But these exceptionally talented people, as you said, only managed to win the first one or two rounds before they were totally dominated by these bots with monstrous skills. But the world record is five rounds. I am sure you know about this."

"So to sum it all up, no, nobody in the world had or would win against these bots. This level was just kept there as a reminder to arrogant and egoistic players that they are nothing but trash against these bots and to make them feel despair. The fastest possible reaction time for humans is around 0.15 seconds while the bots are practically faster by 5 ms, which can really make a difference in games like these where the fastest trigger wins, especially with one hit headshot kills."

Skinny Jim crossed his arms and leaned against the table as he said to Dorian," Well, long story short, you will feel nothing but despair by playing against these bots. That's why we are trying to save you the trouble. Since you are new to this game, it could be quite disheartening to lose miserably against these bots."

"Yeah, I even heard one of the best players in the world tried to commit suicide over this just because he couldn't beat these bots and lost the bet about him winning. Crazy people, indeed," Butkus said with a headshake.

"Yeah, eventually, even pros stopped playing against these bots because they felt like it was a difficulty level created to mock them. They couldn't even improve since they die the moment they are seen by a bot. What could they possibly learn if they die immediately? And soon, this difficulty level became a forbidden one, and those who tried it would be trolled hard, especially before others," Skinny Jim said with a slumped posture.

"Did the Snow Queen ever try this?" Viktor curiously asked.

"My friend, you can't be serious?" Bucky asked with a strange look.

Viktor was even more confused and asked, "What? She also failed?"