Firestorm

"It's a pleasure to meet you! With Eugene emerging as one of the hottest blue-chip prospects in AP solo competition lately, finally getting to interview you is a genuine honor."

"Thank you. You've come a long way — I appreciate the effort."

"Haha, luckily it didn't take all that long."

Before a match begins, every participant in a session is assigned an individual waiting space of their own.

A room with the feel of a modest living room. Players could design the area however they liked, though the layout itself was fairly sparse — built, specifically, so you could review the essentials of the upcoming session at a glance.

Aside from contacting other players entered in the qualifier ranks, there was plenty you could do. Check which map you'd been assigned, for instance, and run through the routes you'd planned for it in advance.

I'd meant to do something along those lines myself, however briefly.

Except the place I'd arrived at wasn't one of those personal waiting rooms every competitor was dropped into before a match. It was a booth that anyone could tell had been set up for an interview.

To explain how that happened, I need to briefly rewind about five minutes. In short: a great many of the promising players in the qualifier ranks had already finished their interviews — but the one everyone was most eager to hear from, namely me, hadn't sat for one at all.

Which was why the broadcast team partnered with Icarus International had carved out a sliver of time and asked me for a pre-match interview roughly ten minutes before the game started.

It wasn't anything difficult, so I'd agreed without much fuss.

And so the moment returns to the present.

"We've received an enormous number of questions from viewers. The single most common one by far is about how you handle mind control — your mental game. Is there some kind of secret to it?"

"Instant reactions live in the realm of instinct, but more intricately designed crises can't be broken through on instinct alone. So you need enough experience to handle whatever comes your way."

It was a thoroughly textbook answer, but the casters seemed to have expected as much and dressed it up with a few flourishes.

"Ah — so it ultimately ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠comes down ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to building a solid foundation. Absolutely the right idea. But as you know, Eugene, in the pro scene everyone starts from more or less the same line, don't they? Beyond the experience you just mentioned, is there any finer factor you think decides wins and losses?"

"I don't particularly think there is one. Personally, I don't believe the living and the dead are separated by differences that small."

"Oh, is that so? That's quite unexpected. Now I'm genuinely curious — could you walk us through that?"

On the surface it sounded like a statement with a touch of the absurd mixed in. Strip away the packaging and what it really said was that you'd try to quantify, with a human brain, the chaos produced by countless variables operating independently of one another.

But just as talk of easy money carries different weight coming from a gambling addict versus a tycoon, the words of someone who had casually shattered every hardship a match could throw at them and claimed first place again and again carried a different gravity.

Even as a gamer rather than a caster, it was something I was genuinely curious about. I unspooled it into language, slowly.

"A lot of people say that winning a fight comes down to improvisation, marksmanship, combat fluency, and so on. They're not wrong. But can you really maintain the same physical expected value in every single engagement?"

On average, a player in the qualifier ranks encounters hostiles more than twenty times. Actual firefights are ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fewer than that, but still — a hundred people. Scattered across a vast area, sure, but you'd still clear ten engagements at the absolute minimum.

Where was the guarantee that you could hold identical, peak physical performance across every one of those situations?

And even if you could, if fire started coming from some bizarre angle you simply couldn't answer with that alone — then improvisation, marksmanship, and combat fluency were all things that needed a platform before they could be brought to bear.

Things I hadn't really laid out for anyone except SSM started spilling from my mouth one after another. It didn't particularly matter. Theory had always been vague by nature.

I knew that myself, so instead of stretching it into a long list I wrapped the answer up with a brief summary.

"As a baseline, the moment I enter a fight I always assume I'm at a disadvantage. From there, I eliminate options one by one until I've at least climbed back to even footing. Cutting off the enemy's escape route, then locking down their sound play… something roughly along those lines."

"Ah — that does track. In ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a lot of your fight clips, Eugene, the geometry ends up flowing as if you'd set up a one-on-one from the start. I think I understand it a little better now."

Put simply, I didn't win because I was strong.

I could lock down first place so consistently because I could manufacture situations in which the enemy could be cleanly eliminated.

In that moment, a string of clips flickered through the minds of the casters — who were also, effectively, reporters.

"So then… the reason you switch to a melee weapon at the end instead of finishing with gunfire is to make absolutely sure the enemy player is gone."

"Exactly. Though I suspect a lot of people hate it, so I've thought a few times about cutting back on how often I do it."

"Hahaha — it's not as if nobody finds it terrifying. If you could reserve the axe blade and hammerhead mainly for PvE enemies, that would be ideal."

"I'll keep that in mind."

Even after that abrupt little session of self-reflection, the pre-match interview rolled on. As the viewer-voted questions ran dry one by one, the more ordinary material they'd prepared in advance took over.

What it had felt like the first time I played Dark Zone. Whether there was a particular reason I'd chosen Apex Predator solo. What my first PvP mode had been. How I'd rate my own Dark Zone skill in objective terms, and so on.

Honest, straightforward exchanges went back and forth — but as always, anything probing what I did in real life was cleanly cut away.

I answered every other question without filter or omission, yet from a certain territory onward I left not even a single crack of room.

Firm enough that even the casters asking the questions — the reporters themselves — were left guessing there must be a reason for it.

Before long even the hard-won scraps of time they'd carved out dropped below the minute mark, and it was time to start the match proper.

Factoring in that some players scrim or run practice matches right up to the final second, the casters felt they'd stolen something fairly important — and they said as much as they wrapped up.

"We've heard so many genuinely valuable things today. We'll be looking forward to a spectacular result this match as well. Any words you'd like to leave for the Tail Corps before we go?"

"…Tail Corps… I wonder how that nickname even stuck. Still, thank you for liking the tail. It's a strange feeling."

"Haha. Looks like everyone's fallen for your charm, Eugene."

And then the final question.

"All right — truly the last one. Most pro gamers tend to practice right up to the final second before coming in. How do you usually spend that time, Eugene?"

"Hmm."

The next line followed,

"Up until just now I was grinding the main missions."

"Aha, the main missio— wait, what?"

A flustered voice.

But just as I had left Harmony behind to come here, I prepared a second farewell for them.

My avatar scattered into a full bloom of light, and I added one last thing as it went.

"You'll find out the details if you watch the stream!"

A soft shimmer.

Leaving two speechless casters behind, I waved and dissolved into a handful of luminous fragments.

Today's map was a gas storage facility somewhere near California.

"Haa."

The wind was dry, and the air carried a harsh, acrid smell of burning.

The surroundings were full night, yet beyond the ridgeline everything glowed red. That intensity never faded. At a glance it almost looked like a sunrise cresting the horizon — except a rising sun always came paired with a clear blue night sky.

In other words: a wildfire.

China had carpeted stretches of California with napalm, and the resulting smoke and flames had carved out a kill zone.

And while most maps had something of the sort, this one too held a unique spectacle if you stayed on the map without extracting.

Specifically — if no one escaped within the allotted time, the kiloliters of gas stored in the facility would detonate in a colossal explosion and completely wipe every player still on the map. A thoroughly grotesque revolution of a mechanic.

Napalm might have started the wildfire, but it was also an indirect lesson in why you should never build a storage depot in a place like this.

In a way, for an AP map wearing the badge of a virtual-reality simulation, it was a fairly realistic one — lifting pieces of Dark Zone's own backdrop into the design.

"Ugh."

A thoroughly headache-inducing place.

I didn't particularly like it. The surroundings were thick with smoke from burning trees. Get caught in it and your eyes started to sting; push further and it triggered status effects. Dizziness set in, and control of your body was gradually stripped away.

The flames, needless to say, were dangerous on their own.

───Clack!

As always, this was a qualifier. That meant tournament rules were in effect. There was no need to manage looting speed at all. Crack open the crates scattered nearby and items simply poured out.

But given the hardcore ruleset, I still had to load my own magazines by hand — which was part of why I favored large-caliber guns. Fifteen rounds to a magazine at most.

"Spawn location's not great."

To briefly brief my current position… put simply, I was on the outer edge of the map. The lack of people nearby wasn't necessarily a bad thing for that reason — but flip it around and there was usually a reason people didn't come somewhere.

I pulled on a gas mask quickly. Judging by the specs it looked like an M55, the advanced successor to the U.S. military's standard-issue M50. The ear sections were open, but breathing still ran through the filter canisters, which introduced a slight inconvenience for sound play. Nothing to be done about it.

And rather amusingly, once a fire scenario hit, the items that came with it showed up to match.

Whether you could really call this an "item" was debatable, but—

—Swish.

"They drop something like this and then tell you not to do melee."

A fire axe.

Dark Zone's Apex Predator had a quiet habit of seeding melee weapons that fit the map. A prison-themed one, like last time, had come with the kind of improvised blades inmates might have forged. An underground research complex had featured a strange little dagger with a heating function.

And places like the Aurora Power Plant sometimes slipped axes in without much fanfare — here, with the core concept being a facility in the middle of a wildfire, they'd stocked fire axes meant for clearing obstacles and cutting paths.

I took hold of the rubber grip studded to keep it from slipping, swung it over my back, and it locked into place automatically.

Kids get scared when you go melee, they said — and then they put something like this in the loot pool. People whose words and actions truly lived on separate planets.