Chapter 6 Part 2
"All done?" the blue-haired girl asked from next door. She had
finished her entry as well. I nodded, relieved.
"Just barely. Really, I can't thank you enough for everything.
Plus, I caused you plenty of trouble…"
She grinned. "It's all right. The buggy ride was fun. Anyway,
what's your opening block?"
"Umm…" I looked down at the screen again. "Block F, it says.
F-37."
"Oh…I see. They must have put us in F together since we registered at the same time. I'm number twenty, so that's good. We
can only meet in the final."
"What do you mean, 'good'?"
"As long as you reach the final of your prelim bracket, you'll
still be in the battle royale, whether you win or lose the last
match. So there's a greater than zero chance we can both make it
in. But if we do meet in the final, just because it's the prelims…"
Her catlike eyes sparkled. "Doesn't mean I'll go easy on you."
"Yeah…I get it. If we meet up, it's all-or-nothing." I smiled
back, and returned the monitor to its home screen. A question occurred to me.
"For being a Western game, why is all the Japanese on this
console so solid? The official site only had English on it."
"Oh, that. Zaskar, the company that runs GGO, is based in
America, but they have some Japanese people running the JP
server. From what I hear, GGO kind of works in a gray area both
here and there, legally speaking."
"Because of the money conversion system," I followed. She
smirked.
"Yep. In a way, it's like private gambling. That's why their public home page only has the bare minimum of information—not
even an address. It's also why managing your character or setting
up an electronic money account to transfer your credits to real
funds can only be done in-game."
"It's…quite a game."
"And that's why it's kept almost entirely isolated from the real
world…but because of that, it feels like my current self and my
real self are two different people…"
I blinked in surprise, as a shadow seemed to briefly fall across
her eyes.
"…?"
"Uh, n-nothing. Forget it. Anyway, we need to get going for the
competition. It's just below us, in fact. You all ready?"
"Yes," I said, and she took me by the hand. Toward the rear of
the first-floor hall, a number of elevators were lined up on the
wall, and she hit the DOWN button on the rightmost one with a
slender finger.
The door slid open at once and she slipped inside, then hit the
B20F button. Clearly the tower extended both upward and downward from here. I felt a very real sense of dropping, which eventually slowed and stopped. The door opened.
When I saw the darkness beyond, my breath caught in my
throat.
It was a circular dome, about the same size as the hall we'd
just been in. The lights were as dim as possible, with most of the
illumination coming from sad little arc lamps set into metal
cages.
The floor, pillars, and walls were all a mesh of gleaming black
metal and rusted fencing. Crude, simple tables lined the walls of
the dome. A giant multiscreen holopanel hung from the ceiling.
But the screens were black, displaying only the words BOB3 PRELIMINARY ROUND with a bloodred countdown, currently under
twenty-eight minutes.
But what made me nervous wasn't that sight, nor the quiet
strains of heavy-metal BGM playing.
It was the sensation coming from the many silhouettes lounging at the tables and leaning against the pillars that lined the
outer half of the dome.
Despite being inside a video game, not a single one seemed to
be excited or enjoying himself. Everyone was either whispering in
small groups or sitting alone in silence. They were clearly the
other participants in the BoB Prelims, and they were also clearly
VRMMO veterans, hardened players with virtual marrow in their
bones.
On the other hand, I probably had more sheer playing time
than anyone else in this room. After all, I'd spent about two years
stuck in a game without a second of interruption.
But each player had his own play style. I was almost exclusively a PvE (player vs. enemy) type, yet I could tell these grubby
bastards were all tried-and-true PvPers. I could sense it from the
sharp, seeking gazes sent my way from under their darkened hel-
mets and thick hoods—they wanted every piece of information
they could glean.
Since ALO transferred to its current administrators earlier this
spring, I had essentially experienced no man-to-man combat.
There was no way that much time away hadn't dulled my PvP instincts. The way I wilted under their piercing stares was proof of
that.
This job is looking harder and harder by the minute, Mr.
Kikuoka.
Something nudged my right elbow. I looked over to see the
blue-haired girl staring at me curiously.
"…What's wrong?"
"Uh, n-nothing…" I stammered. She gave me a reassuring nod
and kept her voice low.
"Let's go to the changing room. You'll want to equip the fatigues you just bought, after all."
She started walking through the midst of the players, completely at ease. There was no sign of tension in her stride. But it
wasn't as if she was being ignored, either. As a matter of fact, the
men around us seemed to be pouring even more antagonism on
her than they were on me. One of them even menacingly expelled
an empty round from the terrifying gun sitting on his knees.
She had to have nerves of steel to ignore pressure of this kind.
I followed the sand-colored muffler, more surprised at her than
ever.
At the back of the dome, there was a space that traded the tables for a few simple steel doors. She opened one with a blinking
indicator, showed me inside, then fiddled with the control panel
on the backside of the door when it closed. The lock clicked shut
and the indicator turned red.
On the inside, it looked like a cramped locker room. We were
the only ones in the space, of course.
"…Whew," she sighed, once she was in the middle of the room.
"They're all such ditzes."
"Uh…ditzes?! You mean all those terrifying-looking people out
there?!" I asked, picturing the fearsome soldiers who filled the
dome. She nodded, as if it was perfectly clear who she meant.
"Of course. Showing off their main weapons a half hour before
the event even begins? It's like they're asking us to work up a plan
to deal with them."
"Ah…I see…"
"You should wait to equip your lightsword and Five-Seven
until just before your match," she said, smiling gently. I nodded
in understanding and she turned her back to me.
What she did next shocked me ten times more than what she'd
said just a moment ago.
She swung her right hand to call up the main menu and hit the
UNEQUIP ALL button on her equipment mannequin.
The sand-colored muffler disappeared, then the khaki jacket,
the loose-fitting cargo pants, and the plain T-shirt.
All she was left wearing was a skimpy set of underwear that
gleamed like some kind of multipurpose textile.
"Wh-wha—?!" I yelped, covering my face with my hand. Between
my fingers, I saw her give me a quizzical glance.
"What are you doing? You'd better get changed."
"Er, yes, b-but…"
My mind raced, even as it grappled with by far the greatest
shock it had received since the dive into GGO began.
There weren't many options available to me in this situation.
One: I could find an excuse to escape the changing room. Two:
Pretend to be a woman and just equip my body armor. But neither choice was in any way fair or honest to the girl who had
given me so much help.
So I plunged headlong into option three before she could take
off any more clothing and cause a true catastrophe.
My head shot down at maximum speed and I produced my
namecard from the menu, then held it out to her with both hands.
"Umm…I'm sorry! I haven't introduced myself until now…Um,
this is my name…man!"
"Huh? M-man?"
I felt her take the card from my fingers.
"Kiri…to. Hmm, that's an interesting name...…wait...…"
Because I didn't belong to any guild—known as "squadrons"
here—the only other information on the card aside from my name
was a sex indicator.
"Male…? What…? But, you're..."
She trailed off in confusion. Within my field of vision, which
was pointed straight down at the floor, I noticed one of her cute
little feet take a step back.
"No way…You're...a man? With that avatar...…?"
Silence.
Unable to bear the tension that filled the locker room, I started
to raise my head a tad.
The next instant, something white flashed in my face with incredible speed and exploded on my left cheek. Purple splash effects covered my eyes.
It wasn't until after I spun around like a top with the force of
the impact, then slumped to the floor with little stars blinking in
and out around my head, that I realized it had been the palm of
her hand.
"Don't follow me."
"B-but I don't know what to do after this…"
"Don't follow me."
"B-but I don't know anyone else here…"
"Don't follow me."
I tried my best to keep up with the blue hair as she strode
away, hissing back at me.
The girl had switched to a military jacket and bulletproof
armor in a desert-colored scheme, with combat boots to round it
out. The only thing that was the same as her in-town outfit was
the muffler around her neck. As she warned me against earlier,
she did not have a weapon out for show.
My equipment was similar in look, but mine was in a much
darker, almost black shade—night camo, I guessed. I was prepared to abandon my usual style and go for something more ordinary, but when she told me it would take too much money to get
enough styles to blend in to all of the randomly selected map
types, I went with my usual fashion sense.
The very person who gave me that advice was now several feet
ahead of me, determinedly not looking back. While her anger was
quite justified, I also hadn't identified myself as a woman, nor
had I used any specifically feminine speech. Maybe I unjustly
profited from that confusion, but she also could have said something about changing clothes before she launched into it…
I shook my head to keep my thought process from getting too
whiny, and stubbornly followed that waving muffler. Abruptly,
she came to a stop. We had gone halfway around the dome.
I stopped as well, and she turned around to face me. Her deep
blue eyes looked directly into mine. They had struck me as catlike
before, but now she was more of a panther. Her tiny lips sucked
in a harsh breath, and I tensed in preparation for a proper shout.
What emerged was only a brisk sigh.
She thudded down into the box seat beside her and turned her
head away from me. Hesitantly, I took the seat across from her.
Up on the holo-panel, the countdown to the first preliminary
matches was now under ten minutes. I had no idea what to do
after this. Was I supposed to move somewhere else once the
countdown hit zero? Was there some extra registration step? I
didn't even know where to look to find this kind of information.
I hunched my shoulders and fidgeted nervously. She shot me
another look. Another deep, deep sigh.
"…I'll give you the bare minimum of information. After that,
we're enemies for real," she growled. I felt the tension leave my
face.
"Th-thanks."
"Don't get the wrong idea; I'm not forgiving you. Anyway, once
that countdown hits zero, every entrant in here will be automatically teleported to a private battlefield with their first-round opponent."
"Ah, I see."
"The battlefield's a square arena, exactly one kilometer to each
side. The terrain type, weather, and time of day are all randomized. You'll be spawned at least half the distance of the arena
apart. When the battle's finished, the winner comes back here to
the waiting area, while the loser is teleported to the first-floor
hall. None of your gear drops at random if you lose. If you win
and your next opponent has already won, the second round starts
immediately. If their match isn't over, you wait. There are sixtyfour players in Block F, so if you win five times, you'll be in the
block championship and thus in the tournament finale. No more
explanation needed or offered," she finished brusquely, though
her explanation was quite helpful. The general flow of the tournament made sense to me now.
"Okay, I think I get it. Thank you," I replied.
She sent another look my way and turned to the side yet again.
I could barely make out the words she said next.
"You'd better get to the final. After all the things I've taught
you, I want to be able to give you the final piece of information
you need."
"Final?"
"The taste of that bullet of defeat."
I had no choice but to smile. Not sarcastically or ironically, but
a true smile. I couldn't help but like people with that kind of mentality.
"…Looking forward to it. Are you sure you'll be all right,
though?"
She snorted. "If I actually lose in the prelims, I'll retire. This
time—"
Those lapis-blue eyes cast a fierce gaze out at the sea of rivals
filling the dome.
"—I'll kill every last one of them."
Those last few words had no volume to them, and reached my
ears as nothing but tiny vibrations on her lips. Those lips then
curled into the smile of a predator. A chill like ice that I hadn't experienced in ages ran down my back.
Clearly, she did not feel an ounce of the pressure all the men in
the dome were putting on her. She was undoubtedly far more
powerful than they were. She had the skill as a VRMMO player—
and the underlying mentality to support it.
I held my breath and stayed quiet. The smile vanished from
her face, and her eyes traveled off in thought for a moment. She
waved her menu open and within seconds had produced a little
card.
She slid it across the table and waited for me to pick it up before saying, "This will probably be the last time we speak like this,
so I'll introduce myself here. It's the name of the one who will defeat you."
I looked down without comment. The card read Sinon. Sex: F.
"Sinon," I muttered, and her blue hair waved as she nodded. I
tried introducing myself properly this time.
"I'm Kirito. Nice to meet you."
I extended a hand over the table without thinking, but Sinon
completely ignored it and turned aside. Chastised, I retracted my
hand.
After that, she said nothing.
The monitor at the top of the dome showed there were still five
minutes left. Either I could sit in my chair and cross my legs, or I
could try talking to her again. Approaching footsteps co-opted my
decision.
I looked up to see a tall man with long silver hair hanging over
his forehead coming straight for our table.
He wore an outfit of dark gray and slightly lighter gray in a
camo pattern that was all right angles. Slung over his shoulder
was a slightly larger gun—probably an assault rifle rather than a
submachine gun. His sharp features matched up well with his
slim figure. There was only a bare minimum of armor on him,
and he looked very capable of traversing the battlefield with
speed and agility. He gave off the air of a special forces agent
rather than a hardened veteran soldier.
The man did not spare a single glance for me in the shadows,
but looked directly at Sinon instead with a smile on his lips. Suddenly, those hawkish features took on a boyish roundness that
surprised me.
"Hey, Sinon. You sure got here late—I was afraid you wouldn't
make it."
His tone of voice was so casual and familiar that I couldn't
help but wince, expecting her to hurl more of her withering vocal
fire in his direction. But to my surprise, the veil of iciness that
surrounded the pale-haired girl softened, and she almost seemed
to smile.
"There you are, Spiegel. I got distracted by some stuff that I
didn't expect to come up. Wait a minute…I thought you weren't
going to compete."
The man named Spiegel smiled shyly and brushed his head
with his hand in embarrassment.
"Actually, I'm here to root you on—hope you don't mind. You
get to watch the matches on the big screen from here."
These two were at least friends, if not guildmates. Sinon
scooted over, and Spiegel sat down right next to her without even
asking.
"So what was it that distracted you?"
"Oh…Well, I was guiding that person over there around,"
Sinon answered, signaling me with a short, cold stare. I straightened up reluctantly and gave a brief bow to Spiegel, who had finally noticed my presence.
"Hi, I'm 'that person.'"
"Oh, er…nice to meet you. Are you a…friend of Sinon's?"
Spiegel had an air about him, to be sure, but he turned out to
be more courteous than his appearance suggested. Either that, or
he was also confusing my gender.
I was figuring out which answer would be the most entertaining when Sinon cut off my fun.
"Don't be fooled. He's a man."
"Huh?"
Spiegel went wide-eyed. I had no choice but to introduce myself normally.
"Uh, I'm Kirito. Male."
"M-male…Which, um…means you're, uh…"
He still looked confused. Sinon and I shared a glance. It
looked like he was having trouble processing the fact that Sinon
had been working with another male player.
Intrigued by this reaction, I decided to toss a little fuel onto
the fire.
"Actually, I've got a lot to thank Sinon for, in a variety of
ways."
Sinon turned her blue lasers on me and growled through
pursed lips. "I…I haven't done any such thing. And you're in no
position to call me by name…"
"What's with the cold shoulder all of a sudden?"
"Cold?! We're complete strangers!"
"Even though you helped me coordinate my outfit?"
"Th…that was because I thought you were—"
Suddenly, our bickering was interrupted by the quiet BGM in
the dome fading away, to be replaced by a blaring electric guitar
lead. Next, a soft, electronically generated voice boomed over the
heads of the hundreds in attendance.
"Thank you for your patience. The preliminary blocks of the
third Bullet of Bullets tournament will now begin. All players
registered will be automatically teleported to the first-round
field map at the end of the countdown. Best of luck."
A great cheer chose from the room. The rattle of automatic fire
and the screech of lasers followed, the various types of gunfire
shooting up to the ceiling like fireworks. Sinon quietly got to her
feet and jabbed a finger at me.
"You'd better make it to the final. I need to blow your head
off."
I rose in turn and grinned. "Well, I was never one to turn
down an invitation to a date."
"Wh-why, you…"
The twenty remaining seconds of the countdown trickling
away, I waved to Sinon and faced forward in preparation for the
teleport. As I did so, I met Spiegel's gaze.
When I saw the wariness and hostility in his eyes, I was briefly
struck by the idea that I'd gone too far, and its accompanying regret.
But the next moment, my body was surrounded by a pillar of
blue light that flooded my vision.
When I could see again, I was atop a hexagonal panel floating
in the midst of darkness.
There was a pale, red holo-window in front of me that loudly
proclaimed Kirito vs. Uemaru. Unlike SAO, in which all players
had to spell their names in the Western alphabet, GGO allowed
proper Japanese characters, so his name was spelled in actual
kanji. I didn't recognize the name, of course. At the bottom of the
window it said, Preparation time: 58 secs. Field: Lost Ancient
Temple.
I interpreted the minute of prep time to be meant for optimizing equipment for the chosen map, but that meant nothing to me
without any backup gear or knowledge of GGO's terrain. I called
up the menu and switched to my equipment window—which resembled that of ALO's—and set the Kagemitsu G4 lightsword as
my main weapon, and the Five-Seven as my sidearm. Once I'd ensured that none of my armor was forgotten, I closed the window.
As the remaining time slowly counted down, a sudden possibility struck my brain.
That ferocious smile I'd seen Sinon wear for just a moment. It
was like pure, distilled lethality, a rifle bolt that could pierce any
armor or shield.
Her voice sounded inside my head so clearly that it could have
been telepathy.
This time, I'll kill every last one of them, she'd said. The words
were trite, even childish, but they succeeded in delivering that familiar chill I'd experienced so many times since the SAO days
that I couldn't count. It was as if real, tangible will, transcending
any kind of in-game role-playing, was radiating out from her tiny
body.
I'd met few players who could make me feel that sort of
willpower within the virtual realm. And as far as female players
went, the only one who had reached this level was Asuna, and at
her most extreme. Actually, even Asuna the Flash, previously
known as the Mad Warrior, had never given off such a fierce energy.
Was it possible? Could this blue-haired girl in fact be the very
Death Gun I was seeking?
The ugly, metallic rasp of Death Gun's voice in the recording
that Kikuoka played for me was completely unlike Sinon's pure,
crisp tones. But unlike SAO, GGO was a normal game. A single
player could easily have multiple characters that she could switch
between at the log-in screen.
Plus, based on what she said, Sinon had absolute confidence in
her ability to reach the Bullet of Bullets final. If my expectation
that Death Gun would be there was correct, that lowered my list
of potential candidates to thirty. Sinon would be one of them.
In all honesty, I did not want to consider that possibility. She
had showed me to the shop and walked me through many facets
of the game, and I never got a hint of murder from her personality. If anything, there was a sad loneliness about her.
So which was the real Sinon?
No use thinking about it now. Once we trade sword blows—
er, gunshots—I might understand more.
I raised my eyes at the exact moment the countdown hit zero.
The teleportation effect surrounded me again.
The next thing I saw was a gloomy sunset.
Wind blew past, a high-pitched whistling in my ears. Scraps of
yellow cloud floated by overhead, and dried grass rustled fiercely
at my feet.
Right nearby was a massive stone column, though I couldn't
have identified Ionian style from Corinthian. It was part of a pattern, a layout of columns in a three-sided square shape, each one
about three yards from the next. Some of them had withered
away at the top, and some were completely collapsed. It looked
just like some ancient temple that had fallen into ruin ages ago.
Out of instinct, I scrambled to the nearest column and
scanned the surroundings.
The faded grasses continued in all directions, and beyond the
low hill I could see a number of other ruins like the one I stood in
now. From what Sinon said, the maps were a thousand meters on
each side, but it was clearly several dozen times that distance to
the horizon. There must have been rivers or cliffs at the boundaries to prevent moving beyond the map.
I remembered more of her explanation. The contestants were
placed at least half of the full distance apart, but I didn't see anyone. My opponent must have been hiding behind cover like me.
There were no cursors to indicate enemy location, so I had to
start by finding my foe.
I could choose to hide until the other guy got tired of waiting
and needed to act, but waiting wasn't my style. It seemed liked a
better idea to sprint to the nearest ruins in the hope of drawing
fire so that I could discern the enemy's location. I brushed the
Five-Seven on my waist with my left hand.
At that moment, a stronger breeze brushed past, snapping the
nearby grass back and forth. Once the gust had passed, at the
exact moment that the grass stood back up, a silhouette abruptly
and silently got to its feet barely twenty yards away.
He had an assault rifle in both hands, trained right on me. The
image instantly burned into my mind through my retinas: brown
stubble pressed up to the barrel, goggles covering the upper half
of his face, and a helmet topped with dummy grass. We were the
only two people on the map, so this had to be Uemaru.
I had no idea how he'd approached so quickly. Clearly, a big
part of the reason was the camo he was wearing. It was colored
the exact same khaki as the grass around us, in a fine, verticalstriped pattern. That was an example of the sixty-second preparation period being put to good use.
Dozens of red lines shot out of the black rifle on the enemy's
shoulder, bullet lines that showed where his shots would land,
crossing entirely over me and the space around me.
"Whoa!" I shrieked, jumping on instinct. That took me in the
direction of the least dense number of bullet lines—directly upward.
Katatatata! His rifle cracked loudly, and I felt two hard impacts on my right shin. The HP bar that was fixed in the upper
left corner of my vision dropped about 10 percent. There were too
many bullets to dodge them all—I belatedly remembered Sinon's
warning about full-auto fire.
I did a flip in midair and landed atop the broken column behind me, pulling the Five-Seven out of its holster and preparing
to shoot back.
But Uemaru didn't give me the time to get ready. More of the
countless red lines intersected my chest.
"Aaaah!"
I wailed pitifully and fell backward off the pillar, but another
of the bullets grazed my left arm, tearing away more HP.
Most of the hail of gunfire hit the stone column, sending little
shards flying. I held my limbs close, trying to keep my body safely
hidden in the shadow of the pillar.
This is nothing at all like a sword-on-sword battle!
The bullet-dodging game I played with the NPC gunman featured a six-shooter with intervals in between, which required all
of my nerves to conquer. But this level of bullet hell—over ten
shots a second—was beyond my ability.
If I was going to use that Kagemitsu to chop off Uemaru's ugly
whiskers, I needed to get right up in his face, but at this rate I
would be riddled full of holes far before I got anywhere near him.
Since full evasion was impossible, I'd have to defend against
the bullets somehow. Sadly, this world only had defensive fields
that neutralized lasers, and no magical shields that could stop a
live round. Even in SAO, I could have used my sword as a shield
using the Weapon Defense skill.
I put my hand to the lightsword, still hooked to my belt by the
carabiner. If only I could deflect some of the bullets with the
sword. It shouldn't be impossible—they did that in those old sci-fi
movies about the wars among the stars. Since this game was
made in America, they had to have considered the possibility. But
if I was going to pull off such a maneuver, I'd need to accurately
predict the trajectories of the incoming bullets…
No, wait.
That was possible. After all, what were the bullet lines for, if
not seeing where the gunfire was going to be?
I swallowed and pulled the sword off of my belt.
The shots had stopped for the moment. If I had to guess, Uemaru had shrunk back down into the grass so he could flank me,
either to the left or the right.
I closed my eyes and let my ears take over.
The wind was still blowing noisily. I shut the howling sound
effects out of my mind. Next, I focused on the rustling of the
dried-out plants around me. Amid the regular waving pattern of
the sound, I searched for anything irregular.
Being able to tell apart the different sound effects in a VR
space was a considerable technique, a system-independent skill
that served me well in SAO. I would never have been able to hunt
down the S-rank Ragout Rabbit without being able to discern fine
differences in sound.
What about now?
I detected an irregular noise moving slowly from my seven to
my nine. It moved for two or three seconds, then stopped, testing
my reaction.
The enemy resumed moving, then stopped, then starting moving again.
"Go!" I screamed, launching myself directly at his hiding spot.
Uemaru clearly wasn't expecting me to charge straight for the
place where he was crawling on all fours. He got up to his knees
from the dead grass and pulled his rifle up to a shooting position,
but that action took him a second and a half.
By that point, I had already closed half of the eighty feet between us. I clicked the switch of the photon sword in my hand as I
ran. With a satisfying vumm, it produced a bluish-purple glowing
blade.
For the third time, Uemaru's assault rifle showed a dozen or
more bullet lines. I'd been evading on instinct alone before, but
this time I kept my eyes forward. Ignoring the prickling of fear in
my neck, I noted that all of the lines did not appear at the same
time—there was a slight time lag between them. That was an indication of the order the bullets were fired from the rifle muzzle.
Out of all of the bullets, only six of them were currently due to
intersect with my body, which was quite a bit smaller than my
real one. The rest were going to miss slightly to the sides, or
above and below. Based on the fact that we were actually quite
close, this level of accuracy told me that either the enemy's gun or
his personal skill were, in fact, not very precise.
That familiar sense of tension that every PvP battle featured
told me that my own gears had finally shifted into battle mode. It
was that familiar sense of acceleration: edges of my vision
stretched out, target in the center much clearer than before. As
time slowed down around me, my mind seemed to speed along
much faster.
The enemy's rifle flashed orange. In that instant, my
lightsword perfectly caught the first two of the six bullets that
would hit me.
Bzz, bzap! Orange sparks flew from the surface of the glowing
sword. By the time I even processed that reaction, my right arm
was already flashing like lightning, holding the photon sword
over the line that connected the third and fourth bullet trajectories. Once again, the bullets were knocked aside by the high-density energy blade.
It took a lot of concentration to keep charging while the bullets
that weren't meant to hit screamed past my ears, but I gritted my
teeth and kept swinging away.
Five…then six! Having successfully deflected all of the accurate shots, I redoubled my speed to close the remaining distance.
"N-no way, man!"
Uemaru's heavily bearded chin dropped in shock. But his
hands didn't stop moving. He released the empty magazine with
comfortable ease, pulled a spare from his waist, and moved to
pop it in.
I pointed the Five-Seven at him, hoping to prevent him from
finishing the reload. The instant I touched the trigger, I was surprised to see a pale green circle over the enemy's chest, but I
pulled it five times in quick succession anyway.
The recoil in my elbow and shoulder was much lighter than I expected, and two of the shots landed on Uemaru's shoulder and
side within the transparent circle. The other three disappeared
into the grass behind him, but the two that hit must have broken
through his armor to do damage. The HP gauge in the upper right
lost a bit of ground. Uemaru stumbled and stopped for just a moment.
That was all I needed.
The instant I was within sword range, I twisted myself to the
right—
And launched myself off the virtual ground with all the added
velocity of my sprint, slamming the enemy directly in the chest
with what would have been called a Vorpal Strike back in SAO.
The blade of light easily sank into his chest up to the hilt, roaring and rattling like a jet engine. For an instant, I felt all of that
energy squirming around in his body without an outlet.
The next moment, a cone of ferocious light and sound erupted
from my right hand, and the enemy's body turned into countless
tiny polygons, expanding into nothingness.
I slowly got to my feet, feeling the lasting numbness of battle
in every inch of my body. Out of habit, I waved the lightsword
back and forth and nearly stashed it over my back until I came to
my senses and quickly shut it off.
Only when the sword hilt was clicked onto the snap ring on my
waist and the handgun was back in its holster could I let out the
breath I'd been holding. Up in the evening sky, a giant message of
congratulations was displayed over the hanging clouds.
Somehow, I'd won my first-round match. The fact that I could
defend against the bullets with my lightsword was a very good
sign. But that kind of high-speed sword work required phenomenal concentration, and I could feel my nerves popping and smoking.
Four more of these exhausting battles?
I slumped my shoulders as the blue teleportation effect swallowed my body. The lonely whistling of the wind died away, to
eventually be replaced by the bustling noise of the crowded waiting area.
Apparently I had been teleported back to the same box seat
against the wall. I looked left and right, but neither Sinon nor
Spiegel was present. Sinon was probably still in a battle, but I
couldn't help but be curious where her male acquaintance had
gone. I eventually spotted a familiar-looking urban camo closer to
the center of the dome. He hadn't noticed my return, and was
watching the monitor hanging from the ceiling with great interest.
I looked up to see that the giant screen, which had previously
been running the pretournament countdown, was now displaying
a number of battles at once. They were showing off players blasting rifles and pistols in desert, jungle and ruin settings with all
the style and impact of an action movie.
Most likely, these were only the ongoing battle scenes out of
the hundreds of matches happening concurrently. When the occasional player took too much fire and burst into pieces, the
crowd watching from the floor gave a great cheer.
I took a few steps forward, hoping to see if I could get a
glimpse of Sinon in action. I started checking each one in order
from the upper left corner, but the camera work was so frantic
that it was nearly impossible to tell them apart. It seemed like a
better idea to concentrate on finding her distinguishing light blue
hair.
Which is why my heart nearly stopped when someone abruptly
spoke into my right ear. It was as if the low, raspy, metallic voice
was bypassing my eardrum to go straight to the sensory center of
my brain.
"Are you, the real thing?"
"…?!"
I jumped back and turned around out of sheer instinct.
The first thought that crossed my mind was Ghost.
Not a real ghost, of course. Around the sixty-fifth floor of Aincrad, which was themed after old castle ruins, there were common ghost-type enemies. They were covered with tattered dark
gray cloaks, the hoods pulled low over absolute darkness except
for faintly glowing red eyes.
The person standing before me in the dim light of the dome
was extremely similar in appearance to those ghosts. My unconscious reaction was to leap backward and draw my sword. The
urge was so strong that I couldn't prevent my hand from twitching.
With a faint grunt, I looked down at his feet. Through the
scraps of the ripped cloak, I could barely make out the tips of
faded, grungy boots.
This was a player, not a ghost. Recognizing that obvious fact, I
let out a slow breath. Upon closer examination, the red eyes
weren't little glowing hellfires, but simply lenses within the black
goggles that covered his entire face. Irritated at both my amateur
reaction and his lack of manners in accosting another player at
point-blank range, I didn't feel in the mood to be polite.
"What do you mean, 'real thing'? Who are you?"
But the gray-cloaked player did not name himself, and took
another step forward to close the distance again. I didn't back
away this time, staring right back at the robotic gaze from just
eight inches away.
His unpleasant voice, obviously affected by some kind of voice
modulator, rasped again.
"I saw, your match. You used, a sword."
"Y…yeah. It's not against the rules," I replied. The AmuSphere
unhelpfully re-created the unease I was feeling, causing my voice
to crack. The gray cloak approached even closer, as if recognizing
that weakness.
The next statement came so quietly that I could barely hear it
without concentrating, even at that distance.
"I'll ask, again. Are you, the real thing?"
Before I even had time to process and understand his question, a bolt of lightning struck my brain out of the blue, stopping
me still.
I know him!!
I was sure of it. I had met him somewhere before. We had come
face-to-face and exchanged words.
But where? The only people I'd spoken to since logging in to
GGO were the avatar buyer right at the spawning point, Sinon
during her assistance with my shopping and registration, and her
friend Spiegel. So it wasn't in this world.
ALO, then? Did I meet him back in Alfheim, while we both had
different avatars? I frantically consulted my memory index, trying to match the style of speech and general air to anyone I knew.
But nothing turned up. I couldn't remember meeting anyone with
such a chilling presence.
Where? Where have I met him before…?
The tattered cloak waved, and a thin arm extended from the
middle. I nearly jumped backward again, but the hand, clad in a
similarly ragged glove, was empty.
The empty hand called up a menu window where I could see,
its movements dull and lifeless. The screen showed a tournament
field with six blocks—the current bracket of the third Bullet of
Bullets.
His needle-like finger tapped at Block F, which expanded to
fill the screen. He clicked again, and it zoomed into the center of
the block.
My gaze was drawn to the spot his finger indicated.
There were two names: UEMARU on the left and KIRITO on the
right. A glowing line extended from my name on the right. It had
already been officially announced that I beat Uemaru and advanced to the second round.
The finger moved slightly, tracing the name KIRITO from top to
bottom. He spoke again.
"This, name. That, attack. Are you, the real thing?"
A moment later, I was struck by my third great shock.
My knees trembled and nearly buckled, but I held my poise
just in time.
This guy knows me!
He knew the source of the name Kirito, and the sword skill
that I used to defeat Uemaru as well.
Meaning…I hadn't met him in GGO or in ALO.
SAO. Sword Art Online. Somewhere in the floating castle Aincrad, the setting of that game of death, I had met this man.
Whatever avatar was behind that tattered, creepy mask—no,
whoever was on the other side of that avatar, lying down, connected to an AmuSphere—they were an SAO Survivor, just like
me.
My pulse was ringing like an alarm bell. If it wasn't for the
gloom of the dim room, it would have been quite apparent that I
was white as a sheet.
Calm down, just calm down, I repeated to myself, over and
over.
There was no need to panic just because I'd met another survivor of SAO. Not long before the collapse of Aincrad, there were
plenty of articles and stories being shared about my Dual Blades
extra skill, and my public duel with Heathcliff of the Knights of
the Blood. And the Vorpal Strike I'd just used on Uemaru was a
very commonly used One-Handed Sword skill. Any player of a decent level in Aincrad could have put two and two together after
watching the footage and checking the tournament bracket. I
probably would have tried the same thing if I recognized an old
acquaintance from those days here in the dome.
So there was no reason to be afraid. There shouldn't have
been.
Then why was I so…
For an instant, just as he removed the bracket and was pulling
his thin arm back into his cloak, my eyes caught sight of something.
On the inside of his wrist, just above the glove that looked
more like ragged bandages wrapped around his hand, there was a
glimpse of pale white skin. And, clear as day, a tattoo about two
inches across.
The design was a caricature of a Western-style coffin. On the
lid was an eerie, leering smile. That lid was lifted slightly off the
hinges so that a white skeletal arm extended out from the darkness within, beckoning the viewer closer. It was the exact same
mark that I'd seen on the arm of a man who paralyzed me with
poisoned water and tried to kill me.
A coffin, grinning.
It was practically a miracle that I successfully avoided screaming, falling to the floor, or getting auto–logged out because of
some kind of brain-wave trauma. Instead, I showed no reaction.
The red, glowing goggles stared through me. Eventually, the
player in the tattered cloak rasped again.
"Did you, not understand, the question?"
I slowly and deliberately nodded my head.
"…Yes. I don't understand. What do you mean, the real thing?"
"…"
The gray cloak took a silent step backward. The red gaze flickered once, as if he blinked. After several extremely long seconds,
his voice was even more robotic than before.
"…In that case, fine. But, if you are, a fake using the name…or,
the real thing…"
He finished his sentence as he was turning away.
"…I will, kill you."
It did not strike me as a harmless bit of in-game role-playing.
The tattered cloak disappeared into the crowd without a
sound, just like an actual ghost. There were no lingering signs
that any player had been there just seconds ago.
This time I really did stagger, barely keeping my balance, and
stumbled over to the nearby box seat. I hugged my slender legs
and pressed my forehead against my knees.
When I closed my eyes, I saw that tattoo again, bright and
clear, even though it had only caught my eye for a fraction of a
second.
There was only one group in Aincrad who used that symbol as
their identifier.
The murderous red guild, Laughing Coffin.
Over the course of those two long years trapped in SAO, it
wasn't long until the emergence of "orange" players, criminals
who took out their frustrations by stealing money and items from
other players. But those actions took place within certain bounds
—usually a big group surrounding a few helpless victims and forcing them to trade, or perhaps using a paralysis venom.
Since obliterating one's HP bar with a direct attack would
cause the player to die in real life, no one had the guts to go
through with that. These were ten thousand people severely addicted to online games—not the type of people who went around
committing violent crimes in regular life.
It was the existence of one single player with a very different
mentality that broke the unwritten rule not to take every last HP.
The man's name was spelled PoH but pronounced "pooh." It
was a silly-sounding name, but despite that—or perhaps because
of it—his presence commanded attention wherever he went.
The biggest reason for this was PoH's exotic looks and his
multilingual status—he seemed to be half-Japanese and halfWestern. His Japanese was peppered with smooth, fluent English
and Spanish slang, which made him sound like a cool pro DJ rapping at the table. It was easy for him to bring others around to his
way of thinking, turning simple MMO gamers into cooler,
tougher outlaws than they'd ever been, and be, in life.
The second reason for his charismatic nature was PoH's outright strength.
His skill with the dagger was nothing short of genius. The
blade flashed like an extension of his hand, and he attacked monsters and players alike without needing to rely on the system's
built-in sword skills. In the later stages of the game, once he'd
found a terrifying dagger by the name of Mate-Chopper, he was a
menacing enough force to unnerve even the front-line players.
PoH's leadership skills were on the same level as Heathcliff's,
but in the polar opposite direction. Very gradually, over time, he
began to remove many of the mental roadblocks that kept his followers within certain bounds.
A year after the game's start, on New Year's Eve, 2023, PoH's
gang of nearly thirty players attacked a small guild that was enjoying an outdoor party at one of the map's sightseeing spots, and
killed all of them.
The next day, the various information dealers around Aincrad
were trumpeting the formation of Laughing Coffin, the first unofficial "red" guild in the game.
At the very least, I knew the gray-cloaked man who made contact was not PoH. His flat, broken speech was nothing in the least
like PoH's machine-gun staccato.
But I couldn't help but feel that I knew someone in Laughing
Coffin who spoke this way. I must have come face-to-face with
him and traded words, if not sword strikes. Not a rank-and-file
soldier, but a very high-ranking officer. How could I guess all of
these things, yet not remember his face or name?
But in fact, I knew why—my own mind was refusing to remember.
Laughing Coffin was formed on January 1, 2024, and obliterated on a summer night eight months later.
It was not a spontaneous breakup, or the result of infighting. A
large-scale raid party of over fifty of the game's best front-line
fighters put them to the sword.
This method could easily have been taken much earlier. The
reason it didn't happen for eight months was because Laughing
Coffin's hideout took that long to pin down.
Any houses or apartments available for players to buy in Aincrad, whether in a town or outside in the wilderness, could be
easily and accurately located with an NPC real estate agent. We
assumed that a place that could house thirty would need to be a
mansion or fortress, so information dealers hired by the group
began crosschecking all of the large-scale residences starting
from the first floor and going up.
Although this did turn up the bases of several smaller orange
guilds, after several months there was still no sign of the crucial
Laughing Coffin hideout.
And there was good reason for that—they were actually using
an already-cleared minor dungeon on a lower floor as their base
of operations, crammed into the safe haven zone within. It was
just a little cave, the kind of location the game designers would
have set up and then forgotten completely. The powerful frontline players only bothered with the labyrinth towers that led to
the next floor, and the midlevel types preferred the larger dungeons with more players around. Of course, one had to assume
that a few unlucky souls coincidentally ran across that tiny cave,
and it was all too easy to imagine how they were prevented from
telling the tale.
The suspected reason that Laughing Coffin's base was finally
identified after eight long months was that one of their members
gave in to his guilty conscience and revealed the location to another player. A reconnaissance mission determined that it was indeed the cave in question, which led to the formation of the massive raid party. The leader was an officer from the Divine Dragon
Alliance, the largest guild in the game. Several other principal
members from the Knights of the Blood and other guilds were
present, and even I participated as a solo.
The assault on their base happened at three in the morning.
Our numbers and levels were significantly higher than those of
Laughing Coffin. We assumed it would be quite easy to seal off
the ways out of the safe haven area and force them to surrender
without bloodshed.
But just as someone from their group had informed on the location of their hideout, they learned about our top secret plan
through some means still unknown.
When we charged into the dungeon, not a single member of
Laughing Coffin was in the safe zone. But they had not fled ahead
of time. They were all hiding in the dungeon's offshoot branches,
and attacked us from behind once we were inside.
They used traps, poison, blinding—every kind of sabotage they
could attempt. Though the raid party was thrown into chaos at
first, responding appropriately to unexpected circumstances was
one of the most crucial qualities to the game's best players. The
raid regrouped quickly and led a furious counterattack.
But there was one unforeseen difference between Laughing
Coffin and the raid party.
It was the resistance to the idea of killing. When we realized
that the insane members of LC were not going to surrender, even
when reduced to slivers of HP, our group was rattled.
We had discussed this possibility before the operation. The
consensus was that we would not hesitate to wipe out the enemy's
HP entirely if that was necessary. But it might have been the case
that none of our entire raid, including myself, truly had what it
took to deliver that final blow, knowing the enemy's HP was
down in the red. Some of us even threw our swords aside and
took a knee.
We were the first to lose a few members to the raid. When the
front-line team fought back with rage and grief, several from
Laughing Coffin died.
After that, it was bloodstained hell.
When the battle was over, the raid party was short eleven,
while Laughing Coffin had lost twenty-one. Two of those had
been at my hand.
Among the names of the dead and captured, we did not find
PoH, their leader.
If the player in the tattered gray cloak was one of the twelve
Laughing Coffin survivors who was sent to the prison in Blackiron Palace, then we must have had a conversation after the battle. If I could remember his style of speaking, but not his face or
name, that was because I was actively trying to forget everything
about that battle.
…No.
What if the man under that cloak was one of the two I killed?
I shook my head violently, still clutching my knees on top of
the chair. I clenched my teeth so hard they could have broken,
and lashed my mind back into shape.
The dead did not come back to life. The four thousand victims
of the SAO Incident, whether I loved or hated them, would never
come back. So the cloaked man had to be one of the twelve survivors of Laughing Coffin. And I knew all of those names. I grimaced against the pain, trying to dig deep, deep into that terrible
memory…
Then I gasped, realizing another possibility.
The twisted, metallic voice—it was only a rasping whisper, but
what would it sound like if shouted at full volume?
The scream on the audio file I heard a week ago came back to
echo in my ears.
This is the true power, the true strength! Carve this name and
the terror it commands into your hearts, you fools! My name,
and the name of my weapon, is…Death Gun!!
It was the same. The exact same. The voice was identical.
Was the man in the gray cloak…Death Gun?
If that was true, then I had already completed my duty: to attract attention in GGO and find myself targeted by Death Gun.
But…I couldn't have imagined that I would learn this fact—
that Death Gun was a survivor of SAO, and a member of the murderous Laughing Coffin, to boot.
A man who had possibly killed two players in real life with
gunshots from within the game. What if that power…was real…?
I nearly screamed when someone suddenly clapped a hand on
my shoulder. I flinched and looked up to see pale blue hair.
"…You look like you've seen a ghost," Sinon said, frowning.
Somehow I managed to work my cheeks into a smile.
"Uh…n-no, it's nothing…"
"Was it really that close of a fight? Seems like you came back
pretty quick."
Only then did I remember that I was still an active participant
in the Bullet of Bullets tournament. I blinked and looked around,
noticing that the previously bustling dome was only half-full now.
Most of the first round was finished, with the losers being teleported back to the surface. My next opponent would be determined very soon, with the second round to follow.
But it was hard to imagine being able to fight anytime soon.
I looked first at Spiegel, who was shooting me a suspicious
gaze from a slight distance, then back to Sinon, who stood right in
front of me, then sighed lifelessly though slackened lips.
She put a dead-serious look on her face. "You're never going to
make it to the final if that's how you're feeling after one fight. Get
it together—I've got to collect what you owe me, remember."
She clenched a fist and pounded my shoulder again.
Without thinking, I grabbed her little hand with both of mine
before it could be pulled away. I drew it toward my chest and put
my forehead against it.
"Wh-wh…what are you doing?!" she yelped, trying to extract
her hand, but I held fast.
Even the false warmth from that polygonal avatar's hand was
more comforting than I could put into words. I felt the terrible
chill of fear that had settled over my heart, and my body began
trembling, well after the fact.
"…What's the matter…?"
As the seconds passed, I felt the resistance from that small,
warm hand slowly ease away.