Sword Art Online Alternative – Gun Gale Online - Volume 10 - Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

Hunting Dragons

—The Fourth Ordeal I—

“Congratulations, everyone. You have completed the third ordeal,” Suuzaburou announced, 130 feet below Llenn.

She’d raced across the snow with her new snowshoes, then blazed up the stairs with inhuman speed onto the roof, where there was simply a door standing in the empty air, like the Anywhere Door from that famous cartoon. She walked through the frame, and that was that.

It was now 12:58:42.

They were warped from the blinding snowfield to a dark, nondescript place. It looked like the standby area from Squad Jam, right before the event started and after you died.

Light began to take shape before Llenn’s eyes, and her eleven teammates steadily appeared around her. They were all there.

Yeah, Llenn, way to go, you’re the best, you did awesome, our hero.

Through the praises and compliments, she walked over to Shirley, who’d been temporarily dead for the last few minutes. “Thanks. You helped us win,” she said.

“You’re welcome.” Shirley even seemed to smile a little bit. “I couldn’t move from that spot, but I watched you go. You’re from a snowy area, aren’t you?”

“Hey, we’re not supposed to talk about real life…but yes.”

“I was impressed.”

“Same thing for your skiing.”

“No biggie.”

For a brief moment, there was a glimmer of friendship between the two.

“All right, enough flirting,” interjected Pitohui, who always knew how to ruin a moment. You couldn’t blame Shirley for being annoyed at that one. “Doggy wants to say something.”

Llenn turned toward Suuzaburou, who was in Fukaziroh’s arms at the moment.

“The fourth ordeal is approaching, everyone. It will begin in five minutes.”

Llenn checked her wristwatch. It was exactly one o’clock.

“Your equipment has all been returned to you, so make use of this time to prepare for battle again. Your hit points have been restored as well.”

“It’s true! Yahoo!” cheered Clarence, who’d been severely injured earlier.

The whole group waved their left hands to get into their menus, including Llenn. When she saw the window that appeared, she heaved a sigh of relief internally. There they are! Whew!

P-chan, the Vor-chans, and Kni-chan were all there in her inventory, including the magazine pouches for her ammo. She selected EQUIP ALL, as always, and then she was properly outfitted for battle again. Grabbing the P90 out of the air where it waited, she cradled it to her chest. “There, there… I’ve missed you so much, P-chan…”

She stroked the curve of the grip tenderly. Llenn was the only one fondling her gun like this.

Freshly retrieved from storage, the firearms were not loaded. Each member prepared their weapons with their respective ammo, creating a symphony of metallic clicking and sliding that filled the dark space.

Once it died down, the group had regained its fangs and was ready to do combat again. They had a hungry look in their eyes—but the timer had over four minutes remaining.

“Should we sit take a breather?” asked Tanya.

“Yeah,” replied Anna.

Twelve people and one dog sat right on the ground. Time to relax.

“Hey, Pitohui?” asked Shirley, pointing her legs straight out and sticking the butt of the R93 Tactical 2 between her thighs.

“What is it?”

“Since we have time, I’ve got to ask you now. What did you mean when you said I hadn’t ‘figured it out’ about the twelve monsters earlier?”

That was right—they’d been talking about that before Shirley’s suicide attack. What was the answer? Llenn listened in, curious.

“What? Are you being serious, Shirley?” asked Clarence, of all people.

“Huh?” Her mouth fell open. “What…? You figured it out?”

Clarence’s handsome face wore a skeptical expression, as though the answer should have been obvious.

“All those monsters were players, right?”

“Whut?” “Huh?”

Shirley and Llenn gasped in unison.

“Wha—?” “Hmm?”

As for SHINC, they were split between two identical reactions, three apiece. Everyone was stunned.

“What?! Hang on; are you saying nobody else figured it out…?”

And no one was more stunned than Clarence.

“Very sharp, Clare. How’d you figure it out?” asked Pitohui, confirming that she was correct. Shirley decided to listen to her partner’s answer, as did Llenn and SHINC.

As for Fukaziroh, she’d fixed up her hair with the knife hairpin and was rubbing Suuzaburou again. “There you go, awww, who’s a sweetie, who’s a cutie pie?”

“How? I dunno, there were lots of weird things, weren’t there? If we were supposed to be dealing with regular enemy monsters, they could have simply interfered with us getting through the door in a couple ways. So why would they be on the other side, rushing for the same goal? And searching for weapons like us? Why would they set up such a weirdly specific system?”

Those are some very good questions, Llenn agreed.

“Also,” Clarence continued, “they didn’t fight like monsters at all. The enemy was moving through the snow like us, hiding in buildings, watching our movements. They used that shield movement plan when there were exactly ten minutes left and kept one person back as a sniper. It all smelled really human to me. Well, it didn’t smell, exactly.”

“Hmmm, I see. Yes, yes. So that was what tipped you off. Uh-huh.”

“Well…damn,” said Shirley, metaphorically doffing her cap.

“Oooh, that’s interesting,” murmured Llenn.

“In other words, they were another group of players on the quest, just like us. The developers were having us compete directly against another team. They just tampered with the visual information so that we each looked like monsters to the other side.”

It was a video game, after all; it would be easy to manipulate a player’s graphical view. The other team would surely have seen Llenn and her companions as unsettling creatures, too.

“And that’s why they made sure the starting time was so uniform,” Boss realized, as did the rest of SHINC.

Except for Sophie, who wondered, “What were they going to do if there was an odd number of teams?”

Rosa answered, “I think one of the instances would’ve had three teams instead of two.”

“Ohhh, I see.”

“Honestly, I’m just baffled that you didn’t figure it out, Llenn,” noted Pitohui, to her great surprise.

“Huh? How come?”

Now it was Pitohui’s turn to be surprised. “How come…? Oh! Oh, I get it!”

“Yes?”

“Llenn, when you won SJ1, you didn’t actually read the signed books written by the sponsor of the event, did you?” Pitohui said.

Llenn was completely taken aback by the sudden new direction of the conversation. “Uh…yeah? I didn’t…”

“Honesty is good. Well, that makes sense, then.”

“Why?”

The sponsor for SJ1, SJ3, and SJ4 was a clinically gun-obsessed writer in his fifties. He’d sent a full signed set of his books to the winner of the events as a prize. Zaskar had delivered a large box to Karen’s house because she’d had to include her address in her account registration.

She did not read the books. But it seemed rude to sell signed copies to a used bookshop, so instead, she left them to rot in a cabinet somewhere. She knew she’d have to get rid of them eventually.

Still, it was humiliating that Pitohui could correctly assume her behavior in this regard. Llenn asked, “What do those novels have to do with this quest…?”

“The situation is identical.”

“Meaning?”

“The battles that crappy writer depicted in his books are extremely similar to what we’ve experienced in this quest so far. The first ordeal with unlimited ammo? It’s basically exactly like his short story about people trapped in a gun store on a big intersection, where they have to escape from a swarm of zombified cats and dogs. That one’s called ‘Our Crossroads Strategy: Clean Up the Petting Horde.’”

“Oh…”

I never would have known that, since I didn’t read the books. Also, what’s up with that title? Llenn thought.

“The next ordeal is exactly the same setup as his masochistic novel about soldiers who turn immortal and participate in excruciating engagements against a robot army from the future. That one’s called The Ultimate Agony! Aaahhh! There wasn’t a Johnny Seven in the novel, but I recall that, in the afterword, he mentions that he won one in an online auction, except that they told him ‘We cannot ship to Japan,’ so he had to give up on it.”

“Oh…”

I never would have known that, since I didn’t read the books. And what an awful title, Llenn thought.

“And the ordeal we just overcame was the same as a short story he wrote that people hated for being a rip-off of a famous battle-royale game. It’s about prospective employees who have to engage in a survival game for the chance to earn a job in the future. That one’s called ‘Death Motive: A War That Tests Your Mettle.’ In that story, it turns out the enemy robot soldiers are actually other rivals for the job. Once you beat everyone else, the survivor gets the position.”

“Oh…”

I never would have known that, since I didn’t read the books. This guy really has no idea how to name his stuff, Llenn thought.

“Anyway, Pito, if you realized all these things, you should have mentioned it earlier.”

“She mentioned it right now,” interrupted Anna, the blond sniper. Pitohui’s knowledge seemed to have impressed her. At least from what you could discern with those sunglasses cloaking her eyes.

“It’s pretty clear that the author wrote the scenario for this quest,” said M.

“Probably,” agreed Pitohui. “I bet he’s watching us tackling his battle ideas and grinning like an idiot right now.”

From the back, Boss asked, “Can you predict the next ordeal, then?”

“Nope, no way. That hack has so many short stories. I think he just likes writing about weird situations he comes up with. But maybe I’ll recognize it once the trial starts.”

“Still, we can use that to our advantage.”

“Maybe.”

“But, Pito,” Llenn asked, “they’re getting tougher and tougher, so it’ll probably be real hard, right…?”

“Exactly. What do you think, Llenn? Be honest.”

“Sounds fun! I’m ready to kick ass!”

“That’s my Llenn!”

“Heh-heh-heh! Wait, no, I’m not yours!” she protested, right as the teleportation happened.

It was 1:05.

Llenn opened her eyes and saw a wasteland.

Hard-packed brown earth stretched to the horizon, peppered with a random assortment of boulders in various sizes. It looked like they were reusing the terrain data from the final battle of SJ1.

“It’s so nostalgic,” Llenn murmured.

“Yeah,” agreed Boss. This was the place where their friendship had begun.

Suuzaburou announced, “I will now explain the premise of the fourth ordeal. Defeat that.”

“Defeat what?” Llenn wondered.

“That!” yelled Sophie. Her burly arm was pointing skyward. The spot was beneath the sun, so that made it south, about a thousand feet off. Something was materializing against the clear red horizon.

Particles of bluish-green light were appearing, floating gently up, then rapidly coalescing into a single point, where they formed a shape…

“Huh?”

Several seconds later, it was still forming.

Llenn and the other eleven watched as the particles gathered, and gathered, and gathered, and gathered, gathered, gathered, gathered some more.

“Is it still going?!” she shouted. The amalgamation of light seemed to hear her complaint and turned a dull red.

Now its shape was clear.

It was a dragon.

Long neck, large head, and a huge mouth. A trunk with four short legs and bat-like wings that weren’t very large. A long, snakelike tail. It was none other than a classic European dragon.

And it was a machine.

The body was metallic, with smooth sides that shone a faded red. Armor-like sliding plates protected movable parts like its neck, and its limb joints were exposed.

An outline of the beast had formed, but it was still growing. More and more motes of light accumulated as it expanded outward, slowly rotating sideways and showing off its full size.

Gigantic monsters existed in GGO in the form of dungeon and quest bosses, but this creature was new. Its design had an unfinished quality. Was it a rejected model, like what had appeared in the most recent Squad Jam?

“What’s that thing? A mecha-dragon?” Clarence muttered.

“It has no particular moniker,” Suuzaburou answered faithfully.

That was actually a rather important point. Whether they were big bosses or random wimps, monsters had names, and having them displayed when you recognized that a creature was an enemy was a staple of the RPG experience.

Their names should have a hit point bar below it, too, so players could learn how much longer it would take to beat it and gauge the effectiveness of their attacks—or alternately, determine when they needed to give up and make a break for it.

This creature’s lack of a name made it seem lazily slapped together, but maybe there was a reason for that. What if it didn’t have a hit point bar, either? That would make the fight really rough…

Sensing the group’s worry, Suuzaburou explained, “Once you’ve attacked it, the remaining hit points will appear.”

Oh, that’s good, Llenn thought, relieved.

“So there’s no name? Let’s just call it Mecha-Dragon, then!” Clarence decided. To the twelve players present, at least, it was officially Mecha-Dragon. Nobody complained because it was pretty easy to say.

It’s so huge, though! Llenn gaped as the mechanical monster grew even larger.

“My God. How big is it…?” Boss asked.

Tohma peered through her Dragunov’s scope. “Can you tell how far away it is?”

Llenn pulled out her monocular, aimed it at Mecha-Dragon, and pressed the button. The digital distance readout delivered a number.

“One thousand and fifty feet to the torso!” she reported.

“Khorosho!” replied Tohma, using the distance sights on her scope lens. She thought for three seconds, then answered, “By my rough estimation…the torso length is thirty-three feet!”

That meant the tail was about the same. The neck and head seemed around fifty feet. Which meant…

“A hundred and fifteen feet!” Llenn gasped.

It could sit end to end in a school pool, and its tail would still spill out. The width of the monster’s torso was a good fifteen feet at the widest.

“That’s huge. So where’s the weak spot? The eyes? Or the scales?” Clarence asked the dog.

Suuzaburou quickly responded, “I have not been given that information.”

“That’s what they told you to say, right?”

“I’ll leave that up to your imagination,” the dog insisted.

“Hey! Stop picking on Suuzaburou!” cried Fukaziroh. They weren’t picking on him.

The pooch continued, “If all of your health is depleted, you will be permanently removed from the quest and returned to Glocken. Be careful.”

That meant death was an actual threat now. Vigilance was the name of the game.

“Your time limit is twenty-one minutes. The ordeal ends at one thirty. You cannot proceed to the next trial without beating it. Best of luck.”

The timer appeared in the upper-right corner again and displayed twenty-one minutes. It ticked down to 20:59.

The mecha-dragon summoning had finally finished. There was no more light gathering around it, it had stopped rotating, and its pale eyes opened.

Still floating, it slowly reared its head, opened its large mouth, and shrieked, “Graaah!” The screech took a second to reach them.

The enormous red monster glided down toward the ground until it went out of sight behind the boulders. The huge cloud of dust and the shaking of the earth that followed told them it had landed. Again, it took a second for the whump to reach them.

“So we have to beat that…but how?”

“Don’t ask other people to do your job for you, Llenn. You’ve got to use your twin weapons of ‘pink’ and ‘speed’ to go give that beastie a polite greeting. I’ll back you up,” said her friend warmly, holding grenade launchers in both hands.

“Fuka,” Llenn murmured, touched.

“Then make sure it targets you and run like hell. While it’s squashing you like a bug, the rest of us will take it out. Your noble sacrifice will never be forgotten. The days will be long without you, my friend…”

“So you coming with me?” asked Llenn, wishing she could punish herself for feeling emotional for even a second.

“Here it comes!” Boss shouted. Llenn abandoned her little comedy routine with Fukaziroh and stared in the direction of Mecha-Dragon.

The rumbling and booming were getting closer. It was obviously charging in their direction with great force.

“Split up!” M commanded. The group bolted out of the way.

There was no way to know where to go when something so huge was coming for you. But if all twelve of them were grouped together in one clump, it would be one strike, you’re out. They needed to fan out as wide as possible to minimize potential damages.

Don’t come this way! Please don’t come this way! Llenn prayed, knowing it would mean one of the others getting chased instead.

With her extreme agility, she quickly made her way left to the north, outpacing the others. She was used to sprinting around this environment. As long as she kept her eye on the nearest rock in the direction she was heading and got out of its way early, she could keep moving at nearly full speed.

Then a small black shape slipped past her.

The dog! It’s so fast!

Suuzaburou’s ears were folded down, the wind pressure buffeting his fur back as he passed her. She did her best to give chase; if she stayed with the mutt, she should be safe. The guide wasn’t going to die when there was another ordeal after this.

The rumbling grew fiercer. Llenn glanced to her right and saw Mecha-Dragon’s massive body crush a boulder to dust as it pursued the others. It had turned a bit to the left, so Llenn knew that her direction was safe for the time being.

“Oh no! Sophie, look out!”

Sophie and Rosa, the slowest members of SHINC, were in its path.

They’re not going to make it…!

She was certain they were going to die. She stopped to gape at the giant creature.

Then Mecha-Dragon bore down on the two women…

“Huh?”

And jumped over them.

The sound of its heavy feet hitting the earth stopped, replaced by the howling of its massive form displacing air.

Its tiny wings, however, were just for show. The creature jumped twenty or so feet in the air, launching past Sophie and Rosa, then landed sixty feet from them. The rocking of the earth was tremendous.

They’re alive, Llenn thought, relieved.

“Oh no! Everyone, after it! Full power!” Pitohui shouted into the comm. Adding that nugget of information to what she was watching, Llenn understood.

Mecha-Dragon was running away for all it was worth. It was making an escape. That long, thick tail was getting smaller and smaller as it waved back and forth.

Clarence yelled, “It’s a runaway boss!”

“Is that even a thing?” asked Shirley.

“It is now!”

“Okay…”

So they had to chase the boss. They couldn’t beat it if they didn’t chase it, and they couldn’t complete the quest if they didn’t beat it. Twenty minutes and four seconds to go.

Llenn began to bolt after the waving tail, shouting, “Don’t run away! I’m your target!”

She fired with the P90. The tiny bullets flew toward the huge beast a hundred yards away. Since it was so large, they probably hit their mark. She thought she saw sparks on its red tail.

Then, above the upper-right portion of the dragon’s body, a little green 100 popped up. That was probably its health percentage. Hadn’t gone down at all. Not in the slightest. Not a smidge.

“Llenn and Tanya, you latch on to it! Don’t lose sight of that thing!” Pitohui commanded.

“Roger!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Whether anyone else could catch up or not, Llenn knew what she had to do. She dashed for all she was worth after the gigantic beast. Since it smashed through the rock towers as it went, the ground was covered with fresh rubble, but that was easy enough to avoid or jump over. All she had to do was focus on not tripping.

Behind her, Tanya followed. Llenn’s top speed was slightly higher, so it was only inevitable that she would steadily increase the gap ahead of Tanya.

The others were trying to keep up as best they could, but Clarence complained, “What do we do? How are we supposed to chase that thing?” She had a point.

“Hey, Pitohui! You remember the story yet?!” bellowed Shirley. For a moment, she pointed the R93 Tactical 2 and its exploding bullet at Mecha-Dragon but decided to hold off on firing. It would be a waste of good ammo.

“Which one would it be…? There are just so many… But I don’t really remember anything specific…,” Pitohui grumbled.

“Oh! I think I know it!” called Anna, the blond in sunglasses. She sounded more like her real-life counterpart because she was remembering something from the real world. “I like reading, too, and when you were describing the stories earlier, it reminded me! This situation is a lot like that author’s newest novel! It’s called Lord of the Wheels!”

“Really? Then I guess it wasn’t in the prize set. No wonder I don’t know it,” Pitohui admitted.

“That title sounds like it’s ripe for a lawsuit,” opined M. Clarence murmured in agreement.

“What kind of story is it, Anna?” Boss asked, picking up the slack.

In the meantime, the dragon was rapidly thudding away. The rest of the group wasn’t ever going to catch up to it at this rate. They just had to pray that Llenn and Tanya could overtake it and slow it down, but the pair certainly didn’t have the firepower to stop that thing. If things continued as expected, it was going to end up being a school relay race. They desperately needed a hint.

As she sprinted, Anna described the book.

“Basically, the tunnels underneath New York connect to an alternate world where mechanical monsters roam the wastelands. The American government secretly sends in vehicles, gas, and guns to bring back all kinds of chemicals you can’t obtain on Earth, so they get superrich. At the same time, two car thieves named Josh and Mary hide from the cops in their stolen car, which ends up getting shipped to the other world. But they’re not feeling sorry for themselves. They use their driving and shooting skills to beat a bunch of monsters, and it gets really exciting when—”

“Okay, thanks, Anna! That’s all I needed!” Pitohui shouted, cutting her off. “Everyone, stop! Stop! But not you, Llenn and Tanya! Everyone else, stop!”

Nine other players skidded to a halt, and Pitohui gave them their orders.

“There’s got to be vehicles hidden somewhere around here! Check the bigger rocks, every single one you can find!”

Time remaining: eighteen minutes.

Llenn spent two minutes at a dead sprint through the wasteland, keeping her eyes glued on Mecha-Dragon and listening to her teammates communicate.

“Found one!”

“Over here, too!”

“Oh yeah! What a haul!”

“Can you ride it?”

“No worries!”

That was Pitohui, Fukaziroh, Boss, Clarence, and Shirley, in that order.

It was clear to Llenn that her teammates had found some treasure in the form of vehicles, but there was no way to tell what kind of vehicles they were. And more importantly, something else was demanding her attention: Mecha-Dragon’s course.

After it appeared, it initially ran directly north toward them, but once they gave chase, it stopped going in a straight line. It was weaving erratically right and left, and she didn’t know if the others would be able to figure out which direction to pursue it from. The beast might have been large, but it was probably out of sight for them by this point.

The rough earth beneath them left no footprints. Maybe they could track the smashed boulders? Based on the dragon’s speed, the majority of the group had to be well over a mile apart by now.

“We’re all set! Where are you, Llenn?” asked Pitohui.

“How am I supposed to know?!” she wailed. Up at the very top of her vision was a compass. “I’m running northwest right now! And before that…I was doing serpentines!”

“Uh-oh. And we can’t see your tracks…”

Llenn was afraid they were out of luck, but then she recalled the beginning of SJ3. She’d gotten lost without knowing how to get back and required the assistance of Fukaziroh and the others.

“How about if Fuka lobs a plasma grenade up, and you shoot it?”

An explosion that size would act like lighthouse. If Llenn told them the direction she saw it, they just had to add (or subtract) 180 degrees to know which way to head.

“Nope, no can do. We can’t waste a single grenade we might need against that monster,” Pitohui countered promptly.

“So what should I do, then?”

“We’ll handle the street signs!” crowed Boss. “Don’t miss any of them, Tanya!”

“Roger that!” acknowledged Tanya, who was following just behind Llenn.

Don’t miss what? Llenn wondered, slowing down so she could look over her shoulder as she ran. A ray of light hung low in the sky; it resembled a shooting star, except that it curved like a parabola, and it was a vivid orange. That was a bullet, a tracer round that fizzed with light in the rear.

“A little bit to the right!” called Tanya.

Then there was another light. But this one was a bullet line.

“Oh!” Despite her panic, Llenn worked it out. The game was designed so that bullet lines were always clearly visible, regardless of distance. The line passed directly overhead in a low arc.

“That’s the angle! You got it! At this rate, you might as well aim for Mecha-Dragon! From a good, healthy distance!” Tanya called out. The line stretched out farther, made contact with the bounding beast, then extended past it.

“Now!”

A moment later, an orange tracer round shot forth, erasing the red trail.

It seemed like it was going to hit Mecha-Dragon, but instead it struck the ground to the side of it, kicking up dust.

“That was so close!” Tanya lamented.

“Okay! Well, we got the direction at least!” shouted Boss.

That told Llenn that the shot she saw was from SHINC’s Anti-M Ultimate Weapon, aka the M-Gun. Or more officially, the PTRD-41 antitank rifle.

It was a 14.5 mm–caliber monster. A bullet that large could fly over three miles if you didn’t care about direction. So they’d aimed it like a flaming arrow, then used the bullet line to calibrate the monster’s direction. Only an ultra-long-range sniper rifle could display its bullet line like that.

“That was amazing,” Llenn murmured, putting her feet back into top gear.

“You think so? We just copied you guys in SJ2,” replied Tanya.

Sixteen and a half minutes left.

Fortunately, Mecha-Dragon’s speed was just a bit slower than Llenn’s, so she was able to keep it in view. She was pacing it well, staying in range, when she heard a high-pitched engine noise.

“Hey, good effort. Nice job tracking it.”

A vehicle came roaring over with a plume of dust. It slowed down and parked to the left of Llenn.

“M! Pito!”

M was driving, and Pitohui sat in the passenger’s seat.

It was a small but tall vehicle. The full length was a bit over ten feet, with a width of around five and a half feet. Its tiny chassis left room for only two seats side by side. There were no windows and no roof, just little doors and a metal pipe frame called a roll cage.

Additionally, the automobile had a height of six feet three inches, which was considerable. That was because the suspension connecting to the tires was extraordinarily long. Beneath the body was a good foot or so of space. It looked like a turtle raised up on its tiptoes.

The color was faded here and there to match GGO’s aesthetic, but it had originally been a green-black combination. This wasn’t your typical vehicle that got a license plate, but rather a small buggy designed for high-speed off-roading. Based on the seating arrangement, it could be classified as a side-by-side vehicle.

“There’s a bed in the back. Can you jump on?”

“I’ll try… Yaaa!”

Llenn leaped as hard as she could while sprinting. She landed in the flat, shallow space in the rear of the buggy. Naturally, you would never want to ride this thing with a person sitting there in real life.

“Nice job. Hold on tight!”

Llenn grabbed the frame and M jammed harder on the gas. The buggy began to lurch and hop, going faster and faster. Now it was moving at over fifty miles per hour.

Although the ground was rough, with the occasional rock strewn along the path, with such tall suspension and the buggy’s good handling, the ride was quite steady despite the way the car seemed to wobble. Llenn wasn’t scared of being thrown off at all.

While it moved at a significant pace, it was still easier to handle than the trikes from the last Squad Jam. Those had been truly terrifying.

“You found a really wild ride!” Llenn shouted, fighting to keep her face straight into the wind.

Pitohui replied, “A couple of these boulders are dummies, just balloons. They pop if you break them. And it’s got a full tank!”

“This is the Kawasaki KRX 1000. It’s the perfect car for a place like this,” said M.

“Who cares about the name? Ugh! Men.”

“Ah-ha-ha-ha. What about the others?”

“Turn around and see.”

Doing as Pitohui said, she saw a number of other vehicles driving to the sides, trying to avoid the dust plume of the buggy.

One of them was a motorcycle. She couldn’t tell the make, but she knew it was a large off-road bike with four headlights jutting from its front. Shirley was driving it, with Clarence riding behind her.

“A motorcycle! Cool!”

Llenn could neither ride motorcycles in real life nor in GGO, so she admired the way Shirley could handle it so gallantly. Even if she was terrible with a four-wheeler.

“That’s a Yamaha Ténéré 700. A pretty simple, large off-roader. I’m noticing…lots of Japanese vehicles here.”

“Who cares about the name and other trivia? Ugh! Men.”

“Ah-ha-ha-ha.”

The motorcycle had a higher speed than the buggy, so it easily passed them by.

“Later!”

A further glance revealed Fukaziroh, riding the exact same buggy. There was no one in the passenger seat with her.

“Yoo-hoo, Llenn. I caught up,” she said, beaming. She had a driver’s license in the real world and also played lots of racing games, so her handling was impressive.

“Yoo-hoo, Fuka. Can I join you?” Llenn asked, preparing to leap over.

“Sorry, babe! On a date with my boyfriend. Some other time?”

As she drove up, Llenn noticed that there was, in fact, a little black dog sitting in the other seat.

“Oh…okay…”

Another one of the buggies came along next, with Sophie at the wheel and Boss as the passenger. Anna sat in the rear with her feet sticking out, and Tanya had hopped on to stand next to her, clutching the frame. Since there wasn’t much room in there to begin with, it seemed quite cramped.

Sophie looked uncomfortable driving the car, but she was doing her best.

Where are Rosa and Tohma?

Llenn looked around and spied them riding a vehicle other than a buggy. They were all the way in the back of the formation, in a sidecar motorcycle. That meant it was a motorcycle with an extra attachment on its right side that could seat another person in an asymmetrical fashion. It was painted a faded rouge.

Tohma was commanding the bike, with its round front light, classic style, and wide handlebars, while Rosa sat in the hack, or the sidecar portion. She’d propped the PKM against the frame so she could shoot ahead or to the right as they rode.

“A sidecar! Amazing!”

Llenn couldn’t drive, so she only knew sidecars for their reputation of being difficult to maneuver. It was certainly in the spirit of GGO to not give the player any assistance maneuvering the machine, yet Tohma was admirably keeping it under control.

“That’s a Russian sidecar, the Ural. They started copying German sidecars in the war but kept updating it over the years. You can still buy them new. Plus, it has two-wheel drive on the sidecar side, which means you can drive one with a normal auto license in Japan.”

“Who cares about the name and history and drive type and licensing specifications? Ugh! Men,” Pitohui ranted, completing the trifecta. “Anyway, no wonder Tohma’s got it down. The Crushin’ Russian.”

That reminded Llenn that Milana was playing as Tohma. She’d lived in Japan a long time and spoke fluent Japanese, but she was still a beautiful Russian blond, no doubt about that.

Her car-loving father had also taught her how to drive back home. She was the only woman in SHINC who could handle a manual transmission. In all likelihood, her father had raised her to operate the vehicle, insisting that if you couldn’t drive a Russian sidecar motorcycle, you weren’t fit to be Russian, or something like that. That had to be it. Okay, maybe it wasn’t, but she sure looked cool right now.

“All right! Then let’s chase down this scaredy-cat boss!” Llenn cheered triumphantly, as the countdown hit fifteen minutes.

“We don’t have much time, so once we reach it, we just gotta blitz it. And pay close attention to where your hit lands and how much damage you do! There’s got to be a weakness somewhere!” Pitohui commanded. The rest of the group chimed in.

“You can do it, Shirley! Let’s land the first harpoon!”

“Like I need you to tell me!”

Despite having the two riders, the vehicle in the lead was the motorcycle with the best combination of weight and skill behind it. They approached the rear-left leg of Mecha-Dragon, which was bounding along, and began to pace behind it at a distance of just thirty feet.

The digital speedometer revealed that they were going thirty-fives miles per hour. So that was the monster’s top running speed.

Each flick of the tail, which hovered aboveground, swept dangerously close to the motorcycle.

“Hey, Shirley! We’re too close! The tail’s scaring me!”

“Shut up! Be willing to die! Now shoot!”

“This is partner abuse,” Clarence grumbled, sticking out the AR-57 with her right hand and holding on to the bike with her left for dear life. She fired the gun on automatic, its high-pitched rattle clattering off the dusty wasteland.

At this range, she couldn’t miss. Sparks flew from the dragon’s tail here and there.

“We hit the tail! No good! No damage at all!”

Like Llenn’s first shot, it had done no damage. The meter was still at 100, of course.

“Can you hit its legs?” Pitohui asked.

“I’ll try!”

Clarence gave it another shot, this time on the rear-left leg.

Despite its joint being exposed, neither a well-placed shot nor a series of blasts could scratch the creature’s hit points by even a single percent.

“Nothing doing! I’m out of ammo!” Clarence barked; she’d drained fifty shots. Consequently, Shirley had to drift farther away from Mecha-Dragon to safely slow down, so her partner could use both hands on the reload.

“We’re up next!”

“Raaah!”

That was Rosa and Tohma, raring to go. Tohma pulled the motorcycle sidecar up behind Mecha-Dragon, and Rosa blasted the PKM through the dust that had been kicked up.

With the support of the hack holding it steady, the machine gun maintained a high precision position. Every one of its shots struck the beast’s tail, body, and rear legs, producing a shower of sparks that burst like fireworks in an impressive display.

“Even that’s no good?!”

After nearly a hundred powerful 7.62 × 54 mm R rounds, they had done no actual damage. The number still read 100.

“Okay, we’re up next!”

The buggy with four SHINC members, including Boss, rushed over in a hurry.

“Sophie, get us in ahead of it!”

“You got it!”

The eyes of SHINC’s driver were bloodshot from the sheer nerves required to maneuver the automobile, but she jammed on the gas and swerved out of the way of rocks as the buggy overtook Mecha-Dragon on the left side. They’d gotten around it in front of its vicious face.

“We’re gonna drop grand grenades! Look out in the rear!” Boss warned, producing the large plasma grenades from her inventory and handing some to Anna and Tanya. The three bombs were set to a four-second timer.

“Ready! Ready! Ready! And…now!”

The gymnastics team lived up to their reputation. Their timing on the throws was perfectly coordinated.

Three watermelons hit the ground and rolled away into the distance, and Mecha-Dragon ran directly over them. Perfectly timed at four seconds, right as the grand grenades were about to pass under the huge red body— Ba-ching!

The monster flashed. Its body blazed as though it were a lightbulb burning itself out.

“Huh…?”

It stepped on the grand grenades and kept running, stomp-stomp-stomp.

“Uh…what…?” Boss muttered.

“Hey, what’s wrong? They didn’t explode. Did you get the timer wrong?” wondered Pitohui.

“I think…it must have deactivated them,” Boss muttered, as she couldn’t think of any other explanation.

“An electromagnetic pulse,” mused M, who had witnessed the flash. “It fried the plasma grenades’ electric fuses with an EM pulse. The flash was just there to sell the effect to us.”

“Kahhh! Damn, that’s a mecha for you! They do things no ordinary Japanese dragon can!” complained Pitohui. The fact was, however, that there were no dragons in Japan, ordinary or otherwise.

“Dammiiiiit!” screamed Boss, who’d been certain this would work. Her face was so screwed up with rage that it would send small children to tears if they saw it. The good part, however, was that the EMP hadn’t knocked out the buggy’s electronics. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to drive.

“Is this supposed to mean…we can’t use plasma grenades on it at all?” Llenn asked.

“So it seems,” M was forced to conclude.

“Aaaargh! What the hell, man? Screw this!” raged Fukaziroh. “That messes up my years-long plan to hit that sucker with Rightony and Leftonia, splatter its guts into the dust, then serve Suuzaburou the finest sirloin steak I can cut off of it!”

That was the first Llenn had ever heard of this plan. It was utterly inessential information.

The remaining time was 13:05.

Tanya said, “Anna mentioned this was a scenario from the author’s story, right? Were there any hints in there on how to beat the meownster?”

She dropped into cat speak every now and then, but she could get away with it because it was cute.

Yeah! That’d be purrfect! Llenn thought. The rest of the group waited with bated breath for the answer.

“The truth is: I couldn’t tell you more back then,” Anna admitted, disappointing them all, “because the book isn’t out yet!”

Huh?

They were stunned.

“I’m sorry, Pitohui. I should have interrupted to tell you this before. The novel’s been delayed month after month. The only reason I’d known what I’d mentioned earlier is because it was on the sales blurb!”

No way! Llenn was shocked and disappointed they wouldn’t unearth a good hint out of it.

“Ahhh, I get it! So that’s what’s going on! Damn that writer!” roared Pitohui, who seemed to have understood his plan.

“What does it mean?” Llenn asked.

She spelled it out to the group. “If it’s been delayed, it’s because he hasn’t finished writing it! He’s out of ideas! So he’s going to use this fight to give him inspiration to finish the thing!”

“Ohhh…”

That explained it. And the source of Pitohui’s anger.

M deftly steered the buggy around a large boulder. “It’s like using a tabletop RPG as the groundwork for your novel. You’re certainly going to get a wider range of ideas than if they all popped out of one person’s head.”

“Yep! He’s going to use all our ingenuity for his own personal benefit. He figures whatever team survives this long is going to be good enough that he can pit them against an impossible foe, and they’ll find just the trick to defeat it!”

“That’s simply ghastly, Pito,” added Llenn, though she was smiling as she said it. “So let’s take this thing out in such a ridiculously over-the-top way that either his readers think he’s full of it, or his editor turns him down for not being realistic enough!”

She’d managed to pump up the team’s morale with that speech, but at the same time, she couldn’t help but wonder, And how exactly are we going to do that? Fortunately, she was shrewd enough not to ask that out loud.

How do you beat a mechanical dragon anyway?

Remaining time: eleven and a half minutes.

Buggies, motorcycles, and sidecars kept pace alongside the bounding beast as their drivers brainstormed a way to take it down.

Clarence was the first to propose an idea.

“Hey, Shirley! You have that long rope, right? Let’s tie up its legs and bring it down! They did that to this big elephanty robot in an old sci-fi movie once!”

“If we’re thinking of the same movie…they were flying planes, right? On a motorcycle, it’s just going to drag us behind it. But hey, it’s bad form to give up on something before trying it, so it’s all you. Go ahead and take the bike, though I hate to give it up. Good luck.”

“No way.”

That was that.

“Could we try hitting it with a normal grenade? If we can at least make it stop, that might give us an opening,” Rosa suggested.

“Ooh! And try it we shall!” Boss announced boldly, like a samurai. She prepared for another round of explosive attacks.

“Watch out in the rear! Yaaah!”

The same members tossed some Russian RGD-5 antipersonnel grenades overboard.

Llenn saw the trio of explosions near the enormous creature’s legs. Black smoke erupted, followed by a ba-ba-boom.

“No good…”

It hadn’t amounted to anything. A hand grenade could blow up a person, but it was totally inadequate for stopping a monster of this size.

Mecha-Dragon continued its inexorable charge, shaking the ground around it. Where was it heading?

“Could we use a grand grenade to create a huge hole in front of it?” Sophie wondered.

Interesting. That way it should blow up without the EM pulse interfering, right? Llenn thought.

“If there’s a hole, it’ll probably just jump over it or run around it,” M countered. That made sense.

“Does someone want to try hopping onto it?” Boss asked.

“Hmmm, I don’t know if that’s going to work,” speculated Pitohui. As the resident madwoman with the lightswords, she seemed like the best candidate. Leaping onto a wildly moving object was inherently risky. If she misjudged her jump at this speed, then falling to the hard ground below would be enough to kill her. “It’s not that I fear for my life, okay?” she added. “I would easily give up one or two lives for all of you.”

Oh, so she’s afraid of dying, Llenn realized.

“What’s the weak point of a machine?” asked Tohma, driving the sidecar motorcycle.

“Like…moisture? A computer breaks if you dump water on it, right?” noted Rosa, who was seated in the sidecar.

“That might not be bad,” responded Pitohui, actually optimistic for once. “But does anyone have any liquid?”

There was an awkward silence for several seconds.

Then Llenn raised her hand.

“Uh, me.”