Downtown (5)
A jeep rumbled and jolted its way across the heart of the wilderness. In the back seat, a man and a woman dressed as explorers were checking over the firearms in their hands — the avatars we would be controlling in this minigame.
Before long, the jeep ground to a halt in the middle of the jungle. The two of them exchanged a look, gave a small nod, and started pushing through the undergrowth.
Then crisp, gleaming text floated up onto the screen.
Gunslinger Adventure had raised its curtain.
A little farther in, two zebras were engrossed in their meal, heads buried deep in the grass. Then they sensed our presence and snapped their heads up — and their teeth were sharp as saw blades. Worse still, they rose onto two legs like humans and came charging in a frenzy.
Hee-hee-hee-hiing!
Bang! Bang! Ba-bang!
We opened fire at once, and the bipedal zebras crumpled under a baptism of bullets. A little farther on, yet more zebras appeared.
Hee-hee-hiing!
“Aim for the head.”
The moment Seo Ye-in concentrated her fire on their heads, the zebras started dropping faster.
Zebras aside, wild animals kept bursting out of nowhere to threaten us as we pushed deeper into the jungle. Their bodies were grotesquely out of proportion, and every last one had saw-sharp teeth — carnivores, the lot. They certainly attacked as if the explorer pair were prey.
Rat-tat-tat-tang!
Gazelles came sprinting at us horns-first, but we worked our avatars out of the way, then immediately concentrated fire and dropped them.
Kii-kiik!
Now and then, monkeys in the standing trees would snatch up fruit and hurl it at us. Who knew what was inside, but when it hit the ground it burst, spilling something like acid that ate away at the earth. What would happen if one struck us directly was plain to see, so dodging well was a must.
Rat-tat-tat-tang!
We shot every last monkey out of its tree, pressed on, and repeated the cycle of running into yet more wildlife.
Stage 1 is pretty tame.
It was, in effect, a sampler stage, so the difficulty was gentle — and Seo Ye-in had real experience banked as a gunslinger, so she was shooting and dodging capably as we went.
Rat-tat-tat-tang!
And when we wiped out yet another herd of zebras that appeared, red warning lights suddenly flashed all across the screen.
⚠ WARNING ⚠
This time a bipedal elephant, its entire body corded with muscle, appeared and filled the screen from edge to edge — one hand gripping a long tusk like a weapon. It was the Stage 1 boss fight.
Pawooooo!
The elephant spun like a windmill, whipping its long trunk around. We ducked in unison, and it followed up by swinging the tusk in its hand. We flung ourselves sideways to evade that too, then emptied our pistols into it.
Rat-tat-tat-tang!
Pawoooo!
The bipedal elephant writhed in agony — then, consumed by an even greater fury, began alternating slams of trunk and tusk. Its patterns were consistent and its wind-ups were huge, so dodging was no trouble, and openings presented themselves readily enough.
“Now. Fire.”
Rat-tat-tat-tang!
Without a word, Seo Ye-in was faithfully carrying out my advice to aim for the head. Not a single bullet went astray; every one of them slammed home between the elephant's eyes. The boss's health gauge drained fast,
Pawooo...
and at last, its strength spent, the elephant sank to the ground.
A brief cutscene: the man and woman, expressions grave, examined the fallen elephant at close range and collected samples.
The man spoke.
“We'll need to take a closer look at this.”
And with that, they started deeper into the jungle — and Stage 2 began immediately.
Now's where it really begins.
In truth, Stage 1 was nothing more than a device for burying challengers. It lulls you into thinking, Huh? This is actually doable — and then, from Stage 2 onward, it cranks up the difficulty in earnest and starts collecting its token toll. A truly villainous piece of design.
And sure enough: we were in the middle of putting down a few bipedal gazelles when an ostrich head shot up from a bush some distance off. It stared holes through us, then—
Da-da-da-da-dash!
—came charging at a terrifying speed.
“Sidestep.”
I said it and stepped out of its path, but Seo Ye-in's reaction was a beat late.
Kyaaah!
The ostrich snatched up Seo Ye-in's avatar in its beak and bolted away into the distance. Her screen washed over in gray as a small message appeared.
If the countdown reached zero, it counted as a forfeit. Fail to finish the run, and naturally there would be no prize.
Seo Ye-in fed a token into the machine, and her avatar popped back into existence.
I said, firing off casual bursts as I spoke, “Alright, I'll call out every dangerous stretch, so listen carefully and dodge.”
“Okay.”
To a veteran, minigames were practically general-education courses. Naturally, I had this one memorized from start to finish — and Gunslinger Adventure was no exception. I knew exactly what would pop out where, so as long as she did what I said the moment I said it, Seo Ye-in wouldn't die either.
As long as she follows right away.
But reacting the instant you hear something is never as easy as it sounds — all the more when you're deep in the game and coaching suddenly barks in from right beside you.
“Jump back.”
Kyaaah!
Her backward jump came too late, and a rhino rammed her avatar flat.
Another token, and on we went.
“Crocodile coming out of the water.”
Shwaash!
The next instant, a crocodile burst from the pool we were crossing and dragged her avatar down into it.
“Two ostriches.”
Da-da-da-da-dash!
Two ostriches made off with her avatar.
“...” Seo Ye-in's gun drooped as she stared blankly at the screen. The air around her felt oddly like it had back in the two-on-two PvP assessment, when I'd tormented her with Wind Force.
Is she mad? Is she about to quit?
“...” But Seo Ye-in glanced at me once, turned her head to give the tiger plushie in the prize corner a single look, then fed another token into the machine.
Whether she was holding out for my sake, for the tiger plushie's, or both, I couldn't tell.
Either way, we continued.
CONTINUE?
CONTINUE?
Even after that, Seo Ye-in met a colorful variety of deaths at the hands — and paws, and beaks — of bipedal wildlife. And every single time, 300 points drained out of her balance.
Still, she's getting the hang of it.
She rarely fell for the same trick twice, and her reactions to my calls kept getting faster.
“Another ostrich.”
“Mm.”
Da-da-da-da-dash!
Seo Ye-in slipped out of the carnivorous ostrich's charge radius, then opened up with her gun. The ostrich tried to bolt, took a bullet to the head, and flopped over.
“See that pool? Brace for the crocodile.”
Shwaash!
The crocodile erupted from the pool, jaws spread wide, barreling in — but Seo Ye-in and I had long since taken cover somewhere safe. That gaping maw got a baptism of bullets instead.
Rat-tat-tat-tang!
The moment the crocodile died, warning text flashed up.
⚠ WARNING ⚠
This time a colossal four-armed gorilla landed with a bone-rattling thud, its hands full of things to throw — objects, other animals, and the like. The Stage 2 boss fight.
“It's throwing an ostrich.”
No sooner had the words left my mouth than the gorilla snatched up a nearby ostrich and hurled it. The ostrich, curled up like a ball, came flapping down on us — but this Seo Ye-in was not about to get caught twice.
Rat-tat-tat-tang!
“Tree fruit. Fall back, way back.”
The moment we retreated, the gorilla's fruit struck the ground and exploded. The fruit was huge, and so was the area its acid melted down.
“Now focus. Hornets coming out of the hive.”
The gorilla tore a massive hive off a nearby tree and hurled it. I shot it out of the air and blew it apart — but dozens of fist-sized hornets came swarming out of the wreckage.
We intercepted the oncoming swarm one by one.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tang!
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tang!
But Seo Ye-in let a few slip through,
Kyaaah!
and her avatar died riddled with stings. I, meanwhile, had intercepted them perfectly.
Seo Ye-in fed in another token, staring hard at me the whole time — a silent “...?” written across her face. Her gray eyes seemed to ask, How come you shoot better than me?
Because I'm the Minigame Demon King, that's why.
That, however, was one answer I couldn't give her, and just then her avatar revived, so she turned her eyes back to the screen.
Rat-tat-tat-tang!
The four-armed gorilla flung anything it could get its hands on. Each time, I fed Seo Ye-in a warning in advance, and together we worked our avatars this way and that to dodge.
“Tree fruit.”
“Two ostriches.”
“That boulder's about to shatter. You have to dodge the shards too.”
“Hive incoming. Get ready.”
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tang!
The hornets bursting from the second hive, Seo Ye-in intercepted every last one, clean as you please. And every time the gorilla bared an opening, we poured fire into it —
— and the beast flopped face-down onto the ground. Stage 2 was cleared as well.
Examining the gorilla, the explorers' complexions had grown darker still.
“Something's very wrong here.”
The two of them pressed on, deeper into the forest. The trees around them grew denser with every step, the jungle giving way to true forest. The creatures that appeared grew stranger in form as well — extra limbs were practically cute at this point, and beasts fused from two or three different animals were beyond counting.
Rat-tat-tat-tang!
Like it mattered. We advanced, turning everything that blocked our path into honeycomb. A black panther with a snake where its tail should have been took Seo Ye-in's baptism of bullets and dropped flat to the ground.
I stole a glance at Seo Ye-in.
She learns fast.
Stage 2 alone had cost her a mountain of continues, but once we entered Stage 3, her death count plummeted. Sure, I'd taught her the danger spots in advance — but as Stage 2 had shown, most people can't dodge even when told. She dodged everything I called because she had adapted to the game itself.
Krr-hraang!
The two-headed lion that appeared as the Stage 3 boss went down just as lightly, following my every call.
The long-awaited final stage.
Partway through the forest, the explorer pair stopped dead in their tracks.
“That's...!”
Right in the heart of the deep woods stood a building, ominous and alone. Just then, a corner of it grated open, and figures in researchers' garb dragged out an enormous cage — then released everything inside it in a rush.
Most of those chimeras, two and three animals fused together, vanished into the woods, but one of them — a leopard with a dizzying pattern of markings — spotted us and came charging at blistering speed.
Kyaaaargh!
Rat-tat-tat-tang!
Spraying bullets alongside Seo Ye-in, I thought:
Like I keep saying — it's always the humans that are the problem.