Finale
An enemy collapsed, its life finally spent.
Quickly skimming the items spilled by the one he’d just killed, Choi Pinam spotted a pistol. He crouched and reached for it. It would have been disrespectful to the dead to say so, but his opponent was so clumsy it was almost pathetic: the man had a sidearm, hadn’t swapped to it, and had still been reloading when he got taken down.
At any rate, the enemy’s main weapon still hadn’t finished reloading, so even if the performance was a little worse, choosing the pistol was the sensible call.
He grabbed the pistol, complete with a suppressor slapped on for the sake of style, then turned his gaze to the last remaining opponent.
Click.
The other man, having just changed his magazine, was staring back with burning eyes.
In his hands was a Kar98k sniper rifle.
It wasn’t the sort of damage that could one-shot with a body shot, but Choi Pinam was already low on life; if he let even one round land cleanly, that would be the end of it.
The two of them almost simultaneously raised their guns at each other and pulled the trigger.
Bang!
Ffft!
Choi Pinam had gotten his sights on target a hair faster, but his shot came a half-beat late.
He had pointed the weapon as if he were about to fire immediately, but with his other hand he had also hauled Kumonyong’s limp body up in front of him as cover.
It was a kind of psychological warfare.
He meant to force the opponent into a hasty shot, throw off the man’s accuracy, and then reduce the exposed area as much as possible to blunt the damage.
But the bullet the other man fired scraped along his thigh, dropping what little life he had left almost to zero.
"Ugh..."
Even with a crouched stance and his shield(?) shoved out in front of him, the enemy had adjusted his aim by the tiniest margin in that brief instant and managed to deal real damage to Choi Pinam after all.
Because of that, Choi Pinam’s own muzzle wavered slightly, and the bullet he had meant for a vital point ended up buried near the enemy’s shoulder instead.
This bastard’s got some skill.
If that had been a large shield instead of a small one, it would have covered his body perfectly!
It was easier to carry, sure, but who would’ve thought it had a flaw like this?
As he thought it over, in a way Kumonyong would have cursed and ripped her hair out if she’d known, Choi Pinam laid the corpse aside, steadied both hands on the enemy, and fired again with laser focus.
One more hit and he was dead anyway.
He had to finish this before the opponent could reload and return fire.
In a situation demanding both precision and speed, Choi Pinam’s finger moved.
Ffft!
One round punched toward the heart.
The enemy’s hand worked the bolt, ejecting the spent casing as he reloaded.
Ffft!
Choi Pinam lifted the muzzle and fired again without hesitation.
The bullet struck the throat dead on, and the enemy’s expression twisted.
If he’d been unarmored, that would have been the end of it, but because he was wearing a helmet and body armor too, a sliver of life still remained.
The sniper rifle, now chambered with the next round, snapped up toward Choi Pinam in a panic.
Still, Choi Pinam was just a little faster.
I won!
Reading the panic in the eyes visible through the visor, Choi Pinam grinned and fired at the center of the man’s forehead.
Click.
...!?
The hammer fell on empty air, and the pistol gave a hollow, ridiculous click.
He was out of bullets here?
So the gun hadn’t been fully loaded after all.
Bang!
As the enemy’s round slammed into his chest, pain blooming there, a deep trace of regret spread across Choi Pinam’s face.
He had thought he might finally save a little face in front of his hyung-nim.
To come up just one step short made his stomach ache.
Still, he’d done enough that this wasn’t exactly humiliating.
Leaving the rest to you, hyung-nim!
[NextK -> Choi Pinam (Dead)]
* * *
This damned... they’re all dead, then?
The last survivor standing alone.
NextK cursed his useless teammates inwardly as he took a bandage out of his bag.
It wasn’t just the team—he hadn’t expected himself to get cornered this badly either.
He was a minor streamer who had only recently started broadcasting, but he had entered the tournament confident that nobody there could match him in skill.
And for good reason: though the server was different, NextK had originally played professionally in the European league.
He had only been a second-team player, but his results were decent enough, and on the European server he’d regularly hit Ace tier as casually as eating a meal.
Choi Pinam? What the hell kind of lunatic was that? To think I almost got killed by some guy who just bull-rushed me like that... Guess I really am past my prime.
He had gotten older, his skill had declined, and in the end he had retired and come back to Korea.
But now he was being pushed to the brink by an ordinary person, not even a former pro, in some streamer tournament he had once dismissed as a joke.
The self-loathing that came with that realization was miserable.
He had started game streaming because games were the only thing he’d ever really learned, but nobody seemed to know how to recognize a former overseas second-team pro, so his viewer count just would not grow.
Then, just in time, a fairly famous streamer had offered him an invitation to join a tournament, and he had come thinking it was a chance.
That bastard was shocking enough, but the real lunatic is someone else. Shit, who the hell is that guy?
The player who had gone on an absurd slaughter in the early and late portions of the match came to mind, and NextK shuddered without even meaning to.
He was a pro himself, after all, and he had watched great players up close—guys who were permanent first-team staples and had won league titles more times than he could count.
The wall of talent he had felt then was, to put it lightly, like nothing more than a hurdle used in an obstacle race.
While those gifted first-team players were running on a clean, open track, it had felt as if he alone had been forced to race while leaping over obstacles.
How can a play like that even happen?
Thinking he had to face that monster today made it feel less like an obstacle race and more like the sport had changed to climbing.
At this rate, there was no way in hell he was going to make a splash and pull viewers in from the tournament. He’d just end up as Extra K.
Step. Step.
Ugh! There he is!
As he wrapped his bandages and recovered a bit of life, footsteps came from ahead.
He didn’t even need to check the kill log to know who the last survivor on the other side was.
Hiding behind a stack of hay, NextK thought hard about how he was supposed to fight that monster.
There’s no way I can beat him straight up... Wait. Maybe...
After desperately grinding his brain, one decent idea finally came to him.
If it worked, it would draw a ton of viewer attention, and the sliver of a chance he had at winning would shoot up dramatically.
The problem was that for it to work, the other guy would have to listen to him.
“W-wait a second! Time!”
Step.
At his loud shout, the footsteps abruptly stopped.
While the viewers watching the broadcast muttered in confusion at the unexpected move, Yeongho spoke in a naively earnest voice after listening to the other man.
When he’d played against Choi Pinam, he’d been told not to react no matter what the enemy said, but this was still supposed to be a friendly tournament. If the other guy had something to say, it felt a bit much to just ignore him and shoot him dead.
“I’m going out, so ple-please don’t shoot.”
With that, NextK cautiously stepped into view.
He watched the revolver pointed at him, swallowed hard, and then began the move he’d planned.
He took off the bulletproof helmet on his head, then removed the body armor wrapped around his torso as well.
With everyone voicing their confusion, NextK threw down the sniper rifle he was holding and took out the pistol he’d been carrying as a sidearm.
“I challenge you to a duel!”
“...Huh?”
Yeongho tilted his head.
“Looks like you’re pretty confident with pistol shooting, but I’ve got a fair bit of experience with pistols myself!”
“Mm. I see.”
“Since it’s a one-on-one anyway, how about we make things a little dramatic for the viewers?”
As he spoke, he removed the magazine, took out the rounds one by one, and scattered them on the ground.
“You know how in westerns they show gunmen facing off? Let’s leave just one bullet each and go at it! Isn’t that the kind of thing men dream about?”
“Hmm.”
Yeongho did think, Why bother? But with the other man putting it like that, it now felt strangely awkward to say he didn’t want to and just shoot him in the head with a bang.
It was an event nobody had planned for, but it was true that viewer interest had exploded.
It felt less like a game that was already over and more like a bonus stage had been left behind.
“Are you maybe scared? I’m actually the guy they used to call the Speedfire K. If you’re not confident, should I just make my forfeit?”
“...All right. Let’s give it a shot.”
Yeongho knowingly stepped into the obvious provocation, letting out a bitter chuckle.
If the viewers liked it, there was no reason not to go along.
To refuse here and just claim the win would only scratch at the image he’d built up so far.
In that sense, the other side had clearly thought this through well by constructing a situation he couldn’t easily reject.
Click, click.
He removed every bullet from the cylinder, leaving only one round behind.
Then Yeongho lowered the pistol and looked at NextK.
“Um... walk backward, and when I count to ten, we both fire at the same time?”
“Understood.”
After mentally registering the rules the other man explained, Yeongho slowly turned around.
“One.”
And then, in step with the other man’s voice, he took a single step forward.
“Two!”
Another step.
Even with his back turned, he never lost track of the opponent’s movements.
The distance between them widened little by little.
Though even at that rate it would still only be about twenty meters, so there was no chance Yeongho’s shot would go wide.
“...Five.”
Unlike the spectators watching with bated breath, Yeongho himself was moving along with almost no tension at all.
“Seven!”
At that count, NextK spun around and raised his pistol toward Yeongho’s back.
Honestly, he didn’t think the win itself mattered.
Even split among the teammates, the prize money wasn’t all that much, and the whole point of entering the tournament had been to bring in viewers.
He figured he wouldn’t get any attention by letting things end here, so he might as well pull in a huge wave of drama instead.
Bang!
Of course, someone might snicker and say it had been his own fault for believing the enemy’s words.
And some viewers might even follow his stream because they found it funny that he’d stolen victory with a backstab like this.
But whether things would actually turn out the way he wanted was another matter entirely.
...No, to be honest, plenty of people probably already knew.
Even if it was just a game, even if it was a small tournament, it was still a sport.
And in a sport, how many fans would really follow someone who acted so cheap?
If the viewers turned on him brutally, there was no telling how badly they could torment a streamer.
From NextK’s perspective, he had jumped in with the naive belief that it wasn’t like streaming was such a big deal anyway, only to carry out an act he didn’t even realize was stupid.
If he could just make some noise and become famous, he thought, anything would be fine.
Got him!
As he sent the bullet toward the back of Yeongho’s head, NextK was already feeling the rush of imagining how hot the viewers’ reaction would be afterward.
Then Yeongho jerked his head sideways as if he’d had eyes in the back of his skull, dodging the round before it could connect.
Huh!?
Seeing the other man turn with that leisurely pace, almost as if he really were just taking his time, NextK calmly pulled the trigger again.
In truth, he was not calm at all; his heart was pounding with shock.
Still, his hand trembled, but fortune was on his side, and the second bullet went straight for the center of the target’s forehead.
He had said they’d each leave only one bullet, then played dumb and emptied the chamber just in case, leaving two rounds behind. That had been his one stroke of genius.
Bang! Thwack!
This time the bullet definitely hit.
It buried itself in the palm Yeongho had opened and thrust up in front of his face.
At that kind of reaction speed, he could have dodged it, so there had been no need to block it with his hand. Still, from the perspective of the people watching, it was a scene that would make their mouths drop open in admiration.
It was the kind of image that looked almost like he’d caught the bullet with his bare hand.
In any case, with his plan now completely wrecked and his mind blanking out, NextK faced Yeongho.
Yeongho spoke in a low voice.
“That seems like cheating.”
NextK, standing there blankly and darting his eyes around, managed to stammer out a reply.
“B-but I was faster, right?”
“...Mm.”
At the ridiculous answer, Yeongho sank into thought for a moment.
He really had fired quickly.
Was that what being called the Speedfire K meant?
Deciding it might not be logically wrong, Yeongho nodded and raised his gun.
“I see.”
Bang!
[SJ DAD -> NextK (Dead)]
And that was the moment the streamer friendly tournament came to an end.