Chapter 25
Chapter 25: Right Before a Major Disaster Strikes
Unlike the preliminaries held across the various capsule rooms throughout Seoul, the main tournament takes place in a single location.
Three hundred players in total.
Whether there's a place that can accommodate this staggering number all at once——``~
There is.
The largest capsule room in the country, nestled right in the heart of Gangnam.
That was where Mu-yeong and his companions arrived.
"Get your noodles, fresh noodles! Piping hot somyeon made by a server with ten years of experience! Limited quantities, so hurry——!"
"Step right up, a martial artist who has mastered pressure-point strikes will personally give you a shoulder massage! Just ten thousand won for five minutes! All the fatigue of your day will melt right away!"
They say people draw other people.
Merchants of every kind were weaving through the crowd, calling out for customers.
Mu-yeong, who had held some expectations, grimaced.
"……It's no different from a marketplace."
"Haha, this area is naturally the busiest and most crowded in all of Seoul. And with the tournament on top of it, isn't this outcome only natural?"
"Even so. Isn't this a bit much?"
The density of people was on an entirely different level.
He thought he had built up some tolerance by now, but it seems that was wishful thinking on his part.
He had expected at most a bit more than the preliminaries, but this was just……
Teeming.
Swarming.
Buzzing.
All he could see in every direction was a sea of heads.
Aside from the most common black, he could spot a fair number of bright, colorful dyes among them.
Here and there, even blue-eyed foreigners stood out.
But novelty was novelty, and bewilderment was bewilderment.
Mu-yeong let out a sigh at the long line stretching far ahead.
Surely I don't have to wait in all of this, do I?
Tournament participants surely had their own separate entrance somewhere.
He was considering using his Lightness Technique to fly above the crowd and look for it, when Divine Dragon puffed up his muscles.
"Shall I clear a path?"
"Just stay still, please."
"Yessir."
As Divine Dragon's frame shrank back down, Mu-yeong began scanning the area once more.
Looking for any entrance other than the main gate into the capsule room.
That was when a pleasant fragrance swept sharply into his nose.
The source was a woman passing by nearby.
"Oh, everyone. I just arrived—goodness……. Can you see all these people? Feels like there are way more than last year?"
She had shoulder-length bob-cut hair and looks that held their own even next to Yu Ye-rin.
Holding a selfie stick and appearing to talk to herself, she walked with confidence, drawing the gazes of everyone around her.
The Iron Blood Witch, noticing the woman, whispered.
"Seems like a streamer doing an outdoor broadcast."
"I think I saw her at the preliminaries too. And here she is again, right on cue."
"At events like this, the live viewer count is solid and the Newtube views come out decent enough that they can't really afford to skip it."
Well, she's someone who does broadcasting for a living, so in a way it's only natural.
Mu-yeong stared at her for a moment.
She appeared entirely unbothered by the stares around her, as if this sort of thing was second nature.
If he ever found himself doing an outdoor broadcast, would he have to act like that too?
If he did it, what kind of content would be best?
While he was briefly lost in other thoughts, the voices of people behind him drifted into his ears.
"Hey, do you know who that person is? I feel like I've seen her somewhere but I can't place her."
"Who? That person?"
"Yeah, looks like a streamer……."
"That's Yu-na, Yu-na. Looks like she made it to the main tournament too."
Yu-na?
Could it be the Yu-na I know?
Mu-yeong's eyes widened at the unexpected name.
Her voice does sound similar, but……
That's the Yu-na who plays Battle Attack?
Of course, they'd known each other for a little while now.
But when he'd visited her stream, she hadn't turned on her camera, so he had no idea what she looked like.
As he wavered between doubt and belief, the woman presumed to be Yu-na fiddled with her phone.
"Hmm……. There are so many people, the stream seems to be cutting out a bit. The tournament's starting soon anyway, so I'll wrap it up here. Everyone, please cheer me on! See you——"
As she waved her hand, she slowly came to a stop.
The smile on her lips fading, just as the broadcast seemed to end——
Her eyes met Mu-yeong's.
"……Huh?"
She tilted her head.
For a moment she stared at Mu-yeong intently, then creased her face into a slight frown.
Then, pointing a finger at him, she widened her already-large eyes even further.
"No way?"
"That 'no way' would be correct."
"Whaaat, seriously? You're actually Mu-yeong?"
Yu-na rushed over in a single stride.
Standing right in front of him, she began looking him up and down with keen interest.
"Oh…… ohhh……!"
Good grief, the same reaction as Yu Ye-rin.
Though if anything, this felt just a little more uncomfortable.
How to put it—she was incredibly forward, that's the word for it.
It felt like the personality he'd sensed through her streams was coming through exactly as-is.
"More importantly, how do you know what I look like? We've never met."
"Obviously I looked you up on Newtube. I was curious what the guy who knocked me flat looked like!"
"That's the kind of thing that gets misunderstood if the wrong person hears it."
"Aah, never mind that. Wow……. You really are handsome. Why would someone with a face like this have been living in the mountains?"
"……There were circumstances."
"No wonder the viewers go so wild. I'd believe it right now if someone told me you were a celebrity?"
Yu-na naturally moved to stand beside Mu-yeong.
Close enough for their shoulders to barely brush.
This woman's social magnetism is something else.
He had vaguely anticipated it from her behavior up to now, but to think she'd be like this in person too.
As he stroked his chin, Yu-na opened her mouth again.
"Anyway, congratulations. I heard you were in the group of death, but you made it to the main tournament fair and square? I knew you could, Mu-yeong."
"It wasn't as difficult as I expected."
"……You're the only person in the world who'd think that. Oh, right. And I passed the preliminaries too, but you didn't know, did you?"
"Congratulations. I was sure you'd pass without a doubt."
"It's written all over your face—where do you get off lying like that."
Yu-na smirked and changed the subject.
"By the way, it's pretty chaotic here, right? You didn't get lost on your way?"
"I was held up, but I didn't get lost."
"That's a relief. Normally it's not this bad, but there's been an unusually big crowd this time. Because of a certain someone."
"You mean No Song-baek?"
"Hm?"
Yu-na suddenly made a deflated sound.
Then with a face full of layered meaning, she asked back.
"Are you really asking because you don't know?"
"I'm asking precisely because I don't know."
"……You really are a natural wonder. An absolute natural wonder."
Rather than explaining, she pulled out her phone.
She opened Newtube and played a familiar video.
"You know that legendary battle where the bomb murderer Choo Geol-gae was taken down? That's what brought all these people flooding in. Like: I absolutely have to watch the main tournament in person!"
Is it really that extreme?
Looking at it now, even his footwork was trembling slightly at the edges and the movements weren't perfectly smooth.
Mu-yeong stared at it in earnest.
Yu-na then jabbed him in the side.
"Anyway, the one responsible for all of this is you, Mu-yeong. Right up until last year it was nothing like this."
"It all feels rather surreal."
"It's a good thing though. It means your fanbase is growing, right?"
She smiled, then clapped her hands together once.
"Oh, right. We need to get inside quickly. You have to check in at least an hour before it starts. Come on, follow me."
Fwoooosh—with Yu-na slipping through the crowd, they arrived at a quiet back entrance.
[Authorized Personnel Only]
Right.
There was a separate entrance after all.
If it hadn't been for Yu-na, Mu-yeong would have stood in that line all along.
.
.
.
.
"Ah, Commentator Song Jae-woo. Could you give us a brief overview of how today's matches will be run?"
"Of course. First of all, everyone will know that three hundred players have made it to the main tournament. Divide that into five groups and you have sixty per group, yes? From there, the top twelve get selected—though the scoring system differs from the preliminaries."
"How so?"
"For one, the match continues until only one player remains. After that, points are awarded on a sliding scale based on kills and final placement."
"I see! So it's not simply about surviving the longest! You need to rack up kills appropriately to advance to the second round of the main tournament?"
"Exactly!"
In name it's the first round of the main tournament, but in practice it's nothing more than another qualifying stage to pare three hundred players down to sixty.
Those sixty who survive will then play the real game.
A fight for survival, with prize money on the line.
"And I hear this tournament's prize money isn't exclusively distributed to first, second, and third place?"
"That's right. To add variety and excitement, the organizers have introduced a few additions!"
"What are they?"
"The Top Kill Award. This is exactly what it sounds like—prize money for whoever records the most kills. The amount is a whopping ten million won! But it doesn't end there. There's also something called the Romance Award."
"The Romance Award? What on earth is that?"
"It's an award given through viewer voting—fans pick the one player who was the most entertaining and enjoyable to watch! And it's no small sum either. Five million won!"
—Oh nice lol
—Right lol, this is what makes it worth watching lol
—They did their job
—Nice nice
Due to the nature of a Battle Royale, camping and cheap play tend to occur frequently.
Even more so when prize money is on the line.
The problem is that if it keeps up, there's nothing fun to watch.
You came to see a Hyper-FPS but there are no fights breaking out?
That leads straight to viewer drop-off.
The Romance Award and the Top Kill Award were the organizers' effort to prevent exactly that.
"I certainly hope this time too there will be legendary moments like in the preliminaries."
"Agreed. There were a few memorable battles, but above all, the reaction to that unranked player was explosive."
"Oh, of course. How could anyone forget? All sorts of nicknames were born after that day, weren't they?"
"Yes. Grenade Launcher, The Guy Who Doesn't Use His Gun in a Gunfight, Merry-Go-Bomb Close—with that one-of-a-kind play style, the popularity is absolutely through the roof!"
"Though unfortunately, I just got the data in and it seems that unranked player isn't listed as such anymore."
"What? What do you mean?"
Kim Cheol was visibly startled.
No one had openly said it, but the most anticipated player in this tournament was the one with the username WillWinTournament.
And yet he supposedly wasn't participating?
What sort of bolt from the blue was that?
"Haha, there may have been a slight misunderstanding. Strictly speaking, he is here."
Song Jae-woo laughed heartily and held up a finger.
"There was a three-day gap between the preliminaries and the main tournament, wasn't there? It seems he spent that time diligently playing the game."
"Phew……. I thought something had happened. So that means he hit Level 20 and played ranked? What tier is he?"
"Try to guess. Where do you think he'd be?"
"Hmm, his skill itself is top-tier, but given the time constraints I'd say…… Diamond?"
Kim Cheol said cautiously.
In truth, even that was a slight underestimate on his part.
Battle Attack ran a system where the better you performed, the more points you received exponentially, causing your tier to spike sharply.
"No."
"Then surely Master……."
"Bronze."
"……Excuse me? Did you just say——"
Kim Cheol questioned his own ears.
Half-wondering if he had heard wrong, he turned the word over in his mind.
Song Jae-woo immediately added an explanation.
"As you know, accounts going through initial placement for the very first time receive points on the stingy side, don't they? By way of encouraging them to get more experience first. That appears to be how this result came about."
"Ah, so from here on, the unranked player should no longer be called——"
"We'll have to call him the Bronze player."
Kim Cheol and Song Jae-woo burst out laughing simultaneously.
And for good reason—people had implicitly placed unranked higher than Bronze.
Bronze was the very bottom, the lowest of the low tiers.
A place said to be populated only by those operating entirely without brains.
But unranked carried the possibility of being placed higher than that, which was what had led to that perception.
"A Bronze player……."
"And a Bronze player who made it to the main tournament, at that."
"Truly a meaningful tournament."
"Indeed."
How much time passed with their smiles undimmed?
The signal came that the first round was ready to begin.
"The wait is over! Is everyone ready?"
"The match for Group 1 will now begin!"
Amid thunderous applause, the screen switched to the observer view.
There, a character with no skins equipped whatsoever had just finished landing.
At his feet lay a single revolver, gleaming brilliantly.
Kim Cheol, recognizing what it was, let out a dumbstruck sound.
"Huh? Already?"
The Bronze player who had just been the talk of the show picked up the Peacemaker.
In that instant, an alarm went off inside Song Jae-woo's head.
A major disaster was about to strike.