Long-Range Sniping
Thwoooom—!
A bullet that had flown some four hundred meters punched through a player’s neck.
The other teammates nearby panicked, sprinting for cover and throwing themselves into evasive maneuvers, but the ghostlike bullets kept boring in, never missing their marks and drilling straight through every vital point.
“Whoa, there are just free kills all over the place here, huh?”
“Good. I’m starting from ten o’clock.”
“Yessir—!”
Even if one of the shots went a little wide and hit the body instead, it didn’t really matter.
They’d all already been worn down, their health shaved away bit by bit, so a body shot was enough to leave them on the brink of death.
And once the enemies had become what people called one-hit-away, Choi Pinam simply mopped them up with controlled bursts.
There were games like this sometimes.
Several squads dropped into a huge loot zone and ended up in a chaotic brawl that looked more like a street fight than a battle, yet for some reason kills were slow to come and everyone was just burning resources.
The bullets and healing items they’d picked up after landing were already gone, and although nobody had died in large numbers, everyone was stuck in a standoff, their health bars chipped down.
If they could just move to another spot and loot a room that still had supplies left, they might be able to keep fighting.
But with no ammo and no health to spare, nobody could move easily, and they could only keep reading each other’s intentions, maintaining that awkward in-between state where they were neither truly fighting nor truly not fighting.
And when a new team entered the fray, all the blood would be spilled by the wrong people, while some completely unrelated bastard reaped the rewards.
That was exactly the situation Choi Pinam and Yeongho had walked into.
Rat-a-tat! Ratatat—!
Thwoong!
If you just shot at anything you saw, the kills practically picked themselves up and handed themselves over.
The counter showing the number of survivors in the corner of their vision dropped rapidly.
- This is disgusting, lmao
- What the hell, there are almost thirty people crowded into this one spot?
- They’re all one-hit-away, aren’t they? lol One or two shots and they just fold
- This map always has the shopping center as the hottest loot spot, so everyone piles in there.
- How did kills stay that low until now? This timing is legendary, seriously;
It was the kind of situation that might happen once in a hundred games, if at all.
The table was laid out so deliciously that all you had to do was pick up your chopsticks and start shoving food into your mouth.
“Man! This is insanely good!! How many kills do you have, Hyeong-nim?”
“Nine just from here.”
“I’ve got sixteen! I’ve never scavenged this many free kills while still having a stomachache, seriously? This is insane, absolutely insane~”
Before they came here, while fighting Squad Two, Yeongho had racked up seven kills and Choi Pinam one.
But after cleaning up the players clustered here, Yeongho’s total jumped to sixteen and Choi Pinam’s to seventeen.
While Yeongho had been picking off enemies one shot at a time with a sniper rifle, Choi Pinam’s assault rifle had just been sprinting around spraying rounds everywhere and scooping up kills.
Somehow, the kill points had already flipped.
“You all saw that, right? I told you I’m not just some guy who rides the bus!”
- LOLLLLLL wow, that’s infuriating lmao
- If I were there, I’d have easily gone over ten kills too.
- This was the kind of situation where you could just close your eyes, spin around, and pull the trigger and still eat.
- Seriously, how does a match like this even happen? ChoiPissHead’s acting all high and mighty now, ridiculous lol
The chat was boiling over, but Choi Pinam ignored it and turned his head as though he hadn’t seen a thing, looting the corpses while speaking to Yeongho.
“Hyeong-nim! Let’s grab anything useful, check the radiation’s path, and decide our next route!”
“Yes. Let’s do that.”
Because it was such a huge loot zone, there was plenty to pick up.
They equipped high-level body armor and helmets, and they’d nearly finished fully modding their gun attachments too.
It seemed like the people here had fought so hard among themselves that even when they looted the dead, there was barely any healing items or ammunition left.
Still, there were a few untouched loot spots left in the shopping complex, so they were able to fill their carry weight right up to the limit, practically hauling a full loadout.
And just like that, after stripping the entire shopping center from the first floor all the way to the roof, the two of them checked the map to decide where to go next.
“Huh? The radiation’s spreading ridiculously fast.”
It was partly because they’d just cleared the biggest loot spot where everyone had crowded together.
But it also seemed there had been fierce fighting elsewhere, because the number of survivors was already down to fewer than thirty.
That meant the radiation leak system had kicked in unusually early.
- Usually by this point, maybe half the lobby is dead at worst.
- Looks like there was a lot of overlap in other areas too? Somehow more than seventy percent is already gone.
- Wow, if it’s like this then the radiation’s gonna wreck people. Those slowpokes circling the outside are sweating bullets right now lol
He’d had a similar experience before, but this time the radiation spread was even faster than then.
At this rate, it was nearly twice as fast as in a normal game.
Unless the hundred players had sat down ahead of time and planned the match together, this was the sort of situation you’d hardly ever see.
Just as Yeongho was thinking it was, in all kinds of ways, a rare sight indeed, Choi Pinam studied the map carefully and spoke in an upbeat tone.
“But this spot’s fine for now, isn’t it? If we move just a little toward eight o’clock, it looks like the safe zone will keep staying nearby...”
“Ah, is that so?”
“Radiation is random by nature, so I can’t be one hundred percent sure, but since it’s spreading on such a huge scale, you can actually see the shape of it.”
“Hmm. If that’s what you say, then it must be right, Choi Pinam.”
Still a newbie who barely knew how to read the map, Yeongho simply nodded along.
- Our Godfather is a baby, okay~ He doesn’t know difficult words~
- This match is basically being spoon-fed so he can take first place.
- He’s a master at killing people, but everything else is just rookie-level lol
- The newbie is so cute~
- If they just stay here, won’t almost every survivor die from radiation poisoning?
- lol the balance in this game is ridiculously broken
Seeing the teasing in chat, Yeongho scratched his cheek with an embarrassed smile, then suddenly had a thought.
He turned to Choi Pinam and spoke.
“Wait a second. That means we don’t need to move in a hurry, right?”
“For now, yes. It’s not like the radiation is about to reach us immediately, and if we shift a bit southwest, it looks like we could hold out almost to the very end.”
“Then doesn’t that mean everyone else has to come toward us quickly?”
“Well, obviously— Huh? Wait, are you thinking...”
Choi Pinam’s eyes curved as he caught on to the intent behind the question he’d been hearing over and over.
“You want to do some long-range sniping?”
“Yes. This seems like a good position for it.”
The roof of the large shopping center.
It was the highest point around, perfect for sniping enemies coming from far away.
What’s more, the severe restriction imposed by the radiation meant the remaining players were being forced to head in this direction.
“Nice! Time’s on our side, so let’s wait a little before moving. I saw a Kar98K on the third floor earlier, so I should go grab that for you.”
Choi Pinam glanced at Yeongho’s Winchester and then, following his memory, turned to head back.
He’d seen an even better sniper rifle while looting downstairs, but since Yeongho seemed to like the Winchester, he hadn’t bothered to pick it up.
Still, if they were going to do proper long-range sniping, switching weapons would be the smarter choice, so he figured he might as well go fetch it now.
The German Mauser Karabiner 98 Kurz.
Abbreviated as Kar98K, it was commonly known as the Kar98K.
Most of the players who would appear from this point on were skilled enough to have won their fights elsewhere and finished looting.
That meant they’d naturally be wearing level-two helmets or better.
Rather than the Winchester, which couldn’t one-shot through a headshot against that sort of gear, switching to the Kar98K was obviously the more rational choice.
“Huh? Um... do we really need to switch?”
“No! Once you try it, you’ll think differently! Just wait a bit!”
Before Yeongho could even stop him, Choi Pinam dashed off at full speed.
Watching his retreating back, Yeongho shrugged and moved toward the rooftop railing.
“If one shot doesn’t kill them, can’t you just hit them with two? Right?”
- LOLLLLL that’s technically true though lmao
- The difference of one shot is enormous, sir.
- Snipers are supposed to end it in one hit, no matter what.
- If anyone else had said that, I’d have cursed them out, but lol I can’t do that to Godfather....
- Info: this person has barely played ten matches of Battle Island yet, a genuine newbie.
He smiled sheepishly at the lively chat room.
Given how much people were saying, it was clear that some other sniper rifle really was better than the one he was using now.
Just thinking about it made him understand the obvious point that a rifle unable to penetrate level-two helmets or better had a very real weakness.
For a single-shot weapon with a slow reload, that was a massive drawback.
It was only because the Winchester had been the first sniper rifle he’d ever handled that he’d grown a little attached to it and resisted people calling it trash.
And so, standing at the railing, keeping watch over his surroundings while also peeking at the chat now and then, he soon spotted something.
“Hmm? I can see something over there.”
Far away, a faint silhouette was wriggling around, so he pointed the barrel toward it and brought his eye to the scope.
It was awkward, since until now he’d only ever sniped with the naked eye, but he quickly adjusted to the distance and confirmed where the movement had been.
“Yep, that’s people. Only two of them, and it looks like the others got taken out somewhere else.”
- You know what’s crazy? He’s already gotten sixteen kills with a sniper rifle in this match, but this is the first time he’s tried sneak-sniping someone outside everyone else’s range lol
- That’s pretty far, isn’t it? Wonder if he can hit them.
- Now that I think about it, yeah lol Most of the people he’s killed were shot from only one or two hundred meters away.
- At that range it’s basically nearly a kilometer, right?
- The farthest kill today was around four hundred meters, I think.
This was his first long-range snipe.
Leaving behind the chat that buzzed with anticipation, Yeongho slowly steadied his breathing.
I wonder if this’ll work.
Most ordinary people who’ve handled guns a little can hit targets at four or five hundred meters, but kilometer-range shooting is on an entirely different level.
Only in pro leagues do players who are truly good with sniper rifles occasionally pull off shots at around a kilometer.
Yeongho had already shown supernatural feats several times thanks to his Battle Sense, but long-range sniping was a different beast altogether.
For one thing, the distance to the target was so vast that it didn’t reach the sensory net he could normally spread out and perceive without looking, the special awareness he relied on when focusing.
He could see them with his eyes, sure, but there was no guarantee he’d be able to make the same sort of precise shot as always.
What if I change the image?
He imagined thrusting his awareness like a sharp point straight toward the target.
He forcibly narrowed the sensory field that had previously spread out around him in a broad hemispherical shape centered on his own body.
The area behind him shrank, and he felt the emptiness of it, but he ignored it and kept pouring all his attention forward.
Gradually, even the senses on his sides dulled and peeled away, until the shape of the detection net became a cone pointing straight ahead.
...So it really can be done.
Battle Sense’s detection range, once deliberately compressed by pouring all his attention into one direction instead of many.
When the two players he was watching through the scope entered the long, narrow net stretched out in front of him, he found himself certain that, just like before, he could hit whatever place he wanted.
Thwoong—!
Click, clack!
He pulled the trigger, the bullet flew, and through the lens he saw the enemy pitch over as blood sprayed out.
At nearly a full kilometer, the gunshot itself only reached him after the body had already fallen.
The remaining player, realizing too late that their partner was dead, immediately recognized the sniper fire and rushed to hide.
But Yeongho had already chambered the next round and finished aiming, and his trigger finger was just a little faster.
Thwaaaang—!
In a matter of seconds, two corpses had been produced.
It looked like the team had been barely scraping by, hiding and surviving without ever managing to loot properly.
Neither of them had helmets, so only two bullets were needed to deal with them.
Yeongho took his eye off the scope and, sensing a perfect opening, teased them with a grin.
“Hmm. Yep, the Winchester really is nice. Since it comes with a scope by default, long-range sniping isn’t a problem at all. Why don’t the rest of you throw away your preconceptions and try using it as your main weapon?”
Unlike other guns, the Winchester model can’t have its parts swapped, but it does come with a fixed 2.7x scope attached.
Of course, most players prefer 6x or 8x scopes, and even when they can’t find those, they usually use the commonly dropped 3x or 4x scopes instead.
So the Winchester’s 2.7x scope is really only an advantage in the absolute early game.
Still, an advantage was an advantage, however small.
- LOL no, it’s not good at all!!!
- He keeps saying it’s good, and I feel like I’m being brainwashed lmao
- High ammo capacity, fast reload speed, and a free scope! Maybe it really is good?
- I’m losing my mind, seriously lol
- I’m actually starting to get dizzy...
At the newbie’s little “Hey, maybe give it a try?” endorsement, the viewers who’d been marveling at the long-range snipe burst out laughing.