The Next Choice
Racing toward their objective, French team member Alejandro Leo felt a heavy impact slam into his abdomen at the exact same moment a gunshot cracked past his ear.
"Guh…?!"
If you asked whether the hit was enough to actually injure someone, the answer was no — he was wearing full protective gear. But the impact itself was a solid, fist-like blow that landed with real weight.
The rounds he'd taken during the firefight with the Indian team had only stung in a localized spot. This was something else entirely.
The real problem was that the gunshot had echoed so massively between the mountain and the open wilderness ahead that he couldn't even tell where it had come from.
He glanced sideways and found his team leader wearing a look of pure alarm.
"We need to take cover somewh—"
"Ugh!"
Bang—!
Mid-sentence, Leo threw himself flat against the ground.
Another shot had cracked out, and this time the impact hit him like a punch to the left arm.
This was nothing like the assault rifles they'd faced in previous engagements.
This was more like—
"Sniper! Get down!"
"What?! A sniper?"
His team leader's face went wide with shock as he flattened himself just as Leo had ordered.
Bang—!
Bang—!
Two more shots rang out in succession, and a beep sounded from Leo's protective gear.
Beeeep—.
He was out.
Under the rules, from the moment you were eliminated you weren't allowed to speak a single word or move from where you lay.
Leo stared grimly at his team leader, still prone a few meters away.
Then he quickly looked toward a distant boulder and gave a covert jerk of his chin.
His team leader followed the gesture.
Fortunately, the man seemed to understand the final silent instruction: crawl to that rock and take cover.
Another shot cracked out.
Bang—!
"Argh!"
French team leader Gaspard Delong twisted his arm at an undignified angle and clutched his own backside.
The sniper round had found his rear end.
Eliminated teammate Leo's eyes went wide.
He hit him while he was lying flat…?
That meant the shooter's elevation was far higher than theirs.
A low mountain rose ahead of them — the very place they'd been racing toward as their objective.
Clutching his rear, Delong's mind snapped into sharp focus.
Those bastards who seized the center first…!
French team leader Delong surged to his feet and sprinted.
His target was the boulder right in front of him.
He had to get his body out of the mountain's line of fire if he wanted to live.
Bang—!
Bang—!
Shots cracked in rapid succession, and even at a full sprint the rounds found him with uncanny precision, slamming into his torso.
"Khh—!"
Gritting through the pain in his right side, he managed to hurl himself behind the rock.
One shot to the rear while prone.
Two more while running.
Gaspard Delong had taken three hits total. Two lives remaining.
And of course, the man who had fired those shots — Kim Su-hyeok — already knew that.
"Team leader. One eliminated, the other took three hits. If he started with a full life count, he should have two left."
Yeon-woo nodded and checked his smartwatch.
[Player Korea-B] has eliminated [Player France-B].
A message confirming Kim Su-hyeok's elimination had arrived.
"The team we just took out is France. The one still standing is probably their team leader."
Player A designated the team leader.
The one eliminated was B, and any team without a leader would have been auto-eliminated the moment the last strategy phase ended — so the survivor was almost certainly the captain.
"Keep the sniper position just like this. Don't let him slip away somewhere else. The second he so much as peeks out, put down suppressing fire and pin him in place."
Kim Su-hyeok understood exactly what Yeon-woo wanted and gave a short nod.
"Understood."
As Kim Su-hyeok settled prone, eye pressed to the scope, breathing steady and locked in, Yeon-woo came down the hillside at speed.
There were countless differences between an FPS game and reality, but the biggest one was field of view.
In popular third-person shooters, you could hide behind cover and calmly survey the battlefield. Even in first-person, the game still handed you radar and a dozen other assist systems designed to help you track enemy positions.
Reality offered none of that.
Pinned down by a sniper who opened fire the instant he moved, the French team leader's field of vision had collapsed to almost nothing.
Sssk—.
Yeon-woo settled Gaspard Delong cleanly onto the iron sights of his rifle.
Completely unaware that Yeon-woo had already closed the distance and taken a firing position, Delong was still frantically calculating how to escape from behind the rock.
Tat-tat-tang—!
A sudden burst of fire from the flank made French team leader Gaspard Delong's eyes fly open so wide they nearly split.
For a second he thought he was going to die of a heart attack rather than from being shot out of the match.
On the other side of the barrel, Yeon-woo's brow twitched.
He should have two lives left. Why is he still up after three hits?
He reacquired the target and fired again.
Tat-tat-tat-tang—!
Rounds poured in. Stinging impacts rattled through Delong's entire body, and he threw both hands up.
"Aaaagh! Stop! Stop! I'm out!"
Only then did Yeon-woo lower his rifle. He studied the man for a moment, then turned and headed back to his own position.
Hmm. So there's some kind of item that can restore lives?
It had looked like indiscriminate fire, but after the initial three shots he had deliberately put exactly four more into the man.
He'd been counting how many hits it took to trigger an elimination.
His gear flagged him as out on the second of those follow-up rounds.
Three hits to start with.
Then two more before the elimination registered.
Which meant the man behind the rock had somehow restored his remaining two lives all the way up to five.
Back at Kim Su-hyeok's position, Yeon-woo checked his smartwatch.
[Player Korea-A] has eliminated [Player France-A].
Reward has arrived for the player who eliminated the entire French team!
Click to use and restore your life count to maximum.
The messages cleared up the mystery.
Apparently the broadcast booth was handing out special privileges every time a team achieved something noteworthy.
Come to think of it, the first kill log showed the French wiping out the British completely. So they just never used the reward they got for that?
Yeon-woo opened his operations pad.
An icon was blinking at the bottom of the screen — a gift notification.
• Life Recovery Kit
• Additional Ammo Resupply
Hm? Why are there two?
Opening the gift box, he found the Life Recovery Kit he'd just earned for wiping out the French team — and, separately, a message labeled Additional Ammo Resupply.
He tapped it, and a message from the broadcast booth appeared.
A performance bonus for the first round of this game has been issued.
Awarded to the team that covered the greatest distance.
Select one of the weapons currently in your possession to receive additional ammunition.
Resupply will be delivered by drone during the next strategy phase.
Yeon-woo read the message and nodded with satisfaction.
Without the slightest hesitation, he selected additional rounds for Kim Su-hyeok's sniper rifle.
A glance at the clock at the top of the operations pad showed that this round's time was almost gone.
They'd agreed to link up with Park Jung-hyeon when thirty minutes remained, so it was time to move.
Hmm. Once this round ends, we'll need to relocate again — and a long way this time.
Not just across the oreum to Park Jung-hyeon. Farther than that.
Spotting enemies first from this high ground and picking them off might look like free farming, but every operation had a window of effectiveness.
And this one had a hard expiration date.
Other teams will start flooding toward the center soon enough.
People fell easily into the illusion of control.
Even in pure chance events — dice rolls, lottery tickets — if you were actively participating, you convinced yourself you could somehow influence the outcome. A classic psychological bias.
At the start of the match, Yeon-woo's decision to plant himself dead center had been based on predicting how the other contestants would think.
But the situation had changed.
Every team was already scattered in every direction, and from here on the variables were too numerous to calculate cleanly.
Even so, what a few of those other team leaders would choose next was painfully obvious.
They'll make the same call France did. Only the timing will differ.
Once Yeon-woo and his team finished off anyone who approached the center the way the French had, the next strategy phase would show only a single red dot sitting in the middle of the map — Korea.
And at that point, every team leader suffering from the illusion of control would come charging straight for them.
That was exactly why most people lost money in stocks and investing.
The opportunity that seemed visible only to you was almost always visible to everyone else too.
And the answer everyone could see was usually not the answer at all.
Which means this is the moment we pull back.
Buy when others won't. Sell when everyone else is buying. Fundamentals.
There was no need to wade into the free-for-all that was about to erupt among the zombie horde pouring into the center.
They'd built a grand colosseum right in the middle of the map. Now it was time for Yeon-woo and his team to slip out to the perimeter and start hunting the other teams from the outside.
Yeon-woo and Kim Su-hyeok linked up with Park Jung-hyeon, who had been monitoring the far side for any approaching hostiles.
Not long after, the operations pad vibrated.
Ziiing—.
The round was over. Strategy time had arrived to prepare for the next one.
Team leaders holding an operations pad, please move at least thirty meters away from your teammates immediately.
Yeon-woo nodded and put distance between himself and the others.
Beep—.
A soft chime sounded, and the positions of all surviving teams appeared on the operations pad's map.
A total of 11 teams remain. Congratulations to all survivors!
Three more teams had been eliminated.
Yeon-woo had personally finished one of them, which meant two other teams had been fully wiped out in engagements elsewhere.
And of course, the number of teams reduced to two members — or one — without a full elimination was probably higher still.
In the current state of the match, was there any team besides Korea that still had all three members alive, full life counts intact, spare ammunition, and a Life Recovery Kit?
The red dot marking the center of the map still held its position with quiet arrogance.
The gaps between them and the other teams had closed considerably since the last strategy phase, but the distances were still substantial.
Now the teams that see our position and feel confident will start pouring in.
Yeon-woo tapped their next destination without hesitation.
The place where he and his team had started the match.
The safest route out to the perimeter from here was the desertified coastal dune field Yeon-woo had used on the way in.
Feet sinking deep into soft sand killed mobility, which made every team avoid that route.
Encountering an enemy while slowed was a death sentence for survivability, and slogging through sand burned far more stamina than covering the same distance on solid ground.
Good thing I packed the desert attachments.
He'd suffered so much in Middle Eastern sand operations that the moment he saw them he'd shoved them into his bag on pure instinct. He hadn't expected them to be this useful.
"Thanks to the French team for the intel. Starting next round, we can afford to play a little wilder."
Eliminate a full team, receive a Life Recovery Kit.
He'd been avoiding engagements as much as possible under the assumption that lost lives couldn't be restored mid-fight. If that assumption was wrong, then the correct play was to circle the outer edge and pick off teams one by one.
Yeon-woo looked at the ten blinking red dots on his operations pad and smiled.
"Time to get serious."