It’s Not Seeing, It’s Feeling (2)
['KimNakhukJjukkMasitda' has donated 20 coins.]
"Uh, I just... figured out where the enemies were from the sound of them moving closer, so I fired."
Just as someone in chat posted a warning, a cold ripple of unease shot down his spine like electricity.
Danger!
Before he could even understand what was happening, his senses stretched sharply outward and his body moved first.
He sprang upright in one motion and took a huge step sideways. Then, with a smooth turn of his shoulder, he swung the trench shovel he was holding.
Clang!
He knocked away the round object flying straight down at his head.
Because he’d moved purely on reflex, guided by sensation alone, he only realized after the fact that it had been a grenade.
BOOM-!
“Aaaagh!”
“Argh! My leg!”
It hadn’t been intentional, but the grenade Yeongho had batted away flew into two nearby raiders who’d been hiding and exploded on them.
“Huh...”
Even he let out a helpless laugh, flustered by what he’d just done himself.
When he entered a fight or found himself in danger, his body just moved on its own and solved the problem. If he told anyone that, nobody would believe him.
At the same time, it made him a little uneasy, as though his own body was moving of its own accord.
Like the viewers were saying, it almost felt as if some cheat program was assisting him, letting his body react automatically.
Sure, batting away a grenade that had come flying at him without any warning was impressive enough. But after everything he’d already shown, the viewers didn’t seem nearly as shocked as they should have been.
Maybe the threshold for surprise had already climbed too high.
"Ah, right. Phew, we’ve had enough of a breather. Shall we get going again?"
Reading that chat, he remembered hearing that if too many subordinates died, the leader would run. So Yeongho peeked up over the car and checked the raiders’ mood.
As if they were still deciding whether to continue the chase, their voices drifted from far behind.
“What are you doing! Go grab that thing now!”
“Boss! We’re only taking losses here. There’s no gain left in this!”
“We’re already way outside our territory! If this keeps up, all of us could be in danger!”
“Damn it... no choice, then...”
They seemed to be leaning toward giving up.
He’d dragged them this far already, and he didn’t want the mission to fail here.
At this rate, it looked like the enemies might actually stop chasing him, so Yeongho leaned out of the vehicle and resumed fleeing once more.
As he had the whole time, he didn’t dodge through obstacles or weave between cover; instead, he exposed his entire body openly, deliberately trying to lure them on.
“H-hey! Shoot him!”
“Kill him!”
The raiders, who’d been wavering, had their aggression drawn back up by the sight of him and started the pursuit again.
Rat-a-tat!
Fweeet—thwack!
“Eep!”
Even as he flinched at bullets skimming past the hem of his clothes, Yeongho kept running without hiding.
Once he was exposed to danger, his senses sharpened again, and his body moved on its own to avoid the threat.
Even while sprinting, if he just shifted a little left or right, every bullet missed him.
To anyone watching, it was as if the raiders were deliberately missing their shots.
Choi Pinam, watching the broadcast together with the viewers, couldn’t find the words to say either.
He’s dodging every bullet from behind without even looking? That’s not a matter of physical skill anymore. That’s manga or movie territory.
If it were just a matter of being unusually talented, he could at least call it impressive reflexes. But even as he watched live, the only thought he could manage was that VR itself might finally have been hacked by a cheat.
If that was talent, then wasn’t it basically a legal cheat?
It was so absurdly unbelievable that the people watching were still confused when, just then—
"Dad! Over here! Hurry!"
His daughter’s face, which had run ahead earlier, came into view.
She was standing in front of a place that looked like a huge factory, jumping in place and waving at him.
They were nearly at their destination.
Sunhee, waiting for her father to catch up, heard the chasing raiders still firing behind him and hurried into the factory.
The viewers had been watching Yeongho dodge bullets in a way that was suspiciously perfect the whole time, so they knew exactly what was going on.
But Sunhee didn’t understand the situation very well, and his father looked far too close to danger as he ran through the rain of bullets. So she rushed ahead and forced the boss fight to begin.
RUMBLE-RUMBLE-!
“Ugh!”
“W-was that an earthquake!?”
The ground shook, and the pursuing raiders tumbled over and rolled across the floor.
And then, right after that, the earth exploded at the midpoint between Yeongho and the raiders.
Chunks of asphalt sprayed everywhere.
And through the flying debris emerged a long, thick body.
Chapter 2 boss: Deathworm.
It was a giant worm-like monster, its entire body wrapped in scales as hard as steel plates.
Its thick torso looked like it could swallow a bull whole, and its length easily stretched beyond ten meters.
Anyone would have been terrified at the sight of it.
“Hiiieek!?”
“R-run!”
In theory, the Deathworm had no eyes, but it could detect prey hundreds of meters away by vibration alone.
Everyone here was already within its sensor range.
Perhaps because the raider group was making more of a racket than Yeongho and Sunhee, the monster decided they were the bigger meal.
The Deathworm began to crawl rapidly toward the fleeing raiders.
“Aaaagh!”
“Save me!”
The raiders screamed as they were swallowed whole into the Deathworm’s mouth, lined with rows of sharp teeth.
As the two spectators shuddered at the horrifying sight, a donation message appeared.
The instant he read that, Yeongho lifted his handgun and aimed at the raider leader who was abandoning his subordinates and trying to flee.
As expected, the boss had been moving more leisurely than the others, as if he had the luxury of doing so.
By now he was already more than fifty meters away from Yeongho, far enough that he had separated from the subordinates being devoured behind him.
Fifty meters was a significant distance for a handgun shot.
And this wasn’t a shooting range; it was a real combat situation, and the target was moving.
Even a professionally trained shooter couldn’t guarantee a hit from that far away.
Still, if I can get help from that sensation again...
He focused his mind and fixed on the target.
Time seemed to slow, and his body moved on its own in the exact direction he needed.
But he couldn’t pull the trigger.
The fleeing leader had left the straight line of fire and vanished behind the wall of a building.
The viewers’ messages were full of disappointment.
Then his daughter’s guilty voice reached his ears.
"Ah... sorry, Dad. I got stupidly impatient and... ugh! We worked so hard to get here!"
He frowned slightly without meaning to.
What parent would want to see their child blaming herself?
And over something as trivial as a game, no less.
Is there really no way? No trick?
He took a deep breath.
Then, for the first time, he deliberately drew up that sensation he had already experienced several times, now familiar enough to summon at will.
Just like when he’d knocked away the grenade or sprinted while dodging bullets.
Even though he wasn’t in immediate danger, the moment he consciously focused, his senses responded and changed.
The vibration traveling from the ground through the soles of his feet.
The wind brushing across his body.
Even a single speck of dust drifting far away in the air.
His senses sharpened to an extreme, and his awareness of the surrounding space and objects widened at a terrifying speed.
Even without seeing it, he could picture the raider leader’s back as he fled in panic.
Yeongho shifted the muzzle away from the original line of aim and pointed it in a completely different direction.
Then he calmly pulled the trigger.
Click! Bang- ffft!
“Aaaagh!”
He let the distant scream go in one ear and out the other, then turned to his daughter and gave her a grin.
"Don’t be sorry. You did more than enough."
And, of course, chaos erupted once more as a flood of comments shot up the screen.
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