A Special Achievement
Yeon-woo and his teammates erased every trace of their presence and approached the rear of the concrete building.
Hmm. About four meters, give or take.
From the front, the building's ceiling height had looked to be five meters or more — not an easy climb. The rear was a different story. The structure had been built with a taller front section housing a massive iron door, then a roof that sloped gradually downward toward the back, lowering the ceiling height as it went.
It was a common design for warehouses across much of Central and South America.
Grain storage needs to stay dry. That's non-negotiable.
Unlike Korea, where even rural areas could draw electricity without much trouble, a remote island in Central America had no easy way to pull power from the mainland. A warehouse this small certainly couldn't justify installing and maintaining its own generator. So the builders relied on pure structural engineering to keep moisture out as much as possible.
Nothing fancy about it. Just angle the roof, and when it rains, the water runs straight off instead of pooling.
That lower rear section made getting onto the roof considerably easier.
Kim Su-hyeok and Park Jung-hyeon took positions behind the concrete building, dropped into a slight horse stance with their knees bent, and cupped their hands together. Yeon-woo stepped onto their joined palms. They drove upward with everything they had, and the rebound launched him into the air.
Thud.
Yeon-woo kicked lightly off the wall with his right foot, caught the edge of the roof with his fingertips, and pulled himself up with the fluid grace of a cat. Once he was on top, he looked down and gave a single nod.
The two men who had boosted him split off in opposite directions, heading for their assigned positions.
There should be ventilation on one of the side walls. Has to be.
Given the power situation, there wouldn't be any electronically controlled dehumidifying system — but basic vents for air circulation would almost certainly be installed.
Yeon-woo kept his footsteps silent, his upper body low, and moved quietly across the concrete roof. Checking both side walls, he found what he'd expected: a ventilation opening on one of them.
The vent had a small, rounded overhang like a hat brim, clearly meant to keep rainwater from flowing in. That made a clean aimed shot through the opening difficult.
I could hang from the overhang one-handed and fire, technically…
Yeon-woo was keenly aware of the cameras embedded throughout his protective gear. The warehouse was abandoned and poorly maintained — the overhang could be corroded enough to give under his weight. And both the viewers and the production staff would almost certainly flag hanging off the side of a building as too dangerous. This was a TV show. There was no need to push it that far.
Besides, this operation doesn't require precision fire.
Yeon-woo's role in the classic stratagem of making noise in the east to strike in the west was simply to create chaos — to throw the enemy into confusion. And as luck would have it, the wall with the vent faced east.
Probably put it on this side so at least some sunlight could get in. The sun rises in the east, after all.
With that idle thought, Yeon-woo stretched out flat at the edge of the eastern wall. Still gripping his rifle in one hand, he lowered it over the side and jammed the barrel into the vent opening.
Click.
He pulled the trigger without hesitation. With only the muzzle protruding through the vent, the rifle began pouring rounds into the warehouse interior.
Tat-tat-tat—!
"…Ah!"
"…They're on the roof…! Get outside first…!"
"Damn it! If we go out, …they've already taken posi…!"
"…Just get out and scatter!"
Screams and frantic shouting from the team inside came through the vent in a muffled, chaotic jumble.
Creeeak—.
The heavy iron door swung open.
Outside, the Canadian team had been watching that door and waiting for the enemy to come bursting out. Now they tilted their heads in confusion. From their angle, the sloping roof completely hid Yeon-woo from view — so all they saw was a sudden barrage of gunfire from inside, followed by the enemy team bolting out in a panic.
Infighting…? No. That can't be right.
This wasn't a nation at war. These were national representatives competing in a survival game show. Internal mutiny among teammates? The idea was absurd.
Myles Kroeger, the Canadian team's specialist, shook his head and barked an order. An opportunity had presented itself — they needed to take the outs while they could.
"Open fire!"
The Canadian team unleashed everything they had on the enemy players pouring through the entrance.
Canada shared its only land border with the United States — the most powerful military force on the planet — which meant that, practically speaking, Canada had little need for a large standing army. No amount of military buildup would ever let them win a war against their neighbor, and as both a Commonwealth nation and a close American ally, no one was likely to declare war on them either. Relative to its economic strength and international influence, Canada's military was admittedly modest.
That didn't mean it lacked exceptional special forces.
Myles Kroeger, a member of Canada's Joint Task Force 2 — the unit responsible for counterterrorism operations — was a veteran who had participated in multiple international missions and survived more brushes with death than he cared to count.
Thud-thud-thud—!
He wasn't about to miss enemies charging out completely exposed. His rounds found their targets one after another.
And then—
"Gah!"
The Canadian team leader, who had been firing from behind a thick tree trunk about ten meters away, suddenly cried out. Myles glanced over mid-burst and saw the red light flashing on the man's protective gear. Buried under the gunfire, a faint beeping sound was going off as well.
He was out.
Who…?
His first thought was that one of the players bursting from the building had scored a hit during the return fire. But five clean hits from people who had just come sprinting outside with no idea of anyone's position? The odds were vanishingly small.
Myles swept his surroundings and locked onto a large man concealed among the distant trees, alternating fire between the Canadian team and the players who had fled the building.
A third force!
Not Canadian. Not the team from inside the building either.
He swung his muzzle toward the man and squeezed the trigger.
Tat-tat-tat—!
He was fairly sure he'd scored hits, but the big man ducked back into cover before Myles could confirm an out.
Thump—!
A heavy impact slammed into Myles's abdomen.
Ugh…!
The hit had come from his right — the opposite direction from the large man he'd just been shooting at. With so many people firing at once, pinpointing the exact source was nearly impossible. But judging by the sound and the force of the impact, it wasn't a standard rifle.
We're already surrounded!
He'd thought of himself as the cat hunting a cornered rat. He hadn't expected another predator circling the cat.
That was his last deduction.
Without warning, another man appeared atop the concrete building and opened fire. Four consecutive rounds struck Myles's protective gear cleanly.
Beeeep—.
Only then did Myles look around. He and his remaining teammate were both down. Including the team leader who'd gone out first, the entire Canadian team had been eliminated.
The three enemy players who had charged out the entrance lay on their backs staring blankly at the sky, red lights blinking on their gear as well.
All six — out.
From the rooftop, Yeon-woo had been monitoring the situation and providing supporting fire. When he spotted an enemy player hidden among the trees opening fire on Park Jung-hyeon, he rose immediately and engaged. The crack of Kim Su-hyeok's sniper rifle from the flank told him that Su-hyeok had identified the same target at the same moment.
Bzzzt.
Yeon-woo's smartwatch vibrated briefly — confirmation that the man he'd been shooting at was out. A quick scan of the area confirmed that all six players from both teams had been eliminated.
[Player Korea-A] eliminated [Player Canada-A]
[Player Canada-B] eliminated [Player Russia-C]
[Player Korea-B] eliminated [Player Russia-A]
(View more)
Checking his smartwatch, Yeon-woo finally confirmed that the team that had come charging out of the warehouse was Russia.
Using the noise in the east, strike in the west stratagem, he had forced the Russians into the open, then borrowed the Canadians' firepower to execute a kill with a borrowed knife — wiping out both teams in a single stroke.
Solid results. Jung-hyeon took a hit earlier, though — I'll need to transfer him a life recovery ticket.
Having pinpointed Su-hyeok and Jung-hyeon's positions, Yeon-woo was about to climb down from the warehouse roof to regroup when something made him pause.
Hmm…?
His brow furrowed. He locked onto a patch of undergrowth off to one side and brought his rifle up in a snap.
Tat-tat-tat—!
Kim Su-hyeok and Park Jung-hyeon, who had been moving to rejoin him, froze at the sudden gunfire and dropped straight back into combat stance.
Five minutes earlier.
Tat-tat-tat—!
Thud-thud-thud—!
Gunfire erupted from every direction. A man crouched in the undergrowth, unable to move, forced to simply watch the chaos unfold around him.
Damn it! Why is everyone suddenly swarming this spot?!
The man hunched low in the brush, scanning his surroundings with raw tension, was none other than Yunus Kabak — team leader of Turkey, and the author of what had become a tearfully determined survival diary.
After losing all of his specialist teammates to the Japanese team and finding himself completely alone, Yunus had turned isolation into an advantage. Staying invisible to every eye, he had been advancing in careful five-hundred-meter increments, surviving by pure stealth.
It wasn't as though he'd never come close to being discovered. At one point, players from some unknown country had walked past the very undergrowth he was hiding in — no more than four meters away. Most teams still had three members, or at least two, so he'd decided it wasn't the right moment to act. Even with a perfect rear angle, he'd let them go.
Taking one out would only invite return fire from the rest. It was a strategic decision. Pure strategy.
He was absolutely not scared.
Definitely not.
Then he'd spotted this unusual concrete building on an island that otherwise had almost no man-made structures, and started approaching — only for two teams to suddenly open fire at practically point-blank range. He'd been trapped in the undergrowth right in the middle of it all, feet glued to the ground.
To make matters worse, a third team had appeared as well. But the three-way free-for-all seemed, mercifully, to have ended.
The gunfire was dying down. He was just starting to relax when—
Tat-tat-tat—!
"Aaaagh!"
A sharp, stinging sensation — like getting a series of injections straight in the backside — tore a scream from Yunus before he could stop himself.
Yeon-woo had been about to climb down from the roof when he spotted a figure lying dead still in the undergrowth along the side wall. Without a moment's hesitation, he shouldered his rifle and pulled the trigger.
Tat-tat-tat—!
"Aaaagh!"
Bzzzt.
[Player Korea-A] eliminated [Player Turkey-A]
Yeon-woo checked the message and nodded.
He'd been carefully tracking every team's elimination count in his head. Turkey had lost all of its other members to Japan not long after the game began — he already knew that.
Their team leader just went down. Turkey is fully eliminated.
Unaware that he had just brutally ended one man's tearful survival diary, Yeon-woo climbed down from the roof with a thoroughly satisfied expression.
Meanwhile, in the broadcast control room, a staff member checking the records raised his voice.
"Team Korea just scored a triple kill!"
John McCallan nodded.
"I saw it. Two from Canada, one from Russia."
The staff member shook his head.
"…That's not what I mean. He took out the team leaders of Canada, Russia, and Turkey in succession. It's a Team Triple Kill."
"…Come again?"
Checking the kill log confirmed it — Canada-A, Russia-A, and Turkey-A had all been eliminated by Team Korea, one after another.
"Wh— what? When did Turkey even die? No — when were they even there?"
At the table where directors were responsible for calculating rewards based on special achievements, every pair of hands suddenly got very, very busy.