Placement Match – Provisional Tier [Gold 1]
1 Win 0 Losses
[ O / _ / _ / _ / _ ]
*Figured I wouldn't feel anything, so why does this feel so good?*
I finished with 32 kills and 3 deaths, and when I got back to my room, the mailbox light was blinking.
I clicked on it, and apparently there were separate rewards just for ranked matches.
Huh, didn't know that was a thing.
"Arena currency? Oh, an exclusive shop? You can exchange things?? Can I gold farm by selling this stuff?!"
I clicked on the details. You get 1 coin per ranked game as a base, plus 2 more for a win, and an extra 3 on top of that if you're MVP.
So in my case, I'd just gotten 6 coins from that last match.
I browsed the shop to see what I could buy.
(Exclusive Weapon Parts)
[Laser Scope – 100 Coins]
[Magazine Assembly – 100 Coins]
[Receiver Frame – 200 Coins]
[Engraving Core – 500 Coins]
(Part Plating – 200 Coins each)
[Bronze]
[Silver]
[Gold]
[Black Iron]
[Abyss]
[Bloodstained]
[Aurora]
"Whaaaat? Why is everything so expensive."
I mean, you can earn a maximum of 6 coins per match, so how many consecutive wins do you need just to buy one 100-coin item?
Suddenly I deeply regretted every Quick Match I'd ever played.
Back then I never paid attention to any of this stuff, so I had no idea….
Maybe it's because I'm actually having fun now?
For some reason, I'm genuinely into customizing my look these days.
I've got my character decked out with bunny ears and everything.
The way the ears flutter every time you jump is just *chef's kiss.*
Which brings me to my point.
"I want it…."
I'd been pinching my allowance penny by penny to buy the pricier exclusive weapons.
The Winchester (Win34) and the MF5 for 20,000 won and 10,000 won respectively.
Among snipers, the AWR is technically better than the Win34, but 30,000 won felt like too much, so I compromised.
They're both weapons I love, so it worked out….
The precious remaining 10,000 won went toward snacks with Si-yeon!
Anyway. Time to grind ranked and buy some cosmetics.
If I'd known it was this fun, I would've started ranked ages ago.
Once I get the cosmetics I want, should I sell the leftover Arena Coins for some gold farming?
Haven't checked yet, but it might actually be pretty decent money.
"Heheh."
If I make money, what do I even spend it on.
Buy a ton of cards again?
I was happily daydreaming when I snapped back and headed to the lobby.
I'm not playing alone, so I can't keep people waiting.
Which is why I felt like I barely got a minute to look around before heading back out.
"Hm?"
Where'd she go?
Kim Eun-ha had vanished from the ranked game room.
*Where did she run off to without a word.*
I frantically unmuted the stream I'd been watching on mute.
[——I just met her today. She said it was her first time in ranked, so we only played one game…. No, I'm not a queen bee, I was doing a viewer participation session and I didn't even know——]
Wait, what?
Kim Eun-ha's stream, which had only had 2 people in it when I joined, had somehow ballooned to 400 viewers.
She was mumbling away with this aggrieved look on her face.
Fidgeting like she didn't know what to do with herself. Poor thing.
Good grief.
Turns out this girl had stirred up some trouble.
Ever since the internet age arrived, one wrong move and you get completely dug up and exposed.
Gotta be careful.
Still, we'd played together, so I felt some sense of camaraderie. I silently vowed not to throw any stones myself and started reading the room.
— Hyeok said don't say anything to her. Get out, all of you.
— You didn't even think to check the kill/death ratio before the game started? lmaooo
— ??? : Bro you're so screwed. Let's pretend we've never met.
— Hello, I'm Fabre. Here to pin the queen bee.
The chat was flying so fast that even when I tried to carefully read through it to figure out what happened, it just kept scrolling past me.
So that's why streamers hate it when people type long messages.
Spam and walls of text are a real barrier.
After about five minutes of listening and reading through the chat—
"Hmm."
Cold sweat.
"This is…."
*Wait, was this because of me?*
I was the cause.
So basically, they'd swarmed in thinking she was some shady streamer using a high-tier viewer's alt account to boost her rank.
*I'm not high-tier, and this isn't an alt….*
This is one hundred percent my dad's ID, the main account!
Either way, when you're climbing rank, the matchmaking is off-balance at first, so wouldn't you inevitably keep getting similar matches? One or two games together shouldn't matter much whether it's duo or solo… now if it were ten games in a row, that'd be a different story.
And sure, I personally suspected I wasn't low-tier.
But I'm not a god—how would I know exactly? It's perfectly reasonable to play the first match casually just to test the waters.
"Hmph."
I just wanted to try viewer participation too.
I felt wronged and deflated, and my brow scrunched up on its own.
I had complaints, but there was nothing I could do, so I just sat in my chair bouncing my feet.
*……I ended up causing trouble for this person for no reason.*
Whoever she'd run into must have been pretty well-known.
The number of people who came to watch had already passed 400.
Based on the name that kept popping up in the chat, the streamer's name was Durihyeok.
I had no idea what he was doing that kept drawing more and more people in, so I switched over to his stream.
6,000 live viewers.
[See, I told you! The way the bullets just connect—this Shubbam makes no sense. I'm telling you, if you make eye contact it's a 4-shot kill. Is that a Beryl? The recoil on that thing is insane, how are you hitting shots from that far?]
*He's talking about me.*
Normally I'd be happy about that, but rather than being impressed by my play, it looked more like he was using it to explain "this is why she's an alt account," so all I could do was narrow my eyes.
[I mean, I'm on an alt too. You can just tell. Oh wait, look at this guy? You're on an alt too? What tier are you from? But after getting shot by them, I can tell. This one's above me!]
Turns out he was on an alt too.
Unbelievable.
I'm on my main, you idiot.
[At minimum Master, I'm telling you. Yeah. The team gap was big too. Team deathmatch always has that team-luck factor. Oh, my editor asked to duo just one game and I ended up getting hit by a truck.]
He was even in a duo?
So the one who was actually duoing on an alt was him. Great.
"Ugh."
My blood was boiling.
Someone's getting unfairly dragged through the mud, and he's over there laughing it up.
Sure, Durihyeok didn't exactly tell his viewers to "go roast Kim Eun-ha and her duo."
With that many people, toxic ones just naturally show up.
That part I can let go.
But.
It was my first time trying viewer participation and I thought it was so cool.
It was actually fun……
And I didn't even get to see Kim Eun-ha's genuine reaction to my gameplay.
[Ah, I should go play on my main. And everyone, I'll say it again—don't go after other streamers. When you do viewer participation, all kinds of people show up, it's unavoidable. She said she'd never met them before. The trolls keep coming. Just stop.]
Now he wants to act like the good guy?!
This guy is getting less and less likeable by the second.
[Main account solo queue, let's go~ Gotta hit Diamond~]
When Durihyeok switched to his main, the status screen that immediately appeared showed [Platinum 2 – 79 points].
Platinum 2?
My provisional tier is Gold 1, so that's pretty close.
*A few winning streaks and I'd be right around the same level.*
I sat down and thought it over.
"Heh."
The puffed-up cheeks I'd been holding slowly returned to normal, and the corner of my mouth started twitching.
Decision made.
You messed up my viewer participation session….
Looks like I'll have to do some unauthorized viewer participation with you.
***
"Let's gooooo!!"
[Victory!]
[Platinum 1 – 70 points]
Durihyeok was on a blazing four-game winning streak, with his promotion match now right around the corner.
"I told you, that first loss was just getting the bad luck out of the way."
— fr fr
— Getting smacked hard in the first game was actually a blessing in disguise lol
— Ugh, Shubbam should've lost, that would've been more fun.
— Boring boring
"Oh, shut up. I'm Diamond material."
The chat was flooded with "yeah right, Platinum forever," but Durihyeok didn't care.
Now just one step away from the Diamond promotion match he'd been dreaming of.
In one of those four wins, he'd run into a subscriber on the enemy team who'd thrown the game for him, making it an easy win.
He'd said "Aww, don't do that, it makes the game less fun~" but the grin plastered across his face made it zero percent convincing.
His viewers' boos?
None of that matters once he hits Diamond.
Durihyeok confidently queued up.
The match that loaded in was Saber Base.
A domination mode set inside an abandoned air force base, where teams fight to control the safe zone.
The key strategic points were the long, open runway and the underground hangar.
The runway, wide open with no cover, was sniper territory.
The hangar, tangled with containers and equipment, was prime ground for rifles.
"Please, please. Let there be one insane sniper on our team!"
The moment Saber Base loaded in, Durihyeok pressed his hands together in prayer.
Saber Base was a map where a sniper's skill stood out more than anywhere else.
Because while you could drop down from the runway above into the hangar below, you couldn't climb back up from the hangar to the runway.
If a sniper locked down the runway, the players in the underground hangar would face a nightmare scenario where the enemy could appear from anywhere.
"Saber Base is all about momentum. If we punch through the hangar right away, it makes things easier for our snipers up top. Let's rush it."
While Durihyeok was directing his team's riflers through in-game chat—
— Hyeok hoping for another loyal subject this time around, am I right?
— Wait? The person from earlier is on the enemy team?
— Who?
— Oh god, another loyal subject?
— nononono it's that alt from the first game. The one who solo-carried by the scruff of the neck. Woniwoni>.⟨
—
Durihyeok had been too focused on the game to check the enemy roster, but the suddenly accelerating chat made him squint.
"What? Woniwoni? Who's that… OH!! Oh for—"
*That person was insanely good!*
He knew it firsthand—he'd genuinely felt a wall between them.
The helpless feeling that if they fought ten times, he'd lose all ten.
— Did they queue snipe?
— lmaooooo
— You think they followed you because you pissed them off?
— lmaooooooo omg
"Oh come on…."
Durihyeok had a dedicated list of people who regularly sniped him—he got targeted that often.
The thing about being in an awkwardly high tier was that while the player pool was thin, if you looked around, there were always a few familiar faces lurking nearby.
So even though the absolute number of snipers was small, the success rate was high enough that he'd run into them often enough to memorize their usernames.
But Woniwoni was an ID he'd never heard of before today.
— Oh wait, I just remembered—this person has sniped Momoji and Jeong Tae-yeon before too lmaooo
— For real? Isn't Jeong Tae-yeon really good?
— Looks like a named-player sniper lmaooo
— Hyeok you're done for. Looks like you poked a hornet's nest
— lmaooo good luck and goodbye
"Ah, shut up, the team comp was just garbage last time. You don't know until you play."
Durihyeok swallowed hard.
*They switched to sniper?*
Last time they'd clearly been running around headshots with a rifle.
Sure, based on what he'd seen, they'd probably be more than decent with a sniper too.
But—
*A guy always has to look cool in front of a girl!!*
If it were him, he'd have stuck to whatever he was best at in front of a female streamer.
So Woniwoni was probably the same.
*They let their guard down and switched to sniper—if I seize the momentum now and push hard, I've got a shot!*
The moment the match started, Durihyeok charged forward aggressively.
Whether that boldness paid off—
Rat-tat-tat-tat—!!
[LinkSmurDurihyeok ︻╦╤─ ManchesterHomeless]
He managed to instantly claim the best position in the hangar.
*If we win the hangar, we win the match!*
His team had three snipers to the enemy's two.
If they could win the hangar with fewer riflers, the snipers up top wouldn't need to dominate—just holding their own would be enough.
No matter how crucial the runway was, the capture point was down here.
The snipers just needed to hold with the numbers advantage—
Fwip—!
[Woniwoni>.⟨ ︻デ═一 ILEuei]
[Woniwoni>.⟨ ︻デ═一 HyeokLovesquad]
"Huh…?"
Two kills in an instant, and then—
[Woniwoni>.⟨ ︻デ═一 GoldenCurrents]
A devastating kill log appeared: all three runway snipers wiped out.
And a moment later.
Thud thud thud— tap tap tap—
The footsteps of the enemy team, now in control of the high ground, overlapped and tangled together, making sound-based tracking nearly impossible.
He had to watch every angle at once, ready for enemies who could drop down at any moment.
"Hah— hah— come on then, you little—"
Just as his breathing started to ragged—
Whoosh—! Thud—!
Something dropped from above.
"AAAAAGH! DAMN IT!"
Brat-tat-tat-tat—!
He sprayed at the enemy who appeared behind him, but—
[Woniwoni>.⟨ -I═⟩ LinkSmurDurihyeok]
There was no escaping Woniwoni's furious knife.