The Norwegian Team
Humanity has Isaac Newton’s Principia to thank for the knowledge that any object with mass, once given velocity, possesses momentum.
Or perhaps people have always known, even since prehistoric times, that getting hit by something flying at high speed hurts.
It’s instinct, after all.
People often speak of “throwing an egg at a rock,” yet an egg is heavier than one might think. An egg has mass, and with velocity added, it has momentum—so even a rock would feel it, deep down.
But if a stone and an egg of equal mass come flying at you, the difference is obvious. Better to take the egg than the stone.
These training rounds may be the product of sophisticated engineering, but the principle is the same.
Two objects of identical mass and velocity share the same momentum, yet the impulse they deliver is not the same. Hardness of material and structural differences dictate the directions in which force scatters at the moment of impact.
In plain terms, an egg shatters into pieces and therefore fails to transfer its energy as completely as a stone of equal mass. Car bumpers work on the same principle—they crumple easily in a crash so they can absorb the shock. It isn’t simply so the manufacturer can charge the owner more for repairs.
…Probably.
Yeon-woo nodded as he watched Kim Su-hyeok settle into position.
I trust American engineering.
This was a show that had gathered shining stars from every nation and every field. How many safety tests must the production team have run beforehand? They would have carefully calculated the maximum impulse the protective gear could handle, the maximum impulse the special rounds could generate, and the damage either could inflict on a human body.
Still, the sight of Su-hyeok’s long-barreled sniper rifle made even Yeon-woo swallow hard. A longer barrel meant a longer time under force, which inevitably increased the impulse.
Hmm. This is probably the closest to the critical threshold of anything the production team considered.
And now he could confirm the experimental results with his own eyes.
Click—.
Bang—!
With a thunderous report, the round sliced through the air and struck exactly where intended—the sturdy protector guarding Gunnar Hundsen’s most unfortunate region.
“Guh—!”
The Norwegian specialist, mid-sentence about the terrain ahead, heard Gunnar’s scream—a sound that seemed to inhale and exhale air at once—and his eyes went round. It barely sounded human; more like the final axe blow that splits a great old tree and sends it crashing down.
But he was a professional, and he stayed calm.
“Ambush! Get down!”
The two men flanking the collapsing Gunnar ducked low.
“Hey! Get up! We need cover!”
“Guuuuh…”
Clutching a certain area with both hands, Gunnar toppled forward and made a sound like a zombie. The actual impulse had been about the same as taking a stray soccer ball to the groin, but the unexpected shock combined with the gunshot echoing from every direction sent him into full panic.
Of course, a soccer ball hurts tremendously. It does not, however, leave a man foaming at the mouth and unconscious in the middle of a battlefield. Yet the sudden impact had thrown Gunnar into such a state that he simply collapsed and could do nothing.
Bang—!
Another round came flying. This time it struck the left arm of the specialist who had been urging Gunnar to move.
“Kh…!”
Gunnar Hundsen stood well over 190 centimeters with a massive frame; carrying him to safety under fire was nearly impossible.
“Stay down in the brush for now! Hey, Pedersen! We need to take cover ourselves and return fire!”
Staying glued to Gunnar’s side would get them nowhere. Protecting the team leader was paramount, but the knee-high grass would hide him reasonably well. The correct tactical call was for the remaining two to fall back to the trees behind them, take cover, and return fire.
Besides, the mud packed all over his body meant his life points barely drained anyway.
Pedersen and Lekdal finished their assessment in seconds, dropped into a low crawl, and scrambled to a tree some twenty meters away.
“Where the hell are they shooting from? The echoes make it impossible to pin down.”
“That’s not a rifle. That’s a sniper…!”
At Pedersen’s words, one team flashed through Lekdal’s mind—the team with the special weapon. Other teams might have earned special-weapon rights through achievements he didn’t know about, but the only one Lekdal knew of was one.
“The Korea team! Ryu’s team!”
While Kim Su-hyeok held position and sniped, Yeon-woo stayed low and sprinted toward the spot where the Norwegian team leader had gone down.
He had held the same role in their first fight against the French team at the island’s center. Su-hyeok pinned the enemy’s attention with sniper fire while the agile, accurate Yeon-woo closed the distance.
With the team leader’s life points so critical, having Park Jung-hyeon make the approach would have been ideal—but the grass could never hide a man of Jung-hyeon’s bulk. By now, though, both Su-hyeok and Jung-hyeon had developed real faith that Yeon-woo would not go down easily. They had begun to see him not as a celebrity who needed protecting, but as an outstanding combatant fighting alongside them.
Jung-hyeon swung wide through the tree line in a broad arc. The goal was to get past the enemy’s sniper-evading cover, establish a firing angle, and simultaneously watch for any other teams that might be nearby.
So Su-hyeok stayed at the original sniper point, putting rounds downrange the instant so much as a hair appeared in his scope, keeping them pinned. Yeon-woo used quick footwork and the brush for concealment as he closed in. Jung-hyeon circled counterclockwise on a wide path to take them from the rear.
The three roles meshed with organic precision.
Among the knee-high green grass were scattered patches that grew as high as a man’s waist. Yeon-woo used those points to approach swiftly and unseen. Then he spotted Gunnar Hundsen, still collapsed, groaning as he slowly recovered.
About fifteen meters.
Prone in the grass, Yeon-woo drew the pistol from his hip.
At this range, they’re definitely watching me.
He wasn’t thinking of Gunnar Hundsen or the Norwegians behind the trees—he meant Park Jung-hyeon and Kim Su-hyeok. Without hesitation, Yeon-woo aimed at the mud-packed pockets of Gunnar’s vest and squeezed the trigger.
Bang-bang—.
Bang-bang—.
It was the same rhythm from the shooting round where he had earned the sniper rifle before entering the island. Two-round bursts of blistering speed. Every round struck the mud-filled pockets of Gunnar Hundsen’s Coted tactical vest with perfect accuracy.
Meanwhile, the people who were certain Yeon-woo was watching them—or rather, the people—stared at the massive screens.
The broadcast control room.
It was the second day of competition. The teams were still far enough apart that no real fighting had broken out, and the gallery was beginning to feel the boredom. Then the Korean team registered Norway on the radar detector they had earned as a reward and began advancing toward them as relentlessly as a guided missile.
The moment the radar gave them an exact fix, the first battle of day two was about to begin.
When Kim Su-hyeok settled into position and held his breath to minimize movement, every manager and staffer in the gallery—plus the newly arrived players from the teams already eliminated—held their breath with him.
Then the rifle fired.
One half of the split screen showed Su-hyeok sniping. The other half, through Norwegian player Lekdal’s headcam, showed Gunnar Hundsen.
And then the unfortunate thing happened.
—Guh!
“Oh, shit!”
“Whoa—!”
“Oh my gosh.”
The gallery filled with the kind of collective groan usually reserved for a home-team player missing a World Cup penalty kick. Most of the people present were men; even though they were only watching on a screen, it felt as if they had all been Bluetooth-linked—every one of them felt a simultaneous, dizzying phantom pain in a certain vital region.
Up to that point, no one had sensed anything odd.
Except the Canadian team, who had already experienced Norway firsthand.
Soon the headcam of player Ryu Yeon-woo filled the screen as he advanced through the brush without a wasted motion, closing on Gunnar Hundsen with ruthless efficiency. Then came the uncanny rapid fire.
—Bang-bang—.
—Bang-bang—.
The gallery speakers poured out the vivid gunshots, yet something felt wrong.
“Huh?”
“What?”
“Why isn’t he out?”
He had poured in a blistering eight rounds, yet the life-point readout for Gunnar Hundsen on the screen never changed. Of course it didn’t—Yeon-woo was deliberately targeting only the thick, mud-packed pockets.
That deliberate, crystal-clear demonstration of the anomaly sent the production staff in the gallery into a frenzy.
“What the hell is that?! Find the cause, now! Why isn’t the Norwegian team leader’s sensor reacting?”
“Joshua! Pull every second of the Norwegian team leader’s footage from yesterday and analyze it all!”
“Yes, sir!”
That should be enough.
If he had shown them this much, even the densest people sitting at the desk would have noticed something was wrong.
Yeon-woo shifted position in a flash, closed a little more distance, and this time aimed with precision at the seams between the pockets.
Bang—.
Bang-bang—.
The range was so short that hitting the back of Gunnar Hundsen—curled into a fetal ball of massive limbs—was easy. The rounds that struck the thin gaps between pockets began steadily draining Gunnar’s life points.
Ziiing—.
Beeeep—.
His smartwatch vibrated at the same moment the protective gear emitted the out-of-game beep. Without looking back, Yeon-woo spun and raced back the way he had come.
A clean hit-and-run strategy. Strike hard in a surprise attack, then withdraw immediately. A tactic with a long and distinguished tradition across every era of human history.
In short: hit and bounce.
Bang—.
Whizz—.
He heard Su-hyeok’s sniper rounds screaming past him with ferocious force. The Norwegian team must have broken cover from behind their trees, desperate to pour fire into the fleeing Yeon-woo. Having lost their team leader so emptily, they would be out for blood with no regard for caution.
With quick footwork Yeon-woo returned to Su-hyeok’s position and caught his breath.
“Hold this position and pick off the rest one by one?”
Yeon-woo shook his head and brought two fingers to his lips.
Wheeeet—!
A high-frequency whistle carried far into the distance—the signal for Park Jung-hyeon, who had circled around as contingency. A prearranged play. Regroup at the designated location.
They had already scooped out the good part. There was no reason to grind themselves down in a war of attrition against a Norwegian team whose eyes had gone red.
“We’re out of here.”
At Yeon-woo’s words, Su-hyeok nodded and slung the sniper rifle back over his shoulder.
“Roger. One kill. Nicely taken.”