Competitive Spirit
Inside the team house of the Royal Commando pro esports team, Qingdao Magic Stars, two young men sat transfixed, their eyes glued to a single monitor.
Click.
On the screen, a Trooper came to a sudden halt. It was a replay match code requested directly from Jo Meohyeop—the joint broadcast between him and Wadeulwadeul, viewed entirely from Wadeulwadeul’s first-person perspective.
“What do you make of this, Mun-hwa?”
Go Jaehyun—known to viewers as the streamer ‘God Jaehyun’ and to the league under the gamertag SIN—turned to ask his team’s main damage dealer, Ga Mun-hwa. Mun-hwa wore a profoundly troubled expression.
“…I honestly have no clue, hyung.”
“If you don’t know, who the hell is supposed to? You’re our hitscan specialist, you punk.”
Despite his sharp words, Jaehyun’s tone lacked any real bite. To be blunt, even as a seasoned professional himself, he couldn’t wrap his head around what he was seeing.
Since Mun-hwa played Trooper as his signature hero, Jaehyun had hoped his teammate might spot something new. Yet Mun-hwa’s verdict aligned squarely with his own.
“How do I even describe this?” Mun-hwa muttered, rubbing his temples. “It’s physical mechanics that couldn’t exist without hacks, paired with an organic fluidity that couldn’t possibly exist with hacks.”
“So in other words, you have no clue.”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“Ah, damn it.”
Jaehyun scratched his head in frustration. An unidentified monster running rampant across the ladder, slaughtering lobbies with zero aim assist. Ordinary players might dismiss it as spicy internet gossip, but for them, it struck a nerve. They made their living as professional Royal Commando players.
No one in the world was supposed to understand this game better than they did. That was the weight carried by the title of 'pro.'
Yet right now, two elite pros were utterly baffled by this newcomer called Wadeulwadeul. Her inputs bore none of the artificial snap of cheating software, yet the resulting performance seemed impossible for any human hand to replicate without them.
“From the macro play, it’s obvious she’s brand new to the game,” Mun-hwa observed. “She doesn’t know where the health packs spawn, and she doesn’t even seem to recognize supply drop pings.”
“Which only makes it worse.”
“Exactly. The second she learns basic macro, every match will turn into a slaughter. She’s already tearing through lobbies at her current tier. I bet she could steamroll all the way up to Diamond on pure mechanics alone. Past Master tier, it’d get trickier since team synergy starts to dictate the game, but still.”
Ga Mun-hwa—gamertag Ga Hu, star DPS of Qingdao Magic Stars—was just as rattled by the replay as Jaehyun, who played support for their roster.
“There is one thing I know for certain, though.”
“What’s that?”
“There is no way in hell you pull off this kind of movement without setting your aim assist to zero.”
Jaehyun’s eyebrow twitched upward. “Meaning?”
“Only dedicated Trooper mains notice this, but if you have even a sliver of aim assist turned on, the physics engine forces a subtle lock during the reload animation. But this player? She blows right past that constraint. The engine doesn't catch her crosshair for a single millisecond. It’s genuine, unassisted zero.”
“There was a quirk like that?”
“I spent weeks trying to lower my assist slider as much as possible, remember? I discovered it when I was drilling at pure zero.”
“Then why can’t you do it?”
“If I had that kind of mechanical control, wouldn't I be the highest-paid player on our team? Hell, in the entire league!”
“So you’re saying whoever’s behind that avatar deserves the league’s top salary? Someone who literally installed the game earlier that afternoon?”
Mun-hwa choked on his words. A bruised sense of professional pride flared across his face, prompting a hurried defense.
“Look, her game sense, positioning, and ultimate timing are still total amateur hour. If we put her in a scrim against us right now, I’d completely tear her to—”
Smack!
Jaehyun’s palm caught the back of Mun-hwa’s head.
“Listen to yourself, you clown! You’re an active pro! Is bragging about beating a day-one beginner supposed to make you look good? For fuck's sake.”
“…Yeah, fair point.”
Mun-hwa rubbed his stinging head, yielding to the logic. Sizing up someone on their very first day of play and letting professional pride flare like that was pathetic, plain and simple.
“Still, you have to consider the lobby,” Mun-hwa reasoned. “Her opponents were barely Gold tier. When celestial-tier players smurf in low ranks, they look like aimbotters too. Their game sense and physical reactions are on an entirely different plane. You can’t know for sure until you face her yourself.”
“True enough. I’d love to run a match against her.”
“You planning to stream-snipe her queue?”
“If our hidden MMR matched, I already would’ve.”
Jaehyun leaned his chair back, craning his neck toward the ceiling with a heavy sigh. Just then, Mun-hwa glanced down at his smartphone and perked up.
“Oh? Hyung, Wadeulwadeul-nim is live right now.”
“She is?”
They had spent nearly two hours dissecting match replays, and before they knew it, eight in the evening had rolled around.
“She’s playing Royal Commando.”
“With hands like that, she’d better be. Hook it up to the TV. Let’s watch together.”
Mun-hwa cast his phone screen to the living room television via Bluetooth. On stream, Wadeulwadeul was busily cycling through different characters, testing their kits one after another.
Because her broader game sense was virtually nonexistent, she frequently threw herself into suicidal situations. Yet her raw physical mechanics were so preposterous that even on the most reckless dive, she somehow deleted an enemy before going down.
“Her raw mechanics are actually insane.”
“Think any pro teams will scout her?”
“Reach out to an unranked account? Not a chance. Maybe if she hits Challenger.”
“And if she does?”
“…Hell if I know. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
A sudden chill ran down Jaehyun’s spine as he imagined going toe-to-toe against a damage dealer with that caliber of raw precision. The moment you locked eyes with her, you’d lose half your health bar before you could even register the shot.
“—Ah, this is kind of dull. I wish I could play against some real experts.”
Wadeulwadeul’s casual remark drifted out of the TV speakers.
Jaehyun blinked, stunned for a beat, before shooting out of his chair as inspiration struck.
“Hey. Do you have Silvers loaded on your Ogogok account?”
“Huh?”
“Send a donation right now. Tell her to host a viewer custom game. I’m getting in there.”
“…Wait, what?”
Mun-hwa immediately caught his teammate’s drift. If the matchmaking system wouldn't grant them an encounter, they would just manufacture one themselves.
“Oh, got it!”
Mun-hwa rapidly logged into his viewer account to craft a donation message. Having watched clips from Wadeulwadeul’s debut broadcast, he had no trouble mimicking the vernacular of her regular viewers.
“Nice, nice. Steer public opinion in the chat for a bit. I’m getting into the capsule.”
“On it, hyung.”
And so, born on a whim inside the Qingdao Magic Stars team house, Operation: Infiltrate Wadeulwadeul was officially underway.
The donation had been brief, but its shockwave was immense. Eagle-eyed viewers spotted God Jaehyun’s verified account in the viewer list, confirming the rumor. Predictably, the chat exploded into a raging inferno.
“Wait… is that really him?”
So Rihwa reacted a beat too late. Distracted by opening a notepad window to jot down interested participants, she had nearly missed the commotion.
She remembered his name clearly. During her collaborative stream with Jo Meohyeop, this was the professional player who had publicly vouched for her integrity.
Direct confirmation arrived right on cue. While viewers could display whatever custom nicknames they wished when donating, a streamer’s backend dashboard always revealed the actual account ID tied to the user.
“It really is him,” Rihwa murmured, genuine astonishment lacing her voice as she verified his handle.
With official verification from the streamer herself, the chat’s hype surged past the boiling point.
Typically, viewer in-house matches were populated by casual players. Unleashing an active pro into such an environment was an invitation to a one-sided slaughter. Granted, Royal Commando was a deeply team-reliant shooter where solo carrying became borderline impossible against structured resistance, but the skill disparity remained staggering.
Yet watching a real pro duke it out in a viewer custom was an exceedingly rare treat, and the audience welcomed Jaehyun’s involvement with open arms. After all, it was just a casual friendly match with nothing on the line.
“…All right, I’ll add you to the list for now.”
Following God Jaehyun’s donation, the floodgates opened. Applications poured in at a terrifying pace. Realizing the enthusiasm wouldn't taper off anytime soon, Rihwa set a hard boundary.
“I’ll take applicants for the next three minutes only.”
As the clock ran out, Rihwa firmly drew the line. Even as queued-up donations containing late requests kept trickling through, she held steadfast.
“One, two, three, four…”
She tallied up the hopefuls on her screen. A staggering forty-eight people had volunteered.
“Now, how should we pick?”
It was a dilemma she hadn't anticipated. Since every participant had sent different donation amounts, choosing the biggest spenders crossed her mind, but she dismissed it just as quickly. Turning it into a pay-to-play circus felt far too mercenary.
Another crisp donation pinged from God Jaehyun.
“Hmm, good point.”
Rihwa nodded along. The standard was transparent, and it perfectly aligned with her desire for a real challenge.
“Let’s go with that, then.”
With a clear benchmark set, the selection proceeded smoothly. Rihwa filtered the top nine players strictly by rank. Incredibly, the lowest-ranked player among them sat at Master 3.
Given that her stream had recently gone viral amidst rampant aimbot accusations, high-tier Royal Commando veterans naturally made up a disproportionate share of her viewership.
“I was just aiming for a casual neighborhood scrimmage…” Rihwa muttered, clicking her tongue as the stakes spiraled far beyond her expectations. Even so, the prospect of trading blows with genuine high-rankers sent a pleasant thrum through her veins.
“Should we do a random ladder draw to split the teams, and then have each squad set up a Discord call?”
Just as Rihwa brought up an online ladder-draw tool, another notification popped up.
“…?”
It was a proposal radiating a glaring, unmistakable desire to face her across the battlefield. Dense as Rihwa could be, even she couldn't miss the naked intent behind it. The chat instantly went wild.
Rihwa watched the comments scroll past and let out a soft chuckle. Perhaps it was the martial artist in her waking up, but this clash of competitive pride—something she had once found burdensome—now struck her as thoroughly exhilarating.
“All right, God Jaehyun-nim. In that case, you play DPS. I’ll lock in DPS as well.”
A brazen declaration of war. That fiery provocation sent the chat room ablaze at a speed unthinkable for a modest channel of eight hundred viewers.
Almost instantly, another donation chimed through.
Seeing that curt reply, Rihwa grinned. The final touch had been delivered, and the chat exploded into pure pandemonium.