Rapid Fire
"Alright then — who will be the first to show us their shooting skills?"
Tony Williams scanned the crowd, and everyone instinctively looked away. They all shared the same unspoken consensus: going first was a bad deal.
"Before we decide who starts, let me walk you through the rules."
The explanation that followed was exactly what Yeon-woo had expected. Four people would step up and shoot simultaneously. With twenty contestants total, that made five groups.
Even if each group takes its time, this should wrap up within thirty minutes. Which means the remaining half hour is for whatever's waiting among those big shelves on the left.
While everyone else was locked onto the shooting match about to unfold on the range, Yeon-woo was already thinking about what came next.
I've got a pretty good idea...
Tony spoke up again.
"I'll call out the four shooters myself. The production team picked them at random, so don't hold a grudge against me, alright?"
He pulled a smartphone from his pocket and began reading off country names.
"Canada. Italy. Australia."
The faces of the contestants whose nations had been called soured instantly. With one spot left, Tony's gaze settled on Yeon-woo standing among the group.
Hmm...
He wasn't thrilled about it, but if his name got called, going first wouldn't be a real problem. Tony, however, just grinned at him — and called a different country.
"And last up — USA!"
The curtain blocking the entrance was drawn back, revealing four shooting lanes exactly as expected, with targets waiting at the far end.
Hmm?
Yeon-woo's brow twitched as he studied the targets. These weren't the standard large circular ISSF targets used in competitive shooting or archery. Instead, each one had a small circle on top and a slightly larger circle below — like a snowman.
A modified target closer to IPSC standards.
The two circles marked a person's vital points. The small one on top represented the head; the larger one below, the heart and chest.
This isn't a shooting competition — it's a survival game where you actually have to point guns at each other. In that light, it makes perfect sense.
The shape of the targets alone was a clear message from the organizers: aim for the vitals and put them down.
Tony Williams added further explanation.
"Each player fires a total of ten rounds. Five must hit the upper target, and the remaining five the lower one. If six rounds land on one side, the lowest-scoring shot among those six is scored as zero."
Every contestant's eyes locked onto the targets. Even a single point was better than a zeroed-out shot — so the rule was clear: five up, five down, no exceptions.
At the end of each lane, the number 25 was printed.
Twenty-five-meter shooting. Everyone here has probably done plenty of that.
Given that the show had carefully handpicked celebrities with a serious interest in military culture, few of them would lack experience with live-fire pistol shooting — it was the most accessible kind. If anything, Yeon-woo, an actor from South Korea where civilian firearm ownership was banned and whose career had nothing to do with live ammunition, might have the least experience of anyone present.
At least, if you only counted this life.
I've only shot airsoft guns for survival games, and the last time I fired live rounds was in Hawaii...
Fortunately, he'd dodged the misfortune of going first. That meant he could stand behind the other shooters and run image training while they fired.
Even if it had been a while since he'd handled live ammunition, the bullets and casings he'd burned through across training and combat in his previous life could have built a small hill. Falling behind amateurs wasn't a concern.
But he was aiming for something specific.
A chance to acquire a special weapon...
He already possessed the ultimate sniper — a devastating weapon in its own right. He wasn't about to let this opportunity slip. First place was mandatory.
Tony Williams's voice boomed through the microphone, filling the warehouse.
"Before the first group begins, you'll each get three practice rounds! Press the buzzer in front of you, then fire."
Yeon-woo nodded.
Good. That's a relief.
A pistol's short barrel offered nothing to aim or adjust with unless you mounted attachments. That was the nature of the weapon — you didn't zero a pistol so much as fire a few rounds, check the grouping, feel out the slight deviation with your body, and deliberately aim off to compensate. And the prerequisite for all of that was simple: fire first, figure it out later.
At least I get three rounds. I need to lock in the feel during practice.
Four people emerged with faces twisted like they'd bitten into something foul. Going first really was a slight disadvantage — the contestants waiting behind could pick up hints just by watching.
As the four took their positions on the range, Yeon-woo focused hard. He projected himself into the shooters ahead, running image training as if he were the one firing.
The four put on tactical hearing-protection headsets at the end of their lanes, hit the buzzers, and opened fire.
Bang—!
Bang-bang—!
Gunshots cracked across the range and rolled through the entire warehouse. Yeon-woo grinned at the long-missed sound of live rounds going off.
Then something felt off.
Hmm...?
Something was subtly wrong — a faint misalignment he couldn't quite place.
Bang-bang—!
The shots kept coming, but the sense of dissonance wouldn't leave.
What is it?
Clack-clack-clack—.
The practice targets rode the rails back toward the shooters. Yeon-woo studied them.
Every single one is high... Wait.
Three of the four had hit slightly above the targets. Only the American contestant's grouping looked relatively stable.
A skill gap?
Yeon-woo rubbed his chin.
"Canada, Italy, Australia... and the United States."
He murmured the names under his breath — then it clicked. Among the four countries, one stood apart. Italy was the only non-Anglophone nation, but that wasn't the answer he'd found.
The odd one out is the United States.
This was an American-produced TV show — you could practically call the host country the U.S. And of every nation represented here, America was the only one that still used the imperial system of yards and pounds.
Once he recognized that, looking at the range again made the difference obvious. It felt just a touch shorter than a familiar twenty-five-meter lane.
That was the source of the dissonance. Those damn yards...
Even in his previous life, the biggest headache during joint exercises with American forces had always been the units. The U.S. military sometimes used metric when handling internationally standardized weapons, but a huge portion of their forces still operated in yards. If the military was like that, then for American civilians on American soil, yards were simply the law of the land.
Twenty-five yards is 22.86 meters.
For anyone used to shooting at a clean twenty-five meters, that was a bigger difference than it sounded. Looking at the faces of Group One as they checked their practice targets, only the Italian contestant seemed to have noticed something was off.
To give the American contestant an edge?
Yeon-woo considered the production team's possible motives. It wasn't out of the question. This was a program built for the global market — but if the American contestant washed out in the very first round, they'd be throwing away a massive potential audience.
Hmm...
Or maybe it was simply because they were in America. They'd subcontracted the range construction to a local company, and that company had built the range the way they always did: twenty-five yards.
A lot of people are going to suffer for this.
Contestants who'd only ever shot on metric ranges would lose points if they fired the way they always had.
The first group finished, then the next — and still "Korea" hadn't been called.
Am I going last?
As if reading his mind, the word he'd been waiting for finally left Tony's mouth.
"And next up — Korea! Looks like we get to see the champion's skills, don't we?"
Yeon-woo let out a short laugh. He walked slowly toward the range as eyes from every direction fixed on him. Some of those looks were openly dismissive, complete with a snort. A few carried a hint of wariness. But most were pure curiosity.
He was young. Publicly, there was no relevant background to dig up. And yet he was the undisputed champion of the original series. Everyone standing here had been recruited for this show — which meant not a single one of them had skipped Survival Island.
Bearing the weight of all those stares, Yeon-woo stepped up to his lane and slipped on the tactical headset with practiced ease. He took hold of the pistol and raised it toward the target.
Watching from the crowd, Italy's representative — Marco Banchero — narrowed his eyes with interest.
Whether intentional or not, the game had been set up to favor the American contestant. But Marco of Italy had already claimed sole first place with a perfect score from Group One, hitting tens across the board. He was a genuine contender — one of the favorites the critics had picked to win.
And right now, Marco was thinking:
Won by luck? Give me a break. The rest of these nobodies might be running their little victory fantasies and writing this kid off — but not me.
Yeon-woo hadn't fired a single shot yet, but his stance alone made it clear he was cut from different cloth. So far, Marco was the only one watching him with real caution.
Bang—!
Bang-bang—!
Yeon-woo's group finished their three practice rounds.
Clack-clack-clack—.
The targets rode the rails back to the end of the lanes. Yeon-woo glanced sideways at Marco in the crowd. Marco, already watching him with wariness, met his eyes and smirked inwardly.
So he's wary of me too. Real recognizes real—
That was as far as the thought got.
Yeon-woo studied the bullet holes on his returned target, gave a single nod — then slammed the buzzer and opened fire like a thunderclap.
Bang-bang—!
Bang-bang—!
The others hadn't even finished drawing a breath, and Yeon-woo was already two full tempos ahead, alone, pulling the trigger without a hint of hesitation. The problem was that he was shooting by himself — and the gunshots kept coming in pairs.
The unwritten rule — no, the international rule — was that you stayed silent and did nothing to interfere while others were shooting. The room began to stir. Up on the platform, Tony Williams's eyes went wide.
"Wh-what? Did he give up? Why is he just blasting away?"
"...No, I don't think he's spraying. Look at the pattern — it's incredibly regular."
Everyone stared as Yeon-woo fired in precise double-tap rhythm. Yeon-woo himself wore the expression of a man who simply had no choice.
Why the hell did that Italian bastard have to go and shoot a perfect score?
His original plan had been simple: take his time, put all ten rounds dead-center in the tens, and lock down first place. Kim Su-hyeok's sniper rifle was that precious. But then some slick-looking guy had dropped a perfect score right out of Group One, and suddenly speed mattered.
Double taps, the Mozambique Drill, the Bill Drill — every kind of rapid fire had been one of Yeon-woo's specialties since his previous life. So he had no choice. At machine-like speed, he began planting rounds one after another: one to the head, one to the body, over and over.
And once more, for emphasis:
Kim Su-hyeok's sniper rifle was precious.