Cartographer
As with any competitive game, the highest tiers were objects of envy.
A tier was, after all, the most objective visual measure of skill—the surest way for players of the same game to confirm where they stood. As the game ballooned beyond any manageable size and ranked modes splintered into ever more divisions, the prestige of the upper tiers had eroded somewhat; that much was undeniable. Even so.
It was also one of the bare-minimum requirements for any streamer who billed themselves as a skill-focused broadcaster and ran Dark Zone as their main content. Flip that around, and it meant that the so-called streamers were disproportionately concentrated in the upper ranks.
In a way, that was only natural. A streamer was someone who provided viewers with something worth watching—and to do that, they needed something to sell. Outstanding game skill was the most intuitive selling point of all.
Raw skill, movement, aim itself—even the bottom-rung ranked games, which played out like a comedy or a tragedy depending on the day, had their own kind of appeal. But the hard-to-predict mind games, the clean and decisive fights, the hard-won victories clawed out from among players of that caliber… if the former was a comedy show, the latter was a well-made film.
It wasn't as if those moments never happened in the lower ranks. But by any common-sense standard, people simply didn't bother listening to what was happening down below.
Back to the point: the highest tiers were objects of envy. Viewed from the other side of that coin, though, the reason they were envied was simple—because that place was a hell beyond human comprehension.
The higher the tier, the more merciless the competition became; that went without saying. No matter how good you thought you were, queue into a match and a whole pack of players at roughly your level was already waiting. And once the people who no longer treated the game as stress relief but as their actual future—the pro-gamer hopefuls—joined the fray, the competition grew even more savage.
Fall behind, or claw your way up with the skill to break through. Only two options. And for people given only those two choices, there was only one answer they could give.
And so, on a sweltering day in mid-August—
One person set foot on the outermost edge of that inhuman hellscape.
"We've climbed quite a ways… All right, let's keep going."
LaemmiaSterio donated ₩1,000!
Thank you so much!
"Oh, for fuck's—hey. What did I ever do to you guys, huh? You think all I do is eat and play Dark Zone? Yeah, I slacked off a bit on the main job, but I'm back now!"
As the chat scrolled past in a parade of pure absurdity, a grand sound effect boomed and a ranked match notification popped up on screen.
A full five minutes. That was how long it had taken to find a single competitive match—and this wasn't even regular ranked. It was tournament ranked.
In a game where every last person was sprinting toward the Asian prelims, it had still taken five minutes to match him with players of comparable skill. Something felt off. Then again, looking at the hundreds of rooms currently running at his tier, maybe it was just bad timing.
With that thought, Kato—streamer handle Katographer—looked at the ranked match briefing screen floating in front of him.
TIER 2 Promotion Match is beginning.
He felt almost nothing.
Dig even a little into his past and Tier 2 had never been an insurmountable wall for him—more like a checkpoint he passed through on the way. His average skill level had always hovered between Tier 2 and Tier 1, and back when he'd been deep in the battle royale craze, he'd even scraped a seat at the bottom of the highest rank of all: Medal of Honor.
In short, while other people stared at the wall in front of them, he was already looking past it—drawing on prior experience to fix his eyes on the higher peaks beyond.
The bare minimum qualification for the Asian prelims started at Tier 2 Rank 5, and even with late-season exceptions, you needed at least SOF 1. Not long ago his daily routine had been running around in his underwear with an axe, a pistol, and valuables stuffed in his waistband—but a rich man stays rich for three years even after going broke.
With a confident tone, the ramp rotated and the transport's lower hatch opened. Wind howled through.
"All right, let's go! End-of-season ranked, but we're climbing fast! Here we gooo———!"
Jump.
The transport that could easily carry dozens of people shrank until he could cover it with a palm, and the research complex below—buildings that had looked like matchboxes—rushed up toward him at terrifying speed. A parachute bloomed with a crisp snap. As his descent slowed in an instant, players who'd hit the ground faster than him were already scrambling into buildings. A few seconds later, he followed the same path.
"Okay, it's a promotion match, so I'll focus a bit more. Loot priority is always skills first, like I keep saying. This is tournament ranked, so decent weapons drop right away. If you really want a specific primary, just grab it later from an airdrop."
His hands moved with practiced ease, cracking open the crates around him. Just as he'd said, they were packed with finished firearms, ammo, cash, body armor—everything designed to push players into early fights. He geared up almost instantly, and a light machine gun that was already more or less fully kitted rose into his hands. Engagements were already breaking out nearby.
After a quick sweep of the surroundings, he started moving, commentary flowing without a break.
"As you all know, skills have activation zones. Early fights in the high tiers basically come down to the mind games around those zones. Just so you're aware—item spawns near activation zones are absolutely miserable except for cash."
Put simply, two choices presented themselves. Grab a gun, farm enough money, unlock your skill, and fight the players who've done the same—or unlock your skill first and fight the pack of players swarming in from every direction, including others who've already unlocked theirs.
In practice, skills were strong enough that survival rates were roughly even either way. EMP grenades and other tools that could flip the balance only showed up late in a match, so there was no real risk of the meta collapsing to one side.
———!!!
Pressure on his finger, and a clean gunshot cracked through the air. Managing his stamina with a mix of slides, sprints, and walks, he'd snapped onto an enemy who'd suddenly burst around a corner and pulled the trigger. High-tier ranked meant the other player's reaction was fast too—but that was exactly why the smallest margin decided life and death.
Bullets crossed for a fraction of a second, and the enemy in Kato's sights dropped into a critical state just a hair faster. First engagement over. He finished them with a few more rounds, grabbed only what he needed, and moved on.
"Obviously you don't execute—enemies are crawling all over the place. If you suddenly get the urge for a dump mid-fight, just gently start the execution animation, forfeit the game, and go to the bathroom. At least you leave with a kill."
He was right. Despite the occasional snag, he swept through the area at a speed that made the fierce fight moments ago feel almost irrelevant. It didn't take long for the kill counter in the upper right—which had started to slow—to climb the way it had at the start of the game.
You'd have expected his skills to have rusted after all that time in other modes, but even the viewers who'd been needling him early on were now letting out continuous sounds of awe. He simply used everything he had—herding enemies into dead ends, clearing likely hiding spots, sometimes climbing into absurd positions to rain down attacks no one saw coming. Through raw skill, through map knowledge, through pure game sense, he assembled the board he wanted like putting a puzzle together.
It didn't always go his way, but every time his mind still concluded the situation was fully recoverable. And through it all, he never skipped the lip service of respecting his opponents.
"Is it because it's end of season, or because it's a promotion match… these kids are all really damn good. Normally I'd be cruising through this part."
But even as he said it, the roughly three thousand viewers watching Kato's stream already knew the truth. No matter how much he tried to prop up his opponents, the gap in class was unmistakable. He was running the game in a half-explanatory tone and competitors were still dropping like autumn leaves.
And the fact that donations and voice chat were still on at this stage—that alone was a hidden proof of Katographer's confidence and skill. Other people struggled to climb this bracket even in full tryhard mode; he did it with incomplete focus and the constant interruption of donations and didn't care. That alone proved plenty.
Cruising the area in a vehicle, he spoke again.
"Whoa, already down to thirty-two. See that, everyone? Nail the early game and you don't have to take the hard road later. Kill points that affect RP end up roughly the same no matter where you farm them."
Rather than hunting down every last enemy who'd survived the early bloodbath, found good positions, and dug into bunker defense—farm as many kills as possible in the early game when everyone was equal. An effective ranking method everyone knew and almost no one could actually pull off. There was a reason it only ever got passed around by word of mouth.
———Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
"Ugh, what the fuck. What is that?"
In the middle of all that, dozens—no, nearly a hundred—rounds of lead poured out from a second-floor window of a nearby mansion. The accuracy and firepower were monstrous. Holes punched through the chassis one after another, and the vehicle UI in the lower left started turning red. The fuel tank must have been shredded—the fuel gauge was plummeting, and the tires were gone too. Kato himself had taken several rounds; his HP had dropped to the midpoint.
Instinct was sending an uneasy warning.
"I've gotta take that one out. Leave them and it'll be a disaster later."
Grrrk.
With a decisive motion that was less "getting out of the car" and more "throwing the car away," he disembarked at a spot some distance from the mansion. The aggro he'd drawn meant assorted noise was already filtering in from the surroundings. He'd exited somewhere the window couldn't see, bracing for possible fire, so his worry was relatively low.
After running through safe entry routes for the mansion in his head, he spoke.
"You can't parkour up that house, but there should be another staircase on the warehouse side. I'll pop a grenade and a flashbang and swing around that way fast."
———Brrrrrt!
Right on cue, a second burst of machine-gun fire roared from the second floor. Whoever was in there was fully occupied with a fight—the perfect window for an ambush.
With a sharp click, the pins of a grenade and a flashbang hit the floor, and half a beat later a shockwave bloomed from the second story. Kato slipped around toward the open warehouse at the back, past the clutter strewn around the grounds, and into the building.
…Why does this place have so much fishing gear?
He pushed the stray thoughts aside. He'd thrown explosives—the enemy inside would know someone was coming. But he held the initiative, and to keep it he had to strike before they could react.
As fast as possible, but quietly, he climbed the stairs.
Thud-thud-thud-thud!
Whether this person had nerves of steel or had completely given up on crisis response, gunfire was still pouring from the second floor. But by the time he thought to question it, it was already too late. Years of game experience meant he knew the house layout cold.
The unending gunfire buried the sound of him pulling another flashbang pin, and only a few seconds later—amid a eardrum-splitting blast—Kato stepped onto the second floor.
No.
He tried to step onto it.
———!
"Gah—!"
Thud.
For reasons he couldn't begin to understand, the moment he drove his foot forward to clear the second floor, something caught his leg and he went down hard. Gear and steel slammed into the wooden floor with a deafening clatter.
He scrambled to get up, but—
"Nice try. A little short on threat awareness, though."
"Kh—hrrk…!"
Slip.
Something thick had coiled around his legs, and an unbearable weight settled on his back—nothing but his arms would move. At the same time, something wound around his throat. Sharp. Unbreakable.
Coincidentally, as Kato's body bent like a shrimp, something entered the edge of his vision.
A machine gun, propped casually by the window—and something like a string, connected to the trigger.
Only then did Kato understand what that was, and what had cinched around his neck.
Fishing line.
Wait—that means…!
"Having plenty of materials to build a trap is always a good thing."
The closer death came, the clearer the sequence of events became. They'd tied a cord to the machine gun's trigger and bluffed openly in every direction—firing continuously as if they had no situational awareness at all. But even so, a garrote this direct was—
"Good luck out there."
Bang.
The next instant—a pistol shot that felt like it punched straight through his eardrums—and with a headshot listed as his cause of death, he was dumped back into the lobby.
"…What the fuck. What even was that."
Of course, he still hadn't managed to pack any sense of dignity for the trip.