SYNOPSIS OF PART I
Less than a month after SJ4, GGO’s premiere team battle-royale event, Squad Jam, announced a fifth competition: SJ5. Once again, the sponsor was that terrible writer. He never learns.
This time for sure, Llenn thought, she would be able to just enjoy the game for the sake of it, with no weird pressure or annoying limitations. And yet again, she was disappointed.
Someone had put down a stunning bounty of a hundred million GGO credits, meaning one million actual real-life yen, on her head. In other words, everyone would be gunning for her, trying to get that cash.
Thanks to that, even her teammates were tempted to go after her. What a wonderful predicament to be in…
…But Llenn didn’t give up.
Buoyed by a promise of cooperation from the furious SHINC, Llenn entered the event with her usual teammates of Pitohui, M, and Fukaziroh—plus Shirley, who would act independently and attack Pitohui whenever she felt like it, and her faithful companion (?) Clarence—hoping to secure her third win.
This time there was a special set of rules that permitted each player to carry a full separate set of equipment for a teammate and to switch between loadouts. So everyone picked out something a little different this time. Llenn’s and Fukaziroh’s choices were still a mystery.
And then SJ5 began.
Apparently determined to live up to his horrendous reputation, the crappy writer set up even more ridiculous rules.
Right at the start of the game, all the members of the team were scattered across the map.
And the battle arena was covered in thick fog that only revealed a space a few yards around each player. Llenn was all alone in a world she could barely see. How lonely.
She was unable to use her comm or compass, and even the terrain she was looking at didn’t show up on the map. How awful.
Despite this, Llenn proceeded through the mist in search of her teammates and her friends in SHINC. Hang in there, Llenn.
And then who should she run into by coincidence but the brilliant strategist who led ZEMAL to a crushing victory in SJ4: Vivi.
Rather than attempt to kill each other, Llenn and Vivi chose a temporary partnership. Under Vivi’s instructions, they carefully survived the battles in the fog.
But after an enormous explosion from the familiar suicide-bomb-happy squad, Vivi was the unlucky one, nearly dying from the blast.
To Llenn’s good fortune, just nearby and rushing over to assist was the pairing of Boss and David, who helped Vivi survive the incident.
Four players from different teams worked as a new squad, taking positions inside a large, sturdy brick house.
They were planning to wait out the clearing mist inside the safety of the house—when one of ZEMAL’s members, Shinohara, came rushing toward the building.
Delighted that they’d have another friend to help out, Llenn could only watch in horror as Shinohara was shot and killed from behind by the grenadier he’d been working with just moments earlier.
Llenn knew of only one grenadier who would commit such cowardly acts without hesitation—and her bad feeling was promptly proven correct.
It was Fukaziroh.
Why the hell would you do that?
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