Battle Royale (3)
South Korea — Baek Jinwoo · 4 KILLS!
South Korea — Baek Jinwoo · 5 KILLS!
Once airborne, Baek Jinwoo was quite literally flying all over the map.
South Korea — Baek Jinwoo · 6 KILLS!
Spot a player while passing overhead? He dropped straight down and took care of it. Nationality made no difference, so long as the country in question wasn't an ally.
World ranker or complete unknown, they posed no problem for Baek Jinwoo whatsoever.
At the current level of play, no one short of the Five Emperors could hope to stand against Hungyo.
And this was no ordinary Hungyo, either. This was Hungyo reborn—his entire body reforged after seizing a fated opportunity.
"Jinwoo! Over there!"
Hwang Jiwoo, riding her Ice Bird at the head of their group, pointed toward the base of a hill.
Oh. There it was.
One of the supply items scattered across this vast forest! A chest that looked for all the world like something pirates had left behind on a treasure island was blazing with golden light.
WHOOOSH! The instant he spotted it, Baek Jinwoo dove.
Tuk. The moment his hand touched the glowing chest—
◈ Battle Royale exclusive item.
◈ Automatically disappears when the Battle Royale ends.
◈ Effect 1: Once every 30 minutes, teleport to the player farthest from you within the forest. Your summons are transported along with you.
◈ Effect 2: After killing a player, return to your original position.
Ambush?
Ah. Baek Jinwoo understood. So that's how it's meant to be used.
Wielded well, the item could drive his kill count even higher.
"Let's look for more first."
They had flown every which way, yet items proved scarcer than he'd expected. Whether they were simply rare, or the arena itself was absurdly vast, he couldn't say—but finding more came first.
"Heheh!"
The smile would not leave Baek Ajin's face.
"Dad."
"Hm?"
"I told you, didn't I? There's no need to worry about our Jinwoo."
Working at Yubaek, she had known for ages that her brother was extraordinary. She just hadn't known he was this extraordinary.
Good grief. Blink and he was here, blink again and he was there—Hong Gildong himself had nothing on him!
"AHHH, Baek Jinwoo! Twelve kills already!"
"He hit thirteen while I was still talking! His item usage is unbelievable!"
"He's found five Ambush items already, hasn't he?"
"That's right! It looks like they've switched tactics! Hwang Jiwoo is holding down a wide-area Frozen Field at their base while Baek Jinwoo carves through every enemy player he finds guerrilla-style!"
"Whoa!"
"How can anyone be that good?"
"Hungyo really is something else. We see him so often we'd stopped noticing... but he's on a whole other level."
Even in Yubaek City, the gasps of admiration kept bursting out.
Baek Ajin felt as if she might float clean off the ground. Her father Baek Jincheol and mother Hwang Myeonghui kept their composure in front of the crowd, but their delight shown through all the same.
How proud must they be? They were simply keeping up appearances as the parents of a guild master, pretending to be calm.
"KWAHAHAT! Everyone! Feast your eyes on our daughter's Ice Bird! Is it even legal for wings to be that gorgeous?! WOOHAHAT!"
"HOOONEYYY!"
As for her own parents—well, if they carried on like Jiwoo's folks over there, wouldn't it smear their son's good name? That was the worry, anyway.
Of course, the mood itself was wonderful. Everyone roared with laughter at Jiwoo's gloriously over-the-top father, having the time of their lives.
Everyone could afford to relax. Every so often, the main screen caught Hong Ari, Ki Jaehyeok, and the rest of the team tearing it up out there.
"Take a look at the scoreboard! Baek Jinwoo 13 kills, Hong Ari 4, Ki Jaehyeok 3, Kang Geonho 1, Oh Seon-young 1! Twenty-one kills in all—seventh among every nation competing! Sadly, Hwang Juwon and Song Yeonhee are out!"
"No need for despair! A full hour in, and eight of ours still stand—that alone is a miracle for us!"
"Exactly! What an unbelievable moment! Korea in seventh place! Keep this up and won't we actually reach the semifinals, just as Baek Jinwoo promised?"
"From your lips to the heavens' ears!"
The semifinals!
A phrase that set the whole nation's heart pounding. Hard proof of a name proudly written among the great summoning powers!
"The current leader is, naturally, Great Britain!"
"Yes, it could hardly be otherwise—every one of Britain's ten players is a world ranker, aren't they!"
"Rachel sits at 14 kills! She's locked in a head-to-head with Baek Jinwoo!"
"Simply standing shoulder to shoulder with Rachel is an incredible, pride-worthy feat in itself!"
"Come on, big brother!"
Baek Ajin leapt to her feet and shouted. If the gap had been wide, she could have made peace with it—but one single kill apart? Her hands were balled into sweaty fists all over again.
And she was not alone in feeling it. The entire nation felt it.
"Baek Jinwoo! Baek Jinwoo!"
"Baek Jinwoo! Baek Jinwoo! Baek Jinwoo!"
One name, cried out by all with one heart and one will. And carrying that hope with him, Baek Jinwoo tore across the field.
SHRAK-KAG!
Hungyo's blade cleaved another five summons in two, all at once.
He had no idea whose they were. They had simply appeared before his eyes, so he cut them down without so much as a greeting.
"How many are left?"
Baek Jinwoo asked the empty air.
Players Remaining: 443
Nearly half the field was already gone.
And my kill count? Eighteen, for now.
The awkward part was that, inside the game, there was no way to tell who was leading—or where he himself stood.
But that didn't mean there was no way at all.
SRIK! Baek Jinwoo tore open one of the items he'd already collected.
Item 'Scoreboard' (E-rank) activated.
Displays the kill counts of the top five players.
So an item like this existed. Quite a few had dropped, in fact. Most players grumbled at pulling what they called junk; for Baek Jinwoo, it was anything but.
If I want first place for certain, I'll have to keep using these.
The scoreboard bloomed across Baek Jinwoo's vision.
"Ha."
A laugh slipped out of him.
Twenty kills?
That was Rachel for you. The woman did not joke around.
Baek Jinwoo had played with everything he had from the moment he dropped in. Save for the initial rendezvous with Hwang Jiwoo, he had pushed relentlessly for nothing but item farming and kills. He had moved without so much as a single breath of rest—and still sat two kills behind.
It had to be the time spent flying out to meet Hwang Jiwoo. Exactly that much of a gap.
Fun.
It was a feeling he hadn't known in a long, long while. The moment his long-dead competitive fire flickered back to life!
All right. Let's see what you've got.
With 443 players remaining, that meant 343 more had to fall. No—factoring in the allied nations, the true number was probably smaller than that.
"Hungyo."
CLACK. Hungyo shifted his scabbard.
"From here on, we split up and fight. You take Ramba and run due east, all the way."
...?
Hungyo turned to him with worry written across his face, but Baek Jinwoo only smiled.
"I'll be fine."
Rachel and the Five Emperors couldn't lay a finger on him anyway, alliance or not. Which meant? The remaining players were more than enough for him to clean up with Doldori's control alone.
And then there was the sheer absurdity of Ambush (B-rank)! Triggered at a truly dangerous moment, it could double as an escape tool.
"Run!"
With a nod, Hungyo shot off toward the east.
SRIK!
Rachel of the golden hair. She, too, tore open a Scoreboard (E-rank)—and then beamed.
It really is Baek Jinwoo.
He was Jinugod, no doubt about it. What else could explain him matching the Five Emperors result for result?
And Jinugod hasn't even been properly growing for a full year yet, has he.
Fight him for real? Or hand him the win!
Honestly, she had claimed the Hidden Reward three times in three years already. Letting it go just once couldn't hurt—if it bought Jinugod's goodwill.
But.
Rachel's smile deepened. She had watched Baek Jinwoo for more than five years now. Throwing a match on purpose? That would never earn his goodwill.
No—the way to truly buy it was to beat him with everything she had, and be acknowledged for it.
If we're going to need each other, I have to show him I belong on that level too.
KWADUDUDUDUK!
A golden dragon of unknown origin, welling up around Rachel, burst the bodies of enemy summons apart.
PUHOK! Blood geysered skyward; flesh scattered in ribbons.
Great Britain — Rose Rachel · 21 KILLS!
Great Britain — Rose Rachel · 22 KILLS!
Two players erased in a single move, she kicked off the earth—TAAT!—and streaked away.
Ordinarily? She would have strolled. But facing Baek Jinwoo, she had no intention of letting her guard down either.
One hour. Two. Time kept flowing.
And as it passed and the surviving players thinned out, the fighting thinned with them. It couldn't be helped—the arena was simply too vast for the number of players left.
Which was how a moment like this ended up on the main screen:
"D-did everyone just see that?! Hong Ari has come face to face with Britain's Olivia!"
"Olivia—world rank six and Britain's number two! The woman known to stand directly beneath the Five Emperors!"
"But—what is this? She's just... walking right past her!"
The Korean broadcast booth was in an uproar.
"What are we witnessing?! We've often seen the great powers avoid fighting one another to conserve their strength... but does that courtesy extend to us as well?!"
"And against Olivia of all people...! Even at her absolute best, Hong Ari would be hard-pressed to last thirty seconds!"
To say it once more: the entire world—broadcasters included—had no idea what the great powers' alliance treaties actually contained. Which only made them all the more excited!
"It seems we've finally earned their recognition!"
"It has to be! The kill gap between Rachel and Baek Jinwoo right now is one! A single kill!"
Rachel: 35 kills!Baek Jinwoo: 34!
Astonishing as it was, even after sending Hungyo elsewhere, Baek Jinwoo was struggling just to keep pace with Rachel. That was how thoroughly her speed and power were overpowering him.
"Only 153 players remain! When 53 more fall, the Battle Royale is over!"
"Korea has already climbed to second in the standings! Magnificent! Baek Jinwoo! This is the feat achieved by Jinugod—by Baek Jinwoo!"
"And what are the other players doing?"
"Hikaru and Beskov are resting! Their teams have gathered around campfires!"
"So they're pulling out of the ranking race entirely, then!"
"Ahh, this is turning into quite the spectacle!"
The United States, Japan, Russia, and Taiwan had gathered in one spot to rest. Their top-nine finishes were all but locked in, and first place was out of reach anyway—so why not pull up a seat and watch the two frontrunners go at it?
Only the national teams of Britain and South Korea combed the skies, hunting players.
Damn it.
Baek Jinwoo, too, was circling hard enough that curses kept leaking between his teeth. His heart wanted to smash the alliance treaty to pieces and hang the consequences—but he didn't.
An alliance is an alliance. I signed the contract.
So he would give it everything he had. And—
Trust them.
Ramba. And Hungyo. They were, by the verdict of ten years of Baek Jinwoo's experience, the most broken EX-grade summons he had ever known.
Hah... hah...
WHUNG-WHUNG-WHUNG-WHUNG-WHUNG!
Already her fourth hour of swinging that staff—Ramba.
By now, Hungyo's power was nothing short of a bug in the system. His boosted attack speed alone had to be astronomical.
...
Feeling Ramba's energy coiling around his entire body, Hungyo thought:
At this level, I would win even against the legendary Dragon of Destruction itself.
A fully maxed Trinity set, plus Light-Speed Ramba's stacks on top! The Hungyo of this moment could carve tens of thousands of precise cuts into the very same point in 0.1 seconds.
The only problem was— finding anyone to use it all on.
"Hoo."
Even for him, finding and dispatching players across this vast arena bordered on the impossible. But standing still was no answer either!
TADADAK! Hungyo was weaving this way and that through the forest when—
Rustle!
Hm?
He froze mid-stride at the stir of another presence and turned.
Someone was stepping out of the thicket. A woman with golden hair, wearing a crop top.
"...You're..."
Rachel murmured, looking utterly dumbfounded.
"Jinugod's Training Instructor?"
She had found Hungyo first.