Limited Thinking
Thud-thud-thud—.
The moment the helicopter door opened, the roar of the spinning rotors slammed into their ears.
Yeon-woo and his teammates pushed through the violent noise and wind, putting some distance between themselves and the aircraft. Only then did a production staffer climb down after them, clutching something black about the size of a tablet PC.
"Take this!"
The staffer's voice cut through the helicopter's din as he raised his volume to be heard.
Yeon-woo accepted the device, and the staffer continued.
"This is your operations pad! It will deliver progress updates and all kinds of guidance! Once the helicopter takes off again, move according to the instructions that come through this pad! Until then, if you head anywhere else, you're disqualified!"
Yeon-woo nodded to show he understood. The staffer climbed back aboard, and the helicopter rose into the sky with a massive roar and a blast of wind.
In the meantime, Yeon-woo and his teammates scanned their surroundings.
Of course no enemies would be within visual range, but reading the nearby terrain the instant they landed was simply what you did.
To the left, an endless emerald sea stretched out. Coastal dunes rose inland from the beach toward the island's center. Far off toward the horizon, dense forest was visible as well—it was immediately clear this was an island where every kind of environment collided.
Kim Su-hyeok spoke first.
"I saw the helicopters carrying the other teams on the way down. When we dropped altitude I checked—the nearest team is roughly seven hundred meters from us."
Yeon-woo nodded at Kim Su-hyeok's report.
As a sniper, his ability to gauge distance by eye far outstripped any ordinary person's; the margin of error wouldn't be large.
A typical school athletic field in Korea ran about seventy meters in a straight line. To run a hundred meters you usually had to cut diagonally or start from outside the track. Seven hundred meters in a straight line meant sprinting that field end to end ten times over—a considerable distance.
Yeon-woo finished the calculation in his head in the space of a breath.
"So one team has already been eliminated, leaving nineteen teams on the ground. That means the island's circumference is at least thirteen-point-three kilometers no matter how small it is. If you cut straight across the island on a diagonal, the minimum straight-line distance would be roughly four-point-two kilometers."
As a sniper, Kim Su-hyeok was quick with basic math himself; he understood at once and nodded. At the same time he couldn't help admiring Yeon-woo's speed at mental arithmetic.
"You took seven hundred meters times nineteen teams for the circumference, then divided by pi to get the diameter."
"Yes. That's assuming the island is circular, of course. The high ground in the center looked like it was formed by volcanic activity."
The helicopter had flown too low for them to grasp the island's overall shape. Odds were high it had been deliberate—to keep information from the players.
Just then the operations pad in Yeon-woo's hand lit up.
"Looks like a message came through."
Yeon-woo read the text displayed on the pad.
Welcome to Survival Island – Global Match, players of the nineteen arriving teams!
Team leaders holding this operations pad: please move at least thirty meters away from your other teammates immediately. Your positions are being tracked via GPS signal. Once you are more than thirty meters apart, the indicator light at the top will turn green.
"Hmm. So first we need to put thirty meters between us."
At Yeon-woo's words the other two nodded.
They had already received the relevant briefing before departure.
When the team leader's strategy selection window opened, he had to separate from his teammates and deliberate alone—that was the rule.
Yeon-woo took the operations pad and put distance between himself and the others.
Once they were far enough apart, the red circle at the top of the screen flipped to green.
Beside the green circle, two numbers appeared.
32m | 31m
Hmm. One must be the distance to Kim Su-hyeok, the other to Park Jung-hyeon.
It looked like a convenience feature so a team leader who got separated could find his teammates easily.
So the teammates really are babysitters for the celebrity team leaders after all.
The production staff were clearly anxious that one of the celebrity contestants might wander off alone and get into trouble.
Bzzzt—.
The operations pad vibrated and displayed a new screen.
A black background overlaid with a green grid pattern—exactly like the green rubber desk mats with grid lines people laid on their desks.
The screen you are currently viewing is the island on which you are located.
Along with the guidance text, red dots appeared across the field.
No need to count—there would of course be nineteen.
Then one of them turned gold.
That must be me.
The interface was intuitive enough that no explanation was required.
The gold dot representing Yeon-woo sat at the bottom of the ring of red dots encircling the island—five o'clock if you thought of it as a clock face.
The spacing between the red dots was relatively even.
Just as Yeon-woo had predicted, the island was circular. If Kim Su-hyeok's eye estimate was accurate, the circumference was likely somewhere around thirteen kilometers.
Having already inferred the island's shape and overall size put them on slightly higher ground than the teams that hadn't managed even that much.
Before the game begins, a few rules will be explained.
1. Every three hours, when a "Strategy Time" like the present one begins, the operations pad will sound an alert. During this period, players may not attack one another.
2. Every player starts with five lives. Each time you are hit, one life is consumed.
3. If a team leader is eliminated, that team is out at the start of the next Strategy Time regardless of whether the teammates are still alive.
4. Remaining lives may be transferred only from teammates to the team leader. (Lives cannot exceed a maximum of five.)
Hmm.
Yeon-woo stroked his chin as he read the rules on the pad.
That meant there were ultimately two ways to be eliminated from the game.
First: failing to reach the point you designated during Strategy Time—in other words, a location at least five hundred meters away. Second: the team leader's lives are all depleted and he is eliminated.
If the team leader went out, the team couldn't designate a new location at the next Strategy Time and would be automatically eliminated anyway—so the two cases were essentially the same thing.
In the end, the points designated every Strategy Time were the most critical rule in the game.
So if we take out an enemy team leader, the smart move is to withdraw immediately.
A team leader's elimination meant the whole team was finished the moment the next Strategy Time began. The remaining teammates would throw caution to the wind and go all-out on the attack. There was no reason to play along with a pointless war of attrition if the enemy came at you that way.
The operations pad vibrated again. The gold dot marking Yeon-woo on the field lit up, and a circular white zone appeared around it.
That must be the five-hundred-meter radius.
Looking at the nearest red dots, they sat just outside the white circle centered on him.
Kim Su-hyeok's eye estimate of roughly seven hundred meters seemed quite accurate.
The white zone displayed on screen is a non-selectable area. Please tap any location outside it. However: if you fail to reach the chosen location within three hours, you are eliminated—choose carefully. Failure to select within ten minutes results in automatic elimination.
A countdown began at the top of the operations pad along with the message.
So I have to pick somewhere outside the circle currently shown. Most people will choose the spot closest to the circle's edge—to minimize travel distance.
Yeon-woo stared at the operations pad.
This map doesn't show terrain at all. Just vertical and horizontal lines. No matter where I pick, I have no way of knowing whether that spot is open ground or dense forest.
The other eighteen team leaders would be racking their brains over the same choice right now.
Their options could be boiled down to roughly two.
First: circle the island along the outer edge.
Choosing that path meant advancing clockwise or counterclockwise along the coastline depending on your starting position. The advantage was that one flank was the sea and the rear was the path you'd already walked—so you only had to watch the front and the remaining side.
But the downside is a relatively high chance of running into the enemy.
If the other side was also advancing the opposite way along the shoreline, a head-on collision was inevitable. In that case one side would be wiped out, and even the survivors would take heavy damage.
There was a second option besides hugging the outer rim.
Advance inland.
Between the two, this is the better play for now.
The teams starting on either side were seven hundred meters away. The required advance was five hundred meters.
Just as a white circle had appeared around him, the others would have ranges displayed as well. Spaces where those circles didn't overlap definitely existed.
If I advance in a straight line toward the center of the island, the chance of encountering an enemy on the first selection is almost zero.
Early combat had to be avoided.
On Survival Island it had been free-for-all, so physical dominance was enough even if you ran into someone—he'd charged in and taken the first strike. But Global Match was a team game. In multi-versus-multi combat, a stray bullet could come from anywhere and put a hit on you.
The number of lives would only grow more important later on, so combat had to be avoided in the extreme early phase.
And this five-hundred-meter rule is a genuinely interesting piece of design.
Yeon-woo thought of Blue Whale Gate's think tank that had planned the rule and let out a quiet snort of laughter.
Meanwhile, from thirty meters away, Kim Su-hyeok watched Yeon-woo studying the operations pad and once again impressed the point on Park Jung-hyeon.
"He's sharp and picks things up fast, but he still has no real combat experience—he might make a strange call. Even so, better to pull in one direction together than have too many cooks. Follow orders and support him diligently."
"Understood."
They had thoroughly memorized the rules from the pre-departure briefing materials, so both men already knew they would have to advance at least five hundred meters from this point forward.
Before long Yeon-woo finished his selection and walked back toward them.
"Which direction are we advancing?"
At Kim Su-hyeok's question, Yeon-woo answered with a smile.
"Toward the center of the island."
Kim Su-hyeok nodded.
He had run the same mental simulation when he'd first received the rules briefing. Of the two options, advancing toward the center was the better play for avoiding early combat—he'd reached the same conclusion.
But the words that followed wiped the expression clean off his face.
"The travel distance will be at least three kilometers, so we'll have to run hard to make it within three hours. Let's move out right away."
"…Excuse me?"
They were going to a location five hundred meters away—why would the travel distance exceed three kilometers?
Kim Su-hyeok's face showed pure incomprehension as he asked again.
"Three kilometers?"
Park Jung-hyeon gave Kim Su-hyeok a solid thump on the back.
"We don't second-guess the team leader's decisions. We carry them out faithfully and support him. Isn't that right?"
"…Mm. Fair enough."
It was the exact thing he himself had said only minutes earlier, so Kim Su-hyeok scratched his head as he answered.
Yeon-woo offered a brief explanation to clear up the confusion.
"We're not heading in the 'direction of the center'—we're heading to the center itself. Whether people circle the outer rim or inch toward the middle little by little, the gaps between teams shrink. Even if we don't meet anyone this selection, the next one makes contact inevitable."
The two agents nodded as they listened. Yeon-woo continued.
"The five-hundred-meter rule is a trap. It plants the natural assumption that moving farther is more dangerous, and that restricts everyone's thinking to the option of advancing exactly five hundred meters. Do that and your early survival rate plummets. While everyone else is brawling in a cramped space, we push more than three kilometers and seize the center first."
There was only one moment in the entire game when moving a long distance sharply increased your survival rate.
Right now.
At the start of the game.
For everyone who had begun arrayed around the circular island's edge, the farthest point from all of them was the center of the circle—the heart of the island.
If they advanced quickly and claimed the center first, they would be free, for at least the next two or three Strategy Times, from the chaotic combat zones that would form as every other team milled about in confusion.
Seize the center in advance, then casually hunt the enemies who claw their way through the meat grinder to reach us.
Hearing Yeon-woo's explanation, Kim Su-hyeok and Park Jung-hyeon found themselves nodding almost without thinking.
They had realized their own thinking had already been constrained by that five-hundred-meter limit.
"At the next Strategy Time, will our position also be displayed to the surviving enemies?"
At Kim Su-hyeok's question, Yeon-woo nodded.
"Yes. It'll probably show as a red dot on the black screen."
Kim Su-hyeok found himself wondering what the other team leaders' faces would look like when the next Strategy Time arrived and they saw a red dot glowing from an utterly unbelievable location.