Black Bullet - Volume 2 - Chapter 3.4

4

“Motion Reality Prism Battle Simulator Version 10.0 activated. Data card reading completed. Welcome back, Rentaro Satomi.”

A synthetic female voice read his name smoothly, and the words HELLO, WORLD appeared in the space about a meter in front of him. Alice and the White Rabbit holding a watch from Alice in Wonderland started chasing each other around the words.

It was probably just the programmer having fun, but the issue was the level at which this was reproduced. Both the blond girl in the apron and dress and the rabbit with his nose twitching looked like the real thing. Rentaro got close to them and leaned over, stretching his hand out slowly, but right before he could touch them, they disappeared.

Rentaro was surprised and stood up, lifting his face. He was in a white room. A really big one. It was empty inside, and it was swept so clean that there wasn’t a speck of dust, but the light shining from far above filled the white room with a diffuse light that made it so bright, he had to squint.

“How is it, Satomi dear?” asked Miori.

Rentaro said, “I can’t tell my right from left or front from back in this space, as usual. My brain is starting to hurt.”

As Rentaro gave noncommittal grunts to Miori’s voice over the headset, he looked around him. It was the fifth floor of the basement of the Shiba Heavy Weapons building. Rentaro was inside a space called the VR Special Training Room, a gigantic cube about a kilometer around.

The inside of the room was made completely of a special rubber that allowed one to use anything from real bullets to different types of explosives. It was one of the few advanced virtual combat training facilities in the world. It was often used by the self-defense force and special police, civsec officers, and even rich hobbyists, and apparently, it was booked up a year in advance, but Rentaro was able to use it as a special favor from Miori.

Living in a shabby eight-tatami-mat apartment, Rentaro sometimes forgot that this was the year 2031, but seeing such futuristic equipment, he remembered.

“Miori, sorry to jump right into it, but please start now,” he said.

“Oh my, Satomi dear, you’re so impatient.”

As he started to retort back, “Why do you always have to make everything sound so perverted?” the scenery around him twisted.

The next thing he knew, Rentaro was abandoned in a desert. Twisting his neck, he could see the sun shining furiously in the middle of the sky, and hot wind and sand hit his body, making him damp and sweaty.

Astonished, Rentaro went to the top of the sand dune in front of him and looked around. Under the clear blue sky was desert as far as he could see. Rentaro was bewildered. His body was definitely in that white room. This room was just a virtual reality. It was not as if he had been transported to an actual desert by a warp from a science fiction movie.

Even though he knew the sweaty temperatures and wind were created by an air-conditioning unit, he couldn’t tell what this hill he was standing on was.

He thought the ground was made of some kind of turgor pressure material that was making instantaneous indentations, but then when he saw the dilapidated pillbox shelter in the distance, he wasn’t sure what was going on again. It wasn’t possible to create such a complicated building out of turgor pressure material.

“Miori, I think this every time, but what principles are at work here?” Rentaro asked.

“It’s a bottom-down system for the 3DCG and a top-down system for the reality capture combined with some other stuff. In other words, it’s a business secret,” she replied teasingly.

When Rentaro scooped up the sand on the ground, the hot sand spilled from between his fingers. It was definitely real—at least, that’s how it felt to him.

“Satomi dear, what do you want to do with the pain level?”

“Set it to max. If not, it won’t be training. Also, give me another of the XD guns that I use.”

Just then, almost ten holodisplay panels popped up in front of him. They were clauses regarding life endangerment saying basically, “We take no responsibility if you die.” Rentaro pushed the AGREE button without really reading them, and the windows closed.

Rentaro put his left hand in the air. A moment later, he caught the XD gun that rained down from the sky.

“Now, let’s get started. I’m looking forward to seeing you get serious, Satomi dear.”

“About that, Miori. For the simulator, just release my left eye. I can’t refill the cartridges in my right arm and leg, so I want to save those for when I fight Tina.”

After mollifying Miori by promising to go all out for her sometime, Rentaro pulled his own XD gun from his waist and waited with both guns out.

A countdown like one from an old movie appeared in front of his eyes—10, 9, 8—flickering inside the black circle surrounding it. He crossed his arms in front of his chest and closed his eyes quietly as he heightened his concentration by paying attention to his breathing.

“Mission start!” the synthesized voice said, and with the sound of a fierce wind on the battlefield, he started hearing the rolling words of a foreign language that sounded Middle Eastern. There must have been terrorist-type enemies positioned in the battlefield.

Rentaro quietly opened his eyes wide.

Artificial eye, activate.

The nano-core processor made using graphene transistors activated and started operating. Geometric patterns emerged on the spinning iris of his eye. His field of vision expanded and the colors became brighter.

Slowly, he inhaled, then exhaled. “Let the battle begin. I will now eliminate the enemy.”

“No way… What is this……?”

Watching on a monitor in another room, Miori Shiba was so shocked, she couldn’t speak. The name of the stage Rentaro was in was Impossible.

Thirty enemies consisting of militiamen in turbans were positioned in this impenetrable stage. Immediately after it started, the militiamen attacked with assault rifle cross fire, so there hadn’t been a single person who had cleared this stage before. The other day, the top ten members of Japan’s Special Assault Team attempted this stage as a team, and they were all kicked out after being judged DEAD.

Miori thought it would be satisfactory if Rentaro took even one of the enemy with him and threw him in this stage half-maliciously. However—

Miori’s face was almost touching the monitor. Her gaze was glued to the young man in the monitor wearing a suitlike uniform.

Rentaro Satomi had the strength of a demon.

Immediately after the battle began, Rentaro ran down the slope of the sand dune with fierce momentum. Sand pillars rose from the gunfire around his feet like explosions. Not even bothering to hide in the shadows, Rentaro charged into the enemy camp.

As he ran, he fired warning shots from his two guns. Slipping through the gunshots of the militia hiding behind a wall of sandbags, he jumped and kneed one of them in the face, jumping into the middle of the sandbags. He shot and killed a militiaman he knocked out at close range. Stealing a grenade from the fallen militiaman, he pulled the pin out with his teeth and threw it into the pillbox shelter. The sound of the explosion and the enemy’s screams came at almost the same time.

Turning toward violent engine sounds, Rentaro promptly rolled out of the way and a truck passed by with a roar, trying to run him over right where he had been. Moreover, there was a heavy machine gun installed in the bed of the truck. With a deafening explosive sound, the heavy machine gun spit fire. A second before the heavy machine gun caught Rentaro and blew him to smithereens, Rentaro rolled onto the sand and fired two shots rapidly, laying low.

The first shot was at the shooter of the heavy machine gun on the truck bed, and the other went through the head of the truck driver, killing him. The truck lost control and spun on its side, exploding and spitting up a pillar of fire.

Even as this was happening, the numbers of the remaining enemy were going down ridiculously quickly.

“The 21-Form Varanium Artificial Eye. That is the true form of what is in Satomi’s left eye.” When Miori looked back, there was Kisara, brushing back her hair, her crisp footsteps sounding against the floor.

“Kisara… What is that?” asked Miori.

“Inside his left eye is a high-performance computer with a CPU that uses a graphene transistor wrapped in a Super-Varanium shell. Miori, would you believe me if I told you that people feel the passage of time differently?”

“Huh?”

“As a child, one day feels very long, but when you become old, a day goes by in an instant. Have you ever heard that? For example, assume that as a child, your brain can think about a hundred things in one minute, but when you become old, of course your brain function declines, and you can only think about ten things in one minute. If that’s the case, then what do you think happens?

“Don’t you think that a day for a child would feel ten times longer than a day for an elderly person? Time stretches and shrinks depending on the person. In addition to having various sensors, Satomi’s artificial eye is equipped with a multiplier function that overclocks the brain’s thought frequency thousands of times, so apparently time passes very slowly in the world Satomi sees. That’s why the enemy’s bullets don’t hit him.”

“B-but, that’s different from his body becoming faster, right?”

“Of course. But according to Satomi, it doesn’t work after the bullet has been fired, but figuring out a safe position based on the trajectory of the bullet before they pull the trigger isn’t that hard.”

“Is that even possible…?”

“It is. That is the true power of Rentaro Satomi, called the greatest masterpiece of the godlike doctor, Sumire Muroto, head of the New Humanity Creation Project.” However, instead of looking proud, Kisara, who was watching the monitor with her arms crossed, looked at Rentaro with sad eyes, murmuring.

“We’ve kept this from Enju, but when Satomi doesn’t unleash the power of his left eye, he can only see out of his right eye. His artificial left eye is set up to move the same way as his right eye, so no one can tell that he can’t see out of it.”

Miori was at a loss for words as she looked at the soldier on the monitor.

“But it’s not all bad. Satomi’s artificial limbs have pain sensory nerves made of carbon nanotubes, so they’re pretty much the same as a normal person—”

“Wait a minute, Kisara. There’s only one enemy left.”

This time, it was Kisara’s turn to tilt her head in question. “He’s almost cleared it then, right? What are you worried about?”

Miori tilted her head at Kisara and said each word slowly and distinctly. “The last person is a sniper.”

Rentaro stood stock-still in the middle of the enemy camp filled with piles of corpses. The area was enshrouded in flames warming his skin and smelled of gunpowder smoke. It was so hot that Rentaro tore off his necktie as he breathed with his shoulders heaving. His whole body was covered with sweat, and one of the XD guns had disappeared somewhere without him noticing.

The enemy was now nowhere to be seen.

Just as he started wondering if he had cleared the stage, something grazed the top of his shoulder. When he thought he had been shot, he sank to his knees and pressed the wound with his hand. The superthin shock paddles he stuck on his skin before entering the VR training room recreated the heat and pain of being hit by a bullet. Even though he had only been grazed, he gritted his teeth at the intense pain that felt like he had been cut.

He looked back and glared beyond the sand dune. “A sniper, huh?!”

The range finder built into the artificial eye found the enemy. The enemy was two hundred and twenty meters away. On top of being too far to see with the naked eye, the hot air created waves distorting his vision. The worst conditions for shooting.

The standard response here would be to get closer to the sniper while hiding in the shadows of the sand dunes. However, Rentaro did not do that but turned back toward the enemy and spread his legs shoulder width, holding his gun diagonally from the target’s point of view.

Tina’s voice played in the back of his mind. “My life has just been pain. That’s why, right now, I’m having my first fun mood in a while.”

Rentaro pulled the trigger slowly and fired. His shot went wide past the target by a long shot.

One more shot. This time, it was too low.

Shots were grazing his ears with ferocious speed, and his legs were shaking. The enemy was firing back. Torn between frustrating impatience and fear, he inhaled, then exhaled shakily. Closing his eyes, he cleared his ears with the sound of his own heartbeat. All living things eventually lose their lives and die and repeat the cycle of reincarnation. The way of the heavens and the reason that preserved harmony among all living things filled his heart, assimilated within him, and sharpened him.

A beam of light flashed in his head. He opened his eyes wide suddenly.

There! He pulled the trigger and fired. His arm was kicked back by the recoil, and an empty brass-colored cartridge spun as it was spit out.

The bullet grazed the upper right part of the Dragunov sniper rifle the sniper held and entered through his left eye socket. It shattered his skull, and the path taken by the bullet was in a vacuum for an instant. The next moment, his body systems were compressed, and his brain was destroyed.

The bullet that was the extension of Rentaro’s arm had brought death to every single one of his virtual enemies. He took the Infinite Stance and quietly stayed on alert.

Rentaro Satomi was one with his gun.

There was a fanfare and the floating words MISSION COMPLETE, along with the smooth synthesized female voice saying the words.

The next thing he knew, he was back in the white room. Only the necktie scattered on the floor, the other XD gun, and the empty cartridges told him that the fight that had just happened was not a dream.

“Satomi dear, you’re amazing! Two thousand, two hundred percent!” Miori screamed into the headset with excitement, causing feedback.

Rentaro yelled, holding his ears. “Be quiet! What do you mean, 2,200 percent?”

“Satomi dear, you used this simulator three times before, remember? If the average of your combat ability during those times is 100 percent, then that’s your combat power this time.”

I see, Rentaro muttered to himself. This meant that with his artificial eye unleashed, he was twenty-two times stronger than usual.

“Satomi dear, how much stronger would you be if you unleashed your arm and leg?”

“Roughly three times stronger that this.”

“Six thousand, six hundred percent! S-Satomi dear, take me now!”

Rentaro snorted.

“Wait, Miori, what are you saying? Satomi is mine! I’m all he sees!” Apparently, Kisara was also with her. “Miori, I’m sure you don’t know this, but Satomi attacked me like a beast and did all sorts of dirty things to me. My body is enough to satisfy him!”

The one who did all sorts of dirty things was Enju. That made Rentaro think of something suddenly. “Hey, Miori, Enju has used this simulator before, too, right? What are her numbers compared to mine?”

For some reason, that made Miori stammer, “Well…” evasively. Finally, she mumbled reluctantly, “Eight thousand, six hundred percent.”

Rentaro exhaled sharply. Well, that wasn’t unexpected. Enju had extraordinary strength for an Initiator. However, it might be paradoxical to think so, but Rentaro did not think that he could not beat her.

As part of a martial arts family, such as he was, he had experience and intuition that Enju lacked. Enju might think that if she made Rentaro miss with the exploding cartridges in his artificial limbs, she could win, but if she thought so naively, she would be easy to handle.

“Then what about the projected numbers for Tina, who beat Enju?” Rentaro asked.

“If the enemy’s specialty was sniping, thinking about it using common sense, going up against Enju would have been the worst matchup for her. If she won despite that, then you should assume she is over 1.5 times stronger than Enju.”

“Over 12,900 percent?!” It was a number that defied common sense. It wasn’t that he had been optimistic, but this was…

“Satomi dear, you can use any of the equipment we have to offer. And we’ll use the simulator to crush your weaknesses one by one.”

There was some time before he answered.

“All right.”

In any case, he didn’t have any other choice. He had long abandoned the idea of running away.

“Now, we’ll use an anti-sniper program next,” said Miori.

At that moment, the world changed again.

“Situation two, stage name: Killhouse. Activating—”