Five Rounds That Decide Human Rights (2)
“We’ll keep going after I eat something first.”
There were some viewers who just figured they’d let it slide, and others who were already badgering him to get back to the game.
Since he’d been rolling along so smoothly only to stop in the middle, the reaction wasn’t exactly warm.
“Hey, you jerks! My brother-in-law needs to eat, all right? Huh!?”
Seeing the mood sag in an instant, Choi Pinam jumped in to save it.
He hadn’t said anything explicit about Yeongho’s special ability, but as his business partner, he knew where the problem lay.
He’d explained it as Yeongho’s concentration dropping hard and his condition going to hell if he stayed in VR too long.
People thought it was unusual, but not so strange that they questioned it too much.
Given the utterly insane things he did in-game, it made sense that he’d burn through far more mental stamina than ordinary players.
The analogy was convincing enough for Yeongho, who had brought up the issue first.
In the end, after discussing the problem, they found a solution.
If fatigue kept him from playing for too long, then they’d just build in a break.
That was why he’d deliberately scheduled the stream to run into the evening.
By the time he got tired of playing and looked for an excuse to stop, it was a little past five.
Early enough that “I’m having dinner” still passed muster.
Of course, that alone wasn’t really a good solution.
“All right, all right! Let’s watch some of the highlight reels for now.”
That was one of the reasons VR streamers needed capsule units in the first place.
The high-end recording function that let him freely switch perspectives was where it really shined.
During live gameplay, perspective switching was disabled to preserve fairness.
But once a match was over, the replay could be adjusted however they liked.
The broadcast view followed the player’s perspective, which meant people inevitably missed things.
Watching the recorded free-camera replay from different angles made the whole thing feel fresh again.
Even viewers who had complained quickly quieted down when they got to see brilliant plays they’d already watched, only now from a new perspective.
“Oh. Seeing myself from a third-person angle is kind of weird.”
“You all remember, right? Right here, I drew their attention so Hyung-nim could take position completely free.”
Still, they couldn’t complain entirely without reason.
“Hey! Making me starve and all that? That’s elder abuse! How old do you think our brother-in-law is!?”
“No, no, calling me an old man is a bit much. I’m still in my thirties. I’m not that far removed from the viewers.”
Once Choi Pinam did a decent job of smoothing things over, the chat’s blatant whining died down.
The viewers chuckled and kept typing when Yeongho made a clearly wounded face at being called old, and the mood settled into an easy rhythm.
Sure, a lot of them had come to see top-tier gameplay, but there were plenty who also just liked chatting with the streamer.
During the game, he couldn’t keep an eye on chat very often, so taking a brief break to refresh things a little wasn’t a bad change of pace.
After all, a stream only had to avoid boring the audience.
“Oh, looks like the delivery’s already here. Our manager was thoughtful enough to order ahead?”
“There are a lot of people waiting, so we should eat quickly.”
While he showed the replay through the PC linked to the capsule, they moved the table over and set the food down on it.
“What’s wrong with gukbap? Age aside, I’ve never met anyone who hated gukbap!”
“Whatever the case, once a steaming broth goes down your throat, your body ends up telling the truth.”
“As expected, Hyung-nim knows what he’s talking about!”
“Hey, didn’t I tell you not to talk about appearances? You wanna fight!?”
“I’ll ban anyone who keeps saying stuff that’s too, no, too mean.”
“...Hyung-nim?”
As they ate and casually added commentary on the highlight clips while moving the mouse now and then, more than thirty minutes of break time slipped by before anyone noticed.
Rested to that extent, he still wouldn’t be fully refreshed, but it was enough to keep going for another two or three matches.
“Now that we’re done eating, shall we get back to it?”
Since they’d only paused for a little under an hour, viewer drop-off hadn’t been that severe.
More precisely, the number that had been wavering around 3,000 had actually climbed slightly to 3,300.
Word of mouth from viewers, along with community promotion, had brought in more people than the ones who left.
With donations and missions piling back onto the resumed game, the loosened atmosphere began to blaze again.
* * *
Time passed, and it was the final match of the placement tests.
The two players who had dominated the first four matches were now on the brink of their last victory.
Only thirteen survivors remained.
With fifteen kills already to his name using his now-regular dual pistols, Yeongho was advancing through the city where the final firefight would break out, staying alert to everything around him.
“It’s quiet.”
There should definitely still be a team hiding somewhere. Let’s take it slow and look around— Ack!
Along with a huge, ear-splitting roar, Choi Pinam, who had been communicating over voice chat from a slightly separated scouting position, screamed and cut off mid-sentence.
“Looks like he’s dead.”
I’m not dead yet! Damn it, my level-two armor got smashed in one shot.
As the viewers laughed and joked, Choi Pinam’s voice came through again.
Whew! I barely survived because I kept moving a little whenever I passed a sniper point, just in case. That was almost a straight trip to hell.
“I’m glad you’re not dead.”
I think that was a Lynx. Where’d they even get it from? Lucky bastard.
“A Lynx? What’s that?”
The Gephart M6 Lynx.
Usually shortened to just Lynx, it was the only anti-materiel sniper rifle in Battle Island.
It couldn’t be found in the field at all; it was a weapon that only appeared, very rarely, in a supply crate that dropped now and then.
The damage caused by the Lynx’s .50-caliber round was more than a fragile human body could ever hope to withstand.
Since it was a game, a glancing shot didn’t instantly kill you if you managed to survive it, but the weapon’s performance was enough to punch through some armored vehicles, so there was no way a person could actually endure it.
That was why the game’s damage values for it were so absurd. Even a level-three helmet would be one-shot by a headshot.
And even when it hit the torso, it could still, under certain conditions, instantly kill through level-two body armor with its insane damage.
That was only natural, considering it was designed not for people but for vehicles.
“So it’s the strongest of all sniper rifles?”
More specifically, it’s the weapon with the highest single-shot damage in Battle Island. What do you want to do? If you get hit wrong, you die instantly, so it might be better to go around and avoid it.
Yeongho wasn’t the only survivor left, and there was no need to force his way forward against the worst sniper possible.
At Choi Pinam’s suggestion, Yeongho nodded and spoke.
“If it’s that dangerous, then we should take care of it quickly.”
...Huh? This is your chance to go undefeated in placements, and you want to take the risk at the very end? Ah, fine! Just do whatever you want, Hyung-nim!
The viewers kept mentioning how dangerous it was, yet secretly hoped he’d pull off another cool play.
Yeongho glanced at the chat, then immediately sharpened his senses and moved toward the roadside where the field of vision opened up.
It’s at five o’clock from your position, Hyung-nim! I can’t tell if it’s the second floor or the roof, but anyway, the shot came from up on a building!
Choi Pinam relayed information about the attacker by retracing the direction of the shot.
Of course, for Yeongho, who had already activated Battle Sense and was consciously scanning his surroundings, it wasn’t all that useful.
About 400 meters? There’s one on the second floor over by the stilt building.
A player with an assault rifle was keeping watch in this direction.
At a slightly farther spot, the sniper who had attacked Choi Pinam was swinging his muzzle around, searching for the prey he’d missed.
Once Yeongho identified the enemy, he picked up speed and moved forward.
The assault-rifle user spotted him first and opened fire.
Rat-a-tat! Tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!
Yeongho ran straight through the hail of bullets, dodging them with ease, and the startled rifleman switched from short bursts to full-auto.
At the same time, a beat later, the sniper finally noticed the new arrival and trained his rifle on Yeongho.
Absolute focus.
Time slowed, and the hands thrust forward crossed in an X.
Crack!
Baaang—!
At almost the same instant, the sniper’s Lynx and Yeongho’s dual pistols roared to life.
The report was so powerful it was like a grenade going off, swallowing the pistol shots so completely they might as well not have existed.
But bullets don’t vanish just because the sound gets buried.
In one patch of empty air, sparks flashed for an instant; in the other, the assault-rifle player staggered and shook his head.
The result was exactly what Yeongho had intended, but none of the viewers could tell what had actually happened.
Whether the viewers understood it or not, Yeongho’s movement never hesitated.
Crack! Crack!
The two pistols spat bullets one after the other.
The rounds that burst from the barrels didn’t stray from their targets; they drove in with perfect accuracy.
“What the hell!?”
“Gah! Why won’t this bastard—”
With curses full of outrage, the assault-rifle player collapsed.
Three consecutive headshots had landed, so there was no way he could survive even with a helmet on.
[SJ DAD -> LooksLikeI'MScrewed (dead)]
Yeongho shifted his gaze to the lone sniper, and as the opponent finished reloading, he fired again.
Bwaaang!
Bang!
Once more, sparks flared in midair and vanished.
Only after the same scene repeated a second time did the spectators begin to understand what they were seeing.
It wasn’t as though this was the first unbelievable thing he’d ever shown, but this time, even while looking right at it, they couldn’t believe it.
He counter-fired with his pistols and blocked the sniper’s bullet?
Maybe once could be written off as miraculous coincidence, but twice in a row?
“You damn—! Don’t cheat—”
The sniper, with a bullet lodged in his head, was in the middle of cursing when he toppled backward.
Even the people watching couldn’t believe what they’d seen, so how much worse must it have been for the one actually facing him?
You could understand why the guy would swear.
[SJ DAD -> SG25 (dead)]
As he watched the kill log pop up, Choi Pinam came at him over voice chat in a strangled voice.
Uh, Hyung-nim? I was healing and just came out, so I missed it, but the viewers are saying you shot the bullet down on purpose. Is that true?
“What? What are you talking about? How could a person possibly aim at a bullet and shoot it?”
Yeongho answered, widening his eyes as if he’d just heard something absurd.
R-right? It was just a coincidence? People said sparks were flying in midair—
“I didn’t aim at it. I just figured it would come this way, so I fired based on a rough prediction.”
—At the bullets...? Huh?
“Once the enemy shows himself, you can read where he’s aiming by looking at the muzzle, right? So I just predicted the path the bullet would take and shot there first.”
......
Wasn’t that just another way of saying he aimed at it?
Choi Pinam’s mind went blank, and he could only fall silent.
As if the internet itself had been unplugged, the chat also froze for a moment.
Then, all at once, fresh messages erupted across the screen.