Video Review
Bang-bang—!
Bang-bang—!
A measured cadence of gunfire cracked through the air as the pistol in Yeon-woo's hands spat flame two rounds at a time.
The other contestants watching the scene kept tilting their heads in confusion.
"Hey, is that Asian guy just not getting it? Did he miss Tony's whole explanation earlier? The part about last place getting eliminated?"
"Doubt it. His English was top-tier."
"Then why's he blasting away like that? Two shots at a time—there's no way he's hitting anything clean."
Someone snorted a laugh.
"Maybe it just depends on the person? Better to wash out on the shooting range right at the start than go onto the island and humiliate yourself. You can always claim you didn't understand the rules."
The reasoning seemed sound enough that someone else chimed in.
"Then the production crew's the real victim here. If an original-series contestant gets eliminated before things even begin, their whole narrative goes sideways."
While the other players gossiped and argued over him, Yeon-woo himself finished shooting.
Ten rounds total—fired in five controlled pairs of two. Naturally, he had used barely half the time the others needed, and the contestants called up in the same group were still mid-volley.
Having finished first, Yeon-woo slapped the buzzer with the same lightning hands he used for Halli Galli, stopping the timer that recorded his shooting time.
Lucky it was a pistol, at least.
A handgun's stopping power against a human target was markedly inferior to other firearms. That was why most militaries ran every training regimen around the rifle as primary weapon, and why even civilian enthusiasts who started with pistols eventually gravitated toward rifle practice. The airsoft and survival games they loved were fought with rifles too.
Even if they're civilians, the people invited here are serious enough about military culture to make the cut.
Had the first-round challenge been rifles, the skill floor would have been high enough that no one could have opened a meaningful gap. But among professionals who used firearms for a living, there were those who—unlike soldiers—could not readily carry a rifle.
Close-protection work, performed at intimate range beside a principal, made a long gun look threatening and advertised the VIP's location to any sniper who might be watching. Bodyguards typically wore a pistol at the hip. Rifles and heavier weapons stayed with a support team or locked in a vehicle for emergencies.
Police who dealt with civilians face-to-face were the same. Standard kit was a sidearm and a baton—and even those were often swapped for gas guns or tasers. When a situation demanded heavier firepower, the manual was not to engage directly but to secure a minimum of safety and call in SWAT or a counterterror unit.
As a result, pistol marksmanship was widely regarded as something you practiced only to be outclassed by the rifle in every respect—a weapon you used because you had no choice. Among dedicated enthusiasts it was sometimes dismissed as a suicide tool or a summary-execution piece.
But there were people whose profession demanded absolute mastery of the pistol.
Sometimes they infiltrated active war zones the way soldiers did. Sometimes, like international police, they slipped into lawless criminal havens to hunt fugitives who had fled overseas. Principal protection, intelligence work, and everything in between.
The people who used and practiced with pistols more than anyone else were neither soldiers nor police—they were intelligence operatives.
Hmm. When you think about it, it's kind of a sad story.
Forget standard-issue weapons. When you infiltrated somewhere, the baseline was to go in unarmed so you would not draw suspicion.
You go in empty-handed, and the firearm you can most realistically scrounge up on-site is, at best, a pistol.
There was not even a preferred model. You used whatever came to hand, so for an intelligence agent a firearm was never the luxury of a special-forces operator or a PMC contractor with a favorite Colt this or Beretta that. A rebel's illegally modified piece, the gun the man you just killed had been holding—you picked up whatever your fingers closed around.
While Yeon-woo's thoughts wandered, the other players in his group finished their strings as well, and the range fell quiet.
He pulled off his tactical headset and looked around just as the targets rode the rails back toward the shooters.
Rrrrk—.
Clack—.
Every curious eye locked onto Yeon-woo's target.
Until now, every player who had shot had taken each round with painstaking care. No one else had blasted away so carelessly—bang-bang, bang-bang—so of course they wanted to know what score was written on his target. And, on another level entirely, more than a few faces wore the quiet relief of people who were not the ones about to be eliminated.
A handful among them, though, seemed to have roughly figured out what Yeon-woo had done. Astonishment and a sharp, rising wariness were already coiling in their eyes.
Yeon-woo looked at the target that had glided in on the rail. He had been certain while he was shooting, but you never knew. Maybe one round had missed the mark.
Hmm…
He gave a quiet nod.
The snowman-shaped target—a circle stacked on a circle—held clean shot groups dead-center in each ring and nowhere else.
Yeon-woo handed the target to a staffer.
It was time for the score that had everyone's attention to be announced.
Tony's mouth opened.
"Korea's score is—astonishingly—one hundred points! With identical scores, Korea, who used less time as previously explained, takes first place!"
The result sent a heavy stir through the players.
"…What?"
The looks that poured onto Yeon-woo after Tony's announcement came in two flavors: disbelief, and wariness.
Those wearing the first expression found their voices first.
"Th-that doesn't make any sense! How do you score a hundred shooting like that? VAR!"
"This isn't soccer. What do you mean, VAR?"
Someone bellowed a demand for VAR.
VAR—Video Assistant Referees—was the video-review system used in football matches.
Yeon-woo looked blankly in that direction. Even here, the home of the beautiful game? Sure enough, the one shouting for VAR was the British representative.
Starting with Britain, players from other countries began venting their grievances.
"Honestly, it doesn't add up. If you can't produce proper evidence, I'm done with this show. I have no interest in being an extra in some manufactured-hero narrative like the original series."
"See? Told you. This is over the line."
The loudest, most petulant complaints came, as expected, from Gochujang Head, and the Northern European players clustering around him started raising their hands and shouting at Tony.
Tony lifted both palms and tried to settle the crowd.
"Whoa, whoa—I understand exactly why you're raising your voices. Our production team couldn't believe it either, so we double-checked. All right, no long speeches. Let's just watch the screen."
At Tony's call, the electronic board that had been displaying rankings at the top of the hall switched over to video.
A split screen fed two different feeds. On the left: Yeon-woo standing at the end of the lane, pistol in hand. On the right: a camera mounted in front of the target, apparently tracking in real time exactly where each bullet punched through.
Then the shooting began.
Perfect form—torso and both arms locked into an unwavering triangle. Textbook technique without a single flaw.
Contestants who had only seen his back now watched his stance from the front through the camera, and a few of them began to feel that something was very wrong.
That form is way too perfect…
No way…
Bang—!
Yeon-woo's shot played out in slow motion.
The first bullet left the muzzle and, in the same instant, punched dead through the center of the lower circle—the snowman's body.
High-pressure powder gas drove the projectile down the barrel and out; the recoil kicked the pistol in Yeon-woo's grip upward. Basic physics. Every gun did it.
He caught that rise, snapped the weapon back into place, and in the same continuous motion the pistol spat fire again.
Even in slow motion the sequence was so fast and so fluid it looked as if he had simply fired two rounds back-to-back. He was deliberately riding the upward kick of the first shot so the muzzle climbed onto the upper circle—the snowman's head.
Bang—!
And sure enough, on the right half of the split screen a hole appeared dead-center in the upper ring.
The feed then replayed the entire sequence at real speed.
Bang-bang—!
It looked like careless double-tapping—and yet clean holes had opened in the exact centers of both the snowman's body and head.
"H-holy…"
"He wasn't spraying. That was rapid fire?"
The moment the footage went public, every player who had been shouting about a fix clamped their mouths shut.
The shooting stance alone was pure professional—impossible to dismiss as staged. And it did not take long for those sealed lips to fall open again.
Because the rapid fire kept coming.
All five pairs were machine-regular. The bullet holes clustered in the absolute centers of the rings, gradually chewing the printed "10" into tatters.
In proportion, the jaws of everyone watching the screen dropped further and further.
"…Oh shit."
Of course, not everyone was standing there slack-jawed in pure admiration.
…I have to treat this as a shooting method that man perfected through relentless practice.
Marco Banchero, the Italian representative, stared at the screen with eyes thick with wariness, dissecting Yeon-woo's technique.
Rapid pairs into a snowman target. One to the body, one to the head. That was not mere speed shooting—it was a drill, burned into muscle memory through countless hours of repetition.
Combat shooting, honed to the bone to neutralize a target as efficiently as possible…
First shot wrecked the heart, the spinal cord, the spine—dropping the opponent. The immediate second shot destroyed the brain. The economy of motion was astonishingly precise.
Slow motion only made it clearer, and goosebumps rose along Marco Banchero's arms.
…I want him. I want to hunt him. Faster than anyone else. Before anyone else gets a hand on him.
A man who routinely staked his own life on hardcore big-game hunting, Marco Banchero felt his blood heat whenever a truly formidable opponent appeared.
He fixed Yeon-woo with a blazing stare.
Yeon-woo, sensing that gaze, shook his head.
Ah, that greasy bastard's at it again.
Even if his love life since reincarnation had been essentially nonexistent, receiving that hot, sticky stare from a bushy-bearded, oily-eyed middle-aged man was firmly off the table.
Yeon-woo pulled out his phone and started a new memo.
1. Norway — Gochujang Head (Gunnar Hundsen)
2. Italy — Sleazy Uncle (Marco Banchero)
And at the same moment, the black curtains screening the shelving that filled the broad space of the harbor warehouse were drawn aside.
Behind them, the racks stood packed with firearms, protective gear, and every other kind of combat equipment.