The Crooked Stone Is Struck by a Chisel (2)
At the spot where Dokgo Jun’s team had been, thirty-seven people were already dead.
And that wasn’t even counting the clashes breaking out at the other loot zones.
It was supposed to be the stage when everyone had only just finished their first round of looting, and yet more than half the players were already gone.
As a result, the radiation spread had exploded into overdrive, and those who had been circling the outer edges to avoid the fighting were killed without ever understanding why.
When you considered that a normal Battle Island match took around forty minutes, and could stretch to an hour if it ran long, the fact that there were only about twenty survivors left after fifteen minutes was absurd.
Of course, Yeongho and Choi Pinam were the ones who had repeatedly manufactured scenes exactly like this, so unlike everyone else, they didn’t panic; they handled it with practiced ease.
And since large-scale casualties usually meant the first safe zone formed near the site of the massacre, they weren’t in the same rush as the other squads, who had to flee the radiation as fast as they could.
Bang! Ratatatat!
Before thirty minutes had even passed, they had swept away every enemy in sight.
Dokgo Jun’s team took first place in the opening match with ease.
The streamers who had been taken down so helplessly, even with team-shooting going on, were furious, and the viewers watching the broadcast were complaining just as loudly that the balance had been completely broken.
“It’s fine. This isn’t our fault.”
“Ah, yes.”
Yeongho had stiffened a little, sensing the mood souring, and Dokgo Jun quickly soothed him with a reassuring word.
“Jun-yi’s right. Sure, the chat’s saying all kinds of things, but what’s really burned into people’s brains is Hyung-nim’s insane play, right?”
“We’re playing the villain right now, sure, but that doesn’t mean we actually did anything wrong. Like Pinam said, even if they complain like that now, once the tournament’s over, Godfather’s viewership is probably going to explode.”
“That’s the spirit! We can still do just fine the way we always do, nyong! But this time, I hope we at least try something before we die, nyong! Last round, we died way too embarrassingly, nyong!”
Because his teammates took turns telling him it was all right, Yeongho’s mind settled considerably, and he nodded with a softer expression.
They were all in their mid-to-late twenties, much younger than him, but as streamers they had enough experience under their belts that, even in the middle of an uncomfortable atmosphere, they didn’t waver; instead, they seemed able to judge it as an opportunity, and that was reassuring.
I think these guys are right. I don’t need to swing from one extreme to the other just because of people’s reactions.
He had thought he might need to hold back in the second match.
But now he decided he could keep showing his skills exactly as he had been doing.
Then the second game began again.
“Military Factory Complex! Let’s drop there right away!”
Marking the most popular large looting site on this map, Choi Pinam called the drop route.
It was almost guaranteed to turn into a full brawl, so normally it would have been wiser to avoid it. But after last round, when other squads had chased them all the way to a remote area just to team up against them, they had decided that a melee was inevitable anyway.
So the plan was simple: since conflict would happen no matter what, they might as well go straight to the best loot spot in the center.
Once the four of them jumped from the plane, the broadcast showed other players, all of them watching one another nervously, shoving and tumbling out in a massive wave.
“...Huh?”
This time, too, Yeongho was the first to land, trying to count the enemy forces, and he voiced his confusion at the unexpected result.
There were only three parachutes dropping in this direction.
Aside from their own team, he couldn’t detect a single other player.
“Hyung-nim!? What are you standing around for? Hurry up and get inside!”
“There wasn’t anyone else besides us.”
“...Huh?”
Choi Pinam, who had landed behind him, spotted Yeongho standing motionless at the factory entrance and jumped in shock; then, after hearing what he said, he was even more stunned and stared blankly up at the sky.
“F-for real? No way not even one team followed?”
Their performance in the previous round must have been so memorable that the others had simply given up on contesting them.
With a dry laugh, Choi Pinam relayed the situation to the others over voice chat.
“Since nobody’s coming, let’s spread out a bit and loot. But don’t go too far, just in case.”
It was a large looting area with plenty of ground to cover, so if there were no enemies around, there was no need to stay bunched together and waste time moving inefficiently.
“Since this is a tournament, we really do get ridiculous situations like this. Free looting of Military Factory is a first for me.”
“I’m not sure that’s necessarily a good thing.”
“Huh? What do you mean, Hyung-nim?”
“Hmm... Let’s talk about that later and loot first.”
And so the looting began, without a single interruption.
It was a place where high-grade gear often spawned, so normally it should have been a desperate, bloody battle.
But because it was so quiet, it felt like the genre itself had changed into a horror game, and he couldn’t shake off the goosebumps.
By the time every team member had fully geared up with top-tier body armor and picked whatever weapon suited them best, enough time had passed that...
After nearly fifteen minutes of combing the huge factory complex, at least twenty players should have been eliminated by now.
But there were still ninety-three survivors.
Only seven people had died, and the teammates, sensing something was off, clicked their tongues and frowned.
It looked like the other streamer teams were deliberately dragging out time while minimizing fights.
What their goal was didn’t even need thinking about; it was obvious.
“Wow, seriously... they’re team-shooting this hard? That’s so messed up.”
Once the teammates finished looting and gathered in one place, Choi Pinam complained in a grumbling voice.
He wasn’t wrong to think the teaming had gone too far.
But Dokgo Jun and Kumonyong exchanged a glance and looked over at Yeongho.
It was definitely excessive, yes... but honestly, their side might be the more shameless one here.
They had heard the saying that a crooked stone gets struck by a chisel, but...
“Huh? Did you have something to say to me?”
“Oh, no, nothing.”
“Nope nyong. Hehe!”
It was hard to condemn the other teams outright when Yeongho’s performance last round had been so monstrously overpowered.
Whether the stone broke because of the chisel or the chisel broke because of the stone, maybe you had to hear the other side first.
Still, since this was their own disaster in the making, what was there to say?
Now all that remained was to struggle so they wouldn’t get crushed.
“For now, we should move around and thin out the numbers as much as possible, right?”
“Maybe. That’s not wrong, but we don’t know how tightly they’re grouped over there...”
In the previous round, enemy players had rushed them before they’d even finished properly gearing up, which meant the enemy hadn’t been able to fully exploit its numerical advantage.
Of course, if they had been ordinary players, then even with weak weapons the numbers alone would probably have overwhelmed them.
But in front of Yeongho, who landed nearly every shot and secured one-shot kills by striking vital points with almost perfect accuracy, a straight rush was nothing more than suicide, no matter how many there were.
Now the enemy teams understood that, which was why they were resorting to this kind of play.
“This round is going to be pretty rough...”
If the other teams had geared up and were teaming in a huge mass, then no matter how legendary Yeongho’s marksmanship was, it wouldn’t be easy.
When he’d been up against enemies who hadn’t armored up yet, he could drop them with a single shot and quickly cut down their numbers.
But if that became two shots, or three, then his allies would start taking damage too, little by little, and eventually they’d be unable to absorb the accumulating losses while time dragged on.
“Still, we already won one round, so the finals are guaranteed. Maybe we should just take it easy?”
“That’s right, nyong! The finals are just one team against another, so the final championship is going to be ours, nyong!”
They didn’t need to force themselves into chasing back-to-back victories.
Still, if possible, Yeongho wanted to give the viewers something with impact, something memorable like the last round, instead of going down in a limp, boring way.
As everyone tossed around ideas...
“What if we try this?”
Yeongho raised a hand and shared his own thought.
Soon, after hearing him out, the rest of the team turned to him with a variety of expressions.
“That actually sounds... kind of fun.”
“Kumonyong will do whatever the oppas want, nyong~”
“As expected of Hyung-nim! That’s an absolutely insane idea, isn’t it? Let’s do it right now!”
Decision made.
Dokgo Jun’s team set their goal and started moving.
* * *
“What the hell are those guys doing?”
“From the chat, they’re apparently driving around in a car? Not sure exactly what they’re up to.”
“How much longer are we supposed to sit here like this?”
The players who had gathered together and were watching one another’s faces muttered as they thought about the target that still hadn’t shown itself.
Thirty minutes had passed already.
There were seventy-five survivors left.
Not every streamer had agreed to deal with Dokgo Jun’s team first, so the numbers had been ticking downward little by little.
Even so, there were still seventy-one people left.
In front of this temporary alliance, made up of a group that large, Dokgo Jun’s four-man team would end up torn to shreds like a leaf before a typhoon.
“This area should be the last one, right?”
“Probably? I don’t know what the next radiation spread will do, but all the big structures are already occupied.”
Enough time had passed that radiation was spreading everywhere, and there were only a few safe zones left.
Players were already pre-positioned at the place they believed would be the final area.
Then a few more minutes passed.
“Got it! Looking at the way the radiation’s spreading, we can just wait here.”
“Why the hell hasn’t Dokgo Jun shown up yet?”
“This is the final zone around here anyway. If they don’t want to die from exposure, they have no choice but to come out.”
No sooner had those words been spoken than a vehicle appeared in the distance, approaching the players’ position.
“They’re coming!”
“Everyone get ready!”
A seventy-one-to-four fight.
Everyone had already finished looting without any real trouble, so they wouldn’t die in some ridiculous, anticlimactic way like last round.
The streamers were already certain Dokgo Jun’s team would be dealt with; the question was what came after that.
Once that target was eliminated, it would become every player for himself, and the resulting chaos would be monstrous.
Seventy-odd people were about to fight their final battle in one location; hell itself was about to open.
“Huh?”
“It stopped?”
The players scattered around the large hospital building tilted their heads in confusion when they saw the vehicle stop about a kilometer away.
Radiation was creeping closer from behind, so why had it come halfway and then suddenly stopped?
The car now traced a desperate circle along the edge of the narrowing radioactive zone.
And then came the gunfire.
Tu-aaaang!
“Gah!”
“A sniper!”
A player wearing a level-three ballistic helmet died instantly.
Sure, they might have looted a powerful sniper rifle from the Military Factory, but to hit that easily from such a distance?
From inside a moving vehicle, no less?
Come on, enough with the cheating already!
“Snipe back!”
“What’s our sniper doing?!”
The players with sniper rifles among the gathered squad aimed to return fire, but...
Taaang! Tuwaaaang!
Every time they lined up a shot, a bullet punched through their heads and dropped them, and the other players watching on screamed in shock.
“What the hell is this!?”
“Did they all bring sniper rifles? Why is their fire rate so fast!?”
“N-no! It’s one person shooting them!”
“What? That’s impossible!”
At someone’s horrified shout, the other players’ eyes went wide in disbelief.
* * *
“Kumonyong hasn’t even fired a single bullet yet! Is this really how it’s supposed to work, nyong!?”
“Hey, Miss Ku! Shut up and keep reloading!”
Choi Pinam had both hands on the steering wheel in the driver’s seat.
Dokgo Jun and Kumonyong, in the passenger seat and back seat respectively, were clicking furiously as they loaded rounds.
And Yeongho, holding a Winchester in both hands, was pulling the triggers at the enemies far in the distance.
Even a level-two helmet wasn’t enough to let a target survive a Winchester shot outright, but when you handled two of them, the story changed.
No matter how weak the sniper rifle was, if two bullets landed on the vital point, even level-three armor was enough to mean instant death.
Whoo-whoom! Tuwaang!
Whirrrrr— click, clack.
Once all eight rounds were gone and the rifles were lowered to the floor, Dokgo Jun and Kumonyong handed over the next loaded Winchesters.
That was why they had looted six Winchesters in the first place.
He did make people wonder why on earth he preferred the Winchester so much.
But when he kept proving its worth through sheer skill, what could anyone say?
At this point, it was almost tempting to believe the Winchester really was a good gun after all.
Thunk!
“Agh! My head!”
“Heh heh heh! Please excuse the rough driving.”
“I dropped the bullets, nyong! You jerk!”
“Ahem, don’t chatter and hurry up and pick them up. Our Hyung-nim can’t be left waiting!”
As the four of them became one body, each performing their own role, the mechanized turret that had appeared in an unprecedented way on the battlefield where far too many survivors still remained in the final zone began to gnaw away at the clustered players, little by little.