Pro Players? These Guys?
“Hmm... that’s a little iffy.”
Looking at the score display, Yeongho shook his head and spoke up.
He had cleared the cutoff, sure, but it was still hard to call him safely in the clear.
If the players ranked just below him happened to string together a lucky winning streak and climb the board, he could still miss out on Predator tier selection by the slimmest of margins.
“One more game.”
He was getting close to the point where he could call the stream, but to be absolutely certain, he decided to run one more match.
The viewers, who had expected him to stop there, cheered at the news instead, thrilled by the prospect of one more round.
And so the final match began.
“Hyeong-nim. Are you sure you don’t need to rest?”
“I’m a little worn out, but one more game should be fine.”
Knowing full well that Yeongho had a hard time playing for long stretches, Choi Pinam asked with real concern in his voice.
Yeongho was a bit tired, yes, but not so exhausted that his concentration had completely bottomed out, so he smiled and told him he was fine.
Bang—!
They had split up around a building to loot when a gunshot rang out from not too far away.
Since they were circling the outskirts of a major loot zone in their usual pattern, Yeongho didn’t pay it much mind.
Even on the outer edge, big buildings naturally drew a lot of people, so skirmishes breaking out from the opening moments was nothing unusual.
But unlike Yeongho, who would have sighed from some corner of a room that this run was doomed without a Winchester or even a pistol, Choi Pinam checked the kill feed as it appeared in the all-chat and frowned slightly.
The timing of the shots cutting off so cleanly made it look like a nearby fight had just ended—the one showing up in the log, maybe.
[FF Stump -> fl0wer (Dead)]
[FF Dbshot -> WhyDoYouKeepTalking? (Dead)]
[FF Natus -> MyTeammateIsDown (Dead)]
Custom nicknames with FF in them.
Having once been a would-be pro himself, Choi Pinam recognized them immediately.
“Those guys are pros, right? Fatal Finish, or whatever? Doesn’t seem like some cheap imitation.”
“Yeah, they’re legit.”
“They’re from Double F, but I don’t really know those nicknames.”
“I checked—looks like it’s a roster of second-team starters.”
“Oh... so they’re all Predator rank? That’s a pretty high-tier match.”
“That FF Dbshot guy got killed by Choi Pinam last round and then got taken down by God Dad, didn’t he? He brought his friends this time, lol.”
“Even so, if they’re only second-team, they’re probably just dad food.”
For a few matches now, they had been in a tier where even pro players could get matched into games, but this was the first time they’d run into a full pre-made squad like that.
Maybe that was why the viewers were so interested.
“If Double F’s second team is here, they’re basically top of the second division. You’d almost have to treat them like a 1.5-string roster.”
“Pros have individual skill, sure, but their squad teamwork is no joke. Even if he’s God Dad, it won’t be easy in a duo queue.”
“Who even watches the second division these days, lol.”
“The Korean Cowboy is already beyond the normal scale. Anyone not betting on him to win just doesn’t have eyes.”
The chat had plenty to say, but Choi Pinam walked up to the window, looked in the direction the shots had come from, then relaxed and turned away.
Come to think of it, it wasn’t strange to run into a pro squad at this tier.
He had heard gunfire close by, but if they were a pro team, there was no reason to think they’d abandon the center of the map just to come this way.
And yet...
Ten o’clock. Four of them. They’re coming.
“Huh?”
At Yeongho’s voice over voice chat, Choi Pinam instinctively tensed for combat, but he couldn’t hide his surprise.
Normally, if a squad landed on the outskirts of a major loot zone, it meant they wanted to avoid the big mess and then, once they’d finished basic looting, make a push for the center.
But for some reason, that squad was moving even farther out, toward this area.
It wasn’t as though pro players lacked the confidence to take control of the middle, so their route was decidedly unusual.
Of course, they’d seen the two of them land out here, so maybe they were simply trying to eliminate a possible backstab threat before moving toward the center.
Still...
“Hyeong-nim! What if we don’t fight right away and fall back a little?”
Understood.
Choi Pinam, feeling a strangely bad premonition, suggested retreating, and Yeongho complied without a word.
Even though Choi Pinam had been struggling lately and dying in nearly every match, he wasn’t the type to avoid a small skirmish without reason.
So Yeongho followed without question, assuming there must be some reason for the retreat order.
They’d finished looting anyway, so without lingering, they slipped out through the back door and started running.
As Yeongho, who had caught up close behind him, glanced back over his shoulder, he spoke again.
“I think they’re still chasing us.”
“Really? Damn, look at these guys...”
By this point, it was certain.
That squad was definitely moving toward them as their target.
But why?
Could it be... sniper queue?
To be fair, they hadn’t exactly said it out loud, but as the two of them had made their way here, they’d run into snipers more than once or twice.
There had been plenty of viewers who showed up claiming to be fans, and there had even been times when some communities had coordinated sniper queues and teaming because they didn’t like the sight of an undefeated winstreak.
The former was easy enough to laugh off, but the latter... he simply couldn’t understand why people did that.
There seemed to be far more people in this world than he’d expected who got a kick out of ruining someone else’s success.
Still, he took all of that as part of a streamer’s fate and had climbed this far by enduring every last ugly condition thrown his way.
Yeah, but why would pros bother? It’s probably just some weird coincidence.
He suspected the enemies were approaching with no attempt to hide the fact that they wanted a fight, but he shook his head at the thought that this might actually be a sniper queue from what looked like a pro squad.
But absurdly enough, Choi Pinam’s guess had landed surprisingly close to the truth.
* * *
FF Esports.
The players belonging to the second team of the pro organization commonly known as Double F, or Dwoobapp, had indeed queued specifically to target Yeongho and Choi Pinam’s duo.
At first, it had only been one of them running auto-match and running into the pair by chance.
But in the next round, he’d called the others over and queued as a pre-made squad.
There was a childish little desire for revenge from the previous match, yes, but more than that, they’d looked into Yeongho and gotten irritated.
“That SJ DAD guy? He’s a streamer, and apparently he hasn’t died once from his placement match up to now.”
“What the hell. How does that even make sense?”
“Yeah, I saw people talking about it on the Bayeob forum. So that’s him.”
“If he wins this match too, they say he’s locked for Predator. I heard he’s getting something like ten million won in mission rewards from the stream?”
“Damn. I’m jealous as hell.”
The moment money came up, the look in their eyes changed completely.
After fees were cut out, the amount dropped quite a bit, of course, but the mission reward shown on stream was still a huge sum from the perspective of second-team players.
After VR advanced, a large portion of real-world sports had been absorbed into esports, and compared to the past, esports players’ incomes had skyrocketed exponentially.
Top-tier players in each country, famous worldwide, were already making annual incomes in the tens of billions of won.
But as was often the case in the arts and sports worlds, the reality for everyone except the tiny handful at the very top remained grim.
“Man... some people become pros and still have to grind like dogs for barely four hundred a month.”
“At least the captain gets more because he’s the leader. Us? We’re barely scraping past three hundred, damn it.”
Even as pro gamers went, second-team players in particular were not in a position to receive especially satisfying treatment.
In terms of pure skill, ace-level second-team players might only be a hair’s breadth behind first-team players.
But in the world at the top, that tiny difference in detail decided everything.
And yet, because of what was, from another angle, a laughably small distinction, status split apart and salaries ended up with a ridiculous gap.
So if someone got the impression that another person was making huge money playing the exact same game, then petty as it might be, the natural reaction was to feel a bit sick inside.
“Jealous? That’s it? Then we stop him! Damn it, are you kidding me?!”
“A straight shot to Predator with zero deaths is crossing the line. We should make him taste some bitterness.”
That was how the sniper queue had come about.
From the various parachutes falling out of the plane, it wasn’t hard for the FF team to spot the two of them.
After all, theirs was the only duo queue team in this stretch of the map.
They landed just behind them, finished basic looting, and then moved in with the thought of seeing just how incredible the hype really was.
“Hey! They’re running away!”
“What, so what was all that about God Dad and whatever—was it just talk? Are they just playing super safe?”
“Damn it, no! Last round I really thought the guy was some kind of hacker!”
“What kind of hacker? A god-tier hacker? Hah!”
“That’s lame. Don’t do that.”
The FF team pressed after their retreating targets and forced the engagement.
They’d been told one of them was an incredible player, but nobody thought they’d lose to a duo.
They weren’t careless, exactly, but the mood was loose enough.
Matching the teamwork they had drilled over and over, the FF team pushed the enemy duo into a corner.
* * *
“If they’re going to chase this hard, I don’t think we can keep backing off. What do you want to do?”
“Ah, damn it! What the hell do they think they’re after, chasing us this far? No choice now. Hyeong-nim! Let’s take them out!”
“That’s what I was waiting to hear.”
The two of them changed direction and pulled out their weapons.
In Choi Pinam’s hands was a Micro Uzi.
The gun Yeongho had looted was an MP5 from H&K.
Neither of them used submachine guns as a primary weapon, but their luck had been terrible in the final stretch, and the loot had twisted into this ugly shape by pure chance.
“But with this setup, we’ll have to drag them in as close as possible.”
Submachine guns were specialized for mobility and rapid fire, weapons that excelled in close-quarters combat inside buildings and other tight spaces.
On maps with lots of obstacles and a lot of forced urban fighting, their efficiency could skyrocket, but their effective range was short, so they weren’t generally all that popular.
Most players would rather use assault rifles, with their stronger per-shot damage and ability to handle mid- to long-range fights, than pick a submachine gun as their main weapon.
And since they weren’t even superior to shotguns at point-blank range, they ended up in a kind of awkward middle ground—neither here nor there.
They were more like sidearms than a true primary weapon, closer to a pistol in function than a main gun.
“I’ll draw their attention, so Pinam, back me up from behind.”
“Th-tha... alright, got it. Be careful, Hyeong-nim!”
It was hard to imagine he could really draw the attention of a pro squad by himself.
But right now, there was no choice but to trust Yeongho’s monster-tier physical skill.
He didn’t want to dump this kind of risk onto the final match, but whining wouldn’t change anything, so this too had to be endured.
Tap-tap-tap—
Ping! Bang bang! Ratatatatat!
The instant Yeongho sprinted forward, the enemies closing in opened fire immediately.
In that tiny instant, bullets flew straight for his vital points.
But as he lightly stepped and spun through his turn, every single one of them skimmed past the hem of his clothes.
Hmm...?
The chat had said these were pro players.
But they seemed easier to avoid than he’d expected.
As he kept accelerating and weaving in and out with sharp turns, narrowing the distance through one evasive movement after another, he could hear the enemies shouting in panic.
“W-what the hell! Why isn’t he getting hit?!”
“No way! Is he actually hacking?!”
“Like hell he is! Shoot properly!”
“Spread out! Fire wide!”
He wasn’t even moving at some absurd speed too fast for the eye to follow, and yet he kept slipping through the intended line of fire by a paper-thin margin, displaying a lunatic level of evasive movement.
In the end, the FF team gave up ground too easily and, with a sickened look, quickly widened their formation.
If they stayed bunched together, the sustained fire from the SMGs could shred them all at once, and since the enemy was dodging like a god of movement, they decided to build a crossfire instead.
Ah. So that’s why it’s easy.
As he scattered bullets and cut through the gaps between them, Yeongho suddenly realized something and let out a dry laugh.