Sword Art Online Alternative – Gun Gale Online - Volume 6 - Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7 
Jacob 
9:44. 
Llenn had gotten into the castle and successfully killed the first enemy NPC. 
“I did it! I beat Cain!” she reported to the rest of the team. All of the centipedes suddenly buzzed with excitement. 
Mere seconds later, Tanya and Kenta reported that they, too, had succeeded at getting inside the enemy base. 
“All right!” 
“Well done!” 
Even Boss and David were pumped. 
Pitohui’s strategy was a bit—well, incredibly—gutsy. 
Its two pillars were to “crawl forward from the south in an attention-grabbing way” and “burst in from the north when the enemy shows signs of movement.” 
On the south side, they had T-S, the shields, and everyone working together in unison, but on the north side of the wall, the only thing they could rely upon was Llenn’s speed and size. 
If they put enough pressure on the enemy, the bad guys would have to focus their defensive ability on that side—whether in the form of a smoke screen or an all-out offensive. 
That would mean drawing the enemy’s attention south more than ever. The machine gunner and sniper camped out on the spires to watch the distance, in particular, would have to keep their eyes peeled to the south. 
And that’s when Llenn’s group would charge. 
They rushed from the forest toward the northern gate, where only Cain would be waiting. Land mines? Jump over them. 
It was a fifty-fifty shot (at best) depending on speed and jumping power that was beyond human capability. 
Naturally, when Pitohui explained the strategy, David asked, “If Llenn messes up on the advance, what happens?” 
Pitohui blithely admitted, “Nothing happens. The two behind her probably get shot, too.” 
“Hang on.” 
“But what other choice do we have?” 
“……” 
David had no answer. 
“Moving on to stage two!” Llenn announced. 
“Give it all you’ve got. Good luck!” Pitohui replied. To the others in her vicinity, she said, “Then let’s move through, ourselves.” 
“Well done! So long!” 
“Nice raiding with you! Farewell!” 
Tanya and Kenta ran ahead, leaving Llenn behind. They were advancing farther into the castle. The dark corridor left no hints about how the interior might be structured. They grew smaller and smaller, until they found a staircase or another room, and they split in opposite directions and vanished. 
Once they got in safely, stage two of the plan would commence. They already had their orders: Split up and raise hell. 
There was no thought to two or three of them joining up to fight together. Better to rush around individually and draw out any enemies that might be lurking inside the castle. 
This idea was based on the difficulty of three people from different teams having the coordination to work together—as well as to preserve the competitive aspect. Each person had a chance to spot the “gas warhead” that was the final objective and achieve the win for their team this way. 
As soon as Tanya and Kenta took off, they switched their comms to speak only with their own teams. Llenn brushed her own ear to switch it and muttered, “Guess I’ll get going…” 
Fukaziroh heard it and gave her some distant encouragement. “Good luck in there. We don’t have much time, actually.” 
It was 9:46. 
The team on the south side knew they didn’t have much time left, either. 
“Then let’s move through, ourselves. You’re all freed up,” Pitohui said, allowing the columns to disband. This was part of the strategy, too. 
They had a little over a quarter of a mile to go. Any closer, and the defensive capability of T-S and the shields would no longer be optimal. The accuracy of gunfire would get much sharper, so a slow and methodical approach would no longer work. 
So they charged. 
It was a competition of speed and luck from this point on. If they didn’t get as close to the castle as possible before the smoke cleared, they would die. They might still die if they did get there, but the closer to the walls, the better the chance of survival. 
If staying still meant death, and getting closer meant death, advancing made the most sense. 
Six from T-S, three from SHINC, five from MMTM, five from ZEMAL, and Pitohui and M. Twenty-one people in all had spread out in a line and began to charge. 
Despite not being able to see through the smoke, the other side must have sensed something. Machine-gun bullets flew from the spire. 
“Ugh!” 
One of them caught Boss through the left shoulder, in truly unlucky fashion. She lost over 20 percent of her hit points. 
“I’m not done yet!” she shouted, using her emergency medical kit and continuing to run. 
“C’mon, guys, you can do this!” said Pitohui, as though she wasn’t actively involved. As a matter of fact, she was located behind the very large target of M, who had two shield plates for protection already. 
At the very moment everyone on the south side began running, Kenta from MMTM caught sight of a gun muzzle out of the corner of his eye. 
“!” 
He was in a room of the castle, surrounded by rock, with a light to illuminate it all. The lightbulb and shade that hung from the ceiling sent soft orange light through the room. It was about thirty-five feet to a side, with stone walls and floor and a wooden ceiling, but nothing else. 
“Crap!” 
Kenta spotted the man pointing an assault rifle at him from the corner of the room and knew that he wouldn’t have time to shoot back. 
He’d kicked open the door, expecting to see more hallway, but it was the gun barrel pointed at him that sealed his fate. 
A man with glasses and a cold expression fired the MCX pressed to his shoulder. He was fifteen feet away from Kenta and approaching fast. There was no way he’d miss. 
The first shot from the suppressor-attached MCX pierced Kenta’s right flank, and the second hit his right knee. The G36K fell out of Kenta’s arms. 
The third shot hit his right breast. “Gah!” Kenta toppled backward, reaching with his left hand behind his back to grab an M26 fragmentation grenade. His back hit the cold, hard ground and bounced upward, and he pulled out the grenade, lifting it to his mouth to bite the safety pin and pull it out. 
Yank! 
Doc’s hand reached out and squeezed Kenta’s, grenade and all. The pin being pulled out didn’t matter if the lever didn’t pop off. 
“Dammit! You’re just a stupid NPC!” Kenta swore, spitting out the pin. 
Doc responded with action. He swept the MCX over and pulled the trigger when the gun pointed over Kenta’s head. Shunk. The man’s hit points dropped to zero. 
Doc pulled the grenade out of Kenta’s hand, then scooped up the safety pin from the floor. He carefully, deftly placed it back into the handle of the grenade. 
All alone, he murmured, “No…not him.” 
When Kenta died, there was a tremendous battle taking place in the open area south of the castle gate. The smoke was slowly but surely clearing, steadily revealing the castle again. 
As the players rushed for the castle walls, a furious stream of gunfire issued toward them. Four different muzzles flashed atop the wall—and one from a spire. It was impossible to tell which assault rifle was which up on the wall, but the gun shooting from the spire was clearly Vodka’s. 
The world was suddenly full of noise. Thunderous gunfire clattered across the empty dirt. Bullet lines appeared from five guns, piercing the ground all over. Just as quickly, the bullets themselves traveled those lines and sent up sprays of dirt— Pa-thup! Pa-thup! Pa-thup! 
“Gaaah!” 
Occasionally, they hit someone running along, too. That one was ZEMAL’s Tomtom, shot through the left arm. 
“Raaaah!” Naturally, he shot back. 
His machine gun roared as he ran, sending bullets back at the castle wall. They struck the stone here and there, chipping off pieces of the wall and causing the enemies nearby to falter and stop firing, at least for a moment. 
But between the shooters on the castle wall with cover to hide behind and the shooters running through open terrain, the former had an overwhelming advantage. Even if you could see the bullet lines coming, it was impossible to move fast enough to avoid them all. And the NPCs’ accuracy was tremendous. They could easily hit a moving target. 
“Gugh!” Dreadlocked Bold from MMTM took PKP bullets to the throat and head. “Shit!” He swore as he died. 
He’d been blown up once already, so this was the second death. His ARX160 hadn’t had the chance to shoot a single bullet yet. 
“Come on back!” shouted David, though there was no way his voice was heard by Bold or Kenta, who had both recently died. This was a game—they’d have another chance in three minutes. 
As for David, he was running pell-mell. Red lines crisscrossed the ground before him, and it took nothing less than intense concentration to avoid them as he ran. The sound of the bullets whistling past his ears was frightfully close and loud. 
His STM-556 had the grenade launcher attached, and it was loaded, of course, but he hadn’t fired it. He hadn’t had time. All he could do was run and try to avoid the enemy shots. 
The best fight was being put up by T-S now. 
“Fire away!” 
“Roger that!” 
They were much slower than the rest due to their heavy protective armor, so there was no way they could reach the castle first. 
Instead, they walked. And as they walked, they shot and shot, exchanged ammo, and shot again. The entire team was taking on a supporting role. Naturally, the opponents were shooting back at them as well, creating showers of sparks where the bullets struck armor. 
“Whoa, I found a staircase!” 
While Kenta was getting shot, Tanya had found a spiral staircase elsewhere in the castle. 
It was huge, about thirteen feet across, and clearly leading up to a castle spire. The steps were slabs of stone embedded into the curved walls of the tower, leading up to the left. The middle of the curve was a hole no wider than five feet. There were no handrails for safety. 
The spires were on the four corners of the castle building: northeast, southeast, southwest, northwest. Tanya had entered the castle from the north, then run this way and that in the darkness… She tried to envision her path in a mental map and decided that this was the southeast tower. 
Tanya stopped just short of the stairs, kept her suppressor-equipped Bizon steady at her waist, and reached out to her teammates quietly through the comm. “This is Tanya. Any enemies on the southeast tower?” 
Anna replied immediately. “Yes. One nasty machine gunner.” 
She also got an answer from up above: the sound of gunfire echoing down the tower walls and the clinking and clattering of golden cartridges falling down. As always in GGO, they promptly vanished in a little twinkling of light. 
Tanya made up her mind. “Okay, I’m gonna get that guy! Someone else can handle the poison gas warhead!” 
She rushed into the spiral tower toward the stairs and nearly tripped on the fresh empties on the very first step. 
“Whoa.” She regained her balance somehow and began to climb. 
“Llenn, they say Kenta is dead,” Pitohui reported, courtesy of David. 
“Got it,” said Llenn. 
That left only Tanya and herself inside the castle. If she ran across someone, the chances of it being an enemy were now that much higher. 
Llenn was in a long, dark hallway. Her P90 was ready at her shoulder, and she walked quietly down the middle of the corridor, to lower the chance of being hit by any potential bullet richochet. 
Speed was Llenn’s best weapon, but if she ran here it would make too much noise, so she moved no quicker than a sneaking stride. From inside the castle, the battle outside was completely inaudible. There was hardly any sound at all, perhaps because everything but the ceiling was stone. It was an eerie place where the air was chilly and dank. 
But this was the enemy’s lair. 
See the enemy, shoot. See the enemy, shoot. See the enemy, shoot. 
“……” 
Llenn quietly walked through the cold, holding her finger just a hair off the trigger. Eventually, a door came into view. Double doors, in fact; old-fashioned and wooden. 
They were cracked slightly in the middle, creating a seam of light coming from the inside. She couldn’t see a bar or lock on it. A good kick should open it. 
But there was no telling what or who she might find on the other side. There could be a wire-and-grenade booby trap there or an enemy NPC with his gun pointed right at her. 
She checked her watch: 9:47. Then 9:48, a second later. 
Don’t have time to mess around, she thought, rushing forward to kick open the door. 
There he is! Tanya screamed internally. 
She’d been climbing for several seconds. After about seventy feet of swift running, she saw a large man’s back several yards above, through the hole in the middle of the tower. 
She could tell from the PKP machine gun that this was Vodka, the very fellow who had caused the team so much trouble. It was time for him to die. 
He was firing with the PKP propped against his shoulder and pointed out the window. The reverberation of the gunshots echoed down the length of the tower. The empty shells fell backward down the hole between the stairs. 
From behind, it was very clear that the black gun was being fed from a belt connected to his backpack, just like ZEMAL had. No wonder he was able to shoot nonstop like that. 
Vodka hadn’t noticed Tanya sneaking up on him from below just yet. They were three rotations of the circular stairs apart. She tried to aim the Bizon up at him from there. 
Not yet! The Bizon wasn’t powerful enough that she could guarantee a hit to the back would be fatal. She needed to get at least one more rotation of stairs closer. She dashed up the spiral stairway, passing below the gunner until she came back around the opposite side where she could see him again. 
“Ugh!” 
The bearlike man had already turned around, his large face and gun pointed in her direction. Either he knew she was there and was luring her in as a trap, or he’d noticed a second ago. In either situation, it spoke to his combat ability. 
She looked into the eyes of the man holding his machine gun at waist height. 
“Hiya!” Tanya greeted, pulling the trigger. 
“……” Vodka was silent, pulling the trigger. 
The tower was full of raucous gunfire coming from two guns just a few yards apart. But Tanya’s Bizon was silenced by her suppressor and was totally inaudible. 
Tanya took ten shots a second, her body painted red all over with damage effects, like someone had dumped a bucket of red paint over her head. Her Bizon kept firing, even past the moment the DEAD marker appeared over her head, and her body fell limply through the hole. 
The tower was quiet for a moment, then Thump! A dead body crashed to the stone floor far below. 
Vodka lifted the PKP and turned around to aim toward the outside again—but he did not fire. Technically, he pulled the trigger, but the gun did nothing. 
In her dying moments, Tanya’s gun shot 9 mm bullets into the rail feeding into the right side of the machine gun, stopping the line of bullets. One hit the large scope atop the gun, cracking it into a sheet of white. 
Vodka sat down at the top of the spiral stairs. 
“……” 
He waved his left hand, then pressed a button floating in midair that only he could see. His body fell backward and was still. 
A DEAD tag floated over his head. 
The tag was barely visible through the window. 
“Machine gunner went down with Tanya, looks like!” Anna reported. 
“Whoa!” “Nice job!” “Way to go!” roared the rest of SHINC. 
Without the aggravating machine gunner up top, the amount of enemy gunfire coming southward was significantly lower. The rest of it was from the four assault rifles atop the wall. 
As she walked behind M, Pitohui smirked and said, “Yesss.” 
M’s shield had been clattering and clanging as it deflected a deluge of 7.62 mm bullets, most likely coming from Hassan. He shifted his hands from moment to moment, altering the shield’s position to deflect them all. The sniper rifle was unerring in its accuracy, its bullet line totally still—which made it easier to anticipate where the bullet was going to come in. 
“Fuka, you all ready? You awake?” 
“Finally! I’m dying of boredom over here. I’m practically asleep!” Fukaziroh replied to Pitohui through the comm. 
“Ah-ha-ha-ha. Then go ahead and let ’em fly. Your target is the south castle wall. I’ll give you the orders.” 
“Aye, aye.” 
“Finally, it’s my turn.” 
Fukaziroh popped out from a huge tree to the northwest of the castle and brandished her six-shooter MGL-140 grenade launchers, one on each shoulder. 

She was located significantly to the west of the spot where Llenn’s trio charged the castle. And Fukaziroh was seated flat on the ground, her back against the closest tree to the castle. There was no one left to snipe her with all the chaos happening to the south. If there were, she would die. 
She lifted her right-side MGL-140—Rightony—said “This looks about right,” adjusted her aim, and then yelled “Yah!” 
Pomp. She fired a single grenade. 
The 40 mm projectile arced up, flying toward the castle, over the northwest castle wall, and even a little bit over the south wall, to explode on the dirt just past the entire structure. 
“Close one. Thirty yards shorter.” 
Pitohui was acting as the bombardment spotter, hiding behind a crouched M with his two shield plates for protection. In her hands was M’s M14 EBR, and she was peering through its scope. 
The distance to the castle was slightly less than one thousand feet. Her “teammates” were busy pushing toward it up ahead, evading bullet lines. 
Four shooters with assault rifles were firing from atop the castle wall, changing locations constantly and being a huge headache for the allied team. 
Bold died earlier, and now ZEMAL’s Peter was down. Elsewhere, SHINC’s Boss and others were glowing with damage from shots, but they hadn’t died yet. 
“Got it. Here comes number two,” Fukaziroh said. 
She was hiding out in the distant northern forest, waiting for the right moment to come forward and launch her deadly grenades toward the castle. This was one of Pitohui’s plans, of course. 
Fukaziroh’s sheer firepower at a bombardment range of a quarter mile was huge, which is why they couldn’t afford to lose her during the charge. It was a boring but crucial role she was playing, prioritizing support. 
That meant she absolutely could not get shot at before her time to shine came. She couldn’t pop her head out of the forest while the sniper and machine gunner in the spire were watching. 
As she waited alone among the trees, Fukaziroh muttered to herself, “Feels like someone’s watching me. Maybe there’s a ghost about?” 
Then it was her time to appear at last. She shot two grenades, pomp-pomp. The first exploded high on the castle wall. The second was perfectly placed, landing directly atop the narrow parapets, shattering the stone. 
But the enemy was not in the vicinity at the time. 
“Didn’t get ’em, but don’t worry. Scatter the rest of the shots,” Pitohui instructed. Fukaziroh had three grenades remaining in Rightony and six in Leftania. 
“Hya-haaaa!” 
She began to fire them all relentlessly. 
The sight of nine grenades detonating atop the castle wall in succession, creating a tremendous din and sending up billowing smoke, elicited a cheer from the allied team. 
“Yeaaah!” “Wow!” “Nice one!” “Kaboom!” 
The enemy’s attack ceased immediately. After all those shots at the NPCs atop the castle wall, they were no longer showing their faces. 
There were no visible DEAD markers, so it was highly likely that they’d snuck back inside the tower and descended out of harm’s way, abandoning the grenade-vulnerable parapets and withdrawing their defensive line toward the castle. 
Pitohui watched it happen through the scope. “There we go. Nice work, Fuka! Reload and wait.” 
“Okeydoke. Call on me anytime you need help.” 
Then Pitohui addressed the companions she could see. “They’re hiding behind the wall, everybody!” 
“All right! Chaaaaarge!” bellowed Huey, and all of them hastily ran for the gate, not just ZEMAL. There was no need to watch for bullet lines like before. 
This was their first and last chance. 
If they failed to get to the wall this time, they’d have to give up on breaching the castle altogether. 
The time was 9:50. 
Ten minutes left. 
Meanwhile, as everyone charged the walls, Llenn was inside, fighting an enemy she couldn’t see. No one here. Nothing here… 
After she braved death to kick that door open, she found herself in a large square room with a rather tall ceiling. It had to be a hundred feet to a side. There were skylights cut into the ceiling, so the interior was fairly bright. 
Based on the size, this had to be the central chamber of the castle. So why is there nothing here…? Where are they…? Llenn wondered, utterly confused. 
There were no tables or chairs on the stone floor—and certainly no MacGuffins like a poison gas warhead to be found. She would have thought, I made it to the goal first! Yahoo! if not for the fact that it clearly wasn’t the goal. 
Given the European castle design, she at least expected a throne dais in the center of the chamber, but it was basically just an empty storeroom. Of course, it was part of the game map, so she could chalk it up to being another environment in which to do battle—but this was strange for GGO. 
This game was known for its extremely intricate environmental design; they would put faded family photos atop the dusty mantels of abandoned homes. You never saw interiors as plain and empty as this. 
And there was no one here. Nowhere to hide. 
There were four doors, including the one she’d come through, so it was possible that someone could burst through any of the others. 
Llenn rushed quickly to a corner of the room and crouched, making herself small. Once she had all four doorways in her field of vision, she checked in with Pitohui. 
“Pito, I’m in a big open space in the middle of the castle. There’s nothing here, though. No enemies.” 
“Got it. That’s weird.” 
“Yeah, really weird. Do you think there’s a basement? I haven’t seen anything that looked like a way down…” 
“……” 
Pitohui paused to think for several seconds. “Let’s do this. Ignore the poison gas thingy.” 
“And?” 
“We change the objective to slaughtering the enemy. The team that kills the last one of them wins. Just go crazy in there.” 
Llenn was just thinking that it was about the only thing left to do, when three doors opened all at once. 
Pitohui, M, and Fukaziroh could only imagine what happened to Llenn based on her voice and the sounds coming through. 
“Ah! Four enemi— Gahk!” 
Tat. 
There was a faint gunshot sound, making it clear she was shot. Llenn’s hit point gauge dropped then—it was unmistakable. She was down to 60 percent. They didn’t hear her P90 firing. 
“Gawaaa! Gdewa! Doffwheu!” 
She made three quite bizarre and strangled screams in a row. No sound of gunfire. 
Lastly, she managed to squeak out some context clues. “Mrrgh! I’m cau—gmrugk! Grrmm!” 
Then she went silent. The connection from her comm unit had been cut. According to the readout all of her teammates could see, Llenn’s hit points weren’t moving. That told them something. 
Fukaziroh said, “Whoa, Llenn got captured!” 
M said, “She’s been captured…” 
And Pitohui said, “Oh, shit, she’s a POW!” 
Their allies on the charge were stunned. 
David said, “Captured? Huh?!” practically squawking the last bit. 
Boss, too, was stunned. “What do you mean? That’s impossible!” she yelled on the run. 
“Do NPCs even take hostages? Are you sure this isn’t some kind of mistake?” wondered David, for good reason: Taking prisoners itself was a very rare occurrence in GGO. There was simply no reason for it. It was much quicker just to kill an enemy. And this was an AI-controlled NPC—as far as they knew—who had taken a hostage. 
“Maybe since it’s a test, they’re trying out some new tactics? Let’s toss out all that old common wisdom!” Pitohui suggested casually, and David did not respond. He was more focused on getting to the wall with his squadmates. He ran, keeping his gun steady. 
“But Llenn gave us some valuable information. Four of them have gone back into the central castle building. Meaning?” 
“We know they’ve all abandoned the wall and retreated to defend the castle itself,” Boss answered. 
“Correct!” 
“Once we’re through the gate, we’re attacking it on our own.” 
“As you wish. In fact, you’re all free to go your own way now. Good luck!” 
The surviving, injured or not, were nineteen in number. The closest were just a hundred yards to the castle at this point. The plan was to get to a gate and rush in immediately. South, east, or west, it was up to the team, but going south would definitely be the quickest in terms of time. 
It was 9:52. 
Eight minutes left in the game. 
While Pitohui was saying “Oh, shit, she’s a POW!” Llenn could hardly believe what was happening to her. 
“Mrrmgh!” 
When enemies poured through three doors at once, Llenn hesitated for a brief instant, unsure of who to shoot at, and that was enough time for them to shoot her once. It went right through her right arm, and she dropped the P90. She lost 40 percent of her health. 
Before she had time to pick up her gun, a thick arm grabbed her, lifted her up, and immobilized her. Naturally, she was unable to use her P90 or knife. She wasn’t sure if her teammates heard her say there were four enemies, either. 
It was Roy who held her captive. He slapped handcuff restraints made of nylon bands around her wrists, tying her hands behind her back. He also brushed the side of her ear, deactivating the comm device. 
He even wrapped a cloth around her mouth, gagging her. All of this happened in a matter of seconds. His movements had been swift and methodical. 
“Mrrggh!” 
She couldn’t speak. It was the first time in her GGO career that Llenn had been taken prisoner by an NPC. All the other NPCs she’d ever seen in the game were the guys and gals who happily sold her guns at the store. 
They sat her on the stone floor so her face was visible. Her hands were restrained behind her back. Llenn tried to figure out who was who. 
In addition to Roy, the black man, there was Jacob, the bearded one with the bandage, Doc with the glasses, and Rock with the piercing glare. 
Rock was the sniper with the antimateriel rifle, if she recalled correctly, but now he was using an M4A1 assault rifle, like Jacob and Roy. The GM6 Lynx must have been destroyed by a sniper shot. Or maybe it was out of ammo. In either case, that was good. Llenn would not forget her original grudge. 
She had killed Cain, and she’d heard the report that Vodka and Tanya had killed each other not long ago. That left only Hassan, the man in divorce court, still located somewhere other than here. 
He was almost certainly watching the south gate. The defense was thin there now, and the east, west, and north gates even more so. Llenn wished she could tell her comrades about this, but she didn’t have the means. 
She didn’t know what would become of her now. This was her first experience being a hostage, after all. GGO’s in-game tutorial didn’t tell you what to do if you got taken prisoner. 
Then one of the NPC’s spoke: “What’s up with her…?” 
“Mguh?” 
Llenn’s eyes bulged. Of course the NPC could speak. The guys and gals who sold the weapons would speak a whole lot, in the hopes of getting you to buy stuff from them. 
But she never imagined that she would see a look of pure, stunned shock from one of them, like she saw on Jacob’s face now—his eyes wide, mouth hanging open, revealing pearly whites. 
“I don’t get it,” Roy replied. He, too, looked very human. Llenn was amazed at the advancement of NPC programming. It was very convincing. 
She also noticed something was wrong: The timing of the movement of their mouths didn’t match their speech. She heard them just a fraction of a second after she saw their mouths moving. And the muscle movements didn’t actually match the sounds she was hearing. 
Ah, a translator, she realized. GGO was an American-made game, so they only had their mouths programmed to match spoken English. 
If they said Hello! then their mouths would match the word perfectly, but instead, Llenn would hear Konnichiwa! on a slight lag. It really was rather impressive. 
In fact, it was so well done that Llenn momentarily forgot about her situation to marvel at the latest state of video games. As for the NPCs, whatever they thought of tiny pink-dressed Llenn, they seemed to remember they had a more important role to play. 
“You gather intel. We’ll protect the south gate,” said Rock. The earnest look in his eyes was utterly human. 
But she didn’t have any info for them to glean from her. Plus, there was nothing here. Was there even a point to keeping her prisoner? Llenn wasn’t impressed with the NPCs’ dialogue. Three turned on their heels and returned to the door, guns in hand. 
As he left, Roy turned back and said, “Jake! The chopper’s coming in seven minutes! Hang in there!” That had to be a nickname for Jacob. 
Llenn couldn’t see her watch, but now she knew the time. It was 9:52 and change. 
When Roy mentioned the “chopper,” that had to correspond to the end of the game, when all the players would lose. Given how carefully constructed GGO was, surely a helicopter would arrive at ten o’clock and blast all the remaining players with machine guns and missiles to force a game over. 
“Mrrmgm!” she grunted, an attempt to say “I don’t think so!” 
“……” 
Bearded Jacob just stared down at her. He was about five yards away, holding an M4A1 assault rifle. It was packed with accessories like a dot sight, laser sight, and so on. The muzzle glared right between her eyes. 
That’s it! Llenn realized suddenly. There was still a way for her to do something productive. This was GGO. It was a video game. And Llenn had two lives left. 
In that case—! 
There was no time left. Llenn made up her mind. 
Using all of the tensile strength her body possessed, she rocked back and then bounced to her feet. There she was, standing right before the enemy soldier. 
C’mon, shoot me! 
“Muhh, moomee!” she gurgled, as loud as her lungs would allow, with a tremendous glare. The result was not very impressive. 
Then Jacob, in the face of furious hostility from his captive, would easily and mercilessly shoot her dead, like any evil movie villain—she hoped. 
Huh? 
But he did not. 
“……” 
Jacob merely fixed her with the same incredibly hard glare, steadied the M4A1 against his shoulder, and did not fire it. Instead, he commanded her, “Siddown!” Llenn knew enough English that she was sure of what the line was originally. 
No, please! C’mon, you gotta! she begged in her mind. All she wanted was for him to shoot her, another first in her GGO experience—and hopefully the last. 
In that case… 
If the stupid NPC wasn’t going to give in to her request, she would have to force his hand. Llenn ran, straight for the gun. She was going to give him a body blow, as small as she was. 
She didn’t expect to move Jacob’s huge, burly form even a fraction of an inch. She just wanted him to shoot her, once. 
“Ah!” 
Jacob seemed quite taken aback by her choice of action, but he dodged out of the way, avoiding her charge as nimbly as a matador. 
“Mwuh?” Llenn shot past him by a dozen feet at least, then turned back. “Muh-muhhh-muuuh? Moomee!” 
What are you doing?! Shoot me! she had tried to shout, though there was no way he understood it. The NPC had no intention of shooting her. 
What’s his problem?! Why won’t he shoot me?! Llenn wondered. Several possible answers spun through her head. 
Was he deciding not to kill her, because he wanted information from her? 
Was his gun actually broken, so he couldn’t shoot? 
He might be smart for an NPC, but he was still an AI, so was he unable to decide on a course of action? 
Ahhh, no! None of those! Llenn realized. This NPC knows what I’m trying to do! 
The moment she understood it, Llenn wanted to sing the praises of the person who created them. She wanted to apologize to Jacob for thinking of him as a stupid NPC earlier. 
She also got a rush of desire not to let him win and, right on the spot, made up her mind about what to do next. 
“Mgaah!” 
Llenn started running—right at Jacob. As fast as she could go with her hands tied behind her back. 
Jacob nimbly dodged out of the way, but this time Llenn did not stop. She kept running. 
Straight toward the stone corner of the wall behind Jacob—at full speed. 
“Gaaaah!” 
Hiyaaaaa! 
She collided with the stone wall headfirst.