Arctic Ocean Power Plant
Apex Predator.
Rendered simply, the name meant the pinnacle of predators — and it was, quite literally, a savage game that herded a hundred players into a vast expanse and left only a single user standing as the victor.
A pure free-for-all. A survival contest. That simple, macho motto — crush everyone else and climb to the top — had driven AP's popularity past other formidable PVP modes, even beyond the famous Team Six.
Moreover, unlike Team Six, which demanded that you understand basic map structure, the utility of every gadget an operator could carry, and the fact that walls and floors could be breached to create entry points, AP's code of conduct was simple and clear: shoot the enemies you see, and move to the safe zone.
A lower barrier to entry was another advantage Apex Predator held over other PVP modes.
That low barrier, however, was not limited to spectators alone.
Team Six's relatively complex map layouts — walls that could be destroyed to open routes, walls that could be reinforced, traps that could be planted — made the mode somewhat difficult not only to watch but also to attempt.
Apex Predator was the opposite.
Even where buildings existed, the indoor layouts were relatively simple, and unlike Team Six, where skills were locked down by EMP, the skills players already knew from PVE — Pulse, Seeker Mines, sticky bombs, healing devices — remained fully available.
So you shot when you met an enemy, moved when the call came to head for the safe zone, and held your ground once you got there. Through that cycle repeated again and again, users either tasted victory or swallowed bitter defeat.
Absorbing and mastering those processes, though, was faster than in any other PVP mode — which meant it was well suited for newbies to try at least once.
AP had rapid player turnover.
That was no empty claim. A fast supply of players meant the odds of a hidden gem emerging among them rose in proportion.
And so Apex Predator became living proof that entry was easy, but climbing the ranks was brutally hard. The road to the Asian Preliminaries — beginning with the Preliminary Rank — was a quagmire of blood and fire, metal and the discarded.
The last week of August. The threshold of September.
This message is being sent to all participants as of this moment.
Apex Predator — Preliminary Rank has begun.
We wish you all the best of luck.
A vast filter of blood and sweat, tears, steel and lead and gunpowder smoke — a machine built to sort people — ground into motion.
"Of all the maps, this one had to come up first."
Not that I was ever free of preferences, but I had likes and dislikes like anyone else.
After my body changed into this form, a few additions had been layered onto my existing tastes, and I found myself more seriously affected by them — no. There was no need to dance around it. In short: among the Apex Predator maps, there were cold ones.
And not merely cold. This one was modeled on an abandoned large-scale power plant complex adjacent to the Arctic Ocean, which left you in a headache of a situation that felt uncomfortably close to a survival mode.
There was no real-world reason to build something like this out there, of course, but the place sat with mountains at its back and the sea to the north — roughly that kind of terrain.
Unusually, most AP maps forced player movement through the kill zone commonly called the "storm," but a few maps did things differently.
The Arctic Ocean Power Plant complex was one of them. Specifically — how to put it — the gimmick was that infiltrators had forced the facilities online and, in the process, released toxins that contaminated the area.
There was also the section of mountain with perpetual snow that would collapse, burying part of the map under an avalanche… In any case, the map used a variety of methods to herd users toward particular zones.
I found it rather distinctive, in its way.
Vibration detected. This area will collapse in 13 minutes 24 seconds.
This map didn't begin with a high-altitude drop the way others did. You approached to investigate the incident, lost communications for any number of reasons, and woke up somewhere on the map.
It felt genuinely close to survival. There were differences, of course.
Still, temperature didn't bind you here the way it did in actual survival. The ratio climbed a little as time passed, but by then you would have acquired enough gear that it hardly mattered. Tournament rules made that even more true.
A different map didn't mean a different start.
Change the map, though, and the supply crates changed with it. The abandoned port where I'd first set foot had boxes labeled ship supplies; the research complex used emergency-supply crates with a slightly high-tech look.
This place seemed to mix the two.
Inside the crate, various firearms lay neatly asleep, armor waited to be worn by someone, and grenades and other odds and ends filled the rest. The design was meant to generate spectacle through fast, frequent engagements.
Today's sidearm, for starters, was an S&W M500 that had appeared out of nowhere. Whether it was because I'd visited a shooting range recently or not, it felt thoroughly random.
And as for today's main event—
"…Ha."
The Mk.18 Mod.1 Mjolnir. My longtime partner had shown itself without warning. No wonder the crate had looked a little oversized.
A sudden wave of longing hit me so hard I forgot I was even in a match and simply took in the rifle's form. All sorts of thoughts surfaced. Whether something different might have happened on that last mission if I hadn't been carrying this… thoughts like that.
Would I ever find out?
At any rate, this rifle was, strictly speaking, a designated marksman type — meaning the barrel was quite long in the interest of accuracy. Twenty inches at the shortest.
But the round it chambered was the formidable .338, and in the past I had carried it as a kind of secondary specifically to silence heavily armored targets and drones with ease.
Far more penetrating than a slug shotgun, with impact force that wasn't meaningfully different — so long as you could manage the weight and the recoil, the weapon offered nothing but advantages.
I threw on the armor in a hurry, pulled out the half-dozen or so magazines that had come with the crate, and fed them into the loading device attached to the bag section of my Icarus Gear.
With a series of sharp clicks, roughly seven full magazines spilled out in about ten seconds. I seated one into the rifle's magwell, chambered a round, and stuffed the remaining six into pouches.
The optic on the top rail wasn't a high-magnification scope — it was a HAMR. That suited me better, honestly. There was no real need for long-range engagements here.
But in the middle of all that—
———Thud-thud-thud!
Rounds suddenly hammered down. I snatched up the rifle and ducked behind a wall.
Hardcore made this considerably more inconvenient. Watching other people's footage, you saw them open a crate and have the gun and fully loaded magazines dump out all at once. I got nothing of the sort.
From the direction of the incoming fire, the volume of the noise, and the vibration running up through my feet, I roughly fixed the enemy's position. Revolver in my right hand, I deliberately pulled a grenade so the sound would carry as far as possible.
Still not coming out, huh.
Then I hooked my tail through the grenade pin and yanked it free with deliberate force.
The enemy, sensing I was exposed, laid down prefire and tried to reposition — but I flung the grenade with my left hand alone while my right index finger worked the trigger in rapid succession.
The recoil was considerable. Grip strength alone canceled it out.
—KRA-BOOM!
Two of five rounds connected.
Not a clean result, but given that I'd been firing one-handed in rapid succession with .500 S&W Magnum, the damage would have been anything but trivial.
I tossed the revolver the other way to sow confusion and closed the distance at a sprint. I heard the enemy swapping magazines.
A quick cost-benefit calculation ran through my head. A suppressor made it hard to be certain, but the weapon was heavier than an SMG. Probably a standard carbine. Rate of fire at least 700 RPM.
Factoring in my rifle against theirs, our respective loadouts… the moment I landed even a single hit, the impact of the round would keep them from putting accurate fire on me.
The next instant, two lines of fire crossed head-on.
The engagement was short.
"Ghk—!"
In that fraction of a second, there was no one on earth who could take three rounds of .338 Lapua Magnum to the body and not go down hard.
The enemy was flung back onto the cold, hard concrete floor, the impact so violent they skidded a considerable distance. Early-game ammunition — ball, not armor-piercing — played its part as well.
The rounds hadn't punched through; they'd crumpled against the ballistic plate, and that enormous kinetic force had driven the body backward.
———THOOM!
It sounded less like a gunshot than a giant stamping its foot.
As the heavy brass kicked from the chamber struck the floor with a relatively low, dull note, a message announced a critical head impact, and the opponent vanished from the match in an instant.
As always, it went like this.
It felt a little strange to say it myself, but for those who ran into me early, all I could ever offer was a quiet rest in peace. Leaving a targeted enemy alive was unacceptable. Once I chose a target, I did not let them go.
What differed from the past, though… was that the legacy they left behind would become my strength.
In place of the discarded revolver, I picked up the Mk.18 CQBR they'd left behind. Fortunately, the nanomachines still had durability to spare. I dragged the body behind a shipping container and carefully went through their kit.
Six fully loaded magazines went into the upper pouches. The optic was, at a glance, a Vortex UH-1. I'd handled so many that zeroing took only a few seconds.
I pulled the NGAL, remounted it at twelve o'clock, and set the point of aim and point of impact to converge at fifty yards. Adjusted the stock length slightly. The grip was, oddly enough, a Hera Arms CQR — I shifted its position a touch.
All of it took under a minute.
I'd handled all of these pieces before, and under the motto that the longer you took, the lower your odds of survival, I'd spent more than a week doing nothing but this kind of work.
And with the setup dialed in this far, I probably wouldn't swap to another primary mid-match. It simply took too long.
This area will collapse in 10 minutes 00 seconds. Zone lockdown in 8 minutes.
"Three minutes already."
I'd delayed longer than expected.
I pulled up the map and plotted a projected movement route, accounting for the zones where the outside temperature was critically low, the areas contaminated by the collapse, the projected range of the avalanche, and the rest.
Keep the route simple. Don't bleed too much time. I needed at least a rough estimate of how long to stay in each area — not so much a rigid plan as preparation for the worst-case scenario.
Current remaining players: eighty-nine. I confirmed the path, fixed the terrain features in mind, and started moving.
Next objective: the skill-unlock zone, where the war of all against all would be in full swing.
Meanwhile, as Eugene walked on without the slightest idea—
The relay room opened under Eugene's name had already descended into chaos as her regular viewers poured in—
—and even the people seeing her for the first time in this relay room.
Once again, Eugene was being broadcast in every direction, the only one who didn't know.