Eye of the Storm

Apex Predator was framed as a kind of combat simulation rather than true warfare, and unlike so much of Dark Zone's other content — which had been adapted, in one form or another, from the bulk of my past — it was packed with scenarios I had never actually lived through.

At my farthest, my operational radius had only ever stretched from New York to San Diego — the opposite side of the country, a long distance in its own right — so I had never set foot in places like these.

Put another way: every fight I had walked into since stepping into Apex Predator was something I was encountering for the first time.

But the path I had walked was a trail of footprints, and at the same time a foundation stone for climbing higher. Which meant that even when I faced a situation I had never met before, I already had the groundwork to handle it well.

The higher I climbed, the more sharply the skill of the players I ran into rose. I didn't particularly want to say it like a boast, but there were occasional matches where someone other than me took first place…

The number of participants, though, never changed. No matter how high you climbed, that figure of one hundred held its place without fail.

That meant individual players drew less focused attention — and that unless you were blatantly conspicuous, the crowd's interest moved on quickly.

Even I had trouble counting every person I'd run into and killed. How much faster would the attention of viewers, whose interests shifted even more rapidly than that, drift away?

Regardless, I never paid that sort of thing any mind. The feeling was always stronger that I should just do what I could, rather than worry about outside eyes. Honestly, it had always been that way.

Put differently… well. Maybe it was that I treated every engagement as if it were the last. You could say, Already? KSM hasn't even started, and the Asian qualifiers are still a long way off — but the truth was, there was no guarantee I would even make it that far.

Hypothetically speaking: if every question I still held about Dark Zone were answered right now, I would wrap up the bare minimum and quit the game without a shred of regret. That would be how I remembered the past.

Someday, maybe, it would turn out that way.

I've gone on a bit longer than I needed to.

Anyway — for the sake of the other players who had poured countless hours of effort into waiting for this day alone, I ought to give them a response that matched. It was mostly an excuse, if I'm being honest.

I'd gotten lost in reflection for a moment, and before I knew it the floor was lapping with water. I was sure I'd seen this exact scene not long ago — déjà vu, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠maybe.

It wouldn't take much longer for the zone to seal. Seawater rose from the outer edges first, but under the pretext of facility damage, the border areas were seeping full as well.

I moved on, footsteps splashing.

"…Please… just kill me…."

"Ah. Right."

Thud.

Better to get ejected to the lobby fast than drown.

I put the incapacitated opponent out of his misery with one foot, and he dissolved into particles with something almost like a smile on his face. It was a little strange, but good was good, I supposed.

Leaving the flooding space behind, I vanished into the distance beyond.

Today, too, time was flowing much the same as always.

"Ah — is the mic working? Hello. Good evening, everyone?"

As with most places, the world of pro gamers was far too varied to lump into a single mold. There were those who preferred not to expose their personal lives at all, those who lived off other people's attention, and everything in between…

It was only natural, then, that plenty of them made a habit of communicating with their viewers and fans. Without people watching, the profession of pro gamer simply couldn't exist.

And here was Evler of Arcadia Games' first team — not merely one of those, but one of the relatively rare few who regularly connected with fans and viewers through streaming.

The moment Thursday's qualifier ranks wrapped up, he went live.

Viewers began filtering in one by one.

Being a pro gamer meant you already owned a powerful draw as a streamer — raw game skill — and that made him a fully viable broadcaster in his own right, even without the pro title.

Chat filled with "EvHi" — short for Evler High — as viewers settled in one after another. Thanks to the opening surge of the AP Soloing season, the numbers were higher than usual. Only after crossing roughly two thousand did the count begin to stabilize.

He filled the time with small talk until enough people had gathered, then carefully checked the room and changed his stream title.

From here on, it was all on his gift of gab.

He carefully opened his mouth and launched into a proper talk stream.

"I've been an AP pro for a year and three months now. Last year we also had AP Soloing… feels like I'm lumping everything together. Anyway, what I always feel doing this is — every single year, where do all these insanely good people keep pouring out from?"

"Come on, talent freak? There's almost no such thing in this scene. These are people who, if this were real life, would practice until their whole bodies were wrecked. I put in twelve hours a day myself. If VR hadn't come out, I'd probably be dead by now."

Talent freak.

Where had that word even come from? History's most famous pianists had left behind the saying that if they skipped a day of practice they would know, and if they skipped three the audience would know. Who on earth just breathed and then walked off with excellent results?

It was one of those misunderstandings that had spread absurdly far. But this wasn't the time for a free-for-all ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠debate over definitions. He let the snag that had caught in his mind drift away on the wave of thought.

There was plenty of material people could relate to without fretting over every little word like that.

A single qualifier rank match was… if you wanted a slightly ridiculous description, a random obstacle defense. Some obstacles you could clear fairly easily. Some you only barely made it over by going all-out. And some… well.

Were those even designed to be cleared?

The question came out of his mouth on its own.

"Anyway, seriously… I feel it in my bones every time that practice alone just isn't enough. I wonder if my perspective would be different if I'd taken first even once. Highest finish across these four days was fifth, so…."

Fifth out of that many people.

It was nice to hear, but given that during the qualifier rank period — excluding the absolute top tier — the average total sessions a single player participated in ran somewhere between fifty and sixty-five, any one match didn't mean all that much.

A lot of people overlooked it, but competition demanded a serious toll on both body and mind from every pro. Especially the roughly four-month forced march from regional matches through the Asian qualifiers and on into the Final Championship proper — and One Above All even more so.

There was always a wide gap between the words you could say out loud and the thoughts you kept to yourself.

Naturally, the topic drifted elsewhere.

Evler's team was Arcadia Games, and among the first- and second-division players under that banner, the number who enjoyed communicating the way he did… wasn't particularly small. Pro gamers, after all, lived closer to communicative media than almost anyone.

As long as it wasn't a sensitive subject, and as long as it ultimately helped the public image, filling people in on the current state of things was fine.

And anyone already interested in AP competition would know most of it anyway.

"Still, Arcadia's sailing along pretty smoothly. Nobody's particularly underperforming, and the people headed to KSM should all make it without much trouble. Part of that's just how good everyone is."

Even in a game of such a high level that you ran into the same pros several times per match, qualifier ranks were still just another beginning. To meet the players other countries had filtered and filtered again, you had to clear two towering walls.

One, as he'd said any number of times lately, was qualifier ranks. The next was KSM. Sixteen hundred became a mere hundred, and then twenty. Even after only one in sixteen survived, only twenty percent of those remained.

It was still too early to be arguing over who was good and who wasn't.

Once you really felt that wall of numbers, it was only natural to start envying the people better than you.

Even in the pro world, the hierarchy of skill sorted itself out. People a little better than you. People who consistently posted excellent results. People you figured would make the top hundred with room to spare…

But among them, there was also the kind of person you could barely even look at — the kind where even envy itself felt like a joke.

"Thanks for the thousand-won donation! Hmm. What was there…."

And the content of the donation reacted chemically with the very thing he'd been thinking about a moment ago, sending its branches thrashing out in every direction.

The moment the trigger was pulled, vivid memories — complete with sensations that shouldn't have been possible — flashbacked in as if ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he were living them again in real time. Fragments of language surged up all at once and poured through the filter without ever managing to lock together.

Wrestling them into sentences and getting them out of his mouth was his job.

"Ah, right. Come to think of it… I don't know if anyone was watching my play closely, but I died absolutely horribly once today. If you're sharp, or if you've been following the AP Soloing matches carefully lately, you'll know exactly what I mean."

The reaction was instant.

Of course it was.

Figures.

There wasn't a single person who didn't know. After the tournament ranks had wrapped cleanly, talk of her — Eugene — had circulated only within places like Xi and SSM, confined, as he'd just said, to a corner of the pro scene.

But once the scrims ended and qualifier ranks properly raised the curtain, she… began flying around as if determined to hammer every absurd rumor that had been circulating under the table straight into everyone's skulls.

No — not flying. A typhoon, maybe.

Calling her existence itself a giant blender wouldn't have been an exaggeration.

"Uh, yeah… nobody doesn't know, huh. Nobody. That's right. I got hit by her. Got absolutely destroyed. If a car had run me over, my body would've been in better shape. Is it okay to say this? I'm pretty friendly with Reaper Infected too, and Michael over there got wrecked something fierce."

Really.

The mountain of urban legends that made you question whether she was even human refreshed on a daily basis, and that one incident — which would have ranked among the legends of this year's qualifier ranks even if it had only happened once — was just one long entry on a tapestry of sub-items too numerous to count.

And just like that, every kind of talk about Eugene started pouring out. Once the dam broke and mouths opened, there was nothing left to hold back.

Naturally, viewer engagement spiked. Nothing was more entertaining than a story told firsthand by the person who lived it, rather than secondhand gossip. He dumped everything he knew. There was no way the chat wouldn't respond.

Where they'd run into each other. What his situation had been at the time. What choices he'd made and how he'd gotten wrecked… he launched into a full speech, spittle flying.

By the time he no longer had any sense of how long had passed—

"…What? Why did so many people suddenly show up?"

4,558.

Nearly double his average viewership was quietly gathering over the chat window.

Of course, it wasn't limited to him alone.