Fenrir Translations
-[ISO: I had some expectations, but this is beyond what I imagined. The scale, armament, and overall force are far more severe and dangerous than the ragtag groups wandering around near New York.]
-[ISO: This entire region is a tech valley, but it’s also an area that was once ravaged by the Rust Belt. In other words, this place was an ungoverned wasteland teeming with criminals, vagrants, and beggars—people who had nothing left to lose.]
-[ISO: Yeah, it used to be like that. Now, all those people are quietly rotting on the streets. Or they’re frozen solid under the snow. Who else but Artemis would have done that?]
-[ISO: It’s going to be tough, but we need all the information we can get about the recent activities and scale of Artemis Technologies' PMCs. They might be holding onto production lines for cutting-edge weapons meant for the frontlines of war.]
-[Objective: Investigate the building’s basement.] ㄴ[Head to the elevator.]
“Are you still alive, teacher? How was it outside?”
“Thanks to the gear and clothing, it’s warmer than last time.”
The chat was going wild.
Though it’s calmed down a bit now, the internet was pretty noisy back when I was just surviving. Out of the thousands of streamers, why was the reaction related to me so hot?
Naturally, the fire hasn’t died down even now, and as soon as my clothing comes up, everyone is openly demanding a new image.
What do they call this… gap moe? I could endlessly wonder why that concept applies to me, but what can you do? You just have to accept it.
Anyway, scrims.
Honestly, I never even imagined it. Blocking my inbox and friend list completely and forgetting about it turned out to be the worst move I could have made. If I had known, I would have just left it unblocked and simply not checked the messages.
Feeling a bit anxious, I quickly cleared the surrounding enemies and checked my message window… It was a total mess, but what was clear was that all the recent messages were related to scrim requests.
I feel a bit guilty, thinking they must have felt ignored.
Recalling the schedule ahead, I reviewed my plans.
According to the last check, the Asia Qualifiers are scheduled for the second weekend of September, which leaves roughly three weeks.
There’s one week left until the competitive rank closes.
But according to the chat, scrims are considered private games, so they’re not much affected by the rank closure, which means I don’t have to worry about that too much….
So, I’ve got three weeks left. I’m not sure how much this will help me, but I figure it’s better than doing nothing.
But not today.
I can’t just change the plans for today’s stream to scrims on a whim. Especially since today’s schedule involves a collaboration with Harmony.
—Clang!
I forcefully pried open the tightly shut elevator door and slid the ascender onto the thick steel cable in front of me. With a click, it locked firmly in place.
“Think of it as wrapping your feet around the concave part of the cable, grip the ascender tightly, and press the down arrow button with your thumb. Or in Harmony’s case, the script prompt might pop up.”
“Ah… looks like it’s the latter.”
“Then I’ll go down first.”
With a strange sound, my body rapidly descended along the line.
The lower I went, the fewer lights there were, except for the emergency lights. There wasn’t much need to install many lights in an elevator shaft, after all.
Beyond the dark floor, thankfully, the door leading to the basement was open. I quickly checked the surroundings for any enemies before Harmony descended.
Once Harmony safely reached the ground, blinking as she looked around, she promptly replenished the ammunition she had used from a supply box in front of her.
The sudden drop in lighting and the dilapidated interior, combined with the randomly placed spacesuit mannequins, turned the atmosphere into something straight out of a horror movie.
Even the weather was cold enough to give me a slight chill.
“…It feels like the game just turned into a horror game.”
“If there were ghosts here, they’d get shot while trying to scare someone.”
Still, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that the cliché of an unusually large underground area, typical in horror movies, had been achieved.
As we crossed the ruined corridors, we didn’t encounter a single enemy, which could only mean that they were hiding somewhere else.
And, as expected…
“…What the hell is this place?”
“Looks like a server room. We probably shouldn’t fire recklessly here.”
In front of us was a critical facility that looked like a place where enemies would come pouring out at any moment.
It was large—football field-sized, to be precise. Servers filled the lower level, and the temperature had dropped sharply, likely for cooling purposes.
There were no enemies patrolling yet.
-[ISO: They’re not as cautious as I thought.]
-[ISO: Anyway, this is excellent news. I never expected the enemy’s heart to be right in front of us. If you can directly access the servers, the firewall won’t matter.]
-[ISO: Let’s give it our best shot. Like we did on the rooftop earlier, one of you should go around the servers, connect to the network, and secure the data or set up a backdoor. The other should deal with any enemies that show up.]
With a quick exchange of glances, Harmony went inside, and I leaned against a suitable spot, checking for any signs of movement nearby.
Through partial vision sharing, I confirmed Harmony had reached the designated location. As the Icarus Gear activated, a defense game suddenly began.
-[ISO: I guess the enemies aren’t fools.]
-[ISO: Well, no one would just sit back and watch as thieves try to rob their house. The longer you maintain the connection, the more the Icarus can do, so please try not to damage the server.]
-[ISO: Even the Artemis guys will refrain from using heavy firepower here.]
So they said.
I put down my gun and drew my melee weapon.
Normally, I would draw the tomahawk holstered on my right thigh with my right hand, but in this situation, more troublesome enemies might appear.
In that case, instead of using an axe that could get chipped after a few uses… it seemed like the right time to open the pouch tied to my belt.
With a snap, the button came undone, and I pulled out a weapon similar to a tomahawk that was securely fastened inside.
<[A donation of 1,000 KRW from user “Jelly who Boils Ramen”]>
“It’s a tactical spike hammer.”
It was a hammer, but it had a sharp blade on one side and a spike on the front, a special weapon with lethal potential. Originally, a weapon designed specifically for me would weigh around 2.3 kg, but this one was about 887 g.
Still, it was enough for me to use.
A faint vibration traveled through my entire body, starting from my toes.
A sound distinct from the continuous server hum, a more irregular noise. Naturally, it was the enemies—a group equipped with pistols, thick body armor, helmets, and even exosuits, ready for combat in the server room.
In other words, Artemis’ special forces, prepared to counter our freedom to shoot considering the server’s safety.
They wouldn’t make the same mistake twice.
—Crack!
With a sinister sound, the spike-tipped hammerhead flew through the air.
Considering the enemy’s speed and timing, I swung it toward the head of an Artemis special operative rushing down the corridor, and he fell forward with his running momentum.
But in the next moment, my nanosuit’s shield gauge dropped sharply as I was hit by a pistol shot to my upper back.
Quickly turning around, I used the server as a shield, tucked the hammer under my arm, switched to a C-grip, raised my HK337, and aimed at the enemy’s torso, pulling the trigger.
The .300 Blackout rounds fired on full auto thankfully hit their mark.
“Hey, it sounds pretty rough out there. Are you okay?”
“There’s no major problem, but I’m a bit concerned about what’s going to happen next.”
There was no time to reload.
Smoke was still rising from the muzzle.
“What the hell is this guy up to? Seriously….”
“Why? What’s he doing? Get off the internet and come check this out.”
“This guy is just picking fights left and right… No, just sit down and watch this.”
Xi IMPRESSIVE, often shortened to Xi.
It’s one of South Korea’s Dark Zone pro league teams, and if you were to name prestigious teams worldwide, it would be frequently mentioned.
Two professional gamers from that team were watching a video together.
In the global esports market, where trillions of dollars are at stake, Dark Zone alone commands a significant share. As such, the professional gamers belonging to the team were as sensitive to information as the internal headhunters.
This was only natural. These players were the ones who actually played the game and were best suited to filter out the diamonds from the rough among countless users.
In this context, one particular user had caught their attention.
“Another female character and another boob party?”
“Ah, shut up! Sit down already! Your avatar’s part of the boob party too!”
“Ugh, my eardrums are going to burst. What’s there to see? Whale, you’re just watching gameplay footage of that user, Yujin, right? I’ve already seen that fifteen times yesterday alone.”
“Yeah, I watched it a lot….”
So, in the end, they had both watched it.
Reluctantly, Whale, the user with a slight dialect in his speech, glanced at his teammate, Corvus, who was sitting in the chair, and shared the screen.
The screen was the size of an A4 sheet of paper. One half was filled with notes, so much so that it was pitch black. The contents were all close to gameplay analysis.
Corvus nearly uttered, “What a crazy person,” but he had seen it a few times before, and the situation was quite serious.
“Has this person ever scrimmed with us?”
“The management guys said they donated money out of their own pockets today to ask for a scrim. Everything was blocked—friend requests and messages—so they had to contact him for the first time during the stream.”
“This person is really something….”
Anyway, that wasn’t the important part.
Naturally, these were pros. They had been filtered through and through among the best, possessing the skills to make investors open their wallets and mobilize their resources.
They had watched and analyzed countless other players’ matches, adapting to the rapidly changing landscape of Dark Zone.
And these players were now admiring one person.
“Is this person really playing in hardcore mode?”
“Icarus HQ certified it themselves. And if you look at how our headhunters have been acting lately, it seems like they’re willing to test anyone, hardcore or not. Being a hardcore player doesn’t mean they can’t compete.”
Dark Zone’s basic policy on hardcore players was one of strict non-interference.
Since almost all content was governed by real-world physical abilities, hardcore players had nearly complete freedom. In other words, it was as if they were saying, “Do it if you can.”
The fact that Yujin’s unique, ingenious gameplay was possible only in hardcore mode was why it stood out.
Meanwhile, even as they discussed this, their thoughts were drifting in another direction.
As always, in international competitions—although there was some communication with other teams—their ultimate goal was victory.
If a final championship winner emerged from South Korea, it would be a national pride. But looking deeper, the question was which team the winner would come from.
In other words, what are the other teams up to?
“…When does the rank for selecting the top 100 qualifiers open?”
“One week left.”
“Besides us, do other players know about this user?”
“If they’re solo competitors in Apex, they probably know to some extent.”
The answer was clear.
“We need to scrim with him as soon as possible.”