Not a Good Example
Click.
"Ugh, damn… life is seriously hard."
He finished analyzing someone else's play that was barely a few dozen minutes old—still hot enough to scorch—and layered his own thoughts on top of it, completing a single post. It wasn't properly edited or anything close; after a cursory check for possible grammatical errors and typos, the post went up with a short plastic click of the mouse.
After a brief buffer, watching it upload successfully, he—Park Woojin, a second-string pro gamer for Arkadia Games—sank into his soft bed. Without needing to look elsewhere, he could see the gallery overflowing with posts.
Eugene. Eugene. Eugene… Occasionally people tried to divert the topic with other bait or pull lame aggro, but they were inevitably swept under by the tidal wave of posts and vanished below.
It made sense. She'd literally demolished the first team of a neighboring organization.
Honestly speaking, he couldn't claim he wasn't envious.
How could he not be? This scene was built on endless competition, and he himself was someone who bounced between the first and second teams through repeated call-ups and send-downs. He prided himself on being a user who'd made a name for himself grinding hard here, but still—like people drawn to a meteor, play of a caliber that became known without any effort to promote it was something to envy.
But that was all.
Jealousy and competitive spirit only work when the other person is somewhere you can still look up to. Beyond that, the feeling drifts somewhere between awe and dread. He was envious. But it didn't go further than that. The greater the gap, the simpler the emotions contained within became.
You had to concentrate hard enough to feel every single raised hair and claw your way up with pure grit just to reach the upper ranks. Even at the entrance to the Asian qualifiers, the surroundings were packed with people who were slightly worse than him, as good as him, or better. The world of competition was ruthless, and of the 1,600 people scraped together up through SOF 1, 1,500 would have to wait for next year.
After that came KSM. Of a hundred people, only twenty advanced to the Asian qualifiers, and from those twenty in the Asian qualifiers, the number shrank to a maximum of four.
Numbers were colder and more terrifying than any severe law.
But skill that didn't even need to care about that blood-boiling competition… well. That was why the feeling he held toward the user Eugene was simple envy. Nothing more, nothing less was needed.
Waking from his thoughts and refreshing with just a thought, his post had already claimed a spot on the popular ranking in the bustling gallery. Without much thought, he clicked and read the comments. There could always be other opinions that weren't baseless, meaningless criticism, and those were always welcome—but today, well. He wasn't sure there would be any.
As if driving a stake into that expectation, there weren't any particularly special comments. Just people expressing their disbelief in their own language, agreeing with the post, roughly that sort of thing.
But among them, there was one fatal problem.
"…Huh?"
What?
Wondering if he'd made a mistake, he hurriedly scrolled up to the title—and the three letters after what should have clearly said "analyze" had evaporated.
A word even he, who hadn't studied particularly hard in school, could recognize.
This was bad.
"No, what kind of stupid mistake is this…"
With a sensation like every hair on his body standing on end, he hurriedly edited the title. Of course, he didn't forget to include an apology to Eugene.
It was an everyday occurrence in the gaming world that wasn't particularly uncommon.
"Nice to meet you. Even if it's only inside virtual reality, this is the first time we've actually met face to face. I hope you're not uncomfortable?"
"No. No real problem. Honestly it's a bit disorienting, but you've been very welcoming."
Inside a room decorated primarily for cleanliness and simplicity, countless windows flickered ahead. Chat windows and gameplay footage were arranged for easy viewing, waiting for someone to look at them.
When a voice came from beside me, I could only answer a little dazed. It wasn't as if the feeling of being flustered was entirely absent. Lately, far too many unexpected things had been happening.
Around 3:30 in the afternoon, right after my second match had just ended.
I accepted Unreal's first invitation—someone I'd only ever spoken with through messages until now—and found myself suddenly serving as a guest in the personal broadcast room he was running.
The slightly unexpected part was that there was someone I'd never seen before sitting next to him.
"Nice to meet you. I'm Russ, coach for Reaper Infected. I got to know about you through Katographer, so meeting like this feels fresh."
"I see. Nice to meet you. I think we ran into each other a few times while running tournament ranks before—so you two are acquainted."
Still, the self-introduction helped. On top of that, fortunately Unreal had given a brief explanation of the personal broadcast room he'd been running up to this point, so the disaster of failing to follow the situation never happened.
That aside, the viewer count was somehow ballooning at a terrifying speed. A broadcast room that had been holding roughly around twenty thousand until now shot up to thirty-five thousand in an instant. The climb was starting to level off a little now, but still.
Glancing sideways, something that looked like a full cut of my own play was running on screen.
Once it got to this point, even a complete novice could figure out why these two had sent an invite code to someone who'd been quietly resting. In short, something like a player interview.
There was no way any prepared remarks existed in my head, but somehow things were progressing anyway.
It started with Unreal turning his head toward me and giving a nod.
"Congratulations on first place in the second match! This is truly unprecedented in Dark Zone history. Even in the qualifier ranks from the year before last and last year, there was never a case of consecutive first places. Before we get into the real questions, may I lightly ask if you have any hidden secrets?"
"…First of all, thank you for the congratulations. Unfortunately, there's no separate strategy for winning or anything like that."
In a way, it was an obvious answer.
But whether it was obvious or not, people expecting a concrete reply were overflowing—and among them were even players who'd been waiting for their next match and been drawn in by the news that Eugene had appeared in the broadcast room.
Unreal added a short remark as if he'd anticipated this, and the speaking rights naturally passed to Russ.
"Yes, thank you for the answer. In a way, that's the obvious thing to say. There's no correct answer in Apex Predator, where countless variables are at work."
"Then may I ask one?"
"That's fine."
Russ's question.
With remarkably fast hand movements, countless windows vanished and appeared, and the map I'd been playing on just moments ago came up.
An abandoned research base in the middle of a desert. Fitting the setting of a simulated war conducted inside virtual reality, it was a map that seemed to have been created by the game itself rather than anything I'd actually experienced in the past. Some of them didn't seem that way, though.
The main Revolutions and kill zones were sandstorms and abnormal weather, plus turrets, explosives, and self-destruct systems for the base's own defense. Unlike the Arctic Ocean power plant from before, this one was a standard high-altitude drop infiltration.
As I was thinking through the map's characteristics one by one, the words continued.
"Given my affiliation and profession, analyzing users' playstyles is one of the things I do, and from that perspective… Eugene, you fall into the rather difficult-to-read category."
Then the screen that followed.
Outside, a sandstorm fierce enough to black out vision entirely was raging, while inside the base building I was rapidly driving a single enemy toward the outer perimeter.
Beside that, this time, footage of me using extremely careful movement mid-engagement to slip out of the area my opponent was aiming at, while simultaneously misleading the enemy with a simple trap made by packing sand from inside the base into a plastic bag.
Sand leaking from a plastic bag lightly slit with a knife. It was connected via nylon cord to a heavy object, structured so that once the sand fully drained and the weight hit the floor, the pin of a grenade hanging at the end would be pulled.
It wasn't made to kill anyone—just a trap to generate noise.
As the chat window fell into another round of admiration asking what the hell that was, Russ carefully added:
"…Sometimes you construct the board with extreme precision, and other times, like the first clip I showed, you frequently show a steamrolling style of play. Is there a common thread that runs through the principle behind these actions?"
Countless reactions surrounded us. The majority were people who couldn't help but marvel at the footage Russ had put up, but if you focused, serious reactions were mixed in among them—from simple curiosity to people from other organizations trying to dig into my foundations. Every one of them was as passionate as the recruitment offers I'd received, and then some.
The question of how much I should say filled my head. While working as a temporary coach for SSM, we'd discussed the degree to which curriculum content could be disclosed, at least a little. Whether it had any real effectiveness still hadn't even been verified, though.
Looking at it from that angle… SSM was providing not only theoretical aspects but direct one-on-one instruction as well, so even if I said everything here, it probably wouldn't balloon into a major problem.
But that didn't mean I was actually going to say everything.
I spoke in precisely tailored language.
"Since a lot of people seem curious, I'll say this—my engagement principle prioritizes neutralizing the opponent's advantages, or driving them into a disadvantageous situation."
The footage that happened to catch my eye. The very first clip Russ had put up, the one where I was rapidly driving an enemy toward the outer perimeter of the base.
I took a small breath and added:
"Anyone who's played Apex Predator to a certain degree probably knows this to some extent, but the desert research base imposes sensory restrictions as the sandstorm hits. That applies even when you're inside a building."
Naturally, the further inside you went, the less that influence applied. Put another way, the closer you got to the outer perimeter, the more you took the sandstorm head-on—sand packed into facilities that were already in poor shape, and equipment and broken exterior panels rattled and made all kinds of noise. Even if that weren't the case, there was the sound of wind coming through a single wall's difference.
The enemy was driven into a zone where efficient response was difficult, and I gradually slowed my pace while sealing off their hearing. From the opponent's perspective, it wouldn't have been a particularly pleasant experience.
How many minutes passed after that? I ejected one person to the lobby without any major issues.
But the important part wasn't that—it was the earlier moments, the scenes in between where the enemy misread my position, that more effectively supported the claim.
My gaze had already shifted to the grenade trap clip.
"The context of the second clip is similar. It's about creating a variable to steal the enemy's attention. In terrain like the example, where directly hitting the enemy with a grenade is difficult, that method can be more effective."
With an additional gesture, I popped up the terrain map from that moment.
The enemy's position wasn't far away, but it was high ground composed of stairs and railings, and unless you threw a grenade wrapped in adhesive material like Semtex, or the explosive was cooked with second-level precision or better, tossing a grenade might just have it fall back to the floor.
The clip played. The moment the grenade exploded, the enemy had no choice but to duck behind the iron plate of the railing, and I—positioned on the hangar floor—quickly moved to a container on the opposite side.
A brief silence followed. The opponent poked their head out and scanned the surroundings, but nothing unusual was visible.
And with that, complacency set in.
───Thoom!
The second time they stuck their head out, the action was a little bolder than before, and more careless.
In that interval, I pulled out the Gepard M6 antimaterial sniper rifle I'd been carrying on my back. The enemy had to be cut down in one go, and since it was close-range engagement, accuracy didn't need much consideration.
The massive bolt cycled twice in under a second. The first round shredded the nanomachinery barrier to tatters; the second completely shattered it, and the physical force that hadn't been fully canceled slammed hard into the head.
In the gap while the enemy fell into a stun status effect, I took the stairs four at a time. How many seconds passed? I closed in close enough that no matter how fast they ran, they couldn't escape my reflexes.
He had nowhere left to go, and in less than thirty seconds he was ejected to the lobby.
I rolled my eyes sideways to glance at Russ and Unreal. Looking again, the two of them seemed to have nothing to say, staring blankly at the screen with dazed expressions.
How should I put it—I'd gone out of my way to talk as if anyone could do it, but once you cracked open the contents, it really wasn't quite like that.
I carefully opened my mouth and broke the silence.
"…The latter part is just a method for cleaning up the enemy quickly, so please don't worry too much about it. From that point on, shooting practice and positioning are important, so make sure you don't skip those either."
Having to carefully calculate every word was a bit exhausting… I resolved that from next time on, I should use more ordinary engagement methods.