Chapter 1
Thirst.
The sensation of thirst was so realistic, it was hard to believe it was just a
simulation created by the AmuSphere. The tongue lost moisture, and the throat
hurt with each breath. It made her wonder if her biological body, resting on her
bed in the real world, was suffering from dehydration.
I wish I could log out and chug an entire glass of ice-cold water, she thought.
But in this mysterious world, Unital Ring, her avatar would not vanish while she
was away. Her thirst meter would stop, but if she logged off, drank water, and
logged back in, the meter would still be depleted. And now that the grace
period had ended, if she died once in UR, she could never log back in again.
Potentially, she could lose her character and all of her items. That was the one
thing she had to avoid.
And that was why Shino Asada, aka Sinon, was rushing desperately across the
barren wasteland in search of water to quench her virtual thirst.
Running made the thirst meter deplete more quickly, but walking wouldn't
get her there any faster, either. She just had to trust that if she ran far enough,
she'd find a source of water before her TP hit zero. The desert was very flat
overall, but about half a mile ahead, there was a small boulder with what
looked like plants growing along its silhouette. If there wasn't water around
there, she was out of ideas.
"Seriously…How could I let myself get stuck in this situation…?"
Her voice was hoarse in her parched throat. Sinon clicked her tongue, thinking
about the mistakes in judgment that had led her here.
Six hours earlier, at 4:50 PM on Sunday, September 27th, 2026.
Sinon was logged in to the VRMMORPG Gun Gale Online (GGO), delving in a
high-level dungeon and farming mechanical enemies for rare metal drops.
Since making an account for ALfheim Online (ALO), the home territory of her
friends, she'd spent more time playing over there, but Sinon had no intention
whatsoever of quitting GGO. The only weapon she'd ever used that was truly a
part of her was the Hecate II, and she intended to win the next Bullet of Bullets
tournament entirely on her own. Her solo metal farming was so that she could
customize the Hecate and avoid the attention of her rivals in doing so.
The metal had only a 3 percent drop rate, and she was down to just one more
to go when it happened:
The ground of the dungeon had rumbled beneath her feet, rainbow colors
had filled her vision, and then she was teleported back to the surface.
She found herself in a town she'd never seen before. Weak sunlight coming
through a thin cloud layer quietly illuminated a gray city. The road stretched in
both directions without a soul in sight.
Sinon had traveled the world map of GGO from end to end, but she didn't
recognize this place. The buildings were constructed not of concrete but of oldfashioned stone, and the road was paved with cracked bricks rather than
asphalt. More and more GGO players teleported in around her, all of whom
looked around in bewilderment. She didn't recognize a single one.
The situation was baffling, but Sinon did not appreciate being surrounded by
unfamiliar men, so she stole away into a nearby building. Checking to make sure
there were no residents inside, she hid in an upstairs room, clutching the
Hecate to her chest as she listened to the voices outside.
About ten players gathered together and began to discuss what was
happening in the hopes of finding an answer. Someone eventually noticed a
fundamental change to the UI of the system menu, so they attempted to
contact the development team but got no response.
That left logging out as the only option to collect more information. By now,
there would be plenty of posts about this anomaly on GGO community sites and
social media. Sinon really wanted to log out to learn more, but an ominous
feeling kept her online.
Outside the building, the ten players were using their strange new menus to
return to the real world. Once the outside area was silent again, Sinon leaned
out the empty window to look at the road below, and gasped.
The ten avatars were still there, resting in the middle of the road on one knee.
That was the standby pose, a familiar sight from GGO and ALO. In most
VRMMOs, it was common practice to keep player avatars present in the world
for several minutes after they logged off while outdoors to prevent them from
being able to escape from monsters or other players by just turning off the
game. If that rule still held true, it meant this city was considered "wilderness"
rather than an actual city and offered no automatic protection. Then again,
there were absolutely no civilians around, so you couldn't even call it a city—
more of a ruin, really.
And that meant…
Sinon was watching the scene with her breath trapped in her lungs when she
heard a kind of skittering, scraping sound. She looked to the right and saw a
number of long, thin shadows emerging into the waning sunlight from a side
path. They were insectoid monsters, like a cross between a centipede and an
earwig, except they were about two and a half feet long.
Based on the size, they didn't seem to be that dangerous. But all the GGO
players within their attention were offline at the moment. The gleaming assault
rifles and laser guns on the players' backs were impressive, but they were
useless without an active finger to pull the trigger.
"Come on—log back in!" she hissed, gripping the windowsill, but the ten of
them just knelt there, perfectly still. The centipedes were rapidly approaching,
their many legs skittering across the paving stones. Sinon reached behind her
on pure instinct, grasping for the backup MP7 she kept in a holster.
But she stopped short. The five centipedes visible weren't necessarily the only
ones nearby. Gunshots could potentially attract an entire swarm of them. She
had a silencer on the MP7 for this very purpose, but she'd left it in item storage
while she was farming for materials to maximize her carrying space. There was
no time to dig through her menu so she could pull it out and snap it onto the
muzzle.
While she sat there, paralyzed with indecision, the lead centipede crawled
onto the back of one of the players and dug its huge jaws into his unprotected
neck. Crimson damage effects spilled from the spot like spurting blood. The
other centipedes quickly set upon the rest of the players.
Sinon assumed that, even as helpless as they were, the players could survive a
few minutes of biting. The centipedes were obviously low-level monsters, and
the men were outfitted with pretty fancy armor.
But just a matter of seconds later, the player who had been bitten first simply
emitted blue particles and vanished. The other players died shortly after him. It
happened all too quickly. Either the centipedes were much tougher than Sinon
thought or…
Sinon opened the strange ring menu. Out of the eight icons there, she
touched the human-shaped one, which she guessed was her status window.
When she saw the values that appeared, she gasped.
Level-1. Maximum HP, just 200. Her stats had been reinitialized.
That wasn't all. Below her white HP bar was a green MP bar, then a blue bar
marked TP, and a yellow bar marked SP. MP was easy enough, but she had no
idea what SP and TP were supposed to represent.
There was no point trying to figure that out now, though. She glanced out the
window again—five players were gone. The other five still living were now in
the centipedes' sights. They were going to be wiped out before any of them
returned.
"Ugh…!"
Sinon drew her MP7. She unfolded the foregrip, extended the stock, and
switched the selector from safety to semi-auto. Pulling the cocking lever loaded
the first bullet into the chamber, and she took aim at the lead centipede,
resting her body against the windowsill. Her finger slid against the trigger and
tensed just a little.
"Huh…?"
She was aghast. One of the two major systems that made GGO, well, GGO
was nowhere to be seen: the bullet circle.
A bug? A system error? Or…? There was no time to wonder. Some monsters
had the ability to nullify the bullet circle, forcing you to use your sights and aim
the traditional way. She was shooting down from the second floor, but at this
distance, there was no real concern about the trajectory being off.
Sinon aimed at the head of the centipede as it prepared to bite its new target,
then double-tapped. Its reddish-black shell burst, shooting sticky green fluid
outward. The second shot missed by a bit, but an HP bar with an unfamiliar
shape over the centipede's head rapidly dwindled to zero. The centipede
screeched with its final breath, curled backward, and fell to the street, then…
did not burst into blue shards and disappear. It was still there, but it was
definitely dead.
She tried to aim for the next centipede and clicked her tongue. There were
red cursors over the heads of the other four creatures. Her instincts told her
they were focused on her now, and that was correct. They changed direction to
approach her building. She told herself not to panic and took out a second
centipede with another double-tap.
The remaining three immediately scurried straight up the stone wall. She
switched the selector to full auto and leaned out the window to aim downward.
The rhythm of the gunfire was pleasing, and a third centipede fell to the
ground, ooze pouring from its carapace where the 4.6 mm bullets struck it.
The fourth met the same fate as the others, but the fifth reached the window.
Sharp mandibles extended from its mouth toward her, and it swung its pincer
bottom to point at her, too.
Sinon didn't force her shot, kicking off the sill instead. She did a backflip as
she flew and opened fire with the MP7 when she landed. It cracked the fifth
centipede's head as the insect tried to get inside the building. Its long, thin
torso hung over the sill.
"Whew," she exhaled, checking the remaining ammo in her magazine out of
sheer habit.
A sudden, unfamiliar musical fanfare blared in her ears, and a blue ring rose
from her feet up over her head. A window popped up in front of her.
Sinon's level has risen to 2.
"Level-2…"
She couldn't help but repeat it like a lament. In GGO three days ago, Sinon
had just reached level-107. Once Zaskar, the dev team for GGO, realized the
error, they would probably do a server rollback for everyone, but the game map
and monsters were too polished for this to be some kind of glitch. It was like
she'd been tossed out of GGO and pulled into a completely different game…
With her MP7 still at the ready, Sinon carefully walked toward the centipede's
body. She poked it with the muzzle a few times, but it did not move. After that,
she took her hand off the foregrip and tapped the creature with a finger.
A properties window appeared with a shwam sound. It said: Red-bellied
Centiwig Corpse, Material, Weight: 5.82.
The red-bellied part of the name made sense. The red coloring on its
underside was brighter than on its back. And if it was classified as a material,
that suggested something.
Sinon put the MP7 back in its holster and reached for the knife on her belt.
But she touched nothing. She looked down at her right side and saw that the
space where she kept her favorite survival knife was empty.
"…"
She glanced in confusion at the Hecate II resting against the wall. She had her
main weapon and her side weapon, plus all her armor, so why would her knife
be the one thing missing? Maybe it fell out when she did the backflip—not that
such a thing should ever happen—but there was no sign of it around the room.
She did, however, notice a cabinet against the wall.
On closer examination, the cabinet was unlike the metal cabinet style of the
world of GGO. It was an old-fashioned wooden cabinet, more suited to the
world of Alfheim, if anything. She opened the grimy old doors and found almost
nothing inside except for some broken dishes, a bottle filled with an
unidentifiable substance, and one small knife.
She picked up the knife. It was not meant for combat; at best, it was suited
for peeling fruit, but the blade still had a little bit of an edge, at least. With the
rusty knife in her hand, she went back to the centipede. After much hesitation,
she jammed the knife into the gap between its segments.
There was a skin-crawling chugk sound and a vibration in her hand that made
her want to hurl the knife away—but fortunately, one action was all it took for
the centipede's body to flash blue and vanish. A number of items fell on the
spot it had occupied.
A message appeared reading Dismantling skill gained. Proficiency has risen to
1.
She shrugged and minimized it. On the ground were a couple of reddish-black
plates and what looked like two curved thorns. She scooped them up and
tapped them, turning them into Inferior Centipede Carapace and Inferior
Centipede Pincers. She didn't know what they were for, but it couldn't hurt to
have them. Sinon opened her menu and tossed the carapace and pincers into
her inventory. Then she stuck the knife into her belt, picked up the Hecate II,
and left the room to head back down.
From the entrance of the building, she peered outside. She'd blasted the gun
at full auto, but no new centipedes or other monsters seemed to be emerging.
The five players she'd saved were still in their standby poses. She used her
knife to dismantle the four other centipede bodies and claim their materials.
"Can't upgrade the Hecate with centipede shells, I assume," Sinon muttered,
sighing once again. However, she soon noticed that there were five dark bags
resting on the ground where the player avatars had died earlier.
"…"
Feeling hesitant, she approached, sticking the knife back into her belt and
touching one of the bags. It turned into a ring of light and disappeared. There
was a new message for her now:
AK-47M acquired. Tactical Vest acquired.
"…"
Both were standard equipment in GGO. As she expected, the contents of the
black bags belonged to the dead players. Of course, it was the centipedes that
had killed the players, not Sinon, but looting a dead player wasn't her style. She
was opening her inventory to put the items back when she noticed something.
In basically every VRMMO, items left behind in the world would vanish after a
certain amount of time. She wasn't sure where the respawn point would be for
those players, but once they realized their weapons had dropped, they'd be
rushing back to reclaim them. If she wanted to be considerate, she should hold
on to them until the players returned.
So she decided not to materialize the first items she'd looted, and she picked
up the other four bags. She was worried about storage space, so she checked
her window again, but her carrying capacity wasn't even at 20 percent.
Struck with foreboding, she checked the contents and saw that all she was
carrying were ten retrieved items and the materials from the centipedes. All of
the items she had earned in GGO were gone.
"Unbelievable…"
She closed the window.
Her items would probably come back once the situation was resolved, but it
was worrying that there was still no announcement from the dev team. She
wanted to avoid losing her Hecate and MP7 if she died, so it seemed like she'd
have to make her precious guns last until the rollback could begin—and then
another thought made her suck in a breath through her teeth.
If everything in her inventory was gone, that meant her healthy stock of 12.7
mm ammo for the Hecate and 4.6 mm ammo for the MP7 was gone, too. The
only things left were the seven shots in the Hecate's magazine and the forty or
so bullets between the MP7 and its magazine on her belt. Once she'd fired
them all, the only weapon Sinon would have left would be the rusty kitchen
knife she'd found in the cabinet of the abandoned home.
Strictly speaking, she also had the weapons and ammo dropped by the five
dead players. But if she made off with them, she was nothing but a looter in
name and fact.
Belatedly, she regretted using her guns on the centipedes at the full auto
setting. Still, Sinon waited for the other five to log in again. The centipedes
would be back eventually, so the six of them had to work together to survive.
She pulled the MP7 from her holster again, then backed against the wall of the
building and waited for three minutes.
At last, one of the players twitched, then bolted to his feet.
"Hey, everybody, let's move! In the middle of the ruins is…," he shouted but
stopped when he noticed that only Sinon was present and listening. He looked
around, then lowered his voice and said, "Hey, you, there were about five more
people here before, right? You know where they went?"
"They died, unfortunately," she said, shrugging.
Sinon was about to explain about the centipede attack when the player—who
was dressed in gray digital camo and used an optical gun—took aim at her with
the assault rifle on his shoulder.
"So you're a PKer, huh?!"
"What?!" she shouted, a mixture of surprise and outrage. Then she realized
that what she said could be interpreted as a bit of creative assassin role-playing.
Plus, she had the MP7 in her hand, so she quickly lowered it and protested,
"No, it wasn't me—it was giant centipedes!"
"Oh yeah? And where are they?!"
"I took them out! I saved your lives!" Sinon objected. She wanted to open her
window so she could take out the carapaces to prove it to him, but the man
immediately pulled the trigger and left a burn mark on the wall just to the right
of Sinon with a yellowish-green laser.
"Hey!!"
"Don't move! Only the lowest of the low would prey on people while they're
logged out!"
"I'm not preying on anyone!" she hissed, trying to suppress her anger. But the
man was in a rage and wouldn't take his finger off the trigger. If she tried to
move again, he would hit her for certain. Sinon was only level-1—well, level-2—
so even a low-powered optical rifle could kill her instantly. If she died and
dropped the Hecate, the man would assume it was rightfully his, won in battle.
Should she take the initiative and kill him first to protect her partner? But
how?
A new voice broke the silent tension.
"Damn, this is crazy! It's not just GGO," shouted one of the other players as
he got to his feet. When he noticed the man with the gun and Sinon, he
exaggeratedly leaned backward in shock. "Wh-whoa, what are you doing,
man?"
"Use your brain! This chick killed five of us while we were offline!"
"Yikes!"
The second man pulled a large-caliber revolver—probably a Ruger Blackhawk
—from his holster. Sinon's back was literally against the wall, and while she was
searching for a way out, the other three awakened in quick order.
She'd completely lost the chance for initiative. It seemed the only thing she
could do now was pray that one of these people would be calm and hear her
out.
Then a familiar dry skittering hit her ears. She looked around briefly and saw
two long antennae extending from a split off the road, to the left behind the
men. The antennae just wavered there for a moment, then emerged farther,
attached to a head with huge mandibles and a long body. The red-bellied
centiwigs had respawned.
Because the guy with the optical gun was screaming his head off, the others
didn't realize the danger. She rolled her eyes yet again and muttered quietly,
"Behind you."
"What?! Did you say something?!" her assailant growled.
Again, she warned, "Behind you!"
"What, you think I'm gonna fall for the oldest trick in the book? Hurry up and
drop your loot before I shoot—"
But a shriek—"Aaaiiieee!"—interrupted him.
"What the hell was that for? Would you shut up…?" the rifleman snapped,
glancing over his shoulder, only to let out a yelp. "Gwah?!"
At last, he'd noticed the centipedes emerging onto the road. There were at
least ten of them.
The five brigands backed away, guns aimed.
This is it…I have to escape now. The red-bellied centiwigs looked frightening,
but two or three 4.6 mm bullets from the MP7 were all it took to kill them. The
players' gear was at least mid-rank, so if they shot like hell, it would take less
than a minute for them to kill the bugs.
The instant she heard the first shot, Sinon bolted. She put the MP7 back into
its holster and sprinted in the opposite direction of the gunfire. It was strange
that she could run perfectly fine with the ultraheavy Hecate II on her back,
despite being only level-2, but she wouldn't know why unless she survived this
situation.
In less than five seconds, she heard an angry shout among the gunfire.
"Ah! Hey, the chick ran away!"
"Dammit! Let's finish them off and go after her!"
At that point, she was rooting for the centipedes to put up a better fight. This
left her with maybe ten seconds to get away from the wide-open main street.
Right after he'd logged back in, the optical rifleman had said, Hey, everybody,
let's move! In the middle of the ruins is… The most straightforward
interpretation of that statement would be In the middle of the ruins is a safe
space. So she wanted to head that way, but it was difficult to go to a place with
lots of players around if some of them assumed she was a PKer. So she should
head for somewhere outside the ruined town.
Sinon recalled what she'd seen looking out the upstairs window. In her
memory, the direction across from the window—meaning the left side of where
she was running—featured a group of larger buildings. If that was the center of
town, then the right-hand side was the way to leave.
The gunshots were wrapping up in the background. She had to get away from
the main road before the men spotted her. Side street, side street…There. Five
yards ahead.
Sinon tilted herself as far as she could go and made a ninety-degree turn
down the side path as close as possible without slipping and tumbling. There
was a narrow alley barely four feet wide between the buildings. If it was a dead
end, she was screwed; she just had to have faith for now.
As she ran, stepping as lightly as possible, she saw three half-broken wooden
boxes up ahead. She jumped behind them and crouched. In less than ten
seconds, she could hear the stomping of heavy combat boots as well as irritated
exclamations.
"Damn! Where'd that girl go?!"
"Maybe she snuck into one of the houses or down a side alley?"
"So we have to go searching them one by one? Man…"
"Don't complain! She killed five of us!"
"Plus, that chick's sni-ri was superrare. If it doesn't get rolled back, we could
sell it and split the winnings and still all come out superrich."
…What the hell is a sni-ri? she wondered, then realized it was supposed to be
an abbreviation of sniper rifle. They were right that the Hecate II was one of the
rarest weapons in GGO, but if she lost it to scrubs who would call it something
as stupid as a sni-ri and then sell it for cash, she'd never live that down.
If the men came down the alley in a line, she'd just have to shoot through all
five of them with one of the Hecate's 12.7 mm bullets. But doing that, even in
self-defense, made her a true PKer. Plus, she had only seven bullets left, and
she didn't want to have to use them on this.
Don't come down here! she begged.
It was as though they could hear her mind. The footsteps slowed at the
entrance to the alley. She couldn't see them, but she could sense their
attention on the spot where she was hiding.
Sinon silently slipped the Hecate off her back and held it in both hands. Now
she wished she'd left one more bullet in the chamber for good measure. She
placed her right hand on the bolt handle. She'd wait for them to come down the
alley as close as possible before loading the bullet, and then she had to shoot
before they reacted to the sound.
One, two…three seconds later.
"Hey, someone check those busted crates…"
But she didn't hear the rest because it was drowned out by the burst of a
submachine gun. Live bullets burst through the wooden boxes, grazing Sinon's
hair and combat boots. Her instincts screamed at her to bolt from the hiding
spot, but through sheer willpower, she kept her avatar still.
"Nothing there."
"Don't just start shooting like that, man!"
The first voice merely laughed. Five sets of footsteps moved away, but Sinon
stayed in place for another thirty seconds before carefully rising. The wooden
boxes were torn up after getting shot, and one more impact would have
crumbled them to splinters.
You're going to regret wasting those bullets, she warned them silently, then
rushed down the other end of the alley.
Fortunately, the narrow path wasn't a dead end, and it took her to another,
larger street. Once upon a time, many people must have walked the stonepaved road that now hosted little more than wind and dust. What had turned
this town into an empty ruin? The answer might lie in the center, but she wasn't
going there anytime soon.
Sinon headed for the outward edge of the town, realizing that at some point,
she had stopped thinking of this place as a glitch or an unintended case of
human error but as a proper VRMMO world with its own internal logic. She
encountered the occasional centipede, spider, and scorpion-type monster, but
she chose to conserve her limited ammo and ran away from them. At this point,
she wished she could have switched her side weapon from the MP7 to a photon
sword…but hindsight was twenty-twenty.
She was on the move for over twenty minutes, avoiding battle, when a tall
stone wall came into view. It looked very much like a castle wall surrounding a
city, but it was stacked with seamless blocks, with no way of climbing up them.
Sinon grabbed a pebble and flicked it upward with her thumb. When it landed
on the ground, it bounced to the right, so she followed the wall in that
direction.
In less than a minute, she arrived at a large gate. Praying that it wasn't locked,
she approached carefully, but she soon saw that her worries were unfounded.
The heavy wooden double gate was standing on one side, but the other side
had come out of the frame and fallen to the ground.
She stopped, wondering if leaving the town was really better than staying. But
there was no way to know the right answer; the only thing she knew for sure
was that she couldn't approach the other GGO players who had been
teleported here until she cleared up their misconception that she was a PKer.
What she needed now was a safe place where she could log out. If there were
centipedes and scorpions and such all over town, the only possible shelter she'd
find was outside.
With her mind made up for now, Sinon walked up to the gate, stepped
through the empty frame, and made her way outside the city.
"...Whoa…"
Instantly, she found herself gasping at the view spread out before her.
The scale of the world map was, simply put, vast.
GGO's familiar world was anything but cramped. On foot, walking across the
wasteland surrounding the capital of SBC Glocken took over five hours. But this
mysterious world wasn't just vast—it was incredibly detailed. Every VR world
naturally faded out as you gazed into the far distance, but the dried earth here
just continued on and on toward the horizon until it met ranges of distant
mountains that were still crystal clear to the eye. She hadn't felt this much of a
sense of scale since her dive into that true alternate reality, the Underworld.
Unconsciously, Sinon raised her hand and touched the side of her head. It
wasn't here now, but back in the real world, where she was lying on her bed,
she was wearing the AmuSphere she'd been using for close to a year and a half.
It wasn't the latest and greatest piece of gear anymore. How was it creating
such a vivid experience?
She needed to log out soon and find out what was happening. Sinon blinked,
switching gears in her mind, and stared at the wilderness under the afternoon
sun with renewed attention.
The terrain was about 70 percent dry, sandy ground and 30 percent faded
plants, with the occasional cactus rising above it all. It reminded her of the
Sonoran Desert in Mexico, not that she'd ever been there, though.
There were monsters, too. Just from here, she could make out two giant
scorpions and one giant lizard. It wasn't going to be easy to look for safety while
avoiding the predators' reaction range. But then she finally remembered
something. The Hecate's precious bullets needed to be conserved, but there
was more her gun could do than just shoot holes in things.
Sinon assumed a standing firing position with the Hecate and looked through
its scope, turning the dial until its magnification was at 5×, the lowest it offered.
Then she moved the gun slowly from left to right, searching for safe ground.
It seemed like being close to the ground wouldn't help. She needed to find a
high space where the scorpions and lizards couldn't reach her, with cover she
could hide behind.
But it was unlikely she'd find such a convenient spot here, so she'd settle for a
raised area with a flat top…
"...Ah," she grunted.
Sinon pulled away from the scope, then looked through it again, raising the
magnification to 10×. She'd found a tall gray rocky pillar jutting from the desert
floor. It was pointed on the top, but there was something like a cave near the
base. If she could climb her way up there, it would be the perfect shelter. And
the distance was reasonable, no more than half a mile at the most.
She lowered her gun, steeled herself for action, and stepped down off the
fallen door. The soles of her boots hit dry dirt, slightly scraping the ground with
every step. She wouldn't be returning to this city for a while. She had to survive
on her own until this strange situation sorted itself out.
At about thirty feet, she broke into a measured run. When she saw monsters
ahead of her, she went well out of her way and kept an eye on the distant rocky
point beyond the brush.
Thankfully, she didn't have to contend with any scorpions or lizards up close
before she reached her destination. Seen from the base, the rocky pillar was
about fifty feet tall. The sides were nearly vertical. It seemed like only the
centipedes from the town would be able to climb something like that—until she
noticed the cracks and handholds on the rock surface. Sinon flexed her hands
for a bit as she charted out a path up to the cave entrance. Once she had one,
she grabbed the first handhold, jammed the toe of her boot into a crack, and
pulled herself up.
In GGO—and probably in real life—a sniper's success was largely defined by
how much elevation they could gain, so free-climbing was a regular part of her
work. The trick to rock climbing in a VRMMO was to do it fast, before the
fatigue variable kicked in. She quickly got about fifteen feet up the surface.
Climbing skill gained. Proficiency has risen to 1.
The sudden message, right in front of her eyes, caused her to miss the next
hold she was aiming for. Her weight slid, but her left hand caught a small gap at
the last moment, preventing her from falling. She clicked her tongue with
annoyance and closed the window, then resumed climbing.
Thankfully, that single point of proficiency in the Climbing skill helped,
because she was able to reach the cave entrance without further trouble. It was
a dark hole about two feet around, and she had to be careful to slip inside
without catching the Hecate on the sides. In the real world, a hole like this
might end up too shallow to be of use, but in a game, the devs never put things
like this in unless it was worth the trouble.
As she expected, the cave widened as it got deeper. That increased the
chances it was a monster's lair, so she slipped the MP7 out of its holster and
turned on the small flashlight she had attached to a mount on her right side. Its
white light cut through the darkness.
The cave was shaped like a cocoon, about four and a half feet tall and ten feet
deep. There were no monsters here, nor any nest materials around her feet.
Instead, there was a single wooden box with a reinforced metal frame along the
back wall.
"...A treasure chest?" Sinon murmured, approaching in a crouch. She tapped
the lid with the gun's muzzle, and it made a hard, heavy sound. The chest didn't
look weathered or aged at all, in the sense of being left behind for years and
years, so in her mind, that made it more likely that it was a treasure chest. She
had to open it. As Sinon reached out with her left hand, she noticed a keyhole in
the metal facing on the front.
She tried to lift the lid anyway, but it might as well have been glued in place.
She exhaled and peered through the keyhole.
GGO's treasure chests—or treasure boxes, as players called them in-game—
were usually locked. There were electronic locks and physical locks, and
sometimes the boxes could have both, meaning you needed both the
LockPicking and Hacking skills. If it was just a physical lock, she could attempt
shooting it with her gun, but the chances of success were low when you did
that. More often than not, you just permanently broke the latch or destroyed
the contents of the box.
Sinon looked back and forth from the MP7 to the keyhole but successfully
resisted the allure of the gamble. If she wasted a valuable bullet and destroyed
the chest, too, she'd feel like a total failure. She would have tried picking the
lock, but all of her lockpicking tools were gone, along with the rest of her stuff.
All she had were the belongings of the unfortunate men, a rusty knife, and
some centipede mats.
"…"
However, a curious idea came to her. Sinon opened the ring menu and
hesitantly found her way to the EQUIPMENT icon. From her very inadequate list, she
selected Inferior Centipede Pincers and materialized one.
A reddish-black pincer six inches long appeared. The two sharp, curved spikes
were connected at the base. If she held them in both hands, she could work
them back and forth, but she couldn't begin to guess what the pincers were
meant to be crafted into. The only thing that mattered now, however, was that
they were sharp.
Sinon stuck the pointed end of one of the spikes into the keyhole, then moved
it around gently until there was a feeling of catching on something. It wasn't as
effective as a proper lockpick, but she supposed that if the chest was ranked
low enough, this was a worthwhile substitute.
She dug the spike around, trying to move whatever it was caught on, and a
new message appeared.
LockPicking skill gained. Proficiency has risen to 1.
So it seemed there were a ton of various skills in this world. There was no way
this situation could just be a system error at this point, but she had to focus on
the lock and ignore the bigger questions.
"Grrr…stupid…thing…," she hissed under her breath, tweaking the lock for a
good three minutes. But when another message finally appeared telling her the
LockPicking skill's proficiency had risen to 2, there was a pleasant clicking
sound. That was also the moment the durability of the centipede's pincer ran
out, and it crumbled in her hand.
Holding her breath, Sinon lifted the lid of the chest. It creaked ever so slightly
and revealed a handful of coins, an aged leather bag, and one greenish rusted
key.
She picked up a coin, the only silver of the bunch, and examined it closely. It
was a circle about three-quarters of an inch across, and it was neither the
credits of GGO nor the yrd of ALO. On one side was the number 100, and on the
back was an image of two trees. She tapped it to bring up a properties window
that said 100-el Silver Coin, Currency, Weight: 0.1.
"El…?"
She'd never heard of that currency. She shrugged and deposited the silver
coin and the other copper coins into her inventory. Next, she took out the
rusted key. There was an ornate openwork flower pattern on the handle, but
she had no idea where this fancy key was supposed to go. She gave it a tap, too.
Bronze Key, Tool, Weight: 0.72. No information of use.
Sinon tossed the key into her inventory next and saved the leather bag for
last. It was tantalizingly heavy. Maybe it was full of gold coins, unlike the inside
of the chest itself. Or perhaps there was a magical item inside. She widened the
mouth of the bag and stuck her hand inside. Her fingers brushed against a
couple of round items, so she pulled one out.
"…What is this?"
Resting in her palm was something like a metal ball bearing, small and shining.
Its dark surface felt like iron or lead. It didn't look valuable. She peered into the
bag and saw that all the items were the same. Sinon was disappointed, but she
tapped the metal ball anyway to see its properties.
Crude Musket Ball, Weapon/Bullet, Attack Power: 28.42 puncturing, Weight:
3.67.
"They're just bullets…"
So the treasure chests that popped up in the middle of the wilderness could
only be so good. Disappointed, she nearly tossed the iron ball aside before she
stopped herself.
"…Musket ball?"
Was there a category for that kind of ammo in GGO?
From what Sinon knew, muskets were extremely primitive flintlock guns that
were muzzle-loaded. They were long guns, but they weren't rifles, because their
barrels did not have rifling lines cut into the inside. They were only one step
forward from matchlocks.
The setting of GGO was a once-advanced world that had fallen into ruin after
a civilization-ending war, with all of the sophisticated metalworking knowledge
lost. Humanity could just barely manufacture optical guns, which were mostly
made of plastic, and live-ammo guns, which required metal stamping and
machining, were completely beyond even the most capable NPC. The liveammo guns could be salvaged only from the prewar ruins. Sinon's Hecate II and
MP7 were both items she'd looted from the dungeon beneath the capital city.
But the guns excavated from the ruins were from the early twentieth century
at the oldest. She'd never heard of anyone pulling a seventeenth-century
musket out of a dungeon. You'd have to pack in a new bullet and gunpowder
after every shot, so even shooting at the weakest monster would be a big pain
in the ass.
Meaning…
"There are muskets in this world…?" Sinon muttered, examining the iron ball
again. Seconds later, she put it back into the bag, closed the bag tight, and put it
into her inventory.
So I didn't find any proper treasure, but at least I managed to open the chest
itself, she told herself, leaning against a gently curved wall. It was six PM. There
weren't going to be any monsters here, she decided. Time to log out and figure
out what was going on.
But before that, a break. She'd wait around for five minutes, or maybe just
three, and be certain she was safe first. Once offline, she could replenish her
fluids and eat something small…What do I have in the refrigerator, again? She
still had some pork miso soup from last night. She could reheat that, then cook
one of the millet dumplings her grandmother sent…
Sinon didn't even realize her eyes were closed until she sank to the bottom of
warm darkness.
She thought she heard an odd noise.
It was like the ringing of countless bells in the far distance, or of shards of
glass gently falling and piling up. Something delicate and beautiful.
Her eyebrows worked themselves several times before her eyes finally
opened. She was looking not at the white wallpaper of her room but at a rough
stone surface. For an instant, she didn't recognize where she was, until she
realized she had fallen asleep in the virtual cave without logging off.
The time readout said it was 9:05 PM. She'd been asleep for three hours. That
meant there was no automatic deconnecting system here that would log out
players detected to have fallen asleep. Then again, maybe she was lucky; if the
game had cut her off, she might have been comfortable enough in her real body
in bed that she'd have slept eight hours instead.
In any case, the strange, continuous sound was drawing her attention toward
the mouth of the little cave.
Her sleepiness dissipated in an instant.
There was a brilliant purple light shining into the cave from the outside, which
should have been well past nightfall by now. It was not the light of sunset. It
was cold and purple, an amethyst glow…and it was flickering irregularly.
Sinon grabbed the Hecate and crawled along the ground. When she reached
the entrance, she went into a prone shooting position and looked carefully up
into the sky.
It was definitely nighttime. But there were no stars or moon in the sky, just a
multilayered curtain of light. An aurora…and the strange sound was coming
from every bit of it.
Suddenly, the aurora flickered powerfully, and a voice emerged.
"The seeds bud, sprout stems and leaves, and join ends to form a circular gate.
Visitors to this land, drained of hope, preserve your solitary life. Withstand
myriad trials, survive untold dangers, and to the first to reach the land revealed
by the heavenly light, all shall be given."
The voice sounded like an innocent young girl's but spoke with the wisdom of
a sage. Sinon didn't understand what it meant right away. The only phrases that
remained in her head were "land revealed by the heavenly light" and "all shall
be given."
The heavenly light had to be referring to the aurora. She gazed into the night
sky again, where the purple curtains of light were arranged in concentric circles.
The center seemed to be north—no, northeast. She'd have to leave to get an
accurate gauge on the direction.
Sinon steeled herself to go and started to get to her feet—but she couldn't.
The rippling aurora in the sky simply vanished, like it had been turned off with
a light switch. At the same time, she felt a terrible weight press upon her back.
For an instant, she thought someone was actually pinning her down. But in fact,
the weight was coming from the MP7, the sidearm she kept around her lower
back. It had been as light as a kitten a second earlier, but now it was a lion
resting on her spine.
"Urgh…"
She reached around her back, grabbed the grip of the MP7 where it stuck out
of the holster, and managed to knock it loose and onto the ground. But the
weight wasn't gone. It seemed her combat suit—the Sniper's Jacket, it was
called—was over her Equip Weight limit.
With her right hand, she opened the ring menu and got to her equipment
screen, then dragged the jacket from her mannequin to her item storage. Once
the boots and muffler were off, too, she was finally light and agile again.
So this was likely what happened. In the four hours between her teleportation
to this strange world at five o'clock and the mysterious announcement at nine
o'clock, there was probably a grace period where she could move normally
despite being encumbered. Once that period ended, Sinon's Carry Weight limit
matched her low level-2 status. She was no longer able to bear the weight of
her rare MP7 and the Sniper's Jacket.
Standing in her simple undergarments, Sinon looked down at the Hecate II on
the floor.
She knew what would happen, but she tried to lift the barrel and stock
anyway. Her gun was so immobile, it might as well have been bolted to the
ground. It was an antimateriel sniper rifle, a member of the very heaviest class
of weapons in GGO—although not as heavy as Behemoth's prized minigun. So it
was no surprise that she couldn't pick it up, but it did mean she couldn't haul
her favorite gun around the wilderness with her. In fact, she didn't even meet
the equip requirements now, so she couldn't get down on the ground and fire it
from there.
The sniper knelt on the floor of the cave and gently traced the beautiful wood
stock of the Hecate.
"…Just take a little rest for now," she whispered, then tapped the gun to open
a pop-up menu, and returned it to her inventory. The massive gun shone
briefly, then vanished. She did the same to the MP7 with a sigh. When the
virtual air filled her empty lungs, she was aware of her throat's dryness.
On sheer autopilot, she reached for the little canteen on her belt, but her
hand found nothing. Like the survival knife, her canteen was gone. She'd just
have to wait it out until she could replenish her water somewhere. It probably
wouldn't be easy in this wilderness, but in VR, thirst was just an annoyance, not
a life-and-death situation…
"Huh…?"
A nasty thought hit her. She looked to the upper left, and when she focused
on the UI elements there, she gasped.
The blue TP bar was slowly decreasing. Below that, the yellow SP bar was also
going down but at a slower rate than the TP bar. She intuitively knew that the
bars going down had something to do with the thirst she was feeling.
T was probably short for thirst, she decided. It wasn't hard to figure out what
would happen when that bar went all the way down. She'd collapse and die and
be teleported somewhere else, leaving all her items behind. She just had to
hope that if her guns were in her inventory, they couldn't be lost that way.
She stared at the blue bar again. It seemed to be falling at about 1 percent
every minute. It would take a hundred minutes to deplete all the way, but she
sensed that this rate would change with the environment and her physical
state. It would definitely drop faster if she left the cave to search for water,
expending energy.
But not doing anything wasn't an option. After the aurora vanished, the sky it
left behind was full of stars, with no sign of any rain in the next hundred
minutes. If she didn't find some water, she was going to die.
But there was one other problem. Sinon was dressed in nothing but
underwear—top and bottom—plus a belt. The only weapon she could use was
the rusty kitchen knife from the ruins. She couldn't even beat a mouse with
that, much less a giant centipede.
"…No other choice, I guess," she muttered and opened her inventory.
It wasn't to take out the Hecate or MP7. She scrolled through the short list
and stopped when she reached the icons for five black bags.
On the right side of the icons were their names: Elcamino's Items, Suttocos's
Items, Lian Lian's Items, Mishoka's Items, and Ichirou Masuoka's Items. If she'd
beaten those players herself, she'd think nothing of using their stuff, but when
she had only picked them up to save their things for safekeeping, it felt
disrespectful to do it.
Still, that hesitation meant nothing to the thirst that stabbed at her throat.
She checked each bag in turn, looking for weapons or armor that a level-2
character could use. The other players she'd seen here from GGO were fairly
experienced, so their loot more than likely had requirements too high for her.
But maybe one of those five played an extreme AGI build…
Thankfully, the player named Suttocos matched Sinon's hopes. In his bag was
a weapon called a Bellatrix SL2 and Weasel Suit armor. She could equip them
both and just barely stay below her Equip Weight limit.
After dropping the two icons onto her equipment mannequin, a long, thin
laser gun appeared on the left side of her belt, and a yellowish-brown combat
suit covered her body. The Bellatrix was an optical gun, which wasn't her style,
and the Weasel Suit had more exposure than she would have preferred, but it
was better than running around in her underwear with a rusty knife. Her
muffler could stay on because it weighed practically nothing.
In GGO, when you equipped a gun, the remaining ammo appeared in the
lower right part of your vision. But this world had no such feature, so she had to
pull out the laser gun and check the energy gauge it featured on its frame. It
said there was 63 percent remaining. She didn't know much about the gun, so
she'd have to actually shoot it to find out how much energy it lost with each
use.
Sinon put the laser gun in its holster and banished the ring menu. Her thirst
abruptly became even more apparent, and she coughed. There was still time
before the TP bar ran out, but the sensation was going to become unbearable
before too long. It hurt to leave the shelter she'd found, but water was the top
priority now.
She glanced back at the opened treasure chest, then popped back out of the
narrow cave mouth and into the arid wasteland.
And here she was now—well past ten PM.
She'd spent nearly an hour on the move after leaving the cave, but Sinon still
hadn't found any water. Her TP bar was under 20 percent, and the feeling of
thirst was excruciating. If there wasn't any water around the rocky outcropping
she was heading for, that would probably be where she died. She wanted to
believe she'd just resurrect somewhere else in the world, but the phrase
"preserve your solitary life" from the mysterious message stuck in her head. If a
player got only one life, then maybe resurrecting didn't work after the grace
period. If she died here, would she drop all her items and get sent back to GGO?
Would she lose her entire character and all its data?
There were three major mistakes in judgment Sinon had made that had put
her in this perilous situation. The first was trying to be nice and picking up the
items from the centipedes' victims for them. The second was not logging out
immediately after she'd found the cave and, instead, falling asleep inside it. The
third was leaving the cave and heading farther into the wilderness, rather than
returning toward the ruined city.
It occurred to her now that if she had searched the homes of the city
carefully, there would probably have been a well or something of that nature. It
had to be an intended part of the game design that players would replenish
their water at the ruins and venture outward from there to explore; that was
why there was no water outside. But her TP bar was already below halfway by
the time she realized this, so she couldn't turn back and return to the city.
If there wasn't any water at the rocks ahead…No. She had to believe it would
be there.
She didn't want to run into any monsters just before the end, so she watched
the darkness very closely as she ran. She'd gained something called the Night
Vision skill a while back, which gave her slightly better vision, but she couldn't
see into the shadows by starlight alone. She gave any big rocks that might hide
scorpions a wide berth and moved as quietly as possible.
The big rock formation's exterior was covered in shrubs. It was only a hundred
yards away at this point.
That was when Sinon picked up some very important information, visually and
aurally. She shrank back and ducked.
What she saw was a small, flickering light at the base of the rocks. The
starlight was reflecting off something. Out in this desert, it couldn't be metal or
glass. It had to be water.
And what she heard was a roar like thunder. The booming bass sound
couldn't come from a lizard or rat. In typical VRMMO terms, only a large
predator—often some kind of field boss—made that kind of sound.
Sinon's instinct was to grab the shoulder strap of the Hecate II, but she
touched nothing. Her usual partner was in her inventory, unable to be
equipped. All she could rely on now was the Bellatrix SL2. But optical handguns
were used for their lightweight nature. Would that really help her against a
boss?
The TP bar, now bright red, was nearly down to 10 percent. Standing here and
waffling wouldn't stop it from running out in ten minutes or so. Finding another
source of water was unrealistic at this point. Her only options were to wait here
and die of thirst or gamble and head for the rock.
For some reason, she remembered something she'd said to the leader of a
PvP squadron that had hired her once: Show me you at least have the guts to
look down the barrel of a gun and die, even if it's "just a stupid game"!
Smirking, Sinon straightened. If she was going to die, she'd prefer combat to
dehydration.
Another ferocious roar blanketed the wasteland. Sinon drew the Bellatrix and
undid the safety.
She stared at the rock a hundred yards ahead. If there would be a fight, she at
least needed to see the monster first. All she could tell was that something
large was moving at the base of the rock formation.
A thought striking her, she crouched again and opened her menu. Sinon
tapped the MP7 in her inventory, then selected the flashlight option from a
submenu and materialized that instead. She stuck the miniature light that
appeared to the lower mount rail of the Bellatrix. The weight was…just low
enough. She couldn't pick up a single pebble after this, but the nice thing about
VRMMOs was that as long as you were under that magic number, you were as
nimble as if you were holding nothing at all.
The flashlight was a high-quality part, but not to the extent of a hundred
yards. Sinon crept forward with utmost care. She closed to half the distance,
watching for monsters and avoiding cacti and rocks.
The stone formation felt small from far away, but now that she was closer, it
was nearly the height of a ten-story building. The surface was almost vertical,
but viny plants hung down here and there, and she could hear trickling water.
Apparently, the water was running down the surface of the rock and creating a
little spring at the base.
The instant she was certain there was water, Sinon's thirst assaulted her
senses. She felt like she was being choked, and she coughed violently. Her TP
bar was at 8 percent…That meant she had eight minutes to drink or she would
die.
Glancing away from the rock formation, she soon found the owner of the
roaring. There was a huge, squat shadow moving counterclockwise around the
base of the rock, as though protecting its territory—in fact, it was definitely
doing that. She couldn't drink anything unless she dealt with the creature.
Before she gave up and made a desperate suicide attack, she thought of
drawing its attention with a shot, then kiting it much farther away. Even if it
didn't lose sight of her altogether, all she needed was a minute away from the
rock to dunk herself in the water.
She moved even farther, nearing thirty yards. As a sniper, this was unbearably
close to the target, but for people who fought with swords, like Kirito and
Asuna, this was where they would start sprinting to close the gap.
What were they doing now? Studying back in the real world? Having fun
leveling-up in ALO? She wanted to replenish her TP, find a new shelter, and log
out so she could get in touch with them. If she told him everything that had
happened to her, Kirito would probably be more jealous than startled. She
couldn't wait to see that look on his face.
"…I'm going to survive this," she muttered, resting her torso against a sloped
rock nearby and taking two-handed aim with the Bellatrix. Not only were there
no bullet circles anymore, but this gun didn't come with a scope; she had to aim
with the primitive sights and beads. Fortunately, optical-gun trajectory was
unaffected by wind and gravity, unlike live-ammo guns, so any laser she fired
would go exactly where the sights said—technically, a fraction of an inch lower.
The huge monster came around the far side of the rocky mountain, walking in
a slow curve and turning its head in Sinon's direction. She could probably get its
attention with a shot anywhere, but she wanted to hit a vital point to conserve
the gun's energy.
Sinon would shift her left hand to hit the switch on the flashlight attachment,
use three seconds of light to take aim, then fire. She exhaled, inhaled, and
started to move her hand.
But she never actually turned on the light.
Dat-dat-dat-dat-daaaan! There was a quick series of bursts, and Sinon
jumped on the spot. It was the sound of a live-ammo gun, and a very high
caliber one at that.
Her first thought was that the players who'd been attacked by the centipedes
had come back to recover their gear. But Sinon had spent over an hour traveling
away from the ruins. Unless they had her bugged somehow, they couldn't
possibly track her here.
The roaring of the large monster confirmed that. It was very clearly an angry
roar, in contrast to the earlier howling meant to warn others of its territory. She
could see bloodred damage effects spilling from its body.
There was another peal of thundering gunshots, but this time, she saw it
happen: To the southeast of the rock, on Sinon's right side, a number of orange
lights flickered briefly atop a small hill. A moment later, effects of the bullets
hitting the creature's left flank lit up, and its bulk lurched to the side.
The effects vanished right away, but Sinon's eyes had enough light to make
out the form of the monster. If one word could describe this thing, that word
was dinosaur.
Sinon's apartment in the real world was in the Yoncho-me block of Yushima in
Bunkyo Ward, adjacent to Ueno Park. When she had time to kill, she sometimes
went to the art galleries and museums there. Her favorite was the National
Museum of Nature and Science, which had hosted a dinosaur exhibit this
summer. She wasn't crazy about dinosaurs in particular but had given it a look
out of curiosity. The highlight was a full-body fossil of something called a
deinocheirus, meaning "terrible hand." The enormous arms and claws certainly
convinced her of why it was called that.
The monster protecting this rocky mountain was very similar to the
deinocheirus. Its back rose upward like a hill, with a long neck atop it, a pointed
head, and powerful arms and legs. Unlike the illustrations at the exhibit that
imagined what the deinocheirus looked like, however, this one wasn't covered
in feathers; instead, it had rough, armor-like skin. It seemed to be about sixteen
feet tall and twice as long.
The dinosaur faltered with the impact of the large-caliber bullets but quickly
recovered. It turned toward the hill where its attackers waited, pawed at the
ground with its specialized front legs, then charged. With each footfall from its
five-ton body, Sinon could feel the vibration in the earth around her feet.
The front slope of the hill formed a rather steep little cliff, and even a
dinosaur would have trouble running right up. The players ought to be shooting
it a third and fourth time, but now the hilltop was silent, for some reason. Who
was attacking the beast anyway? If it wasn't Suttocos and his friends coming
after Sinon for their gear, was it another group of GGO players who had
ventured out farther? But why did all the guns sound like the exact same type?
To Sinon's amazement, the dinosaur maintained its powerful momentum and
slammed its heavy head against the cliffside. That attack rumbled even harder.
Cracks spread outward from the impact point.
The dinosaur then backed away, its head lowered, and tensed to charge
again. At last, a third round of gunfire sent a series of red eruptions running
across the dinosaur's raised spine. This time, however, it did not falter;
apparently, the protuberances on its back gave it higher defense there.
"Goaaaah!" the dinosaur bellowed, and it bounded forward on its tree-trunk
legs. It slammed into the same spot on the cliff with another headbutt. The
cracks reached the top of the hillside, and clumps of dried earth fell downward.
Sinon thought she heard faint screams, and she squinted for a better look.
Along with the earth, a figure also tumbled down the side of the hill, which
was about thirty feet tall. One of the people atop the lip of the cliff lost their
balance as it gave way beneath them.
"...Good grief."
She was so exasperated by this display of amateurism that she forgot about
the pain in her throat and leaped out of her hiding spot. She didn't know who
the attackers were, but working with them was her best chance at eliminating
the dinosaur and getting some water to drink. She thought about sneaking over
to the spring while the battle raged on, but she hated the thought of being
targeted by the dinosaur and attracting the anger of the attackers as well.
Sinon gripped the Bellatrix with both hands as she rushed toward the cliff
from the south. The fallen player was trapped under rocks and couldn't get up.
A fourth set of shots rang out from the hilltop, but the number of bullets was
fewer. The dinosaur was unconcerned, and it lifted its front leg, threatening the
fallen player with its deadly claws.
"Over here!" Sinon shouted, turning on her flashlight. The bright light pierced
the darkness and struck the dinosaur's head. It briefly stopped with confusion,
and she used that chance to shoot the Bellatrix in its yellow eye.
There was a comparatively weak pshu! sound, and a pale-green beam of light
shot forth, penetrating the dinosaur's right eye.
"Gyaooooo!!" it shrieked. The beast smashed into the cliffside, having lost its
balance thrashing about. More of the cliffside crumbled, and large amounts of
dirt and rock tumbled downward. Above its head, which was similar to both a
crocodile's and a bird's, a red ring cursor appeared, but she didn't have time to
stand there and read.
She lowered her gun and turned off the light, then rushed to the fallen player,
pushing hard against the large boulder trapping the player's leg beneath it.
"Get up!" she shouted, offering her hand—and then her eyes widened.
The collapsed figure wasn't a human. In a broader sense, you could call him
humanoid, but at the very least, she had never seen an avatar like this in GGO.
The figure had a squat body covered in brown feathers, with the head of a
bird of prey.
In other words, a birdman.
He reminded Sinon of the harpy-type monsters from ALO, but he was more
birdlike in this case. His body was covered in armor made of cloth and leather,
and he held a simple rifle in his hand. This couldn't be a player or a monster, but
an NPC.
Sinon reversed course and thrust her hand out again. Even if his appearance
was 70 percent bird, she would surely find common understanding with a
fellow shooter (even if she had no evidence to back up the assertion).
It wasn't clear if the birdman understood her, but his hawklike eyes blinked
once, and then he grasped Sinon's outstretched hand. She pulled him to his feet
and saw that she was about two inches taller.
"Can you run?!" she asked.
But the birdman answered her in a language she couldn't begin to
comprehend.
" ."
She had no idea what he said, but there was no time to figure that out now.
The dinosaur was shaking vigorously, trying to throw off all the cliffside earth
that had landed on top of it.
"This way!" Sinon shouted and began to run for the rear side of the hill. The
birdman followed her on naked feet that looked like an ostrich's. There was red
light streaming from his left leg, but the damage didn't seem too serious.
The hill was circular in shape, about a hundred feet in diameter and fifty feet
tall. There had to be a path on the other side that the birdmen had used to
reach the top of the cliff. Or maybe they flew…But no, that couldn't be right.
Their wings had atrophied—or perhaps evolved—into arms. The feathers from
shoulder to elbow were more ornamental than anything and certainly not
designed for actual flight.
As they ran, her new companion abruptly shouted, " !"
She spun around and saw him pointing at the cliff with a clawed hand. She
couldn't see it very well in the dark, but she could tell there was something like
a ladder there. Sinon turned as hard to the left as she could with her
momentum and leaped onto the ladder. This wasn't just some rope ladder
thrown down temporarily but a fixed feature that had been pounded into the
rock surface with stakes. That must have meant the birdmen didn't
coincidentally decide to attack that dinosaur tonight but had tried picking it off
many times from the top of the hill.
Sinon hurried up the ladder as fast as she could go. The Bellatrix was back in
its holster, so if the birdman tried to attack her from below, her ability to return
fire would be delayed, but she didn't think he would betray her now.
Sure enough, she was able to climb the entire fifty feet of ladder without
interruption. At the top of the hill was only a small selection of shrubs, with the
rest being rock and sand. She'd hoped for a little bit of water but saw nothing.
Her TP bar was down to 4 percent.
Thinking about it brought the sensation of thirst back with a terrible
vengeance, sending Sinon to her knees. A few seconds later, the birdman
reached the top of the hill, so she asked him, "Do you have any water…?"
But the birdman just blinked at her, confused. She glanced at his body and
saw only two tool bags on his belt and no canteen. If he was an NPC, he
wouldn't have a virtual inventory, so whatever she could see was everything he
held.
So in the next four minutes—make that three and change now—she had to
defeat the dinosaur and get back to the spring at the base of that mountain, or
else she would die.
And I refuse to die.
Sinon summoned all her willpower to get back to her feet, then tottered into
a run toward the west side of the rocky mountain. Within moments, she saw a
number of silhouettes (birdhouettes?) along the cliffside. They were aiming
their rifles at the base of the cliff and had their backs to her. It seemed they
were going to open fire on the dinosaur for a fifth time.
But from what Sinon could see of the dinosaur's HP bar, it was still at nearly
80 percent. Their rounds of gunfire hadn't even taken off 10 percent each time.
If they stayed up here at the top of the hill, the dinosaur couldn't attack
directly, but the only target they could hit was the thick hide of its back. It
wasn't doing a lot of damage. And based on the size of the sacks on their belts,
they weren't flush with ammo, either.
"Wait!" she shouted, causing the line of birdmen to flinch. The feathers
around their necks stood on end. They whipped around, pointing their guns at
Sinon.
" ?!"
" !!"
She raised her hands on sheer instinct and tried to argue her cause. "I'm not
your enemy! I want to help you beat that dinosaur!"
" !!" shouted a larger individual who stood a head taller than the rest. His
rifle was steady on her. Nothing she could say was going to get through to
them.
Her TP bar was at 3 percent.
I guess this is as far as I get, she lamented.
Then an impact almost as powerful as an explosion slammed the entire hill.
The dinosaur had struck the cliff with another headbutt. The lip of the cliff
crumbled spectacularly, and the birdmen leaped back from it, crying with
dismay. The dinosaur's roar set the night air on edge.
That sound was enough to bring back Sinon's will to fight, just as it was
running out.
She could wallow in despair once she died. As long as there was a single pixel
left on her TP bar, she would fight to survive. She just had to make her
intentions known to the birdmen and get their help to beat the dinosaur. There
had to be a way to do that.
What would Kirito do in a situation like this? He probably wouldn't rely on
words. He always used action—whipping everyone into battle through the
sheer brilliance of his sword and the willpower contained within it. Sinon had
no sword, but she did have a partner. And she was the only thing Sinon could
rely on here.
She opened her ring menu and quickly moved to the STORAGE icon. In the list
there, she selected the name of the gun she'd stored hours ago and brought it
back into the world.
The moment the gigantic antimateriel rifle appeared atop her window, the
birdmen screeched in alarm. Their guns were more like the old-fashioned
muskets that matched the bullets she'd found in the cave—in no way
comparable to her Hecate II, a high-precision weapon created with modern
production technology. Of course, it was strange that the birdmen could use
guns at all, but this was her chance to get them on her side, while they were
impressed.
"You and you! Support the barrel from each side!" Sinon commanded,
pointing to the largest one, who seemed to be their leader, and the one
standing next to him. They tilted their heads in puzzlement. The gesture was so
distinctly birdlike that she nearly laughed, but she held it in.
"Hurry!" she tried again. "We have to shoot while the dinosaur is stunned by
the headbutt!"
But the birdmen did not react. It seemed they weren't going to respond to
words in any way. There were android NPCs in GGO that spoke a mysterious
language, too, but once you got a language conversion chip during a quest, they
would sound Japanese again. There was probably a similar thing she needed to
do to be able to speak to the birdmen, but there was no time for quests right
now.
"Please, you just have to hold it up!" she begged a third time. That was when
a smaller figure leaped in from behind—the first birdman, who she had saved
from the rubble. He gave his right shoulder to the middle of the barrel.
Instantly, the support her player window was giving the gun vanished, and the
massive weight of the gun pressed onto the birdman's shoulder.
He squawked with exertion, and Sinon hurriedly reached out to the gun,
grabbing the wooden grip with one hand and supporting the body with the
other. But even with two of them, the best they could do was keep it off the
ground. They couldn't carry it to the edge of the cliff like this.
Her TP bar was at 2 percent.
"Urgh…Grrrgh…!"
Grunting and heaving, Sinon tried to push the rifle forward, despite its being
well over her Carry Weight limit. To the right of her HP bar, there was an icon
like a red paperweight that was flashing rapidly. A small window appeared
before her eyes, saying Physique skill gained. Proficiency has risen to 1, but she
didn't care.
The birdman holding up the barrel was doing his best to keep it raised, but his
body was slowly sinking with the weight. With each struggling moment, more
fine feathers came loose from his shoulder, until this began to create damage
effects on his skin.
Sinon's efforts were reaching their limit, and she was just about to fall to her
knees—
—when a large hand grabbed the barrel close to its end.
The blinking of the paperweight icon slowed down. She looked up and, for a
brief moment, met the eyes of the leader of the flock.
" !" he shouted, then lifted the barrel and rested it on his left shoulder. That
didn't lessen the load until it was under her Carry Weight limit, but she felt like
they might be able to transport it now.
The three of them proceeded forward unsteadily and moved the massive rifle
to the edge of the cliff. She wanted to deploy the Hecate's bipod to rest it on
the ground, but that wouldn't give her the right angle to aim at the dinosaur all
the way at the bottom of the cliff.
"Crouch down and keep holding it up!" she instructed, knowing the birdmen
weren't going to understand her. But they quickly knelt, and Sinon stuck her
cheek to the side of the Hecate and tilted the muzzle downward with all her
strength.
But the dinosaur was already recovering from the wobbliness of its most
recent collision. Its burly head was pointed in their direction, and it was backing
up, preparing for its next blow. That wasn't good; if it hit the cliff now, the
Hecate could tumble out of her grasp and off the side of the hill.
The dinosaur's HP bar, shaped like a combination of ring and pillar, also
displayed the target's name in Japanese. It read Sterocephalus, which certainly
sounded like a dinosaur, although she didn't know what it meant.
Regardless, the head of the sterocephalus was protected by thick, shell-like
armor, and perhaps even the Hecate couldn't break through it. And that was
assuming she could actually hit that target at all, at a time when she couldn't
even lift the weapon. It was going to be nearly impossible.
So she'd have to aim for its huge torso instead, preferably the heart. But the
sterocephalus wasn't even exposing its sides to her, much less its belly. Could
she shoot its heart all the way through its back?
Her TP bar was down to 1 percent remaining. Sinon had sixty seconds left to
live.
"…Firing now!" she exclaimed through a throat drier than the wasteland
sands.
But before she could pull the trigger, the leader birdman supporting the
muzzle lifted a hand and shouted, " !!"
The other birdmen lined up on either side of Sinon and aimed their muskets.
The old-fashioned guns, which didn't have the benefit of rifling inside their
barrels, could barely break the surface of the dinosaur's hide. They couldn't hit
it in the heart. But with another short cry from the leader, they shot in unison.
Within each musket, the flint on the end of the hammer scraped the frizzen,
creating sparks that lit the priming charge in the pan. A moment later, the
gunpowder within the barrels exploded and propelled the bullets out of the
muskets with a tremendous bang!
The spray of bullets almost entirely missed the dinosaur. Instead, they gouged
out the ground around its feet, creating a huge wave of spark effects.
"Gwoeaaah!" roared the sterocephalus, standing on its rear legs and lifting its
front arms high in the air. The action exposed its whitened belly, which was not
covered in heavy natural armor.
This is it.
Sinon aimed through the scope at a spot she suspected was the
sterocephalus's heart, then hastily pulled the trigger. The blast it produced
made the muskets sound like toys. Orange flames shot from the muzzle brake.
Even with three people holding it, the recoil was too great, throwing Sinon and
the two birdmen backward, along with the gun itself.
But Sinon was certain of what she saw. The .50 BMG round struck the center
of the sterocephalus's chest, creating an eruption of damage effects.
As they landed on their backs, the massive dinosaur's HP bar began to
plummet. Down and down it went, from yellow to red—to zero.
She could hear the rumbling of the giant beast falling to the ground, even
from atop the cliff. A new message appeared before her eyes: Sinon's level has
risen to 16. She was momentarily stunned at the huge jump in levels—but then
it occurred to her that maybe it would refill all of her gauges. Sadly, the tiny
sliver of TP was not moving. She had forty—no, thirty—seconds until it was
gone.
With a trembling finger, she tapped the Hecate next to her and put it back in
her inventory.
In concert with that motion, the birdmen all raised their muskets high in the
air and issued high-pitched shouts. The leader and the one Sinon saved got to
their feet and joined in the exultation.
But there was no time to watch. No time to descend the ladder behind her,
either.
Sinon got to her feet and sprinted for the cliffside. She had to banish her fear
and leap off the fifty-foot hill. With her upgrade to level-16, she could probably
survive an outright fall of that height, but she wasn't trying to gamble that hard.
Instead, she was aiming for the toppled body of the sterocephalus.
Her feet landed on the relatively soft flank of the dinosaur, and she bent her
knees to tumble forward on a diagonal, hoping to deflect as much of the impact
as possible. Ever since Kirito had taught her that fall damage in Seed VRMMOs
changed depending on if you fell or if you braced yourself for impact, she'd
practiced it in ALO. Thanks to that, she lost only 10 percent of her HP bar, but
there was only a single pixel of TP left.
She slid down the dinosaur's flank and hit the ground. Her vision clouded
slightly, although she couldn't tell if that was just adrenaline or a simulated
effect of such. There were about two hundred yards from here to the
glimmering spring at the base of the rocky mountain. She could sprint there in
about ten seconds.
Gritting her teeth, Sinon launched into motion. One, two, three steps, and she
was at a full sprint…and that was when the TP bar silently depleted.
The worst feeling of dehydration yet burned her throat. The looming rock
blurred so that she was seeing double, and she closed her eyes.
I guess that's it.
She waited for death to arrive, leaving her last words for the Hecate II in her
inventory:
If I lose you somehow, I'm going to do everything it takes to get you back.
The strength was draining from her body. She collapsed forward onto the
ground. Gravelly sand brushed her cheek. Her avatar was disintegrating
into...…
Nothing.
It wasn't disintegrating at all.
Instead, she noticed that the HP bar in the upper left corner was now
decreasing. So when TP reached zero, it wasn't instant death, just the start of
the damage to her HP. Her eyes shot open as she lay prone on the sand.
"You could have warned me of that first!" she grumbled.
No one answered, of course. She steadily lifted herself up. Death hadn't come
for her yet, but there was no time to waste. The HP bar was decreasing fast
enough that she could see it plummeting. Her new grace period was maybe a
minute long at best.
Sinon's vision was still doubled, which told her that it was a visual-effect
warning that she was at death's door. Struggling to her feet, she resumed
running for the rock ahead. She bumped into smaller ones along the way, and
by the time she crossed the two hundred yards thirty seconds later, her HP bar
was under the halfway point.
There were beautiful, delicate flowers at the base of the rock, and a pristine
surface of water swayed beyond them. She swore to herself that if this turned
out to be a poisonous swamp, she would track down the people who created
this mysterious world and pump them full of lead. She crossed the patch of
flowers and knelt at the edge of the water.
Sinon had no cup, so she thrust her hands into the flickering sky of stars
below. The water was shockingly cold. She lifted her hands to her lips and drank
deeply, without bothering to taste first.
"Ah…"
She gasped. Then she scooped and drank again. And again. And again.
The dropping of her HP bar stopped, and the TP bar began to recover, but the
rejuvenation she was feeling completely overrode any attention for small
details like those. Scooping the water with her hands felt too slow, so she
lowered her mouth directly to the water to slake her thirst like animals did.
She never wanted to leave this rock. She wanted to build a house and live
here. Sinon drank and drank from the life-giving pool, not even noticing that her
TP bar was already back to full again.