The Green Sea
Swish—.
Yeon-woo moved, killing every trace of his presence as thoroughly as he could.
Rustle—.
The floor of the cornfield was carpeted with leaves and kernels that had naturally shed under the Atlantic sea wind and the scorching equatorial sun of Central America. Every step crushed those dry leaves underfoot and produced sound whether he wanted it or not.
Of course, the same was true for the enemy.
Crunch—.
The brittle leaves shattered beneath combat boots. Yeon-woo shifted position at once and locked onto the enemy a half-beat sooner.
As expected—two of them.
With their lines of sight blocked by the dense stalks, the distance between Yeon-woo and the opposing pair had closed to a mere four meters of point-blank range. Whoever fired first would still give the other side more than enough time to return fire.
…They’ll definitely shoot back before I can land all five hits.
If they had been using real assault rifles, the idea would have been absurd. An assault rifle with an RPM over 700 could empty a magazine in a continuous roar—if the magazine were infinite, it could pour out more than seven hundred rounds a minute. One long burst and the other side would be dead.
But that would have made the whole match a dull game of “whoever spots first wins,” so the production team had already tampered with the weapons. Even rapid single fire was limited to roughly two rounds per second. Compared to Kim Su-hyeok’s sniper rifle, which he could cycle once every three seconds with practiced hands and lightning aim, the rate of fire on these “assault rifles” was ridiculously slow.
In that case…
Yeon-woo pulled the trigger without hesitation.
Bang-bang—!
Rounds left the muzzle, and the enemy reacted instantly.
“……!”
“Right side! Shoot!”
Click—.
The moment their muzzles swung toward him, Yeon-woo hurled himself sideways. Two hits scored, then he dove without a second thought into the corn.
Bang-bang—!
Bang-bang-bang—!
Bullets stitched the empty air where he had just been standing. Yeon-woo was alone; the enemy was two. Even if he started by landing two hits, the moment he tried to finish one man the second would join in, and by the time he took one out he himself would be out as well.
While I’m landing five rounds, their delayed return fire will still put six into me.
He could manage two rounds a second; they could manage four. Firepower was simply against him.
The sudden ambush left the enemy’s muzzles wobbling. Yeon-woo kept his eyes locked on them until the instant he vanished into the corn, reading their reaction speed and coordination.
The one I hit is the team leader.
No matter how much these contestants loved military gear, the team leaders were still civilians—either never professionally trained or trained but never blooded. Their teammates, on the other hand, had clearly been hand-picked from the best specialists their countries could offer. The teammate who spun, shouldered, and returned fire the instant the shots rang out, and the team leader who turned a half-beat late and simply followed the other man’s lead—the difference was unmistakable.
Yeon-woo hit the ground with a proper breakfall, sprang up, and changed position at once.
Rustle—.
Sssss—.
Movement rustled a short distance from where the enemy had been. Again Yeon-woo threw himself without hesitation.
Bang-bang-bang—!
Sure enough, rounds tore through the space he had just left. From here on they would have to fight by pure prediction and feel.
They still think two-on-one is an advantage.
Yeon-woo, already reading their movement and slipping the attacks before they arrived, gave a small shake of his head.
But on a battlefield like this, being two can actually be a liability.
He wasn’t talking about the cornfield itself. He was talking about the fact that this was a television show with rules.
If both opponents had been specialists, the numerical disadvantage would have been real. But one of them was a civilian—and that civilian was the team leader. That was the blind spot of the entire game.
The team leader’s life is worth far more than a teammate’s.
From the start the two lives carried different values. Eliminating a team leader earned two points; eliminating a teammate earned one. The reason was simple: if a team leader went down, the entire team was eliminated the moment the next strategy phase began. In a real war you couldn’t put a price on human life, yet it was still true that keeping the veterans alive helped the fight. Here the logic was reversed.
And that reversal is exactly where their disadvantage begins.
Bang-bang—!
This time Yeon-woo spotted them first among the corn stalks swaying left and right in the Atlantic wind.
“Ugh…!”
Bang-bang-bang—!
The hit team leader and the teammate beside him sprayed fire. Yeon-woo threw himself clear, but the specialist had already anticipated the dive and was raking the area; one blind round found him.
Assuming everyone started at full life, the enemy team leader is now at one point, the teammate at five, and I’m at four.
His smartwatch hadn’t vibrated and no beep had come from their gear, so the hit was almost certainly real. They still held six lives between them to his four, but those six were split between a leader and a teammate while Yeon-woo was a lone team leader.
They’ll have to choose now—or maybe they already transferred mid-fight.
He was thinking about lives. Rule four, announced at the start of the match, floated back into his mind.
4. Remaining lives may be transferred only from a teammate to the team leader.
To keep their now paper-thin team leader alive, the teammate would have no choice but to hand over lives. In truth the real fight had always been between Yeon-woo and the enemy specialist. The team leader simply added a half-beat-late spray of supporting fire; in a high-tempo guerrilla scrap he was dead weight.
In a two-on-one where one of them is baggage, the solo fighter actually has the edge.
The specialist would be a combat-hardened operator; if the two of them went head-to-head, Yeon-woo couldn’t guarantee who would come out on top. The man could predict and dive just as Yeon-woo did. The team leader, however, was different.
His mere existence means the teammate is fighting with his own life parked outside his body—and parked in an easy-to-hit package.
By now the specialist would have burned lives restoring the leader. Even if he hadn’t, Yeon-woo could simply finish the leader and end it.
Rustle—.
The instant he heard corn husks crunch at close range, Yeon-woo rolled forward without a second’s pause.
Bang-bang—!
Rounds hammered the spot he had occupied—yet something had changed.
…Only one gun.
The specialist must have transferred the lives and finally realized how badly the odds had shifted. The moment Yeon-woo finished the roll he answered.
Bang—!
Bang-bang—!
He tracked the sideways dive, raking the muzzle laterally as he fired, but the thick corn formed a natural shield and stopped the rounds. There was no time to linger. He moved again at once.
“Ohh—!”
The gallery filled with gasps as the breathless fight unfolded on the screens.
“That’s incredible. Honestly, when Mr. Ryu ran into both of them I figured he was done for.”
The American team—eliminated on day one by the Italians—spoke while staring at the feed. A man behind them raised his voice.
“Come on, I keep telling you Mr. Ryu is different. You can’t look at him like a normal civilian.”
The speaker, chest puffed out with unmistakable pride, was Myles Kroeger of the Canadian team.
“What are you, Myles—his dad? Why so proud?”
“Well, no, not exactly…”
Wedged in the middle, Kim Min-su rolled his eyes and strained to catch every word flying around him.
They keep saying “Mr. Ryu, Mr. Ryu”—it has to be our actor… but I can’t make out a damn thing.
Mr. Ryu this, father that. Were they insulting Actor Ryu’s father? A dad joke? No, that couldn’t be it.
…Haa. The second we get back to Korea I’m studying English like a maniac. He’s going to work overseas from now on; me still not speaking the language is basically dereliction of duty.
The gunfight was pure chaos.
The production crew, electrified by the intensity, immediately scrambled a nearby heli-cam into position.
Whirrr—.
Corn leaves shivered in every direction. Whenever the Atlantic wind swept through the field, sharp gunshots cut through the gusts.
Bang-bang—!
Bang-bang-bang—!
Like dolphins surfacing and vanishing again beneath the waves of a green ocean, Yeon-woo and the enemy specialist kept erupting into view, pouring fire, then disappearing without a trace into the emerald sea of leaves.
Even so, Yeon-woo moved with deliberate rhythm.
Five steps left last time… this time straight ahead.
He knew exactly what the other man was after. In an endless cornfield, if you didn’t consciously track your own movement you drifted farther and farther from your original position with every exchange.
He’s trying to protect the team leader.
The leader would be hidden somewhere nearby. The two of them had split apart precisely to push Yeon-woo away from him. Knowing the plan was no reason to play along.
While fighting in measured patterns, Yeon-woo kept scanning for the leader. Amid the green-and-gold sea he finally spotted a black shape.
There you are…!
He put two rounds into the figure, then launched himself forward.
“Hiiik!”
The enemy team leader, already wound tight by gunfire from every direction, suffered a full-body muscle lock; his reaction speed collapsed. He swung the muzzle toward the diving Yeon-woo, but the range was so short he couldn’t even aim properly. In a real fight at this distance you would fix a bayonet and go to cold steel.
Mid-air Yeon-woo spun the assault rifle’s sling around his shoulder and drew the pistol from his hip. He hit the ground rolling and closed to less than a meter, practically embracing the man. Through the fogged goggles of the helmet their eyes met—wide, round eyes of pure shock behind the sweat-misted lenses.
Pinned at point-blank range, Yeon-woo clamped the man’s rifle hand and emptied the pistol into his abdomen.
Bang-bang—!
Bang-bang-bang—!
Beeeeeep—.
Ziiing—.
Red lights flashed across the top of the defensive gear and the beep howled. Yeon-woo’s smartwatch vibrated in the same instant. The team leader still wore a dazed expression, not yet grasping what had just happened to him. Yeon-woo gave his shoulder two light pats.
Tap-tap—.
Then he slipped once more into the green ocean of leaves.
The moment the specialist realized his team leader was gone, he came after Yeon-woo like a madman.
After several more exchanges Yeon-woo revised his estimate upward: the man was even better than expected. His predictive fire was excellent; his ability to read and dodge Yeon-woo’s shots was excellent. With only one life left between them, the corn itself acted as a natural shield, making clean hits nearly impossible.
The chase continued without either landing a decisive blow until the edge of the cornfield finally came into view. Yeon-woo reached the boundary first and read the specialist’s path by the violently bending stalks. Both men broke into a sprint and launched themselves into the open at the same instant—Yeon-woo to finish him, the specialist to inflict whatever damage he still could now that his leader was already gone.
BAAAANG—!
The thunderous report that rolled across the field belonged to neither of their rifles.
Ziiing—.
[Player Korea-B] has eliminated [Player Brazil-B].
The owner of that echoing shot was Kim Su-hyeok. He had been listening to the continuous gunfire, read the kill log that arrived on his smartwatch, and sprinted in to set up overwatch.
Far off, Kim Su-hyeok raised a hand and waved at Yeon-woo.
“Nice timing. That was my kill and you sniped the last hit right out from under me.”
Yeon-woo looked toward the distant figure, muttered to himself, and broke into a bright, satisfied grin.