[Bout type: 1v1 singles]
[Match class: Japanese Amateur League match]
[Victory condition: Kill the opposing participant]
[Map: Silent Cityscape (Small)]
[Current spectators: 1,042]
[Matchup: 2,749 vs 8,674]
This map was the heart of a city after dark.
Between the light bleeding out of building windows and the streetlamps dotted about, making out my surroundings was no great difficulty.
"......!"
I rolled to get clear of something flying at me.
SHOOOOOM— THUNK!
What buried itself in the roadside tree was an arrow.
This opponent was an archer.
Whether he had been trained properly, or whether he was the type who used several weapons and had picked a bow because of what this map was like, I couldn't tell yet.
What mattered was that for this match he had chosen concealment, mobility and guerrilla fighting.
I ducked straight into an alley where the dark had settled.
'This match is going to be fairly tricky.'
The bow is a weapon that is hard to build proficiency in.
I had shot one myself, once. There is no weapon to match it for sniping a target quietly.
'Though I gave it up soon enough.'
Which was why I knew better than anyone how dangerous my current situation was.
An arrow out of the dark was lethal even to a trained mercenary.
And with the map being a city, it was that much worse.
Streetlamps, neon signs and light bleeding out of buildings all mixed together, throwing scattered shadows everywhere.
On top of that, a city is a vertical battlefield.
Simply working out the direction wasn't enough to pin an archer's position precisely.
That vertical structure was certain to push him into being a thorough hunter and me into being helpless prey.
'First I need to find the shooting positions.'
I left the alley and sprinted along the main road.
SHWEEEEEK! FSSSSSSS—
In that instant an arrow came past me alongside a red line and skittered across the asphalt.
Thanks to it I had his rough position.
The 8 o'clock direction, taking the tallest building as my reference.
Allowing for a bow's usual effective range, I put him within 200 or 300 m.
'Luckily his skill is at a dismal level.'
I moved in a zigzag, following the line the arrow had flown along.
The method for hunting a sniper is simple.
They always hold to a safe zone.
A space with a clear field of view, with a line of retreat, and with the wind steady.
There were a few spots that satisfied all three conditions, but luckily there was exactly one near me.
'Behind the billboard on the roof of the K-Denki electronics mall.'
Once I had come close, I threw a stone and tapped the wall with the flat of my blade, making noise on purpose.
The idea was to push him into changing where he was hidden.
Then a red line took aim between my eyes.
"......!"
I turned my head on reflex.
SHWEEEEEK— KRAK!
The arrowhead slammed into the concrete wall, and cement dust flew everywhere, stinging my face.
And past it I could see him: a man in a dark gray hooded jacket and a tactical vest with light ballistic panels in it.
"......Tch!"
Found out, the archer jumped straight down off the billboard and slipped into a nearby high-rise.
He was presumably planning to use the complicated interior layout to build himself another shooting position.
But there was one thing he didn't know.
Concealment, close-quarters brawling in cramped spaces like this, and pursuit are my specialties.
I started up the stairs of the building the archer had entered without a moment's hesitation.
Carrying a lot of equipment gives you excellent versatility across situations, but it has the weakness of lowering your mobility.
From the moment I had his position, the archer might as well have had me behind him already.
'He walked into a dead end on his own two feet.'
I passed the 5th floor, and just as I was about to climb to the 6th.
"......."
I grinned under the mask.
A vivid red line cut across my field of view.
Before he had even thrust his sword, my own blade was already waiting at the spot where that edge would end up.
'I knew you'd jump me around here.'
CLANG!
At the same moment I knocked his blade aside, I drew the knife with my empty left hand and shoved it into his thigh.
"Guuh......!"
Then I took him down just like that, pinned his left arm hard with my right knee, and leveled my point at his chest.
The archer's brow creased with pain and his lips trembled.
"Sasuga...... uwasa no toori da. Yokereba waga girudo ni konai ka? Saikou kurasu no taiguu o yakusokushi......."
What is he even saying?
I only know basic Japanese, so I just pushed the blade in.
"Tch...... H-Hito ga hanashitenda......."
The grisly sensation of bone parting traveled up through my palm.
His body shook in small tremors, and then went slack.
At the same moment a notice window surfaced in front of me.
[You have defeated participant '8,674'.]
[Victory!]
***
"......Agh, my eyes sting. Did I focus too hard?"
Go Tae-min slid out of the capsule and let out a long breath.
His whole body was drenched in sweat.
They might say you didn't actually die, but a fight was unmistakably a fight.
Every single match he ran was bound to drain him badly.
Considering that even on a contract he had fought at most two or three times a week, Nova Arena was a brutally harsh environment for a participant.
And more than that......
'What is this? My opponents feel like they're getting stronger. Wasn't this random matchmaking?'
For the first 3 days or so they had been at broadly the same level.
But now every opponent he met was on the level of the samurai from day one, or above it.
Go Tae-min was puzzling over the sudden rise in the participants' level when Chae Geon-uk dragged his chair over with a long scrape and asked:
"You out? Time to eat. What do you want?"
"Bulgogi Burger."
Chae Geon-uk put on a look of weary exasperation at the answer.
"Hamburgers again? Eat a variety of things, kid."
"That's why I change the menu every time."
Shrimp Burger for lunch yesterday.
Chicken Burger for dinner, and a Rice Burger this morning.
When he explained as much, Chae Geon-uk's expression got worse rather than better.
Go Tae-min tilted his head.
'How can anyone not like hamburgers?'
The hamburger is a complete food.
Its carb-protein-fat ratio is good, it has the reassurance of tasting the same every time, and it's high in calories.
On top of that you can eat it straight away with no fuss.
And more than anything else...... it's cheap.
He couldn't understand why his senior disliked a hamburger like that.
"Argh, now I have to eat a hamburger too because of the minimum order."
Chae Geon-uk burst out in frustration while looking at his phone screen.
The sight of him made Go Tae-min snort.
His senior grumbled like that now, but when they first met the man had been a completely rigid soldier.
Their first meeting had been at a temporary FOB (forward operating base) near the Cameroon jungle, where the man had greeted him with a cold face.
At the time Go Tae-min had been an operative of the 9th Clandestine Unit, which selected only a tiny few even inside the Armed Forces Defense Intelligence Command.
A specialist who infiltrated and ran missions not as a team but as an individual cell.
Chae Geon-uk, on the other hand, belonged to the Special Mission Group (SMG), a unit specializing in reconnaissance and recovery, directly under the Defense Intelligence Command.
The connection they had formed on an operation to support and retrieve Go Tae-min from deep inside enemy ground had carried on to this day.
Honestly, Go Tae-min had never once imagined Chae Geon-uk working as an information broker after discharge.
That a senior who had believed in regulations and procedure would become a gray-market information broker.
This was exactly why you could never tell with people.
Ding-dong—!
A moment later the food Chae Geon-uk had ordered arrived.
Go Tae-min chewed noisily through his hamburger and asked:
"By the way, did you poke around at all about the bastards who jumped me?"
"Ah, them? They were absolutely set on it. Looked like a whole company got committed just to bury you guys? They swept the place so clean they didn't even leave a trace."
"That much? Honestly, what on earth was there in that place to make them commit that many people?"
Go Tae-min let out a laugh of disbelief, and Chae Geon-uk tapped his phone screen and went on.
"And lately high-difficulty infiltration jobs have suddenly been pouring in. Exactly the kind you'd be good for."
"They've laid the mousetrap out nice and pretty too, have they?"
Go Tae-min stroked his chin and murmured it low.
Thinking back to the radio traffic he had overheard at the end, there was no doubt the other side had been after him as well.
Which meant carrying on as a mercenary had become difficult for a while.
For a man who absolutely needed money, that made his reason for climbing to the Pro League all the clearer.
Go Tae-min tucked a leaf of lettuce back into his hamburger where it had fallen out and mumbled:
"Who ends up as the prey...... I suppose we'll know if we watch it through to the end."
***
In Nova Arena, the higher you climb the more money you make.
Fight purses, sponsors, advertising, spectator numbers: all of it rises exponentially.
Put simply, it was a structure where the more people watched, the more revenue grew.
In that sense the Amateur League had the most participants but, conversely, the least attention of any league.
As a rule it was difficult even to push spectator numbers into double digits.
And yet lately there were matches in the Amateur League whose spectator count started at 1,000 at the very least.
Namely No. 2,749.
It was Go Tae-min's match.
【Nekopanchi】 2749 is here!!!!!!!
└Wow.. he's still undefeated?
└Which is why he's already being called the Demon
└Personally I hope he sets his handle to Demon when he goes up to the Pro League. I've already become his fan
└He'll probably keep winning after he moves up too, won't he? His movement is already World League level
└Hey, isn't that disrespecting the World Warriors a bit too much?
【Boozehound_Samurai】 Where do I have to go to buy that demon mask? (serious)
└There's talk that 2749 made it himself
└If you search 'demon-face mask' on Mercari you do get something similar
└But doesn't a mask narrow your vision and get in the way?
【Nameless_Swordsman】 I analyzed 2749's combat patterns [long post]
└Thanks for the long post (didn't read)
└Judging by how even his breathing stays when he swings, I think he's a person who has been through fights like this often before
└This is the analysis post I was waiting for! So what's the conclusion?
└(Summary of how to handle 2749: don't get matched)
└Thaaaaanks a lot for the summary
└At this rate are we about to get the Japanese Amateur League's first undefeated promotion?
The people who watch the Amateur League are, by and large, nothing but participants aiming at the Pro League.
So the related communities were similar in character.
Mostly fervent participants exchanging information and studying purely in order to take a Pro License.
Given that, Go Tae-min's performances were bound to spread fast.
And this situation soon reached Korea too, which was parched for a top-tier warrior.
"Did you hear about it? Apparently there's a participant piling up an undefeated record in the Japanese amateurs lately."
Nova Korea Arena.
Oh Hyeon-seok, CEO of the body known in short as NKA, asked his secretary.
"You mean the participant they're already calling the Demon? Currently sitting at 85 matches undefeated."
"That was yesterday. He's done two more today, so now it's 87 undefeated. Damn it, Amagi Shohei is going to sneer at me again."
Oh Hyeon-seok pressed a hand to his forehead and groaned low.
Amagi Shohei, CEO of Japan's NJA, had a gift for talk and a real knack for needling rival branches.
The secretary gave an awkward smile and added, carefully:
"That must sting."
Korea is a country with world-class competitiveness in esports and VR content.
So a great many people had expected Korea to stand out in Nova Arena too.
But reality had not been so accommodating.
This modern Colosseum, which had never existed before, was not a simple virtual-reality game but a combat platform in another category entirely, one that demanded real combat instincts and physical limits as well.
As a result, Korean warriors had produced nothing worth mentioning in Nova Arena.
Not a single Korean-born warrior in the Super League or the Master League, and in the World League only a little over ten active in total.
So NKA too had poured every kind of effort into prospect development, equipment support and hiring foreign coaches over the past several years, but so far the results had not been good.
Prospects who soared under a brilliant spotlight had quickly run into the ceiling of their talent and snapped.
"We need one like that to come out of us too, at least one......"
CEO Oh Hyeon-seok looked at the masked participant on his monitor screen and shook his head.
Nova Arena is no longer a single piece of cultural content.
Once BCI technology made it possible to reproduce combat without casualties, every nation began raising combat talent in Nova Arena instead of risking military training and covert operations.
Which is to say that performance in Nova Arena had become the very measure of national strength.
What is more, Nova Arena had already left the popularity of established sports like soccer, baseball, MMA and boxing far behind.
Super League viewership had passed the World Cup final, and rankers' names were brought up even in summit talks between heads of state.
The number and quality of a country's high-tier warriors.
An age in which that led directly to a nation's standing.
It was only natural that Oh Hyeon-seok was parched for a Korean warrior who would perform in the upper leagues.
"And on top of that, I hear head office is preparing a national-team competition?"
"That's correct. They say the goal is to make it a worldwide event surpassing the Olympics."
The two of them sighed at the same time.
For a Korea with no promising top-tier warriors, it was an unwelcome event.
"Damn it. That 2,749 should have come out of the Korean league......"
Oh Hyeon-seok muttered it while watching the replay footage of the man in the demon mask.
The silhouette moving like black lightning in front of his eyes only made the bitterness worse.