CHAPTER 15
It’s Just a Game
Although it wasn’t shown on camera at all, from about 2:05 to about twenty seconds past 2:09, over four minutes in which SHINC and PM4 carried out their intense long-range battle, there were two characters who were crawling along the entire time.
One was Llenn.
She had a brown camouflage poncho on to hide her pink battle fatigues, and she was army crawling at absolute top speed over earth of the same color.
With her incredible agility stat, what would happen if she tried to crawl as swiftly as possible? It turned into an ultra-high-speed crawl, like watching a video on fast forward. She was scrabbling over the dirt at about the speed of an ordinary person trotting along, only it looked like some giant crawling insect.
The other person was Fukaziroh.
Her camo was already well suited for this terrain, so she didn’t need a poncho. She dragged her two MGL-140s along at the slow crawling speed of a normal person. “Heave-ho. Heave-ho. And there we go.” She was more like a caterpillar.
The rigors of an endless crawl were impossible to understand unless you did it yourself. The act of sliding across the earth with nothing but elbows and legs sapped stamina and wore down the mind.
There was no physical stamina in GGO, but mental stamina was a different matter. The fatigue of the mind was something that did take a toll on a player.
But Llenn pressed on.
Defeat Pito. Defeat Pito. Defeat Pito. The mantra echoed in her mind. She pushed her right elbow and knee forward on the beat of Defeat, and the left elbow and knee on Pito.
Occasionally, she would look up, using the distant scenery as her guide, to make sure her direction was correct. Over the low brown horizon, she saw a small patch of green earth.
And she was heading right for where Pitohui had been on the two o’clock scan.
The place where SHINC was fighting now.
Slightly earlier, at 1:50, inside the dome…
After the scan had passed, Boss wished Llenn a good clean fight, but Llenn was unable to respond in kind. She’d hemmed and hawed, unable to explain why, until Fukaziroh spilled all the beans in one go.
They had explained the situation as thus: Llenn was only fighting in SJ2 so she could save the life of Pitohui’s player. It was the biggest spoiler she’d ever dropped in her life.
“Hmm…,” Boss had mumbled. Her expression looked bitter at first, but after several seconds of contemplation, she asked, “In that case… Is there anything we can do for you, Karen?”
Llenn and Boss came up with their plan in a very short span of time.
It would be a two-team pincer attack. Boss’s group would leave the dome from the south; Llenn’s team would leave from the east and wait for the two o’clock scan. They would identify the location of PM4, most likely southeast of the dome, and converge on the spot from different directions.
SHINC would attack first, from the south. While PM4 was preoccupied with the battle, Llenn and Fukaziroh would attack from behind.
Defeating Pitohui would be Llenn’s job, but SHINC would help with that by whittling down as much of PM4 as they could.
“It’ll work! We have our own plan to get rid of M’s shield, as a matter of fact! We can keep PM4 occupied for at least that long! And hey, if we get wiped out, that’s that!”
Llenn knew best of all that the girls just wanted to win.
“…”
She started to say something, then thought better of it. Instead, she bowed her little head low.
“Next time, I’m buying you more snacks than you can possibly eat! That’s a promise!”
Moments before the two o’clock scan, Llenn burst out of the dome and began sprinting almost directly north, not even toward the likely location of PM4.
All in order to create an impression: She’s running away. No likely contact in the next ten minutes.
At two, after running pell-mell, Llenn reached the foot of the snowy mountain. She watched the scan come in there and confirmed that PM4 was where she expected them to be.
“Taaaaa!”
When the scan was over, she began racing like a demon for that spot, over a mile and a half away.
Meanwhile, Fukaziroh stayed behind, hiding inside the dome, and began to slowly make her way toward the same location. They proceeded toward PM4, Llenn covering massive ground at superhuman speed, and Fukaziroh making her way slowly from a much closer location.
But because it was a highly visible area, they would be spotted if they simply ran up. PM4 was a very capable team, and they would not fail to notice what was happening around them.
So Llenn and Fukaziroh got within a certain distance before getting down and crawling the rest of the way.
In under three minutes, Llenn ran over a mile, then put on the camo poncho and began to crawl over the dirt for the rest of the distance. Fukaziroh did the same.
Llenn could hear that SHINC and PM4 had begun battle, just as they’d planned. The gunshots were distant but audible.
Then she heard Boss say, “Okay! Target PM4! Commence Operation Snacks!”
This was possible thanks to the comm that Boss had taken from the team they’d beaten very early in SJ2. Any weapon or gear taken from another character was usable until the end of the event. So this whole time, Boss had been giving orders to her entire team, plus one.
That was why, while she was crawling, Llenn knew that M had sniped Anna with an ultra-long-range sniper rifle, and that Sophie had died to become a shield, just as they’d planned.
“We broke M’s shield! The opportunity is ripe! Charge!”
And she knew that Boss and her three teammates broke through the shield and were engaging in a diversionary charge.
She could hear the sound of SHINC’s machine guns and M’s M14 EBR. It sounded like a merciless shoot-out.
It was impossible to see, because she’d been crawling the whole way, but there had to be less than a third of a mile to go until she reached PM4.
Their perilous and painful plan had paid off.
Llenn’s wristwatch buzzed, signaling that it was thirty seconds past 2:09.
“It’s time!” Boss said in her ear.
“Roger that!” Llenn replied.
The final stage of the plan: get as close as possible before the 2:10 scan and attack before PM4 saw them on the map.
“Do it, Fuka!” yelled Llenn at 9:40.
“You got it!” Fukaziroh shot back. She readied the MGL-140 while lying on the ground. “Hi-yah-yah-yah!”
Between 9:45 and 9:50, she shot off six consecutive grenades.
They were aimed at a location between where she believed PM4 to be and where Llenn was. Her job was to paint the space pink and allow Llenn to make a high-speed charge.
The six smoke grenades she kept back for this purpose landed right where they wanted and began issuing smoke. Llenn could see the space before her turning the proper color.
“Okay! I’m going for it!”
“Best of luck!” “You got this!” Fukaziroh and Boss replied together.
Llenn tore the poncho off and stood up. Once her feet pushed off the ground that supported her body, they would not stop until she clung to Pitohui’s throat.
Here goes!
On her feet, her eyes looking upward for the first moment in minutes, Llenn noticed a dark blob to her left.
At first, she thought it was just a mound of dark, damp earth, like a large anthill.
But the next moment, she saw the short black line extending to the side.
Then she recognized that it was a gun barrel.
And once she knew it was a gun, her mind could then process the human figure behind it. It was a seated person with legs in front, looking like a black mass. A person cradling a long rifle and aiming it. About 650 feet away.
And the gun was pointed right in the direction that she was about to charge: toward PM4.
The possibility was still only one in five, but a terrible premonition ran down Llenn’s spine.
“Noooo!”
She gave up on running and pointed the P90 instead.
She opened fire.
Shirley’s plan was almost the same as Llenn’s: snipe and kill Pitohui.
Once her mind was made up, she suppressed her burning desire for revenge and calmly considered what she could do to achieve it.
The most important thing in hunting was not to shoot a gun well. It was getting yourself to a situation where you were guaranteed a clean hit. In other words, how close you could get to your target. The better the hunter, the closer they were to the animal when they fired.
At 1:59, Shirley began climbing the snowy mountain. It was to try to fool them about her location on the upcoming scan, whether it was going to work or not.
And in order for this to work, she opened up her inventory and brought out an item. It was an item that she actually used in real hunting off-line and one to help her deal with snowy slopes in GGO, too—a pair of skis.
These were no ordinary skis for enjoying the feeling of sliding down snow. They were a special pair made for hunting and other mountain activities. They were probably called mountain skis popularly, but all the Japanese hunters knew them as sommerskis, or summer skis.
They were about five feet long, with no binding at the ankle, so you could walk with them like cross-country skis.
The biggest feature of them all was a special layer called a seal on the underside of the skis to keep them from sliding. They were named for the sealskin they were traditionally made of, which always grew fur in one direction. This meant they would slide forward but grab the surface of the snow and hold tight in reverse. Just by shifting their legs forward and backward, skiers could climb right up a slope.
Mai had plenty of experience with sommerskis. It was the best possible tool for making your way quickly around the backcountry in the snow. As Shirley, that still held true. She kept the R93 Tactical 2 on her back and hurtled up the slope like an alpine soldier with her poles in hand.
At two o’clock, a very slow Satellite Scan started up. Shirley checked her device with one hand as she climbed. She glanced at PM4’s location, driving it into her memory.
She continued climbing the snowy mountain for as long as the scan was going. She wanted all the other players to think she was running for safety.
After a full minute, the scan was finished.
“…”
The woman with mud across her face stopped and turned around. She’d climbed quite a ways. Down the smooth slope, the massive dome was visible on the right. On the left was the valley with the long bridge, with the rocky mountain on the other side.
Straight ahead was a grand, wide-open space filled with green—and a small log house.
“Haah!” she barked, a smile on her lips.
She rearranged her feet and began to slide downhill, toward the target she meant to shoot and kill.
She was more than twice as fast going down the hill than she was climbing it.
Shirley shot down the slope in moments, as straight as a shot put. She didn’t have the Skiing skill in the game, but because she was an expert skier, it was no issue for her.
She had about a mile to go until she reached her target.
Then Shirley used a strategy identical to Llenn’s. She started crawling. It was the only way for her to approach without being spotted by her target or any other hostiles in the area. The difference between her approach and Llenn’s was that she crawled for a much longer period of time, and her terrain was sludgy with snowmelt.
She put two gloves over the end of the R93 Tactical 2 to keep the mud from getting inside the muzzle. Then she laid it sideways across the crook of her elbows and began to wade across the muddy ground.
Instantly, she was covered in filth. Her torso, her legs, and even her brilliant green hair turned black with mud.
While she crawled, she learned from the sound of gunshots that some other team had started fighting PM4. It was probably someone coming from the south. There were huge gunshots like thunderclaps. It sounded like they were firing cannons.
This battle was exactly what she needed. Shirley smirked to herself, white teeth shining in the middle of her muddy cheeks.
She kept moving, onward and onward…until her wristwatch told her that it was past 2:09, and she stopped.
In fifty seconds, her position would be made obvious on the scan. She didn’t know how much closer she was to that woman now, but at this point, her only option was to set up her gun.
Shirley moved slowly to avoid detection. First, she rolled over onto her back. Then she circled around 180 degrees, pointing her feet toward the enemy.
She took the gloves off the muzzle of the R93 Tactical 2 and pulled herself up to a sitting position with ab muscles alone. By raising and spreading her knees a bit, then bracing the outside of her elbows against her inner thighs, she could stabilize herself in a firing position.
Shirley opened both ends of the scope and peered through the lens, pulling the gun up slightly.
“There…”
She found PM4’s location right away. It was about a third of a mile away, atop a patch of grass. The enemies a few hundred yards on the opposite side were shooting off machine guns, and the tracer rounds made it easy to spot them.
To Shirley’s good fortune, she found the woman who had killed her partners right away. She was down on a dip in the grassy slope. But she was being cautious and staying down, leaving only a bit of her ponytail visible. The only thing Shirley could do was give her a haircut.
She considered aiming a bit lower with the hopes of hitting her in the face, but she abandoned that idea. Knowing that woman, she probably did stuff like dropping her gun down to guard her face or something like that.
“Dammit!”
She’d successfully snuck up to firing range and had her target in her sights, unaware—but she was unable to take her shot and score a vital hit. She looked at her watch: 2:09:45.
The scan would start in fifteen seconds.
If she stayed there, she’d get busted immediately, and PM4 would take appropriate action. Whether that would be a hail of machine-gun fire, a deadly sniper shot, or more of that horrible woman’s shooting, she didn’t know—but with nothing but a single bolt-action sniper rifle, Shirley knew she didn’t stand a chance.
Perhaps she should accept that her approach was a failure and run away while she could. Or should she attack, expecting to die in the attempt?
As she pondered these extreme options, Shirley heard a distant sound of gunshots.
It was something else, not the machine-gun rhythm she’d been hearing already.
This was almost cute, like pom-pom-pom-pom-pom.
It sounded louder in her right ear, so it was probably coming from her right. But before she could determine the source of the sound, she caught sight of something truly unbelievable out of the right side of her vision through the scope.
“Huh?”
There were little bursts of pink smoke appearing one after the other, one, two, three—six in all. With no real wind passing by, the smoke rose upward and outward.
Why…smoke?
No… Why pink?
It didn’t make sense to Shirley.
She hadn’t seen any footage from the prior Squad Jam, so she wouldn’t have known that a little shrimp wearing pink was the winner. So the pink shade of the smoke meant nothing to her. It just looked festive.
And then, grappling with confusion, more visual information entered her right eye. Within the enlarged world of the scope lens, the woman—the horrible one who had cheap-shot all her friends—raised her head.
There was new armor covering her head that hadn’t been there before, but the snotty tattooed face was clearly the same.
And she wore a happy smile. Shirley could see her pearly whites.
Why? How come? For what reason?
The woman who had been so cautious—and hadn’t let down her guard for even an instant—raised her head and smiled when she saw the pink smoke. Shirley couldn’t fathom what this meant.
But she wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass. Even without a bullet circle, at this distance, she was confident she could hit any still target.
Shirley instantly put the crosshairs of the scope just a tad higher than the woman’s right eye. The scope was set for about a hundred yards shorter, so this accounted for extra distance. The woman was facing slightly to her left, so if it hit her right eye, the bullet would bury itself deep into her brain.
Once she was sure she could kill the woman, Shirley felt her heart leap like never before.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha.” She laughed to herself.
What a comical thing. After all her stubbornness about never pointing her gun at someone else, even in a game, she had let her fury carry her up and down a snowy slope, crawled in the mud for minutes straight, then readied her gun and was about to seize her shot.
What would her old self say if she saw this?
But it didn’t matter.
It was just a game. It was just for fun, she told herself, mind clear in a single instant.
Just because she shot guns in real life, it didn’t make any sense to get angry about pointing them at people inside a game. Just like her friends had once laughed, there was no need to treat real life and games the same way.
That woman had two-timed Shirley’s teammates and shot them as part of the game.
In a battle royale where everything was permitted, it was their fault for turning their backs and letting themselves be tricked.
She was attempting to snipe her target now as part of the game.
It was the woman’s fault for showing her face.
This was a game.
Your avatar dying didn’t mean that you died.
Their avatars dying didn’t mean that they died.
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