SPECIAL TEARJERKER EPIC II I Fight with My Pride on the Line! II ~Let the Gunshot of My Soul Ring Across the Town~ It was about ten minutes after the start of the second Squad Jam. “Huff…huff…” In the town on the west side of the windy map, a player heaved and panted, lying in the bed of an overturned truck. He had an unremarkable avatar with an unremarkable face and figure. He wore very typical woodland-camo fatigues beneath a vest with a number of pouches for ammo magazines. Only his gun was nice, the expensive Swiss SIG SG 550 Sniper rifle. This was a custom sniper version of the SG 550 assault rifle. It had the best specs and highest price of any 5.56 mm gun. “Huff…huff… Dammit… All my allies…have been wiped out…” Up in the left corner of his vision, all five of his teammates were down to zero HP. And his was only at about 5 percent left, as the glowing bullet marks around his body made visually obvious. The next bullet that so much as grazed his skin would kill him. The truck was in the middle of a large intersection, surrounded by similar abandoned vehicles. There were a whole lot of bodies behind this wreck. Over twenty, in fact. “Ugh, why did this have to happen…?” he murmured, staring up at the cloudy sky. Those who saw the previous Squad Jam probably remembered him. He was the man who was shot by SHINC’s sniper in the desert. In real life, he was a novelist in his fifties who spent all day writing books about gunfighting, and as some people knew, he was also the financial sponsor of the tournament. Yes, he had sneakily entered his own sponsored event, and yet, not only did he not win, he didn’t even place in the top five. On top of that, when it was revealed that the special prize he sent out to the champions and runners-up was a signed set of his own books, it was…not warmly received online. He made the mistake of self-googling. “Who wants that?!” “Straight garbage.” “Nice stealth marketing.” “That doesn’t even count as stealth marketing.” “Plus, they’re individually addressed, so you can’t even sell ’em!” “It’s cyberbullying!” “Way to slander your heroes…” The toll these comments had on his mental health was, suffice to say, draining. But instead, he chose revenge! He abandoned his writing job to work on his GGO skills, determined to win the next time around. He was going to show them all. He’d get back at them with an obnoxious “Hey, I run this event, and I also won—with pure skill and no cheating! Whoopsie! Tee-hee!” So he took up arms with comrades who were aware of this unfortunate personality flaw of his, and he delved into GGO like never before. He was so unreachable in real life that his book editor actually had to create a GGO account to get in contact and demand his latest manuscript directly—but at least his character was tougher than before. And just when he had pumped himself up (“Hell yeah, I’m gonna go sponsor the second round!”), some other jerk completely blew up his spot and sponsored it first. Furthermore, the new sponsor offered prizes that were way more popular with the audience.
“Arrrgh! This sucks! This sucks!” He nearly had an aneurysm. He threw himself on the floor and flopped around. But he was not the kind of cool competitor who could admit defeat and walk away. He decided to enter SJ2 in order to steal the grand prize, and indeed, he did pass through the preliminary round with ease. Now it was a few dozen minutes into the main event. His team had a strategy. The “Let’s run away from danger and then swoop in at the last moment to snatch victory away!” strategy. It was a pathetic strategy, but at least it was a strategy. So they headed into the first Satellite Scan intending to flee from trouble, but… Why did this have to happen? Instead, other teams fled toward them into the neighborhood area to escape the powerful LF and SHINC. It turned into a giant, chaotic fracas with many squads involved. Bullets assaulted them from behind vehicles and buildings, giving no indication of who was friend or foe. Grenades clattered past. In just minutes, the battle was over, and silence returned abruptly. He had shot a number of enemies but suffered great damage himself. He was lucky to be alive, in fact. Rustle, rustle, thump. Something moved on the other side of the truck. Without any of his teammates alive, anything that was moving in this world was inevitably an enemy on one team or another. Awww… Guess I’m not…getting that prize… He closed his eyes and reflected on his life. In the span of two seconds, he thought of the very first BB gun he ever had, the sensation of the first time he shot a real gun overseas, the shotgun he bought with his book royalties, and the fun he had playing GGO. Lastly, he remembered the look on the faces of the girls in his eighth-grade homeroom when he brought an air gun in and showed it off—a look that said, Ew, what’s wrong with him? Is he a kid? Grow up. Rustle, rustle. Thump. The sound of something scraping on the ground was closer and louder now. Whatever it was, it was probably approaching from the other side of the truck. At this point, even his fancy sniper rifle wasn’t much use. He’d dropped his pistol when it was hit by a stray bullet in the big battle, and he didn’t know where it was now. Guess I’ll just give up and die! There was no point in struggling any longer. He might as well go out with a bang. Was there any reason to do otherwise? No, there wasn’t. With that thought, he laid the SG 550 Sniper on the ground. Then he removed two plasma grenades, the only other weapons he had left, and held them in each hand. Farewell, he said in silence to his favorite gun. Click. “Yaaaaaaah!” He hit the buttons for both plasma grenades and emerged from behind the truck, bellowing with his last breath. Then he saw the battlefield littered with corpses and someone’s gun dangling from the side of the truck, scraping the ground as the breeze blew it. Oh! There are no enemies! I’m the only one who survived! Yahoo! I’m still in it! I might even be able to set up from a distance and snipe my way to victory! he thought to himself in triumph. He celebrated right up until the moment the plasma grenades, which he had forgotten about, exploded, enveloping him in the blast. The End
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