The Wedge That Sticks Out Gets Hammered Down
It was common knowledge that a sniper did best when he kept his position hidden for as long as possible.
So although someone had voiced the question, the result on display soon proved it was a pointless worry.
Thoom!
Whoosh—click!
Thwoong—!
Whoosh! Click!
At almost a full-auto pace.
Since he was firing again the moment the reload finished, with almost no real aiming in between, the players who had been hesitating were dropping one by one, their bodies skidding across the floor.
The Winchester was regarded as the weakest and worst of all sniper rifles.
Which meant that in places like this, smaller looting zones outside the city, where the odds of a good weapon spawning were low, it also happened to be the sniper category’s most likely candidate.
And as he had proven again and again on his own stream, Yeongho with a Winchester in the early game was nothing short of the Reaper of the battlefield.
Thwoong!
Whoosh, click!
He twisted his body, swung his arm toward the next target, and fired the instant the reload completed.
Since the Winchester already had the one advantage among sniper rifles—its reload speed was the fastest of the lot—once Yeongho discarded the whole aiming process, he became a horrifying blur that no one would have mistaken for a sniper rifle in the first place.
At this rate, his accuracy ought to have collapsed.
Instead, every shot was a headshot by default, and from the perspective of the players in front of him, it was enough to drive them mad.
“Argh!”
“R-run!”
“It’s just one guy! Rush him!”
“Hide behind the wall!”
They had teamed up, but they hadn’t actually been one squad from the beginning, so their orders fell apart and they could only scramble in confusion.
The players who charged in first dropped with holes punched through their throats and foreheads, while those who fled found bullets neatly buried in the backs of their heads.
If he had treated the sniper rifle like an ordinary person and hidden indoors while firing, then he might not have had a clean angle on every fleeing enemy.
From the start, the most effective method had been to take the rush-sniper style and go in with the intention of eating them alive.
Besides, the enemies hadn’t even finished looting, so they had no weapons worth using to fight back. There was no reason to cower and trade shots with them.
Of course, even if they had weapons, Yeongho would have still gone in with the mindset that if he got hit, he could just dodge it.
“Idiots! He’s out of ammo!”
“Rush him while he’s reloading!”
After Yeongho burned through all eight loaded rounds and began pulling fresh bullets from his pouch one by one, the handful of survivors seemed to think this was their only chance and charged at him with everything they had.
Yeongho watched them approach with a calm face and slowly backed away.
As he retreated at an unhurried pace while loading the rounds, his back soon touched the outer wall beneath a window.
“Take his gun!”
“Yaaah!”
“How does it feel to farm newbies?”
The three of them charged in, yelling themselves hoarse.
Yeongho looked at them, shrugged, and spoke.
“‘Farming newbies’ is a bad thing to say, right? Hmm... still, yeah, I guess it does feel good.”
Without retreating any farther, Yeongho simply stood there, steadily loading the eighth round.
He could probably have resumed firing without bothering to fill the cylinder all the way, yet the viewers grew anxious, wondering what he was thinking.
Crash!
“Who do you think you’re talking big at, punk!?”
Choi Pinam burst out through the second-floor window, smashing his way through the glass with his body, then dropped to the ground with the axe he held raised high.
The next instant, a lightning-fast blow came crashing down on the head of the player charging at Yeongho.
Thud!
“Damn it! What now!?”
“What else? Early retirement!”
After sending one man off with a headshot, Choi Pinam rolled across the floor, sprang up, and drove the axe full-force into the chest of the player who was screaming in shock.
In close combat, a barehanded fight against blades was nearly impossible to make work unless the difference in physical size was absurd.
And Choi Pinam was one of the strongest players in this streamer tournament.
After bringing down all the standing enemies with a few swings of the axe, Choi Pinam turned back toward Yeongho and shot him a thumbs-up.
Yeongho nodded and grinned back.
“Whoa—insane! Absolutely insane!”
Dokgo Jun, who had somehow survived, clapped wildly as he jogged over to the two of them.
“Here, Jooni-hyung. Take this.”
Seeing that Dokgo Jun’s health had fallen low, Choi Pinam tossed him two bandages he’d picked up, along with his axe.
“Huh? What about you?”
When Dokgo Jun asked that, already picking up the axe and wrapping himself in bandages, Choi Pinam answered by pulling a revolver from his backpack.
So he had more guns after all.
Then why not give me that instead of the axe?
Dokgo Jun couldn’t quite say that out loud, so he just wrapped the bandages around himself with great concentration.
There wasn’t much worth picking up in this lousy outer-zone loot spot anyway, so it made sense for the two experts to grab the useful gear.
But Dokgo Jun’s thoughts didn’t last very long.
“...? What?”
After Choi Pinam checked the revolver’s cylinder and confirmed the loaded rounds, he promptly handed both the gun and the ammunition over to Yeongho.
Why give a pistol to the guy who was already holding a sniper rifle?
Sure, it was always nice to have a sidearm, but with no other weapon available, shouldn’t they have split it between the two of them?
Tat-tat-tat! Bang-bang!
As that thought crossed his mind, he heard gunfire from far away, followed by Kumonyong’s voice chat.
“Aah! It hurrrts nyong! Don’t! Please, let me live nyoong—!”
Then the kill log flashed up.
[PpajijikDokkaengi] -> Kumonyong (DEAD)
“Still, Kumonyong did her part, so she bought us time.”
“Say stuff like that and her fans are gonna mob you.”
Dokgo Jun scolded him, looking exasperated.
And sure enough, there were more than a few viewers in the chat railing at Choi Pinam.
Kumonyong was terrible at games, but she was still a popular streamer who consistently pulled close to 5,000 viewers on average.
In terms of broadcast clout, she was second only to Dokgo Jun here, so he really couldn’t win against the firepower of her fanbase in chat.
Of course, Choi Pinam didn’t care in the slightest.
The only plan in his head was to make Yeongho shine and drag home the win.
And, if possible, to do a little something of his own on the side so he could bask in the glory too.
Bang! Tatatang! Thududududuk!
“Eek!”
When bullets came flying toward him, Dokgo Jun ducked so hard he nearly hit the ground, his body folding into something close to a crawl.
“Jooni-hyung! Follow me!”
Choi Pinam, also keeping low, waved him over.
Dokgo Jun reflexively followed behind him, but once he got his head together, the direction they were moving in seemed wrong somehow.
“Hey, this is taking us closer to the enemies!”
“You have to get close if you want to fight, right?”
“No, how am I supposed to fight without a gun!? You gave me nothing but an axe!”
“I’m the one who doesn’t have any weapons at all.”
Come to think of it, that was true.
Then why had he handed the pistol to Godfather?
He was debating whether he should even ask that when—
Bang! Thwoong—! Bang! Thwoong!
Whoosh—click.
With a Winchester in one hand and a revolver in the other, Yeongho strode forward with the lazy ease of a man out for a walk, the two guns in his hands taking turns spitting fire.
“Kyaaa!”
“What the hell!? What is that thing!”
“Argh! H-help me—”
“Why aren’t these shots hitting!?”
The gathered players fired back with everything they had, but for reasons no one could understand, none of their bullets were finding their marks.
All Yeongho did was walk forward lazily, occasionally tilting his head to the side or making tiny little hops like he was stepping across stones in a stream.
Not a single shot even grazed him, let alone landed a meaningful hit, while every round he returned seemed to drive straight into a vital spot.
The opposing teams were simply losing their minds.
“Wow... so that’s what an Ace is like...?”
Worried that this might actually be dangerous, Dokgo Jun glanced back over his shoulder and then promptly got distracted watching Yeongho’s performance with his mouth hanging open.
He looked less like a human being and more like some war machine sent from the future.
So that was why Choi Pinam had even given up the revolver.
“Jooni-hyung! Focus!”
He jerked at Choi Pinam’s shout and turned his head again.
“See? This is why I said we didn’t need orders. If we just leave that hyung alone, he’ll wipe them all out by himself.”
“R-right. But then what are we supposed to do?”
“What else? We fight too! Godfather doesn’t need orders, but you guys do, so you’d better listen to mine!”
The instant he said that, Choi Pinam slapped Dokgo Jun on the back.
“Over there! We have to stop them!”
A group was trying to circle around and ambush Yeongho from the side.
There were five of them.
Following the order, Dokgo Jun hurried after him.
As the two of them charged, the enemies noticed and stopped moving.
It was a five-on-two fight.
But the two of them didn’t have guns.
Was this really okay?
“Run! I’ll take the right!”
“A-ah, fine! Yaaah!”
Before he could even ask, the order came down, and Dokgo Jun raised his axe high and charged the far-left enemy.
Here stood a brave barbarian warrior!
Ratatatata! Bang! Tatatatang—!
“Augh! Ugh!? W-wait, arghh!”
Dokgo Jun was cut down under concentrated fire before he even got the chance to swing his axe.
Lying on his side, he turned his eyes toward his teammate.
And there was Choi Pinam, who had been charging alongside him, suddenly veering right and running off instead.
That rotten bastard.
So “the right” hadn’t meant the enemy’s right?
While the enemies’ attention was fixed on Dokgo Jun, Choi Pinam had sprinted hard, sliding in toward a fallen corpse and snatching up the dropped gun.
It was the body of one of the players Yeongho had already taken down.
Good work, Jooni-hyung.
Still, you need a gun. How were you supposed to fight barehanded?
He hefted the heavy weapon and aimed at the group crowding together ahead.
A DP-28 light machine gun.
Apparently its owner had gone down before even getting to fire properly, because the magazine was still stuffed full at forty-seven rounds.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
The light machine gun, spitting nearly nine bullets a second, erupted into flame.
The five players moving together in a packed formation were shredded by the hail of bullets in an instant.
The light machine gun was an absurdly powerful weapon, with strong damage per shot and a blistering rate of fire.
The only downsides were its fierce recoil, which spread the spread pattern wide, and its heavy weight, which made it hard to run with.
But the enemies weren’t all that far away, and Choi Pinam had enough physical control to manage the recoil just fine.
Under the torrent of machine-gun fire, the five players had no choice but to turn into corpses.
The flood of criticism in chat didn’t matter.
“May Kumonyong and Jooni-hyung rest in peace.”
“Save me, you lunatic! I’m not dead yet!”
“...Oh?”
When Dokgo Jun, now on the verge of death, crawled over shouting at him, Choi Pinam instantly changed expression and ran over to wrap him in bandages, bringing him back from the brink.
And just like that, the gunfire that had been echoing across the battlefield gradually quieted down.
Looks like it’s over.
At Yeongho’s calm voice over voice chat, Dokgo Jun looked around, rubbed the goose bumps off his arms, and shivered.
The battle had begun with 36 against 4 in the very early game.
Their side had lost one person. The other side had been wiped out to the last man.
It was an unbelievable victory.