Chapter 6
I turned on my blinker, leaned the frame sideways, and passed
through the large gate.
Instantly, I felt the accusing stares of the pedestrians on either
side of the tree-lined street, and abruptly slowed the motorcycle
down.
In the midst of the increasing use of electric scooters, the
crappy old Thai 125 cc two-stroke dirt bike I got through Agil's
help made an astonishing amount of noise. Every time Suguha
sat on the back, she complained that it was noisy, smelly, and uncomfortable. I tried to tease her by saying that she couldn't be like
the wind if she didn't understand that sound, but secretly I
wished that I had bought one of the four-stroke scooters made
after the exhaust regulations kicked in.
Especially when I was riding it on the grounds of a hospital.
I puttered along the street with the speed of a donkey pulling a
cart until eventually a parking garage came into view. With a sigh
of relief, I drove inside and stopped the bike at the special motorcycle section in the corner, pulling out the archaic ignition key
and pulling off my helmet. The chilly winter air brought a faint
scent of disinfectant with it.
It was the Saturday after my high-priced-cake meeting with
Kikuoka.
He sent me a message saying that the location was prepared
for me to log in to Gun Gale Online. I made the trip with heavy
heart, but was surprised to find the address was for a large municipal hospital in Chiyoda Ward.
I hardly ever had a reason to visit the city center of Tokyo, but
I didn't get lost along the way. The physical rehabilitation center
attached to this hospital complex was the place where I'd rebuilt
my strength after escaping SAO.
Even after the monthlong stay there, I had to make the trip
time after time for tests and other procedures. I hadn't been here
in six months, but the sight of that familiar white building filled
me with a strange, confusing mix of nostalgia and loneliness. I
shook my head to brush off the sentiment and headed for the entrance.
The conversation I had with Asuna six days ago at the Imperial
Palace nearby, where I first explained the situation, played back
in my head.
"Wh-whaaat?! K-Kirito, you're…quitting ALO?!"
Asuna's wide, shocked eyes were beginning to well up, so I
quickly shook my head to put her at ease.
"N-no, no! It's just for a few days! I'll convert back as soon as
it's done! A-as a matter of fact…I need to go and observe this
other VRMMO for a bit…"
Asuna's panic melted away, to be replaced by a skeptical
look.
"Observe…? Haven't you been just making new accounts up
until now? Why would you need to convert?"
"Well, it's because…of the four-eyes in the Ministry of Internal
Af airs…"
With great dif iculty, I explained how a large part of the reason I'd chosen the palace for our date spot was based on Seijirou
Kikuoka's summons, intentionally leaving out certain details of
the story.
The story finished up just as we reached the gate. We returned our tickets there and were crossing the Hirakawa Gate
bridge when Asuna gave voice to her feelings, looking conflicted.
"Well, if Mr. Kikuoka's asking you, I guess you don't have a
choice…but sometimes I wonder if he can really be fully trusted.
I mean, I know we owe him a lot, but still…"
"I completely agree with you."
We grinned wryly at each other. The smile quickly vanished
from her face, and she squeezed my hand.
"…Just come back as quickly as you can. There's only one
home for us."
I nodded and looked down at the surface of the moat.
"Of course. I'll be back in ALO before you know it. I'm just
doing a bit of research on what's happening inside Gun Gale Online."
…That's right.
I did not say a single word to Asuna about the true nature of
Kikuoka's request—that I would be making contact with the
player Death Gun, who (supposedly) wielded a mysterious power
beyond the bounds of the game. I knew if I explained that, she
would either stop me or demand to infiltrate the game with me.
I knew it was a selfish desire, but I had no intention of letting
her anywhere near any virtual world with a hint of real danger
about it.
Of course, I was sure the stories about Death Gun were 99 percent fictionalized.
A man who could kill a virtual player in real life.
At no point could I bring myself to believe it was true. The
AmuSphere was nothing but an extension of the classic television
set. It was easy to think of the full-dive virtual worlds as a kind of
technological magic, but in reality, they were simple, useful tools
—not magical items that transported the user's soul to a far-off
land.
But it was that last 1 percent that had brought me here.
Several months ago, I was organizing some old digital magazines that had built up on my PC's drive, and I stumbled across a
short interview with Argus's development director, Akihiko
Kayaba, just before SAO launched. In it, I found the following
quote.
THE NAME AINCRAD IS AN ABBREVIATION OF "AN INCARNATING RADIUS," MEANING AN ACTUALIZED WORLD.
WITHIN THIS WORLD, PLAYERS WILL SEE THEIR DREAMS
COME TO LIFE. SWORDS, MONSTERS, LABYRINTHS—THIS
WORLD NOT ONLY BRINGS THESE SYMBOLS OF GAMING
INTO REAL FORM, IT HAS THE POWER TO CHANGE THE
PLAYER HIMSELF.
I had indeed changed. So had Asuna. And Agil, and Klein, and
Liz, and Silica. Everyone who experienced those two years inside
the game had changed to a degree that they could never be their
old selves again.
But what if Kayaba's "change" was more than that…? Thanks
to The Seed—the VRMMO creation package—there was now a VR
Nexus made of infinitely multiplying virtual worlds. Was it possi-
ble that somewhere, in some tiny corner of the Nexus, there was
some element that freely overwrote the boundary between virtual
life and real life?
The automatic door buzzed open and brought a wave of heated
air and disinfectant that cut through my uncollected thoughts.
In any case, if two players had died in the real world, I couldn't
guarantee with absolute certainty that there was no danger in
contacting Death Gun. If I admitted this to Asuna after returning
to ALO, she would be mad, but in the end, she would understand.
She would know that as Kirito, the man who prematurely
ended the Aincrad time line and unleashed The Seed upon the
world, I didn't have any other choice in the matter.
After a quick stop in the restroom, I followed the instructions
on the printout of Kikuoka's e-mail to reach a third-floor room in
the hospital's inpatient ward. There was no patient name in the
placard on the wall. I knocked on the door and opened it up.
"Hey! Good to see you again, Kirigaya!"
It was a familiar nurse I'd known while I was in rehabilitation.
The long hair beneath her nurse's cap was tied into one thick,
three-strand braid with a little white ribbon waving at the end.
Her tall frame, packed into the light pink nurse's uniform, created a tempting silhouette for any new patient to behold. A small
name tag on her left breast read AKI.
The put-on smile she wore was as purifying and welcoming as
an angel's, but I knew that she could be every bit as frightening as
the situation warranted, and I wasn't fooled. After a second of
paralysis and surprise, I hastily bowed.
"Ah…h-hello, it's been a while."
Nurse Aki stretched out her arms and abruptly grabbed my
shoulders, squeezing my upper arms and the sides of my stomach.
"Wh-whoa!"
"Look at you, you've got some meat on those bones again. But
not enough yet. Have you been eating properly?"
"I-I have, I have. But why are you here, Ms. Aki…?"
I looked around the cramped room, but she was the only one
inside.
"I got the story from that government man with the glasses.
He says you're doing some kind of virtual…network? Research
thingy? And not even a year after you got out, you poor boy. Well,
he said that since I was in charge of your physical rehab, he
wanted me to monitor your condition here, so I'm off my regular
shift for today. Those government agents really do have that national power to push people around—he cleared it with the chief
nurse and everything. So here's to some more time together, Kirigaya!"
"Ah…i-it's a pleasure, ma'am…"
Very clever of you, knowing I can't argue back against a
pretty nurse, Kikuokaaaaa, I cursed the absent agent. Instead, I
was all smiles for Nurse Aki as I shook her hand.
"…So the four-eyed agent isn't here, then?"
"No, he said there was a meeting he couldn't skip. He had a
message for you, though."
I took the manila envelope and pulled out a handwritten note.
Send your report to the usual e-mail address. Be
sure to expense all costs incurred, as you will be
reimbursed along with your payment when the
operation is complete. P.S. Don't let your hormonal urges get the best of you while you're alone
in the room with that pretty young nurse.
I immediately tore the note and envelope into shreds and
stuffed the pieces into my jacket pocket. If Nurse Aki happened to
see that, I'd be taken to taken to a real court for harassment.
She blinked at me suspiciously. I answered that look with a
nervous smile.
"Well, uh…Let's get connected to the Net, then…"
"Ah, of course. It's all set up for you."
She showed me to a gel bed with a number of imposing monitoring tools next to it. A brand-new silver AmuSphere hung
gleaming over the headrest.
"Out of your clothes now, Kirigaya."
"P-pardon?!"
"I've got to pop the electrodes on. No use being shy—I saw it
all when you were hospitalized here."
"…Is…just the top okay…?"
She thought it over for a moment, then mercifully nodded a
yes. I obediently took off my jacket and long-sleeved shirt before
lying down on the bed. She quickly slapped a few electrodes in
various places on my upper half, to help monitor my heart activ-
ity. The AmuSphere itself had a heart rate monitor, but Kikuoka
wanted to be thorough, just in case the unit itself was hacked
into. That, at least, reassured me that he really was concerned
about my safety.
"And that should do it…"
The nurse performed one last check of the monitoring tools
and nodded. I reached up for the AmuSphere, fitted it over my
head, and turned it on.
"Okay, well…here I go. It'll probably be a four- or five-hour
dive, just so you know…"
"Sure thing. I'll be watching your body very closely, so don't
worry about anything back here."
"Th-thanks a lot…"
I closed my eyes at last, wondering how exactly I'd gotten myself to this position. A little ticking sound in my ears let me know
the device was powered up and ready to go.
"Link Start," I commanded. Familiar beams of light covered
my vision, tearing my mind free of my body.
The moment I landed in the world, something felt off.
A few seconds later, I understood why. The entire sky was yellow with a trace of pale red.
As I understood it, time inside Gun Gale Online was synchronized with real time. So just after one o'clock in the afternoon, the
sky should have been the same shade of blue that I'd seen
through the hospital window a moment ago. What was the reason
for this gloomy shade of twilight, then?
After a few moments of wondering, I shrugged my shoulders
to clear my head. The setting of GGO was the wasteland of Earth
after the Last Great War. The coloring might just be an effect to
add to the postapocalyptic setting.
Ahead of me was the majesty of the capital city at the center of
the world of GGO, SBC Glocken. As befitting the king of sci-fi VRMMOs, the vibe it gave off was completely different from the fantasy cities of ALfheim's Yggdrasil, atop the World Tree, and the
major cities of Aincrad.
A host of metallic-looking high-rises loomed tall and dark in
the sky, connected by a network of midair walkways. Colorful
neon holograms were plastered in the spaces between the buildings, and increased in number closer to the ground to form a
flood of color and sound.
I looked down to see that I was standing not on dirt or rock,
but a street fitted with metal plating.
Behind me was a domed structure that was apparently the
spawning point for newly created characters, while ahead of me
was the wide main street heading into town. Weird little shops
crowded the sides of the street, reminding me of the back alleys of
Akihabara in real life.
The players I saw walking the street all had a distinctly dangerous air about them.
And there were, overwhelmingly, more men than women.
Perhaps it was because my home game was the more female-popular ALO, with its world of dainty fairies, but the sight of so many
imposing, well-muscled men in camo military jackets and black
body armor was imposing, to say the least. Calling it energetic
would be putting it nicely; the word I'd choose was sweaty. Every
last one had a mean look in his eyes that said, Don't talk to me.
There were other reasons to be intimidated. Such as the fact
that the majority of the players were carrying large, black guns
over shoulder or waist.
Unlike the more decorative aspects of swords or spears, guns
existed for one purpose: to be weapons. They were all designed
and shaped in order to best defeat the enemy and nothing more.
It occurred to me that this was something that could be said
about this entire world.
The aims of this game world were refined and distilled into
three simple things: fight, kill, take. Everything that made ALO
what it was, the idea of living another life in a world of fantasy,
was stripped clean out of GGO.
If anything, an appearance that suggested delicacy or prettiness was only a downside. How much menace you could inflict
upon the opponent in battle with appearance alone was clearly a
significant variable here. Most of the men wore scruffy beards or
had large, ugly facial scars to help achieve this effect.
So what did my avatar look like?
I realized that I didn't know yet, and looked down at my body.
If I was going to draw the attention of Death Gun by being an infamous badass, I'd want to look like a macho soldier out of some
Hollywood action flick…
…but I had a bad premonition.
Both of my hands were pale and smooth, with shockingly
slender fingers. My body, clad in black military fatigues, seemed
even more fragile than my real body in places. Based on my line
of sight, I didn't feel very tall, either.
As I told Asuna earlier, I hadn't created my own character
from scratch for Gun Gale Online. If I did, who knew how long it
would take for me to encounter Death Gun, who only targeted the
game's most powerful players.
All of the game worlds based on the VRMMO support package
known as The Seed—technically called the Cardinal system—
shared just one meta-rule that applied to each and every one: the
character conversion system. As long as your game was created
with The Seed, you could not deactivate this feature.
By using the conversion system, a player could take a character's data from one game and transfer it to a different game run
by an entirely different company. It was similar in concept to the
SIM cards that allowed one to transfer their phone data to a new
model from an entirely different carrier.
Let's say you had a character in Game A that had a Toughness
of 100 and Speed of 80, and you wanted to transfer that character
to Game B. Your strength in Game A would run through a relative
value converter, which might give you a Strength of 40 and
Agility of 30 in Game B. In short, an above-average muscular
warrior in ALO would become an above-average soldier in GGO.
Naturally, this was not designed for copying characters. The
moment an avatar was converted, the original in the old world
disappeared entirely. Not just that, it was only the character that
moved, not the items and equipment, so while the process was
convenient, it did require some courage to go through with. In
transferring "Kirito the Spriggan" from ALO to GGO, I had no
choice but to dump nearly all of my items into Agil's new pawnshop storage back in Yggdrasil City. Anyone else who wasn't as
lucky to know a trustworthy partner like him would have to get
rid of their entire material fortune.
So the conversion process gave me a character equal in
strength to Kirito in ALO, although given that I had started over
from scratch there, I wasn't as all-powerful as the Kirito from the
original SAO. But since I couldn't bring my appearance and items
with me, I had no idea what sort of look I'd be given. Hopefully, I
was blessed with a menacing soldier look, but…
I looked around the area, a bad premonition crawling up my
neck, and noticed that the outer wall of the dome I'd just exited
was made of reflective glass.
My eyes went wide.
"Wh-what the hell is this?!"
The person I saw in the reflection was a hundred light-years
away from the look I was hoping to get.
The height was even shorter than my Spriggan form, and more
slender. The hair was still black, just as before, but now it flowed
smoothly from the back of my head down to my shoulder blades.
Like my hands, the skin of my face was pale white, with brilliant
red lips.
Although the color of my eyes was still the black of my previous character, they were much larger and shinier. In fact, framed
by the long eyelashes, the innocently bewitching gaze that came
back at me from the reflection was so different that I momentarily forgot it was me and looked away shyly. I straightened up and
let out a long sigh.
Asuna used to tell me that the SAO Kirito had quite a girlish
face, but this went way beyond that. I stood there, wondering how
in the world I would turn myself into a menacing soldier looking
like this, when a guy who had been eating something off to the
side rushed up behind me.
"Oooh, miss, you're so lucky! That's an F-1300 line avatar! You
hardly ever see that type generated. Hey, since you just started,
feel like selling your account? I'll give you two mega-credits!"
"…"
I stared at him, my mind a total blank. Suddenly, an uncomfortable possibility occurred to me, and I hastily patted my chest.
Fortunately, what I felt was flat and solid, and not the rounded
softness I was afraid of finding. My features were feminine, but
my avatar hadn't undergone a sex change in the conversion
process.
In almost every VR game nowadays, players were forbidden
from playing the opposite of their real-life sex. Long-term use of
an avatar of the opposite sex apparently caused undeniable mental and physical effects. But because the player's sex was determined based on reading brain waves, there were very rare occasions that one was identified as the other side, and suffered quite
a shock when they dove in for the first time.
Based on what we knew now, Kayaba must have already understood the ill effects of crossing those streams—at the start of
the original SAO, gender choice was free to the player, but we
were all forcibly reverted to our original state soon after being
trapped inside…
I realized that I was getting lost in my own thoughts, so I concentrated on the fellow before me and shrugged.
"Uh…Sorry, I'm a dude."
Even my voice was high enough to be a reasonably alto female
voice. Disappointed, I waited for his answer, but he was at a loss
for words. When he found his tongue again, it was actually twice
as excited as before.
"Then…you're an M-9000 series?! N-no way! I'll pay four—no,
five mega-credits. Please, just sell it to me!!"
On the contrary, I'd have been happy to give it to him for free,
or even exchange looks, but that was sadly not an option.
"Umm…Listen, this isn't a new character, it's a conversion.
Can't sell this one for money, sorry."
"Oh…I see…"
He took one last regretful, thorough examination of my face
from all angles, then recovered his spirits somewhat.
"Some people say that having a really well-used account before
conversion ups your chances of snagging a rare avatar. If you
don't mind me asking, how much playing time did you put into
your previous game?"
"Huh? P-playing time?"
I thought it over. The total playing time for Kirito the swordsman, the account I'd taken from SAO to ALO, was at least two
years long…Which would be 730 days times 24 hours…
"Let's see…ten thou…" I started answering honestly, then
quickly covered it up. The VRMMO genre itself was barely three
years old, so the only players who could have ten thousand hours
logged were former SAO players, and I didn't want to reveal that
about myself.
"Er, I mean, a year. It's probably just a lucky coincidence."
"Oh, I see…Well, let me know if you ever change your mind."
He took out a clear card of some kind and pushed it into my
hands before reluctantly trudging off. As I stared at the card,
which featured his name, gender, and guild, it began to glow and
disappeared. That probably meant the information had automatically been added to my in-game data file.
Unable to get over this betrayal, I glared at my reflection in the
glass. It didn't seem like there was anything I could do about it.
My conversion history was saved into my character data, so if I
converted back to ALO I would once again be the spiky-haired
Spriggan, but any time I tried to switch to GGO, I would still be
this unidentifiable avatar somewhere between girl and boy.
Determined to live up to my motto of finding the silver lining
in any cloud, I spent a few minutes until I came up with one definitive "good thing" about it.
The only reason I was in this game was to make contact with
the player known as Death Gun, and observe and assess his powers for myself, hopefully not by getting shot. In order to achieve
that goal, I had to garner attention by displaying my strength.
Given the type of game GGO was, there were doubtless very
few female players, so my feminine appearance, while not what I
was hoping to look like, would at least help me stand out. I
wouldn't be imposing any kind of pressure in battle, so I'd have to
make up for it with skill.
As far as advertising my strength, I already had a plan for that.
It took time to make a name for yourself with standard play—
conquering dungeons, or the unsavory practice of PKing. But fortunately for me, this was the very day that they were starting an
event called the Bullet of Bullets, a tournament for determining
the best player in GGO. I'd enter the tournament and jump into
the battle royale. If I could hit the upper ranks and get my name
out there, Death Gun would take notice—and he might even be in
the tournament already.
I had no idea how well I could fight in a game I'd never played
before, but there was no better alternative than trying it out. I
knew that fighting with guns wasn't the same as the ranged bat-
tles with archers and mages in ALO, but as long as they were both
VRMMOs, there would be some common ground. I'd do the very
best I could—and if that wasn't good enough, the ultimate fault
lay with Kikuoka for putting this ridiculous mission on my shoulders.
At any rate, first came registering for the tournament, and
then came equipment.
I gave one last glance at my reflection and snorted before
heading off down the main street. When I realized that I was unconsciously stroking the long hair off of my cheeks, I felt a deep
gloom settle over my mind.
Within minutes, I was lost.
The strangely named SBC Glocken was made of a number of
vast floors stacked atop one another. As I looked upward, it
seemed to be like a compressed version of Aincrad's many floors
looming overhead, with a small opening far above that admitted
the sunset sky. Large buildings cut through the floors, and a variety of floating hallways, escalators, and elevators crossed here
and there in beautiful disarray, but the complexity of it all was
worthy of a dungeon.
I could call up a detailed map from the menu screen, of course,
but it was not easy to match the location noted on the map with
what I was actually seeing in real time.
In a single-player RPG, I would wander around in a daze,
never to return to my original location, but this was an MMO—
there was only one thing to do.
I checked out the crowd of people around me, looking for another player rather than an NPC, then trotted over and called out
for help.
"Um, excuse me, could you give me directio—"
I immediately regretted my decision. The person I'd caught
ended up being a girl.
Her pale blue hair was cut short in a careless style, but the fine
braids tied at the sides of her forehead made for a memorable accent. Below her sharp eyebrows gleamed large, dark blue eyes
with a feline hint to them, followed by a petite nose and lightly
colored lips.
Wondering on the spot if this might be another misleadingly
feminine avatar like mine, I made a quick inspection of the
player's body, but the unzipped jacket beneath her sand-colored
muffler bulged in the properly feminine ways. On top of that, she
was quite small; I just didn't notice because my line of sight was
lower than usual.
In a VRMMO, a good three-quarters of the time that a male
player asked a female for directions, he was actually just hitting
on her.
As I feared, the look on her face was of obvious suspicion—but
it didn't last very long.
"…Is it your first time here? Where are you going?" she asked
in a beautifully clear voice. There was a hint of a smile on her lips.
I wondered what had prompted this response, then realized the
answer. She was making the same mistake that the avatar buyer
had just minutes ago: She thought I was a girl. Well, that was just
great.
"Uh, erm…"
I nearly corrected her about my gender on the spot, but
stopped myself in time.
In a way, this was the perfect situation. If I backed out here
and found a male player to ask, and he mistook me for a girl as
well, it would only complicate matters. My second motto was to
make use of whatever I could, which in this case meant that this
poor girl would have to stay under her mistaken assumption for a
while.
"Yes, it's my first time playing. I need to find a cheap weapons
shop and this place called the regent's office," I answered, my
voice slightly lower and huskier than hers. She looked confused.
"Regent's office? Why?"
"Um…I was going to enter the battle-royale event that's coming up…"
Her large eyes blinked in surprise and went wide.
"You…just started playing today, right? There's nothing stopping you from entering, but you might not be good enough to
last…"
"Oh, this isn't a brand-new character. I converted from another game."
"Ahh, I see." Her indigo eyes sparkled, and an honest smile
broke across her lips this time. "Do you mind if I ask why you decided to switch to this dusty, greasy game?"
"Because…um, I've played all fantasy games until this point,
and I was in the mood to try something more cyber-ish…And I'm
kind of curious about what it's like to have a gunfight."
This wasn't exactly a lie. After honing my VRMMO skills on
close-range sword combat for so long, I wondered how well that
skill would translate to the vastly different style of GGO.
"I see. Well, you've got real guts to challenge the BoB right off
the bat," she chuckled. "All right, I'll show you where to go. I was
on my way to the regent's office too, anyway. But before that, a
gun shop. What kind of firearms are you into?"
"Umm…"
I didn't have an immediate answer. As it became clear that I
didn't know, she grinned once more.
"We should visit a nice big market with lots of selection, then.
That'll be this way."
She spun around and took off. I hurried after the swaying muffler.
We passed through so many twisting alleys and moving walkways and stairs that I was certain I'd never be able to recall the
path we took. After several minutes, we came on another wideopen street. Directly in front was a huge, flashy store that looked
like a giant foreign supermarket chain.
"That's it," she said, pointing to the building as she weaved
through the crowd.
The interior of the vast store was full of color, light, and sound,
like an amusement park. The NPC shopkeepers were all beautiful
women in revealing silver outfits flashing dazzling smiles, which
made it all the more shocking to see them holding, and surrounded on all sides by, menacing dark handguns and machine
guns.
"This is…quite a store," I muttered, and the girl next to me
chuckled.
"It's usually easier to get the good bargains at the deeper specialty shops than these all-round stores that sell to newbies. But
you can also use this place to find the type of gun you'd like, and
then go do your shopping elsewhere."
Now that she mentioned it, the players milling about the establishment seemed to be wearing more colorful attire than the
average, and compared to her veteran desert-colored fatigues,
they came across as amateurish.
"All right. What type of build are you playing?"
I paused. Though I had converted between very different
worlds, my character's general leanings should have been preserved.
"Um, mostly strength, followed by speed…I guess?"
"So you're a STR-AGI type, then. You could be a midrange
fighter with a heavier assault rifle or a large-caliber machine gun
as your main weapon and a handgun for your sub…Oh, but you
just converted, didn't you? So you won't have much money…"
"Ah…r-right."
I waved my right hand to bring up the menu. Though I kept
my statistics, I lost all my items and money in the transfer. So the
number displayed at the bottom of my item storage said…
"Um, one thousand credits."
"…Exactly the starter sum."
We looked at each other and laughed nervously.
"Hmm," she murmured, putting her fingers to her chin and
tilting her head in thought. "With that amount, you might only be
able to get a small raygun. Or on the live-ammo side, a used revolver, perhaps…But then again, if you're interested…"
I sensed what she was about to suggest and quickly shook my
head. No matter the MMO, it was never wise for a newbie to get
too much assistance from a veteran player. I wasn't here to enjoy
the game, but there were still rules that a gamer had to follow.
"N-no, that's all right. So…is there somewhere that I can earn
a bunch of money really fast? I thought I heard there was a casino
in this game…"
The girl looked troubled at this idea.
"That kind of thing is best to jump into when you've got plenty
of money and expect to lose what you wager. But it's true that
there are places you can gamble, big and small. In fact, even in
here…"
She spun around and pointed toward the back.
"There's a game just over there, see?"
Her slender finger was pointing to a large machine, flashing
with electric lights. Upon approaching it, I found that it was too
big to be called a game machine—it covered the entire wall.
It had to be nearly ten feet tall and sixty feet wide. It was surrounded by a waist-high fence set into the metallic floor tiles, and
an NPC dressed like an Old West gunman stood watch in the
back. There was no fence at the near end, only a revolving metal
bar and a square pillar that looked like a cashier box.
Behind the gunman, who regularly drew his oversized revolver
from its holster to spin it on his finger and offer challenges to
passersby, was a brick wall riddled with countless bulletholes. At
the top of that wall was a pink neon sign reading UNTOUCHABLE!
"What's this?" I asked. She pointed out the features for me.
"It's a game where you go in the gate at the front and see how
close you can get to the NPC at the back without being hit. There,
see where the high score is?"
Her finger indicated a glowing red line on the floor behind the
fence. It was just over two-thirds down the length of the space.
"Oh…and how much do you win?"
"Well, it costs five hundred credits to play, and you get a thousand for reaching ten meters, and double that for fifteen. Oh, and
if you actually touch the gunman, you win back all of the money
that's been put into the game so far."
"All of it?!"
"See the carryover amount on the sign? Ten, hundred…three
hundred thousand credits and change."
"That's…quite a sum."
"Yeah, well, it's impossible," she said flatly. "Once you get past
the eight-meter mark, the gunman starts doing this high-speed
firing pattern that's a total cheat. He's got an ultra-fast reload and
three-point burst somehow, even though it's just a revolver. By
the time you see the bullet line, it's already too late."
"Bullet line…"
She pulled on my sleeve and whispered into my ear, "Look,
someone's going to add to the pool right now."
I tore my eyes from the gunman to see that a group of three
men were approaching the game.
One of them, clad in a wintry white-and-gray camo jacket,
strode up to the gate with purpose. He pressed his palm to the
cashier terminal, which erupted into a bright fanfare to indicate
that a transaction had taken place. Nearly a dozen people wandered up from elsewhere in the store to watch.
The NPC gunman drawled something in English that I took as
a threat to "blast your ass to the moon," and put a hand to the gun
in his holster. A large, green, holographic number three appeared
in the air before the Arctic camo challenger, then beeped down to
zero, at which point the metal bar clanked open.
"Rrraaagh!"
He roared and raced forward, then abruptly threw his legs
wide to come to a stop, his eyes wide-open. He tilted his upper
half to the right and lifted his left hand and leg up into the air in a
truly comical stance.
Before I could wonder what kind of dance he was doing, three
shining red bullets passed to the left of his head, through the
space under his left arm, and below his left knee. While I'd been
distracted, the gunman had fired three quick bullets in succession. The man's evasion was impressive—but it seemed as though
he knew where the bullets would be fired.
"Were those…trajectories?" I murmured to the blue-haired
girl, who nodded and answered:
"Yes, he evaded the bullets by watching the bullet lines."
The man in the camo took off on another mad dash when the
lines of fire were gone, then stopped again, just as quickly. This
time he opened his legs wider and bent over ninety degrees at the
waist.
With a high-pitched whine, two bullets flew over his head and
another passed through his legs. Another rush forward, another
abrupt stop. It was like a game of "Red Light, Green Light."
The camo man showed considerable agility in proceeding forward seven meters. Just three more, and he'd be able to win back
double what he paid to play—but that's when it all went wrong.
Until now, the NPC gunman had been firing three shots in the
same pattern: pause, two shots, one shot. The man jumped to
evade the last shot, but lost his balance and put a hand to the
ground when he landed. By the time he recovered, it was already
too late—the gunman's hand flashed, and the shot caught him on
his white vest, shooting orange sparks.
The sound system played another flare, this one droopy and
mocking. The gunmen swore in triumph, and the pool total on
the wall behind him shot up 500 with a jingle. The Arctic camo
man slumped back toward the gate.
"…See?" The girl shrugged, hiding a grin behind her muffler.
"It would be one thing if you could dart left and right, but it's
pretty much a straight shot forward, so you always get beat right
around there."
"Hmm…I see. So it's already too late by the time you see the
trajectory lines," I muttered to myself, heading for the gate.
"Oh…Hey, wait," she called out in surprise, trying to stop me. I
grinned back with one cheek and put my palm against the
cashier. It made an old-fashioned cha-ching sound.
The onlookers and the previous challenger's group both murmured in surprise, either at another foolish attempt so soon, or at
seeing my appearance. The girl with the muffler had her hands on
her hips, shaking her head in disapproval.
The gunman drawled a different taunt this time, followed by
the same countdown.
I dropped my hips and took a dashing stance. The instant that
it hit zero and the metal bar swung open, I burst forward.
Within a few steps, the gunman's hand rose and three red
lines appeared from the end of his gun. They pointed at my head,
right breast, and left leg.
As soon as this registered in my head, I leaped forward to the
right as hard as I could. An orange bullet tracer shot past my left
side. I kicked the panel on the right and returned to the center of
the lane.
Naturally, this was my first experience against a gun within a
VRMMO.
There were many monsters who used ranged attacks like arrows, poison projectiles, or magic spells in ALO and even SAO.
There was one way to evade these attacks. You had to read the
enemy's eyes. It had to have been a sticking point with Akihiko
Kayaba—every VRMMO monster run by the Cardinal system
looked directly at its target when it attacked…but only if the creature actually had optical organs that could be classified as eyes.
That golden rule had to apply to the NPC gunman as well.
I focused not on the red bullet lines or the black muzzle of the
gun, only on the gunman's eyes. I could sense the trajectories of
his shots just from the lifeless twitching of those eyes. When they
moved, I darted just enough to avoid them, left and right, up and
down, weaving my way around the silent lines. Each time a bullet
passed, I was already in position for the next leap forward.
I must have passed the ten-meter mark by the time he finished
the second set of three, because a brief sound effect played. I
barely even registered it.
The gunman released his empty cylinder, sprayed the spent
cartridges behind him and popped in a full six bullets with one
motion, then clicked the frame back into place within the span of
half a second—cheating, indeed—then pointed it at me again.
His next attack was not the same crisp three-shot pattern. The
shots came irregularly; two, one, then three. I evaded out of sheer
instinct, closing another five meters. There was another brief jingle, and the gunman's lightning-quick reload.
There were only five meters left. I could see his whiskered
face, twisted in what I imagined was disgust.
Beneath the ten-gallon hat, his black beady eyes swiped sideways across my chest. I determined that dodging to the side was
impossible, so I flopped down and slid on the tile. The six shots
flew like machine-gun fire, but I'd bought myself half of the remaining distance.
The enemy was out of bullets again. With another half a second to reload, I had enough time to reach him. But as I got to my
feet, I thought I saw the gunman's eyes twinkle with pleasure.
On the spot, I changed gears and leaped as high as I could.
The air I'd previously occupied was burned through by six lasers
that shot out of his revolver without reloading.
What the hell was that?!
I did a flip in midair and landed just in front of the gunman.
Though I was tempted to drop a catchy one-liner, I didn't want to
find out what other tricks he had up his sleeve—laser beams from
his eyes?—so I silently slapped his leather vest instead.
There was a moment of silence, as if all the sound was sucked
out of the store.
"Oh my Gaaww—!!"
The gunman screamed and put his hands on his head, then fell
to his knees. A mad fanfare played overhead.
A rattling sound caused me to look up and see that the brick
wall behind the gunman was crumbling outward. Before I even
had time to be surprised by this, a fountain of coins was raining
out, pouring over my legs and vanishing with nice little tinkling
sound effects.
The big counter underneath the neon sign was dropping with
eye-popping speed, and hit zero just as the waterfall of gold dried
up. An awful clanging bounced off the walls of the store, then the
game reset itself. The gunman was back on his feet, twirling the
pistol around his finger and spouting challenges again, but after
the illegal twelve-shot maneuver he just exhibited, no one in the
crowd was likely to take the bait.
"…Whew."
I took a breath and left through the exit on the left-hand fence.
Suddenly, a roar of murmurs spread through the crowd, which
had grown to twice its previous size. I heard people wondering
who I was and what in the world I'd done.
The little blue-haired girl trotted over from the side of the
crowd and stared at me with her catlike eyes. After a few seconds,
she finally said something, her voice hoarse.
"…What kind of reflexes do you have…? That last one, where
you were right in front of him…You dodged a laser from six feet
away…From that distance, there's almost zero time lag between
the bullet line and the actual bullet!"
"Umm…well…" I struggled, trying to find the right thing to
say. "This thing's basically a game where you predict where the
bullet prediction will be, right?"
"P-predict the prediction?!" she yelped adorably, loud enough
for the entire store to hear. Everyone in the crowd simply gaped,
openmouthed.
A few minutes later, once the audience had drifted off, I was in
a corner of the store, examining a case of rifles.
"Hmm…I don't get this assault rifle. Why is it so big, when the
caliber is smaller than a submachine gun?" I asked the nice girl,
who was still helping me. She still seemed like a cat trapped between caution and curiosity, staring at me like some kind of unfamiliar creature.
"…How could you have that much evasive skill, and not even
know this basic information? You said you converted, right?
What kind of game was it?"
"Umm…Just, y'know, one of the fantasy kind…"
"Oh. Well, whatever. If you enter the BoB, you'll get a good
look at what real combat is like. So what were you asking—why
assault rifles are so small-caliber? Well, it starts with the American M16, which they designed for small, high-speed rounds that
offered increased accuracy and penetration…"
She trailed off with a sour face, like she couldn't believe what
she was saying. That odd reaction disappeared instantly, replaced
by a gentle smile.
"…But that doesn't matter, does it? Come on, let's finish up
your shopping."
"Uh…yeah, thanks," I said, nodding suspiciously. She looked
away from me and began strolling past the large display case.
"You won 300K, so you should be able to afford something
nice…but ultimately it all comes down to personal preference, so
that's what we need to figure out first."
"Preference, huh…?"
I followed the girl, eyeing the many black and gleaming guns,
but none of them stood out to me. That made sense, as I knew
nothing about guns, other than that there were revolvers and automatics.
As I agonized, I eventually reached the very last one of the
cases that filled the store from end to end. At this point, she
ought to just pick one out for me, I thought—until something
caught my eye.
In the corner of the long display case was a selection of things
that looked like metal tubes, clearly not guns.
They were about an inch across and ten inches long. On one
end was a metal tool that looked like a climber's carabiner, while
the other end was slightly wider and featured a black hole that
seemed likely to shoot something. If it was in this place, it was
probably some kind of gun, but there was no grip or trigger of any
kind. The only other feature was a small switch high on the side
of the tube.
"Um…what are these?" I asked the girl. She looked back and
shrugged her shoulders, which seemed to be a typical reaction for
her.
"Oh, those are lightswords."
"L-lightswords?"
"Yes. As in swords of light. The official title is 'photon sword,'
but everyone just calls them laser blades, or lightsabers, or beam
sabers, or whatever they want."
"S-swords?! There are swords in this game?"
I leaned over to get a better look at the case. Now that she'd
put the image in my head, they did indeed resemble the tools
used by those force-wielding knights from the sci-fi movies of old.
"Sure there are, but no one actually uses them."
"Why not?"
"Because…you have to be at point-blank range to hit anyone,
and you'll be pumped full of lead before you can get close enough
to…"
She trailed off and stared at me, her mouth hanging open. I
nearly gave her a nasty grin back, but salvaged it into a gentler,
reassuring smile.
"So I just need to get close enough."
"L-look, I know you're real good at dodging, but against a fullauto rifle—ah!"
I had already turned away from her and tapped on a particular
photon sword whose matte black finish I liked. When the pop-up
menu appeared, I hit BUY, and an NPC employee came rushing
over at top speed with a smile and a metal panel. When it dawned
on me that the panel had the same green scanner that the game
cashier did, I knew to put my palm on it.
It made another register sound, and the black photon sword
buzzed into existence on top of the panel. I picked it up, and the
employee thanked me for my purchase, then hurried back in the
direction she'd come from.
"Well, no taking it back now," the girl said, giving me a look
with her head tilted at forty-five degrees. "To each their own, I
guess."
"Hey, if they're selling this, it must be possible to fight with it."
I gripped the short cylinder and held it out in front of me.
When I clicked the switch with my thumb, it vibrated with a deep
sound and a three-foot blade of purplish-blue energy crackled out
of the base.
"Ooh," I murmured. I'd used my fair share of swords, but
never one that was made of insubstantial light. Upon further examination, the blade was nondirectional—a narrow, circular
cylinder like the handle.
I held it out at midlevel and tried the motions for the old SAO
One-Handed Sword skill Vertical Square, which was so familiar
that I didn't need the system to give me any help with it.
The blade of light growled satisfyingly as it cut a complex path
in the air and came to a dead stop. Naturally, I felt no inertial re-
sistance, as the blade weighed essentially nothing.
"Wow," the girl exclaimed with surprise, clapping her hands.
"You seem to know what you're doing. So that was a move from a
fantasy world, huh? Maybe you're tougher than I gave you credit
for."
"I'm not that special…This thing sure is light, though."
"Of course it is—that's about the only thing it has going for it.
But assuming you're fine with using that as your main weapon,
you'll still want an SMG or a handgun for your sub. You need
something to keep folks from getting too close."
"…I see. I suppose you're right."
"How much do you have left?"
I checked my window and found that out of the 300,000 credits I had, only half was left. She blinked in surprise and slumped.
"Ugh, those lightswords are so expensive. Only 150K left…
Since you've got to pay for ammo and armor, too, we might be
limited to handguns."
"Um, I'll leave all the decisions up to you."
"You'll want a live-ammo gun for the BoB. For keeping people
at bay, accuracy might be better than power. Hmm…"
She walked slowly past a case of handguns, then pointed to
one.
"It'll leave you with very little, but this FN Five-Seven would
be good."
Her slender finger pointed out a small automatic pistol with a
smooth, rounded grip.
"Five…Seven?"
"It's the caliber—5.7 mm. That's smaller than your average 9
mm Parabellum, but the bullets are shaped like rifle rounds,
which gives them an advantage with accuracy and penetration.
Because they're special bullets, you can only share them with the
FN P90 submachine gun, but that doesn't matter if this is the
only gun you use."
"Uh, I see…"
The explanation flowed out of the pale-haired girl's mouth so
naturally that it made me slightly more curious about her.
As GGO had fixed genders, I knew the player herself had to be
female, too, but her race and age were beyond me. My instinct
told me that her age wasn't that far from mine.
Of course, anyone who played an MMORPG long enough
learned about the items within. Asuna and Leafa could spend
minutes and minutes talking about the swords and magic in ALO.
But I couldn't help but feel that something was different about
guns. And from what I understood, half of the guns in GGO were
actual weapons that existed in the real world. All I could envision
after hearing about these weapons was blood and slaughter. This
girl around my age dove into this world enough to be a veteran
player with detailed knowledge of all kinds of guns. I had to wonder what motivated her to do all of this…
"Are you listening?"
"Uh, yes, of course." I snapped back to reality. "I'll take it,
then. What else should I get?"
I purchased the Five-Seven handgun she recommended, along
with plenty of backup ammunition, a thick bulletproof jacket, a
beltlike accessory called an anti-optical defense field generator,
along with a few other odds and ends. The 300,000 credits I'd
won from the bullet-dodging game were clean gone.
The photon sword on my right hip and the Five-Seven on my
left tugging with an unfamiliar weight, I walked out of the store to
see the sunset had turned a shade redder.
"Well, you've really been a huge help. Thank you very much," I
said. She grinned behind her muffler and shook her head.
"It's fine. I didn't have any plans until the prelims begin anyway. Oh!" She stopped and checked the simple chronometer on
her left wrist. "Crap, the entry deadline is at three o'clock. We
might not make it to the regent's office unless we sprint…"
"Huh? You hadn't registered yet, either?"
"Nope."
Following her pale-faced lead, I checked my brand-new digital
watch. The time read 14:51.
I looked up and quickly asked, "Are there any means of teleportation or something like that? Items, or spells, or special powers?!"
"I'll explain as we run!" she shouted, turning around and racing north up the street. I followed the waving muffler. Within a
few seconds I had caught up, and she looked over to see that I
was close before she continued.
"Here in GGO, there's only one method of instant travel the
player can control: dying and returning to the resurrection point.
The spawn point in Glocken is close to the regent's office, but you
can't lose HP in town, so that's off the table…"
We ran at full speed, weaving around the NPCs and players
walking the street. It was all I could do to keep up. It was already
hard enough to get used to the lower vantage point than what I
enjoyed in ALO, but she was also extremely quick. It was the absolute body control of someone who had mastered full-dive
movement, not just the effect of good stats.
She checked her watch again and pointed down the street.
"The regent's office is over there. It's at the north end of the
market, which is still nearly two miles away. It takes five minutes
to register, so we need to get there in three minutes!"
Far away down the length of the straight main street was a
giant tower glowing red with the light of the setting sun. It was a
straight shot there, but even without the worry of cramping up, it
would be extremely difficult to cover two miles in three minutes
while avoiding pedestrians.
If I failed to make it in time for the registry period, that was
my own fault for inadequate preparation, but the blue-haired girl
running beside me would have easily made it if she hadn't been
sidetracked helping me. I looked over, feeling guilty. She had her
teeth gritted and her eyes straight ahead, full of determination. In
between virtual breaths, I heard quiet words escaping her lips.
"…Please…please, be in time…"
The first round of the upcoming Bullet of Bullets tournament
had to mean more to this girl than just some game event, I
sensed. She had some important reason that compelled her to
participate…
I looked around the area, searching desperately for some
means to get her to the tower in the less than three minutes we
had remaining. Immediately, a sign caught my eye.
Part of the street to our left had been expanded into a kind of
parking area, featuring three small automobiles in primary colors. The panel behind them featured a glittering neon sign reading RENT-A-BUGGY! The meaning was clear.
"That's it!"
I grabbed her hand and tilted her to the side. She stammered
in surprise as I practically pushed her over the shoulder of the
street into the buggy rental area.
The machines were all three-wheeled cars with one in the
front and two in the back. I practically tossed the girl onto the
rear step of the red buggy in front and jumped into the driver's
seat. The meter nearby had another fingerprint scanner like the
ones I used to shop for gear, so I slapped my hand on it. It rang
me up and the engine came to life.
Fortunately, the front half of the buggy worked exactly like a
motorcycle did. It even operated in manual. I squeezed the handlebars and hit the throttle. The gas engine roared and the buggy
shot out into the street, the front wheel floating off the ground.
"Aaah!"
A cute little scream reached my ears from behind, and two
small hands grabbed me around the stomach.
"Hang on tight!" I yelled unhelpfully, then broke into a pavement-burning right turn and hit the gas. With a few shifts into
higher gear, we were quickly moving at over sixty miles an hour.
The overwhelming power of it finally made me glad that I'd
bought that antique manual bike in the real world, rather than an
electric scooter like everyone else.
I darted left and right around the futuristic four-wheel cars on
the road, shifting up and down rapidly. The girl's voice hit my ear
again.
"H-how is this possible?! These buggies are supposed to be so
hard to drive, even the guys can barely handle them!"
Sorry, I actually fall under that category, I thought to myself,
but found an excuse.
"Umm…well, I did play some racing games years ago—whoa!"
The large bus ahead of us abruptly changed lanes, forcing me
to squeal the rear tires in an evasive maneuver. I dropped a gear
and accelerated again to pass the bus. It was the year 2025—it
made sense that very few people had experience with stick shifts
anymore. Even at the driving school, the standard vehicle everyone learned on was an electric scooter. I went to the trouble of
getting that midclass license with manual training because Agil's
friend was giving me the motorcycle for free, but it wasn't until
later that I realized pawning off the Thai-made machine on me
was actually just a scheme to save him the junking fee. Some people said that it was only a few years until it was outright illegal to
ride gas-engine vehicles…
I was torn out of my thoughts by sudden laughter just behind
my head.
"Ha-ha-ha…Wow, this feels great!"
It took some time to recognize that the voice was coming from
the cat-eyed girl. It never occurred to me that someone so tense
and somehow lonely would have such a carefree laugh.
"Go, go…Go faster!" she shouted. I glared at the approaching
regent's office tower, still more than half a mile away, and returned her encouragement. Head down, kicked into top gear, the
engine screamed, and the speedometer said we were nearly up to
125 mph.
At that speed, we would close the distance in just a matter of
seconds.
But the brief cheers of delight the girl emitted during that
short period left a strong impression in my memory.
The three-wheeled buggy came sliding to a sideways stop in
front of the wide stairway leading up to the regent's office.
I checked my watch: just over five minutes until three o'clock.
"We can still make it! This way!"
The girl hopped off the rear step, grabbed my hand, and
started running. Her profile had already regained that sharpness
that reminded me of a blade—or a high-powered gun. I tried not
to waste too much brainpower wondering which of the two was
her real side.
At the top of the twenty-step staircase was the unbelievably
huge metal tower. It had long, streamlined curves on the front
and back, with the occasional antenna disc or radar dome poking
out.
"This is the regent's office, which most people call the Bridge.
It's exactly on the opposite side of town from Memorial Hall,
where you started," she explained, pulling me along.
"Bridge? It doesn't look like a bridge," I noted. She tilted her
head.
"No, it's because it's the bridge of a ship. They call it that because it was the command center when Glocken was still a spaceship."
"A spaceship…No wonder this place is so vertical, then."
"Exactly. The SBC in the name stands for Space Battle Cruiser.
Every time you enter an official event or do some kind of in-game
registration, it happens here," she noted. We passed through the
entrance to the first floor of the Bridge.
On the inside, it was a very large, circular hall. Round pillars
with detailed, futuristic designs rose up to the tall ceiling in a
cross pattern. Large panel monitors lined the walls, lighting the
dim interior with the color of upcoming-event advertisements
and commercials for real-life companies. Most notable of all was
a promotional video for the third Bullet of Bullets tournament,
which was playing on the big screen dead ahead.
But I didn't have the time to stand around and stare. The girl
pulled me along to the far right corner. There were several dozen
tall, narrow machines along the wall. They looked a lot like the
ATMs or multicontent vending machines you'd see at a convenience store.
The girl pulled me over to one of them and explained as
quickly as she could.
"This is where you enter the tournament. It's just a common
touch-screen machine. You know how to use them?"
"Yeah, I'll give it a shot."
"Good. I'll use the one next to you, so just ask if you need
help," she said, taking her spot on the other side of the panel that
separated all of the machines. I thanked her and looked down at
the panel.
The home screen on the monitor said SBC GLOCKEN REGENT'S
OFFICE, and to my surprise, all the menus were in Japanese.
When I checked out the game's official site before diving into
GGO, everything was in English. Fortunately, they had at least
put some work into localization.
I poked through the menu for a few seconds until I found the
Bullet of Bullets entry button and pressed it. That brought up a
form asking for name, occupation, and other data. There were
180 seconds left.
The form was annoying. Why couldn't the system fill in my
character name automatically? And what was my occupation,
anyway? Then I noticed a small caveat at the very top.
It read: Please enter your real name and address into this
form. You may still participate with missing or falsified information, but you will be unable to receive the high-ranking prizes
if you do.
My fingers stopped still. My intention in entering this tournament was to make a name for myself and get Death Gun to target
me, but my MMO instincts couldn't help but salivate at the word
prizes. Usually that meant ultrarare gear that couldn't be won
normally…
I started drifting toward the K key for Kirigaya before my better sense won out.
This wasn't a game excursion for pleasure. My primary duty
was to make contact with the player known as Death Gun and ascertain the true nature of his powers. If Death Gun actually had
some kind of supernatural power within the game, revealing any
private details was unwise. There was no guarantee that Death
Gun wasn't actually involved with the game's administrators
somehow, and able to access private player data.
I shook off the temptation of that rare loot and sadly left the
entire form blank, hitting the SUBMIT button at the bottom.
The screen refreshed with a message saying that my entry had
been accepted, along with a notice of the time for the preliminary
tournament. The date was today—the time, thirty minutes from
now.