CHAPTER 9
Converging, Part 2
At one forty-five, Shirley heard the sounds of fierce combat while she was skiing across the snowfield alone.
The sounds were coming from the right, in the direction she was currently traveling. She’d been skiing all over the snow the whole time, so her map of the area was pretty considerable at this point.
Thanks to that, she knew the area thoroughly, as well as her current facing. Her skis were pointed north-northwest, which meant the gunfire was coming from…
“The north. What now…?” she wondered.
The gunfire was happening ceaselessly from a distance of several hundred yards, perhaps a thousand. Although it wasn’t clear, there was too much happening for it to be just one or two people.
“That explosion led to some activity…”
She had confirmed the explosion of one of the members of DOOM earlier—who had registered under the team tag BOKR this time. That had been at 1:41.
The sky looking so clear and bright to the north for most of a minute must have been caused by the explosion sweeping away all the fog. It was back again now.
That must have revealed the locations of several players to one another. It was the first sound of true, fierce combat she’d heard that day. There had to be at least ten people involved.
“In that case…”
If there were that many people absorbed in their fight at the moment, she could sneak up behind them and snipe to her heart’s content.
“Guess I’ll go and poke them in the back.”
Shirley headed off with her skis.
One minute later, Shirley was somewhat disappointed.
“What’s with them? Are they just target practice mannequins?”
It was all too easy to pick off her targets.
She’d made steady progress through the mist, until she could hear the gunshots and see the muzzle flares at the same time. Her targets were facing and shooting in the other direction, so they had no idea she was there.
As time passed, the fog had gotten thinner, so now she could see about a hundred feet. Shirley stopped at that distance and scanned the area. She lazily steadied her R93 Tactical 2 and pulled the trigger.
A man on his stomach firing his gun took an exploding bullet to the neck and died. He had no idea how it had happened.
“I’m telling you, you’ve gotta watch your six,” Shirley lectured her second victim as she shot him thirty seconds later.
He, too, was shooting at something he could see through the mist. But while it was visible to him, it was not to Shirley, except for the fact that it was a dark blob in the distance, considerably larger than a human.
There were also occasional muzzle flashes from it, so someone there was shooting back.
“A car…?”
She tried looking through the scope, but that didn’t help much. And she wasn’t going to shoot what she couldn’t identify.
But if it was a car, she was curious as to why it wasn’t running. It must have been driven out to this location.
Did the tires get shot out? Maybe it ran out of fuel.
“This is starting to get boring…”
A minute later, she was taking out two more players.
She was making a very wide circle around the mysterious black object when she spotted two men whose clothes were different styles, which meant they probably weren’t squadmates.
They were about ten feet apart, one shooting a machine gun from the ground while the other moved forward.
Bam, ch-chik, bam.
Shirley shot one, loaded up, and shot the other.
The world was quiet again. They were probably the last two survivors. With the gunfight over and silence back, Shirley got down on the ground, curious about the black object.
If someone was over there, she wanted to help kill them.
She couldn’t get close enough to see because there was no cover in the snowfield. If she tried crawling along the ground and they saw even a glimpse of her, she’d get mercilessly shot to pieces.
“Oh! There is a way,” she realized aloud.
There was an object that would protect her from bullets, and it was on the ground just sixty feet away from her. Two of them, in fact.
Shirley put her skis and poles into her inventory for the moment, replacing them with crampons for her shoes. Those were the spiked cleats that mountain climbers typically wore to keep their feet from slipping.
She crawled on hands and feet up to the man’s dead body at an angle that kept her hidden behind it, stopping just before the DEAD tag floating overhead. The shape of the car was much clearer from here.
She rested the barrel of the R93 Tactical 2 rifle atop the body and thought, Here we go…
Now it was just a battle of stamina.
Digging her crampons into the snow behind her, she started engaging in a sheer show of strength: pushing the dead body forward from a prone position.
The body was an indestructible object now and could not be broken down further, but it wasn’t totally immobile. Otherwise a player stuck under a dead body would be completely helpless and trapped for the next ten minutes until the corpse finally vanished.
The friction coefficient of the smooth, packed snow was low, and with each kick against the ground with her crampons, Shirley slid the body forward a good amount. She was exhibiting a powerful bowlegged style here.
As she got closer, she could see more and more about the car.
First of all, it was not a car.
It was a mysterious thing that she had never seen or heard of before in GGO: an object consisting of a pipe frame with protective armor plates attached.
And when she looked through the scope, she saw M and Anna inside it.
“Oh, it’s you guys. No need to shoot you, then.”
Both of them were glowing with damage effects all over, making them an oddly beautiful sight in the hazy fog. They looked like gaming PCs with red LEDs inside the case.
“I’m amazed you’re still alive, looking like that,” Shirley muttered.
“I was certain that I was dead this time.”
“Same…”
“I owe you my thanks, Shirley.”
“Same…”
“Fine, fine. Just keep walking, you two. Or you really will die.”
Shirley was in the lead on her skis, with Anna and M forming a line behind her as they trudged south over the snow and through the fog.
It was 1:53.
About four minutes earlier, having confirmed that there were no other enemies around, Shirley shouted over to M, alerting him that one of his allies was there. He responded by summoning her.
Shirley got to her feet and walked over, where she saw giant M and not-tiny Anna squashed inside a metal-frame cage. M’s shield plates were strung up around them, attached with duct tape.
“Thanks. I was just sticking them up at random, and after getting shot so much, I’m too numb to get out,” M said pathetically.
From there, Shirley could see a whole array of DEAD tags scattered around the place. Most of them were to the north, maybe ten or so. They were the people M had sniped. He sure had killed a lot of people.
Anna had done her share of the heavy lifting, too, as there were more bodies in the other directions Shirley hadn’t come from.
So they had taken a position here, put up shields to protect themselves, and persevered despite the many shots that snuck through the gaps between the shield pieces.
It was frankly miraculous that they had survived after taking so many hits, though. It must have been because all the hits were to their extremities and not in fatal locations.
Shirley used her ken-nata knife to chop up all the duct tape, until M and Anna could finally escape their cage.
Now she could see M’s hit point bar for herself. The bar was very short, maybe at 10 percent, though it was currently growing after he’d used his emergency med kit.
“I’m alive…,” Anna murmured, clutching her sniper rifle. Her number was probably around the same.
Inside and around the cage, in fact, was a veritable pile of empty ten-shot magazines for Anna’s Dragunov and twenty-shot magazines for M’s M14 EBR.
How much shooting must they have done? Presumably, quite a lot of covering fire to keep enemies away. The majority of the gunfire Shirley had heard from a distance must have been M and Anna.
Had they used up just about all the ammo they had? If not for the recharge, they would have almost entirely expended all their battle ability.
“Nearly time for the scan. Want to watch it here?” Shirley asked.
M was putting the shield back in his pack. “Yes,” he said at once. “But we’ll need to move again as soon as we watch it.”
“Why is that?”
“Because Anna’s the team leader for SHINC. Enemies will come swarming us. The self-destructing team is here under a different name, and there are still four of them left. It was one of them earlier who blasted our car all the way out of the city.”
“I see…”
And after watching the scan results at 1:50, they proceeded to travel south.
“You sure you don’t want to hook up to the comm with us?” asked M from the rear as they trudged through the snow. When he had mentioned this first, she casually declined.
“I can hear you fine right now. Plus, I’m still going after Pitohui. This scattered starting point rule in SJ5 was practically created for my benefit. So once I’ve seen you off safely to the south, I’m gonna split.”
“I see. Do as you like.”
Anna asked, “Why do you say it’s safe to the south?”
Quite matter-of-factly, Shirley replied, “Because most of the players who were in the snow from the start I’ve already eliminated. One of them was one of the self-destructing sickos with a giant backpack. Oh, and don’t worry. I didn’t see any SHINC folks. They must have fled to a different area.”
“I see…”
“Go about two miles south and turn right to the west. If you’re lucky, you’ll meet up with Llenn.”
They continued traveling south from there.
Although the trio was out of sight, there was one player who could overhear them.
At 1:50, three players watched the scan roll in while squished in a very cramped, undersized basement: Llenn, Fukaziroh, and Boss.
From what they learned, there were twenty-five teams remaining. The fighting was picking up around the map, and five teams had lost all six members by this point.
“When they didn’t even get the chance to regroup… Poor things…”
“Oh, Llenn. Your compassion for your enemies is your worst habit. Let us be honest and celebrate instead.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Naturally, MMTM, ZEMAL, and SHINC were still among the living.
MMTM’s dot had moved from the upper left corner closer to the middle but was still firmly within that quadrant.
Most likely it meant that he didn’t have to worry about a hiding spot. Whoever had taken over the leader slot from David was not pushing their luck.
ZEMAL was in the lower right corner. Right on the corner. Almost no movement there.
“Oh, I know what’s going on here,” noted Fukaziroh. “Since he’s at the edge of the map, the enemy can only come from ahead of him. So he can keep shooting without worrying about his back.”
“Ah, I see… And whatever dark shapes he sees ahead of him, he can shoot without fear,” Llenn echoed.
With their machine-gun firepower and the ammo refills, that was a valid strategy to win fights this time around. Apparently, there wasn’t a member of DOOM who had gone after him yet.
SHINC’s dot, meaning Anna, had gone quite far south, out of the upper right quadrant and over into the lower right.
“She’s moved a whole bunch. Anna’s been putting in the work.” Boss grinned.
As a matter of fact, she had been working harder than anyone else, but she’d also nearly died several times over.
The scan was over. There were no team leader dots within two miles of Llenn’s current position, at least. But—not to belabor the point—that did not mean there were no enemies around.
“Let’s get a move on! To the east!” Llenn said.
Boss asked, “Sure, but why?”
“It’s the direction the sun rises. Believe it or not, Llenn was a sunflower in a previous life,” Fukaziroh replied.
Llenn ignored her. “To get closer to Anna. Also, I think all those guys we beat mostly came from the east. So the enemy density over there should be lighter.”
“That makes sense. But even if we do run into anyone, we can have fun killing them. I’ll take the lead in front of you, Llenn.”
“But then we won’t be able to see!”
“That’s not what she means, Fuka.”
So the three of them left the cellar.
The fog was supposed to clear entirely in the next ten minutes, but while it did seem lighter than before, the range of vision was still only forty yards at best.
Taking point was Boss, with her silenced Vintorez sniper rifle set to automatic. She was watching the path ahead and also to the right.
Five yards behind her, wrapped in a poncho and carrying a P90 with a muzzle silencer, was Llenn. She was watching the territory ahead and also to the left.
Three yards behind her was Fukaziroh, with a grenade launcher in each hand. She was the rear guard, so it was her job to watch behind them.
They could have Llenn and Fukaziroh travel inside the PM, with Boss hiding behind it for cover from bullets—but that would slow them down and, more importantly, lower their attack power, so they decided it was best to travel with their favorite weapons instead.
Since it was still misty, they did not run. Instead, they traveled at about a speedwalk, by Boss’s standards.
They were making their way through the dead bodies they’d created themselves when Boss murmured, “I’m impressed that you were able to team up with Shinohara earlier. I would have thought they’d hate that.”
Without losing her focus on the sights and sounds around them, Llenn chimed in, “Yeah, you were saying something about your ‘Shinohara connection.’”
Boss was aware that Fukaziroh’s real name was Miyu Shinohara, which was why Llenn didn’t feel bad about bringing it up.
“Oh, that’s simple. I found Shinohara blasting away with his machine gun at the switchyard, thought he seemed like a good partner to have, and just followed him at a safe distance.”
“Even though M said to stay hidden in a safe place until the mist was gone…?”
“I was laying it by fear.”
“You mean, playing it by ear?”
“Yeah, that. Anyway, while the machine gun is powerful, he’s just one guy. When he was shooting one guy and the other one was circling around behind him, I took it upon myself to blast the second guy with a grenade.”
“I see.”
“And through the mist, I shouted over to Shinohara that I’d saved him. I even revealed my real name. I said, ‘We’re probably unrelated relatives!’ and for some strange reason, he believed me. He said, ‘Well, if we’re both Shinoharas, I guess I got no choice.’ Honestly, I’d like to know what in the world made him think he had no choice. How does that work?”
“So you’re saying…you teamed up with him by claiming you had a close personal connection…while you were conspiring to kill him the entire time…?” Llenn said, aghast.
What can you say? Fukaziroh was, as it turned out, still Fukaziroh.
“It was a sacrificial action, revealing my own name in the belief that sticking with him would give me a chance to take out Vivi…and it almost worked out… So how are you gonna make it up to me, Llenn?” she said, glaring at her friend.
“Dunno. Don’t care,” Llenn replied.
Five minutes later, it was 1:56.
“In the midst of a forest of great, huge trees, Llenn encountered a wild Pitohui.”
“I don’t need your weird narration, Fuka.”
The residential area ended as suddenly and unnaturally as though it was split by a ruler, at which point the next area began: a forest of huge, thick trees. Within, they met a suspicious-looking woman in a navy bodysuit with face tattoos.
The only reason they didn’t get into a shoot-out in the fog was because Pitohui spotted them first and started a dialogue.
Now the four were hunched beside a large tree, keeping an eye on every direction and conversing quietly through their comms.
“I was wondering why there were no enemies along the way… Now it makes sense,” said Boss.
Since entering the forest, they had seen dead bodies lying here and there. DEAD tags gleamed all over the place.
Clearly, Pitohui had done in all of them. Every player wandering around the forest was dead now.
Pitohui smirked happily and said, “Hey, guys. Glad to see you’re all doing well. What kind of fun stuff did you run into before this? Because I had nothing. I just hid inside a hollow tree and killed every person who wandered past me—that’s all.”
Llenn replied, “We went through so much, it’d be hard to describe it all. But mainly, Fukaziroh did something really crazy. We need to have an intervention for her later so she can apologize.”
“What?!”
“Listen, I’d be happy to hear the whole story after the game’s over. For now, let’s focus on the combat.”
“May I just ask one question first, Pitohui?” Boss said, picking up on something.
Pitohui replied, “What is it?”
“If you started in the woods area, you must have noticed the team that banded together to go after Llenn’s bounty. They were calling out for one another, recruiting members in the mist, I assume. So you were aware of that…and you let them go?”
“Ah!” Llenn gasped, louder than she meant to.
Boss’s perception was remarkable, and Llenn was equally shocked at her own lack of the same, but the most obnoxious thing of all was Pitohui’s choice of action. It had made things so much harder and for no good reason.
“Hmm? Really? Is that what happened?” said Pitohui, desperately trying and failing to play dumb.
“Honestly, you…”
Oh? Is Boss going to yell at her for me? Is she going to scold Pitohui for being a bad teammate and friend? Yes, Boss! Give her an earful! Llenn thought.
“…are a genius, Pitohui! I must follow your model of behavior! No more coddling my teammates, either!”
Hang on, snapped Llenn in her mind as swiftly as a quick-shooting gunman.
“Very good, Boss. You understand the mentality of a leader.”
Wait a second. No, that’s not right. Boss is only puffing you up with hot air because she knows you’re Elza Kanzaki.
“I’m honored by your compliments. Wah-ha-ha!”
“Oh, it’s fully earned, I assure you. Wah-ha-ha!”
Okay, forget these two, Llenn thought. Surely there was a more substantive topic to discuss.
So instead, she asked, “What do we do now?”
Pitohui’s laugh immediately died. “Hmm? We’ll wait for two o’clock here, then think of what to do,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Yeah…I guess that’s best.”
Llenn changed from her white camo poncho to a green one.
At 1:58, Shirley was in the midst of the snowfield.
“All right, my guide work ends now. Just keep going west from here.”
In real life, Mai worked as a nature guide, but she never expected to be playing a similar role at any point in GGO.
Of course, in real life she would never abandon her guide position like this. If she did that in Hokkaido, someone was likely to get eaten by a bear. Nature could test you, it was true, but the point of a guided hike was not to get your customers devoured.
“Thank you. You’ve been a huge help,” said M, whose hit points had recovered to halfway and were still rising because he had used his final med kit.
“I appreciate it,” said Anna, who’d recovered to a bit over 30 percent but had already used up all her med kits and couldn’t heal any further. Even still, she gave a very courteous and diligent Japanese bow.
“Hey, M,” Shirley called out once the two had started walking again.
It was definitely a classic movie thing to wait to say the most important thing until after people started walking away. Shirley was probably aiming for that effect.
“Yeah?” M replied without turning.
She stared at his back with a fierce smile on her lips. “I’m the one who’s going to kill Pitohui. Just try to stop me. I’ve always wanted to fight you, too.”
“Got it.”
He waved his hand over his shoulder.
But did not turn to look.
“I mean, you could do that now,” Anna murmured into the comm.
“It wouldn’t be sporting. Besides, Pitohui enjoys it this way.”
“Well, if you say so… That’s fine.”
“This is a game. It’s for fun. You don’t actually die,” M said wistfully.
Of course, Anna remembered that in SJ2, Pitohui and M had risked their actual lives on their avatar’s lives in the game.
“Very true!” She beamed. While she looked like an exotic foreign beauty, her response was more befitting of who she really was on the inside: a teenage girl.
“Okay, let’s run.”
“Got it!”
Shirley watched the two of them vanish into the mist, trading lines like the final scene of some coming-of-age movie.
“I thought they might turn around and shoot me…”
She let go of the R93 Tactical 2 hanging over her chest. If either of them had turned and pointed their gun at her, she would have fired at the giant man first.
“It’s too bad. This would have been a great chance to take out M.”
What a shame. She’d lost that chance.
Into the comm, Shirley said, “Hey, thanks for waiting. Shall we meet up now?”
It was not actually any participant in SJ5 who was most eagerly awaiting two o’clock, when the fog was supposed to be fully cleared away at last.
“Ten more seconds!”
It was the dozens of players in the big pub, watching on the screens there.
“Nine!”
For the past hour, they’d been almost blind to whatever was happening.
“Eight!”
As soon as SJ5 started, the huge monitors displaying the action of the big game were completely white, all thanks to the obscuring fog.
Occasionally, the players would see the flash of gun muzzles and the resulting glowing DEAD tag, but that was about all they could actually make out.
“Seven!”
Naturally, the audience protested.
The jeers were constant. “What the hell is this?” they shouted. “Give us our money back!” Nobody had actually paid any money for this.
Eventually, the special rules were pointed out, and the audience begrudgingly accepted them as long as it was only until the fog cleared up, and they continued drinking in the meantime. Except the fog didn’t clear up. Not at all.
Some of them were so fed up that they simply left and didn’t come back.
“Six!”
Even when fiercer battles broke out, the cameras did not zoom in especially close to capture them. Seeing hazy muzzle flashes in a sea of white did not exactly paint a vivid picture of what was happening.
Maybe if the cameras could at least be turned to thermal vision, there might be more definition of the action unfolding—but that was not happening, either.
The cameras had gone on thermal mode in SJ2, when Llenn and Fukaziroh burned pink smoke in the jungle, but not this time. There was no reason given, but it was probably because doing it for all the cameras would have been too much trouble on the system or something.
“Five!”
So the people in the bar counting down the last seconds until the hour was up were the patient ones who’d been sticking around the whole time.
“Four!”
But they also had a lurking concern.
Why had none of the players who died in SJ5 returned to the bar yet?
“Three!”
Yes, no one had come back after being disqualified. And that did not make sense.
In all previous Squad Jams, you had to wait ten minutes after dying before you were returned to the bar. Then you could hang out and watch the rest of the event with the audience or talk about your results with your other teammates or the crowd as it went on.
They could have come back to the bar and simply stayed in a private room with their teammates, but the chances of every single deceased player doing that had to be almost zero.
It wasn’t clear whether the mystery was going to be resolved anytime soon, but the clock counted down each second regardless.
“Two!”
It was 1:59:58. Almost time.
“One!”
1:59:59.
“Zero!”
The players gathered on the map of SJ5 at that exact moment were greeted with a true spectacle.
Those waiting on their wristwatches or ocular overlay clocks knew that the mist was supposed to clear out at exactly two o’clock.
If they were standing in the midst of a wide-open area, then the moment after the mist cleared, they might be sniped at from a far distance. There had to be one or two snipers thinking of doing exactly that.
So all the players were staying as low as possible, hiding behind cover, when the moment arrived.
And that’s when they saw it.
Llenn, Fukaziroh, Pitohui, and Boss were on the ground in the forest.
The moment it turned two o’clock, they saw the white fog instantly and silently vanish.
“Wow!” Llenn exclaimed, unable to stop herself.
It was a beautiful sight.
In a single instant, the forest was restored to a forest again, making visible the distant rows of trees, the greenery of the plants, and the brown soil of the earth.
It was positively magical.
M and Anna experienced the same effect.
This was because they had just reached the end of the snowfield and entered the rather abrupt forest zone. They were prone on the ground with a huge tree in between. Anna looked up in the moment and was entranced by what she saw.
M, however, was staring right at his Satellite Scanner.
“Ahhh…”
Shirley saw it happen as she lay prone in the snow.
The scenery around her suddenly expanded, so in three seconds, she could see as far as one possibly could.
She also saw the green of the forest where she was heading, a few hundred yards to the west.
“Shit!” she snapped. “It’s already time!”
“Whoaaa!”
“Here it is!”
“You can see the terrain!”
The audience in the pub erupted into noise.
On the large monitors hung high on the walls, the mist had vanished all at once, revealing the lay of the land at last.
All kinds of areas were visible on the various screens. There were also helpful map markings in the lower left of each screen that showed where each camera was located on the game map.
“So that’s what it looks like!”
“I’m seein’ a lot of weird terrain.”
In previous Squad Jams, all of these environments would have been visible right from the start, but only now could the audience see them in SJ5.
Lighting up the screens now was aerial footage, as though shot by drones hovering at a thousand feet or so.
One screen displayed a large city.
This was the place where M and Anna had started, with one major street and many tall buildings that either stood or littered the ground after the giant explosion. The screen told the audience that it was in the upper right of the map, the northeast quadrant.
Another screen displayed desert wasteland.
It was earthy, full of brown sand, rocks, and rubble. This was where Clarence had started.
That was to the west—or the left—of the city zone, covering nearly two miles of the center of the map. From top to bottom, north to south, it was about a mile and a quarter.
The audience noticed right away how the city abruptly turned into wasteland, across a razor-thin margin.
“What the hell is that?!”
“That’s not real map design!”
“They just pasted the regions at right angles!”
“That’s lazy programming!”
“Man, that would be so easy… If only you could do that all the time, my life would be so much better…”
“Hey, guys! I found a game designer! He’s right here!”
On another screen was a space crossed with many sets of rails, eating into the wasteland. This was the switchyard.
As seen before in SJ3, a switchyard was a place with many parallel rails, where freight cars could be moved, exchanged, and parked. This one was a scaled-down version of the previous, about a mile across.
The switchyard was where Fukaziroh had started, and in this case, it was arranged diagonally from the upper right to the lower left. At its end, the tracks narrowed to just a few, which continued out beyond the edge of the game map.
On another screen was the northwest part of the map. Above and to the left of the switchyard was a mountain.
This was where MMTM’s leader had started. Its exterior was all white rock and green grass. There were no trees there.
Several peaks ran along the mountain’s length, jagged as the teeth of a saw. The white boulders littering this area were about the size of houses.
On another screen was a highway.
It was quite wide and very sturdily built. This road started out of a tunnel coming from the mountainous zone in the northwest part of the map. It looked like you could get inside the tunnel, but the other exit was unlikely to be anywhere within the map.
The highway went directly south in a straight line into the southwest part of the map. The only thing to either side of the highway was flat black earth.
Though the crowd watching in the pub couldn’t have known, the highway was where Llenn had started. It was where she had met Vivi and had nearly got hit by the car.
The bodies were gone by now, but the flipped-over Outback Wilderness still remained.
On another screen was a residential area.
Big, fancy houses lined the streets, all of them abandoned and falling apart, with a huge black blast zone in the center. The closer to the blast zone, the less remained of the houses.
“What’s with that huge explosion mark? Was that always there?” asked one of the audience members.
“That’s certainly possible, but on the other hand, just maybe…,” someone else murmured.
“The bomb team!” several people chimed in at once.
Naturally, the audience was suspicious.
“DOOM, right? But that name isn’t on the list.”
“They can hide it by simply registering under a different name. That’s what I’d do.”
“Did anyone fight them in the preliminary round?”
People called around the bar, but no one came forward to admit it.
They didn’t know who fought them, and they couldn’t have known.
In fact, the frequently participating team that fought DOOM—in this case, BOKR—during the preliminary round so underestimated their opponent that they got entirely eliminated in a single blast and were too embarrassed to show up at the bar today.
On the adjacent screen to the one showing the residential neighborhood was a forest. It was a place of massive trees that took over the middle of the southern part of the map. It was entirely green, connecting the neighboring residential area and snowfield.
“That’s so simple… If I could get away with that, it would be sooo easy to design maps…”
“Check it out. The game designer’s still here!”
The snowy field was a flat white desert.
It looked like it could be Antarctica. In order to fit this zone, which took up the entire lower right quarter of the map, the camera had to be pulled up to a considerable altitude. There was no way to know who was down there.
The screens in the pub displayed almost all the different zones of the game—except for one.
“They haven’t shown the center yet.”
As someone just said, the middle of the map.
The center, the core of the map, which measured six miles to a side in its entirety.
And it contained…
“What is that?”
“Ummm, a castle?”
“Yeah, that’s a castle.”
A castle.
It was a European-style castle surrounded by a circular wall with a diameter of a mile and three-quarters.
The stone wall was a hundred feet tall, with a large rampart about seventy feet wide. It was almost like an elevated highway.
Parapets jutted outward here and there, either to prevent falls or for defensive purposes, with the occasional embrasure: window slots to shoot through with a gun.
Naturally, there was a gate. No one would be able to get in otherwise.
There was actually more than one gate. In fact, every thousand feet there was a very large opening in the wall about 150 feet wide and 30 feet tall.
By rough calculation, the circumference of the wall was a bit less than six miles, which meant there were very many gates, in fact. At least thirty-three of them, going again by rough calculation.
It was like a castle wall decayed with cavities. If a wall was meant to serve a defensive purpose, this one was an utter failure of design. Who built this? Show yourself!
And none of the gates actually had, well, a gate. Every one of them offered free access. There were no signs to be seen, so it would seem that it didn’t even cost for admittance.
Since the cameras were aerial, there was a very clear view of the inside of the castle. Right inside the gates was a flat interior space for about five hundred yards. The circular castle was in the middle, so the yard was perfectly donut shaped.
There were many stone buildings placed within that yard. It looked like a town at first glance, but it was probably not for that purpose—more like a selection of places for players to hide.
The center of the donut was the castle keep itself.
It was a massive circular castle, a whole mile and a quarter in diameter.
If there was a castle that size in the real world, it would have bankrupted the entire country to build it.
The foundation wall was like a cliff, looming 160 feet tall, with spires placed at equal intervals around the edge, eight in total.
Those towers were another 160 feet tall. Each one was the height and size of a high-rise building.
The central room of the castle was a vast, round chamber measuring nearly a mile across. It was like a coliseum of sorts, with all kinds of cover objects placed around the room.
There was a bridge over to the castle itself. It was a stone arch bridge that rose slightly. It was a hundred feet wide and a stunning five hundred yards long.
If you wanted to build a bridge like this in the real world, you couldn’t make it out of stone. You might not be able to make it out of anything else, either.
The European-style castle was reminiscent of the castle where Llenn and her friends had done the playtest, but this one was several times larger and taller.
“What a huge freakin’ castle, man. But…”
“Yeah. Even knowing there’s such a massive building there now…”
The audience had figured it out. They noticed right away.
“…nobody’s going to go in there. It’s too hard to fight in.”
That was correct.
An unnatural environment that was built like a theme park attraction was actually harder to fight in. Anyone familiar with the common sense of GGO would not run for shelter inside that castle.
So normally, you would expect that no combat would occur there.
But the castle had been placed there.
“Which means…”
“Yeah.”
The audience had figured it out.
One man swirling a wineglass in his hand spoke for the rest of the group.
“It’s going to be a setup. There’s going to be some scenario that forces you to go there.”
Clarence and Tanya were on a lookout platform near the very top floor of the stone tower when it happened.
They saw the mist below clear instantly, revealing the bottom of their tower, the large castle, the even larger courtyard, and the castle walls that surrounded them. It helped that they were at a height of three hundred feet.
A notice appeared informing them of their ammo returning, but they ignored it for more pressing matters.
“We gotta hurry!” Tanya said.
“Sure do,” agreed Clarence, waving her left hand to bring up a window, then touched the button for her comm. She attempted to connect to the teammates registered on it. According to the extra rules at the start of the game, you would be able to reconnect with any registered teammate, no matter how far apart you were.
Three seconds later, she contacted her teammates from the start of the game.
Now Clarence and Tanya had the ability to share information directly with all their teammates.
So before she even said hello, Tanya shouted, “Everybody! Hurry to the middle of the map now! There’s a castle here, and you can get right inside with all the gates! If you don’t, you’ll die! Everywhere else, where you guys are, is gonna crumble and fall away!”
With a gleeful grin, Clarence told her distant teammates, “Heya, Llenn and everyone else! Listen! Your areas are all gonna crumble away eventually, and it’ll only leave the castle left. They wrote the special rule on the castle walls. Isn’t that messed up? Ha-ha-ha! I’m fine because I’m already inside the castle. So don’t worry. The team won’t be totally wiped out! Well—good luck!”
The audience in the pub saw it at the same moment that the pair were informing all their teammates.
On one of the screens was the wall around the castle in the center of the map. It was a close-up.
Now they could see the writing on the wall, which wasn’t visible from the aerial angles. It was a message written plainly in a generic Mincho font.
This land will eventually fall into ruin, and when it is done, only what is within these walls will remain. All who still live, enter now while you can. Make it your final sanctuary. If you have seen this message, spread it to your distant companions when your ability to do so is restored.
That was the very same message that Tanya and Clarence had read when they arrived at the wall earlier. It was written all over the walls. In fact, it was designed so that the letters would appear when any player reached within a certain distance.
The audience understood its meaning, but they had a question, too.
“Why is it in Mincho?”
“How should I know?!”
That aside, someone else had a more direct question.
“What does it mean by, ‘the land will fall into ruin’?”
That’s a very good question, and here’s the answer! the screen seemed to say, because that very moment, all the monitors in the bar switched to the exact same image. It was like someone had messed with the channel at the wall of TVs in an electronics shop.
It was an aerial angle showing the entire field map of SJ5 from above, like a map screen. And it kept zooming out, pulling back.
The camera-carrying drone almost seemed like it was losing control and floating out into space, but the audience quickly understood that it was showing them this for a particular purpose.
They realized what they were seeing and what they were meant to see.
“Whoa!”
“What the hell?!”
“Yikes!”
The outer edge of the map itself was a cliff.
Beyond the boundary of the SJ5 map, the ground simply vanished into empty air. The sheer cliff gave way to an intimidating downward drop, with only flat, brown earth below.
Based on the size of the arena itself, at six miles to a side, the cliff had to be nearly two miles tall.
In other words, the map of SJ5 was basically located on top of a flat, square mountain, at an altitude of ten thousand feet. No wonder it had been covered in fog.
A massive, table-like surface jutting up out of the ground.
“It’s just like a tabletop mountain,” one of the audience members said. He was correct. A tabletop mountain was a mountain with a flat top. The tepuis found in Guyana were a good example.
SJ5’s fog-shrouded field was on top of a very, very tall cliff. Nobody had noticed because the mist made it impossible to see.
If they had run at full speed in that direction without knowing, they would have fallen right off a ten-thousand-foot cliff and died. A terrifying way to limit the edges of your map.
A number of screens switched away from the full-map view.
One displayed a highway that ended in midair.
Another displayed a snowfield that ended in midair.
Yet another displayed a mountain that ended…
A forest…
A wasteland…
And all those cliffs began to crumble.
“Huh? What? No way!”
There was one player within SJ5 who saw this collapse happen before anyone else and closer than anyone else.
It was Tomtom, the member of ZEMAL who had been placed in the leader position this time. His trademarks were his ripped body and the bandana he wrapped around his head.
He wore a green fleece jacket, the uniform of ZEMAL, with the backpack-style ammo-loading system behind him and a sweet FN MAG machine gun.
In this case, Mr. Nice Guy was in the lower right, the very southeastern tip of the map.
He’d started SJ5 on the snowfield, and following Vivi’s instructions to stay within his means and focus on survival, he chose to make his stand right in the corner.
Earlier, Fukaziroh and Llenn had been talking about this very subject.
“Oh, I know what’s going on here. Since he’s at the edge of the map, the enemy can only come from ahead of him. So he can keep shooting without worrying about his back.”
“Ah, I see… And whatever dark shapes he sees ahead of him, he can shoot without fear.”
As it turned out, they were exactly correct.
Tomtom had set up in what he believed was likely the very edge of the battle map, waited for the foes who would see his dot on the Satellite Scan and come rushing toward him, and used his overwhelming machine-gun firepower to destroy them.
He had obliterated five foes so far, mostly during the early stages.
Is that it? I was hoping for more. I’m getting bored, he thought. Of course, he had no idea that Shirley, zipping around the snow on her skis, was eliminating most of the targets before they could get to him.
When the clock hit two PM and Tomtom could see without any fog at all, he thought about moving his position.
But then, from about ten yards behind him, he noticed an ominous sound and spun around.
Rrrmmbmbbrattlerattlerattle.
But there was already nothing left when he turned to see.
“Huh? Oh, no way!”
Even as the words escaped his mouth, the ground was already vanishing beneath his feet.
The earth that composed the tabletop mountain, and the tightly packed snow surface on top of it, crumbled.
“Noooooooooooooooooooooo!”
And with them, they took Tomtom, who plummeted ten thousand feet.
He didn’t even have time to hook up his comm to his teammates again.
“Jake! Anyone else who’s near the edge of the map! Get away from there right now! This place is going to crumble real soon and leave nothing but the center behind! Everyone, get to the castle in the center as fast as you can!”
It was 2:00:30.
The one giving orders was David, the not-current-leader of MMTM.
It was the first thing he yelled as soon as he’d connected his comm to his teammates’ once again.
He was not actually inside the castle, but he could see its walls at the moment. In fact, he was at the edge of the switchyard, hiding out among the abundance of freight cars.
It was the same thing that Pitohui had done in SJ3. In other words, he’d slipped inside a car tough enough to block bullets, then used a lightsword to create a tiny hole that he could see through. After that, he’d just waited for time to pass.
After breaking off from the group with Llenn, David chose this tactic and survived the rest of the way without firing a shot or being shot at in return.
When the mist cleared earlier, he could see the castle in the distance. After peering at it through the scope, he was able to make out large Mincho font letters on the castle wall.
“What…the…?”
His spine trembled as he read the message. There was only one thing he could yell into the comm now that it was working again.
That nasty, mean-spirited sponsor had laid another trap for them.
A team that had chosen to shelter in place from the start of the game and never made any moves was never going to see this information written on the castle wall.
So the trap was going to collapse beneath the feet of those who had no idea what was happening, right as they got knocked out of SJ5.
David just happened to see the message because he was hiding in the switchyard. It was a total coincidence. If he had been hiding in that brick house until two o’clock, he’d probably have been too far away to see the message.
Jake, who had the leader mark on the map, was hiding out in the northwest part of the arena. He was in the most danger. And there were other teammates out there somewhere who hadn’t died yet, either.
“Got that?! The center! Hurry! If you run across any enemies, try to let them know, and avoid combat!”
“Everyone, listen closely. This place is going to crumble starting from the outside. Head toward the castle in the middle of the map.”
In a spacious train car, another player was doing the exact same thing, alerting their teammates to the impending danger.
It was Vivi.
She had been working with David and was, in fact, in the same car.
In the upper left corner of her vision, the list of her teammates now displayed an X next to Tomtom’s name. He was the second death, after Shinohara.
It was very easy to guess that he’d died as a result of the terrain collapse. The leader mark transferred down the line to Peter.
ZEMAL now had four members remaining.
“Let’s all meet up at the castle. Don’t die.”
“Hyeow! That cliff is collapsing fast!”
“Yeah! Break it down! Crumble to bits!”
The audience in the pub was alive again, working off the frustration of the last hour’s boredom.
On screens all over the room, the terrain was collapsing rapidly.
The vertical cliffs were crumbling away in a fascinating manner. It was the kind of grandiose destruction that just couldn’t happen in real life.
They could also see the people dying as a result of the collapse. Tomtom was one of them, falling right off the edge of the snowfield.
The collapse of the city, where Anna and M had started, was quite spectacular. As the ground gave way, the towering buildings tilted and fell, breaking apart in the process.
There was a player running desperately down the street who had been hiding in a building near the edge of the map up to this point. But no matter how hard he ran, the speed of the crumbling was faster, and he soon tumbled away along with the cracked road beneath his feet.
“At this rate, it’ll only be a few minutes before everything aside from the castle has fallen away,” someone muttered.
The others couldn’t know if that estimation was correct, but they decided it was, because that would be more entertaining.
“Yes, it would be fun if it were that fast.”
“If they don’t make it in time, they deserve to die.”
It’s always fun to watch dynamic, tremendous spectacles play out from a safe and cozy location.
“I know it’s too late now, but I wish I was there, too…,” someone muttered, with a glass in his hand.
“I get it. I wish I was in the castle, picking off the people who are trying to run to safety,” someone replied.
The man with the glass said, “No, not that. I…I want to fall. You only get to do that once in your life, so the only option for me is to do it in a game instead. But no other games will let you fall from such a tall height…”
“Oh…yeah…”
No one else spoke to him after that.
Here and there on the map, the players who were already in the castle, or were close enough to understand the situation, were panicking. Panicking and rushing toward the castle keep in the center.
Those unlucky enough to have failed to learn the truth came wandering out when the mist disappeared and made for good targets. Many of them got shot.
“Hey, people! Is that really the top priority right—? Gahk!”
“Don’t shoot, you idiot! We gotta head for the cast— Grfh!”
“Just hear me out, okay?! Stop this and run for— Daah!”
Sadly, many more players found themselves knocked out of the game.
Meanwhile, having received the news from Clarence, Pitohui was delighted.
“Ah-ha-ha! What a messed-up idea! It’s the return of the cruise ship from SJ3! Wah-ha-ha-ha! Oh, that takes me back!”
She was very delighted, indeed. In SJ3, the island on which the players were fighting was sinking. The waterline had been rising bit by bit ever since the beginning of the game, forcing the players steadily toward the luxury cruise liner hidden in the center of the map.
Of course, on top of that there had also been the insane rule that each team had a single member who was secretly chosen to be a betrayer.
Llenn was aghast. “This is not a laughing matter at all, Pito. C’mon, let’s hurry!”
But no sooner had she said that than Fukaziroh said, “Wait, hold on. Just a bit longer. If you go now…”
The sound of abrupt fighting broke out through the woods.
“…you’re going to get stuck in a stupid and pointless fight between the people who know what’s going on and the people who don’t. Just hold off for a minute or two.”
“Hrmph…” Llenn had no choice but to take her advice.
At her side, Boss said, “Good job, Tanya. Protect yourself with Clarence.”
Tanya had provided them with the crucial information they needed. To the others, she announced, “Hey, girls! Did you all hear that? Let’s meet up at the castle! I’m going to head there from the forest to the south, along with Llenn, Fuka, and Pitohui!”
Though Llenn couldn’t hear it, she seemed to be getting the other girls’ responses. According to Boss, no one in SHINC had died yet.
The four of them then heard a different voice.
“You’re in the forest? That’s fantastic,” said M.
“The two of us will go to join you! Where are you?” asked Anna. It seemed that M had patched Anna into the group’s channel.
“Wow, it’s M! And Anna! You’re close! Come on over! We’re at…um…”
Llenn tried to figure out how to describe their location and came up short.
“It’s about five-seven,” said Pitohui. She was quoting the style of shogi notation where the first number referred to the columns, starting from the right, and the second number referred to the rows, starting from the top.
“Got it. We’ll be there in one minute from the west. Watch the perimeter for us.”
In less than a minute, Llenn’s group greeted M and Anna.
Yes! she cheered to herself. Now they had a party of six. That was very reassuring.
“We can celebrate our reunion later. Let’s go to the castle,” M said without a hint of pleasure. He was busy taking his shield out of his backpack.
He combined them vertically in two parts. One he kept for himself.
“Here you go.”
“Thanks.”
And the other he gave to Pitohui.
They didn’t even need to speak to know what the other was thinking. The two of them would stand at the lead, and if anyone was out there trying to shoot at the group, they’d hold up their shields to block the shots.
Equally silent, Fukaziroh and Boss assumed the rear position, with Llenn and Anna comprising the center of the formation.
“Let’s go.”
They couldn’t see the crumbling of the earth yet, but they couldn’t stay here forever.
The three pairs of the group took an interval of about ten yards each and began to move toward the large castle visible in the distance.
With each stretch of ground, the trees in front thinned out, so the castle was quite clear from here. They had probably two-thirds of a mile to go.
When she looked over her shoulder, she still saw only woods, so the collapse wasn’t rushing up on them yet, Llenn wanted to believe. She had no other choice.
It would’ve been nice if the device map would show them how much of the land had fallen away, but of course, the piece of crap writer wouldn’t allow for that.
Tat-tat-tat-tat-dat-tam! Gunfire broke out.
Ga-gank-gang-ting! M’s shield deflected the bullets.
“Enemy ahead on the right!” M announced.
Llenn dropped to the ground at once, so she didn’t see the enemy. But it was clear that someone who was ignorant of the situation was firing at them.
“Ugh, honestly!” Pitohui fumed. She stuck her shield into the ground for support, then returned fire with a fierce burst from the KTR-09 assault rifle.
Automatic fire after automatic fire. She sprayed bullets for several seconds, more than willing to empty her entire seventy-five-round drum. The gun only stopped firing after Llenn started wondering if she was maybe going a bit overboard.
“Got ’em,” M muttered.
The two in the lead resumed moving forward, as though the interruption had not happened at all.
Llenn got back to her feet and continued walking, watching the right side for movement. About fifty yards away in the distance, she saw a DEAD tag.
“Huh?”
In fact, there were two. A pair of players had died and fallen on top of each other in the same spot.
In other words, the strategy was that if the first player was shot and killed, the person behind them would continue shooting—perhaps making use of the body as an impenetrable shield.
But Pitohui had figured them out instantly and hit them with a merciless stream of automatic gunfire. It wasn’t just an overkill situation, where she was taking it out pointlessly on a dead player. She had a reason for what she did.
“She’s very good,” Boss commented.
You said it, Llenn thought.
Carefully, she continued her watch as they followed the lead pair. Eventually, the forest came to an end. Beyond the last of the massive trees, the castle was clear and unmissable. The group came to a stop next to a nearby tree.
Although the castle was visible now, there were about five hundred yards of space left, treeless and empty, with no feature beyond dry brown earth.
M created cover for himself with the tree trunk and his shield, then used binoculars to examine the castle wall.
“They’re up there. Quite a few, atop the walls straight ahead. Seems like they want to snipe anyone rushing up to the gates.”
Campers! Llenn fumed to herself.
“Campers!” Fukaziroh fumed out loud. She added, “If we were a bit closer, I’d be feeding my grenade launchers fresh blood.”
Her MGL-140 launchers had a maximum range of four hundred yards. Even adding the sixty-foot diameter of her plasma grenades, they weren’t going to cover five hundred yards. It was out of range.
“If not for the collapse behind us, we could gain ground with sniper support,” Boss said bitterly.
This made sense to Llenn. Five hundred yards was certainly a manageable distance for a sniper to aim at a human target. And they could offer support from the woods by either sniping the attackers or at least getting them to stay down and out of sight so the others could rush toward the castle.
M and Anna would hang back by the trees to offer support while the others moved forward, and when she was within effective range, Fukaziroh could help with her sheer firepower. Once they were safely at the castle, they would call M and Anna to join them—the most standard of tactical moves. This would probably work, except that M and Anna might get left behind when the collapse reached them. It had a much higher chance of causing two to die, but only two.
“All right!” Pitohui said brightly.
“Oh? You got a brilliant plan for us?” Llenn asked with great optimism.
“I do! M and Anna will have to die here.”
“Hold on.”
I was a fool for expecting anything better, Llenn thought.
“But, I mean, isn’t that the best option? M and Anna have taken the most damage in combat so far, too.”
“I know, but—!”
“Should we all rush the castle and get shot?”
“I don’t want that, either, but…”
“And we’re wasting time just sitting around worrying about it.”
“But…”
Llenn had run out of rebuttals.
“Let’s do it, M.”
“Sure.”
With just those two short messages, the pair of Pitohui and M performed their gear-switch.
M’s M14 EBR vanished, as did his defensive shield, replaced by a monster the same weight as both of them: the six-foot-plus Alligator antimateriel rifle. This would enable him to do even more devastating sniping.
Pitohui’s KTR-09 assault rifle disappeared, too, along with her Remington M870 Breacher. Instead, she had a machine gun now.
This was the collection piece Pitohui had deigned to bring along this time: a general-purpose machine gun that used 7.62 mm rounds, the H&K MG5.
The rugged exterior was colored brown. The stock could be retracted or folded, it featured a rounded optical sight, and it was a newer gun in both GGO and the real world. If any of the ZEMAL crowd were here, their eyes would be sparkling right now.
It had a box attached to the left side of the gun containing a 120-round belt link of ammo. Pitohui loaded the first shot into the gun.
“All right, let’s move! Say good-bye to those two, everyone,” she said heartlessly.
“Don’t worry. If we can catch up, we will.” M beamed, accepting the possibility of his own death.
Anna said, “Leave the backup to us!” her voice bright, despite the fact that her sunglasses could have been hiding tears.
“Awww…” Llenn felt quite upset about this, but if M and Anna had made up their minds, she couldn’t protest. There was no time for lengthy farewells.
“Okay, start in ten seconds,” M said, placing the giant Alligator on a bipod and lying down behind it. He operated the large bolt handle, sending its first huge bullet into the firing chamber.
“Best of luck, everyone!” said Anna, pressing herself against a tree with her Dragunov in hand. This would stabilize her aim.
“Five, four, three,” Fukaziroh counted down with anticipation.
But just as she was saying two, Pitohui snapped, “Wait!”
Llenn had just been mentally preparing herself to rush into the lead, as the smallest and quickest target, distracting the enemies with her presence.
“Eep!” she yelped, P90 quivering. “What is it?” she asked Pitohui.
“Something weird’s coming. On the right.”
“Huh?”
Llenn looked over to the right, as Pitohui had indicated.
Everyone saw it then.
A vehicle approaching from their right.
It had two skis in front, with a track in the rear, or perhaps a caterpillar tread: a snowmobile.
The body was a faded yellow color. While it was quite far away still, it was clear from here that there was only one person riding in it. The snowmobile was designed for smooth and easy riding over snow, but if you wanted to, you could use it to cross flat earth as well.
But you had to be careful about running it for too long, because the engine might overheat. The radiator was over the track, so when running over snow, the track would lift the snow up to hit and cool the radiator. (Whether GGO implemented this level of mechanical physics was unknown.)
This vehicle had clearly come from the snowfield zone, and it was now racing straight for the castle. It was quite fast.
Peering through her rifle scope, Anna called out, “It’s the suicide bombers!”
Whut? Everyone used whatever items they had to get a closer look.
Llenn pulled out her monocular and saw for herself. She didn’t even want to look at those guys. The ones with armor over their bodies and on top of the huge backpacks they wore. She’d seen one earlier, and it had disastrous consequences. She’d been through hell.
“Lemme see?” asked Fukaziroh, leaning closer, so she put the monocular to her friend’s eye.
“Is he gonna get into the castle before he blows up?” wondered Boss, peering through the Vintorez’s scope.
“No…I don’t think that’ll work. The castle itself should be indestructible, unlike the ship in SJ3,” M replied calmly.
“That’s good,” said Llenn, the very person who ultimately destroyed that ship.
“Exactly. Otherwise, we’ll lose the place where we’re supposed to be running for shelter,” agreed Fukaziroh, following gamer logic.
Yes, that makes sense. It would have to work that way, Llenn understood. If that man and his teammates could blow up the castle, it would basically mean the premature end of the game.
If the castle were to be destroyed while there were still players left, and they were unable to attack one another, SJ5 would never end, unless someone got fed up with it and either committed suicide or resigned.
But that did leave the mystery behind of what would happen with all the explosive force and blast wind pressure.
That aside, M lifted the Alligator and said, “This is a good opportunity for us. Use him as a decoy or his blast as cover for all of us to charge up.”
Llenn thought he might go back to his M14 EBR, but he did not. He wasn’t giving up on providing support if it was necessary.
The snowmobile drew closer to the castle. It was driving up a great trail of dust, which drew attention. People were shooting from the castle ramparts. The lines of fire moved twice as fast as the sound, stabbing at the DOOM member.
But the bullets bounced off harmlessly. At a distance of four hundred yards, they weren’t able to puncture his armor.
The shooting from the castle grew even fiercer.
They must have noticed that it was DOOM. Everyone who was up there, most likely from a variety of teams, started shooting at the greatest threat at the moment. Probably everyone who could see him had joined in by now.
But the snowmobile didn’t slow down.
“That’s it! Go, go, go!” cheered Fukaziroh, lifting her MGL-140s in exultation.
You know that if you make too much noise, they’ll snipe you from the castle, Llenn thought scornfully about her partner.
Two hundred yards left until the castle. Suddenly, the snowmobile began to slow down—and just like that, it stopped.
“Aaah!” Llenn exclaimed.
“The engine in the front got knocked out. The track works on a lot of friction, so it can’t keep sliding along out of inertia,” M explained.
“What’s he going to do?” Boss asked.
“Maybe run from there?” Fukaziroh said.
“Or maybe…,” Anna wondered.
The answer: He exploded.
In the bar, the screens were engulfed in the glow of an orange ball of light and the white sphere of the shock wave that grew from it.
Then there was a colossal noise that threatened to destroy the speakers throughout the room.
“Whoaaaaaa!”
“He did it!”
“Fireworks!”
“Way to go!”
“That’s our DOOM!”
“Since when were they yours?”
The crowd erupted into cheers and comments. There had been running commentary ever since the snowmobile appeared on-screen, and the camera followed his glorious dash from just over the shoulder.
They had groaned and lamented when the engine got shot, prematurely ending his mad dash for the castle gates. But the explosion brought them roaring to their feet again.
They were having quite a time.
“This is our chance! Don’t let the blast stop you! Prepare!” M said as the shock wave swallowed up his words.
The explosion happened over three hundred yards away, but even still, the force of it punched them hard. The trees were being whipped back and forth.
The group stayed flat on the ground, waiting out the seconds until the violent force of the initial shock wave passed.
“Waaagh!” Llenn was so light, she nearly got blown away.
“Yo!” Boss’s thick arm reached over to hold her down.
“Thanks!”
Once the first wave had safely passed, M called out, “Now go! Just run straight there!”
The group got to their feet and began to run through the sudden dust screen that covered the world before their eyes.
As he expected, there was dust everywhere in the air now. There was no longer any worry about the players at the castle being able to see them. There was just one other problem.
“How long do you think this will hold up?” Llenn asked as she ran. No one was able to give an answer.
The wind died down, and then the air began to rush backward to fill the vacuum. It roared from left back to right.
Llenn could not see her teammates through the dust; she could only keep running until the moment she smacked into the castle wall. If she got close enough, they wouldn’t be able to shoot down at her from the ramparts, and more importantly, she could get inside.
Of course, there would be other enemies in there, too. But she could worry about that when they got there. Right now, she was going to die if she didn’t get into the castle.
Naturally, there were no shots at them from the walls. No one could see them.
“Tanya, Clarence,” said M, “we’re heading for the castle, hiding in the dust from the explosion to the south.”
Clarence’s response came in her usual lackadaisical tone. “Okay, cool. Wow, what an explosion. I’m sure you don’t want to hear this, but the collapse is getting pretty close. Don’t slow down now.”
“Got it.”
Llenn ran, ran, and ran for all she was worth.
“Hyeep!”
Until she almost ran through the dust smack into the wall itself.
She had to slam on the metaphorical brakes and twisted around until she finally stopped by smashing back-first into the bricks.
“I reached the wall!”
“If there’s a gate, wait there.”
“Got it!”
Llenn started walking along the wall, tracing it with her free hand, with the dust cloud around her. She had seen a gate when looking straight at the castle earlier, but now that she was right next to the wall, she couldn’t tell which direction the gate was in.
Should I go right? How long do I have to walk? she wondered. Suddenly, she was touching nothing but air.
Here was the castle gate. The entrance to her salvation.
“Found it! I was going straight to the wall, and then it was on my right!”
“Wait there. When you see someone else arrive, call them over.”
“Got it!”
M was referring to their teammates, Llenn understood. They ought to regroup at the gate, then go inside the castle grounds as a team.
Several seconds later, Boss was the next to arrive. She spotted Llenn through the cloud of dust.
“Hey.”
She took position next to Llenn and kept her gun pointed into the castle grounds.
They couldn’t see more than thirty feet through the cloud. There was no way to know what was happening on the other side.
Eventually, Fukaziroh showed up, followed by Anna. Fukaziroh took position behind Llenn, and Anna stuck next to Boss.
The only ones left were Pitohui and M.
I think we’re all going to make it, thanks to that explosion! Llenn hoped. Right then, M came through the dust. His Alligator was literally held in his hands like a spear. He probably could have killed her with it if he’d run into her.
To this point, still no one had shot at the group.
“Hey, gang, thanks for waiting!”
Pitohui came last. At first Llenn was momentarily alarmed, because the MG5 machine gun was such an unfamiliar sight on her, but it was indeed Pitohui.
And right as they all regrouped, the wind blew.
Whether it was some final blowback from the explosion or a helpful gale sent by the game system to blow away the dust, a stronger-than-usual wind picked up and cleared out the cloud that had been hanging around them.
The sky returned from cloudy brown to its usual reddened blue, revealing what was beyond the castle gate.
“Be on the lookout!” M instructed, holding his Alligator at the waist. All the others pointed their guns into castle.
It was a very spacious courtyard, so the chances of someone being nearby was low, but they were going to be ready to shoot the instant they saw anyone, regardless.
Pitohui came next to Llenn to join the lineup. “Let’s get in there and raise some hell.”
“It’s good to have you on our side, Pito.”
“And I’m reassured to have you on our side, Llenn.”
Friendship between women was blooming on the battlefield.
And it was at that very moment that Llenn saw a bullet damage effect appear on Pitohui’s head, along with the white smoke of something exploding.
“Oh?” murmured Pitohui, and then all was quiet.
The damage sparkled, creating an effect that looked like a red head on top of a dark-blue body.
But in fact, it was clear that she was already dead. Pitohui’s body toppled toward Llenn with the machine gun in her hand.
“Pito!” Llenn cried. “Mmgh!” She got squished.
“Huh?”
“Hmm?”
Fukaziroh and Boss turned around and saw Llenn, facedown and squashed on the ground.
Ding! And lying atop her, Pitohui’s body, featuring a DEAD tag overhead.
“She got got,” M said simply.
It was clear from a glance at Pitohui’s red head what had happened.
Taking a hit from a rifle shot to the head did not cause it to turn completely red like this. It was the phenomenon to demonstrate a head being exploded. It would simply be too grotesque to actually blow up the player’s head. You could cut it off but not blow it up.
In other words, if this were a real combat situation, Pitohui’s body would have no head above its shoulders.
There were only two possible explanations for such a powerful bullet.
One: an antimateriel rifle.
Two: an exploding bullet.
“Huh? Pito?”
Llenn tried to lift the body and MG5, but the weight was too much for her.
“Move it!” said Fukaziroh, kicking the body to free her teammate.
This was not the kind of thing you usually did to a friend’s body, but her hands were full of the grenade launchers, so that was the quickest way. Nobody complained about it.
“M, what should we do with the machine gun?”
“We’re going to make use of it,” said M, waving his left hand and putting the Alligator back into storage. He lifted the MG5 and pulled the backup ammo box off Pitohui’s side.
Even with all that, M still had room to carry more weight.
“Whaaat?” Llenn exclaimed with shock.
“It was an exploding round,” explained M. “Shirley. She wasn’t in the castle yet, I guess.”
If Pitohui was right near the entrance to the castle, then naturally the shooter would still have to be outside.
“You don’t think…,” said Anna. Only she would have picked up on this. “…Shirley was teaming up with the man from DOOM in the snowfield, do you?”
M’s cheeks twisted into a smirk. “That’s probably it. She sent him toward the castle to blow himself up at this moment. All so she could get a clear shot on Pitohui.”
“Most impressive,” Fukaziroh remarked.
“Awww! Pito!” Llenn was still having trouble recovering from her friend’s death.
Fukaziroh used her petite tush to push Llenn along and put some space between her and her fallen teammate before she could start clinging to Pitohui’s body.
“Come on. Keep your wits about you, or you’ll be next.”
“Ugh…”
Llenn took one more look at Pitohui’s body on the ground.
“I’m gonna take out whoever did this!” she threatened.
“So…you’re gonna eliminate Shirley?”
“Huh? Uh…yeah! Before we win!”
“Sure. You do that,” Fukaziroh murmured, poking Llenn in the back with the end of a grenade launcher. “Let’s get moving, people. Stick with me!”
“Huh? Are you taking charge?”
“No, I just always wanted to say that. M, take it away.”
M clenched the MG5 and said, “All right. We’re going into the castle!”
The clock at this time said 2:06.
“I did it… Thank you, little bomber,” muttered Shirley.
There was no longer anyone to hear her. The one member of Team BOKR whom she’d been hooked up to had just blown himself up.
As Anna suspected, Shirley had indeed recruited him for her strategy. When she stumbled across him in the mist and got too close to shoot, she had spoken to him instead. “Hey, how ya doin’?”
To his shock, she told him, “It’d be a waste to blow yourself up here.”
To his shock, she told him, “I can take you to a place where you’ll really shine. Let’s work together until then.”
Of course, it was a gamble on Shirley’s part as to whether he would actually accept her offer.
But to her shock this time, he replied, “Wow, really, scary sniper lady? Yeah, I’ll follow you! I was just feeling lonely, being separated from my team!”
Based on his tone of voice, he seemed like he was very young. They spoke more over time, and he shocked her even more by blithely admitting that he was still just in middle school.
So the member of BOKR had more or less become Shirley’s follower. He told her the tag was an abbreviation of Bokura—in a word, Us.
While Shirley was busy taking out the enemies on the snowfield, she had him look around for a vehicle of any kind. Even on a totally flat and featureless plain, they would have hidden something somewhere.
After a painstaking search, he announced that he had found a snowmobile hidden in a hole. It was a large hole with a white board placed over it.
She told him to take it, ride it to the very eastern edge of the field, and wait there.
It was after that point that Shirley helped out M and Anna. After saving them and seeing them off, it was two o’clock before you knew it.
“Uh-oh, Miss Shirley! We gotta get to the castle quick!” he told her, which was how she learned what was happening. She called him back at once, and they rode the snowmobile together to the edge of the snowfield closest to the castle.
At that point, she didn’t know whether Llenn and Pitohui were still in the forest or if they’d already reached the castle. So she had to take the option that guaranteed her own survival: rushing the castle.
But now that the mist had cleared, moving across a nearly five-hundred-yard empty space in full view was dangerous. If she got closer, the people already in the castle would be able to gang up on her—even if she was speeding on a snowmobile.
While she was deliberating, her new friend, the little bomber, said, “I’ll blow myself up part of the way, and that’ll create a dust cloud that’ll be your smoke screen. Then you can use that to get into the castle!”
After a bit more thinking, Shirley gave her order: “Clear the way for me to do my thing.”
“With pleasure, ma’am!”
Then the explosion.
And the dust cloud.
Shirley started running straight for the castle wall.
And right at that moment, someone started to whisper into her mind.
“Mai, if you stay here, maybe you’ll get the chance to shoot that hateful Pitohui in the head.”
Grandma!
It was the voice of her grandmother.
Still alive and well, by the way.
Shirley got down on hands and knees at the border between the snow and dirt and set up the R93 Tactical 2 on a bipod.
She was aiming for the path from the forest to the castle.
If Pitohui’s team was still in the forest, then they would’ve made a move for the castle through the dust cloud.
In which case…
Shirley waited.
Pressed to the ground as she was, she could feel subtle vibrations. They were getting bigger.
She didn’t need to turn around to understand. The ground was crumbling behind her.
There was no way for her to know how far behind it was. Perhaps the dirt supporting her body would give way in the very next second, sending her to her doom.
Still, she waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And when the dust cleared and she could see the castle gate through her scope, she murmured, “Gotcha…”
She adjusted her aim just a tiny bit and caught Pitohui right in her sights.
Her target was Pitohui’s center of gravity.
The distance was half a mile.
The bullet would drop over time, so she had to aim a full person’s height higher.
She wasn’t relying on the system to aim for her, so she wouldn’t produce a bullet line that gave away her presence. It was a pure snipe shot based on nothing but player skill.
Even with her incredible talent, this distance was pushing it in terms of Shirley’s accuracy.
If she misjudged the bullet’s drop even the tiniest bit, the bullet would easily sail over Pitohui’s head.
Carefully, slowly, but firmly, Shirley pulled the trigger.
When she lowered the scope after the recoil jump, she could see Pitohui’s beet-red head.
Her aim had been off slightly, but only up to her head. It must’ve been instantly fatal.
“I did it… Thank you, little bomber.”
Shirley got to her feet, loaded her next shot, then finally turned around.
The white snowfield turned into sky partway. The boundary was about four hundred yards away.
Then it was 380. In less than twenty seconds, the ground under her was going to crumble, too.
For just an instant, Shirley considered it.
But only for an instant.
“I can’t die yet!”
She took off running with the R93 Tactical 2 in hand.
Running for the castle gate before her eyes.
“Gaaah! She got me!”
In the dark of the waiting area, Pitohui writhed in frustration, alone.
Her presence there was an instant tip-off that she’d been one-hit-killed.
“I know it was Shirley!”
She hadn’t actually seen the shot that hit her, but she was certain: It was Shirley who did it.
Considering the feelings behind the bullet that hit her, the grudge that went into it, she couldn’t imagine anyone other than Shirley.
That is, assuming such things were actually real in the virtual world.
“Well, shit.”
She flopped onto her back with her limbs splayed out and stared at a countdown clock on the wall with a timer at 9:40.
If she waited here for nine minutes, she’d be back at the pub.
“Guess I could drown my sorrows there,” she muttered. But just then, a message appeared in the corner of her field of vision.
It was at the very top of what she could see, staring up at the ceiling, meaning it was on the wall behind her.
“Huh?”
She sat up and turned her head to look at it.
“Huh!”
She took note of what it said.
About the special rules of SJ5: Here are some more! It’s very important! Read carefully! Don’t give up just because you’re dead!
Below that was a very long explanatory text.
Only those who have died in SJ5 get to read this. We have a very special opportunity for all of you!
“Ohhh?” Pitohui murmured. She read further.
You may have died, but there’s still something you can do, right? Yes, you can come back and haunt people.
“Uh-huh.”
So…would you like to be a ghost?
To be continued…
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login