Sniper? Mister (2)
With a crash, the window shattered.
There hadn’t been time to open it, so the moment he showed himself, he simply fired straight at the enemy.
Hitting a target from a standing firing stance with a sniper rifle, without even the time to properly aim, wasn’t easy, even at close range.
The approaching enemies were still about fifty meters away, so it wasn’t exactly a short distance, either.
SJ DAD -> PigBar [Dead]
And yet the kill log flashed up immediately.
He’d risen from a crouch and pulled the trigger the instant he stood, and that shot had landed squarely in the enemy’s vital point.
- ??? Is this really something you can do just because your reflexes are good?
- No, seriously, isn’t this just straight-up hacks??
- He didn’t even have time to check the enemy’s position, and he still hit them...
The moment one of them dropped, the squad members coming in halted with a flinch.
Then they all broke into a full sprint toward him.
Since they’d confirmed his weapon was a sniper rifle, they were probably trying to force close combat as fast as possible.
As for the other one, even if he didn’t know exactly what gun Yeongho had, his first thought was to hug the outside wall and deny the sniper any angle to shoot from.
And Yeongho, having anticipated that much, kicked open the front door beside the window and revealed himself.
He moved the moment he fired his first shot.
Thwoom!
One of the charging enemies took a bullet through the head and snapped backward.
SJ DAD -> WatermelonBar [Dead]
“Holy crap! What the hell!”
“Fuck! What kind of lucky-ass snipe was that!”
The enemies, who’d been keeping their attention fixed on the window to watch for the sniper, panicked and swung their guns toward the door.
With two people getting instantly killed in rapid succession before they could even react, curses naturally flew out of their mouths.
Sure, sniper rifles hit hard, but unless the shot landed in the body, a one-shot kill usually didn’t happen.
Which meant he had clearly fired without even taking the time to line up a proper shot, and somehow both bullets had gone straight into vital points.
From their side, it was understandable that he seemed like someone absurdly lucky.
- Normal anger is valid.
- If you didn’t know any better, you’d obviously think it was a fluke...
- Why the hell do all his shots land as critical hits when he isn’t even properly aiming lol
Of course, the truth wasn’t that he was lucky at all. It had all been planned from the start.
Using Battle Sense, Yeongho sensed the enemies’ positions and, from the silhouettes forming in his head, even confirmed what weapons they were carrying.
That was why he’d used his first shot to kill the player carrying an assault rifle, the one who could keep up sustained fire.
Then, when the fight closed to close range, he took out the shotgun user, the most dangerous opponent in that kind of engagement.
The other side had confirmed it was a duo squad, so they had considered the possibility of another enemy besides the sniper appearing.
Still, they’d assumed any attack would come from some other angle, so they’d only been watching the corners on either side of the house.
They hadn’t expected him to burst out so openly from the front.
What’s more, the one who’d appeared wasn’t another player, but the sniper from just a moment ago.
When unexpected situations kept piling up like this, hands and feet got tangled, and reactions inevitably slowed down a little.
Bang bang bang! Thrrrrrkt!
Half a beat late, the enemies with pistols and submachine guns unloaded their bullets, but Yeongho had already moved away from the doorway long ago.
The enemies were thrown into confusion once again.
Why was the guy with the sniper rifle charging forward?
Questions were questions, but their hands still instinctively tracked the muzzle of their guns.
But for some reason, the bullets just weren’t landing properly.
He was running with his upper body swaying subtly left and right, and it seemed ridiculous to think that weaves like that would actually dodge bullets, like some kind of boxing footwork.
And yet, inexplicably, all that showed up were a few glancing hits with tiny amounts of damage, and not a single bullet drove cleanly into his body.
The submachine gunner, who had a giant question mark practically written across his face, took a Winchester round straight between the eyebrows.
SJ DAD -> JjoseuBar [Dead]
Click—clack!
Yeongho pulled the lever down and back up to cycle the round, then aimed at the last remaining enemy, the one with the pistol.
The Winchester was, in fact, widely considered the trashiest sniper rifle in Battle Island.
Even if you landed a headshot, which had the highest damage multiplier, it couldn’t kill an enemy in one shot if they were wearing a level 2 helmet or better.
Compared to other sniper rifles, where only a level 3 helmet could prevent a one-shot kill, it was a painfully weak weapon for something that put all its power into damage.
Of course, almost no one had farmed enough to wear even that kind of armor this early in the game.
Thoom!
“Ack!”
The pistol player had just started swapping magazines and trying to duck behind a tree when a heavy impact struck the back of his head and sent him sprawling.
He hadn’t died instantly.
Maybe he’d gotten lucky with his loot, because he just happened to be wearing a level 2 helmet.
...If he had one of those, wasn’t it better to just hand it over to another teammate?
If someone carrying an actual gun instead of a pistol had survived, the outcome might have been a little different.
A small doubt crossed Yeongho’s mind, but he decided that, well, something like that could happen, and pulled the lever again.
Looking at the IDs of the players who’d gone down, it seemed like they were friends who’d matched their names to a theme. When friends played together, they didn’t exactly care about the highest possible efficiency.
If something good dropped, you took it and kept it, even if you died with it; if you stepped up to give it away first, people would just call you a pussy.
Click—clack!
People called the Winchester the worst sniper rifle of all, but it did have one tiny advantage.
It was the only lever-action sniper rifle in Battle Island, which meant it reloaded its next round faster than the other bolt-action guns.
Thwung—!
The player who had been crawling as if dragging his body along the ground, trying to get behind the tree, was pierced through the heel before he could fully hide and collapsed onto the floor.
Since his health bar had already been gutted by the headshot, that much was enough to reduce his life to zero.
SJ DAD -> BibiBig [Dead]
“...?”
Yeongho’s eyebrow twitched at the kill log that popped up.
He’d thought they were all using similarly themed names with matching rhymes, so why was this one guy alone named BibiBig?
It needlessly bothered him, and for a moment his concentration nearly slipped.
While he hesitated over that useless stray thought,
Bang!
A loud gunshot rang out from behind him, snapping him right back to attention.
Right. If he hadn’t died in one shot like the others because he was more solid than the rest of them, then BibiBig did fit after all.
He brushed the meaningless thought aside and turned toward Choi Pinam, who had entered the fight, moving to support him.
* * *
“Who the hell charges in with a sniper rifle!!”
Choi Pinam’s lips jutted out in a comical pout as he protested.
He knew this wasn’t the kind of situation where there was room to debate tactics, but when someone just went and did things without telling him the plan, it was honestly hard to keep up with that hyung’s tempo.
- lololol what even is an assault sniper
- If he goes out like that, isn’t he just gonna die? Even taking on one squad means four people, you know;
- Godfather doesn’t play sneaky just because he’s holding a sniper rifle!
- You insolent fool! Doubt not the Great Father!
He was the one with a headache, but the viewers were the only ones having fun and chattering away.
Still, Yeongho had asked for cover.
Choi Pinam hurried after him, braced himself against the doorframe, and leaned out just enough to sweep his shotgun from side to side.
“...What? You’re taking them all yourself? Then what am I supposed to be doing here!”
The enemies were already all down before he could even help.
A whole squad had been wiped out by a single sniper.
If Yeongho had just stayed back and sniped from a distance, it would at least have made sense, but could something like that really happen in a normal firefight this close?
And he hadn’t even stayed hidden—he’d run outside and fought them there?
“Seriously, if that’s the case, what am I even supposed to cover—”
With his energy drained, Choi Pinam let out a snort of laughter, then stopped muttering to himself and turned sideways, bringing his shotgun to bear.
The other team, which had been approaching after hearing the gunfire, had just rounded the building’s corner and spotted them, stopping dead in place.
Ah! So that was what he meant by cover?
He’d taken care of one squad himself, and Choi Pinam was supposed to suppress the other squad so they couldn’t interfere.
“Whoa! That’s seriously an amazing hyung.”
Only now, after finally interpreting Yeongho’s meaning, did Choi Pinam let out an admiring exclamation and pull the trigger at the enemies trying to find cover.
Bang! Baanng—!
The deep roar of shotgun blasts rang out in rapid succession.
Pellets, not a point but a spread of metal beads, slammed into the oncoming enemies and stopped them in their tracks.
It was a double-barrel shotgun, so the power was strong, but with only two shells, the enemies quickly returned fire.
One, two, three, four.
Counting as he reloaded, Choi Pinam spoke to Yeongho over voice chat.
“Hyung! They’re all coming from one side!”
Understood.
If they had split into separate teams and attacked from different directions in a crossfire, they would have been much more annoying to deal with.
But from the looks of it, they’d recognized that a fight had broken out and rushed in fast, planning to overwhelm the survivors whose health had already dropped.
They were probably a little rattled themselves that the situation had been resolved faster than expected.
But it’s only going to get more chaotic now.
Pressing himself against the wall to get out of the line of fire, Choi Pinam ducked into the building and let out a suppressed chuckle.
Because he’d met him directly at the corner, the other side still hadn’t confirmed Yeongho’s position.
They’d probably figured out from the sound of gunfire that he was using a sniper rifle, and naturally they’d assume the sniper was inside the building.
Footsteps approached in a hurry a moment later.
“Told you they didn’t see me. Kheh heh!”
It was hard to keep from laughing out loud.
From the sounds of it, all four of them were focused on this side.
None of them would have guessed that the sniper who had just been in a firefight had run out of the building instead of staying inside to shoot.
There was a monster outside that you couldn’t judge by common sense.
You idiots are so busy worrying about me that you’re showing your backs to a predator!
Thinking of the players clinging to the outer wall and looking for a way in, Choi Pinam couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for them.
* * *