The Five Matches That Decide Human Rights (3)
Even as the chat room seethed, Yeongho kept doing what needed to be done.
“The people we just fought already looted this building, so there’s nothing worth taking here. And the corpse loot isn’t much either... Ah! I’ll grab a first-aid kit for Choi Pinam.”
“As for how... what I explained earlier is really all there is to it. I just shot as if I were placing an obstacle in the path the bullet was about to take, right? Think of it as precisely guarding the impact point with a tiny shield.”
There was nothing else he could really explain, so he left the bewildered viewers to stew in their confusion.
Yeongho walked over to the body of the sniper he’d dropped last.
“This is supposed to be the strongest gun in the game, isn’t it?”
He lifted the anti-materiel sniper rifle, which gave off a presence entirely unlike the other guns, and let out an impressed whistle.
“Wow... It’s incredibly heavy. I think it easily weighs over ten kilograms.”
After picking it up and moving it around, he decided it was far too heavy to handle comfortably.
Since he already had the ability to guarantee hits on vital points, Yeongho preferred a combat style that prioritized mobility over raw force.
The anti-materiel rifle wasn’t a weapon made for sprinting around with, so it didn’t suit his tastes very well.
As he was examining it,
“Oh! Everyone, it’s a Winchester.”
Yeongho spotted a gun dumped in a corner of the room, tossed the rifle to the floor with a thud, and rushed over.
It looked like an item that had spawned in the room from the start.
And naturally, the player who’d had the rifle had apparently left it behind without bothering to loot it.
“I’ve got a sniper rifle. I’ve used pistols plenty already, so for the rest of the fight I’m going to make use of this.”
Smiling brightly at the discovery of the Winchester, Yeongho looked downright delighted.
While the viewers reeled at a choice that defied common sense, Yeongho swapped out one of his pistols for the Winchester and strolled out of the building with light, easy steps.
The chat kept spiraling into chaos, but Yeongho wasn’t reading it, his attention fixed elsewhere.
It seemed the remaining survivors had started fighting each other, because gunfire was ringing out from a nearby direction.
And then—
<Agh! Hyung-nim, I’m gonna die! Damn it! I already used all my healing items!>
Choi Pinam’s voice chat screamed in his ear.
Apparently, he’d gotten greedy and tried to make a play of his own, only to end up caught between the two teams and surrounded.
“How bad is it?”
<Oh, just leave me behind! At best, I think I can hold them for about thirty seconds! Sorry!>
“I’m on my way, but try to hold out as long as you can.”
At Choi Pinam’s words, Yeongho sprinted forward and sharpened his senses.
He detected nine people gathered roughly three hundred meters away.
The person standing alone must be Choi Pinam, while the two groups of four would be the two teams.
I can’t save him in time.
Just as he thought there was no way he could make it there within thirty seconds by running...
a motorcycle parked by the roadside suddenly caught his eye.
He didn’t have time to hesitate, so he climbed on and started the engine at once.
Vroooom—!
The moment he twisted the throttle all the way, the motorcycle shot forward with a shriek that made his ears hurt.
It was a little dangerous, but if he went like this, he might be able to save Choi Pinam before it was too late.
He was confident he could win even if he ended up alone, but they had a bond, didn’t they? He ought to at least try to save him.
The viewers’ worried reactions piled up as he rode the motorcycle into the firefight.
He had shown a similar scene when he first did a joint broadcast with Choi Pinam, but back then it had only been an unimportant casual game. Right now, though, he was standing on the brink of a winning streak in the placement matches.
Considering the money tied to all these missions, there was no reason to shoulder this kind of risk.
And yet Yeongho still set out to save Choi Pinam.
He was still a pure beginner, not only as a streamer but as a gamer too, so he wasn’t at the stage where he’d stop to calculate every little reason something couldn’t be done.
A teammate was in danger. So of course he should go help.
It was still a time when acting on that simple logic without overthinking it didn’t seem strange at all.
And that sort of recklessness was sometimes exactly what moved people.
Rationally, it looked like foolish behavior, but emotionally, it was easy to accept: that’s a real man right there!
Of course, if the outcome turned bad, there would be people ready to flip their opinion on a dime and mock him instead.
But that was a matter for later.
For now, watching Yeongho barrel into the middle of the fight at great personal risk, the chat exploded with fervent cheers.
“Hey, hey, look over there.”
“Huh? What kind of lunatic is that?”
The two squad teams, who had been trading fire desperately while thinking they were just one last step away from victory, spotted Yeongho storming in on a motorcycle and shouted in disbelief.
They had been planning to close the distance and deal with the other side once they’d flushed out the hidden rat lurking in the middle of the battlefield.
Now, on top of that hidden rat, a flying pest had been added to the mix.
“Take him out first!”
“He’s lost his damn mind!”
They were already reading the battlefield and realizing there must be some sneaky bastard waiting to ambush from behind once the survivor count dropped.
So when someone came barreling in as if begging to be shot, there was no way they could ignore him and keep quiet.
Rat-a-tat-tat!
Bang! Bang!
Because he was on a motorcycle speeding at full tilt, not many bullets hit him cleanly.
Even so, his health bar dropped by nearly thirty percent in an instant.
As long as I avoid a headshot, I can make this work.
Throwing himself into a situation where death was only a few shots away, Yeongho calmly sharpened his senses and took one hand off the handlebars.
Then the Winchester in his empty hand roared to life.
Thoom!
Whirrrr, click-clack!
A bullet slipped neatly into the mouth of the player who’d been shouting something.
He spun the bolt to chamber the next round and instantly aimed at another target.
The viewers had said his style was nothing but showy flashiness, but when he had to reload with one hand, it became incredibly useful.
Good thing I learned it. Yeah, this is great, Winchester.
As he pulled the trigger of the Winchester in his right hand, his left hand also released the handlebar, drew a pistol, and aimed at the empty space to one side.
Whoosh—! Bang!
Clink! Click!
Another player with a bullet lodged in his head collapsed.
At the same time, the sniper round that had been headed for Yeongho’s ribs collided in midair with a pistol bullet and ricocheted away.
The sniper stared at him in shock, then frantically worked the rifle to load the next round.
In front of Yeongho’s maximized Battle Sense, a single slow sniper shot like that could be stopped with one click of a pistol.
So instead of dealing with the sniper first, which common sense would have demanded, he moved to eliminate the other prey in front of him.
Bang! Bang! Tooooom! Bang!
Whirrrr, click!
The pistol in one hand and the Winchester in the other spat bullets without pause.
Even though he was firing one-handed, not a single shot missed its mark.
The enemies returned fire with all they had, but the difference in accuracy was beyond comparison.
Remaining health: 52 percent.
Enemies down: 4.
Bang! Toooom—! Bang! Bang!
After roughly two seconds of gunfire, his remaining health had fallen to 33 percent.
Only two standing enemies were left now: the sniper and the submachine gunner.
“Hup!”
The motorcycle, now moving only in a straight line because he wasn’t holding the handlebars, was about to smash into the wall of a building.
Yeongho kicked off the footrest and hurled himself sideways. He rolled on the ground with the force of his own momentum, then pushed himself upright.
The impact of falling from a moving motorcycle took his remaining health down to 12 percent.
Now even one or two stray hits would be enough to kill him.
The moment he stood, he raised his pistol and pulled the trigger.
Bang! Kaaang!
The sound of colliding bullets rang out, and sparks flew less than a meter in front of his face.
If he’d reacted even a little later, that sniper shot would have blown his head off.
“You fucking bastard! Are you hacking or what!”
The sniper, his face flushed red, screamed in fury.
Yeongho was moving almost in a trance and had no time to answer, so he shifted the pistol he’d held out and aimed at the enemy again.
Bang! Click. Click.
...
He’d been fighting so frantically that he’d forgotten the magazine might run dry.
Without even the luxury of swapping magazines, he kicked off the ground and threw himself sideways, and the submachine gun’s rounds burst into the spot he’d just vacated.
His remaining health was too low to afford taking a few hits in exchange for return fire.
This could actually kill me.
Thinking that, he let go of the empty pistol and rolled with both hands clamped around the Winchester—
“You little shiiit!”
Since his own health had hit rock bottom first, Choi Pinam had been crouched and hiding behind a low stone wall.
Feeling the pressure that had been focused on him disappear, he sprang up toward the enemies and unleashed a hail of gunfire.
Rat-a-tat-tat! Tatatatat—!
He’d gotten a little ugly at the end by being too greedy, but Choi Pinam still had real skill, and his precise shooting sent every round straight into the enemies’ torsos.
And so, at last—
The two men, both pushed to the brink of death, brought down every remaining enemy and became the final victors.
While the chat room was plastered with congratulations, Choi Pinam trotted over to Yeongho.
“Ah, Hyung-nim! You should’ve just left me behind. Charging in like that was way too dangerous... I almost threw away our perfect streak because of me.”
He was clearly choosing his words carefully, glancing at Yeongho as if he felt grateful but also guilty and worried that he’d been too reckless.
Yeongho smiled and held up his palm.
“We said we’d go all the way together, didn’t we? If we die, we die together. If we live, we live together.”
“...Hyung-nim! Dammit! I knew I could trust youuuu—!”
Choi Pinam slapped his hand against Yeongho’s so hard it cracked, then clutched their joined palms tightly and shouted with a deeply moved expression.
The screen turned into a mess of mission completion notices, countless donations, and all kinds of chat messages.
When the chaos gradually settled after some time, the viewers, having watched the two men emerge from the placement matches, returned to the subject they were most curious about.
At the viewers’ urging, Yeongho brought up the profile information and checked the rank record window.
“Huh?”
Then, tilting his head like someone who’d just seen something strange, he let out a puzzled sound.