Last Day
"Ugh. Everything's spinning."
August.
Rain fell in a steady drizzle, soaking the nightscape below, while the darkness painted thick across the sky made it plain that the day had already run its course.
And yet, even as every team-affiliated gamer and every unaffiliated player skilled enough to enter the preliminary ranks took an early night's rest for the first time in ages—preparing for tomorrow—there were those who stayed up for tomorrow alone, sleep a luxury they could not afford.
In the black building jokingly known as Yeouido's yeonyanggeng, lights still burned on the upper floors.
Countless Icarus employees were still moving through those halls.
Their departments were as varied as their tasks. The publicity team checked every last detail of the Dark Zone AP Soloing tournament ads set to air from tomorrow across TV, YourSpace, Tricky, and a dozen other platforms, while coordinating schedules and time slots with the various broadcasters. The server control division worked tirelessly to keep traffic routes balanced so the servers would not collapse no matter what, and to guarantee that commentary, spectating, and observer functions would run smoothly from the mid-to-late stages of the preliminary ranks onward. Program engineers ran the machine-generated bracket results through check after check, hunting for any possible error. A handful of upper-management executives oversaw the whole operation, while the cafeteria staff prepared late dinners and midnight snacks for everyone still on the clock. And because overtime could easily mean missing the last train home, there were even people inspecting the building's overnight sleeping facilities and standing night duty.
Just because one person's day had ended was no guarantee that anyone else's had.
Meanwhile, in the publicity department—
Among those still ironing out final details, conversation began to drift, one remark at a time.
The same topic that surfaced every tournament season without fail: would any free agents put up a strong enough showing to advance to the main stage? And if so, where would they come from? In truth, it barely mattered either way. These people belonged to Icarus, not to any of the pro teams.
It wasn't critical—but it wasn't irrelevant, either. Players who demonstrated outstanding performance—pro gamers, for instance—sometimes received modeling offers from Icarus International itself.
Either way, the people in this department had to stay sharp on information, and every scrap of talk that circulated was built on intel that refreshed daily, sometimes hourly.
"How do you even pick a hundred out of fifteen hundred? If you assume every first-string pro makes it through, are there any seats left? This one's brutal."
"Still, AP Soloing has a ridiculously fast player turnover, so you don't have to take it that seriously."
"True enough. Who's looking strong this time? Reaper Infected? Xi? Arcadia Games or TK1?"
"Who knows. Could be SSM."
"They've been pouring everything into developing their second-string roster. I get that their entire first team washed out of the Asian qualifiers the year before last and Dice had to carry the whole load by herself, but…"
"We'll just have to see how it plays out. Anyone making noise among the non-pros?"
"That stuff always surfaces near the end of the preliminary ranks. Right now? Hard to say…"
And somewhere in the middle of that conversation, the spark jumped sideways without warning.
"Assistant Manager Jincheol—right, you picked up extra work recently. Anything unusual? Anything giving you trouble?"
"Ah, nothing too difficult. The last thing I handled was just that user asking me to testify regarding a cheat suspicion."
"And that wrapped up cleanly?"
"Yes. The physical evidence was so clear that was all it took to settle it."
"Good. That… involves a Mutant, so if anything comes up, report it immediately."
Fortunately, that was as far as it went—but that didn't mean his tongue wasn't itching. Because the very person those colleagues had just been discussing—"someone making noise among the non-pros"—was the Mutant he already knew.
Even people who lived and breathed information didn't know everything. And the fact that Eugene had set foot on the competitive scene barely a month ago and was already producing results at that level could easily be dismissed as too absurd to be real.
Or maybe they simply didn't know.
Either way, they were still a layer thinner than the analysts at the pro organizations—people who staked their livelihoods on information itself. For those analysts, data was money; it could even steer the entire direction of a team. Compared to that edge, this department's blade was inevitably a little duller.
Still—unlike the topic that had fizzled out so anticlimactically—anyone who actually knew her couldn't help but wonder.
Just what kind of storm was that user about to kick up?
For now, that remained a private little pleasure shared only among those in the know.
As for what that user was doing at this very moment—
ReformedEugene donated 1,000 won
"…If I were Nyangnyang Auntie, I'd have run for it too. Yes, you, ReformedEugene."
At the tail end of a Lovecraft otome game, she was barely managing to steer a ship whose entire crew consisted of perverts.
"Nyangnyang Auntie…"
"Hm? What was that?"
"Ah—nothing."
Monday, ten in the morning.
Two hours before the preliminary ranks opened—inside the virtual reality exclusive to SSM.
Without distinguishing between Soloing, Duo, or Squad, every last one of SSM's AP pro gamers had gathered inside a hyper-realistic auditorium, all of them staring at the screen projected at the front.
In one sense it was the final lecture before the preliminary ranks; in another, it was a last conference meant to boost morale and ease anxiety.
After all, from here on they would have to compete not only against other organizations but against their own teammates—a long, grinding ordeal. And so, as always: applause and support for the winners, comfort for the defeated.
In short, it was about delivering the final points of advice they needed to hear during matches, while underscoring the spirit of fair play.
Of course, right in the middle of it all, Dice—who had wandered into Eugene's stream the day before and been blindsided by an otome game more bizarre than anything she had ever encountered—was letting every word go in one ear and out the other.
Honestly, at her level, showing up barely mattered. She had safely cleared the Asian qualifiers three years running, and last year she had been one of only four players to advance to the main stage.
This, too, was just a place she was passing through.
So this is why people watch streams…
Her mind was still stuck on yesterday.
Eugene's broadcast wasn't exactly the kind you'd call gut-bustingly funny. There had been a steady trickle of laughs, sure, but it wasn't one of those high-energy streams where the comedy never stopped.
But how to put it—maybe it was the gap. The same person who had been an iron wall in scrims, looking utterly invincible the moment combat started, casually dropping dry remarks while playing that grotesque game, the feelings threaded between every line.
It sounded strange to say, but she laughed, she had likes and dislikes, and when confronted with the utterly deranged progression of that bizarre game she kept reacting with a steady stream of what the hell is this—and that alone was endlessly fascinating.
So Dice had sat there snickering right through to the end of the stream…
"Dice. Stop grinning and get up here. Say something useful to the kids."
"Uh, I'd rather not…"
But drawing that many eyes rarely led anywhere good, and before she knew it she was standing on the podium under a sudden storm of applause, with no real choice in the matter.
It wasn't unpleasant, exactly. If anything, it was familiar—she'd half expected it. She was one of SSM's flagship pro gamers, and she'd made the main stage last year.
Dice found a microphone in her hand and opened her mouth.
"Is there anyone here who still hasn't learned the preliminary rank rules?"
Naturally, no hands went up. If someone had raised a hand, that would have been its own problem.
Either way, there wasn't much to do until the preliminary ranks opened at noon, so since she was already up there, she decided to say whatever she wanted.
"Good. By now you should all have your preliminary rank schedules, and a few of you have probably been invited to the same rooms. Of course, you won't know which room you're in until you enter, so it's not that important…"
The preliminary ranks.
From this point on, grinding hours the way you did in regular ranked play would no longer produce meaningful rank changes. Rooms opened only at specific times; you received an invite code, and only by posting strong results in that session could you climb.
Aside from drawing a little less fame until the mid-to-late stages, it was the first format that truly lived up to the word tournament.
Put simply, it was an online competition.
"From here on, spectator rooms go live, so do not casually use any tactics or tricks you've been holding in reserve. If you've hit a skill ceiling and have no choice, fine—but to be blunt, if you're already at that point in the preliminary ranks, you're going to have a very rough road ahead."
Spectator rooms going live.
That meant outsiders could now watch the matches in earnest—which meant overseas analysts would be watching every movement and every tactic with bloodshot eyes, dissecting them down to the bone.
Of course, tactics themselves—though Eugene's lectures had shifted her thinking somewhat—were ultimately a contradiction in terms: standardized improvisation. At least within Asia, they mattered less than people tended to think.
The main stage, on the other hand…
She didn't even want to think about it.
And right on cue, the questions started coming, one after another.
The Möbius strip of questions she'd faced after returning from last year's main stage began to coil through her mind again—but what could she do?
All she could offer was whatever she was able to say.
"What's the main stage actually like?"
"You'll see something beyond anything you can imagine."
There were any number of ways to put it, but if she had to pick one: it was like being the ingredients inside a blender.
Even as the questions kept pouring in, Dice's vision was already flooding with flashbacks. She had fought with everything she had, and still been outclassed in movement, reaction speed, cover-based maneuvering—every single dimension of the game.
It felt like fighting a bulldozer wrapped in ballistic plates with an auto-aim turret bolted on. The conviction that she could never cross that threshold, and the helplessness that came with it, had welled up together.
Aiming as natural and fast as breathing. Triggers pulled without a flicker of hesitation. Groupings so precise they left no margin whatsoever. Terrifying reaction speed and merciless close-quarters fighting.
Those people didn't feel like they'd shown up to play a game…
How to put it.
Maybe the only real takeaway had been a bone-deep understanding of just how terrifying it was to make an enemy of the U.S. military.
Looked at that way, the people in this room were working themselves to the bone just for the privilege of walking into hell. The thought was bleak enough that she kept it behind her teeth.
As if the blood-soaked gauntlet of competition ahead of them—herself included—weren't already enough.
And yet this year, for reasons she couldn't quite explain, she couldn't bring herself to give up.
It wasn't simple competitive instinct. It was something quieter: the desire to watch one person's path, to walk alongside it, and to see just how far the ending prepared for that person would reach.
A strange kind of goal—but it was drive, all the same. Unmistakably so.
"How many of you here have run North American ranked?"
Every hand shot up.
But of course, none of them poured themselves into North American ranked the way they did on the Korean servers. Even the ones who tried hard never climbed past SOF.
And the truth that actually mattered: the battlefield where they would experience hell in the truest sense was not North American ranked.
She alone, among everyone present, had participated in the North American scrims hosted after the Asian qualifiers—and that place needed no explanation. It was convenient enough to think of it as a slightly degraded version of the main stage.
So she added one more thing.
"It would be ideal if you could run North American scrims after clearing the Asian qualifiers… but if the chance comes, make sure you participate in the practice matches held in the States.
The AP Soloing champion—the one person in the entire world who can claim that title—will have to walk a path of thorns you can't even imagine to get there. I guarantee it."
There wasn't much more she could say.
"I'll see you at the Asian qualifiers."
That was the only blessing she could offer them.