HALO
"Prepare for high-altitude drop."
"One hundred operators are deployed into a virtual training environment spanning over seven square kilometers. Only the most elite will claim victory. Use all acquired assets to survive."
"Test your survival instincts, familiarize yourself with weapons you've never used, and fight enemies in extreme environments that occasionally arise."
"All experience gained here will become your foundation."
"Drop, drop, drop!"
"What the hell is this..."
Thud.
She set her foot down carefully on the ground and roughly sorted through the parachutes scattered around her. Her tone was half-grumbling, but the words slipped out because she genuinely couldn't believe what she was seeing.
Scattering people across the map like handing out flyers was common enough in battle royales, but actually being on the receiving end of a jump from an aircraft... well, that was it.
A cool wind swept in.
After surveying her surroundings, she decided—personally, anyway—that this place also looked like a dead city. Not the kind with skyscrapers scattered like New York, but one that had developed around a port.
In short, it felt a bit rough and artificial. That was about it.
She entered a nearby building at random and checked its structure. She wasn't planning to stay long anyway. This was her first round, and she was just getting a rough sense of how the game flowed.
But as if determined to wipe away her relaxed mindset, gunfire erupted around her.
At the top of the UI, the numbers that seemed to indicate remaining players were already ticking down one by one.
—Clink.
Boxes scattered throughout the building glowed with a faint golden light, as if begging to be opened. She pried them open to find magazines, fully assembled firearms, bulletproof vests, and more spilling out.
Just walking around a little, every kind of attachment for guns was lying at her feet, and even various tactical gear was scattered about.
They'd set it up so you could fully gear out in less than a minute. It really was a game by combat, for combat, and of combat.
What was so fun about killing other people, anyway...
"..."
She left the building and entered the loading dock of a nearby big-box store to check the map.
As expected for a battle royale game, something circular was advancing from the far edges of the map toward the center. She had a rough idea what it was.
"...Footsteps."
They weren't light. Rather, they were heavy, with the sound of gear clinking and bumping against each other.
The first engagement was the most important of all. The reason was simple: it would reveal what kind of picture the developers were painting.
If you died from just a few shots, this mode would prioritize psychological warfare and survival over direct combat.
But if you could take a reasonable amount of damage without dying, the developers were aiming for bloody combat.
Vibrations traveling through her body gave her a rough sense of the enemy's position.
Thinking that they were moving around far too carelessly, she flung open the door and caught the enemy in her holographic sight.
They were armed with a shotgun. Slug rounds. Even if they were wearing a helmet, the kinetic energy alone would snap their neck.
And how long had passed?
The moment she pulled the trigger, the heavy recoil sent the iron slug flying, and it struck the enemy in the chest.
"Kuh—!"
They tumbled backward as if defying the laws of physics.
They didn't die in one shot, so she fired two or three more roughly, and like some hedgehog game, they spat out their loot and vanished from the spot. The number at the top of the UI decreased by one, and her kill count went up by one right after.
Looking through her items for a better gun, she spoke up.
"It's pretty realistically normal. Or maybe it's because of the slug rounds."
She wasn't usually the type to grab whatever gun she found. Not just her—everyone she'd operated with in the past used their own customized weapons.
She preferred Western-style over Eastern-bloc, and as for guns... honestly, she used whatever. Larger caliber was better, though. Most of the fights she'd experienced happened in hot zones where suppressing the sound of firing and gunfire was meaningless.
Actually, the best was probably the infantry railgun she'd used during Operation Chariot.
She rummaged through her inventory with that thought, but unfortunately, the person she'd just taken down only had... an M1A that was somewhat usable. Still, better than a shotgun.
She removed the high-magnification scope from the Picatinny rail, swapped in an EOTech, and adjusted the zero while adding:
"For this first round, I'll play without worrying too much about safety."
For now, if there were enemies around, she'd settle things. Even she thought it was a meta that enemies would really hate.
And so she left the shopping mall.
The mouse that made aiming simple, the WASD keys on the keyboard that controlled character movement, and the countless shortcut keys that enabled various tactical actions.
Even though Dark Zone had gone through numerous player-friendly patches to simplify things, it still couldn't fully replace the convenience of so-called "key-ma" users.
Thus, VR games—big or small—naturally came under the influence of real-world physicality, and the frequency of so-called "superplay" situations dropped significantly.
Of course, a lot of time had inevitably softened the players within the game, and Dark Zone was no exception.
It was obvious that the removal of keyboard and mouse meant there was no going back to the old days. But conversely, it meant that as time passed, even if rarely, excellent play would still emerge.
However—
—Zing!
"Ugh."
There were always cases where such rare exceptions didn't apply.
A ballistic knife fired from close range. She barely dodged it with pure reaction speed, and the severed strands of her hair fell to the ground with a soft thud.
She'd rushed in during the gap after the last shot landed cleanly, making it the enemy's final desperate act—but the look on the user's face twisted strangely when they saw it blocked in such a pitifully absurd way.
Intense noise and white light surged forward, and the enemy with a hole in their head collapsed to their knees on the spot.
Current kills: 16
High-value target being tracked / Target lock duration: 13 minutes 26 seconds
She exhaled sharply, then checked for any remaining enemies around her. The sound of beans being fried kept coming from nearby.
She was currently inside a small house. More specifically, she'd pushed her way into a building where someone else had already set up.
This was the realm of CQB, and she was someone who had grown accustomed to clearing buildings.
"This isn't even a modernized space. In cases like this, there are plenty of ways to push in once you know the rough position. I wouldn't recommend staying in one place for long."
Ammony has donated 1,000 won.
...Is that so?
She glanced at the chat with a sense of doubt, but it was hard to find any opinions that disagreed with that donation. If that was the standard for ordinary people, then so be it.
By now, thirteen people remained. The circle had shrunk considerably. What had once stretched beyond the map when she first dropped was now small enough to cover just one or two small villages.
Soon it would shrink even further, and the damage field would cover the entire map.
The engagement range had shortened significantly by now.
The M1A slung on her back... it was probably time to let it go. She'd used it well, but now she could handle combat without trouble even with the MP7A1 she'd acquired not long ago.
Alert: Enemy UAV identified.
Alert: Damage field shrinking. Move to the safe zone.
"I'll need to move."
She hadn't planned to stay inside a building for long from the start.
Before going outside, she checked her movement route and avoided the sight angles of windows where enemies might be—that was basic of the basics. She began moving quickly as she'd pre-planned.
There were plenty of cover objects, so moving wasn't difficult. Using the gunfire heard from various directions as background noise, she gauged the rough positions of enemies.
Having switched to a lighter firearm, her mobility was swifter than she'd expected, but the terrain ahead wasn't in great shape.
Almost simultaneously with those chat reactions, a volley of buckshot began pouring down from above. It was almost like a premonition.
The very familiar sound of a whip cracked in her ears, and flames flickered from the second-floor window of the house directly in front of her.
There was no enemy more troublesome than someone who secured a position first and then mowed people down.
She wished she had a rocket launcher or a grenade, but the thing you need is always the thing you don't have.
The number of competitors had already dropped to seven. Judging by the size and shape of the circle, there would be at most one enemy moving along the same route as her.
Keeping in mind a possible engagement, she maintained a state where she could aim at any moment as she approached the house.
She cautiously opened the mansion's door and entered. Almost simultaneously, the sound of footsteps came from across the way.
"..."
She held her breath and hid behind a wall, gauging the situation solely from the sound of footsteps.
By her estimation, the enemy who had entered similarly would definitely know there was another user on the second floor. After firing so much, they couldn't possibly not know.
Going straight to the second floor would be ideal, but...
Unfortunately, things didn't always go the way you wanted.
She considered using a Tomahawk but quickly decided against it. She already knew the position well enough through vibration detection, so she simply waited for them to come close enough.
She identified the silhouette passing in front of her.
What came next was simple.
"Ugh, wha—!"
With one large step forward, she approached from behind, clamped a hand over their mouth, and wrapped her tail around their legs, yanking them upward as if lifting them. The opponent was now half-suspended in midair.
From that position, she twisted their neck and snapped it. In that instant, the opponent died silently.
With the enemy's body going limp and turning into a pile of items behind her, it was now time to fulfill the dreams they hadn't finished.
She climbed the stairs quickly and threw a flashbang into the room where rustling sounds were coming from.
That was the first explosion. The machine gun fired indiscriminately by the enemy whose vision and hearing had been scrambled became the second.
The burst fire didn't last long.
The clacking sound indicating there were no more rounds to fire became their last words.
"Aaaah, ahh—! Kuh—!"
They flailed on the bed, and a single bullet tore through their forehead, piercing through the pale gray mass, and it was over.
That made 18 kills. She didn't feel particularly excited. She chambered another round and checked for useful items, but aside from restocking one flashbang she'd used earlier, there wasn't much to do.
Only three people remained.
LiveStrongInNature has donated 1,000 won.
"You'll get hurt if you try to find out."
There was nothing else she could really say.
And roughly two minutes later, she finished her first round with 20 kills.
The start wasn't bad at all.