Sword Art Online Alternative – Gun Gale Online - Volume 10 - Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

Vanquishing Crabs

—The Fourth Ordeal II—

“Well, I’m shocked and kind of annoyed, but nice job today!”

“Hey, thanks!”

“Now let’s go— Raaaaaah!”

Ten minutes remained. The moment the wristwatch displayed 1:20, with M driving the buggy, Pitohui hurled the cylindrical object with inhuman strength.

It was the thermos full of Llenn’s tea.

Then she pulled the M870 Breacher shotgun from her left side and blasted it. The buckshot punched a number of holes in the thermos in midair, spilling tea as it fell toward Mecha-Dragon’s head.

Brown liquid splashed onto its reddish cranium—and the beast screeched.

“Graaah!”

It was only a tiny splash on a small portion of Mecha-Dragon, but it swung its long neck back and forth in apparent agony, lost its balance, and fell over to the left.

“Yesss!”

Then the sideways body of the creature began to roll.

“Huh? M…! Look out!”

It barreled toward their buggy, clearly on purpose.

“Ah!”

M yanked left on the wheel. The automobile’s center of gravity shifted hard to the right, and it eventually made a successful turn, rear wheels skidding, just as the long tail of the rolling creature bore down on them.

Nothing but red tail was visible overhead.

Uh, we might be dead.

Llenn was preparing for the worst when it whizzed past just above their heads. There had been barely inches to spare.

“Wowzers, that was a close one,” commented Fukaziroh, who’d seen it all from behind. She braked gently to adjust; you had to be careful when there was a dog in the car.

Mecha-Dragon had stopped rolling and was now upturned on its back; off to its side, she noticed a new number.

Remaining hit point percentage…50.

Various cheers and shouts of triumph rang out from the group.

Mecha-Dragon was stuck on its back, fat legs kicking helplessly in the air. Its stomach glowed red and dull.

“Eat this!”

The motorcycle sidecar was closest to its head, so they opened attack with the PKM. Sparks erupted from all over the target, but its hit points weren’t dropping.

Yet when the bullets made contact with its head, there was movement. The 50 on the gauge pinged down to 49 after about ten shots.

“The head! It’s working! We can grind it down!” Rosa reported.

Pitohui relayed her instructions to the group. “You heard that, everybody?! Aim for the head! Attack with the sun at your back!”

SHINC members were already advancing into proper formation to avoid a cross-fire situation, in which people attacking the same target from opposite sides accidentally shot one another past it.

Sophie stopped her car fifty yards to the south of the downed beast, and the team let loose. Boss fired the Vintorez from the passenger seat, and Anna and Tanya shot from the rear bed with their Dragunov and Bizon. Lastly, Sophie herself let go of the wheel and used the GM-94 to blast grenades.

A deluge of bullets struck the machine’s red cranium, which turned orange with sparks. Grenades exploded on its surface. When they finished their magazines, they exchanged them for new ones, then shot, shot, and shot again.

“Grind it! Grind it down! We can do this!” encouraged Boss. The number was indeed dropping. It went to 45, then 43, then 40…

“Once you figure it out, it’s kind of anticlimactic,” mumbled Shirley, who stopped her motorcycle behind SHINC’s buggy. She was going to pull her sniper rifle out of storage but decided it wasn’t necessary.

“Do you really think it’s just going to end like this, Shirley?” asked Clarence, holding her around the midriff from behind.

“Huh?”

“Big foes like this never get serious until they’re under thirty percent.”

“Clare’s right. You might want to back up a bit, Boss,” warned Pitohui, whose buggy was even farther away.

“No worries! We’ll take it down ourselves!” replied Boss. She and her teammates continued blasting.

The overturned mecha-dragon craned its long neck and struggled, but the head was so large that it wasn’t hard to keep wailing on it regardless. Its stamina number dropped under 35.

Is this really going to be the end of the ordeal? Are we getting through this? Llenn wondered. There was just over eight minutes left, plenty of time for them to finish it off at the current pace.

“Ah! It’s getting up!”

Nope, it wasn’t going to be that easy. The creature rolled over and promptly began to struggle to its feet right before SHINC. The number was 31.

“See, what did I say?”

“Get back!”

Sophie put the buggy in reverse, and Tohma did the same for the sidecar. The teammates stopped shooting, zooming away in their vehicles.

In the back, the duo on the regular motorcycle commented on this development.

“Ooh! That sidecar model can go in reverse!”

“Shirley, why are you getting distracted by that?”

Is Mecha-Dragon finally going to square off with us? How will it attack? Is there anything I can do with P-chan? Llenn wondered, clutching the buggy’s frame with her free hand while keeping the P90 aimed at its rising form…

“Huh? What? Whaaaat?”

The dragon ran off again.

There the beast went, thudding away across the wasteland.

“Are you kidding me?! All it’s going to do is turn tail?!” Llenn roared.

“I know; it’s disappointing. Especially for someone like you, who lives to shed the blood of everything that breathes on the battlefield.”

“I resent that remark!” she snapped back at Pitohui, not exactly denying her claims. If anything, it was a tacit agreement.

“I can’t believe this thing!” Boss seethed as well. No matter what they did to it, the creature just fled. Shifting from reverse to drive again, they resumed their pursuit of Mecha-Dragon, who was now down to 30 percent.

“Good grief.” Shirley sighed, putting her hog into gear.

“Good grief.” Fukaziroh sighed, taking her foot off the brake pedal.

The monster was actually faster now, closing in on fifty miles per hour. Their vehicles would have to hit highway speeds in order to close the gap.

About twenty seconds after starting the pursuit again, the rocks that had dotted the landscape all but disappeared. The same was true for the divots in the earth.

It was as if they were traveling across a brown sea. Before them lay nothing but hard earth underfoot that continued all the way to the horizon, absent a single feature.

“What basic-ass graphics! Did they skimp out on map space?!” Pitohui raged.

“Hey, it makes it easier to drive,” M admitted. They might as well have been on asphalt. He could close his eyes and still go perfectly straight.

Llenn watched over the top of the buggy at SHINC’s automobile and the sidecar motorcycle, fervently pursuing the giant beast two hundred yards ahead on a diagonal. They were like a swarm of orcas taking down a much larger whale.

Occasionally, a flash of light and sound would occur as they fired on its bobbing head. Bit by bit, the number on the side of Mecha-Dragon dropped by one or two points at a time.

Six minutes to go.

“Huh? Is it just going to end like this?” wondered Clarence, who was usually the last to pick up on things.

“Hang on, I see something. Up ahead on the horizon,” murmured Fukaziroh lazily. She was driving on the right edge of their formation, the farthest in the back, to avoid all the dust plumes from the other vehicles.

Hmm? Letting the P90 drop on her sling, Llenn brought the monocular up to her eye. She scanned above the horizon.

“Euuuugh!” she exclaimed once she recognized the object in full detail.

“What?” demanded Pitohui from the front seat.

Llenn had no other option than to tell the plain truth.

“Another…mecha-dragon… A blue one! Coming this way!”

“I knew this thing wouldn’t be that simple,” frothed Clarence with excitement.

“Are you kidding me? What do we do now?” asked Boss, whose team was still busy attacking.

“We’ll have to split apart for the moment,” Pitohui ordered. SHINC obeyed. The buggy and sidecar drifted off to the left.

M turned to the right, and Shirley and Fukaziroh followed his lead.

Through the monocular, Llenn watched the red mecha-dragon race onward, directly toward its blue counterpart, which was close enough to make out with the naked eye and looked exactly the same, color aside.

More dust clouds kicked up behind the blue beast. Before Llenn could even home in on them with her monocular, Anna’s scope did the job.

She reported, “More vehicles! Behind the blue one! The same buggies…five of them!”

“Huh? What does that mean?!” Llenn exclaimed.

But Pitohui seemed to have grasped the situation. “It’s fairly obvious—”

Before she could say it, Suuzaburou interrupted.

“The victory conditions for this ordeal have been updated.”

“The fourth ordeal has entered its second stage. The countdown clock will be reset.”

In the upper right of her view, the countdown had stopped at 05:14. That was a welcome change, of course.

“Your requirements will remain the same. Please defeat the target you have labeled Mecha-Dragon.”

“And what about the other one?” Llenn asked.

“There is no need to destroy anything other than the target. That is all from me. Good luck.”

“All right. But what’s that other one coming from the distance? And who’s behind it?” Llenn asked, her mind swimming with questions.

Now Pitohui had the chance to say what she was mentioning earlier.

“Another team working on this quest, trying to defeat a different mecha-dragon. We’ve linked up with another group again.”

“Ah, that makes sense…”

Two mechanical monsters, red and blue, rapidly converged.

The other one was going at the same speed, but because they were traveling toward each other, it created an optical illusion that made them look much faster.

They zoomed toward each other, seemingly about to collide, and just when it seemed unavoidable—they did collide.

The shock waves from the impact of the red and blue dragons felt like a heavyweight sumo bout. Their chests smashed and lifted upward with momentum, thrusting each of them dozens of feet into the air.

Once they hit the peak of their height, they flashed.

“Ah, that’s bright!”

Everyone shut their eyes against the light.

When they could open their lids again, Llenn and the others beheld something new.

The mecha-dragons had fused in the sky.

“Huh? A crab…?”

Their tails intertwined so that the monsters had attached back to back. Then they combined into a single body, blue on the right and red on the left.

The rear legs had fused and were no longer visible. Their heads stretched luridly away from each other, flanking the body and opening their jaws wide, so that the entire form looked like a crab with two outstretched claws.

What had been their front legs jutted out to the left and right, so that they instead resembled the limbs of a crab. Just with two fewer on either side.

“If we have to call it something, I’d say it’s a crab,” Fukaziroh agreed.

“If we have to decide now, it’s a crab,” Pitohui agreed.

“Yep, it’s a crab,” M agreed.

“So what now? Do we stop saying Mecha-Dragon and switch to Mecha-Crab instead? It’s harder to say,” whined Clarence.

“Forget that! What about the other team?” Boss demanded, trying to get them off the topic of crustaceans. A rival team was taking part in the ordeal on five buggies. They were heading straight for Llenn and company.

“We’ll pass by them for now. Don’t slow down, or they might shoot us,” Pitohui advised.

Boss asked, “Should we blast them?”

“Only if they fire first.”

“Got it!” Boss complied.

After connecting together and becoming a crab, the Mecha-Dragons had landed back on the ground, allowing the group to race around the sides. The oncoming team was directly in view.

If they shoot, shoot back…

Llenn gripped the P90 harder but kept her finger off the trigger. Simply displaying a bullet line in GGO was a clear sign to your opponents that you intended to fight.

After a few tense seconds, another buggy of the same type passed by M’s at high speed. The members of the opposing team did not shoot.

“Oh!”

The instant she could make out the players on the other side, Llenn recognized a familiar face.

“Hah! I knew it!”

Sitting in the passenger seat of the buggy that passed by Llenn was a man wearing a Swedish military camo suit composed of different shades of green in a blocky pattern. He smiled menacingly. His upper-left arm bore a logo of a skull with a knife in its teeth.

The man leaned back, holding a 5.56 mm Steyr STM-556 assault rifle with grenade launcher, and spoke through his comm, “Did you all see that?” He sounded excited. Very excited. “That was Pitohui’s group!”

An elated woman’s voice rang in response. “I saw them, too. They’re teamed up with the Amazons.”

“Aha, just as we thought! So what now, Leader?”

“That’s a good question. First, I’d like to have a nice leisurely chat with Pitohui. There’s a lot of information I could glean from her.”

“Got it. Don’t shoot them until they shoot us, got it? If they fire, you fire like hell.”

Boss’s voice reached the ears of the rest of the team.

“I just saw them as we passed! It’s them! The All-Japan Machine-Gun Lovers!”

“We saw them, too! It’s MMTM! They were on three vehicles, two people each! So they’re working together…,” replied Llenn to the shock of the rest of the group.

I can’t believe it. The top overall team, MMTM, working with ZEMAL…

They were undoubtedly both powerhouses. MMTM had been a thorn in Llenn’s side too many times to count in Squad Jam. And she’d given plenty of grief back to them, too.

As for ZEMAL, they were tops in firepower and had gotten stronger with each iteration of Squad Jam. They won SJ4 by a landslide.

A mystery woman named Vivi who had shown up and taken the reins had been behind their rise to power. She knew Fukaziroh from ALO and was a serious gaming addict; there was no doubting her skill. After all, she’d turned ZEMAL into champions. ZEMAL!

“Oh! Did you see Vivi?” asked Fukaziroh, growling.

“Yep!” answered Rosa, who knew about Fuka’s grudge.

“Veevee? Who’s that?” asked Clarence; she couldn’t be blamed for that. She’d blown up spectacularly before the group came face-to-face with her in SJ4. But Shirley had been there, and she began to explain what had happened in SJ4 after that point.

“No change in the crab yet? They’d probably like to share information, I’m guessing. Can you all be patient? No shooting yet. Keep your distance from the crustacean. We don’t know how crabby it is.”

“Got it. You handle the negotiation. We’ll keep an eye on the seafood.”

So you’re just going to call it the crab, Llenn thought, disappointed. She did, however, approve of Pitohui’s plan to convene with the leader of the other team. The only question was which person was playing the role.

Eventually, a single buggy approached M’s vehicle where it sat on the dirt. It, too, was a Kawasaki KRX 1000. Both automobiles had identical paint jobs and forms, so it was difficult to tell them apart.

They could have numbered them, Llenn thought. She watched the other side approach, keeping the P90 hanging on its sling to show that she had no intention of being aggressive. Of course, it was still close enough to her person that she could grab it and fire with incredible speed if necessary.

The vehicle closed in on the left slowly, with the bandanna-wearing member of ZEMAL, Tom-Tom, in the driver’s seat. He wore their group uniform and a green fleece jacket bearing an infinity symbol logo made out of ammo belts on the right breast. Below the waist he’d opted for black combat pants.

His machine gun was an FN MAG; he typically used the “cheat code” backpack ammo-loading system that allowed it to fire a thousand rounds consecutively, although it was in his inventory right now because it would only get in the way while driving.

What was different was that Tom-Tom’s sunglasses had clear lenses now. They were a type of smart glasses you could acquire in GGO.

These special lenses could display in-depth information that supplemented the readout available to all players, and they offered better night vision in dark places. Of course, the smart glasses available in the real world weren’t nearly this effective (publicly, at least), so the ones on offer here were more befitting the futuristic setting.

In the rear of the car was another ZEMAL member, Max. He had a powerful Black avatar—the kind you were more likely to see in an American-made game like this—with a fade cut on the sides. He, too, wore smart glasses.

A rope was tied through his belt buckles, connected to the frame of the roll cage. The arrangement ensured he wouldn’t fall over when the buggy shook. A nylon resin pistol holster was attached to his right side. Resting inside of it was the American military version of SIG Sauer’s P320, an M17 9 mm automatic pistol.

There were tons of them in GGO since it was a common model of military gun. You found them in the wild quite often, so they were cheap but fairly solid—a firearm that wouldn’t let you down. The entire team must have gotten a set for the pistols-only area in SJ4.

Max carried his favorite machine gun, too, of course, but it was slightly different than before. Though Llenn, who wasn’t that much of a gun expert, had absolutely no idea what that difference was.

“Hrmm…”

“Oooh.”

M and Pitohui, however, identified it right away.

The 5.56 mm Minimi light machine gun he wielded had been subtly updated. The Mk2 basic model had been swapped out for a customized Mk 46 model used by special forces. There were actually multiple variation of Mk 46; this was the original “Mod 0” type.

What made it distinct from the Mk2 was a shortened barrel, a lack of the carrying handle, and a standardized railing around the front end of the gun body for attaching accessories.

Presumably for mobility purposes, he wasn’t using ZEMAL’s favorite backpack ammo-loading system; instead, he’d attached a hundred-round box magazine to the bottom of the gun. By contrast, when ZEMAL’s ammo system was attached, a metal rail connected the feeding slot to the backpack, which limited the directions he could turn.

A laser sight was fastened on the left side of the Mk 46’s railing. It projected both visible and invisible (infrared) light to a target distance of several hundred yards away for the purpose of aiming. Real armies commonly employed them, especially wealthy ones like the Americans, but you hardly ever saw people use them in GGO.

That was because the bullet circle rendered them obsolete. So there had to have been a reason for him to attach it.

Last was the person in the passenger seat of the approaching buggy: the mystery woman named Vivi.

“Hello, everyone. Enjoying yourselves?”

She had the beauty of an avatar who looked around twenty years old, with pale skin, gray eyes, and wine-red hair. Perhaps she had swapped out some of the colors for a better look. Her slimmed-down smart glasses were stunning. They gave her that intelligent lady look.

Clutched to her chest was a cut barrel RPD, a Soviet machine gun with a drum magazine like a candy tin. Another M17 pistol clung to her hip.

Vivi turned toward Pitohui. “May I speak with the leader of your team?”

So she’s their leader? Llenn was shocked that it wasn’t MMTM’s David calling the shots for the other allied team. But she didn’t voice this.

“Hi, Vivi!” smirked Pitohui toward the other buggy.

What’s she going to say first…? wondered Llenn, M, and Boss nervously, listening through the comm.

“And to the rest of ZEMAL, congratulations on winning SJ4!”

Oh my. Actual sportsmanship. Llenn was surprised. Impressed, in fact. If Pito wanted to be magnanimous, she could.

“We collected up all the most powerful survivors into that mall, did our damnedest to finish them off, and died in the process, so you’d better be grateful!”

Ah, classic Pito. I take it back, Llenn thought.

“All of that aside, how many of yours are alive? Still everyone?” Pitohui asked, fortunately bringing the topic back to today.

“Of course. You too?” Vivi asked.

“Obviously. I have to say, I didn’t expect to see you folks teaming up with MMTM.”

“When you want to finish the quest faster than everyone else, you join forces with the best team.”

“Ooh, ouch! Guess you picked wrong then, honey. We’re the best team.”

“It’s good to have lots of confidence. But even better when you’ve got the skill to back it up.”

This development was not particularly surprising. The women were sparring with insults. But the scary part was how they kept it so classy. Still, this wasn’t the time for bickering.

Llenn interjected, “Hey, you two! The crab! We’re supposed to be beating the crab!”

“That’s right. You’re calling it the crab? Fine, crab it is. Did you hear that, boys? Now that the ‘draggys’ have fused together, we’re just calling them the crab,” Vivi told her teammates. So they had called their target Draggy, then.

As for the crustacean, it was slowly but crabbily crawling sideways on its four forelegs on the sides of its body. That was taking it away from the group, but it was also moving much slower than ever before, so there wasn’t much worry about it fleeing from the group’s range.

Circling around the gigantic form, Boss’s and MMTM’s buggies enclosed it from a distance of a hundred yards.

As for Shirley and Clarence, they had come up on their motorcycle behind the LPFM buggy on the right side in a position to protect Pitohui, but Llenn knew better. If anything happened, and they started a furious firefight with MMTM and ZEMAL, Shirley was set to assassinate Pitohui before anyone else. She was keeping the R93 Tactical 2 on a sling in front of her chest for that very reason.

They just had to pray that the entirety of ZEMAL didn’t glance at her and think, Is that sniper on guard to shoot us? Please, don’t worry, her target is our team leader. I know that doesn’t make much sense. It’s our problem, not yours.

“What was the remaining HP on the blue one? Ours was 27,” Pitohui informed. It was only proper that she revealed her information before asking for theirs.

“16. I thought we were going to pulverize it.”

Impressive, Llenn thought. ZEMAL and MMTM had been chasing the fleeing mecha-dragon just like Llenn and company and had managed to get it that much farther down. That must have been thanks to the firepower of the Machine-Gun Lovers.

“Did you know you can’t use plasma grenades against them?” Pitohui asked.

Vivi nodded. “We tried that. Didn’t work.”

“What did you use for liquid? We used tea,” Pitohui said.

That was a good question. Llenn wondered if someone else had brought their tea into battle like she did, but Vivi’s response ruled that out.

“Coolant from the buggies we didn’t use. We collected it from a couple of them, then threw it in an ammo case.”

“Ah, I see. So you had that idea in mind. Very sharp!”

Llenn saw why Pitohui had no choice but to praise the other team’s ingenuity. At the point that the dragon started fleeing, both teams had concluded that there would have to be a way to catch up to the target. That meant the other group had immediately decided they might need the coolant from the extra vehicles to use as a weapon. You had to have some serious predictive skill to make that call on the spot.

“Aw, man! Their plan was way flashier than ours! We’re losing! They’re the ones who’ll get written into the novel!” fumed Clarence loudly from the back seat of the motorcycle.

“Hmm? What do you mean?” Vivi asked. They didn’t seem to be aware of the writer, then.

Pitohui glanced briefly at the mechanical crustacean, then went through a brief explanation of the story behind this particular ordeal.

“Ah, I see… Thanks. We had no idea about that. So that’s the backstory behind this quest,” said Vivi, who seemed to be either genuinely interested or genuinely annoyed. That impressed Llenn even more—they’d done this well without cluing in to what was going on?

At this point, Fukaziroh’s vehicle stopped circling around and rolled closer. She lined up right next to ZEMAL’s automobile, trapping it between hers and Llenn’s.

“Hey, Vivi,” she called out with a dark look in her eyes. “I don’t see your guide doggy in any of your buggies. What’s up with that?”

Really? That’s what you’re worried about? Llenn thought. The leader’s buggy was indeed dogless. Fukaziroh must have been driving around to inspect all the other vehicles.

“Oh, we left the pooch back at the starting position.”

“You! What?!”

“Hey, don’t freak out. It was for safety. Although it’s basically immortal—there’s no way to kill it.”

“How do you know that? Did you try?!”

“I told you: Don’t freak out. On the previous map, one of the enemy bullets hit it by accident. So when this ordeal started, we told it to wait there. You’ll hear its messages wherever you are anyway. Besides, isn’t it weirder to take it into battle as though you’re going on a walk?”

That’s a pretty good point, Llenn supposed.

“Hah! It seems we’re fated to never see eye to eye…”

Fuka, stop acting like some weird old guy.

“All right, everyone, let’s get along,” Pitohui insisted. “We need to defeat our respective parts of that crab. But it’s not that simple anymore. I trust we all know why?”

Llenn certainly did. When you had this many players concentrating on attacking the same target, your “allies” were going to get in your way. Both sides had a vested interest in avoiding cross fire and stray bullets.

They also had to watch out for overcrowding from all the vehicles. Nobody wanted to crash their buggies into one another.

Plus, the targets were mixed. If you attacked sloppily and hit the wrong one, you were only helping out the rival team.

“That’s right. So I have a suggestion—,” Vivi proposed.

“Got it. We’ll go with that,” interrupted Pitohui.

Uh, Pito? She didn’t say it yet, Llenn snapped—but only in her mind.

Yet somehow Vivi understood. “I’m glad you agree. So who goes first?”

“Whoever loses this,” responded Pitohui, holding out her fist.

“Got it. Here goes… Rock, paper…”

Scissors, shoot! And sure enough, Vivi played rock. Pitohui threw paper.

“Yeaaah!” Pitohui celebrated as though she were a child.

Huh? Wouldn’t you want to attack first? Llenn wondered.

“Sorry, everyone. We’re going to have to make the first strike. Be on your guard for a counterattack from the crab,” Vivi announced. That explained it; with the enemy in a new form, no one knew how it might react. Thus, the first side to attack would be at a disadvantage.

“Don’t worry about it, Leader. We’ll grind out those last sixteen points in no time,” reassured Tom-Tom.

ZEMAL had been a very merry band the last time around, but they seemed to have toned down some of their cultish zeal from SJ4, where they’d referred to Vivi as Goddess. They were still deferential to her, however.

“…Okay, got it. Pitohui, David has a message for you,” informed Vivi, having just heard him in her ear.

“Oh? What is it?”

“Have fun sitting back and watching. We’ll see you around later.”

“Ha-haaa! Send this one back to him! ‘Eek, you’re so cool! Open parenthesis, heart emoji, close parenthesis. Good luck! Daveeeeed!’”

Vivi repeated the message into her comm and quickly grimaced. You could only imagine how he would react to that one.

After that, the rival leader’s gaze sharpened behind her smart glasses. She was switching from water cooler chat mode into battle mode.

“Everyone, on high alert! We’re going with our machine-gun-centric style again! Use grenades only when you’re certain you can land the hit! You handle the aim, Max!”

“Roger that, Leader!”

Tom-Tom started driving the buggy off, while Max pressed his body against the roll cage to keep the Mk 46’s aim steady. It was pointed at the distant crab, but he hadn’t fired yet.

Instead, he switched on the laser sight. A red beam appeared from the accessory and illuminated the side of the monster’s blue head.

M started driving and pulled the buggy away from Tom-Tom’s. He murmured, “Knew it. They really thought this through.”

Llenn asked, “Thought what through?”

“Their new tactics. On Vivi’s orders, Max will point out the target with the sighting laser. In the light, he uses the optical beam, while in the darkness, he can switch to the infrared laser, which their smart glasses will pick up on night-vision mode.”

“And…what else?”

“The other members of ZEMAL aim their bullet circles at that guide to blast away. That ensures an extremely focused assault, which also doesn’t require verbal communication that could be misunderstood. Concentrated fire from a group of 7 mm machine guns is going to pin down your target, even if they’re not all hitting. Plus, it cuts down on wasted shots.”

“Meanwhile, Daveed’s group is better on mobility, so they can charge in and take advantage of its reaction, lobbing grenades, watching the vicinity, and providing support. Very shrewd, an excellent division of duty between teams,” Pitohui noted.

“Ohhhh!” Llenn exclaimed. She was impressed by both their observation skills and Vivi’s leadership.

She guessed that, in the first and second ordeals, they must have used this arrangement to effectively defeat their targets. The third ordeal, where the players’ weapons had been taken away, was more of a mystery to her, but she assumed that they probably hadn’t gone down to the wire like LPFM and SHINC did.

“The only question is why proud Daveed agreed to follow Vivi’s lead… But for now, let’s just see what they do.”

Once he was a healthy distance away from the crab, M stopped the buggy at an arbitrary location on the pondlike surface of the rock. From this point on, they would be observing. Llenn watched their rivals brawl with the beast through the monocular.

Inside the scope, she saw five buggies begin their assault on the crab. From this vantage point, it was easy to grasp the scale of the 150-foot-wide crab monster. It was like they were driving toward a building.

In front of Vivi’s buggy was another vehicle with machine guns bristling from the passenger seat and bed in the back. They approached the crustacean at an angle, circling to strike it from behind, but the creature sensed them and turned so that they ended up directly in front of it. The automobile came to a halt about 150 yards away.

MMTM’s vehicles spread out to the sides of ZEMAL’s to offer support. Just as M said, Max’s red laser sight lit up the blue head on the right half of the crab.

Their attack began.

The muzzles of the machine guns lit up, and a second later, their automatic fire reached Llenn’s ears. The blazing line of shots from the two buggies, including tracer rounds, struck the only part of the mechanical monstrosity that could be damaged: its head.

The sparks were so numerous that she couldn’t see its face nor its head anymore. Overwhelmed by the deluge of bullets, the crab swung its right pincer—or head. It was desperate and seemed to be in pain.

But streams of bullets continued to pummel the target. The machine guns were packing considerable power. Although many of the opposing team’s shots missed because the head was whipping around rapidly, they had enough output to make up for that.

The crab scrambled backward, but the machine guns continued to fire. Llenn couldn’t see the hit points of the blue one, but it had to be taking serious damage.

“Is it just me…or are they likely to finish it off soon…?” she wondered, peering through the monocular.

“Uh-oh, are they gonna get it done first?” Pitohui asked, too.

Boss brought her buggy around behind them. “What happens in that case…? If one half of it dies, what about the other half…?”

“Dunno. Let’s just hope our half dies with—”

“Wait!” Anna shouted, cutting off Pitohui.

She’d been peering through some large binoculars, so she could see it better than anyone else. The left side of the crab—the red pincer that Llenn’s team had been chasing—was reaching over toward ZEMAL, its jaw opening.

“Red mouth! Here comes something!”

And that was when the counterattack began.

“Here it comes! Look out!” yelled David.

Everyone in ZEMAL heard him since their comms were linked. Tom-Tom and Peter, the two drivers, jammed on the gas. They were already in reverse gear, so their buggies zoomed backward.

Shinohara and Huey had been standing in the rear of the cars to shoot. The sudden reversal shook them up quite a bit. Huey, in particular, nearly lost his balance and fell off, but he recovered and stayed in his vehicle through sheer strength.

“Gaaaah!”

Something blue erupted out of the red maw and struck the ground where the buggy had been just half a second before.

A laser? Llenn and everyone else thought.

That was because the blue light shot forth with phenomenal speed and stabbed into the ground faster than they could see.

“Huh…?”

But once the dust cleared, the blue object was still stuck in the ground.

It was several inches in diameter and about ten feet long.

“Ice…?”

A long, thin pillar of ice.

A beautiful, pale icicle, stabbed at an angle into the earth.

“Yeeep! That one! Was bad!” screamed Peter.

If he’d been a split second slower to step on the gas, the frozen spike would have speared the buggy. He was the smallest member of ZEMAL, whose trademark detail was the tape over his nose. As the car backed away as fast as it could, he called to his teammates, “Sorry for driving so erratically! You okay?”

Black-haired Shinohara with the M60E3 in the passenger seat replied, “More or less!”

He was clutching his chest with his left hand. When the buggy slammed into reverse, he’d smashed into the handle near the dashboard. He’d even lost a few hit points.

“Yeah! I’m alive!” managed Huey, the macho man with his brown hair slicked back, from the rear bed. He’d flipped completely off his feet, and they were both sticking up into the air. But he never let go of his M240B machine gun, which was attached by a rail to his backpack.

The red mouth opened again, pointed at the two retreating vehicles—but it did not emit a pillar of ice this time.

It was hail. An absolute deluge of frozen orbs.

The rounded chunks of ice, about four inches across, shot out all at once like shotgun pellets. It must’ve been the same kind of ice as the pillar, only crunched up inside the dragon’s mouth.

“Wha—?”

Peter saw the hundreds of ice pellets spreading out in an array before him but realized it was too wide for him to be able to avoid through steering.

“Sheeit!”

He yanked the wheel to the right in the midst of a full-speed reverse.

A shotgun blast typically struck all at once. This hail was the same; hundreds of spots on the brown earth over a range of a few hundred feet spat up dust simultaneously. The ice shattered on the hard surface, glittering in the sun.

Llenn watched everything happen.

“Aaaah!”

Tom-Tom’s buggy was outside the attack range, but Peter’s was obscured with dust—right in the midst of the offensive spray.

“They’re down!” Llenn wailed, as though it were her own companions who’d been hit.

Within three seconds, the brown mist had cleared, giving her a view through her monocular.

“Huh? Oh! Wow! They’re alive!”

Beside the overturned buggy, all three members of ZEMAL were running. Scratch that, they were sprinting. Fleeing for their lives.

A fair amount of damage glowed on their bodies, but none were dead. They were bolting away for all they were worth, lugging along their heavy machine guns with one hand.

The overturned vehicle wasn’t so fortunate—both of its right tires had blown off, and its body was heavily damaged. The fact that it hadn’t vanished was a sign that it could be fixed and used again, but that wasn’t going to happen in a matter of seconds.

“Were they just lucky…?” she wondered.

“No,” M replied. “The driver flipped the buggy on purpose. He pulled into an extreme turn in a very risky way. Since it flipped over, the ice hit the underside of the vehicle—and unlike bullets, ice isn’t that hard. All the pieces shattered, so none of them went through the metal.”

“Ohhh!”

Llenn was impressed by the split-second decision-making that saved the lives of the driver and his companions, but it also meant one of the buggies was now wrecked. Considering using vehicles was the entire point of this engagement, that was a considerable loss in attack power.

ZEMAL’s remaining buggy and MMTM’s three all stopped firing and took their distance. The three on their own booked it with their backs to the crab, as fast as they could. Fortunately, there was no extra attack coming.

The crustacean, meanwhile, thudded slowly sideways while looming over the earth, impossible to read. Next to the red head was the same number as before: twenty-seven.

The bout had ended in the span of less than a minute.

“Mmm-hmm. That was very instructive. Thank you for the lesson,” Pitohui murmured happily. Llenn couldn’t see it from the rear of the buggy, but she was sure that Pitohui had the most wicked smirk on her face.

“If you attack, the other head delivers a fierce counterattack…,” stated Boss. That seemed correct. If so, it left them with only one option.

“Okay, Llenn. Get off,” M ordered. She did as he instructed and jumped off the bed. The car’s total elevation was much higher than her actual height, but she’d jumped inside in the first place, so it wasn’t a problem for her.

M got out of the driver’s seat and materialized the backpack he had in his inventory. He quickly retrieved the shield from inside. The eight plates were spread into a fan shape, but he pulled them apart. Each one was a piece of spaceship armor, roughly twenty by twelve inches in size. He began to attach them to the pipe frame around the driver’s seat.

“Here you go!”

Pitohui used the best friend of all Americans, her trusty roll of duct tape, to wrap the shields to the frame.

The automobile now had plating around the driver’s seat. There were two plates each on the left and right, two over the front, and two overhead. The effect was a very rough, homemade armored car. At the very least, it should protect M from ice pellets in the front and above. The gap between two consecutive plates barely measured two inches, just enough to stick a gun barrel between.

“Nice! So this is for attacking, huh?” Llenn said, excited.

“Yes. I want the person with the highest attack power to sit in here, though.”

“Meaning?”

Llenn was thinking he meant Rosa, who had her PKM machine gun.

“No. Someone from ZEMAL.”

“Excuse me, Shirl? Would you call Vivi over here?”

Shirley fumed at the nickname and the errand request but did as she was asked. Approaching Tom-Tom’s buggy, which had returned from the battleground, she sent the request message to Vivi in the passenger seat.

Eventually, her own vehicle made its way over toward Pitohui’s, where she muttered bitterly, “First I lost the game of rock-paper-scissors, then I nearly lost my teammates.”

“Sounds like you’ve had some bad luck,” smirked Pitohui.

I’m guessing she’s not faking that smile. She’s just happy that things turned out exactly the way she anticipated, Llenn thought.

“I already know what you’re going to say, so can it. You’re not going to bother attacking just on your own, are you? It seems clear to me. We’ll have to bring it down with our forces combined,” Vivi said. Pitohui gave her a very satisfied smile.

I’m glad she didn’t say something like “It’s your turn now! Go out there and die!” thought Llenn, relieved.

Pitohui gestured toward the armor plating on their buggy and announced, “Ta-daa! This will easily help us withstand the ice shotgun. Now it can get in close, absorb all the damage, and still attack. So with that in mind, can we borrow one of your gunners?”

Her request came in the same tone that one would use to go next door and borrow a bottle of soy sauce.

“……”

Vivi hesitated. In a sense, she was also asking to borrow one of their own soldiers for a decoy plan that was highly likely to end in death. But she hadn’t come up with a better alternative on her own.

“Tom-Tom, can you do that?”

“I’d love to, Leader!” he shouted, as though he were her employee, hopping out of the driver’s seat. He waved his left hand and materialized his FN MAG 7.62 mm machine gun and its backpack ammo-loading system.

MMTM’s three cars came up alongside Pitohui’s. They were riding two to each vehicle, just as they did with the hovercraft in SJ1.

The driver of the first car was the short, black-haired Kenta, with the G36K. In the passenger seat was the large Summon, with the SCAR-L assault rifle. Both of them, of course, were wearing smart glasses.

In another buggy sat Lux, who always wore sunglasses. In his case, the smart glasses’ functions had probably been installed on his usual pair. He’d lost his MSG90 automatic sniper rifle due to a high-speed traffic accident in the most recent Squad Jam. That had been Fukaziroh’s fault.

Hence why he was using a 5.56 mm assault rifle this time. It was a Type 20, a domestic rifle that the Self-Defense Force started using in 2020, a rare drop. He was the biggest gun nut on the team, so he’d undoubtedly brought it from his collection. A short scope was attached to the weapon; like David, he could work as a close-range sharpshooter.

MMTM’s leader, David, took up the passenger seat of that car. “So it’s come to this anyway. Well, I’m not surprised,” he admitted.

Behind the wheel of the final vehicle was Bold, the dreadlocked wielder of a Beretta ARX160 assault rifle. Jake was standing in its bed, holding a 7.62 mm machine gun, the HK21.

Additionally, all six members of MMTM were outfitted with their pistols from the last Squad Jam, Beretta APX 9 mm handguns attached to their belts. David was the outlier, with a Steyr M9-A1, plus a lightsword.

“Hi there. We had quite a double kill last time, huh?” Pitohui smiled. She and the MMTM leader had a furious rivalry. “But I looked at the video and measured very closely. I died about point-five seconds later than you, so technically, I won that fight.”

“……”

Pito’s really got a talent for making him angry, Llenn thought, wisely choosing not to say that out loud.

Careful not to set off David, whose temple veins were pulsing, M interjected, “I’ll drive and put us right up front. I plan to escape as quickly as possible, but I expect that whatever machine gunner is with me could possibly get wiped out.”

“Yeah, I know that,” said Tom-Tom. “I’m not gonna let you guys have all the glory.”

The members of MMTM whistled and cheered.

Vivi asked the obvious question: “But which one should the rest of us attack?”

Naturally, each group’s completion was on the line, so they wanted to blitz their own target. They were all itching to move on to the next ordeal with a head start over the competition.

M answered, “Whichever one you want. Striking your own color will lower its hit points but make the attacks from the other color worse. You could choose to fire at the other one to prevent that or try to take out both heads together at the right opportunity. As long as we’re not hitting each other, we should be free to adapt to the fight as needed.”

“Interesting. That sounds fine,” acknowledged Vivi, watching the scampering crab in the distance. “I’d like to have a strategy meeting. Can you give me two minutes?”

“All right.”

They had agreed upon a cooperative battle plan.

M shut off his comm and climbed into the buggy with Tom-Tom. Each man left his team behind. Since Llenn and Pitohui had lost their vehicle, she went over to Fukaziroh’s buggy and begged, “Fuka, give me a ride! I already asked you once.”

“Damn, I guess I have no choice, huh? But only this once,” Fukaziroh reluctantly agreed. Suuzaburou got onto her lap. Even now, it seemed that the option of dropping him off in a safe location never occurred to her.

M and Tom-Tom were on their own now, no longer surrounded by any other cars or people.

The machine gunner rested his backpack ammo-loading system on the bed and brought the rail up in front of him. The barrel of the FN MAG stuck out between the armor plates. He was ready to shoot for all he was worth in the passenger seat.

“Let’s do this, M. Drive with all you’ve got!”

“Yeah. Same with your shooting.”

“Don’t worry! By the way, you’re still not selling your MG42, are you?”

“Nope. Even though I haven’t shot it in forever.”

“The god of machine guns longs for you to give it to us.”

“Sorry, but I’ve got my own goddess, and every now and then she demands to use it. I can’t let go of that gun.”

“Well, that sounds pretty final. But if she ever gets tired of it, sell it to me.”

Two buggies, one sidecar, and one motorcycle huddled for an eleven-person strategy meeting.

“As you heard, M’s going to draw all the damage toward himself. Of course, that’s no guarantee that we won’t be attacked at all. But in the meantime, we’re going to focus our firepower to get those hit points ticking down. Ideally more than the other side does, but they’ve got a big lead, so that might be impossible. We should pay attention to when the blue head hits zero,” Pitohui announced. “And when that happens, be careful not to let any stray bullets hit the other team. That’s a warning. Okay? Just a warning. I can check the warning off the list now.”

Llenn and the others got the gist. If a bullet does go their way and hits them, that would be a real shame. Sometimes, stuff happens.

On that topic, Llenn turned her thoughts to Shirley. She’s probably thinking that if a bullet does go Pito’s way and hits her, it would be a real shame. But sometimes stuff happens, you know?

That was Shirley’s reason for participating in these quests in the first place, so it was fine. In all honesty, Llenn just didn’t want any of these stray rounds hitting her during the shenanigans to come.

Boss asked, “We’ve got two cars, a sidecar motorcycle, and a regular motorcycle. Each one has different characteristics and different types of mobility. Can we make use of that somehow?”

It wasn’t a surprise to hear that question coming from Boss, who was quite cognizant about how bodies moved in real life. That was the sort of thing Llenn would never think to ask about.

“Good point. Motorcycles are advantageous because of their high speed and small size, so it would help if we could have them rush around and keep the enemy at bay.”

“Absolutely not. If we get hit with anything at all, we’ll spin out. And I’m a sniper. I shoot the target in the head from a distance. That’s what I do,” harrumphed Shirley. It made sense to Llenn.

“I’ll stay in the back, too,” added Tohma, SHINC’s sniper.

Sophie got down from the driver’s seat and materialized the PTRD-41 antitank rifle she kept with her. She was responsible for holding the firearm, along with using her shoulder as a base so Tohma could fire it.

Naturally, that meant losing a person to drive the sidecar motorcycle, so Rosa had to get into the back of Boss’s buggy and rest the PKM atop the cage.

“What do we do about the Ural?” Boss asked.

“No problem. I’ll do my best to drive it. I’ve never done it before, but it’ll work out, I bet. And Llenn can ride in the sidecar.”

No way, thought Llenn, before realizing she couldn’t turn the suggestion down. So instead, she asked, “What are we supposed to be doing, then?”

“Riding all around the crab, of course…”

“And attacking as much as we can while M’s drawing its damage on himself?”

It would be best if Llenn could drive the sidecar motorcycle so Pitohui could concentrate on shooting, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen. She hoped people weren’t expecting too much from her P90 against that gigantic monster, but she was part of the team, so she had to do something to help.

Summoning her courage, she asked about that arrangement, but Pitohui replied, “Huh? No way. Riding around helps us avoid trouble. Surviving this battle is our strategy.”

“Whaaaat?” Llenn gasped.

“All right, everyone, listen closely. Teacher’s going to explain something very important right now. I want you to only think about survival from here on out. Leave the main offense to M and the other team. But if we’re too obvious about staying out of trouble, our opponents will freak out, so put on a show for them. The snipers will be perfect for that. Just pop off some shots from a distance. You don’t even need to land them. Just demonstrate how enthusiastic we are about the battle,” Pitohui explained shamelessly.

Boss nodded. “Noted. No point in jockeying with them right now. We’ve still have another ordeal left after this. Everyone got that? Our strategy is all-out preservation!”

“Okay!” agreed SHINC in unison.

“That was my plan all along,” muttered Fukaziroh, who was back to driving around with her dog again.

As long as they don’t find out what we’re up to, thought Llenn.

But Pitohui jerked her out of her reverie by shouting, “Come on, Llenn! Get in! You’re in the sidecar for our date!” And so she clambered into another strange vehicle.

About a minute before this, Vivi and David were conferring, watching LPFM in the distance.

“What do you think Pitohui’s team is going to do, David?”

“Easy. I guarantee you they won’t really strike the target. They’re going to do the minimum to avoid getting yelled at and let us do the dirty work.”

“Yes. My thoughts exactly.”

Pitohui’s plan was completely busted. Or maybe scheme was more appropriate.

“But the real key will be M and Tom-Tom, who’ll bear the brunt of the monster’s damage. We’ll take it down while they’re occupied and get moving to the next ordeal.”

“Agreed. And when the time comes, we’ll do like always.”

Once their strategy meetings had ended, Pitohui patched in to M, and Vivi contacted Tom-Tom.

“All right, M. As the representative male of the group, it’s your duty to die and look good doing it.”

“Tom-Tom, this might sound cruel, but we’re counting on you to carry us through.”

Both messages had essentially the same sentiment, but the amount of kindness put into each one couldn’t have been more disparate.

“Got it.”

“Gladly.”

Yet the two men were full of the exact same determination.

They shared a brief glance and some words of encouragement.

“If we’re gonna go out, we might as well do it like kings. I’m banking on that gun of yours.”

“No complaints here. Relying on that driving!”

M looked forward and slammed on the gas.

Good luck, M! And…be safe somehow!

Saying “Don’t push yourself too hard!” to someone making a huge sacrifice was pretty insulting, so Llenn kept her words of encouragement to herself.

Humanity’s last stand against the crustacean menace commenced.

Shuffling across the ocean of earth was a titanic crab over sixty-five feet tall, a freakish monstrosity birthed from the fusion of the red and blue mecha-dragons.

An armored buggy sped straight toward the beast.

The rest of Llenn’s team wanted to attack the red head on its left flank, so their two buggies, their sidecar, and their motorcycle fanned out on that side for the approach.

On the other side was Vivi’s group. They had four buggies spreading right and left in a wing formation. Three of those buggies carried two members of MMTM each; on their rear beds sat Shinohara, Huey, and Peter, each equipped with their machine guns and backpack ammo-loading systems.

Vivi commanded the final buggy. Max stood in the bed as her spotter.

“First we’re going to weave through their legs!” M shouted, once they were going over sixty miles per hour. Given the extra load it was carrying, that had to be the automobile’s top speed.

Although they could see forward through the crack between the plates, with the massive size of the crab, it wasn’t much of an issue.

“Here we go!”

When they were about a hundred yards away, Tom-Tom opened fire. The barrel of the FN MAG sticking through the gap roared as several of its shots homed in on the blue cranium.

“Don’t worry, I got you, too!”

Tom-Tom fed the red one a couple shots as well. He seemed to be the dutiful type.

Both heads looked down in fury and opened their mouths wide.

“Too slow!” M drove the vehicle through the crustacean’s legs and beyond. There was enough clearance to pass under, but it would be terrifying for anyone who happened to be standing up in the back.

The spray of ice that burst from both mouths smashed nothing but empty earth, but it was very pretty.

The crab had no real front or back, so the necks simply swiveled backward in the direction M had driven.

“Fire!” ordered Vivi.

“Here we go!” ordered Pitohui at the same time.

A hail of bullets converged on the heads from the buggies slowly circling to the sides, along with the snipers hanging back.

Llenn observed ZEMAL’s offensive from the sidecar. Ferocious lines of gunfire extended toward the heads, pelting them with rounds. Their firepower was tremendous.

It was a miracle that she’d survived this onslaught at the start of SJ1. What would have happened, if not for the trees she’d hid behind? Even now, she still reeled from that encounter.

But her teammates were no slouches, either.

“Raaah!”

Despite being reassured they wouldn’t need to get in close, SHINC’s overloaded four-person buggy was closing in at a high speed. Anna was firing from the passenger seat, while Rosa and Tanya blasted from the bed.

A tail of glittering gold from all the empties trailed behind the buggy. It looked like a comet.

“Oh, c’mon. I just said you could take it easy.” Pitohui sighed. She twisted the sidecar’s accelerator. “Go on then, Llenn. Blast away.”

“You bet!”

Llenn aimed the P90 from her seated position and opened fire at the back of the red head. It was far enough away that she didn’t think she was making much contact, but it was better than doing nothing.

“Whoo-hoo-hoo. They’re getting into gear. Shirley?”

“Yeah, gotcha.”

The motorcycle was propped on its kickstand. Shirley was in a partial crouch with her R93 Tactical 2 resting on the seat. The pose was terrible for your back, but hunters and snipers had to be skilled at shooting from all positions.

The target was about 650 feet away.

“Eat that!” Shirley cried, pulling the trigger.

Clarence used binoculars to watch the bullet explode over the head. “Brilliant!”

Its hit point number dropped immediately from 24 to 21.

“Shirley must have struck the target… Well, I don’t want to be the one who missed…,” grunted Tohma, calibrating her aim at the target over nine hundred feet away through the scope of the PTRD-41.

The barrel was as long as a flagpole, resting atop Sophie’s left shoulder where she sat cross-legged on the ground. She was still alive this time around, of course.

The antitank rifle barked at the distant target of the crab’s head; because it was so large, aiming wasn’t particularly difficult. As the massive bullet erupted from the barrel at twice the speed of sound and struck the back of the red cranium, the gun roared so deafeningly that dust rose from all around them.

All at once, 21 reduced to 16.

“M! It’s down to sixteen now!” Llenn reported.

M turned to his riding partner and yelled, “We’re at sixteen. How about you?”

A moment later, Tom-Tom replied, “I just saw it! Eleven!”

“Okay, let’s do that again!”

“Okay!”

M hit the brakes and pulled the buggy into a sharp U-turn. The idea was to charge beneath the crab again, pulling its attention so that it would attack them. When they completed the 180-degree turn, the crustacean loomed before them again. This time the sides were reversed—red on the right, blue on the left.

Off to the creature’s sides, the other vehicles were busy making distance. He waited about five seconds for them to fan out before stomping on the gas pedal, starting the drag race up again.

“Here we go!”

That was the very moment that Huey, firing his machine gun from the bed of the retreating buggy, beamed the blue head—and dropped its HP number down to 10.

Pgyaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

The crab’s pincerlike head let out an earthshaking shriek.

Now with its HP at 10 percent, the blue head roared at the sky. A moment later, the red one mimicked it.

“Oooh!”

M and Tom-Tom winced as their car approached the beast; the cry was like nails on a chalkboard. But the decoy charge did not falter.

“Rahhh!”

Tom-Tom attacked the blue head again, now on the left side, in an attempt to draw its attention toward them—but it didn’t take the bait.

“What?!”

The huge cranium, stretching toward the sky, turned and opened its mouth at his companions far off to the left.

“Oh no! Everyone, look out!” Tom-Tom screamed, right as the ice spray emitted from its jaw.

If the previous attack was an ice shotgun, this one was an ice machine gun.

And if the previous attack was a net, this one was a whip.

Hail pieces less than four inches wide rocketed out of the blue mouth at a ferocious rate; at least twenty chunks per second. It fired at the vehicles driving below it.

The small pieces were coming so fast that they appeared to be connected, painting a single blue line. It was like watering the lawn with a showerhead.

When the blue maw moved, the line moved with it, whipping up a string of dust disturbed by its icy assault. The four buggies started turning when they heard Tom-Tom’s warning. The line of frozen bullets followed them.

“Gah!”

It struck the left flank of Shinohara, who had his M60E3 ready to fire from the buggy bed, knocking him clean off the vehicle. His teammates could see his HP gauge drop significantly, down to 70 percent, and his stomach glowed red with injury.

Neither ZEMAL nor MMTM could scoop him up off the ground. They didn’t even have the wherewithal to worry about him. The frozen lash coming from above clogged the space around them with ice and dust.

“Shit, shit, shit!” Bold yelled, nearly flipping the buggy to the left in an attempt to avoid the attack. Between the g-force of the tilted buggy and the menacing ice attack, Jake and Peter both went queasy in the passenger seats and the back of the car, respectively.

Dozens of hail chunks ripped through the area just three feet from the right side of the vehicle. It was like a wall of dust had instantly been erected beside them.

“We need distance!” Vivi instructed. The four buggies scattered to the wind.

“Son of a bitch!” David swore as the whip of ice descended upon his car at an angle. They weren’t moving fast enough to avoid it. “Rrrgh!”

Anticipating huge damage, he gritted his teeth and shut his eyes, but luck was on his side.

The first hail projectile struck the buggy’s pipe frame and sprayed David’s face with ice shards. The second projectile broke against the hood of the car and dented it, while the third dented the radiator, and the fourth grazed a tire.

After the buggies scattered, Shinohara was left all on his own.

“Ryaaaaaa!”

He got to his feet, held the M60E3 to his waist, and began blasting at the crab’s head right in front of him.

“What’s wrong with you? I’m right here!”

The ice-spitting head noticed the small target shooting at its chin, just below it. For a brief moment, it stopped spitting and looked downward.

Then its mouth opened again and paused, seemingly gathering power, and shot out a huge chunk of ice.

When he saw the giant iceberg heading his way, Shinohara grunted “Don’t worry—I’ll keep you safe” before tossing his M60E3 as far as he could to the left.

The pillar of ice many inches wide and ten feet long pierced his body and his backpack ammo-loading system, obliterating both into polygonal pieces.

The only thing that survived was the machine gun, which fell clattering to the featureless earth.

“Hng!” Vivi grimaced as she watched her teammate die. She and the other three drivers pulled farther away from the crab.

Its blue head rose, watching them go imperiously, but did not attack further. Shinohara had acted as a sacrifice and allowed the others to survive.

“Dammit!” yelled Tom-Tom as the armored vehicle passed beneath the crab without taking any attacks.

“Hyaaa! Looks like they’re having trouble over there!” exclaimed Pitohui with inappropriate excitement, turning the sidecar motorcycle’s handlebars left to pull them farther away from the monster.

“No, you were totally expecting that to happen,” Llenn snapped. She had watched the entire thing play out, the ice spraying from the blue head like water from a hose.

Even from a distance, it was clear to see that one of ZEMAL’s members had fallen from a buggy and stayed put, attacking the crab to focus its attention and allow his teammates to get away, while an icicle skewered him.

“Nweh-heh-heh.”

Llenn didn’t need to read Pitohui’s mind to know what she was gloating about. Vivi was trying to finish this quest without losing a single member, and that’s been ruined now. Bwa-ha-ha!

“Poor, sweet Vivi. Her plan’s gone up in smoke.”

I knew it.

“We won’t be able to get closer!” rang Boss’s voice in Llenn’s ear. Since they couldn’t afford to get pulverized by the same attack on this side, she had to keep the automobile she was riding in with her three companions farther away.

Reasonably safe at a distance, Tohma announced, “I can shoot the next one. Should I?”

Pitohui promptly replied, “Er, no. Same to you, Shirley. I think it’s set to attack more fiercely after its HP number gets to ten. Take a break, sniper team. Have some tea.”

“I mean, that just makes sense. Do you have tea?” asked Clarence, who was watching through binoculars next to Shirley’s motorcycle. The remaining number on their target still read 16.

Shirley stopped looking through the scope and snorted. “Hmph.”

Llenn asked, “How are we supposed to avoid those attacks…?”

A machine-gun rattle of ice was lashing down from above like a whip. There was no cover, nothing at all to hide behind.

She tried to think of a solution on her own but came up with nothing. At best, she figured that if she ran around fast enough, it would be harder for the beam to connect with her.

“Let’s see…,” Pitohui murmured, starting to think.

But before she could say anything further, M spoke up.

“I’ll knock it out.”

“I’ll knock it out.”

Vivi and every other player fighting against the giant crab heard that declaration. He’d asked Tom-Tom to link up his comm item so all the teammates on the other side could hear him, too.

On the other hand, neither M nor any of his teammates could hear the voices of MMTM and ZEMAL.

H-how? Llenn wanted to ask, but she resisted the urge. She assumed M was going to give everyone a piece of his mind. It didn’t take long for her prediction to come true.

“This is M. I have a message for everyone here. I’m going to approach the underside of the crab on my own. Once I’m at its feet, I’ll have Tom-Tom fire at it from behind. We’ll cause a vehicle explosion.”

Ohhhh, Llenn marveled. I get it.

Shooting the buggy would produce one of GGO’s famous vehicle explosions, which might succeed in toppling the enormous but unsteady-looking crab creature.

Even if he didn’t knock it out, he would most likely knock it over. That would bring the heads down low, which would remove their altitude advantage, plus make aiming at them easier.

It was a brilliant gambit, something bold and dynamic in the midst of a bad situation. Classic M.

The downside was that M would die. No question about it. He’d go out in a blaze of glory. Without a driver in the seat, there was simply no way to pilot the buggy to the right spot at the exact moment.

It was clear to everyone what would need to happen. Pitohui answered with two short words.

“Do it.”

“And that marks the end of our exciting drive together.”

M parked the buggy about two hundred yards away from the front side of the crustacean. When it wasn’t assaulting them, it essentially just stood in place. It seemed to be jeering, Come at me, if you dare.

M looked over at Tom-Tom and said, “The timing is key. I’m counting on you.”

“Don’t worry; I’ve got this.”

Then the pair parted ways, one inside the vehicle and one outside.

Tom-Tom stood on the hard, solid earth and effortlessly hauled his heavy machine gun up to his shoulder.

M jammed on the gas pedal, jolting the armored automobile forward.

Using his sets, which was something he rarely did, Tom-Tom aimed carefully for the rear of the buggy.

The crustacean noticed the vehicle, lifting its blue head easily. The frozen shotgun erupted from its maw.

Hundreds of hail pellets sprayed out in a net that captured M’s buggy. It vanished into the storm of dust and ice—and burst out the other end before the cloud of debris cleared.

Although the body was dented all over, it had retained its shape and protected M from the frigid blast. Not all the duct tape had survived the onslaught, however, because in short order one sheet of armor fell loose from the car, then another.

“Yaaaaaah!”

M’s mettle and speed did not waver.

“You should join our squadron. We’re always looking for people who really kick ass,” muttered Tom-Tom. He opened fire with his FN MAG.

The buggy was about to collide with the crab’s right legs when the bullets caught its rear bumper and struck true.

A fireball worthy of an action movie shook the world—and the crustacean.

The explosion threw two blue legs on the right side loose like they’d been swept; then the monster’s giant form wobbled and tilted before collapsing backward.

While it was still falling, Vivi yelled “Go!” and Pitohui snarled “All right, get ’im!” and their vehicles came roaring forth from both sides.

As the sidecar rumbled with rapid acceleration, Llenn saw M’s HP bar plummet to 0 in the upper left of her readout.

Prayers up!

M had told her that he would pray for her if she died, so Llenn imagined placing her hands together to send an invocation for him in turn. Her actual hands were too busy clutching the P90 and the frame of the sidebar.

Just as they’d expected, the crab hit the earth with a heavy boom and did not rise. Its legs merely flailed helplessly back and forth. Since the necks supporting the heads were sideways, they couldn’t really lift the craniums much higher off the ground—ten feet at most.

As Bold drove the buggy slowly in for better aim, Jake landed the first shot from the passenger seat. Pointing his HK21 to the right, he slammed down the trigger to avenge Shinohara.

The rounds smacked the head resting on the ground, taking its HP down to 9.

The other buggies crowded behind that one, and soon more lines of fire joined the fray. Every member who wasn’t driving was unloading with everything they had. The din from the scene was unfathomable.

LPFM approached on their automobiles and sidecar motorcycle from the other side, coming to a total stop at a distance of forty yards so the drivers could shoot, too.

As everyone capable of shooting joined in, the true cacophony really began.

“Vengeance for M!”

“Rahhh!”

SHINC pointed all the myriad firearms in their arsenal at the same target, muzzles flashing.

“Hya-haaa!” Pitohui screeched joyously, emptying out the KTR-09’s drum magazine. Llenn stood up on the edge of the sidecar, then pressed down the P90’s trigger all the way. Empties flooded out of the bottom of the gun, pinging pleasantly off the body of the sidecar.

Fukaziroh showed up late, observing the crowd around the gigantic form. “Whoa, you guys are really going for it,” she remarked. “Like a bunch of starving beggars crowded around an all-you-can-eat crab buffet.”

“Fuka! Are there any other analogies you could have chosen?” Llenn asked when she had a moment to switch magazines.

“Nope.”

“Oh.”

The next moment, the fallen half of the crustacean—the blue side—burst into tiny shards and slowly began to disappear.

Even without an explanation from the game, it was clear that the ZEMAL/MMTM alliance had slain their target. Llenn could see the men pumping their fists on the buggy nearby, while Vivi waved her hand from the driver’s seat.

The blue shards slowly climbed up into the sky. After many seconds, half the crab vanished, and all the members of that team simply blinked out of existence like ghosts. They had finished the fourth ordeal first.

“Five left!” Boss announced, switching her magazine.

In the distance, two hundred yards farther away, Shirley muttered, “No need to shoot the crab anymore…”

Resting atop the seat of the motorcycle, the muzzle of her R93 Tactical 2 swiveled smoothly. The crosshairs in the scope homed in on the back of a woman with a ponytail standing in front of the sidecar motorcycle.

Oh? You gonna do it? implied Clarence with only a sneering expression.

I’ll do it right before we finish, Shirley replied, using just a smirk.

“Down to three! Almost there!” Boss rallied, counting down. “Now, two!”

Shirley’s finger approached the trigger.

She didn’t need a bullet circle. Since she had her gun zeroed in on a distance of four hundred yards; at two hundred yards there would be less drop on the bullet. As long as she aimed slightly downward, the round was guaranteed to hit Pitohui somewhere.

And her explosive bullet would ensure that the results would be lethal, no matter where it landed.

“Down to one! Shoot, shoot, shoot!”

Shirley silently reached for the trigger.

“Ah!”

A bright-red line landed on the motorcycle right in front of her.

That was a bullet line, of course, coming from over her left shoulder, and it was far bolder than usual. Only one person had a weapon capable of producing that.

“Fine. I lose.”

Shirley lifted her gun off the seat.

Tohma saw that action through the scope of the antitank rifle, just as Boss roared, “That’s zero!”

She took her finger off the trigger.

As pieces of the crustacean tore apart and rose up to the heavens, Suuzaburou’s voice echoed in Llenn’s ears.

“Congratulations, everyone. You have completed the fourth ordeal.”

She lowered her heated P90 and checked the watch on the inside of her left wrist. It was just after 1:42.

“I will escort you to the fifth ordeal now.”

The final ordeal at last… I wonder what it’s like…

White light engulfed her.