Sword Art Online Alternative – Gun Gale Online - Volume 6 - Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4 
The Devil’s Castle 
Llenn was on the run. 
She raced directly north through an area dotted with rocks. 
At her max speed, it was a trip that would not take long at all. The goal, according to the map, was less than one thousand yards away now. 
There were no enemy attacks in the meantime. But she could hear the drumming of consecutive gunfire in the distance ahead, so there was clearly some battle happening. One of the other teams had arrived already. 
She wondered if she might run across the members of SHINC, who were heading to the same spot, but it didn’t happen. They must’ve gone much farther east. 
The mist-shrouded goal came into Llenn’s view. 
The location all but confirmed it. This was the base the enemy NPCs were protecting. 
The enemy’s stronghold, the details of which were concealed on the map—was a castle. 
A castle built of stone, in the European style. The stone was gray, shaded such that it blended eerily into the gray of the sky. 
Tall walls surrounded the castle. Rounded portions of the walls were slightly taller, probably containing staircases within. Those would have turrets near the top. 
Four spires towered behind the castle walls. The keep itself was hidden, but she could imagine its shape beneath the spires. 
The walls and towers were perfectly intact, making it clear that these weren’t the usual ruins. They’d be able to go inside, presumably. And the enemy would shoot from above, presumably. 
“I see it! They’re protecting a castle! Like one in Europe. It’s about a thousand feet across, I’d guess? I can see a big wall surrounding it!” Llenn reported to her teammates, who were following up somewhere behind her. 
M said, “Got it. Can you see any combat?” 
“Not on visual. Just distant sounds.” 
“All right. Wait for us in a safe location.” 
But Llenn thought it over for a bit and disagreed with her team leader. “I’ll be fine. I’ll keep approaching for a better look until they start shooting.” 
There was still plenty of ground to cover, and as long as she kept moving, she knew she could avoid any sniper shots. If they started firing en masse, Llenn had the legs to dodge, as long as she could see the bullet lines. 
M’s reply was delayed a bit, probably out of surprise and confusion. “All right. But don’t attempt to get too close or charge in there alone.” Ultimately, he acknowledged her enthusiasm. 
“Got it!” she chirped happily, continuing to run. 
Then she saw, up ahead, where the rocks disappeared. There was almost no cover whatsoever. The best she had was a few isolated bits of crumbling stone wall. It seemed to have once been part of the castle town, but it had gone past ruins into simple scraps of standing material. 
What now…? 
Llenn hesitated briefly. She was less than 650 yards away from the castle now. Any gun that fired 7 mm bullets would be able to hit her at this range. 
But she didn’t slow down. 
I can get there! I will get there! I must get there! 
She rushed past the last boulder. Her speed dipped slightly as she made certain not to step on the bits of crumbled stone, and she continued on her way to the castle, occasionally feinting to either side to keep it unpredictable. 
It was still far away, so she couldn’t see the lower part of the castle very well. She’d just barely get within two or three hundred yards, find somewhere to hide, and then look for an entrance. 
At that moment, something large and orange flashed to the side of the castle. 
The very next moment, a patch of dirt in front of her burst upward as though exploding on its own. It showered her face and body and even went into her mouth and eyes. 
“Pbleck!” she yelped, hearing the quick drumbeat of gunfire in the distance. 
I’m under fire! 
The dirt in her eyes impaired her vision, but she knew enough to seek out the stone wall about three feet high and thirty feet long, ahead to her left. But as soon as she turned to the left, another series of explosions in the dirt happened on her right, followed by the sound of the gun. If her turn had been a moment later, she would have run directly into the path of the bullets. Their accuracy was frightening. 
“Fwaah!” She nestled her diminutive body behind the stone wall and shouted, “I’m getting shot from the castle! Machine gun! But I couldn’t see a bullet line! They’re shooting without lines!” 
GGO was a game, so when a player placed their finger on the trigger, it would display a visual target called a bullet circle that would indicate where the shot would go. The drawback was that it would also show a bullet line to the target. The only exception was the very first shot in a sneak attack. 
But initial surprise shots aside, Llenn never saw a line with the second volley of shots. That meant the other side was a skilled enough shooter to fire without producing a line. 
She knew that M could do it, because he’d had training at live shooting ranges overseas, where that was legal. But Llenn never considered that an NPC might lack a bullet line. Or more accurately, she never thought that the system would state that NPCs could perform such a feat. So the whole thing about them being the strongest NPCs wasn’t a bluff. 
“I heard the shots. Where are you?” 
“I managed to hide behind a stone wall! I’m about five hundred yards from the castle!” 
“Got it. We’ll come closer,” M said, which was a momentary relief—but in the end, it did not help her. 
Minutes later, without any backup and the protective stone wall reduced to rubble by a large-bore sniper rifle, Llenn had no choice but to rush out into the open, where she was cut down by machine guns. 
“That’s it… Dammit! They’re just too tough!” 
She was dead. 
Llenn knew what would happen if she died in the middle of the playtest. 
First, once her hit points reached zero, she would instantly be teleported to a waiting room. Like in Squad Jam, she found herself standing in a fishy-looking place almost like outer space, where up, down, left, and right seemed like amorphous concepts. 
In front of her was a large timer, counting down from 180. She could either wait here for the number to hit zero or choose to end the game session and return to Glocken right now. 
Communicating with her teammates was not possible, of course. She was allowed to take items out of her virtual storage to equip them, it seemed. But at the moment, there was nothing for Llenn to do. 
“Ugh, I pushed too hard. I got sloppy!” Llenn complained, plopping into a seated position on the black floor and cursing her own foolishness. 
She had gone off way too far on her own. She never imagined that the enemy would be able to fire machine guns and large-caliber sniper rifles without bullet lines. But she should have known better. 
This was a mistake of overconfidence. 
“I really let Pito down.” 
When they fought ZEMAL earlier, it should have been Llenn’s job to commit suicide and come up behind then. She was the speedy one. It was the ideal strategy for her. 
But M gave the order to Pitohui. 
That was probably—no, certainly—because he didn’t want to waste one of Llenn’s lives here, but preserve them for the battle against SHINC at the very end of all of this. And now she had wasted one for no gain at all. She didn’t even catch a glimpse of the enemy. 
“I won’t be sloppy again!” she told herself, waiting for the number to tick down to zero. 
She’d been teleported to the waiting space instantly and came back just as fast. 
“Ooh!” 
She was standing behind a boulder. It was familiar scenery: the place she’d passed through with the team earlier. 
A look around the area turned up nothing that looked like an enemy. Based on the HP bars of her team in the upper left corner of her vision, no one had suffered any damage since she died. A ten-second countdown appeared in the center of her view, but she ignored it. Llenn opened her map screen and spoke to her teammates through the comm. 
“I’m back. Sorry. Where are you now?” 
The map showed Llenn where she was: to the south, almost a mile from the goal. 
“We’re hiding in the ruins of a large house, half a mile from the castle in a south-southwest direction. Can you make it here?” said M. 
“Got it! I’m going now! I’ll make it to you!” Llenn said, bursting into motion. 
“Yo, Llenn Number Two!” 
She ran like a bullet and eventually reached a crumbling stone house, exactly where M said it would be. When she got there, she found Fukaziroh and the other two were crouched behind it. 
“Sorry for the wait!” she said, sliding over the damp ground to rejoin the group. 
A number of Western European–style houses were falling apart in the area; it seemed to have been a residential area at some point. A large flat section made of smaller pieces was lying at a diagonal. It was probably the ceiling. Several layers of rubble many feet thick propped it up. That would protect them from any kind of shooting, even an antimateriel rifle. It was the perfect place to take cover. 
The problem was that there was nothing of note between them and the castle. It was just flat land that was perfectly visible from the distant destination. M might be able to snipe the castle from this distance, but that would do little good on its own. And if they ran closer, they’d only get shot. 
“How does it look?” Llenn asked. 
Fukaziroh replied, “It’s bad, Llenn. We can’t get any closer to that castle. The other guys are crazy tough.” She lifted her empty hands in a gesture of abandonment. 
Pitohui pointed out, “The south side is no good—it’s too open. They shoot with an antimateriel rifle with no bullet line, plus they have machine-gun support. The western side is slightly better, as you can see, but there’s still no cover up ahead. So, in that sense, it’s no different from the south side.” 
“What about the north?” 
“There’s thick forest there, and it should get us the closest to the castle. You ready, M?” 
“Yeah,” he said, turning to face them. A rectangular box was in his hands. It was gray, seemingly plastic, and about the size of a standard A4 sheet of paper, but it was two inches thick. 
“?” 
It was not a common sight in GGO. Llenn looked confused, so M hurled it up into the air. Immediately, bits like arms shot out of the four corners. There were propellers on the ends of the arms that spun and stabilized the box in midair. 
“Ooh!” Llenn exclaimed. “Wow! This is one of those thingies… A drone, right?” 
“Yes, indeed. This is the toy I just bought,” said Pitohui. 
This was the item she wanted to arrive early to purchase, Llenn realized. So drones were implemented in GGO now, too. 
Drones were the catchall name for a variety of devices—unmanned mobile units that could be remotely controlled or were entirely autonomous. An automobile or ship could be a drone if it was controlled without a human on board, but the kind of drone best known in Japan was this multicopter type, a small helicopter with multiple propellers powerful enough to keep it elevated. 
It rose until Llenn could see a hemisphere of clear glass on the underside of the box. It was very clearly a camera, like the kind on the ceiling of convenience stores. 
“And we’ll watch it on here,” Pitohui said, showing her a flat panel like a tablet computer. On the tablet, Llenn could see herself looking at the tablet from an overhead angle—it was the image the drone was capturing. 
The visuals were crisp, colorful, and with hardly any visual lag. Llenn waved at it and saw herself doing so on the screen with no noticeable delay. There was no sound. 
“So they put them in the game! And you bought one!” 
“It was really expensive. There aren’t many available yet,” said Pitohui. 
“Ooh,” Fukaziroh exclaimed. “I’m not going to ruin the fun of the game by asking the price, but between you and me, how many thousands of yen did you throw down?” 
“Ah, let’s see… Enough to field a whole soccer team of the guy who said, ‘People are born equal but don’t live equal, so you better study hard and make something of yourself!’” 
“Wowza! Eleven Yukichis!” said Fukaziroh, referring to the man on the ten-thousand-yen note. 
“Incidentally, if it gets shot down, the item is lost forever.” 
“Hot damn!” 
“So fly that sucker veeery high, M.” 
“Got it.” 
The buzzing of the propellers got much louder, and it began to ascend. M was using the controller grip connected to the screen, using his thumbs on little sticks. His face was dead serious with concentration. If it crashed or got shot down, it represented a major financial loss, so of course he was careful. This was his first time piloting it. 
“All flight aside from stasis hovering is manual, so it’s pretty old-fashioned compared to modern drones. You can’t have it run recon for you all on its own. Pretty high difficulty,” said Pitohui. 
In 2026, even a drone you could buy at the toy store would take off automatically with the push of a button on a smartphone screen and follow a route if you just traced it on a map with your finger, automatically avoiding danger and returning to its origin point before its battery ran out. 
This GGO drone would stay at its designated location and maintain altitude if the user wanted it to, but everything else had to be done by the pilot. If it were totally autonomous, that would be too much of an advantage for the owner. It was also fairly large and not very cool-looking. 
Despite all that, Llenn was thrilled. “This is incredible; we can see the whole map from above!” 
“That’s nothing new for me,” bragged Fukaziroh, who came from the world of ALO, where all characters could fly as much as they wanted. 
Llenn watched the video on Pitohui’s tablet—or as much as she could while still remaining vigilant. It was so entertaining to watch the camera footage as it rose higher and higher. She felt like she was a bird. 
“And in ALO, I could see this with my own eyes…? Maybe I should try it out…” 
“Oh! You wanna come over? You wanna? You’re welcome anytime!” 
“Um…maybe…kinda…?” 
“With pleasure, then! One guest, coming right up!” 
With a smile and a shake of her head, Pitohui watched Fukaziroh and Llenn carry out their mysterious little routine. “You can do that later, you two. We need to check out this castle for now.” 
The drone was very high up now. The entire castle was visible on the screen. 
The stone castle walls made a decagonal shape, where each side ended in towers topped with a spire and turrets. The walls themselves were about sixty-five feet tall, with the towers adding another fifteen. 
Atop the walls were battlements with embrasures at regular intervals for both defensive and offensive purposes. The way they jutted up and down was very clear on the image. The entire breadth of the space enclosed by the walls was about a thousand feet, as far as Llenn could tell. 
There was a gate in the wall on each of the cardinal directions. The gates had straight sides and soaring arches. Each was the same size, about thirteen feet high and ten feet across. A large truck could easily drive through it. 
You would expect a wooden door firmly bolted shut, but whether it was from sheer age or damage, there were no doors on the gates. Instead, piles of rubble made of stones and bricks rose to about the height of a person within the gateway, making access more difficult. 
“It looks just like…a castle,” said Fukaziroh helpfully. 
The interior behind the walls was a courtyard with no plant life whatsoever. There was only bare, flat earth, with the occasional simple wooden building—they could have been stables or storehouses. The group could see a little circle, too—a well, maybe. 
Paved stone paths extended in each direction from the gates. Large, rectangular divots were visible along the sides of the paths; perhaps they were meant to be ponds. Nothing reflected from them, so there was no water in there now. 
In the center of the property was the citadel itself, a castle with four spires. It had a plain, practical exterior, nothing fanciful. 
The towers were placed at perfect forty-five-degree angles from the cardinal directions. Each one was about the height of a ten-story building. There were black holes here and there on their surfaces: windows. 
The building itself was about half that height. The whole thing was maybe 160 feet across. Many more windows yawned darkly from the higher parts of the castle. 
The wooden roof of the building was still firmly intact, so you couldn’t see the inside from above. There were other castle-like dungeon areas in GGO, but Llenn had never gone into them. 
“Hmm… It’s already tough enough to merely approach it, and even if we breach the walls, it’ll be a nasty fight to cross that courtyard. They’ll shoot at us from the towers and castle,” Pitohui observed. No sooner had she said it than a light flashed from a window near the top of one of the castle towers. A narrow orange beam approached the screen. 
“Higher, M!” 
“Got it.” 
The castle got quite a bit smaller on the screen—M put the drone into a rapid ascent. The firing from the tower stopped. Either it was out of range now or the drone was at such an angle that it couldn’t be struck from the window. 
“Yikes, that was close. Hold it at the highest possible height, M. I’ll zoom in the camera,” Pitohui said, pinching the tiny image of the castle with her fingers to zoom in. That was a pretty handy feature, and she could do it with her gloves on. 
As the castle got larger and larger on the screen, a soldier came into view. The man was prone next to a turret on the castle’s east wall, holding a huge, blocky rifle. 
“There!” Llenn cried, at the first sight of their enemy. Given the abnormal size of his rifle, this was clearly the one who’d shot up the wall Llenn was hiding behind before she died. 
And just when they’d finally caught a visual of the enemy for the first time—a tiny glimpse through the screen, at least—there was a cute little bing! sound, and more words appeared in the air before Llenn’s eyes. 
You’ve got intel on all of the enemy units! 
So it seemed the developers had given them some extra information. Presumably that would be because they had gotten a good glimpse of the enemy for the first time. Even through the drone camera and not in person, though? It probably wasn’t important enough to quibble over. Llenn was grateful for the information. 
There are seven enemies. Each of these soldiers is the toughest in his field! 
Fukaziroh was clearly reading the same message that Llenn was. “Gee, thanks,” she snorted. 
Bing! A picture of the first member appeared. 
It was very considerate of them to provide the characters’ appearance. It would be quite annoying if a player got into the castle and couldn’t tell if what they were seeing was an enemy NPC or a member of another human team. 
The picture was of a large white man. His beard was so long and thick that they couldn’t see his jawline. He was the very picture of a burly foreign man. He seemed to be in his forties. 
The man wore American-style MultiCam fatigues, with a military issue helmet and a plate carrier vest protecting his torso. There was a bandage over his forehead beneath the helmet. Perhaps part of his character story was that he was already injured. 
Beneath the photo was written the name Jacob in both Japanese and English. 
“Get a load of this bad guy,” muttered Fukaziroh. 
Under his name was a section titled PRIMARY WEAPON, which displayed the gun that this NPC would be using. There would be other guns he might use, of course, but this was meant to be a guide to his general combat focus. 
Jacob’s main gun was the M4A1, the standard-use American 5.56 mm assault rifle. That was a very typical weapon in GGO. But just because the gun was standard didn’t mean his ability with it was. 
Bing! The second member was a black man. 
He was also built like a wrestler, and though Llenn found it difficult to guess his general age, she estimated he was in his forties, too. He had no facial hair, but he was smiling in his picture with attractively white teeth. 
The clothes and gear he was in appeared to be the same as Jacob’s. His name was listed as Roy. His gun, too, was the M4A1. 
“He’s a bad guy, too.” 
“Are you going to say that for every one of them, Fuka?” 
Bing! The third member showed up. 
This white man was slightly younger, probably in his thirties. His face was narrow, his eyes sharp. His listed name was Rock. It wasn’t clear if that was his given name or a nickname. His main gun was a GM6 Lynx. Llenn didn’t recognize that name. 

“That’s an antimateriel rifle,” said Pitohui, who wanted a complete collection of every gun in GGO. “It’s Hungarian, part of the Gepárd series. It’s a .50-caliber semi-auto, ten shots to a magazine. And it’s a bullpup.” 
She listed off the specs as smoothly as if they were right on the tip of her tongue. A bullpup referred to a gun design where the magazine was loaded behind the grip and trigger. By placing that apparatus in the back of the gun, it enabled the overall length to be shorter. 
“It’s extremely compact for a gun of this type, which means you can fire it standing up if you want to. The last thing you want is to be on the opposite end of a gun with such a terrifying combo of flexibility, portability, and power. He’s definitely the one who sniped at you through the wall.” 
“Grrr. So that’s what he looks like…” 
“I don’t think they’ve implemented this member of the Gepárd series yet, though. Damn privileged NPCs. It’s a scary gun, so everyone be careful he doesn’t shoot you through a wall.” 
“Mmm,” grunted Llenn. 
Beside her, Fukaziroh said, “You look like you want to kill him and steal it, Pito.” 
“Uh-oh, you can tell? I wonder if you can actually procure NPC weapons before they’re available to players. Some games’ll let you do that,” said Pitohui, who was having more fun now than at any point earlier in the day. 
Procurement was a military term that meant claiming the enemy’s weapons for one’s own. Usually it meant picking up weapons that the enemy left behind and saving them for research—or sometimes just using them among your own troops. 
“Everything’s a new challenge! If you give up, that’s the end of the plunder and revelry!” 
The fourth member was named Cain, and he looked like an Asian man with lightly tanned skin. All of them seemed to be wearing the same thing, so it had to be a uniform. That was helpful for identifying the enemy. 
Cain was easily the youngest so far, in his twenties, though maybe that was just the good ol’ “Asians looking young” magic. He was quite handsome, as a matter of fact. Whoever modeled the character must have worked off a movie actor or something. 
Fukaziroh looked as serious as she ever had and pointed at the screen. “Our goal today is to extract him from the evil organization and make him my boyfriend. Is that understood?” 
“Fuka, don’t change the story.” 
“I expect one hundred and fifty percent from every last one of you to fulfill this objective.” 
“Are you listening?” 
Cain’s primary weapon was the Steyr F90. That was an improved, updated model of the famous bullpup-style assault rifle, Steyr AUG. It could also fire grenades, so that meant they had to be aware of flying projectiles. 
The fifth member was named Vodka. It sounded like a Russian name, and sure enough, he looked like a big Russian polar bear. He was a good match for M. 
“That’s one big, ugly dude. Definitely not boyfriend material,” Fukaziroh said, jabbing her finger at the picture. Llenn kindly ignored that comment. 
He must be the one who blasted me full of holes earlier, she thought. In the primary weapon field, it said he used a PKP Pecheneg. That was the latest iteration of the Russian PKM guns that SHINC used. 
Shiori, who played the avatar of Rosa, kept talking about how she wanted this gun next, like a child begging for a game for Christmas, Llenn recalled. 
According to her, “It’s got an air-cooled barrel with a steel jacket that pulls cool air into the barrel, which makes it possible to fire it for longer periods of time, and it’s not a removable barrel, so the accuracy is much higher! And you can put a scope on it for better long-distance shooting! It also has a higher rate of fire and does more damage to boot!” 
It sounded like a product pitch, in fact. You didn’t need to be a mind reader to know what Llenn was thinking, though. Why would high school and college girls want to know so much about guns? 
The PKG was one of the newest machine guns in GGO, however, so it was extremely difficult to find and would cost a very pretty penny if you tried to buy one. 
SHINC couldn’t pour their real-life funds into the game, so Rosa lamented that it would be quite a while until she was able to acquire one. 
Bing. 
The first of the remaining two to appear was Hassan. 
Like his name suggested, he was Middle Eastern. His skin was dark, and his face was rugged and bearded. He looked like a capable middle-aged man in his fifties. The photo of him looked somehow haunted and mournful. 
“This guy…is currently going through a divorce,” Fukaziroh made up on the spot. “His wife cheated on him, but she’s got a big-shot lawyer, and he hasn’t been able to finalize it yet. She’s about to gain custody of their daughter…even though the daughter’s closer to her dad…” 
Now he seemed even sadder. 
This man’s weapon was the FN SCAR-H. It was a 7.62 mm assault rifle. That was a gun with good sniping capabilities, too. Like M, he probably acted as a sniper who could shoot on semi-auto. That was a tough combination on a long-distance map like this one. 
The last of the chosen seven was a white man named Doc. 
He appeared to be in his thirties, and like the nickname for doctor implied, he looked like the delicate intellectual type. He wore stupid-looking round glasses, like a real chump. 
“Ha-ha, so the last boss of the seven is this guy. I can tell because usually it works out that way in the movies. Don’t be fooled by the fact that he looks like a total virgin,” Fukaziroh warned. 
“We’re gonna kill all of them either way, so I don’t care,” said Llenn flatly. 
“Wow! Listen to Llenn the Pink Maiden of Manslaughter!” 
“Don’t bring back that weird nickname,” Llenn protested. But after she slaughtered all those teams inside the pink mist within the dome in SJ2, there were probably many people who thought of her that way already. 
As for the virgi— As for Doc’s weapon, he used the SIG Sauer MCX, a very rare, high-precision assault rifle. It looked like the M4 series: lightweight and adaptable. He would be a tough opponent to face indoors. 
“So Jacob, Roy, and Doc have assault rifles. Cain has a grenade launcher. Rock uses the antimateriel rifle. Vodka’s the machine gunner. And Hassan’s the sniper. Got it,” said Pitohui, repeating their names and weapons and swiping with her left hand to remove the window. Surely that information would be accessible at any time, but nobody was going to go to the trouble in the midst of battle. 
Llenn scrolled through the screen before her eyes once again, memorizing all the faces. There weren’t any prizewinning teams in Squad Jam with faces quite like these, but just in case, she wanted to be able to tell them apart. 
So their names, faces, and weapons had all been revealed, but that told LPFM nothing about their actual skill level. Based on the accuracy of the sniping and machine-gunning earlier, it was clearly quite high. 
“How’s their ability as a team? I bet teamwork between NPCs pales in comparison to that of real people. Like, maybe they can follow patterns, but they don’t have the adaptability to change on the fly,” Fukaziroh pointed out, as a gaming veteran. 
“We should find out soon. Watch the screen,” M said. 
Llenn and Fukaziroh peered at the tablet Pitohui was holding. It showed the castle from above, with the forest on the north side in view. Six square cursors lit up within the forest. M had touched the screen to pop up those targets. 
“These guys are going to attack the castle. I’m guessing they’re MMTM.” 
He made the footage zoom in. One of the wonders of the video-game world was that he could go in as far as he wanted without making the picture grainy. 
It was definitely MMTM. They had disguised themselves with grass, but the geometric green camo was identifiably Swedish in design. That was the uniform MMTM wore from SJ2 onward. 
“Ohhh, well done, Daveed,” teased Pitohui. The actual name of MMTM’s leader was David. Pitohui had been on a squadron with him a while ago, and she knew from experience that he hated it when she called him Daveed. 
MMTM had a high level of overall skill and teamwork. They were at the edge of the forest, within a hundred yards of the castle. They’d been spending all their time going at a slow, boring, painful crawl, just to make sure they weren’t spotted if the enemy happened to patrol outside the castle. 
“If they rushed out of the forest, don’t you think they could get to the walls? And at that point…,” Llenn said. It seemed like they might stand a chance of getting into the castle itself, if they rushed through the north gate quickly and managed to get across the courtyard somehow. 
Knowing how much MMTM loved interior combat, they might clear out all the enemies indoors and mop them up. That would be the end of the game. 
“But will it really be that easy?” 
“Oh! You’re making your evil face, Pito.” 
Gulp. 
There wasn’t much to be done at this point but watch. Llenn was going to be a bird soaring over the battle that was about to unfold. 
“It feels like we’re the audience hanging out in the bar,” she muttered. 
On the screen, MMTM’s forward crawl came to a halt. 
They had reached the edge of the forest. There were no trees ahead, just a hundred yards of flat, dry ground until the castle wall. 
“You know…this might actually work,” Llenn said. 
“Oh, I’m sure they’ll get to the walls. There are no NPCs up there,” Pitohui told her. 
Zooming out showed no enemies atop the wall. That meant they weren’t aware of MMTM’s approach yet. 
The charge began. 
Six men began running all at once. Their cursors vanished when they left the forest and became easily visible to the naked eye. You could tell they were running, but from above it was impossible to see their faces. It was hard to tell them apart by gun, too. A further zoom might clear that up, but then they’d have a bad angle on the entire arena, so Pitohui didn’t bother. 
The six rushed toward the thick gray line on the screen that was the wall. There was no shooting from the castle yet. 
Within moments, they had reached the wall and run down its length toward the gate. Although it wasn’t visible from this angle, there was a pile of rubble through the gate that would slow their ability to get through. One member stayed put with his gun at the ready while the others filed through. 
Just when MMTM reappeared on the other side, having passed through the gate—there was an explosion. 
A huge explosion, in fact, set off shortly inside the gate entrance, in the courtyard. 
“Aaah!” “Ooh!” “Oh my.” “…” 
Llenn saw it. Fukaziroh and Pitohui saw it. Even M saw it happen, without comment. 
A few yards inside the castle wall, the ground simply exploded. It wasn’t an attack from above, but a land mine or some other type of explosive already in place as a trap. 
Four members of MMTM were in the vicinity. Their bodies were blown sky-high, floating like scraps of paper in the wind. Limbs were torn and severed, but there was no point in taking stock of damage values and hit points this time around. Everyone caught in a blast of this size would be killed instantly. 
The remaining two were outside the wall. They were supposed to take a defensive position and provide covering fire while the other four ran through the courtyard, presumably. 
A single shot flew in their direction. It was slower than a bullet; a 40 mm grenade. Its aim was perfect. It landed on the ground immediately outside the castle wall and exploded directly between the two surviving men. 
They, too, were killed instantly. 
All six members of MMTM were obliterated within moments, without having the chance to fire a single shot. 
Boooom! Boom! 
Llenn heard two explosions, one large and one small, roar through the virtual air. When the smoke from the blasts cleared on the camera footage, there were six bodies total inside and outside the castle wall, DEAD markers floating above them. 
“Whoa…,” Llenn gasped. 
“Not bad!” Fukaziroh praised, for some reason. 
“Well, well…” Pitohui grinned. 
“They knew the whole time and set a trap…? Was the enemy simply waiting for that?” Llenn asked. But there hadn’t been a single shot fired on them to that point. 
“Well… I suppose…,” Pitohui said hesitantly, which was uncharacteristic of her. Normally, she’d say something like Of course they did! Ha-ha-ha, your fault for being sloppy, Daveed! Loser! 
Llenn tore her eyes from the tablet screen to look at Pitohui. The woman looked dead serious, her facial tattoos utterly still. This was the first time she’d ever seen her looking so stone-faced. 
Who are you? Llenn wanted to ask. But she didn’t. 
Then M said, “The Amazons are going to try from the east.” 
“Oh!” 
Llenn looked back to the screen. Pitohui had pulled back the zoom to show the whole castle, then pushed in to the east side. 
On the map, this side was listed as grassland, and on the screen, it was definitely grass. It grew tall and thick, up to an adult’s waist. The place looked like a vacant lot in the summer, after the pampas grass had been left unattended. 
People were running through that empty lot of grass now. It was hard to see them because they were wearing green on green, but it was clear that someone was running. There were four of them. 
Four members of SHINC were in a formation several yards across, running toward the east wall of the castle perimeter. They had about 650 feet left to go. 
“They left the snipers behind and rushed the castle,” M pointed out. Llenn could see that now. 
They left behind Tohma, who used the extremely long PTRD-41 antitank rifle, and their other sniper, Anna. The remaining four sprinted for the castle wall so they could burst into the castle grounds. 
Of course, rushing across the grassland with no actual cover from bullets made them sitting ducks. But because they heard the explosions from MMTM’s battle, they’d been waiting for this moment to make their move. 
In other words, they’d hold steady until the fighting picked up somewhere else, then they’d join the attack. The defense would have to split their attention between both sides, and one of the two would eventually give way. 
An unorthodox strategy, but one that got results. 
But Pitohui was not impressed. “They’re going to fail.” 
“Ah!” Llenn noticed it, too, and she went pale. 
SHINC was trying to launch their attack while the seven-man NPC squad dealt with another team—but that fight was already over, in two simple explosions. MMTM had been obliterated. 
“No, Boss! Run away!” Llenn cried, but they couldn’t hear her. 
A merciless sight played out on the screen. 
Light flashed in a hole in the middle of the spire along the east wall, and then beams of light poured down onto the grassy area. That was an attack from a PKP machine gun, and the beams of light were terrible blades that pierced one of the SHINC members. The tracer rounds came one every four or five bullets, so the hail of gunfire was several times what they could actually see. 
“Damn you, Vodka!” 
He’d definitely taken out one person—but he’d also revealed his own location. If Tohma and Anna attacked, they could beat one of the NPCs! 
But Llenn’s anticipation did not bear fruit. 
“Huh?” 
Vodka’s attack ended, and the light of the tracers and the muzzle flash stopped coming from the window. In the next moment, an especially large beam of light shot toward the window. It was a sniping attempt by the PTRD-41. 
A little trickle of gray smoke appeared from the window; a phenomenon often seen when you hit stone. 
“They missed,” Pitohui observed. Then people appeared on the eastern castle wall. Three men emerged from the sides of the gate tower bearing rifles. 
It wasn’t clear who was who, except that they were obviously the enemy. The three hid behind the battlements, sticking just their muzzles through the embrasures to aim at SHINC. 
You couldn’t determine the types of guns being used, but you could certainly tell that they were firing. The tempo was staccato and semi-auto. The other three dropped quickly as they ran. 
“Dammit! Tohma, Anna, you can do it!” Llenn urged the two hidden snipers, but her hopes were crushed without mercy. 
When the first three men were done with their brief, efficient burst fire, another man emerged onto the roof of a different gate tower, knelt down, and fired a massive rifle. It created a tremendous muzzle flash. Then another. 
And that was it. All was still. 
The three on the castle wall retreated back inside the tower. Nothing moved in the grassland area. 
You didn’t need to see the details to understand what had happened. SHINC’s assault was a failure. All six had died in battle. 
“Oh no…” 
As far as Llenn could tell, the enemy NPCs’ teamwork was absolutely perfect. 
Take Vodka, the machine gunner. When you shoot down one target from an advantageous position, you often get greedy and want another one. But he immediately pulled back behind cover. 
Thus, he avoided SHINC’s impeccable sniping, and he managed to alert his companions to their locations. It was hard to miss the PTRD-41 being fired. 
The next three men then appeared and quickly eliminated the remaining members of the forward team. While Tohma and Anna were preoccupied with that, they got shot by Rock’s GM6 Lynx. 
If he only fired twice, that showed that it was all he needed. He must have split Tohma and Anna in half—or something close to it. Hopefully their valuable PTRD-41 antitank rifle didn’t get destroyed by a bullet. 
“W-wiped out… SHINC wiped out…,” Llenn murmured lifelessly. 
“How many seconds was that?” Fukaziroh wondered. 
Pitohui provided the answer. “Twenty-seven seconds.” 
You were counting! Llenn thought, shocked. She didn’t say it out loud. 
“You were counting!” said Fukaziroh. 
“Ugh…” 
First it was MMTM, now SHINC. Llenn’s shoulders slumped dejectedly. 
“You’re too nice, Llenn. We just saw rival teams attempt the enemy boss and fail, and we learned something about their strategy. That’s really good for us,” said Fukaziroh, who had been through life-and-death battles in many games over the years. She was sparing no sentiment in this situation—and she was correct. 
“Yeah, I know, but…” 
Llenn couldn’t help her frustration, seeing the team she’d chosen to be her eternal rivals get utterly spanked like that. 
“Another team’s about to test them. They’re going in from the northwest,” said M. 
“Another one looking to get destroyed?” Fukaziroh asked. 
“It would seem so,” replied Pitohui. 
“All right, then. Which team’s next up on the the chopping block?” said Llenn, sulking. 
“The machine gunners,” said M. 
Ah, so that’s where ZEMAL is. 
Fukaziroh wondered, “How many seconds do you suppose they’ll last? I say twenty.” 
“Hmm, maybe less. Fifteen?” 
“I don’t care.” Llenn sulked. 
Pitohui moved the camera focus to ZEMAL. There were five of them, right between the forest and wasteland along the northwest edge of the castle wall. They’d been hiding at the edge of the forest before this. 
The trigger-happy bunch was probably set to charge and spray loads of bullets. They’d be an easy target. Llenn expected to see them getting shot up and eliminated promptly. 
But when the camera got up to maximum zoom, she couldn’t believe her eyes. 
“Huhhhhh?” she shrieked.