10

A long, slow breath in. Once the virtual lungs were full of cold air, they expelled it at the same slow pace.

With each relaxed breath and the rhythm of the heartbeat, the green bullet circle expanded and contracted in time.

Within the rifle scope, a single player moved through the brush in a low crouch. In his hands was a compact Jati SMG. While no sidearm could be seen, his entire body seemed to be oddly rough and bulging. He probably kept the weapon weight to a minimum and decided on a high-powered, anti-optical defense field, plus effective live-ammo composite armor to fill out his weight limit. The thick helmet with custom face guard made him look just like a giant boar. His name was Shishigane, a Vitality-first defensive player; he had appeared in the last tournament, but she’d never faced him.

At nearly twelve-hundred-meter range, even her super-powered Ultima Ratio Hecate II would have difficulty breaking through that armor to deliver a fatal shot. Landing two hits would do the trick, but he was no rookie. As soon as she shot him, he would find cover to hide behind, and she wouldn’t see him again anytime soon after that. And if she waited around for him to emerge, other players would wander over to investigate the sound of her first shot, and she’d be pumped full of machine gun bullets.

Sinon was on her stomach between a large boulder and some shrubbery, finger on the trigger. She delivered a silent challenge: Come on out.

If her target came within eight hundred meters, she knew for a fact that she could hit him on the face, where his armor was weak and the damage modifier was much higher. She’d knock him clean out of the stage.

But her telepathic message didn’t reach him. He moved in a different direction and steadily distanced himself from her. Even his back was fully armored—there was no weakness to exploit. She’d have to give up on him and wait for the next target to approach. Just before she took her eye off the scope, Sinon noticed something round hanging from the man’s right hip.

A large plasma grenade. Two of them, in fact. Possibly a good-luck charm in lieu of a sidearm. It would be a handy weapon in a short-range battle with plenty of cover, but in this game, every cheap but effective item had its risks. Sinon felt the tension return, and she squinted into the scope.

She moved the pointer slightly down and to the right from the man’s back. The reticle caught the waving, metallic orbs.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in—hold it.

All of her distractions disappeared. The moment the metal in her arms became a part of her, the bullet circle shrank abruptly to a pinpoint of light. Her finger pulled the trigger without her thinking about it.

A shock stung her body. For an instant, the muzzle flash turned her vision white. Her eyesight recovered at once, and through the scope, she saw one of the grenades on the man’s waist explode. Sinon pulled her head away from the gun.

“Bingo.”

A brilliant blue fireball erupted from the center of a distant hill, flattening the brush around it. After a few seconds, a blast like thunder reached her ears. She didn’t need to check to know that the man’s HP was entirely gone.

Sinon was already on her feet, bipod folded up and Hecate over her back. The few minutes after a shot were the most dangerous to a sniper, given the revealing nature of the gun’s tremendous sound and exhaust flare. She checked left and right and took off running down the route she’d chosen ahead of time.

There was thick brush around her that made visibility difficult. She told herself that any nearby foes would be more distracted by the boar-man’s explosion than her gunshot, and the possibility of a sneak attack was very low, but she didn’t slow down either way. After more than a minute of sprinting, she finally reached the roots of a massive, dead tree and stopped for a breather. When she looked up, she saw a blood-red sun passing through a gap in the heavy clouds.

Nearly thirty minutes had gone by since the start of the Bullet of Bullets final match.

The boar-man was the second of Sinon’s sniping victims so far. But the total number of survivors at this point was unknown until the satellite data updated every fifteen minutes. She pulled the thin Satellite Scan terminal out of her waist pouch, brought up the map indicator, and waited for the locational update.

When the chronograph on her left wrist showed the real-life time as 8:30, a number of blips appeared on the finely detailed map. There were twenty-one in all, which meant nine had been eliminated already. She stared closely at the map, hammering the details into her brain.

The special stage for the final was a circular island about ten kilometers across. The north side was desert, while the south was forests and mountains. Sitting in the center was the ruin of a large city. Sinon was presently at the foot of a rocky mountain looming over the very southern end of the map. A large river ran to the north of her, cutting between the mountainous region and the forests.

There were three dots within a kilometer of her. She touched each one to check their names. The closest was Dyne, about 600 meters northeast, moving westward. Following slightly from the east of him was Pale Rider. And blinking quietly nearly the peak of the mountain 800 meters to the south was Lion King Richie.

Richie was a high-firepower type with a Vickers heavy machine gun. He’d found the highest point on the map, and was going to stake out that point and clean out anyone who came after him. He had tried the same strategy last time and ended up dying because he ran out of ammo—a very lame ending. He probably had some trick up his sleeve this time, though. At any rate, she could ignore an enemy who refused to move.

The problem was Dyne, who seemed to be fleeing at top speed, according to the movement rate of the dot, and the pursuing Pale Rider. Dyne was the leader of the squadron that Sinon had recently been active with, and a veteran soldier who’d placed in the final of all three BoBs so far. With his excellent SIG SG 550 assault rifle, he was a master of midrange combat. She didn’t respect him much as a person, but he couldn’t be discounted in battle.

Meanwhile, this Pale Rider who had Dyne running like a timid mouse was someone Sinon had never fought, much less seen in person. Was he really that good, or did he have an advantage based on terrain or equipment? At that moment, the aerial satellite passed out of range, and the dots on the map began to blink. In another ten seconds, the information would be gone.

Sinon instinctually lifted her right hand and started to tap on the other eighteen, more distant blips, one after the other. But just before her finger brushed the screen, she clenched the hand into a fist—she realized that she’d been about to search for one name in particular.

“…Forget him,” she muttered. She had no obligation to be worried about the present fate of Kirito the Despicable Lightswordsman. All that mattered was the prey within her Hecate’s range. If Kirito appeared in her sights, she would aim, fire, and destroy him without emotion. That was all.

The blinking lights turned off. Sinon returned the terminal to her pouch and stood up, taking note of the surroundings. On the other side of the gentle hill facing her was a thick forest. Dyne and Pale Rider were making their way through from her righthand side to the left. In the direction they headed was the great river that split the map, and a bridge spanning it. Cautious Dyne probably preferred the open, clear views from the bridge as a setting to fight Pale Rider to the risky and unpredictable forest.

Sinon was closer to the bridge than they were. If she ran now, she could set up in sniping position before they got there. She would observe their battle and take out the winner in the moment that he let his guard down.

She shouldered the Hecate, crouched down, and dashed again through the brush.

When Sinon made it through the reddened hillside and leaped under the last bush at the edge of the zone, she was met with a red ribbon of reflected light.

It was the river. It flowed from the southern mountains, winding its way through the center of the map to the north, and vanished in the distant ruined city. On the far bank was a forest of massive, ancient trees. A narrow, stone-lined path could be seen twisting away beneath the thick branches. The path hit the river just 200 meters to the north of where Sinon hunched, forming one end of a crude metal bridge. The two players should be racing at full speed down that path toward the bridge.

Just at that moment, a figure burst out of the shadow of an especially large tree at the forest’s edge, very close to the bridge. She hurried to place the Hecate on the ground, impatiently flipped up the scope’s cover, and peered through it.

Woodland camo, top and bottom. Square chin beneath the helmet. SIG in his hands. It was Dyne. He raced down the stone path with smooth, veteran form. Within a few seconds of leaving the forest, he was on the rusted bridge. Just as he was finished crossing the fifty-meter bridge to the riverbank where Sinon hid, he threw himself to the ground and took up a firing position.

“I see what you’re doing,” Sinon noted, impressed. He was well situated to blaze down any target who tried crossing the bridge. On the other hand, his sides were defenseless. His back was wide open to anyone on this side of the bridge.

“Check your six at all times, Dyne,” Sinon muttered into the scope, catching the side of his face in her reticle. She could just shoot him now without waiting for the end of his fight with Pale Rider. Although her shot would alert the other player to her presence, he’d have to cross the bridge to attack her. It was only 200 meters to the bridge, so even were he to run at full speed, she knew she could hit him.

I’d feel bad for the audience watching on the screen, she added silently, tracing the Hecate’s trigger.

Suddenly, Sinon felt a cold shiver run down the back of her neck. Someone was right behind her.

You idiot! You were so wrapped up in your own chance to snipe that you neglected to check your own back! she mentally screamed at herself, taking her hand off the Hecate. She sprang 180 degrees and pulled her MP7 sidearm over. Even in the process of that smooth movement, her brain was working. But nobody can be here. When I checked the Satellite Scanner a few minutes ago, the only person behind me was Lion King Richie. He wouldn’t leave the peak of the mountain, and I couldn’t have missed his approach with that heavy machine gun.

On the other hand, no one aside from Richie could have snuck up on me in such a short time. So how—and who?

She raised the MP7 to point behind her, stunned with shock, at the same moment that the black gun barrel appeared. It wasn’t her imagination—someone had pulled up right behind her.

At this point, escape was impossible. She just had to keep spraying bullets until someone’s HP was gone or their magazine was empty. Sinon depressed the trigger—

—but just before the firing pin could strike the first bullet, the attacker held up a hand to stop her and murmured, “Wait.”

“…?!”

Her eyes went wide, and traveled from the point of the gun to the enemy’s face.

Shiny black hair down the back. White skin, even in the setting sun. Stunning, shiny, slender black eyes.

Her archenemy Kirito was leaning over her, Five-Seven gripped in his left hand. A number of conflicting emotions rose within Sinon and burst apart. She forgot about the muzzle pointed at her face and bared her teeth in a snarl, ready to open fire with her MP7.

But again, Kirito whispered, staying Sinon’s trigger finger at the last moment.

“Wait. I have a plan.”

“You can’t be serious,” she whisper-snarled back, seething with fury. “There are no plans or compromises at this stage! Someone dies, and that’s that!”

“If I wanted to shoot you, I could have done it anytime!”

The surprisingly desperate note in Kirito’s words caught her off-guard. What could be more important than the present situation, where their guns were drawn at one another?

Though it frustrated her to admit it, Kirito’s statement was truth: If he was good enough to sneak into point-blank range against her, he could have shot her in the back or sliced her up with the lightsword.

“…”

She waited in silence for him to speak again.

“I don’t want to go blasting now, and have them hear us.” For just a moment, Kirito’s glance leaped up over Sinon’s shoulder to the scene by the metal bridge, which would soon turn into a firefight.

“…? What do you mean?”

“I want to watch what happens in the battle on the bridge. Don’t interrupt them until it’s over.”

“…What are you going to do after watching? Please don’t be an idiot and say we resume our gunfight.”

“Depending on the situation…I’ll be leaving this spot. I won’t attack you.”

“Even if I snipe you in the back?”

“If you do, that’s your choice. Do me this favor; they’re about to start!”

Kirito looked back at the bridge again, clearly distracted. To her surprise, he lowered the Five-Seven and put it in his waist holster, even as she had her submachine gun pointed at his forehead.

More exasperated than angry, Sinon slumped back. If she put just the tiniest bit more pressure on the trigger, the MP7’s 4.6 mm, twenty-round chamber would eliminate all of Kirito’s HP. But even Sinon had to admit she didn’t want the battle against her archenemy to end with such an absurd, one-sided result.

She’d been thinking of strategies so hard, steam shot out of her ears—Kirito might be able to evade the Hecate’s shot, even without a visible bullet line. She’d rather deal with all of the other finalists until it was just the two of them, and she could focus on expending every last ounce of energy on beating him.

“If we regroup, will you fight me properly next time?”

“Yeah,” he said. Sinon stared into his eyes for about half a second before lowering her SMG. She didn’t take her finger off the trigger, just in case he did start swinging at her, but he only straightened up and laid down in the shadow of the bush next to Sinon. He pulled a small pair of binoculars out of his belt pouch and looked through them.

She was both furious and annoyed that she seemed to be a secondary, if not tertiary, concern to him now. Why would he bother observing someone else’s battle? And where did he appear from in the first place? When she checked the Satellite Scanner just minutes ago, Kirito’s name didn’t appear within a kilometer of her.

But Sinon chose to sit on these concerns for now and returned the MP7 to her waist. She put her arms around the Hecate and looked through the scope.

Dyne was still down in firing position on this side of the long bridge. The way he held the SG 550 straight, without a single twitch, belied an impressive level of concentration. Despite having chased him here, Pale Rider wouldn’t be able to just pop out of the forest on the other bank.

“Maybe the battle you were hoping to see isn’t going to happen at all,” Sinon remarked drily to Kirito. “Dyne’s not going to just lie around there all day. If he gets up to move positions, I’ll shoot him first.”

“I don’t mind if you do…Wait a second.” Kirito’s voice went sharp. Sinon pulled her eye out of the scope and scanned the bridge herself.

On the far bank, a player had just loomed out of the thick forest along the path. He was tall and thin, with an eerie pale-patterned camo suit. His face was invisible, thanks to a helmet with a black shield on the front. The only visible weapon was an ArmaLite AR-17 shotgun at his right side. This was probably—no, it had to be—Pale Rider, the man who chased Dyne here.

Dyne’s shoulders stiffened on the other side of the bridge. Even at a distance, Sinon could sense the tension in the scene. On the other hand, there was no hint of unease in the way Pale Rider stood there. Slinking, he approached the bridge, showing no fear of Dyne’s SIG.

“He’s good…” Sinon muttered to herself. Kirito’s body shifted. She looked over for a second to see his girlish face painted with an alarming strain. It was Pale Rider he was concerned about. Sinon had never seen the name or avatar before, but his skill level was clear from the way he moved.

In the world of GGO, there was a future-predicting assistance system called the “bullet line,” which would be impossible in real life. But even with that, it was not easy to approach an enemy with a full-auto machine gun. The typical method was to run at a sprint from cover to cover, zigzagging to close the distance.

But Pale Rider left himself completely defenseless, sliding forward toward the bridge. There was no terrain to hide him from gunfire. Even Dyne was visibly confused by this action, and this was exactly what he wanted to happen.

But as the longtime leader of a PvP squadron, he clicked back into gear quickly. A second later, the sound of his precise Swiss SG 550 assault rifle rattled across the river.

He shot at least ten 5.5 mm rounds, but Pale Rider evaded the shots with a very unexpected method—he leaped up onto one of the countless wire ropes supporting the bridge and began to climb it using nothing but his left hand. Dyne hastily followed his course, but it was difficult to aim upward when on all fours. His second burst of fire went wild, and Pale Rider used the momentum of the wire to launch into a long jump. He landed quite close to Dyne’s end of the bridge.

“For a Strength-first build, he kept his weight total low to boost his three-dimensional movement ability…and his Acrobat skill is really high,” Sinon whispered at the same moment that Dyne got to his knees, determined not to fall for the same thing again, and pulled the trigger three times. But Pale Rider read that one ahead of time. The pale silhouette dove headfirst, just underneath the upward-facing line of fire. And not a clumsy dive, but a skillful, compact somersault using his left hand to push off the ground. When he stood up again, he was barely sixty feet from Dyne.

“Son of a bitch!” Dyne growled in a familiar way, and moved to switch out his empty thirty-round magazine. But before he could, Pale Rider’s ArmaLite spat fire with a stomach-churning thud.

There was no way for a shotgun to miss entirely at that distance. Several bullet-hit effects sprang up on Dyne’s body, and he flew backward with the force of it. But he was too skillful to give up on changing his cartridge, and was just pulling the gun up to his sights when another blast rang out.

The second shot from Pale Rider, delivered closer than the first, knocked Dyne off balance even further. That was the danger of a shotgun: The damage was bad enough, but the movement delay was so powerful that its victims were helpless to prevent further shots from landing true.

He should have sprayed fire from the hip, rather than trying to hold the SIG steady at eye level, Sinon thought, but it was too late for Dyne to make use of that advice, even if he could somehow hear it. Rider handily reloaded the AR-17 as he approached and pulled the trigger a third time, right in front of Dyne’s face. The twelve-gauge shotgun blasted a hail of shot that eliminated his remaining HP.

Dyne fell backward, limbs splayed, and stopped entirely. A large red indicator reading DEAD appeared over his body, rotating slowly. Dyne was now out of the battle royale. In order to prevent any players from sharing information, he was prohibited from logging out during the tournament, and was forced to remain in the dead body, watching the rest of the battle play out as it aired on the stream.

“That blue guy sure is tough,” Kirito whispered. Sinon nearly nodded, but frowned when she heard what he said next. “Is he the one…inside the cloak…?”

Sinon was momentarily confused until she recalled that Pale Rider was one of the three names Kirito had demanded from her. In other words, he might be the one whom Kirito had fought to kill in that other VRMMO. And the name of that game might be—no, it had to be—the stuff of legend…

She forced herself to stop thinking about it right then. Kirito had his reasons for this, but the weight of his past was his alone. She couldn’t shoulder the burden for him, and even if she could, she shouldn’t.

Sinon turned off the Hecate’s safety to distract herself from that hesitation and whispered, “I’m going to shoot him.”

Without waiting for a response, she put her finger to the trigger. Pale Rider had already left the scene of his victory and headed north along the river. She caught his slender back in her crosshairs and fine-tuned based on wind and distance.

At last, Kirito croaked back, “Yeah…I get it. But if he’s really the guy…”

If he is? He’s going to dodge a sniper’s first shot, sans bullet line, from just 300 meters, while facing away?

You must be joking, she mouthed, and started to pull the trigger without hesitation, when—

To her utter shock, Sinon caught a sight through her scope she hadn’t expected.

Pale Rider’s right shoulder, clad in pale blue camo, burst with bullet fire, and his slender form lurched and fell to the left.

“Aah—!” exclaimed both Sinon and Kirito, who was watching through his binoculars.

He was sniped—and not by Sinon. From the deep forest on the far bank of the river.

Despite her shock, she instinctually put all of her concentration into listening. She needed to figure out the direction and type of rifle blast that took down Pale Rider. But no matter how hard she strained, all she heard was the dry rustling of wind and the flowing of the river.

“Did I miss it?” she wondered.

Meanwhile, Kirito had the same idea. “No, there was no sound at all. What does it mean?”

“The only possibility is…one of the quieter laser rifles…or maybe a live-ammo gun with a suppressor, but…”

“Sapresser?”

She glared at Kirito, wondering how many things she needed to teach the idiot before all was said and done, then gave in and explained, “It’s a noise canceler that goes on the end of the gun to keep it from being too loud.”

“Ohh…a silencer, you mean.”

“That’s another word for it. Whatever you want to call it, a rifle with one of them equipped can cut down on the sound a lot. It does negatively affect accuracy and range, plus it’s ridiculously expensive for a disposable item.”

“I see,” Kirito muttered, nodding. He looked to the tip of Sinon’s Hecate II. All that he saw was a muzzle brake, and even a beginner like him could tell there was no suppressor attached.

Before he could say anything, she added, “It’s not like I’m cheaping out by not using one. It’s just not my style.”

She returned to the scope with a snort. Pale Rider was still prone on the ground. But it didn’t seem to be a one-hit kill. If it was fatal, the DEAD marker would be floating above him, as with Dyne nearby. Why wasn’t he running or fighting back, if he wasn’t dead?

There were other questions, too. Sinon knew from checking the Satellite Scanner map that no one else was within a kilometer. That meant whoever this mystery sniper was, they were shooting from very far away. It also had to be quite a high-caliber rifle. But the larger the gun in GGO, the less useful a suppressor was, and the worse its downsides. It didn’t sit right with her that she didn’t hear the gunshot.

At this point, Sinon remembered that she’d felt the same suspicions about the player right next to her, just minutes before. Without turning her head, she asked, “By the way, Kirito, where did you come from? You weren’t around this mountain when the satellite passed over, ten minutes ago.”

“Huh? Well…I was tracking that Pale Rider guy from about half a kilometer, so I should have shown up on the scanner…Oh, no, wait. I get it.”

“What?”

“Actually, about ten minutes ago, I might have been swimming across the river. I was going underwater at the time, so I guess the satellite couldn’t detect me…”

You swam across?! she nearly screamed.

There was nothing in the game that prohibited swimming in rivers or lakes, and a fall into water didn’t spell instant death. But HP dropped continuously while in water, and a full set of equipment was too heavy for swimming. On top of that, a river of this size was impossible to cross alone without a frogman-style breathing apparatus.

“H-how did you…?” she barely managed to squeak out. Kirito just shrugged casually.

“I took off all my equipment first, of course. When you remove it in your status window, it goes into storage and doesn’t require holding in your hands; that’s a common rule to all Seed VRMMOs.”

“…”

She was dumbfounded. Getting the idea to swim across the river was one thing, but having the fortitude to remove all his defensive gear in the midst of a battle was unbelievable. With a heave of disgust, she said, “Well, if you were showing off your avatar’s undies, at least the people watching on the stream must have gotten a kick out of it.”

“But doesn’t the livestream only show active combat?” he returned confidently. She snorted.

“…At any rate, it seems that being submerged in water means the satellite can’t pick you up. That’s good to know. On the other hand, you went all that way to chase Pale Rider, and while he was tough, he wasn’t all that. If taking one good shot was enough to freak him out and paralyze him, he won’t…”

Last, she was going to finish, but Kirito cut her off, binoculars pressed to his eyes again. “Actually, it doesn’t look like he’s freaked out… Look closer. There’s some kind of weird lighting going on around his avatar…”

“Huh?”

She increased the magnification on her scope. It was hard to tell in the intense light of the setting sun, but it did appear as though pale blue sparks the same color as Pale Rider’s camo were crawling over his body. She’d seen that effect before. It had to be—

“An electrical stun round?!”

“Wh-what’s that?”

“Like the name says, it’s a special kind of bullet that runs a high-powered current that stuns its target. But you need a really high-caliber rifle to load one, and each round is prohibitively expensive, so no one uses it for PvP. It’s only useful when hunting major mobs with a party.”

Even as she delivered this explanation, the sparks holding Pale Rider prisoner were fading. In less than a minute, the effect would be gone. But since it barely hurt his HP, it didn’t make any sense why someone would pull off such a difficult, long-range snipe…

“—!”

In the moment, she couldn’t tell if the shock that ran through came from her own body, or Kirito next to her.

About 200 meters to the north of the bush in which they hid was the metal bridge, spanning the river from east to west. At the west end of the bridge was the confirmed corpse of Dyne’s avatar. About five meters north of him, Pale Rider fell over, having been shot by a stun round from the eastern forest. He would soon be getting to his feet.

Just between them, a black silhouette bloomed from the shadow of the metal bridge’s support pillar.

At first glance, it didn’t appear to be a player. The outline of the avatar was strangely indistinct. She stared at it hard, and finally understood why. Not only was the player wearing a tattered, gray, hooded cloak, the breeze was blowing it in chaotic directions, like some kind of swarm of vermin. Rather than a classic sniper’s ghillie suit, it was more like a “ghillie cloak.”

“When did he get there…?” Sinon murmured unconsciously. It was almost certain that the cloaked figure was the one who sniped Pale Rider. But when did he leave the forest and cross the bridge? Even with the hiding bonus of the cloak, she would have spotted him if he crossed the empty bridge. Or did he swim, like Kirito had? If that was the case, she wouldn’t have missed him opening his window and manipulating his equipment.

In the next instant, a new shock eliminated all of those minor questions from Sinon’s mind.

The tattered cloak slowly moved forward, revealing the main weapon that had been hidden in the body’s shadow until now.

“Silent Assassin,” she moaned.

It was a massive rifle, nearly as long as her Hecate. The barrel was slightly thinner, but the many bolt holes crossing the body of the gun, the one-piece stock with advanced thumb hole grip, and the dark gray matte finish gave it a chillingly cruel appearance. But most notable of all was the long sound suppressor attached to the end of the barrel. No, it wasn’t attached—this gun was designed around the use of a silencer to start with.

The proper name of the gun was the Accuracy International L115A3. It fired .338 Lapua Magnum rounds—weaker than the Hecate II’s .50 BMG rounds, but the L115 was not an antimateriel rifle. As one might guess from the default implementation of the silencer, it was built for sniping human targets. Its maximum range was over 2,000 meters. Those shot by it couldn’t see the shooter, much less hear the gunshot before they died. Thus giving rise to its nickname: the Silent Assassin.

She’d heard that the fearsome rifle could be found in GGO, but had never seen one for herself. In fact, Sinon didn’t know of any snipers who could fight solo aside from herself. But the person in that tattered cloak had shot Pale Rider from deep within the woods on the far bank of the river. That wasn’t possible without the technique and willpower to control the expansion of the bullet circle, which was linked to one’s pulse.

Who is he?

She looked at the watch on her left wrist: 8:40 PM. There were still five minutes left until the third satellite flyover. That was a very long period of time for the current situation to hold.

Through her scope, she saw the cloaked man set the L115 on his shoulder with lifeless precision. She squinted to see if his rifle might bear a sticker from his squadron, but aside from a thick cleaning rod attached below the barrel, there was no customization. As she watched him, he carefully slid over to the prone Pale Rider.

Pale Rider had defeated Dyne without taking damage, and was clearly a talented player in his own right. Sinon hadn’t heard of him before this, but she figured that he was well known in the distant northern landmass, like Behemoth the minigunner. But based on first look, the cloaked man had even more presence. Sinon felt a chill prickling her entire back, perhaps even more visceral than when she beat that enormous boss monster on her own to win her Hecate.

But in order to be sure of the cloaked man’s strength, there was still one question to answer. If he had such a rare rifle and the sniping skill to match it, why did he bother with stun rounds, rather than live ammo? A single .338 Lapua shot to the head or heart would tear the lightly armored Pale Rider apart. Certainly, stunning him first to allow for a fine-precision kill shot would work, but the cloaked man stunned him and then walked right out of the forest, exposing himself to his still-healthy target at close range. It rendered the success of that high-difficulty shot meaningless.

Sinon bit her lip, disturbed by the fact that she couldn’t even begin to guess what he was after. Meanwhile, Kirito was oddly silent. She wanted to check on him, but she couldn’t pull her eyes away from the tattered cloak.

He was standing right in front of Pale Rider now, L115 still on his shoulder. He reached into his cloak, convincing Sinon that he must be pulling out his sidearm for the kill. It might be a small submachine gun; a full magazine at point-blank range would be enough to take down all of the target’s HP.

“…Huh?” she muttered, startled once again.

Instead, he removed what looked like a plain old handgun. She couldn’t identify it, because the gun moved into the shade of his body against the setting sun, but the silhouette made it look like a perfectly unremarkable automatic pistol.

A bullet from a handgun was just as powerful as that of a submachine gun, but it wouldn’t have full-auto fire if the trigger was held down. It would take too long to empty enough bullets to eliminate all of the enemy’s HP, and Pale Rider was just about to recover from his paralysis. As soon as he was able to move, he’d fire his shotgun, and it would be the man in the cloak who died.

Yet the mysterious player showed no signs of haste, his trailing ghillie cloak flapping in the setting sun. He pointed the handgun down at Pale Rider and withdrew his left hand from the cloak as well. It was empty. For some reason, he touched his hooded forehead with the fingers of his empty hand. Then to his chest. Then left shoulder, then right.

He was making the sign of the cross; a last tribute to a dying foe, perhaps. But his time was running out. Was he certain that he could avoid a shotgun blast at close range? Or was he just a fool who got a lucky gun and didn’t know when to rein in his act?

Sinon couldn’t unclench her teeth from her lip, it was all so confusing. A whisper reached her left ear.

“Fire, Sinon.”

It was Kirito. But there was a desperate tension to his command that she hadn’t heard before. She asked him, “Huh? Who?”

“The guy in the cloak. Please, shoot him now, before he fires!!”

His intense plea was passionate enough to move her finger to the Hecate’s trigger. Normally she would have argued back out of habit, but she broke that pattern and trained her crosshairs over the back of the cloak. She estimated the wind and humidity from the level of visible dust effects. When she put pressure on the trigger, a green bullet circle covered the target.

Theory said that she should wait until they were done fighting and shoot the victor. If she shot the tattered cloak now, Pale Rider would recover from his paralysis and dart off for the bushes, and she wouldn’t get a second chance to snipe him.

But even knowing that, Sinon didn’t relax her finger. She just had a feeling that she needed to shoot him. She held her breath and gathered cold virtual air in her lungs. The chill slowed her heart. Ba-bump…ba-bump… The circle expanded and contracted with the beating of her heart. When it reached its smallest size, covering the center of the target’s back…

A blast.

Flames shot from the large muzzle brake like the breath of dragons. She was just 300 meters from her target. Sinon couldn’t have missed—she could already see the avatar flying, a giant hole in its back.

But…

At the exact time that Sinon pulled the trigger, the player in the tattered cloak dramatically bent over backward, like a ghost without a solid form. The deadly bullet grazed his chest and ripped an enormous hole in the earth past him.

“Wha…”

Stunned, Sinon suddenly felt the player’s face turn toward her and stare right into her eye through the scope. The mouth, hidden in darkness, sneered at her. Without realizing she was doing it, Sinon moaned, “H-he knew…he knew we were here all along…”

“No way! He never even looked toward us!” Kirito exclaimed, equally shocked.

She shook her head. “He couldn’t possibly have dodged like that unless he could see the bullet line. In other words, he must have registered me by sight at some point, which the system remembered…”

Even as she spoke, Sinon was automatically loading the next bullet into Hecate’s chamber. But she wasn’t sure what she should do, even as she entered firing position. It was 99 percent impossible for her to hit a foe with that kind of reaction speed when there was a visible bullet line to utilize. She could try firing the four remaining bullets in the magazine in quick order. But if they all missed and he was able to close the distance, she’d be in trouble. What to do…what to do?

The cloaked man regained his balance, as though sensing Sinon’s hesitation. He turned the handgun on Pale Rider again, cocking the hammer with his thumb. He steadied the grip with his left hand and pulled the trigger, facing his target at an incline.

There was a small flash, and a moment later, a dry klak gunshot.

“Ah!” Kirito gasped.

The bullet caught Pale Rider in the center of the chest. It was a critical point, but no matter where a 9mm Parabellum bullet hit its target in this game, there could be no one-hit kills. If anything, Pale Rider probably still had 90 percent health left. For some reason, the cloaked player didn’t bother to shoot again. He stood in place, holding the gun in the Weaver stance. He had to know that Sinon was aiming for him, but he made no effort to hide. He was certain that he could dodge any of her shots.

One, two, three…

The electric stun that immobilized Pale Rider wore off at last. His camo-clad body leaped up off the ground, and the AR-17 shotgun rose so fast it looked like a blur, pointing directly at the cloaked player’s chest. It was literal point-blank range. Every projectile in the shot would hit the heart. Unlike the pistol, this one could be a one-hit kill.

Sinon, Kirito, and most likely everyone else in GGO and the outside world watching the live stream of the event held their breath.

There was no echo of return fire.

Instead, all Sinon heard was a small crumpling thump. The AR-17 had fallen out of Pale Rider’s hand onto the red dirt.

Next, he fell to his knees, like a lifeless rag doll with broken joints. The avatar leaned slowly, slowly to the right, and collapsed on its side.

From Sinon’s position, she could see only the mouth poking out from beneath Pale Rider’s helmet visor. It was open wide, as though caught in a silent scream, or perhaps gasping for air.

His left hand rose, eerily weak in contrast to his earlier confidence, and clutched at the center of his chest—

And the pale camo body erupted with scrawling, irregular light like static noise, and vanished. All that was left of the light was a small, floating DISCONNECTION message, which soon evaporated into the setting sun as well.

“…What was that?” Sinon finally said, several seconds later.

The player in the tattered cloak had shot Pale Rider just once with a handgun. He still had HP left at that point; that was clear. Just after that, Pale Rider’s paralysis wore off, and he tried to shoot back with his shotgun, but something happened to his connection, and he was cut off from the game.

That was the logical explanation for what she had just seen.

But what was the likelihood of his connection going bad at that exact moment? And how would the cloaked player know that he’d emerge triumphant from that dire predicament? It was less that he got tremendously lucky, and more that he knew the connection would occur at that precise moment. In fact, it was like…

…It was like he had willfully disconnected Pale Rider himself.

But that was impossible. There was no way to interfere with another player’s connection from inside the game. Yet, the cloaked player showed no surprise at Pale Rider’s disappearance. He smoothly returned his left hand to his side, while he raised his right hand and pointed the pistol up to the sky. Sinon realized what he was pointing at right away: the virtual camera lens that was capturing their footage for the stream. It was represented within the game world as a pale, glowing object, to let the players know they were being filmed. He was pointing his gun for the sake of all the people watching. But why? His battle with Pale Rider was irregular, a victory by disqualification—not something to be proud of. Or was the cloaked man saying that this disappearance was his victory? Meaning…

“He can knock other players…off the server?” she rasped.

Kirito’s voice was calm and quiet, as though he wasn’t even thinking about what he was saying. “No. Not quite. I wish it was that benign…”

“Benign? What do you mean? That’s a huge deal. He’s basically cheating his way to victory. What does Zaskar think it’s—”

“No!” He grabbed her arm suddenly. She automatically tried to shake him off, but what he said next turned her blood to ice. “He didn’t knock him off the server. He killed him. Pale Rider…the actual player who was controlling Pale Rider, just died in real life, right now!”

“…Wha…”

What is he talking about?

Before she could respond, Kirito continued, “That’s it. That’s him. That’s Death Gun.”

She recognized that name. The vague knowledge floated up from the depths of her memory. “Death…Gun…Is that the guy with all the weird rumors? The one who shot at the last tournament’s champion, Zexceed, and one of its high-rankers, Usujio Tarako, and they never logged in after that…”

“That’s right,” Kirito said, and stared right at Sinon. There was unfathomable shock and fear wavering within his deep, black eyes, as well as something else. “At first…I thought it was impossible, too. Even after meeting him in the waiting dome yesterday, I tried to deny it. But there’s no denying it now…He can kill players somehow. Zexceed and Usujio Tarako’s players both turned up dead…”

“…”

How do you know that? Who are you? And what happened between you and that cloaked player? Sinon wondered, holding her breath. The questions for Kirito were even more at the forefront of her mind than the shock of learning the Death Gun rumors were true.

In fact, she couldn’t believe it right away. Killing someone from within a game? It was so absurd…if not downright contradictory. If real lives were on the line, they were no longer playing a “game.” But Kirito’s deadly serious expression, tone of voice, and gaze were so realistic and so pressing that she couldn’t just laugh it off as nonsense. So who was he…?

Kirito finally removed his piercing gaze from the confused Sinon and turned back to the metal bridge. She followed his eyesight.

The mysterious cloaked player finally lowered his gun and looked over at Dyne’s body just to the south. The DEAD tag still floated above his stomach, which meant he should still be online, but he obviously couldn’t say anything or show any reaction. There was no way to know how he was feeling about the bizarre battle that had just unfolded nearby.

The cloaked player returned the pistol to its holster and reshouldered the L115, then started clanking off in Dyne’s direction. Sinon held her breath, wondering if he was going to shoot Dyne’s body next. Kirito went still, clearly thinking the same thing. He seemed ready to leap out of the bush.

Fortunately, the cloaked player did not pull his pistol back out. He passed Dyne’s body and continued toward the bridge. However, he did not cross it but, similar to how he appeared, simply swung around the side of the large pillar and vanished—probably because he leaped down to the lower bank. That put him out of sight temporarily, but there was only north or south to go from there. Once he started moving, he would be visible very soon…

“…He’s not emerging,” Kirito grumbled. Sinon nodded. There was no sign of the cloak after ten seconds. That meant he was still hiding in the shadow of the bridge. He had to be wary of Sinon’s sniping.

At that moment, she felt an alarm vibration on her left wrist, and she looked at the clock: 8:44:50. In another ten seconds, the third satellite scan would happen. She pulled the terminal out of her pouch and watched the screen.

“You keep an eye on the bridge, Kirito. I’ll use this to find out his name.”

“Got it,” he responded.

She waited for the map to update. Three seconds, two, one, scan. Far above, a spy satellite from the space-exploration era passed over. Its electronic eye would see through any meager cover. He wouldn’t escape its gaze unless he hid in a cave, or, as Kirito had proven for himself, deep water.

A number of blips popped up on the map. Richie was still comfortably situated on top of the mountain to the south. He wouldn’t be coming down until the tournament was over.

About 800 meters to the north of that, lined up above the cliff of the brushy area were two dots, Sinon and Kirito. Any distant player would assume from the map that they were in battle. They wouldn’t assume the two were lying down next to each other under a bush…she hoped.

There was a faintly glowing dot another 200 meters to the north. That was the deceased Dyne. Pale Rider’s dot ought to be close by, but it wasn’t displaying. And to the east of Dyne, just under the bridge, was…

“Wha—? Nothing?!” Sinon exclaimed, staring a hole into the high-tech terminal screen. No matter how hard she looked, there was no dot around the bridge except for Dyne’s. The cloaked player was already on the move. But if he ran along the river bank, they would have seen him. For a moment, she felt terrified, but she promptly corralled her thoughts to order.

There was one possibility. Like Kirito, he dove into the river and swam downward to escape the satellite. Which meant…

“This is our chance,” she whispered. Kirito frowned. He looked at her for clarification, which she provided. “The cloaked guy isn’t on the radar. He’s in the river. That means he has to have all of his gear off. It’s going to take him at least ten seconds to open the window and put all of it back on once he’s on dry land again. If we strike then—”

“With one pistol? He can still swim with that equipped, can’t he?” Kirito interjected. Sinon thought briefly before responding.

“I’ve never tried it myself, but if you have enough STR or VIT, I suppose it’s possible… But still, we can easily overpower one measly handgun—”

“No!” he hissed suddenly, clutching her arm. “You saw him erase Pale Rider with that black pistol! If you take one hit from that thing, you might die, too!”

She couldn’t pull her eyes away from those sparkling black orbs. It was only with great force of will that she could look away and shake her head in disagreement.

“But…I just can’t accept that. How can you die for real, just because you were shot in a game…? And more than that, if it’s true, that means the guy in the cloak is killing people at will, right? It’s impossible…I don’t want to believe that someone in GGO—in a VRMMO—would do something like that…”

Even in the desolate wastelands of Gun Gale Online, Sinon found it to be a comforting place.

True evil and malice didn’t exist here. What looked like bullets and gunpowder was a pure expression of willpower, of desire to best one’s opponent and be tougher than anyone else. After all, dozens of bullet wounds never caused anyone here to bleed a drop of blood. There was no pain, no injury. So while battle could cause frustration, it never caused hatred. In a recent pitched battle, Sinon’s left leg was blown off by the minigunner Behemoth, and she destroyed his entire body with her Hecate. But when it was done, all she was left with was confidence, reflection, and respect for her worthy foe. Sinon believed that it was the same for him, as well.

That was why she had chosen GGO as a buffer zone between her weak real-life self and the horrors of her past. If she kept fighting here, she hoped that the wealth of Sinon’s confidence would one day outweigh the depth of the hatred that plagued Shino.

True malice must not exist in a VRMMO. It would no longer be a virtual world. It would be the darkness of reality that Shino feared and shied away from…

“I…don’t want to admit that there are VRMMO players who would commit not PK, but actual murder.”

Kirito replied to her comment with deep pain in his voice. “But there are. The guy in the cloak, Death Gun…once killed many people in the VRMMO that I played. He swung his sword, knowing that they would die. Just like he did now, when he shot Pale Rider. And…so did…”

He looked down and let go of Sinon’s arm. He didn’t finish his sentence.

But based on the fragments of his past that she’d gleaned from past conversations, Sinon felt she could fill in the blanks.

The Incident that shocked all of Japan three years ago, in 2022. Even Sinon, who had no interest in VRMMOs at the time, knew quite a lot about it, thanks to the considerable press coverage it received. There were over ten thousand young people taken prisoner at the start of the game. When they were released to the world again two years later, only six thousand emerged. That meant that four thousand lives were lost over the course of the Incident.

There was no doubting now that Kirito was one of the survivors of that world. And if his statement was true, so too was Death Gun. But Kirito’s words hinted at an even darker truth:

In a world where in-game death meant true death, Death Gun had killed many players of his own accord. He had done it knowing that their bodies in real life would perish. He was the very thing Sinon claimed she didn’t believe in: a VRMMO player who would commit murder.

And he was in GGO now, logged in to the map of the third BoB final battle—using some mysterious means to kill players just as he had in the past. That was what Kirito claimed.

When the picture coalesced in Sinon’s mind, she felt her entire body go as cold as ice. Her vision went dim, blackness spreading out from the center. Something was in its midst, watching her. That gaze—the lifeless, empty, but close, clinging gaze………

“…non. Sinon!”

She opened her eyes with a start. On the other side of the vanishing shadow was Kirito’s worried face. Only the disgust that flooded up within her at his pristine, bewitching beauty kept the panic down.

She exhaled and said, “I’m fine…Just a little startled. To be honest…I’m not sure if I can believe all of your story just yet…but I don’t think all of it is made up.”

“Thanks. That’s enough for me,” he said, right at the moment that the dots on her terminal map started to blink. The orbiting satellite was going out of range. She quickly set the map to display its full width so she could count the dots. There were seventeen dots still bright—the survivors. Eleven dim dots were deceased players. That added up to twenty-eight.

“The numbers don’t add up…”

There were thirty when the match started, which meant that if you included Pale Rider’s missing dot due to disconnection, there was one more dot still unaccounted for. That had to be Death Gun, who was evading detection at the bottom of the river. Even there, he could still be on the move—either approaching or distancing himself. If it was the former, he might appear from the water just to the east of their cover and attack at any time…

All of the dots disappeared from the screen. She’d have to search with nothing but her five senses for another fifteen minutes.

Sinon glanced down to the east, but nothing was moving. The cloaked player was probably going north. His Silent Assassin, the L115A3, was a deadly weapon, but like her Hecate II, it was a bolt-action sniper rifle, which made it unsuited for mid-and close-range combat. He was probably choosing not to attack the two of them at once, but to take distance so he could hide his location data.

Sinon sighed and muttered, “At any rate, we should move from this spot. All the other players who assumed you and I were fighting are bound to come snooping in to clean up after the battle.”

“Good point,” Kirito murmured. He stared right into Sinon’s face. “I don’t suppose it would work to ask you to find an absolutely safe location to hide until the end of the battle royale, would it?”

“O-of course I won’t!” she hissed back, just as loud as was safe. “Do I look like Richie the Camper to you?! Besides, there’s no safe place on this entire island. I know there are caves in the desert region to the north that won’t show up on the scan, but all anyone has to do is toss a grenade inside to finish me off!”

“…All right. Let’s part ways here, then.”

“Uh…” She hadn’t expected that. After a couple of quick blinks, she regained her cool. “Wh-what will you do?”

“I’m going after Death Gun. I can’t let him shoot anyone else with that pistol. Besides, I feel like…I might remember, if I meet him face-to-face. What his old name was. And then…”

Kirito’s smooth lips shut tight. He took a deep breath and faced Sinon directly. “Sinon, I want you to stay away from him as best you can. I’ll keep my promise: The next time we meet on this island, I’ll fight you for real. Oh, and…thank you for hearing me out without shooting me.”

He bowed briefly, and the black-clad swordsman slid out from the bush.

“Ah…hey!” Sinon yelped, but he was already standing on the reddish dirt in his assault boots, running for the bridge to the north without a backward glance.

She followed his slender, retreating back for a few moments, then shut her eyes tight.

“~~~…”

With a silent argh! Sinon let out a long breath and forcefully jumped up from her spot under the bush. The terrain object was destroyed by her violent action, the branches and leaves scattering through the air before they disappeared entirely.

“Wait, you!” she screamed. His figure stopped, a good forty paces away. She picked up the Hecate without looking at it, slung it over her shoulder, and dashed after Kirito. She didn’t so much as look at the expression of pure, undiluted suspicion on his face.

“I’m going with you.”

“Huh?”

“You’re going to fight Death Gun, aren’t you? He’s clearly really tough, even without the power of that gun. If you lose before I get to fight you, I’ll never have the chance for a rematch. Though I’m not exactly happy about it, I’ll fight at your side temporarily…which gives us the best chance at knocking him right out of the BoB,” she announced quickly, rattling off the lines she came up with while chasing him down, only to then shoot a sidelong glance at him. The lightswordsman’s brows were knitted, but his lips were curled into a slight smile—a very odd expression. But his concern won out, and he shook his black hair.

“No…that’s not good enough. You saw how he fights, Sinon. He’s dangerous. If you get shot, you could suffer real-life harm…”

“We don’t know where Death Gun went, so whether we’re separate or together, the danger of encountering him is the same. And don’t give me that crap about being worried for my sake, when you’re such a noob that you ran right out into the open without looking around you.”

“…Okay, maybe you have a point…”

After a few seconds’ hesitation, Kirito finally slumped his shoulders and nodded—when suddenly, his hand flashed, moving in a blur. She didn’t even process that he had pulled his lightsword from the carabiner on his belt until after the blue-purple energy blade had extended from the handle.

No way, is he going to ambush me and pretend he’s done with our promise? Sinon wondered in a panic. But Kirito looked away to the west. She followed his gaze to see a number of red lines extending from the shadow of a large rock about a hundred meters away. Bullet lines.

Their mystery attacker’s gun barked full-auto fire, while Kirito’s lightsword ducked and waved, leaving glowing afterimages and knocking down the storm of gunfire bullet by bullet. Sinon stood dumbly in place for a good second, blown away by a show of skill the likes of which she’d never seen in GGO, before recovering and lurching into motion. She dropped to the ground with her Hecate, getting into firing position and planting its bipod in the sand.

Though she was already certain of this based on the full-auto fire, a peek through the scope confirmed that it was not the ghillie cloak of Death Gun shooting at them. She recognized the oddly shaped open helmet with a fluffy tassel on the crown, and the accuracy-improving eyepatch device. It was Xiahou Dun, an assault rifle gunman who had appeared in the previous two tournaments. He used a Norinco CQ rifle. Though he was a grizzled veteran, the gruff avatar’s jaw was agape, and for good reason—he never would have expected that an entire magazine of ambush fire could be deflected perfectly by the novelty weapon that was a photon sword.

“No way, man!” wailed Xiahou Dun, an extremely inappropriate action for someone who looked so much like a stately, whiskered ancient Chinese general. He ducked behind the boulder.

Kirito glanced down at Sinon and shrugged. “Might as well start with him. I’ll go in, you cover me.”

“…Roger that.”

It was an odd turn of events. How did it come to this?

Sinon pressed her cheek into the familiar wooden stock of her gun.