New Common Days
───Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
A hail of bullets. Sparks leaping into the air.
I forced down the heartbeat trying to claw its way up my throat, sorting through the flood of information that filtered in between the suppressed reports of gunfire, picking out whatever might be useful. How many rounds the enemy had fired. Their movement routes. Whether they were about to throw a grenade…
The deeper I sank into the fight, the fewer UI elements remained at the edges of my vision, until only the enemy and I were left. The methodology etched into my body and years of accumulated combat experience quieted the thrum of my muscles and found calm inside the violence.
I felt the trigger catch against my gloved finger. Pressure on a trigger that had nowhere further to travel, the firing pin striking the primer, and the bullet breezing past the sound barrier on its way to the enemy.
A Lapua Magnum round split the air and slammed into a concrete cover wall. With a sickening whip-crack, the kinetic energy concentrated on a single point began to tear apart cover that was already starting to fail.
A ten-round magazine emptied itself in an instant.
The moment gravity dropped it to the floor, a fresh polymer magazine slid into the well, and once again it spat lead — or tungsten — in a death sentence of fire.
Pull the trigger. Intercept the incoming grenade. Close the distance while the enemy repositions behind cover. These were countless tiny plans, shattered into pieces. Calling it a kind of puzzle wouldn't have been an exaggeration.
Each objective was a prerequisite for a larger one — footsteps toward a destination.
Change position. Fire the gun. Kill the enemy. Kill the enemy, break through the obstacles the session throws at you, and claim victory.
Claim victory, enter the qualifiers, advance to the main stage — and once I reach the main stage… I'll inevitably end up visiting Icarus headquarters.
If I make it that far, will I finally understand why Dark Zone is connected to my past — to the world I came from?
───KRA-BOOM!
A grenade intercepted midair detonated with a roar, scattering tiny steel balls in every direction. Like a rain of death. In practice, it wasn't much different.
I checked my nanomachines and remaining health. The enemy, hit by armor-piercing rounds, was losing both nanomachines and health at once — the rounds had punched clean through and exited the other side.
Even so, the few rounds that had connected delivered more than enough shock to keep the enemy from aiming properly, so I sprinted forward without the slightest hesitation. Just as expected, no follow-up fire came.
Cause produces effect, and effect becomes usable information.
The breathless exchange of fire reached its end before I quite noticed.
Steadily, continuously degrading an enemy's combat capacity without accumulating damage to my own body had always produced reliable results.
But — just because the opponent had lost enough strength that they could no longer deal me a serious blow did not mean I could casually walk up to them.
Before they could recover, I pulled a grenade.
A soft click as the pin came free.
The grenade's body hit the floor with a dull metallic thud, and the final puzzle piece slid into place.
I took one more step forward.
───!
A winner has been decided.
This session will end in 20 seconds.
Through the ear-splitting blast, I survived another day.
Without even being sure where any of this was leading me.
Adjusting tier…
"Hah…"
Cool water slid down my throat.
How to put it — it felt a bit like climbing a staircase. With each passing match, the quality of the games I had to play rose a little higher. Not exponentially, but not imperceptible either.
The congratulatory messages pouring in through the notification window were strangely novel. Sixteen people. Thinking about it, that checked out. One hundred players per session. Sixteen of those rooms — one of them hadn't quite filled to a hundred, but there had been additional recruitment — so sixteen winners.
Sixteen out of sixteen hundred. Genuinely rare. Still, the fact that I was one of them hadn't quite sunk in.
I glanced at the notification window.
It wasn't all complete strangers. Quite a few check-in messages had come from people I'd exchanged a message or two with before. Amusingly enough, they were ordered by how our connections had formed.
Harmony. Unreal. Katographer. Dice. And a few others… all people I knew. I started reading from the top. Harmony's.
Anyway you always do so well I don't think I need to worry about you, so I'll cheer you on instead of worrying! Hit me up whenever you're free!
P.S.) That Cthulhu dating sim we played the other day was SO fun lmaooooooo you're doing a sequel right??
A thoroughly Harmony-esque message.
As for that last postscript… that would be rather difficult to grant. The content had been so far out there that even while playing, I'd barely managed to keep my composure.
Katographer was a name I remembered. Back when I'd just started grinding tournament rank — not qualifier rank — we'd run into each other by chance. Calling it chance was generous; it was closer to me unilaterally thrashing him.
We hadn't really kept in touch after that, but it was hard to call us complete strangers either. Roughly that level of distance.
Anyway, the contents were fairly ordinary. Just a standard check-in, really. Mentioning that he'd entered qualifier rank himself, saying see you at KSM later. About that much.
And then Dice…
Before introducing the contents, I idly worked my fingers.
And then, as if to drive the point home — the reply came remarkably fast.
Back to the original message… it was actually about three times the length of Harmony's.
Briefly summarized: the opening was a standard check-in, the middle covered everything that had happened so far and the stream she'd watched last time, and the latter half was roughly an invitation to meet at KSM or the Asian qualifiers rather than places like qualifier rank.
And of course, a postscript pleading that we please not end up on the same board.
My next match wasn't for another three hours.
While mixing a shake that packed two thousand kilocalories into a single cup, the conversation drifted onto a slightly different topic.
At some point the texts had graduated into an avatar-phone call.
"That aside, you completely demolished Michael. No offense, but are you actually human? Should I put in a request to add live CQB to the temporary coaching job…"
"I feel like I've heard that particular line quite a lot…"
"Can you blame people? Well, I only saw the clips so I didn't get the full context. But does it really need explaining? That scene alone says everything."
Of course she wasn't done talking, and the topic was already shifting again.
"…How long have you even been carrying that tomahawk around? Getting kills with something like that is kind of… you know? You're not going to kill me with it later, right?"
"It's a rather storied piece of equipment. I can pull it out whenever a situation starts going poorly, but…"
"That's terrifying, seriously…"
It wasn't actually that unusual.
In real engagements, literally anything could happen — not just carbine range, but pistol-only distances, and even situations where pistols were useless and it came down to a conversation between bodies.
Put simply, it was the same principle as many soldiers carrying a tactical knife when deploying for real. I just carried an axe instead of a knife.
It wasn't as if I'd been completely unaffected by the Hunters deployed to kill Icarus operators, either.
And so the conversation kept going.
Outside, the rain was still falling.
Sup, Dark Zone gallery peeps
Came here today to explain what I know about Eugene's play — the hottest potato of the moment — for anyone who hasn't seen it yet
I'm only talking about what I know so my take might differ a bit from how the actual play flows, but I'm a lifelong second-division scrub and Eugene is a human armored vehicle who splits open the skulls of every big-name pro gamer you've ever heard of, so just take it with that in mind
Three-line summary up top, three-line summary down below
<Eugene movement route photos>
Three-line summary of Eugene's movement routes:
1. Don't
2. Do it
3. You get shredded
Being real, you can't call Eugene's routes good, because the higher you climb in tier the more AP's motto becomes survival, not kill-catching
As most of you know, AP has some skill variance by tier, but bad luck can still have Masters instantly deleting pro gamers on the regular
That's honestly why every tactics analysis you see on YourSpace ends up looking roughly the same — even under tournament rules, the baseline is playing stable while maximizing survival rate, so it's kind of convergent evolution…
Which is exactly why Eugene's play can't help but stand out
If you had to call this user's behavior a tactic, maybe Bulldozer Tactic or Blender Tactic? Because anything that gets in the way just gets ground up
Anyway it's play that normal people can't copy, but if you look closely there's some genuinely unhinged psychological warfare going on under the surface
Take that 1v2 situation you lot are currently debating, for example
<Clip of Eugene fighting Kyle, the user further down the corridor, with Michael behind her>
<Michael interview stating he never heard the smoke grenade being thrown>
Look carefully — Eugene used her tail… or whatever that is… to pop smoke deep down the corridor mid-fight
Here's what a lot of people missed: the sound of the smoke grenade rolling and detonating was completely buried under the gunfire
The way I see it, this was deliberate — denying extra information. If Michael had heard the smoke go off, I think he would've reasoned like this:
— Wait, smoke grenade sound? There's a long corridor in front of me?
— Trying to block vision and push the corridor? Better pick up the pace and catch up.
Not certain, but something like that. At least that's how I read it
Anyway she masked the smoke detonation sound, and Eugene was openly wasting ammo. I think part of that was also to bait the grenade throw location to some degree
Got a reason for thinking that
<Michael's grenade impact point>
Look close — Michael deliberately didn't throw the grenade deep into the corridor. He must've thought Eugene was still there
But Eugene was already hidden inside the smoke. Kyle, seeing the smoke go out, assumed a push was coming and just ran off the other way
After dodging both grenades she closed the distance immediately. Looks like Eugene decided to finish it right there
And what came next is the scene everyone knows — that shoulder throw.
Being real, if it hadn't been Eugene — if it'd been me, or anyone else — they'd have died. Guy's pushing with a shield, there's no winning that in close quarters
I've seen every kind of play in this game but this one made me dizzy the second I saw it
And after that….
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<abridged>
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