Rat-a-tat-tat-tat!

The rain of bullets and the sparks flying from them.

While forcibly suppressing the surging heartbeat, I sort through the flood of information that filters through the suppressed gunfire, picking out what could be useful. How many bullets the enemy has fired, where they’re moving, whether they’re about to throw a grenade…

The more I immerse myself, the fewer UI elements remain around my field of vision, until it’s just me and the enemy. The methods ingrained in my body and the years of combat experience calm my muscles and find tranquility amidst the chaos.

I can feel the trigger under my gloved finger. As I apply pressure to the trigger that has reached the wall beyond which it can go no further, the firing pin strikes the primer, sending the bullet effortlessly breaking the sound barrier towards the enemy.

The Lapua Magnum bullet slices through the air and hits the concrete cover. With a chilling whip-like crack, the accumulated kinetic energy begins to weaken the cover at the point of impact.

A magazine with ten rounds is spent in an instant.

As it drops to the floor due to gravity, a new polymer magazine slides into the receiver, and once again, it unleashes a hail of lead bullets—or maybe tungsten bullets—along with a fiery downpour of death.

I pull the trigger, intercept the incoming grenades, and close the distance while the enemy tries to maneuver. These are countless fragmented plans, almost like a puzzle.

Each objective is a step towards a larger goal, a stride towards the destination.

Move, shoot, kill the enemy.

Kill the enemy, overcome the challenges presented by the session, and claim victory.

Claim victory, advance to the preliminaries, and qualify for the finals.

And if I make it to the finals… inevitably, I’ll have to visit Icarus headquarters.

Once I reach that point, will I be able to understand how Dark Zone is connected to my past and the world I came from?

BOOM!

A grenade intercepted mid-air explodes, scattering small metal fragments in all directions. It’s like a rain of death. And in reality, it’s not much different.

I check my nanomachine status and health levels. Both have decreased due to being hit by armor-piercing rounds. The bullets must have penetrated through and out of my body.

Even so, the few bullets that hit were enough to shock the enemy to the point where they couldn’t aim properly, so I didn’t hesitate to move forward. As expected, there was no follow-up gunfire.

Causes have consequences, and these become usable information.

The suffocating firefight had come to an end before I knew it.

Reducing the enemy's combat capabilities steadily and continuously without accumulating damage to my body always yielded effective results.

However—although the opponent had lost so much power that they could no longer inflict significant damage on me, that didn’t mean I could approach them without caution.

Before they could recover, I pulled out a grenade.

The click of the pin being pulled.

As the grenade’s body hits the ground with a dull metallic sound, the last piece of the puzzle clicks into place.

With this, I take one more step forward.

BOOM!

[Notification: A winner has been determined.]

[Notification: This session will end in 20 seconds.]

With a deafening explosion, I survived once again today.

[Notification: Congratulations on being one of the first 16 winners of the preliminary rank!]

[Notification: Tier adjustment in progress….]

“Hah….”

Cool water slid down my throat.

How should I describe this feeling? Perhaps it’s like climbing stairs. The quality of the matches I have to face increases little by little as time passes. It’s not exponential, but it’s noticeable.

The congratulatory messages that popped up through the notifications were fascinating. Sixteen winners, huh? Now that I think about it, that’s right. One session has a hundred players, and there were sixteen such sessions—though some didn’t fill to a hundred, additional players were recruited—so there are sixteen winners.

Sixteen out of 1,600 people. It’s certainly rare. But it didn’t feel quite real that I was one of them.

I glanced at the notification window.

There were several greetings from people I wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with, those with whom I had exchanged messages at least once. Interestingly, the messages came in the order in which I had formed these connections.

Harmony. Unreal. Cartographer. Dice. A few others… all people I knew. I started reading from the top. It was from Harmony.

[Harmony: Thanks to you, teacher, I’ve been checking out match broadcasts I didn’t even know existed, hehe. I watched your fight well! It’s a fiery battle that I’ll never have any connection to, ㅠㅠ

Anyway, you always do so well, I don’t think I need to worry about you, so I’ll just cheer you on instead! Feel free to contact me anytime if you have the time!

P.S.) That Cthulhu dating sim we played recently was so much fun, hahaha! You’ll do the sequel too, right?]

It was a very Harmony-like message.

Of course, the last part… seemed like it would be quite difficult to fulfill. The content was so surreal that it was hard to hold back my bewilderment even while playing.

Cartographer was a name I remembered. I had randomly encountered them in the past while running rank matches—not preliminaries—and in fact, it wasn’t entirely random; I had just thoroughly beaten them up.

We hadn’t interacted much since then, but it wasn’t like we hadn’t spoken at all. We had a slight connection, just about that level.

Anyway, the message was fairly straightforward. Just a simple greeting, mentioning that they too were participating in the preliminary rank and that we should meet later at KSM. Something along those lines.

And then there was Dice…

Before introducing the content, I moved my fingers a bit.

[Yujin: Dice]

[Yujin: Do you not have many people you interact with?]

In response, as if to hammer the point home—her reply came quickly.

[Dice: No, I do!!!]

[Dice: Why are you suddenly roasting me after just saying hello, ㅠㅠ]

[Yujin: Sorry, hehe]

[Yujin: Did your match go well?]

[Dice: Smoothly into the top tier, hehe]

[Dice: I couldn’t get first place because of some BS situation at the end, but I took down so many enemies that my LP won’t be much different from the person who came first.]

[Yujin: Congratulations]

Returning to the content… in fact, it was about three times as long as what Harmony sent.

In summary, the beginning was the usual greetings, the middle was about what had happened recently and comments about the last broadcast, and towards the end, there was a mention of seeing each other at KSM or the Asia Qualifiers instead of in the preliminary ranks.

Of course, it ended with a postscript hoping that we wouldn’t end up in the same match.

The next match was scheduled to take place in three hours.

As I prepared a shake that packed 2000 kcal into a single cup, the conversation shifted to another topic.

Before I knew it, the texts had transitioned into an avatar-call.

“By the way, you completely destroyed Mikael. Pardon me, but are you really human? Should I suggest they add CQB to the interim coaching duties…?”

“I feel like I’ve heard that a lot….”

“Well, there’s a good reason for it. But I only saw the clip, so I didn’t get the full context. But do I really need to? Just that scene alone tells enough.”

Of course, the conversation didn’t end there; the topic shifted again.

“…When did you start carrying that tomahawk around? Doesn’t it feel… weird to get kills with something like that? You’re not planning to kill me with it later, are you?”

“It’s a rather historic item. I can pull it out anytime if the situation turns bad….”

“Terrifying, truly….”

To be honest, it wasn’t that uncommon.

In actual combat, anything could happen, and that included not only the range of a carbine but also the distance where only a pistol could be used—or even a situation where not even a pistol could be used, leading to hand-to-hand combat.

To put it simply, it’s the same reason many soldiers carry tactical knives during real operations.

I just chose to carry an axe instead of a knife.

Of course, it wasn’t that I wasn’t influenced by the Hunter who was deployed to kill Icarus operators.

And so the conversation continued.

Outside, it was still raining.

[Analysis] Analysis of Yujin’s route today.anal

Hey there, Dark Zone enthusiasts,

Today, I’m here to give you a brief explanation of Yujin’s gameplay, the hottest topic lately, for those who missed it.

Since I’m just sharing what I know, there might be some discrepancies between my perspective and the actual gameplay, but keep in mind that I’m just a perpetual 2nd leaguer, while Yujin is a human tank who’s slicing through all those top pro gamers like it’s nothing.

There’s a summary at the top and another one at the bottom.

<Photo of Yujin’s movement route>

To summarize Yujin’s movement route in three points:

1. Don’t do it.

2. Don’t try it.

3. You’ll get shredded.

 

To be blunt, Yujin’s route isn’t particularly good because the higher the tier, the more the motto of AP becomes about survival, not kill-catching.

As most of you probably know, AP has its own skill gaps between tiers, but if you’re unlucky, even a master player can get shredded by a pro gamer in an instant.

That’s why when you look at tactical analysis on YourSpace, the content is usually similar. The basic approach is to play it safe and raise survival rates—it’s a form of convergent evolution, so to speak.

That’s why Yujin’s playstyle inevitably stands out.

If we had to categorize this player’s actions as tactics, we could call it the bulldozer tactic or maybe the blender tactic? They just grind through whatever’s in their way.

Anyway, it’s a playstyle that ordinary people can’t imitate, but if you look closely, there’s a crazy psychological battle subtly at play.

For example, let’s take a look at the 1v2 situation you’ve all been excitedly discussing.

<Clip of Yujin in a firefight with Kyle down the hallway, with Mikael behind her>

<Interview with Mikael where he says he didn’t hear the sound of the smoke grenade being thrown>

If you look closely, Yujin released smoke deep in the hallway during the firefight… with what seems to be her tail.

What many people missed is that the sound of the smoke grenade rolling and exploding was completely drowned out by the gunfire.

In my opinion, this was done to avoid giving additional information. If Mikael had heard the sound of the smoke grenade going off, he would have thought something like this:

-“Huh? A smoke grenade? There’s a long hallway ahead, though?”

-“Looks like they’re trying to blind my sight and push through the hallway. I’d better speed up and catch up.”

It’s not certain, but that’s what I think. At least, that’s how I saw it.

Anyway, the sound of the smoke grenade was hidden, and Yujin blatantly wasted some ammo. I think this was partially to lure Mikael into throwing his grenade in a certain spot.

There’s a reason I think this.

<Point of impact where Mikael’s grenade landed>

If you look closely, you can see that Mikael didn’t throw the grenade deep into the hallway, thinking Yujin would be there.

But Yujin had already hidden in the smoke. Kyle, thinking Yujin would push through after throwing the smoke, retreated.

After dodging two grenades, Yujin immediately closed the distance. It seems Yujin decided to end it there.

And the next part is the ‘overhead throw’ scene that everyone knows.

To be blunt, if it wasn’t Yujin, whoever was there, even me, would’ve died. There’s no way to win in close combat against someone pushing with a shield.

I’ve seen all sorts of plays while gaming, but this one made me dizzy the moment I saw it.

What came next was…

…

<Content omitted>

[All Comments] [Sort by: Date]

• Upvoted before reading, lol

• Summary: Don’t even dream of trying this unless you’re Yujin

• I saw it roughly when Unreal and Russ were commentating, but breaking it down like this is nuts, lol

• While everyone else is struggling to survive like scrubs, here’s a guy filming a movie… which is why he’s even cooler….

• So today’s tip is that you can kill shield users by throwing them, right?

 

---[Author] Exactly^^

--- What the hell, lol, is this supposed to be a joke or what, lololol

--- Yujin, you crazy person, does a ballistic shield look like an ice cream bar to you?????

--- If that was possible, I would’ve smashed all those shield jerks a long time ago, lol

• LOL, but seriously, what’s with the title, lololol

 

---‘anal’

--- You need to add ‘yze’ at the end, lololol

--- Today’s Yujin Route Analysis. ‘Anal’

--- I’m literally dying of laughter, lololololololol

--- The next game won’t be Dark Zone; it’ll be in court, lol

…