Sword Art Online Alternative – Gun Gale Online - Volume 4 - Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1 
If It Happens Twice, It Can Happen Thrice 
Saturday, June 6th, 2026, at 2:20 PM 
A light rain had been falling on Tokyo since the morning, and the temperature was high, making it exceedingly muggy indeed. 
“Ahhh.” 
Karen Kohiruimaki was lounging. 
“Ooooh.” 
All six feet of her, extremely tall for a twenty-year-old Japanese woman in college, was clad in pale-yellow pajamas as she lounged atop the low bed in her apartment bedroom. 
“Ohhh.” 
The dull light from the rain clouds passed through the white lace curtains into her room, which was cooled and dehumidified by her air conditioner. 
“Dahhh.” 
Like a bored bear lounging in a zoo, the owner of the room surveyed her cream-colored rug, simple furnishings, neatly organized bookshelf, clothes rack, and the P90 air gun hanging from it. 
Tired of rolling from side to side in her spacious bed, Karen finally stretched her limbs all the way out and gazed up at the ceiling, grinning. “Ahhh, an afternoon with nothing to do… This is the best…,” she said to no one in particular. 
It was the greatest of luxuries—not doing anything, not sleeping, just lounging comfortably atop her bed while her mind wandered. 
Her short hair was unkempt, her face bare—and perhaps even unwashed all day. She was really making the most of her rainy Saturday afternoon. 
Next to the bed was an AmuSphere. 
When the large silver goggle-like device was hooked up to a computer and placed over her head, it would take her to a virtual world where all the senses were directly stimulated in a way indistinguishable from reality. 
But Karen’s AmuSphere had a tiny layer of dust on its surface, a sign that it hadn’t been used for some time. She hadn’t played a VR game in over a month—meaning, specifically, she hadn’t played the one game she actually had an account for: Gun Gale Online. 
GGO had an individually sponsored team battle-royale event known as Squad Jam, which was typically referred to by the abbreviation SJ. There had been two Squad Jams so far, and Llenn took part in both. 
The first SJ, from which she emerged victorious following battle after battle, had taken place on February 1st. 
The second SJ, which she’d entered for the purpose of defeating Pitohui, and finished in second place, followed two months later, April 4th. 
After that, she finally got the chance to meet Elza Kanzaki, Pitohui’s real-life identity, had a horrible time, and swore that she would never meet her offline again. That was April 19th. 
But only three times after that had she actually dived into GGO. 
The first time was Saturday, April 25th. She sold the entire submachine gun set she’d won for being an SJ2 runner-up and used the money to buy a new P90. Her teammate, Miyu Shinohara, who went by Fukaziroh online, had already returned to her favorite game, ALfheim Online (ALO), and given Llenn full control over her rewards. 
“Prize? Do whatever you want! Sell them off! Just keep Rightony and Leftania in the locker where they belong, okay?” 
She had plenty of money but no item, and it was quite an ordeal to find one. She must have searched through just about every gun shop in Glocken, the capital city of the GGO world. 
The second time she logged in was May 5th, the last day of the Golden Week holiday period. 
With her new P90, dyed pink once again, she met up with Pitohui to go monster hunting. P-chan the Third acquitted itself very well. The familiar contour of the grip. The light, compact body, which fit her petite size. The fifty-round magazines, which could be shot at a rate of nine hundred rounds per minute. Llenn had decided she would use this gun for the rest of her life. She would never cheat on it. 
Her third login was the day after that. 
She’d had some free time in the evening and decided to dive in. She was enjoying a cup of tea at a place with a nice view when she was unluckily spotted by other players. She decided to run rather than get into a big fight. If there was one thing she was good at, it was running. 
Since then, Karen hadn’t dived into GGO at all. 
There were three reasons for that. 
One, a new term had started at school, so she was busy with classes. In other words, she was preoccupied with real-life concerns. The game was just a hobby, something she did to pass the time. Karen was a hardworking student, and she wasn’t going to let her grades slip over a game. 
Two, because she had so fully plunged into SJ2 in order to beat Pitohui and allowed herself to go as wild as her instincts wanted, she actually felt quite fulfilled with what she’d accomplished during the last tournament. 
And lastly, Pitohui could hardly play anymore. She turned out to be, shockingly enough, the ultra-famous singer-songwriter Elza Kanzaki, of whom both Karen and Miyu were major fans. 
She had upcoming shows—a seven-city tour across the country from mid-June to early July, spanning Hokkaido in the north all the way to Kyushu in the south. That was obviously a big deal to her, so she was probably just swamped with rehearsals and practice. Pitohui hadn’t logged into GGO at all. 
If her number one partner wasn’t playing, then Karen didn’t feel a particularly pressing need to, either. She drifted away from GGO. 
There were some other players she knew who were her rivals in the game and thus did not mingle with her in GGO, but they were very good friends in real life. These people were from the gymnastics team of the high school attached to Karen’s college. 
“We’re super-busy these days, too! No GGO for now!” texted the team leader, Saki Nitobe. “But everyone’s doing great! We don’t have any new team members this year! It’s kind of rough! But there are lots of people who switch clubs once things settle down, so I’m not giving up hope! When things ease up, we’d love to hang out and eat snacks again!” 
It was very easy to see how Saki’s senior year was going. 
“She’s really living up her youth,” Karen remarked to herself idly. 
As usual, she had no friends at school and was always alone, but that didn’t bother her anymore. She didn’t need to force herself to make friends. She could just take things at her own pace. It would all work out. 
Ironically, her reason for starting GGO was to become another version of herself in VR, gain confidence, be more assertive, and maybe make some friends. And the conclusion she arrived at was the polar opposite of that. 
“Uuuh.” 
She was fully enjoying her lazy afternoon, when…bzzzrt. 
“Uh?” 
Her smartphone buzzed on the shelf attached to her bed’s headboard. It was her notification for an e-mail or text message. 
“Urgh?” 
She reached out, making full use of her long arms to grasp the phone behind her head and bring it in front of her face, being careful not to drop it. 
There were seven and a half billion people living on the planet, and very few of them ever had reason to contact Karen. The one more likely than anyone else was her older sister, who lived on an upper floor in the very same high-rise apartment building. 
She would send all kinds of messages. For example, sometimes she’d text Karen when she knew her husband would be home late so that she and her daughter could fill the extra seat at the dinner table. Other times it was Let’s go shopping at the department store by the train station. Or Mom and Dad sent some sweet potatoes and corn from home, so come and get some. Or How is school going? And so on. 
But because her sister was taking on the watchdog role, Karen actually didn’t talk to her own parents that much. 
Even less frequent was correspondance from her friend Miyu back in Hokkaido. She would bring stories about screwing up at the driving school she was attending now or about how much she was doing in ALO, her favorite game. Miyu was a college student, too, but she never had anything to say about classes and grades. 
After that came Saki. And then M’s real-life identity, Goushi Asougi, who only contacted her on rare occasions. 
She hadn’t given Elza Kanzaki her e-mail address yet, but if necessary, she could use the messaging system in GGO, so the result was the same. 
Now, who is intruding on my leisure time? she wondered, looking at the sender of the text. 
“Karen! Huge tidings!” 
It was Saki. 
“Uh-huh? What is it?” she replied mechanically, scrolling down the screen with her phone held straight above her upturned face. 
“Did you see the news?” 
“Huh? About what?” she mused aloud to the screen, continuing down through the body of the message. 
“It’s happening! Next month! The span is staying brief!” 
“What is? What’s happening?” 
“You’ll be entering, I assume? This time! It’ll happen for sure! I’m looking forward to it! Gosh! I’m so pumped up!” 
“About what? What am I entering?” 
Her mind was so utterly relaxed that it wasn’t functioning at all. Nothing passed through her head other than the mechanical instruction to her thumb to keep scrolling down. 
“This time, I’ll kill you for sure!” 
When she saw the final line, Karen yelped, “Hyurk?” 
Her fingers slipped, and the smartphone obeyed the laws of gravity to fall a few inches downward. 
Gonk! 
“Ouch!” 
It bounced off Karen’s forehead on a corner and plopped onto the bedsheet nearby. 
Now Karen was rolling around atop her bed for a very different reason. 
“Ooooh, it hurts, it hurts!” 
At that very moment, somewhere else among the twenty-three wards of Tokyo, a pretty woman climbed into an expensive German SUV in an underground parking garage surrounded by concrete. 
She was in her early twenties, skinny and petite, with straight black hair long enough to reach her bottom. Her outfit was extremely casual, just jeans and a T-shirt. 
The woman hopped into the back and plopped onto the expensive leather seat. 
Her name was Elza Kanzaki. 
She was one of the most famous singer-songwriters in Japan at the moment, and much less known was that she was the person behind the crazed and deadly GGO character of Pitohui. 
Elza promptly put on her seatbelt, leaned back against the seat, and closed her eyes. 
“Shutting the door,” a young man said just before it boomed shut. He came around to the driver’s seat on the right side, the motion rocking the vehicle. 

 

The driver was a very handsome man in a clean-fitting navy-blue suit. 
His name was Goushi Asougi. 
He was an employee of Elza Kanzaki’s talent agency, her personal driver, and probably her lover, as well as her servant or henchman or slave, or something along those lines. 
In GGO, he was the massively buff and powerful man known as M. 
The SUV quietly rolled into motion. It climbed the slope of the garage and out into the open street, where the sky dumped rain on the city. 
Soon after they turned onto the big road, Goushi started talking to her from the front seat as he drove. “Nice work today. There’s nothing left on your schedule. But separately, what you expected is coming to pass. There was just a news update about it.” 
In the back seat, Elza had her eyes shut, shapely lashes downcast; she almost looked asleep. Seconds after he spoke, her petite mouth opened to say only, “About what?” 
“You must be tired…,” her driver kindly said. 
“Kind of. Well, whatever it is, I’m going to fall asleep once you explain it to me. When we get home, you have to carry me on your back up to my room, got it?” Elza told him. 
Goushi hesistated. “Ah…well, once you hear what I have to say, you’ll have a hard time sleeping, I think. Should it wait until you wake up?” 
“Oh…? You’re going to keep the current world-record holder for sleepiness, who was up all night, awake even longer? Say it. If it’s true, I’ll kick your ass later. And if you’re lying, I’ll kick your ass later,” Elza said, eyes closed, voice pristine and beautiful. If any of her fans were to hear her, they’d be stunned and disappointed. 
But she knew that, too, of course, and would never think of uttering her most private thoughts in public where anyone could hear. 
The light ahead was red, and the SUV came to a stop. Without turning back to face her, Goushi obeyed her order. 
“Then I’ll tell you. The third Squad Jam, which everyone rumored would be coming soon, has been officially announced. It’s going to be on Sunday the fifth of next month, starting around noo— Ghrlh!” 
Elza’s eyes snapped open. She bolted upright and smacked Goushi directly in the back of the neck with her skinny arm. 
“Not while I’m driving, please! We’re lucky it’s a red light!” he protested. This made sense, because punching the back of a driver’s neck was a very dangerous thing to do. Definitely one of those things that good little girls and boys should not do at home. 
“Shut yer frickin’ piehole! We’re diving into GGO as soon as we get back!” 
“I thought you were going to slee— Ghrlh!” 
She punched him again. “How can I sleep now?! I’m entering! I’m doing SJ3! And so are you!” 
“But…that’s the day after the last night of the concert tour. Aren’t you going to be exhausted?” Goushi said out of concern. 
“As long as it’s not the same day!” Elza promptly replied. 
About two hours later, around five o’clock on Saturday evening. 
“Yoo-hoo! Llenn! Long time no see!” 
“Pito, it’s been forev— Hrrgh!” 
In a restaurant in the GGO city of Glocken, tall, muscular Pitohui clamped Llenn like a vise so hard that she felt like her insides were going to squirt out of her mouth. 
Pitohui was dressed in her usual GGO outfit, a skintight navy-blue bodysuit. Angled, geometric tattoos adorned her cheeks. Her black hair was gathered into a tight ponytail in the back. 
Llenn, too, wore her own trademark look of pink combat fatigues and pink hat. In fact, it was the only clothing she had in the game. 
Pitohui squeezed her so hard it was practically strangulation, hurtling her friend’s tiny body back and forth. “Wow, it really feels like it has been forever! Oh, you’re just so cute! Did you shrink?” 
“Gyaaa!” 
“That’s enough, Pito,” said a man built like a mountain, wearing a T-shirt. If he hadn’t done so, she probably would have strangled Llenn. 
From there, Llenn, Pitohui, and M entered a private room where other players couldn’t see or overhear them. 
“Iced tea!” Pitohui ordered for Llenn. It popped out of the table at once. “Here we go! Cheers! Whoooo! So anyway, I can’t wait to fight in SJ3!” she said, getting right to the point. 
“Huh?” Llenn gaped, straw for her iced tea stuck to her lip. Pitohui held up a glass with a drink of some mysterious color and smiled. “I mean, that’s what I wrote in that message. They’re holding SJ3.” 
“Yeah, I know that! But I never wrote back with any indication I was signing up!” 
“Oh? You don’t want to? The honored champion and then runner-up hero who defeated me isn’t going to tuck her tail between her legs and flee when I’m burning for revenge, is she? Is she?” Pitohui teased unpleasantly. 
But Llenn wasn’t that weak anymore. “I’m not taking that bait!” She wet her whistle with more iced tea and snapped back, “I’m tired of fighting against you! It’s exhausting! I don’t want to do it, if I have the choice! In fact, I definitely don’t want to do it!” 
“Aww, you’re no fun.” 
“And more im-por-tant-ly! We don’t have any reason to fight!” 
“Aww.” 
“It’s true! I’ll hang out in the bar and root for you! I’ll burn the image of your heroism into my retinas!” 
Llenn sat back and took another sip from her straw, satisfied that she’d made an airtight case. 
“Ahhh, I see your point. It’s true; you don’t really have a reason to fight me. I can understand that,” Pitohui admitted. 
“Oh?” Llenn’s eyes went wide. 
But she nearly spit out her tea when Pitohui said, “So let’s play on the same team this time!” 
“Huh?” 
“You don’t want to go against me, right? So we just have to be on the same team instead! We’ll finally get to be in Squad Jam as teammates! That’s so exciting! Hey, squaddie!” 
“……But, but, but…,” Llenn countered, yet Pitohui’s grinning face got closer and closer. True to form, the smile was pleasantly malicious. 
“Besides, you’ve broken one very important promise already, haven’t you?” 
“Pardon?” This time, Llenn really was confused. She’d fulfilled her promise to Pitohui in SJ2, so that really should have been the end of her commitments. 
“Your battle against the Amazons!” Pitohui reminded her. 
“Ah…” 
It wasn’t until that point that Llenn recalled the very reason she’d dropped her smartphone on her face two hours earlier. Pitohui was right; the battle she’d promised Saki, boss of the Amazons, had been delayed in SJ2 because of her own personal reasons. 
Thanks to that, Pitohui was still alive here today. Llenn ignored the temptation to say This is all your fault! She had to find a way to fulfill her promise to Boss. But there was just one simple question to answer first. 
“How did you know about that, Pito?” 
She hadn’t told anyone else about the promise she made in SJ2. There was a video archive, but there wouldn’t be any voice audio. And Llenn couldn’t imagine that the other girls had any connection to Pitohui. 
“Huh? How did I know?” Pitohui repeated, baffled that Llenn wouldn’t already be aware. “Because Miyu told me, obviously.” 
The face of the other person who had been present flickered through Llenn’s mind like a storm. Miyu and Fukaziroh, two sides of the same coin, flipped back and forth, both smiling. 
So unbeknownst to Karen, Miyu had gotten the contact info for Pitohui—make that Elza Kanzaki—and had been carrying on a correspondence secretly. 
It was quite the opposite reaction to Karen’s after meeting Elza in person, when Elza had French-kissed Karen and caused her to distance herself out of a sense of personal peril. 
“Th-th-that…bitch!” Llenn howled, but there was nothing she could do about it now. 

“So give it up, Llenn. If you’re able to get to the bar that day to watch, it means you don’t have anything else going on, right?” 
“Urgh…” 
“And you need to fulfill your promise to the Amazons, so you’ll take part in SJ3. You need powerful teammates to fight a powerful team, so that means me and M…and why not invite Miyu? She can just convert over again!” 
“Booo…” Llenn pouted. The plans were coming together over her protests. 
“Six members is the max for a squad…but we’re all tough, so I bet four will be enough!” 
“Hrrm…” 
“Oh, stop sulking! Let’s fight on the same side! It’s a game, okay? A game! Just a normal game! Let’s just have fun with it and make the most of this opportunity!” 
So said the very person who had ensured that the previous two times, Llenn couldn’t just enjoy a normal game and have fun with it. Her smile was radiant. 
“……” 
Llenn didn’t know whether to be furious or to laugh. 
 
Whether she wanted to or not, Llenn was going to participate in SJ3. In the coming days, other SJ-obsessed squads had some thoughts on the matter. 
“Whoo-hoo! Karen’s going to team up with Pitohui and Fukaziroh this time!” 
The members of SHINC, the all-girls high school gymnastics team led by Saki, were beside themselves with excitement. 
“Yes! Revenge match!” 
“Payback for SJ1!” 
“The big-time fight we’ve been waiting for!” 
“We’re just getting started!” 
“Let’s kill ’em!” 
They were dressed in their school uniforms and shouting bloody murder on the sidewalk in broad daylight, which caused mild alarm among the other pedestrians. 
“SJ3 time, baby! What are we doing, boys?” 
In their usual group chat, the collection of machine-gun aficionados spread across Japan known as ZEMAL, the All-Japan Machine-Gun Lovers, were similarly pumped up. 
“We’re doin’ it!” 
“I’m in! And this time, I’m keepin’ an eye above us, too!” 
“If there’s a reason not to play, I wanna hear it.” 
“I would pawn off my own parents to enter this tournament! How much do you think they’ll give me?” 
“Awesome! Then I’ll get us registered! But…we can have one more person, so it sure would be nice to round out the group.” 
“I agree, but it’s a bit late for that.” 
“We gotta find someone who loves machine guns as much as us? Tough assignment.” 
“Got it. That’ll be our homework for next time. This round, we enter as five!” 
“Okay! Give us your protection, god of machine guns!” 
“Yes! Bless us, Open Bolt!” 
“Please, we beg of you! Open Bolt!” 
“OB, our god!” 
“OB! OB! OB!” 
And so a new cult religion was born. 
“And that’s why I called this impromptu meeting.” 
The all-male MMTM team, full title Memento Mori, had lost to M and Llenn the first time around, and Pitohui alone the last time. Today they were having an in-GGO meetup. 
“We’re not doing any hunting activities today, just having a discussion.” 
They were in a private room in a pub in Glocken. They wore the same thing they had on in SJ2, an old Swedish camo pattern of straight lines and angles in green shades. Apparently, it had become their trademark look. 
“I’m thinking that we should enter as a team again. Is there anyone who absolutely can’t make July 5th?” asked their handsome leader. The other five around the table all said they were available. 
“Good! Then let’s win this time!” he said, slamming a fist into his open palm. “Squad Jam’s getting a name for itself, too, so we might have some talented new opponents—but for now, we’re dealing with that gorilla’s band of Amazons; they’ve got good teamwork. There’s the little pink shrimp who ya can’t hit for the life of ya, and then crazy Pitohui’s team. Whenever we’re able to get together, we will focus on tactics and practice designed to counter these specific teams.” 
One of the men, who wore shades indoors, said, “Pardon my interruption.” 
His name was Lux. He used the 5.56 mm G36K assault rifle. He was the one who drowned in the lake in SJ1 and got his head cut off by Pitohui’s lightsword in SJ2. 
“For a while now, I’ve actually been thinking of changing jobs to a sniper role.” 
“Oh?” said the leader. 
The rest of the team looked at Lux, who explained, “In SJ, much of the combat happens in more open environments than you’d expect going into the event. I think it’d be good to have at least one sniper who can hit a target at twenty-five hundred feet. So I’m considering giving up the G36K for an MSG90. With an automatic sniper rifle, I can provide long-distance support for the rest of the team. But I wanted to get everyone’s approval first, since that will change our tactical style.” 
As Lux said, the MSG90 was an automated sniper rifle that would shoot continuously just from pulling the trigger. Like the G36K, it was made by Heckler & Koch (HK) from Germany. The body was based on the G3 assault rifle, with an enlarged 7.62 mm caliber barrel. That was the same size as M’s M14 EBR. 
So it could be used for sniping, and its automatic fire could work in mid- or close-range situations as well. It was an almighty weapon very close in usage and specs to the M14 EBR overall. 
“I see…” 
The team leader thought this over. To this point, the team’s machine gunner, named Jake, had taken on the limited role of sniper. His HK21 was based on the G3, too, and could be switched to semi-auto mode. It also had a scope for long-distance aiming. 
But the principal purpose of a machine gun was to lay down a hail of fire. It could never match a sniper rifle for precision, so the scope had a low zoom and couldn’t give an accurate reading at a distance. 
Having just one sniper on the team would give them a much bigger advantage in open spaces than they had at the moment. Lux was also the team’s biggest real-life gun fanatic, and his aim was good. 
On the other hand, they would be going from five close-range storm troopers to four. A 20 percent loss of power was no laughing matter. They would definitely need to practice as a team under any new strategic lineup. 
All decisions have their upsides and downsides. Nothing was pure good or bad. 
In four seconds, the team leader arrived at his decision. 
“Let’s do it!” 
“I can? You sure?” Lux said, double-checking. 
The leader told him and the rest of the team, “Everything is a new challenge. If it doesn’t work out, then it doesn’t work out. You can blame me for making a bad decision.” 
The other five grinned. They knew that their decision to make him the leader was the right one. The quickness of decision and the responsibility to claim fault if it went wrong were the marks of a quality leader. 
“What’s the plan? Are we entering again…?” 
At that moment, in a different pub elsewhere in GGO, more players discussed signing up for SJ3. This group was made up of seven men and one woman. The men sported a variety of hairstyles, but the solitary woman stood out even more thanks to hers—in a brilliant-green color. 
They were the team known as KKHC, the Kita no Kuni Hunters Club; Kita no Kuni meaning “from the north.” 
This group of real-life hunting companions had formed their own squadron in GGO for the purpose of improving their hunting and shooting skills in a safe virtual environment. They wore matching jackets in a camouflage pattern that looked like realistic trees, better suited for hunting than combat. 
Last time, four of the men and the one woman here had been available on the day of Squad Jam and entered on a lark. 
“Boy, we sure got creamed…,” complained a middle-aged man with a receding hairline. He was right—the results had been brutal. 
It was their first experience with personal combat. They played conservatively, utilizing their sniping strengths to pick off a number of enemy teams, but suggesting an alliance with Pitohui’s deadly squad after that was a clear lapse in judgment. 
She turned them down, then shot them in the back as they left. The four men all died on the spot without a chance to shoot back. Only the green-haired girl, Shirley, escaped alive. She put up an excellent fight on her own and even got a hit on the hateful Pitohui. 
However, in the end, she was unable to finish the job and avenge her teammates. The pink shrimp who got runner-up shot her in the head. Game over. 
After several moments of silence, a young man who was among the SJ2 participants said, “Well, I dunno… I mean…we don’t have to play, do we?” 
The room softened a bit. He had earned their warm gratitude for being the one to step up and suggest the thing they all wanted but were afraid to say. With the ice broken, he continued, “I mean, team combat is fun and all, but we’re in GGO to practice our hunting accuracy, not to get better at killing people, you know? So we can just—” 
Wham! Hands slapped the table. 
“Weak!” 
That was Shirley, who got to her feet. She snarled, exposing white canines. 
“Aren’t you angry? That woman’s going to be in it again! It’s the perfect chance to slaughter her right in front of everyone! Don’t you at least want revenge against her? To blast a hole right through her head and score a satisfying clean kill? Don’t you have the guts to pit yourself against a powerful enemy?” 
Furious passion exuded from her every pore, down to the tips of her green hair. Her teammates could practically see an aura rising, despite it being a video game, incapable of simulating spiritual power. 
In short, the men were freaked out. 
“Erm…” 
“Well…uhhh…” 
“Gosh…” 
“I dunno…” 
Collectively, the men had the same thought: That’s weird; weren’t you the one who held out until the last moment on trying SJ2, claiming that it wasn’t proper for someone who used guns in real life to practice shooting players in the game…? 
And yet, none of them had the guts to say this out loud, so they just sat in silence. 
“I’m going to enter!” Shirley yelled. “Who else? Is anyone with me?” 
She stared down her companions. 
Elsewhere at that moment, a player spoke to five teammates who were leading the way. “You’ll be entering, right? Because I’m in. I can’t wait for it.” 
They were in the wilderness of GGO. The game’s setting was said to be a post-apocalyptic Earth, when a spaceship returned with human beings after the planet had been rendered uninhabitable by war. 
Even the atmosphere was ruined here. The sky at midday was bloodred, and the earth was a blasted, arid wasteland. In the distance, skyscrapers stood bent in various stages of slow collapse. 
The speaker was a handsome player with short black hair, wearing black combat gear with four cylindrical pouches on the chest and a plastic pistol holster on the right hip. 
His—no, her—name was Clarence. 
While she looked like a handsome man and spoke with the characteristic roughness of a man, the player was a woman. The system that AmuSphere VR games used prevented players from playing as characters whose sexes differed from their real-life identities. 
Clarence had her first taste of Squad Jam action in the previous event. Her squad chose to join forces with others inside a giant dome packed with jungle trees and undergrowth. Their strategy was to beat the powerhouse teams like Llenn’s LF, SHINC, and MMTM with the strength of numbers alone. 
Three teams totaling eighteen members formed a net that succeeded in catching the pink shrimp’s team—they just weren’t good enough to win. 
In the midst of an unexpected pink smokescreen, the tiny player darted back and forth, finishing off enemies one by one. It was the Massacre in the Dome and was the cause of much celebration for the players watching the event live. 
By coincidence, Clarence had the chance to briefly talk with Llenn, and in the end, she gave the other girl her leftover ammo magazines, just moments before she was shot and killed by MMTM. 
Rocking against her back as she walked across the desert was an AR-57. 
It was quite an eccentric gun. It had the lower receiver—meaning the bottom and back half—of an M16 but the upper receiver of a different gun entirely, making it a sort of firearm chimera. 
As for the upper receiver, it was actually nearly identical to Llenn’s P90. It had the magazine on top in the same way and fired special 5.57 mm rounds. 
In GGO and in the real world, these two guns were the only kinds that used this type of magazine. It was the only reason she was able to provide Llenn with all that ammo. 
“I’d like to see that squirt again! And this time, I’ll use every dirty trick in the book and win fair and square! I wanna shoot her in the back! I wanna shoot her cute little butt! I wanna stick the muzzle into her mouth and pull the trigger!” Clarence trilled happily. In the meantime, her teammates, who were outfitted with a variety of camo and weapons, made faces of disgust. 
Even the most clueless of people could tell that they clearly did not want to take part in SJ3. Or perhaps it was that they didn’t want to take part in SJ3 with Clarence. 
“So we’re all in this one together, right? Shall I sign us up? Same lineup as last time, okay?” Clarence said, all in a rush. 
“Nope! I’m busy that day.” 
“So am I. Gotta pass on this one.” 
“Me too.” 
“Ditto.” 
The four all declined, none of them turning back to look at Clarence. 
It was often the case that players in GGO spoke without looking one another in the face. Not because of any antisocial desire to avoid others, but because you had to be on the lookout for monsters and enemy players. 
In this case, however, it was perfectly accurate to say that none wanted to look at Clarence. Or show their expressions, either. 
Clarence trotted over to the closest victim. “What about you, Sam?” she said as she grabbed his shoulders. His avatar was that of a dark-skinned Middle Eastern man. He turned to her. His name was Sam. Just Sam. 
While his features were well-composed, the body was his avatar, and it exhibited his mental state quite faithfully, twisting with hesitation and unease. 
“Um…I…” 
“Be a man and man up! Are you busy that day?” 
“No, but I…,” he said, withering under the pressure. 
“Then it’s settled.” Clarence released her grip and patted his shoulder. There was resignation on his face. 
She turned to the rest of the group and said happily, “Hey, everyone! I’ll be entering with Sam! At least show up for the preliminary round, okay!” 
There had been a preliminary selection round in SJ2, and there would probably be one this time, too. It would be tough to get through the prelims with just the two of them, so her request was a “friendly” invitation for the rest to join for that round. 
The other four did not respond. Without breaking her smile, Clarence said, “If you don’t, I’m going to spill the beans about you-know-what.” 
“Oh, I’m in!” “Of course I’m there!” “Why wouldn’t I be?” “I was hoping to participate in the prelims!” they all stammered at once, talking over one another and making it hard to distinguish their words. 
What was crystal clear, however, was that Clarence had some kind of dirt on her male teammates. 
 
The teams hoping to take part in SJ3 filed their entry forms one after the other, as soon as they were able. The passion for Squad Jam hadn’t diminished over the downtime. The prizes for landing among the top ranks, while not as deluxe as the last one, included guns, medicine, and a variety of ammunition. 
Even without the promise of a deluxe prize, the offer of a special exclusive map that you couldn’t find elsewhere in GGO was the kind of thing that struck the gamer’s soul. The interior jungle of the last event was a good example of that. 
Another perk was the chance to engage in team combat with some like-minded friends. And even better, they recorded live footage for the pub audience, so you also had the fun of seeing the video of your team kicking ass (or getting its ass kicked) afterward. 
Among the player base, there was one rule in particular that struck up conversation. What did it mean? 
SJ3 essentially carried over all the rules of SJ2. It would be a thirty-team battle-royale event, with Satellite Scans every ten minutes that displayed the location of each team’s leader. The four top finishers from last time would each be given a bye. The competition would take place on a map ten kilometers to a side, or a bit over six miles. All dead bodies would remain in place as indestructible objects for ten minutes. 
But this time, there was one mysterious rule added to the list. 
“By the sponsor’s suggestion, at the point that only six to eight teams remain, a new rule will be announced and put into place. It is designed to be enjoyable for both participants and viewers. Please look forward to it.” 
There were absolutely no details as to what it might be. No hints were given or questions answered. There was even a warning on the form saying that if you didn’t like it, you didn’t have to enter. 
Why would it take place when six to eight teams were left? What was the reason for the range between those numbers? There was no way to know ahead of time. 
Normally, you might react with anger. Who’s gonna take part in a game where you don’t know the rules before you start? Harrumph! But in this case, nobody withdrew their application on account of the new rule. 
For one thing, in a chaotic battle like SJ, it would be very difficult to survive until only eight teams remained, so this wasn’t a serious issue to the majority of the players entering. More important was just lasting that long. 
And to the teams with the skill and potency to last to the final eight, it was a trivial issue. 
“What’s the use in worrying about it? It’s not like they’re going to install a rule banning machine guns! OB!” said someone in the Machine-Gun Lovers. 
“Who cares? Whatever it is, we’ll adapt appropriately when the time comes,” said the leader of MMTM. 
“No matter what happens, we’re teammates, and we won’t back down,” said Boss from SHINC. 
“I’m not worried in the least. If anything, something different might spice up the proceedings,” said Pitohui. 
Karen told Miyu about it during a call to Hokkaido and got a very muted reaction. 
“Hmm, I wonder what it is. In one of the games I played, they would do stuff like bump weapon durability all the way back up to max for the final battle to make it more exciting.” 
“Ooooh. You think they’d refill all your ammo or something?” 
“I’m more excited about the chance to hold Rightony and Leftania again soon!” 
That was about the extent to which they dealt with whatever the new rule might be.