Chapter 140

“Wow! Wow! Yoon-ho! You’re actually doing it? Hey hey! I believed in you!”

Rumi shouts from beside him.

And Alpaca tenses his body, clenching his fists as he prepares to cheer.

Windstorm Sword seems awkward in this kind of atmosphere and can’t make any sound, but still appears to be watching with intense focus.

‘There’s some tension here.’

Seo-jun was watching the limp, squishy characters’ fight with great interest.

The player character in Beast Cartel was like a doll made with a clay-like texture.

Matching that appearance, their movements were also extremely limp and lacking in power—you’d wonder if the physics engine was even supposed to work that way—yet surprisingly, there was still impact to the hits.

Thud!

Thud thud thud!

[Team Captain Ha Yoon-ho’s squishy punch!]

[Oh! Is he getting grabbed by the collar? He’s been grabbed! Weed player! He’s carrying Team Captain Ha Yoon-ho toward the grinder at the edge of the map!]

[With only two left! And if Ha Yoon-ho can’t be killed here, it’s over!]

“No! If we win just this round we’ll be first place, but if we lose we have to play one more round!”

Rumi speaks worriedly, and Alpaca and Windstorm Sword’s eyes widen at that moment!

The opponent’s yellow clay character lets go of Yoon-ho’s blue character.

Like being on the moon where gravity is insufficient, the character that fell to the ground bounces twice with a boing boing sound.

Then Yoon-ho gets up and this time grabs and lifts the opponent instead.

[The tables are turning!]

Thump, thump, thump, thump!

The character showing true moonwalking throws the opponent into the grinder beside them, and text appears.

[Game Over!]

[Winner Ha Yoon-ho!]

[Wow! Congratulations. The points for the first game go to Team Captain Ha Yoon-ho’s team, who was first to collect 3 victory rounds!]

“Wow! Yoon-ho actually pulled it off!”

“He really did!”

“Well of course…”

Windstorm Sword was about to say something but stopped.

Seo-jun felt like he could guess what came next. Not just Seo-jun—anyone who knew the team’s atmosphere from earlier could probably guess.

‘Yoon-ho would’ve been in deep trouble if he hadn’t pulled something off.’

That was the team atmosphere.

While the other E-grade players had come with the mindset of just hoping to win, for Ha Yoon-ho it had been a matter of life and death.

That difference in mindset from the start was why he was able to win, Seo-jun thought.

[Haha! Then please reveal the points!]

[Yes! The points going to Team Captain Ha Yoon-ho’s team are 500 points!]

The points earned from winning this game were indeed the same points from the auction.

The team with the most points remaining at the end of today would gain the right to choose groups.

This was how the remaining points after the auction ended were utilized.

“500 points?!”

Alpaca’s eyes widened.

“We have the most!”

Even teams that hadn’t spent much in the auction didn’t have 500 points left over.

-Wow!

-They’re giving out a ton lol

-Well, they won’t have any use for it after tomorrow anyway, so might as well pour it all out

[Oh, and now we’ll prepare for the second game. Just so you know, the winning team of the second game gets 2,000 points! So everyone, fight until the very end!]

Arin winks and an advertisement plays.

-Damn LOL

-If they just win at Ground Zero, they get to decide groups lol

-What’s this retreat meta lmao

-Operations team: We put everything on the last game so they’d fight until the end lol

In the final battle, making everything that came before meaningless—this is called the retreat meta.

Seo-jun thought it was quite appropriate and smiled.

It wasn’t an unpleasant smile.

This was a competition where everyone was supposed to have fun anyway.

The team members didn’t get angry either.

“Oh right. Wasn’t this always how these competitions were?”

Everyone nodded in agreement at Rumi’s words.

* * *

“The winner has returned!”

The team captain came back to the lobby. He was wearing a triumphant expression.

But now that the retreat meta had been revealed, it would be hard to get a good reaction.

“Oh, you’re back?”

“Good work.”

“Well done!”

“Thanks for your effort.”

At the lukewarm response, Ha Yoon-ho looked puzzled and shook his head. Then just as he opened his mouth to brag.

“Well then, let’s discuss how we’ll handle the next game.”

Alpaca spoke.

Ha Yoon-ho shot looks that said things like ‘What about my victory? Where’s my congratulations? I did well this time, didn’t I?’ but Alpaca lightly ignored them.

“You’ve heard the explanation about the battle royale earlier, right?”

Alpaca was speaking to Seo-jun. Originally, he was the only one who hadn’t played that game.

“Yes.”

Ground Zero.

An FPS battle royale game.

Battle royale refers to rules where participants are thrown into one location and fight until the last person or last team is left standing.

When many people compete at once—like the current situation—it was exactly the right genre for a quick round.

“Ah! I got 500 points but if we win this we get in total of 2,000 points!”

Ha Yoon-ho realized the cause through the chat and muttered to himself. Now that he understood the reason, Ha Yoon-ho’s sense of injustice completely disappeared and he immediately joined the meeting.

“Seo-jun-nim knows about it too, right? Then! Let’s go with the Gandhi strategy.”

Battle royale had various paths to that final victory, since the system was that whoever became the last one standing won.

The most representative strategies were the camping meta, Gandhi meta, and Lü Bu meta.

The camping meta involved staying in one place as much as possible and only dealing with enemies that came to you.

It was similar to the Gandhi meta, which aimed for non-violence by avoiding combat as much as possible.

And the Lü Bu meta, which was exactly the opposite, involved actively seeking out combat.

Besides these, there were countless other strategies like the real estate agent meta (securing good building positions early), the prayer meta (just hoping to the sky), and so on, but most could be considered entertainment-focused, Seo-jun had heard.

Ha Yoon-ho continued.

“First, there are quite a few people, right? 24 people. Even if it’s a small map, there should be plenty of room for farming items. So how about we take the safe route—full farming first, then fighting when the player count decreases? By then Seo-jun-nim should be familiar enough to really take off.”

This meant avoiding early combat as much as possible.

“If we’re lucky enough to get a supply drop, we’ll give it to Seo-jun-nim.”

Everyone nodded in agreement again.

“Do you trust me?”

Seo-jun asked with a meaningful smile.

“Yes.”

“There aren’t any Ground Zero specialist streamers, so Seo-jun-nim is the only one we can trust.”

Ah, right.

“Oh, but we don’t have to win necessarily. Being able to fight the people we want in the group stage would be nice, but it’s not a huge advantage.”

This was said to relieve pressure.

But Seo-jun hadn’t felt any pressure from the start.

‘If we’re going to do it, we should win.’

First time playing the game?

That’s fine. Really, unless it had some bizarre control scheme, they’re all pretty much the same, and the way to win is the same, isn’t it?

“Then how about we do both the Gandhi meta and Lü Bu meta?”

“What?”

-Lmao what kind of crazy thing is he trying to do now

-Can those two coexist?

-Here he goes with more insane talk.

* * *

Seo-jun launched Ground Zero. Then he accepted the tournament organizers’ invitation.

An interface appeared with a list of about twenty people.

The game had 24 participants, 4 people per team.

Even the smallest map usually ran with 64 people.

Of course, there were event maps that ran with 32 people, but either way, it definitely had fewer people than a typical game.

[Alright! Then let’s begin!]

When the game started, the official broadcast that Seo-jun had been watching cut out.

Then he opened his eyes in a somewhat dark, massive warehouse. Loud vibrations and noise were traveling through the walls to reach him.

‘Oh right. It’s not a warehouse but a plane, right? We drop down to the map from here and then the fighting starts.’

Twenty-four users were sitting in a line against the wall by teams.

Some people wore strange helmets, others were covered in pink, and even more shocking, there was a streamer wearing only underwear.

Even if it was just an avatar, it was scanned from their real body, so that was quite bold confidence.

‘I should be a bit careful of that person.’

There was a saying in the martial world.

Be wary of women, children, and old people.

Similarly, there was a saying in games.

Be wary of users wearing only underwear.

They were either complete newbies who were really weak, or incredible masters who had nothing left to do in the game. One of the two.

Since Seo-jun, a first-timer, was wearing normal pants and a jacket, that person was likely a master.

“Seo-jun-nim! The plane door will open soon. Get ready to drop! First we need to check what map it is, and you can see the minimap once the door opens, okay? We need to look at the map and situation first…”

While Rumi beside Seo-jun was explaining, there was a loud crash.

Clang!

Whirrrr!

The plane door began to open.

Users with good eyes could tell where they were just from the sky color before even seeing the terrain below.

“It’s the Great Desert!”

“Crazy, they’re giving us the biggest map with only 24 people?”

“Quick, check the minimap!”

Chaos erupted.

In contrast, his team members were calm. They had decided to just watch people drop and head to the most peaceful location.

The Gandhi meta.

“Let’s check it out too.”

Each map has a fixed plane route. So once you confirm the map, if you know the game reasonably well, there’s usually no need to rush.

But this wasn’t a regular game. It was a tournament, and who knew what the organizers had done.

Sure enough.

“What! Why is the storm already formed!”

“Damn. This is going to be brutal fighting.”

“If we’d jumped right away we would’ve died from storm damage on the way to the safe zone. Whew.”

The storm.

An essential device in battle royales.

Seo-jun carefully examined the circle drawn on the minimap.

“This circle—if you’re outside it, your health continuously drains, right?”

“Yes. And that circle keeps shrinking over time, restricting the safe play area.”

To avoid the storm, you had to come inside the circle, so users spread across the map would naturally gather and fight.

“But having the circle at a size that doesn’t even cover half the map from the start means…”

They want us to start close together from the beginning.

“Yes. It’s the organizers’ scheming.”

-Scary

-Well, would they want to watch streamers comfortably full-farming and then fighting? Lol

-For real lol

“What do you want to do?”

Alpaca asked Seo-jun whether to reconsider the strategy.

And Seo-jun answered without a moment’s hesitation.

“Let’s stick to the plan.”

Narrow space? Even better.

* * *

When the transport plane entered the safe zone, users began jumping out one by one.

And among them was the Challenger Jungle Goblin.

‘The camp is ours to take.’

Whoosh!

With the heart-dropping sensation of free fall, the goblin who began falling controlled his speed while surveying the surroundings.

The former was because if you fall too fast, your parachute won’t deploy, and the latter was to check how many competitors there were for the camp.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

‘Huh?’

He counted again.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

‘Huh? What?’

Same number.

This couldn’t be right.

The count he just made didn’t include himself, so he couldn’t help but be confused.

Including him, that meant 9 people were heading to one spot, but in a 4-person team game, how could 9 people be possible?

-Huh? Isn’t that Jin Seo-jun?

-That noisy guy from the start?

-He was the loudest during the auction today too lol

-995 points worth of expensive body

Looking at the chat, Goblin who properly identified each person could see the situation clearly.

Jin Seo-jun.

The biggest mystery of this auction, where three team captains had gone all-in.

‘He must have jumped to the wrong place.’

Goblin didn’t think much of it until then.

‘I’ll grab the camp quickly and head underground…’

Whoosh!

But when some object plummeting vertically passed by him at high speed, he was quite shocked.

‘Not controlling speed? If he does that…’

The object that passed him was Seo-jun. And the acceleration was no joke.

As expected, his parachute didn’t deploy due to the system.

CRASH!

Seo-jun landed on a rooftop. Faster than any of the 9 people.

‘Wow. He actually managed to turn his body at the end and land properly though.’

Goblin admired this while deploying his parachute.

-What an absolute madman LMAO

-Going solo and doing a naked dive lmao

-His health is critically low now. Let’s go get him

“Going after him would be dangerous.”

The good thing about falling without deploying your parachute is that you can land on the ground first and farm items before anyone else.

Even so, there are reasons why people don’t do it.

-His health is so low that one hit would kill him, and you’re going to let this slide?

-Just go poke him once

-He’s obviously a clueless newbie, let’s show him the bitter taste of battle royale
Fall damage.

This refers to the game system where you take health damage if you fall from above a certain height.

“With that health, he’ll die quickly even if it’s not me.”

Goblin slowly descended via parachute while heading toward a building a bit away from Seo-jun.

He caught a glimpse that luckily there was a pistol on the rooftop where Seo-jun had landed.

‘Ah, I was planning to go there first.’

Goblin felt regretful and watched Seo-jun.

At first, Seo-jun seemed confused and scratched his head.

Then after saying something to his viewers, he shrugged and trudged toward the pistol.

The pistol ended up in Seo-jun’s hands.

‘Should I keep some distance?’

And at that moment.

Seo-jun and Goblin made eye contact.

Seo-jun grinned.

Then he threw the pistol he was holding far away.

‘What?’

It was an incomprehensible development.

But Seo-jun’s next action was even more outrageous.

‘He’s raising both hands? That’s a boxing stance? He’s doing that toward me?’

-Goblin is being invited to hand-to-hand combat lol

-Why did he throw away the pistol when one hit would kill him lol

-Ah lmao Goblin is quasi-pro level at real boxing, and he’s challenging this

-One thing’s for sure, he’s definitely a true madman

‘Damn… I can’t resist this.’

Goblin changed his parachute’s direction.