Fenrir Translations
In the past, when she roamed the dead city,
Danger was always present, and countless times she had almost lost her head by letting her guard down. Anything that wasn't an ally was a potential enemy, and most of the time, that was indeed the case.
However, after spending countless hours there, the threats inevitably had to be categorized—from those that were relatively less dangerous to those that one should never face alone.
Looking back, among them, the Hunters were….
[Warning: EMP Detected.]
…Enemies you should never engage alone.
They existed as countermeasures and arch-enemies specifically designed to efficiently kill Icarus operators, and dozens of agents had lost their lives to them.
The command had established combat protocols against them solely through the last desperate messages left by agents who had already died, and those words were literally written in blood.
And the first rule of that protocol was to always engage them with at least a 2:1 ratio.
Click.
She pulled the pin from a grenade and hurled it fiercely toward the wall where the scattered snow tracks abruptly ended. But as if they had anticipated it, the Hunter immediately sprang out and took cover elsewhere.
The few bullets that did hit their body were purely a result of her skill.
However, they did not even cause a minor injury. At most, the impact would have caused a tingling sensation at the point of contact.
'I don't like taking risks in situations like this….'
And this wasn't just any ordinary risk.
It was closer to a simple yet mad gamble, a deadly game of who could dance longer on the edge of a blade with their life as the stake.
She had a rough idea of the betrayer's intentions, so to make it in time, she needed to break through the Hunter quickly.
Speaking into the now rapidly deteriorating comms, she gave an order.
"Can you distract at least one of them?"
"…Ah, y-yes…! The so-sound isn’t…coming through…well, but I’ll t-try…!"
"Under no circumstances should you let the enemy get close. Do you understand?"
It was half a wishful thought.
To turn that wish into reality would require taking even greater risks… But if she couldn't endure that, she would have died long before she could even return to where she had come from.
Lowering her gun, she waited. Their trait was cunningness, and when they took a certain amount of damage, they would immediately take cover nearby to treat their wounds and recover.
However, if you tried to provoke close combat, they would approach with surprising speed, despite their large build, to deliver electric shocks or swing their tomahawks.
There were two choices, but both led to the same deadly outcome.
She used that against them.
Rustle!
They were dangerous, and with that danger came an aggressive nature.
In other words, if combat was avoided, they would actively try to close the distance. The amplified footsteps, growing louder, confirmed this.
With her skills sealed by the EMP, she couldn't detect the enemy's location.
She could only trust her sharpened instincts and wait.
Then,
"…!"
"Ugh…!"
Grind.
A tomahawk swung around the corner. But instead of dodging, she grabbed their arm. Simultaneously, she gripped their other arm tightly, not with her hand but by holding onto the arm itself.
In her left hand was a hand axe, and on her right was a high-voltage emitter. The latter, like a taser, would cause the body to lose control if it made contact.
She locked eyes with the bloodshot eyes visible through the ballistic mask. The murderous intent in those blue eyes stared directly at her as she twisted the enemy's right hand forcefully.
The sickening sound of flesh tearing and bones twisting followed as the hand bent unnaturally, causing the emitter, spewing out an eerie arc of electricity, to make contact with the Hunter's own body.
Bzzt.
The world flickered with overwhelming brightness.
"Aaaaargh!"
"…Ugh…!"
A dizzying pain surged through her body as if she was being shredded alive.
But she gritted her teeth and held her ground, refusing to collapse. Within mere seconds, her Icarus gear rebooted, regaining some control over her body and forcing her muscles to move.
In the next moment, the Hunter fell to the ground with a thud.
He had been unable to endure and had collapsed.
"…Ha."
Her breath smelled faintly of burnt air.
Ignoring the excruciating pain, she drew the tactical tomahawk hanging from her waist. Her target was the cervical spine. She aimed to end it in a single blow.
With the fear of death still etched behind the mask, she twisted her waist to add momentum and brought it down toward the ground.
Crack.
And thus, one Hunter met his end at the hands of his prey.
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!
Meanwhile, gunfire echoed from a distance.
It indicated that Harmony was engaged in combat not far away.
Now, in terms of sheer numbers, they were evenly matched, but the Hunters were killing machines designed to eliminate operators, and Harmony was still a novice who had only been playing this game for a few days.
Forcing her body, which still hadn't fully recovered, to move, she noticed another Hunter had already closed in. She didn’t expect the same luck as before.
But it had to be done, and so she would just take them down.
The dawn had not yet broken.
"Ugh, I’m going to die at this rate. They're really scary…."
At that moment, Harmony's chat was getting more toxic than ever.
The countless opinions flooding the chat could be summed up as chaotic, but they still had some sense of direction.
Specifically, they were divided between those who were furious at the user who had put their favorite streamer in danger and those who clarified that such betrayal wasn’t exactly against the rules.
Of course, the truth lay somewhere in the middle, but what was certain was that the majority opinion in the chat, "Can't we report that user somehow?" was, in reality, impossible.
This was because the survival mode and combat in the contaminated zone were designed to allow and even encourage such situations.
There was a reporting feature in the Dark Zone.
In fact, it was much more robust than in other games, but it was still challenging to immediately and accurately judge the needle that stood at the intersection of gaming permissibility and sniping.
However, conversely, this meant that if there was solid evidence, it could be judged as sniping.
But none of this was helpful to Harmony, who had unfortunately encountered a truly awful opponent.
'…At times like this, it’s best not to engage in the subject at all.'
While it was a bit ambiguous to call it simply "ignore and move on," Harmony, with her years of streaming experience, knew that speaking out at a time like this would be akin to suicide.
Whether she died or survived, it was better to share her thoughts once everything was resolved, and all the pieces had fallen into place.
Streamers who forgot this… most of them had perished.
And whatever it was, she still had the trigger that Yujin had given her. That should help, somehow.
Whoosh!
"Ugh, hey! So, who are those guys? I don’t know what they are, but they look super strong, so someone do something! Help me out here! Ding dong ding dong!"
Unlike the gunfire, the sound of bullets flying nearby was like the crack of a whip.
Bullets ricocheted, shattering concrete fragments that scattered around, making for a tense firefight. While hiding in a spot overlooking the parking lot was good, there was no escape route.
The fight was one-on-one, but the opponent was a Hunter—one who could easily wipe out even veteran players in an instant if they were unlucky.
By context, Yujin was likely dealing with two of them at once, but would she be okay? But such thoughts were a luxury. Even she wasn’t sure if she would survive the current situation.
Her breathing grew heavy, and her mouth felt dry. Even though this was an in-game scenario, the stress on her physical body during the fight was still substantial.
[Warning: Fragmentation Grenade Detected.]
The UI, which had briefly glitched, started returning to normal. Although there were still flickering parts, it was much better than before.
A series of seemingly meaningless skirmishes continued. Gradually, both sides were taking more damage. Even when facing other players, the pressure wasn’t this intense.
**[하이야신스안스님이 1,000원 후원!]
"Ugh, this game… So many weird things happen, it’s driving me nuts…!"
In the meantime, to lighten the toxic atmosphere, more viewers than usual started sending helpful donation messages.
Throw grenades to force them to move, then focus your fire while they’re out of cover. Use the various status effect grenades you’ve picked up so far. Use the pulse to locate them.
All of these were things she had forgotten in the heat of battle.
As if being controlled by some unseen hand, the flood of advice began to take root in her actions.
Normally, this kind of input would be impossible to process, but the time she had spent with Yujin had made it somewhat feasible, and Harmony, albeit clumsily, began to follow the advice.
First, she used a skill to detect the enemy's position, then prepared to use the grenades in her pouch.
The next moment, a grenade emitting an electrical pulse exploded, sending a large jolt of electricity through the area, causing the Hunter who was unlucky enough to get caught in it to collapse, convulsing on the spot.
Switching to automatic fire, Harmony pulled the trigger, sending bullets flying through the air at a rate of 800 rounds per minute.
But before she could fire off even ten rounds, the Hunter almost instantly recovered from the status effect, rolled to evade the bullets, and took cover.
It wasn’t just walking or running; the fact that he could move like a stuntman despite wearing such heavy gear was nothing short of extraordinary.
The chat was in an uproar.
But it wasn’t out of frustration that she hadn’t finished off the Hunter; it was something more familiar…
**[스페츠님이 1,000원 후원!]
"Thanks, 스페츠, but… Haha, don’t make me laugh at a time like this!"
A lull followed.
The almost critically wounded Hunter was hiding behind a container, focused on self-healing without revealing even a single strand of hair, while Harmony reloaded her magazine and took cover behind a wall.
With a crackling sound, another EMP went off. The comms, which had just started working again, crackled once more. Yujin, likely preoccupied with her own battle, didn’t respond, leaving only intermittent gunfire to indicate she was still alive.
As always, the chat had quickly forgotten the previous incident, and the consensus was that since they had already driven the Hunter to near-death, they might as well finish the job.
But then, suddenly,
Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!
"Aaah!"
A barrage of gunfire erupted from behind, and several bullets tore into Harmony’s body.
The sight was all too familiar.
It was familiar because all the equipment that person was carrying…had been made with the materials Harmony and Yujin had acquired during their battles.
With a sickening grin, the cold, mechanical sound of the warning system filled her ears.
[Warning: Rogue Operator Detected.]
[Warning: Operator Health Low.]
"You should have watched your back. Rushing up like that only gets you shot in the head."
Kicking the rappelling line set up on the ground, the user who had been known as Barcode pointed his gun at the nearly incapacitated Harmony.
There was a flash, and before she could react, the gunshot echoed.
[Warning: Operator Down.]
37
nice
Kinda cinematic ngl