Poplar Ridge Correctional Complex

"Hello, Dark Zone esports fans! Your esports Phoenix is back after a full year for the AP broadcast! I know you've all been waiting with your necks craned out of their sockets — and I've been just as desperate for this match to start. Great to see every one of you!"

"Hello, everyone. I'm Flame, your host for today. I'll be covering the matches as a whole and handling the commentary."

Tricky — the official Dark Zone broadcast room threw open its doors, still hot off the press.

Among virtual reality games, this one had always sat at the top of the popularity charts, and the sheer volume of matches it hosted matched that fame. As always, the official broadcast room flickered red whenever it could, feeding heated match coverage to its viewers.

And so, at the threshold of September — that murky stretch between late summer and early autumn, when the heat and the gray drizzle still hadn't quite let go — the official Apex Predator qualifying rank broadcast began.

Beside the red light announcing they were on air, the viewer count had already climbed past seventy thousand. Apex Predator matches had always outstripped other PvP formats in popularity, and the ads plastered across every corner of the internet hadn't hurt either.

Even after the countdown finished and the broadcast proper began, that number showed no sign of stopping. It kept climbing. Most people had expected as much. It would need to clear a hundred thousand at the very least before it stabilized.

The service itself was barely five years old, and pros had only been a visible presence for three years at the absolute outside. That still left a monstrous amount of potential coiled inside both the game and the professional scene.

You could glimpse a fragment of it in the viewer count, which had already broken past a hundred and twenty thousand.

"The long, grueling tournament rank is over, and so is the scrim that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠selected the countless new sprouts, rookies, and rising stars who will lead the next generation of the AP scene. Even with a tighter schedule than last time, participation jumped by a full three hundred people. That has to mean the overall skill level of the entrants has gone up, right?"

"Exactly right. Below the Medal of Honor tier — which cleanly cuts off at the top hundred — there's no fixed number for Tier 2, the rank that grants the right to enter the qualifying ranks. It's a percentage cut of total participants, so the more people enter the tournament ranks, the more slots open up."

"Excellent explanation. Thank you."

Fingers swept through the air, and sixteen screens bloomed into a four-by-four grid overhead. Every one of them was a match waiting to start. Sixteen games, a hundred players each.

Of all those people, only a hundred would advance to the KSM. Which meant that in any given hundred-player match, only six or seven would survive.

The cold logic of win-or-die spared no one. Players in the qualifying ranks had no choice but to throw everything they had into every match — and the entertainment value for the audience rose in direct proportion.

The caster drove the point home.

"Today, as always, we'll be watching desperate matches where blood washes blood, over and over. The world of competition is cold, and more than that — it's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠brutal. Only the strongest survive to climb ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠higher."

"In a way, that's the motto of AP soloing itself. Only one person can stand at the peak."

A soft shift.

A single room of a hundred and sixty thousand viewers split into sixteen. Sub-categories bloomed in an instant, and roughly thirty commentators who had been waiting in other rooms began broadcasting from every one of them.

If two people couldn't cover this many simultaneous matches, you simply made as many rooms as there were sessions.

It was a blunt approach, but it worked. Instead of being stuck watching strangers or rival teams, viewers could go straight to the room where the pros they actually cared about were playing.

Soon the original broadcast room received its own session assignment.

While the map was decided and a hundred players waited in their private rooms before the match began, the casters kept talking without pause, stoking the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠audience's anticipation.

"All right — first match. Let's keep the commentary rolling. As you can see, the map assigned to our room is… yes, Poplar Ridge Correctional Complex. An entire island converted into a prison underground. Major kill-zone gimmicks include crowd-control gas, large-scale electric field generators, and seawater flooding."

"Then let's check the player roster. Oh — this is stacked. Familiar names all over the place, and a lot of new faces who've made real noise this season. Anyone you're watching closely, Caster Phoenix?"

"I'd say the Arcadia Games players have the edge here. They've got serious experience fighting in awkward terrain. Poplar Ridge is an indoor map with no real concept of an 'outside,' so the fights are going to get extremely bloody."

"Fair point. Well said. As for me… I'll go with Player Eugene."

"Haha, isn't that a little too standard?"

Every eye locked on.

After that, the room's viewer count surged, breaking thirty thousand in a matter of minutes. Of course it did. In a battle royale genre this brutal, she was the only one who climbed to a peak even flying, soaring pros couldn't guarantee — and did it, reliably, every single time.

Phoenix glanced at the chat, failed to hold back a laugh, and let the words slip out.

"Haha — did you see what chat's calling her? A moving natural disaster. Is there a better definition of Player Eugene than that?"

"Agreed. She pulls off near-impossible physicals every single match. For anyone unlucky enough to share a lobby with her, there is no worse catastrophe. While we're on the subject — let's take a look at her loadout."

Eugene's preferred armament floated into the air for everyone to see.

There was nothing especially exotic about it, but if you had to name a common thread, it was this: she ignored ergonomics and recoil entirely and stacked pure firepower. The guns themselves were terrifying. An MK18 Mjolnir. An MG338. Even an Ash-12.7…

Just looking at the preference list was enough to make your head spin, and the casters each got a word in.

"That selection basically announces to the world that she's confident in her recoil control. And she is."

"True. Caster Phoenix — do you think User Eugene will take first?"

"Hard to say for certain. Apex Predator is the most primal PvP system there is — only one person who has cut through countless variables, hardships, and setbacks climbs to the top. Predicting what a storm will leave behind is difficult. Like tomorrow's weather. High probability doesn't mean a guaranteed hit."

"Haha. A wise answer to a foolish question. Thank you. All right — let's start the match commentary in earnest."

The small talk ended, and dozens of screens bloomed into the air. A dizzying array of viewpoints.

Some were fixed like CCTV cameras on key terrain features. Others tracked individual players. Still others floated free of any single session entirely, showing the real-time movement of all hundred participants at once.

From here on, lead would do the talking.

The match began.

If you asked the pros entering the recent Apex Predator AP soloing qualifying ranks what they wanted to avoid most, nine out of ten would answer the same way: the so-called "rigged" situations.

An enemy appearing out of nowhere the instant you break aim. Getting sandwiched between two opponents without having made any real mistake. And so on. Unfair, badly timed situations happened constantly.

But the way words shift and pick up new meanings over time, the definition had started to change among AP soloing pros — and one of the new meanings was this: running into Eugene by pure bad luck.

Of course, no one said it out loud.

People who had turned a vast skill gap into a livelihood — into a career — would be admitting they'd lost their competitive edge the moment they started dodging another player because they didn't think they could win.

But.

When that person was actually standing in front of you, could you still say that with a straight face?

Shit. I think I'm fucked…

Everyone who had ever encountered Eugene and failed to survive — which was to say, almost everyone — described it the same way: she closed distance like a ghost.

You'd open the fight certain she was at a particular position, get stunned once by the absurd accuracy of her fire, and the moment any explosion or noise pulled your eyes away for even a second, she'd hit you from somewhere you never imagined.

Unfortunately, that was the absolute truth.

———Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!

The prison cafeteria section was wider than expected, cluttered with junk scattered here and there. He had opened fire first. He had even landed hits. But far from finishing the chase, he couldn't shake the feeling that the whole situation was sliding the wrong way.

That silhouette. An avatar so distinctive that mistaking it for anyone else would have been idiotic. The mottled snake tail undulating through the air burned itself onto your retinas after a single glance.

But the figure wearing it moved in flickering, strobing bursts — along routes and at speeds that defied prediction entirely.

One by one, certainty drained away.

He kept his eyes locked on the spot where Eugene had been, waiting for her to emerge, but he couldn't be sure. Was the enemy even there?

Suffocating tension. Was it already too late to cook a grenade? Thoughts multiplied. He tried to scrub them out however he could.

Rounds left in the magazine: roughly mid-to-high teens. Still some room. He thought back to the points she herself had emphasized in every interview and clip.

He needed to create space to move.

—Clack.

He fused the draw and the pin-pull into a single motion.

The grenade left his hand in a fluid arc, sucked toward the intended point — and in that brief instant, something like a blurred shadow shuddered and started to move.

There.

"…!"

Fast.

Lead crossed under gunfire loud enough to rupture eardrums. Hexagonal barriers rose over both bodies, catching the storm of rounds.

What the hell is that accuracy…!

The opening exchange had given away his position to some degree, sure — but this was still ridiculous.

It was basic common sense that accuracy dropped off a cliff when you were moving or shooting a moving target. Apparently common sense got overruled sometimes.

The alarms in his head were sending nothing but bad signals. The instant he broke cover and sprinted for the opposite side, gunfire cracked through the air again. His nanomachine reserves plummeted below thirty percent in a heartbeat.

This is bad.

And that thought was not wrong.

———KRA-BOOM!

"—Urgh!"

A grenade attack that threaded the exact window of the few seconds he'd needed to reach cover and reset. Sight, hearing — everything went numb at once.

One chance at survival, bought with the complete destruction of his nanomachine barrier. But his head was already full of static. The more chaos flooded the surroundings, the more one-dimensional thought became.

This was that kind of moment.

Unable to decide whether to fight or run, the ending was, well.

Not going to be good.

—Crunch!

"Ghk!"

The instant the silhouette entered his vision, a dull impact spun his field of view hard. Sensation was cut off because it was an avatar, but the last warning window he saw through the UI was packed with nothing good.

Thud.

The moment he saw it, every scrap of fighting spirit drained out of him like a tide.

He went flat on the floor and threw up the surrender marker. Surprisingly, a rather clear, ringing voice answered him. He'd heard the tone a dozen times in videos, but hearing it in person felt entirely different.

"Any last words?"

"…Guess autumn means the bad luck hits extra hard."

"Haha."

Bang.

That was the last sound he heard before being ejected to the lobby.