I planted myself in front of the computer with a certain grim resolve.
"Let's go, let's gooo~"
Today's goal: rack up 20,000 grenade kills.
I'd already stacked up 19,580 yesterday, so I just needed to send exactly 420 more souls to paradise.
When you consider that I normally sweep up 20 to 30 kills solo in a single match, 420 kills might not sound like much.
The catch is that you only get one grenade per life.
So the fastest strategy is to jump into an 8v8 deathmatch room with a 100-kill target, throw the grenade, die as fast as possible, then the moment you respawn, throw again and die again — repeat to infinity.
That said, just suiciding pointlessly to die faster is absolutely out of the question, because that tanks my KDA.
In Dead Zone, your KDA is your pride.
Your calling card.
[Woniwoni>.<]
[Overall KDA: 67.1%]
[Assault Rifle: 63.4%]
[Sniper Rifle: 81.2%]
*Nice!*
My glorious KDA!
With the rifle, I win more than 6 out of every 10 fights.
With the sniper, I toy with three or four people per clip.
I never resorted to the cheap trick of rage-quitting a room the moment things looked dicey just to protect my KDA.
This was the result of grinding Quick Match lobbies into dust with razor-sharp reflexes and the footwork of a seasoned veteran.
And since I lean more toward playing for fun than sweating, I don't do guild wars or ranked matches — which probably inflates my KDA even further.
Anyway.
Today, the title grind came first, so dying fast and respawning to reload grenades was the priority.
My carefully maintained KDA was inevitably going to take a hit, but I had no intention of just rolling over and letting it crater.
I equipped the MF5 — commonly nicknamed the "M-bba," an extremely lightweight firearm — and planned to sprint straight into enemy lines, relying on headshots to hold my own in one-versus-many situations.
Every time I died, I'd take at least one or two with me, keeping the KDA damage to a minimum.
Plan set.
No hesitation — straight into action.
Whoosh—!
Pull the pin, toss it into a high-traffic enemy corridor.
[Woniwoni>.< (💣) ScallopTasty]
One grenade kill secured.
[Woniwoni>.< ╓╦═─ (HEAD)Dragon수]
[Woniwoni>.< ╓╦═─ (HEAD)BangbaedongBbatta]
Then I charged in and popped two headshots back to back.
Immediately after, I got gunned down by a respawned enemy.
Three kills for one death — couldn't ask for better.
Keep repeating the same pattern and the other side eventually starts thinking.
I read that they'd set up an ambush along my usual charge route, so I flipped the script—
*What if I throw it just around here?*
With a boom—
[Woniwoni>.< (💣) Dragon수]
[Woniwoni>.< (💣) Ronaldo호날두]
[Woniwoni>.< (💣) BangbaedongBbatta]
[TRIPLE KILL—!!!]
"Heh. That's what I'm talking about."
I was gleefully racking up kills when something in the chat caught my eye.
[BangbaedongBbatta: ugh ran into this person again lol quick match leecher kkk can't cut it in ranked so you just live in here huh? still no tier. what's even the point of playing for people like you. get a life loser.]
"Oh."
A familiar username.
I had no interest in ranked, so I mostly stuck to Quick Match — but the game seemed to have built some kind of internal rating system to prevent veteran players from stomping newbies, so I kept running into the same crowd.
One of them was this guy, "BangbaedongBbatta."
Living up to his name, he had a temper like a lit fuse, which made him endlessly entertaining.
Poke him once and he'd combust all on his own, burning himself out before I even had to do anything.
Like so—
[Woniwoni>.<: ur so good tho?]
One little line and he absolutely loses it.
[BangbaedongBbatta: good?? lol I'm Diamond climbing to Master and some scared little nobody who can't even queue ranked is talking to me]
[Woniwoni>.<: Wow, congrats!!]
Keep every reply short, then immediately move toward the enemy base.
He'd be too busy hammering his keyboard in a rage to pay attention to the game.
In that gap—bang bang—!
[BangbaedongBbatta: lolll quick match leecher boosting your self-esteem huh ㅜ겨ㅑㅐㅁㅁ]
[Woniwoni>.< ╓╦═─ BangbaedongBbatta]
"Heheh, this never gets old."
The way he'd throw a fit about getting shot while typing, screaming that it was cheap.
*How does someone stay this predictably simple?*
Every move he made was completely transparent, so I treated myself to a proper date with him — sniping him from a distance, gifting grenades to his hiding spots, savoring every moment.
Because of that, I didn't fill the grenade mission quota as fast as I'd hoped.
Oh well. If it was fun, that's all that matters!
Wishing him a long future as my infinitely respawning punching bag, I refocused on the title grind.
The next day.
I ran into Mr. Bbatta again sooner than expected.
At first I thought it was just coincidence, but judging by his reaction, it felt more like he'd been actively hunting me down.
[BangbaedongBbatta: heyyy~ lolll]
[IllIIlIllI: lolll is that them?]
[YourBFSucks: kda is insanely high tho,, ㅠㅠ how many newbies did you kill]
[MomIsThisHack: coming to deliver some justice for the health of the gaming ecosystem;;]
A bunch of strangers acting like they knew me — I looked closer and saw they all had [Strawberry Yogurt] tagged on their names. Same guild.
*Wh-what? Are they friends…? That's a lot of friends….*
I tensed up slightly.
Why were they swarming in like this? Were they targeting me?
It wasn't peak hours, and Quick Match doesn't have many players, so it probably wasn't hard to track me down.
*But what does targeting me actually accomplish?*
It's still just shooting, killing, dying. Same as always.
And if the chat gets annoying, I can just ignore it.
I figured it'd amount to nothing — but then.
[BangbaedongBbatta: hehe same team? carry time.]
In the 8v8 match, they'd split into pairs and scattered across both teams.
The fact that hot-headed Bbatta was giggling to himself should've been my first warning sign.
BEEEEEEEP—
"Ah! Damn it! My eyes!"
A flashbang, thrown right in my face without warning.
Then immediately after—
Rat-tat-tat—!
[IllIIlIllI ╓╦═─ Woniwoni>.<]
[IllIIlIllI: toxic player eliminated;; easy lol]
"……"
As if they couldn't care less about winning or losing.
They just stuck to my tail, spamming flashes and body-blocking me at every turn.
And every time they did, the enemy team materialized like clockwork and unloaded into me.
The fact that grenades kept landing exactly on my path made it obvious — these guys were sharing my position in real time.
"Ugh…! What is this, seriously……"
The sudden harassment made my blood boil, even as frustration surged up alongside it.
Sure, I'd been messing with Bbatta — but that was because he was the enemy.
This was just bullying.
Who trolls their own teammates?
To think that lurking inside a game I'd been genuinely enjoying were toxic, unsportsmanlike players like this.
How many other people had had their games ruined by these guys?
My current KDA: [4 kills, 6 deaths].
I gritted my teeth, determined to make everything they were doing completely pointless.
Every ounce of focus locked onto the monitor.
Two people tailing me.
The pattern: hold a flashbang, and the moment I was about to engage an enemy, pop the flash. Or just step in front of me to block my path.
The body-blocking wasn't much of an issue — as long as I moved in straight lines instead of circling around, I'd always be ahead of them anyway.
So there was really only one thing I needed to focus on.
I listened carefully through my headset and tightened my grip on the mouse.
Then.
Ting—!
The sound of a flashbang pin being pulled.
*Now!*
Without panicking, I pictured the map layout and pre-aimed toward the spot where the enemy was most likely to rush from.
BEEEEEP—!
Almost simultaneously with the flash going off, I fired a prediction shot.
[Woniwoni>.< ╓╦═─ YourBFSucks]
Then immediately repositioned.
Two guys were still glued to my back.
From the perspective of the regular enemy players, it looked like three people charging in together.
So I deliberately avoided narrow side paths and pushed through wide open areas instead.
Three people suddenly bursting out of an open clearing split the incoming fire in all directions.
Rat-tat-tat-tat—!
[DeadZoneNoob╓╦═─ BangbaedongBbatta]
Bbatta, with his worse movement, ate the enemy bullets meant for me and went down.
I successfully cleared one enemy in front and one behind, then sprinted toward the enemy base.
Staying alert for the flash sound from the one guy still trailing me.
*By now they're probably scrambling over there too, so they won't be able to time it precisely.*
Most likely, they'd get a rough "I'm here" ping and throw the flash on a rough estimate.
A few seconds later, another *ping—!* of a pin being pulled.
This time I snapped my mouse around and spun my character in place.
Dodging a flashbang in-game is simple — just turn your back at the right moment.
I knew it was coming, so I could tank the flash on pure reaction.
Then I swung my mouse back to the original direction.
Rat-tat-tat—!
I blew the face off the enemy who arrived a beat too late.
But it wasn't over yet.
The ones getting desperate were them.
The guy I'd killed first would be sprinting back along the shortest route to help.
*Respawn is ten seconds, so they should be back by now….*
Ping—!
This time I pulled my own grenade and threw it toward the predicted spot.
[Woniwoni>.< (💣) YourBFSucks]
"Oh, nice! It actually worked."
Once I shook them off my tail, I had free rein until they tracked me down again.
Use that window to kill as many as possible, then get harassed again after respawning.
After a while I actually started adapting, and it felt like I'd turned on a self-imposed hard mode.
You could say it injected a fresh kind of tension.
Grinding Quick Match for the title had been fun enough on its own, but this kind of unexpected challenge was pretty decent too.
There was a thrill to it.
Final score for that match: [27 kills, 16 deaths].
Even after getting hobbled in the early game and dying twice as much as usual, I walked away with first place on the team and a win.
That alone was exhilarating, but…
The highlight of the day came in the next match.
[BangbaedongBbatta: wait, are they on the other team?]
[IllIIlIllI: splitting into two was kind of annoying to play around ngl]
[YourBFSucks: voice on, let's go]
[MomIsThisHack: I'm getting kills tho? hehe]
All four Strawberry Yogurt guild members had been matched onto the enemy team.
"You're all dead."
I immediately opened my loadout and swapped the rifle for a sniper.
The hunting hour had arrived.
***
Angler — a Dead Zone streamer on the internet broadcasting platform Link.
As Dead Zone kept growing, he was one of the mid-tier streamers who'd migrated over from other games.
Current tier: Master.
With only Grand Master and Challenger above him, that was reasonably high — but not quite high enough to be called a true elite. An awkwardly in-between tier.
So he ran a stream that leaned more toward content and entertainment than raw skill.
"Wait, there are actually guilds like that? Toxic ones?"
―yeah
―if you run into their members in ranked you get trolled every time you match against them
―they've got a lot of members too, you see them pretty often in ranked
―wild that people like that exist
Today was a slow day with no planned content, so he was doing a relaxed solo ranked session.
Before that, he was doing some casual warm-up talk when he started hearing about the toxic guilds' antics.
Angler himself had been on the receiving end of harassment because he streamed, so this had his full attention.
"What are they called? The guild name."
―there are a few different ones
―the main one is Ddalyo
―yeah, Strawberry Yogurt
―oh those little sh*ts lol
"Why does a guild like that have a name like that."
Making it sound like some cute girls' guild and then being a toxic nightmare.
Even that felt malicious.
The flood of chat messages made it clear the victim count was far from small. He thought it over for a moment.
*Exposing toxic players — something like that could work. I could put it on NuTube too.*
He hesitated, wondering if it was worth poking the hornet's nest.
But from a streamer's standpoint, who cares.
If they retaliated, even getting harassed on stream would just pull in more viewers.
As luck would have it, twenty Strawberry Yogurt guild members were currently online.
He clicked on the ones in-game and—
"Wait, four of them are in the same room? Something smells rotten here!"
And on top of that, the four had split two-and-two across both teams.
The usernames — a barcode-looking name and something like "IsThisHack" — reeked of toxicity.
Angler, convinced this was going to be pure gold, gleefully switched to spectator mode.
"Holy crap, what. This person is insanely good?"
―overall kda is in the 70s;;
―how do you get 63% with a rifle
―possible if they're a quick match leecher lol
―no their sense is just on another level?
[Woniwoni>.<], who appeared to be under concentrated harassment, was absorbing the interference from all four players head-on — and still, through relentlessly aggressive movement, managed to drag the team to victory.
"Oh, they're going straight into another match."
This time, all the Strawberry Yogurt guild members ended up on the opposite team.
Essentially running a guild war inside Quick Match.
And clicking through their usernames one by one — every single one was Master tier or above.
"Looks like they couldn't get it done playing casually, so now they're going full tryhard, right? Toxic players are annoying like that — they actually have a baseline skill level. It's not that they're bad."
But when the match started—
―this is brutal;;
―their sniper KDA is 80%
―the opponent has to be hacking, there's no way
―wait is this person hacking too
―oh… insane.
As if to mock everything he'd just said, Woniwoni's sniper started breathing fire.