CHAPTER 14 Bombardment Battle Thanks to the camera with a close-up view of SHINC’s situation, the crowd in the bar saw the entire sequence very clearly. They saw the pigtailed leader of the Amazons use her gun to shoot her own teammate. She propped herself up, steadied the silenced Vintorez sniper rifle, and fired one bullet at the squat dwarf woman a hundred feet away. The extremely heavy 9 × 39 mm round struck the woman’s left temple, killing her instantly. “Wha—?!” “Whoa!” “Hang on!” “Did she go crazy?!” “Huhhhh?” “How come?” The bar was filled with screams and bellows. And before they could subside, the audience saw, right behind Sophie’s body, the nature of the item she had just pulled out of her inventory moments before. The particles of light coalesced into a long stick. “What’s up?” M and the other members of PM4 heard Pitohui ask. “The enemy leader shot one of their members in the head and killed her,” M explained as concisely as possible. Even Pitohui found this to be a surprise. “Whaaat? Why?” she yelped. “No idea…” “Infighting? I guess that would be like you in the last Squad Jam!” Pitohui added, needling him. But the number of reactions she got from the team, whether laughter or anger, was zero. So Pitohui followed it up by saying, “Well, I didn’t get to see it, so how did she kill her partner? Can you explain in detail?” M said, “Huh? Okay. They were charging to close the distance between us, and we sniped one of them. Then, at a distance of 930 yards, they all dropped to the ground. But one got up and sat cross-legged, then her own teammate shot her from behind for an instant—” He was unable to say kill. Pitohui cut him off at the end of his explanation by screaming, “Get down as flat as you can!” The audience at the bar had a better grasp on the full situation than the ones actually fighting in it. At the point that the dwarf woman’s final item materialized, they understood at least half of SHINC’s strategy. The motes of light gave shape to an enormous gun. It was nearly seven feet long, as a matter of fact. The barrel was just a raw metal pipe with a bipod halfway down its length for support. There was a muzzle brake at the end to minimize recoil and vent exhaust. The barrel alone was over four feet long. That was longer than the entire length of nearly any assault rifle. In order for it to be usable for a human being, the trigger, grip, and stock were placed back behind the center of gravity. A sight sticking out to the left of the barrel was nonstandard, an aftermarket scope. And this obnoxiously long gun that looked more like a fishing rod than anything else was named— “The PTRD-41!” “Degtyaryov’s anti-tank rifle!” two people shouted at the same time. It was in the nature of a gun fanatic to want to be the first person to identify and call out the model of a gun. Both answers were correct. It was a Soviet Army anti-tank rifle used in 1941, during World War II. Degtyaryov was the name of its designer and represented the D in PTRD. Thus, the weapon was often known as a Degtyaryov anti-tank rifle in Japan. Because tank armor at the time was fairly thin, this extremely large-caliber rifle was designed to pierce it. The reason that such weapons did not exist anymore was because they were effective only into the second half of World War II. Since then, the anti-tank rifle category had been replaced by the much-improved antimateriel rifle instead. The bolt-action single-shot rifle used a 14.5 × 115 mm Soviet Russian round. In other words, the bullet was 14.5 mm around, and the cartridge was 115 mm long. The .50-caliber rounds for M’s M107A1 were 12.7 × 99 mm, which meant these ones were a full size bigger and used more gunpowder. Naturally, the bullets were far more destructive as well. The entrance of this monster gun enthralled the rest of the crowd, stricken with gun mania. “What the hell is that?!” “What a relic we’ve got here!” “How do you get your hands on something like that?!” “Are they gonna fight back with that thing?” “And they kept it stashed away in storage to hide their secret!” “Very methodical… That’s the kind of power that can take down M’s shield.” “They didn’t have it last time, right? They must’ve done some superhard quest to loot it since then.” But then someone wondered, quite understandably, “But how will it work? They can’t aim against a flat target on their stomachs like this.” Both sides were fortified on flat land. M’s team couldn’t snipe well at SHINC when they were flat on the ground, so it only made sense that the women couldn’t get a decent shot at M’s group without lifting their guns higher. But if they stood up to shoot, or even sat up, they would make themselves into targets. And most importantly of all, standing up was no way to fire such a heavy gun. Even sitting wouldn’t give them precise aim. These superheavy weapons were meant to be propped up on something to shoot. How were they going to use it? The audience’s question was answered with action. It was the black-haired sniper who would fire the monster rifle. And anyone who saw the last Squad Jam knew that the one with the black hair and knit cap used a Dragunov with an adjustable scope. She was the one who sniped Llenn and nearly took her out of the first Squad Jam—the best shot on the team. She was also the last character to die in that event. She sat behind the dead body and carefully lifted the gun there, nearly seven feet and thirty-five pounds of metal. Then she rested the front end of the long barrel atop the left shoulder of her deceased teammate. “Ohhh…” The audience understood, with a shiver of horror down their backs. That was why the dwarf woman sat down facing the enemy. That was why the leader had shot her dead. That was why she shot the left side of her head. “They used their own teammate as a shield and stand!” In Squad Jam, all dead bodies remained in place as indestructible objects for ten minutes. In other words, they were invincible shields. Tohma lifted the silver bolt handle of the PTRD-41 and pulled it toward her. In a waterproof pouch nearby, she had ten bullets that looked big enough to be used as fatal bludgeons on their own. She plucked one out of the pouch, leaving oil on her glove. The bullets were coated with plenty of oil to ensure the gun operated smoothly. Then Tohma loaded it into the gun through a slot on the underside and pushed the bolt forward to load it. Kneeling about three feet behind the corpse with its arms jammed into the ground, she took aim. Through the scope, which was quite a distance from her eye, she took aim at the shield twenty-eight hundred feet away. The moment her finger touched the trigger, a pale-green bullet circle appeared, and upon its first contraction, the Russian named Milana who controlled Tohma chanted, “Your life will be mine!” The gun fired. It was less of a gunshot and more of an explosion. “Get down as flat as you can!” yelled Pitohui. “Ngh!” M let go of the M107A1 and threw himself against the ground. Grass and dirt entered his mouth. “Huh?” The chubby man was just a bit slower. And unfortunately for him, the shield was blocking his view of Tohma’s bullet line, so he did not notice it. The 14.5 mm round struck the rightmost plate of the fanned-out shield—and ricocheted. There was that spaceship-exterior metal coming into play. Thanks to the diagonal angle, even a 14.5 mm bullet from 2,800 feet did not puncture the material. It sent up a shower of sparks and made a tremendous noise, but it did hold. However, impenetrability was not the same as shock absorption. The kinetic energy the bullet delivered was tremendous. It slammed into the plate of the shield, inflicting tremendous pressure on it. The shield was hardy, meant to stand up to any amount of heat and pressure. But the metal joints that folded to connect the shield, top and bottom, were not as strong as the plate itself. The two joints that supported the piece that received the brunt of the pressure instantly twisted like soft candy and snapped apart. The shield part then bounced right off its bearing backward—and struck the face of the man holding the Savage 110 BA right behind it.
He couldn’t do a thing. No scream, no complaint, no surprise. After the hardy metal sheet struck him, his head was twisted at an angle the human body was not meant to support, generating the red glow that indicated damage had been inflicted on the flesh. A DEAD marker sprang up, identifying PM4’s first casualty of the battle. A blast of air buffeted the area around the PTRD-41 with its shot, whipping up a dust devil from the dry ground. The tremendous kickback did shove Tohma’s body, but on her knees, leaning forward, she had enough momentum to withstand the recoil. It was a bolt-action gun, but with a unique system that utilized the recoil to open the bolt and eject the empty cartridge—a feature that was faithfully re-created in GGO. Upon firing, the body and grip of the gun—essentially everything other than the shoulder stock and cheek pad—shifted backward about two and a half inches. That momentum caused the bolt handle to strike the metal bit in the rear and deflect upward. It happened automatically, rather than forcing the user to manually release the bolt. The inertia caused the released bolt to retract, and the greased-up empty ejected itself from the chamber to fall beneath the gun. Tohma picked up another oiled bullet and slid it into the gun from below. She pushed the retracted bolt forward to lock it on the right. The gun was ready to fire again. “Next!”
For their counterplan against M’s powerful shield, SHINC’s philosophy and choice of action were simple: “We just need to get a weapon that’s way more powerful than what we have now!” If they couldn’t beat him with their current firepower, they just needed a more powerful weapon to break through his shield. So what would that be? First, they considered the same kind of grenade launchers that Fukaziroh was now using. They could use the projectile arc to go over M’s shield and reach behind it. But with a range of not much more than four hundred yards, it just wouldn’t have enough reach. They needed to be able to surpass the range of the M14 EBR (which was twice as long), or at the very least match it. That left only one option. They needed a high-caliber, high-powered antimateriel rifle. That way, even if it failed to puncture the shield, the force would likely destroy the joints. Or perhaps knock the shield out of place. So in between their busy studies, team practice, and hellish battle training, they gathered what information they could. They’d thought there were only about ten antimateriel rifles on GGO’s Japanese server, but the rumors said otherwise. “That was last year. They started adding more recently, so not only are there more opportunities, it’s easier to get them than before.” There was hope. Next, they tried collecting information from people who already had antimateriel rifles about how they got theirs. First, they needed rumors about who might have what, then they could search for that person. In the end, they tracked down four, and only two took their questions seriously. Both said, “I miraculously beat a superhard quest, and it dropped from a boss encounter.” As they’d expected, there would be no way to buy one from a normal store. Of course, the chance that a person who owned one would part ways with it was much lower than for another kind of weapon. The last time one was auctioned off, it commanded a shocking price: about 200,000 yen when converted into real money. One of the two people who answered their questions was a woman. She was a cute girl with light-blue hair named Sinon. That was her avatar’s appearance only, of course, and the player behind it might have been an old woman. Sinon was an expert in the game, a finalist who reached the end of the BoB tournament. Nobody in SHINC could beat her in a one-on-one fight. It was Boss and Anna who got to talk with Sinon, because they finished up their homework earliest. Sinon was very helpful and accurate in answering the questions, perhaps as a favor to fellow women in the game. According to her, the dungeons deep beneath SBC Glocken were harder than the ones in the wilderness outside and had better loot drops. The odds were much higher in the places where traps dumped you deeper in. At least, that was how she got hers. That day was the start of a very reckless campaign for the gymnastics team in their attempt to earn an antimateriel rifle. They headed into areas they couldn’t possibly handle at their current level and got chased around by super-huge boss monsters and giant machines—and occasionally stepped on. They repeatedly wiped as a squadron, respawning back in the safe part of town for no experience gain. After they had stopped counting the number of times they wiped out and tried again, Lady Luck finally smiled upon them. They were fighting in a long and narrow dungeon that was most likely originally a subway station. The enemy was a monstrous machine like a giant tank with multiple power-shovel arms, and the squad was blasted to bits by its laser beams. Rosa the machine gunner was unable to dodge its ramming attack, and she got crushed under its treads and splattered to pieces. But out of some kind of vengeful spirit, her severed right hand continued to pull the trigger. The PKM kept firing, exercising its owner’s last act of rage. For the brief span of time until her body evaporated into polygonal shards, the gun shot about twenty rounds toward the walls of the tunnel. Some hit the pipes that ran along the sides, punching holes in them. They burst forth with hot water meant to keep the subterranean tunnels warm. The spray of hot, pressurized water hit the machine monster. Suddenly its movements weakened, perhaps because of electronics shorting out. The thick steam that filled the area halved the effectiveness of the laser beams it shot from the ends of its arms. “This is our shot! Attack at once!” “Yeaaah!” “Get it!” “Destroy it!” “Raaaah!” The remaining five set upon it all at once, paying no heed to the boiling water. They were wiped out in moments. This was because of how much damage they had accumulated over the course of the fight. If it were that easy to win a battle with spirit alone, no country would ever lose a war. But they had found the key to victory. The next day, they went into the same dungeon and set explosives on the heating pipes. Then they lured an enemy closer and drenched it right off the bat with even more water than the day before. At that point, it was just a matter of overpowering it. They shot and shot and shot at the incapacitated enemy. Just shooting the arms equipped with laser beams caused the monster’s accuracy to go haywire. Even still, the ferocious battle continued for some thirty minutes. Once the enemy began to run low on HP, Boss took all the plasma grenades she could carry and charged in for a suicide attack. They won at last. In the end, it was Tohma’s Dragunov that shot through what looked like a power reactor that had been exposed by loose armor plating. But because it exploded into pieces so spectacularly, only she and Anna, the snipers shooting from a distance, actually survived. A flashy sign congratulated them on their victory in the moldy corridor, and for landing the killing shot on the enemy, Tohma saw a small game window open for her. When she touched it, an anti-tank rifle like a giant fishing rod, the PTRD-41, appeared before her.
The girls pretty much exclusively used Soviet-era weapons, and this fit the bill, almost as though they’d been aiming for it specifically. Anna remembered how Sinon said she’d used a French sniper rifle and got a French antimateriel rifle back. “Ah, that makes sense. I guess the gun you receive as your prize depends on what you used to beat the boss.” But of course, nobody could say if that assumption was actually correct. When Tohma and Anna brought the massive PTRD-41 fishing rod back to the teammates who had died and spawned in town, everyone was delighted. With the way they hugged and laughed and cried and jumped, you would never imagine they’d gotten along poorly at first. The girls’ school gymnastics team had been through many battles to the death with their guns, and they had become inseparable friends. And now they had the weapon they needed. They just had to be able to use it. At twenty-five pounds for just the gun alone, the PTRD-41 was heavy and required a character with a very high strength stat to wield it. Only Sophie and Rosa could make immediate use of it and actually run around carrying it. They had the strength because they typically used heavy machine guns and carried huge boxes of backup ammo and barrels. But this was a sniper rifle. Tohma and Anna were best prepared to use it, with their sniping ability and various passive skills that assisted sniping, so they trained hard in an attempt to raise their strength fast. With the arrival of spring vacation, they focused on their own efforts at all times outside of club practice. Eventually, Tohma reached a point where she suffered a weight penalty walking around with the gun, but she could at least shoot it. At that point, the gun was effectively hers. The first time she shot it, following the in-window instruction manual, she thought that the incredible kickback it had was going to separate her shoulder. It didn’t seem like something that a human (avatar) should be able to fire. But if she couldn’t tame this beast, their team wasn’t going to win. They procured a bunch of 14.5 mm bullets, and Tohma practiced with it. She got mentally tougher, teaching herself to deal with the recoil. The gun had no scope. Anti-tank rifles at the time did not have them. But this wasn’t going to help them fight long-range against M. “If the cuckoo does not have a scope, give it one. That’s how the saying goes, right?” She used the gun-customization function to attach one. She crushed the metal aiming reticle on the left side of the barrel and welded a scope mount on instead. It was a crude method, but all that mattered was that it worked. If she used a normal rifle scope, there was a danger that she’d damage the area around her eye when the gun kicked back on her. So instead, she used a pistol scope with a longer eye relief, meaning the distance between the lens and the eye. That worked better. It was the creation of the “PTRD-41 Anti-Tank Rifle, Girls’ School Gymnastics Team Special.” Also known as the Anti-M Ultimate Weapon, or simply, the M-Gun. As a test run, the girls went back to challenge the same monster that had dropped the gun. They used the hot water to lock it down, then let Tohma shoot it repeatedly from a distance. The armor just peeled right off the enemy that had been so hard to defeat. “Now we can wiiin!” Boss roared down the tunnel. They defeated the machine like their previous hassle had never happened. Of course, they did not receive another antimateriel rifle for their trouble, but they did get good experience and money. As the rest of the team celebrated, Tohma wondered, “But what happens if I can’t get set up with a bipod in an advantageous spot? I can’t exactly carry this gun around with me…” The bulky weapon wasn’t going to move once they set it up on the ground. Tohma’s concerns were well-founded. Both Rosa and Sophie, the two machine gunners, grinned at once. Rosa said, “You guys know how sometimes you act as a base for us to prop up our machine guns when we don’t have a level surface?” Sophie said, “Exactly. We just need to do the same thing. One of the two of us will plop down on the ground, and you can fire the gun off our shoulder!” Tohma’s eyes bulged. “But…that means one of you might get shot and killed!” Sophie said, “Yeah, that’s not great. In that case, I guess we’d better commit to being a base.” “That’s not what I meant by…” “Well, this should be easy to solve!” said the dwarf woman with a grin. She was as dutiful as a team vice-captain should be. “Just kill me first. Then I’ll be an invincible stand that will absorb all enemy attacks for ten whole minutes!”
“Next!” Tohma had loaded the second shot before the dust of the first had even settled. Her aim drifted a bit right this time. Right into the center of the fanned-out shield. If she scored a hit with this one, it wouldn’t just knock the shield away; it should deliver big damage to M and the gun he was using right behind it. SHINC had not counted on M bringing in an antimateriel rifle. They’d practiced and planned to shoot from just outside the M14 EBR’s effective range of nine hundred yards, but there was no complaining now. They knew they were bringing in a big gun; it was their fault they didn’t expect the enemy to do the same. “Eat this!” She fired. With an earthshaking blast, a hunk of carbide weighing two ounces hurtled forward at an unbelievable twenty-three hundred miles per hour, or Mach 3. The next instant, it hit the shield. Tohma’s aim was a bit off. It struck the left edge of the shield and knocked one of the panels loose. If M hadn’t dropped to the ground like Pitohui directed, the shield panel would have smashed into his head and killed him. He looked up and clung to the M107A1. M knew what the enemy was after. They used their own teammate’s corpse as an indestructible object and set it up to be the base for a large-caliber gun in the open. A gruesome but very effective strategy. Through the scope, he saw the dwarf woman sitting with her eyes closed and, behind her, another woman loading a bullet into a gigantic metal pipe. “Enemy! Degtyaryov anti-tank rifle! Even a graze will kill you! Absolutely do not look up!” he ordered his squadmates, then fired the gun. While it wasn’t as powerful as theirs, his gun was still devastatingly powerful. The bullet roared away and simply deflected off the sitting body’s head. “Shit!” The monitors inside the bar faithfully showed this exchange of cannon fire. One of the Amazons fired the PTRD-41, using her own comrade as a base. The blast of sound boomed through the speakers, rumbling the air in the room and the guts of the avatars present. When the chubby member of PM4 got bludgeoned to death with the loose piece of shield, the crowd cheered. “Whoaaaa!” “They did it! It worked!” “They broke through the invincible shield!” The shooter quickly reloaded and fired a second round. It knocked another piece of the shield off, but M did not back down. He shouted a command and fired back, but the indestructible body bounced his powerful bullet away. Meanwhile, the woman had loaded her third bullet and was quickly sharpening her aim. The camera zoomed in on her face, displaying a fierce but delighted smile on her lips. “It’s a bombardment battle,” someone muttered, but the thunderbolt of the gun firing drowned it out. Tohma’s third shot roared over the dry earth. The shock of the bullet’s route traced a straight line of dust on the ground as it flew. It hit the shield, twisting off a third panel. The panel hurtled directly over the head of M, who ducked after his own shot, then it stuck into the ground over fifteen feet away. The eight-panel shield had lost material from either side and was down to five now. But M did not falter. The opponent’s gun had auto-discharge, manual reload. His gun was a semi-auto, with five rounds left in the magazine. “Come on!” he barked, lifting his head and aiming with the M107A1. He stared through the haze of dust at the distant enemy as though trying to kill with a glance, and he pulled the trigger. “Taaa!” Tohma fired her fourth bullet at the exact same time as M’s shot. It was a repeat scenario of the end of the last Squad Jam. Tohma’s and M’s weapons belched fire simultaneously. The empty cartridges discharged and pinged off the ground. The bullets passed in midflight at a distance of no more than eight inches. One struck the left shoulder of a dead body, stopping its momentum completely in an unnatural way. It fell harmlessly to the ground. The other bullet hit the center part of the shield and pried it loose. The shield bounced backward, hitting the M107A1 and slamming into the side of M’s body. “Oof!” He toppled to his left, grabbing the gun closer and examining its side. “…” Then he understood. The gun was unusable until he took it to a weapon shop. It would not do anything more for him in SJ2. The edge of the shield, which was made of that sturdy material, had carved a deep groove in the side of the gun barrel. If he’d tried to fire it again without noticing that, the bullet would have caught on that groove, and without a place to go, the pent-up pressure would have burst the barrel. This was the kind of attention to detail in terms of how guns could get damaged that drew so many gun fanatics to GGO. “The .50-caliber is down. I can’t shoot it until it gets repaired,” he announced. He tossed the M107A1 to the side, then carefully slid backward. When he was about ten feet away from the shield, the fifth shot hit the now unoccupied shield. If not in GGO, the resulting sound would have ruptured eardrums. The panel in the center of the shield blew off. The frame was no longer able to support its curve, and the remaining pieces fell in a heap. They’d lost one team member, their fancy invincible shield was destroyed, and their long-range rifle was unusable. “…” “…” “…” The three other masked men, lying facedown, all took a silent breath. No one needed to see their faces to know what expression they were making. “Not baaad!” Only Pitohui seemed happy about it, cackling away. “Damn, not bad at aaall!” the bar roared with delight. The Amazons had sacrificed one of their own, but they’d destroyed the shield of M, returning champion, and inflicted PM4’s first loss. Naturally, the crowd was in an uproar. “Yeah, yeah, yeah! SHINC could win this thing now!” cheered those who were on the side of the Amazons. “You never know! It’s five on four! And M still has the M14 EBR, plus that vicious woman is still in prime condition!” said others, who were rooting for PM4. The crowd was split evenly between the two teams, leading to a whole lot of excited cheering. Meanwhile, one lonely man sipping whiskey from a shot glass mumbled, “What happened to my dear Llenn…? What is she doing…?” “Huff…huff…” Tohma panted, holding the PTRD-41, its long, long barrel issuing a trail of smoke. “I…beat…it… I beat it, Sophie! Thank youuuu!” she cried tearfully to her friend, the steadfast corpse sitting in front of her. “Yessss!” exulted Boss, still facedown in the wide-open field. They had lost Anna and Sophie, but they’d succeeded at the goal of getting rid of M’s shield. Her watch read thirty seconds past 2:08 PM. The time had passed so slowly. “That was perfect timing! Prepare to charge again! Tanya, you’re back in the front. Tohma, give your thanks to the Degtyaryov! Rosa, provide covering fire when you’re in range!” she ordered her surviving teammates. They all replied in the affirmative. The PTRD-41 couldn’t be used anymore. With Sophie dead, nobody could actually carry it around. Not only would it be too heavy for Tohma to go at more than a crawl, she’d also be unable to carry and use the semi-auto Dragunov, which she’d need in the fighting ahead. If she had to pick between the two, it was going to be the Dragunov, obviously. The same was true for Rosa and her PKM. “Thank you for everything. Until we meet again,” Tohma said to the gun that had done its job so admirably. She set it down next to Sophie’s body. Then she put the remaining bullets back in her inventory, just in case someone else tried to pick up the gun and shoot it. Boss stood and told four sets of ears, “We broke M’s shield! The opportunity is ripe! Charge!” “They’re coming!” said the macho man in the mask and goggles. He fired his MG 3 machine gun at the approaching Amazons. The sound it made with the silencer was very odd. They were very far off, still just dots by the naked eye, but he was placing the sights over them and firing in bursts of five anyway. The cartridges fell to the ground and vanished as bare polygonal models. He kept firing. Even if he didn’t hit them, the point was to force them to watch the line, dodge, and duck. It kept them from lining up any shots in return. One of the targets he’d come close to hitting stopped zigzagging and hit the deck. He assumed that he’d successfully kept them in check for now, but he hadn’t actually landed a hit. “Pull back!” M suddenly shouted, and the man obeyed, immediately hauling his gun away. A number of bullet lines appeared around the position he’d been in, and after a beat, a hail of bullets burst through, leaving brief orange lines in the sky. The grass swayed and hurtled, while dirt flew into the air. “Eep!” He’d been focused so much on beating the enemy that he’d been slow to react to the lines approaching on a diagonal angle. Without M’s instruction, he could well have been shot just now. The enemy was still firing. Bullets whizzed and cracked directly over his head. “Crap!” He couldn’t see it, but it was certain that while the enemy machine gunner was keeping them down, the others were moving quickly. Once the other guys—no, girls—had gone far enough, they would hunker down again, and another teammate would provide their cover fire. “It’s all right. No need to panic,” M said. “It’s still far enough that you have time to dodge the line. Even from the side, they don’t have any cover to hide behind. If they get a bit closer, I’ll ask you to hold them off again. Until that point, I’ll keep sniping.” “Yes, sir.” M then took out his M14 EBR and rushed through the grass in an army crawl. The land was essentially flat here, but there would be enough slight undulation that he could find a slightly higher spot, set up the bipod just behind it, and shoot from there. It would give him more ground to hide behind and a better angle for shooting. As he crawled, M couldn’t help but wonder, Why are they pushing at us so hard? His team had chosen a flat piece of land because they had the shield and the super-long-range sniper rifle. The other team had an anti-tank rifle, so they chose to fight back in that location. And they emerged triumphant. That much made sense. But now that they had destroyed the shield and achieved their goal, SHINC had no reason to rush them head-on anymore. Shouldn’t they normally pull back and regroup for a different maneuver? Why would they choose to press onward in the worst possible location, a wide-open field that was ideal for getting picked off? Had they lost their minds with anger after the loss of their teammate? The possibility was greater than zero, but it seemed very unlikely for a squad as good as theirs. In which case… “They must have some strategy…,” he mumbled, finding a suitable spot and setting up the M14 EBR where there were no bullet lines to worry about. He aimed at the silver-haired woman through his scope. She was quick. In her hands was a Bizon submachine gun. This was the person who’d encountered Llenn among the rocks for that ferocious dogfight last Squad Jam. She ran for three seconds, changed directions, and approached. She was about 760 yards away. Would she turn right or left at the next juncture? What would the angle be? Without having the answers, M could rely only on his instincts. He aimed at an empty space. “Let them fall where they may.” He pulled the trigger. Tanya was in the process of changing directions in the middle of her sprint when she screamed. “Kyahrg!” The shot went directly through her left shoulder. Even she could see the glowing damage effect. She crashed spectacularly, sending up a cloud of dust. Her hit points dropped about halfway down at once, from the green zone into yellow. “Dammit! I got sniped! He did it without a line again! He read my mind!” Tanya swore in frustration. She pulled out an emergency med kit and stuck it into her neck. Very slowly, her hit points began to recover. “Boss! I don’t think we can get much closer than this!” Tanya complained with her typical good cheer. “I know that! But we’ve got to do it regardless! Just like we planned!” Boss replied, her face still in the dirt. Five seconds later, right as she was about to get up, her wristwatch buzzed, and she looked at the readout. 2:09:30. “Here we go! It’s time!” she called out. “Roger that!” replied Llenn.
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