The new battle royale map—Apex Stratum—was a spectacle of vertical madness: hanging platforms, shifting bridges, gravity vents, and entire districts suspended over a neon abyss. A perfect arena for COD:VR's livestreamed global reveal.
And in the middle of it—
Jin and his android dropped into the chaos first.
His squad—Astra, Nox, and Revv—landed seconds behind, scrambling to stabilize.
"Holy—Jin, slow the hell down!" Nox shouted, chasing after the two blurs ahead of him.
But Jin didn't slow.
He synced seamlessly with the android, who adjusted her gait to match his, every movement mirrored with machine precision. They sprinted along a narrow mag-rail track as gunfire erupted from two teams below.
Astra ducked. "They're fighting already?! We just dropped!"
Nox pointed toward Jin and the android. "No—they're fighting them."
Enemies swarmed the platform above. Jin didn't hesitate.
"Hop the vent," he said.
The android processed the battlefield in under a second.
"Trajectory set. Initiating boost."
She grabbed Jin by the forearm and launched both of them into a gravity vent. They shot upward like twin bullets—spinning, flipping, stabilizing midair.
The crowd watching the livestream exploded into reactions.
"WHAT WAS THAT?! Did he just—did she BOOST him?! Who is that player?!"
"We have no record of an avatar animation like that! That's custom—Jin is running custom tech!"
From the ground level, Jin's squad could only stare.
Revv's jaw dropped. "Did… did he just use her like a launch pad?!"
Astra blinked rapidly. "I didn't even know the engine ALLOWED that!"
They reached the high platform.
Three enemies.
Heavily armed.
The android landed first—sliding under a barrage of bullets with zero hesitation. She kicked off the floor, locked onto the nearest enemy, and projected a holographic trajectory line across Jin's HUD.
"Target left hip," she said. "Shot correction: minus two degrees."
Jin adjusted.
Fired.
Direct armor-piercing hit. The enemy spun, downed instantly.
"Two remaining," she reported.
Another enemy charged with a shotgun. Jin drew a blade from his belt. The android's hand shot out and hooked the shotgun barrel, twisting it aside in one elegant, lethal sweep.
"Opening created. Strike."
Jin didn't think—his body simply followed.
The third enemy tried to flee.
The android tilted her head.
"Permission to pursue?"
"Go."
She sprinted off the platform—jumping, flipping into the void, catching the lower rail bridge, and sprinting upside-down beneath it with magnetic boots until she caught the last player.
Then the elimination notification chimed.
ENEMY SQUAD WIPED.
Astra's legs stumbled as she tried to keep up. "This is—this is insane."
Nox pointed helplessly. "Look at them! They're not even talking! They're just… moving. Perfectly."
Revv swallowed hard. "Is that even allowed? That—That's gotta be borderline illegal."
The android returned to Jin's side, unscathed. Jin simply nodded to her, and she synchronized back to his pace.
Just cold, relentless progression.
The battle raged across the map, but nothing touched them. They vaulted across floating skyscrapers, dropped into collapsing alleys, and cleared rooftops with perfect tandem strikes.
At one point, Jin slid under an enemy turret while the android leapt above it. She diverted the turret's locking sensors. He planted the charge. They detonated it mid-motion.
Another point where they fought back-to-back:
Jin reloaded. She shielded him with her forearm plating. He stepped forward on her cue. She vaulted over him as he raised her into a spin, firing downward.
The feed commentators lost their minds.
"WHO IS SHE? THAT'S A CUSTOM PARTNER MODULE—NO WAY THAT'S BASE GAME!"
"This synergy—this looks rehearsed, but we all KNOW it isn't!"
Meanwhile, Jin's squad trailing behind looked like spectators who accidentally spawned in.
Astra whispered, almost frightened, "He doesn't need us anymore."
Nox said nothing.
Revv clenched his fists. "He replaced us."
Above them, Jin and the android marched forward, unstoppable, unhesitating—cutting through the new game map's challenges like the terrain had been built for them alone.
And the whole world saw it.
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Jin didn't intend to become famous.
What started as routine grinding felt almost meditative to him—precision calibrations, recoil curve tuning, micro-adjustments to his loadouts that most players never even looked at twice. His workshop was quiet except for the soft tik-tik-tik of tools tapping carbon frames and the faint hum of processors warming. Lines of code reflected across his eyes as he worked.
To Jin, these were simple tasks. Natural, even.
After all, he wasn't just any player.
He was a Tier 4 Engineer—one of the rare few whose clearance allowed him to rewrite weapon parameters, drone behaviors, and traversal algorithms on the fly. His hands moved with the steady confidence of a surgeon, each motion precise, measured. Every small improvement felt like chiseling away at something raw until only the perfect form remained.
But everything shifted the moment his android stepped into existence.
The first field tests weren't even supposed to be public. Jin only wanted to see if the synchronization patch worked. They were in a quiet, near-dead lobby; just a few squads warming up in a forgotten queue. Jin slid a magazine into place with a metallic click.
"Check latency on movement vectors," he muttered.
His android tilted its head slightly, mechanical pupils dilating. "Synchronization at ninety-nine point nine percent. Manual override available."
"Good. Mirror me."
They moved through the abandoned structures like two halves of the same thought. Jin vaulted a railing—his android mirrored the motion a hair faster, compensating for the weight gap. Jin fired at a holo-dummy—his android analyzed the recoil in real time and optimized its stance.
The fluidity was impossible to ignore.
An idle spectator clipped a short snippet. Then a second clip spread. Then a third, showing Jin's quiet, surgical cleanups of entire squads while his android moved with eerie precision beside him.
In just three days, Jin's name rocketed up the global leaderboards like a missile breaking the sound barrier. His ascent didn't look human.
Solo dungeon clears—frame-perfect.
Impossible shots—captured, replayed, analyzed, and still disbelieved.
Zero-death gauntlet runs—broadcasted live, commentators stuttering.
And the most viral clip of all: Jin blindfolded, his android feeding micro-movements directly into his HUD as they dismantled an elite raid boss with eerie synchronicity.
Millions watched. Millions reposted.
And Jin turned into a phenomenon the game couldn't contain.
Inside Owl Esports' in-game headquarters, the air felt thick with tension. The massive holo-panel on the wall flickered with the newest clip: Jin sliding under a stomping war mech, sparks hissing off metal. He planted a shock mine without even looking, the explosion blooming like blue fire that sent the mech collapsing. Jin rode the falling hulk upward—boots scraping against hot steel—vaulted over its shoulder, and finished with a single, effortless headshot.
Crowds online said the sequence looked scripted.
Everyone in the room knew it wasn't.
Nox crossed his arms, jaw tight. "You realize you made us look like bronze lobbies, right?"
Astra scoffed, trying—but failing—to hide how much the comments were getting to her. "People keep messaging me like, 'Is Jin carrying you or are you just decoration?'" Her voice cracked just enough to betray the sting.
Revv kicked a loose gear across the floor; it clattered against a metal crate. "Man's hogging the spotlight like he doesn't even have a squad."
Jin didn't even glance at them.
He stood beside his android, adjusting a diagnostic panel along her arm. Soft pulses of neon ran through the mechanical veins beneath her plating. She remained unblinking, still as a statue, watching Jin's hands with quiet precision.
"Then work harder," Jin said without turning.
Astra's jaw dropped. "You serious right now?"
Nox stepped forward, heat rising in his voice. "You're making it look like we're dead weight."
"Maybe you are."
The air snapped like a wire under tension.
Revv muttered a curse. "What the hell happened to you, man?"
Jin finally turned toward them.
Exhaustion clung to his eyes, but so did something sharper—something carved out of cold resolve. His expression wasn't arrogance. It wasn't ego. It was obsession forged into focus.
"This isn't about fame," he said.
Astra threw her hands up. "Then what is it?! If this isn't about the spotlight, what the hell are you doing all this for?"
The android's head tilted, as if analyzing the shift in emotion.
Jin's reply came quiet.
"I don't care about being known," he said. "Take the fame. Take the sponsorship offers. Take the rewards, the clout, everything."
His fist tightened at his side.
"I only want to defeat Drumstickkkk."
The holo-panel behind him replayed the mech takedown, Jin's avatar soaring through sparks.
But none of them were watching the screen anymore.
All eyes were on Jin—the teammate they once trusted, now a man driven by a single, burning target.
-----------------
Silence cracked.
His squadmates exchanged looks—hurt, frustration, disbelief—until Nox finally shook his head.
"You're obsessed, man. You're losing it."
Jin didn't respond.
He didn't need to.
He simply returned to his android, whose glowing eyes tracked his vitals with mechanical indifference.
Nox exhaled slowly. "Then… that's that."
Astra grabbed her things. "If we're 'dead weight,' then you don't need us."
Revv muttered, "Good luck, Jin."
One by one, they walked out of the chamber.
The door hissed shut behind them.
Jin stood alone with the android, the quiet hum of machinery filling the void his team once occupied.
His android tilted her head. "Squad integrity compromised. Recommend recalculating support vectors."
"No," Jin whispered.
And with that, Jin walked back to the simulation chamber—alone again, by choice this time—while the world outside continued to watch him rise for all the wrong reason.