Sword Art Online - Volume 23 - Chapter 1.2

She glanced back at the opened treasure chest, then popped back out of the narrow cave mouth and into the arid wasteland.

And here she was now—well past ten PM.

She’d spent nearly an hour on the move after leaving the cave, but Sinon still hadn’t found any water. Her TP bar was under 20 percent, and the feeling of thirst was excruciating. If there wasn’t any water around the rocky outcropping she was heading for, that would probably be where she died. She wanted to believe she’d just resurrect somewhere else in the world, but the phrase “preserve your solitary life” from the mysterious message stuck in her head. If a player got only one life, then maybe resurrecting didn’t work after the grace period. If she died here, would she drop all her items and get sent back to GGO? Would she lose her entire character and all its data?

There were three major mistakes in judgment Sinon had made that had put her in this perilous situation. The first was trying to be nice and picking up the items from the centipedes’ victims for them. The second was not logging out immediately after she’d found the cave and, instead, falling asleep inside it. The third was leaving the cave and heading farther into the wilderness, rather than returning toward the ruined city.

It occurred to her now that if she had searched the homes of the city carefully, there would probably have been a well or something of that nature. It had to be an intended part of the game design that players would replenish their water at the ruins and venture outward from there to explore; that was why there was no water outside. But her TP bar was already below halfway by the time she realized this, so she couldn’t turn back and return to the city.

If there wasn’t any water at the rocks ahead…No. She had to believe it would be there.

She didn’t want to run into any monsters just before the end, so she watched the darkness very closely as she ran. She’d gained something called the Night Vision skill a while back, which gave her slightly better vision, but she couldn’t see into the shadows by starlight alone. She gave any big rocks that might hide scorpions a wide berth and moved as quietly as possible.

The big rock formation’s exterior was covered in shrubs. It was only a hundred yards away at this point.

That was when Sinon picked up some very important information, visually and aurally. She shrank back and ducked.

What she saw was a small, flickering light at the base of the rocks. The starlight was reflecting off something. Out in this desert, it couldn’t be metal or glass. It had to be water.

And what she heard was a roar like thunder. The booming bass sound couldn’t come from a lizard or rat. In typical VRMMO terms, only a large predator—often some kind of field boss—made that kind of sound.

Sinon’s instinct was to grab the shoulder strap of the Hecate II, but she touched nothing. Her usual partner was in her inventory, unable to be equipped. All she could rely on now was the Bellatrix SL2. But optical handguns were used for their lightweight nature. Would that really help her against a boss?

The TP bar, now bright red, was nearly down to 10 percent. Standing here and waffling wouldn’t stop it from running out in ten minutes or so. Finding another source of water was unrealistic at this point. Her only options were to wait here and die of thirst or gamble and head for the rock.

For some reason, she remembered something she’d said to the leader of a PvP squadron that had hired her once: Show me you at least have the guts to look down the barrel of a gun and die, even if it’s “just a stupid game”!

Smirking, Sinon straightened. If she was going to die, she’d prefer combat to dehydration.

Another ferocious roar blanketed the wasteland. Sinon drew the Bellatrix and undid the safety.

She stared at the rock a hundred yards ahead. If there would be a fight, she at least needed to see the monster first. All she could tell was that something large was moving at the base of the rock formation.

A thought striking her, she crouched again and opened her menu. Sinon tapped the MP7 in her inventory, then selected the flashlight option from a submenu and materialized that instead. She stuck the miniature light that appeared to the lower mount rail of the Bellatrix. The weight was…just low enough. She couldn’t pick up a single pebble after this, but the nice thing about VRMMOs was that as long as you were under that magic number, you were as nimble as if you were holding nothing at all.

The flashlight was a high-quality part, but not to the extent of a hundred yards. Sinon crept forward with utmost care. She closed to half the distance, watching for monsters and avoiding cacti and rocks.

The stone formation felt small from far away, but now that she was closer, it was nearly the height of a ten-story building. The surface was almost vertical, but viny plants hung down here and there, and she could hear trickling water. Apparently, the water was running down the surface of the rock and creating a little spring at the base.

The instant she was certain there was water, Sinon’s thirst assaulted her senses. She felt like she was being choked, and she coughed violently. Her TP bar was at 8 percent…That meant she had eight minutes to drink or she would die.

Glancing away from the rock formation, she soon found the owner of the roaring. There was a huge, squat shadow moving counterclockwise around the base of the rock, as though protecting its territory—in fact, it was definitely doing that. She couldn’t drink anything unless she dealt with the creature.

Before she gave up and made a desperate suicide attack, she thought of drawing its attention with a shot, then kiting it much farther away. Even if it didn’t lose sight of her altogether, all she needed was a minute away from the rock to dunk herself in the water.

She moved even farther, nearing thirty yards. As a sniper, this was unbearably close to the target, but for people who fought with swords, like Kirito and Asuna, this was where they would start sprinting to close the gap.

What were they doing now? Studying back in the real world? Having fun leveling-up in ALO? She wanted to replenish her TP, find a new shelter, and log out so she could get in touch with them. If she told him everything that had happened to her, Kirito would probably be more jealous than startled. She couldn’t wait to see that look on his face.

“…I’m going to survive this,” she muttered, resting her torso against a sloped rock nearby and taking two-handed aim with the Bellatrix. Not only were there no bullet circles anymore, but this gun didn’t come with a scope; she had to aim with the primitive sights and beads. Fortunately, optical-gun trajectory was unaffected by wind and gravity, unlike live-ammo guns, so any laser she fired would go exactly where the sights said—technically, a fraction of an inch lower.

The huge monster came around the far side of the rocky mountain, walking in a slow curve and turning its head in Sinon’s direction. She could probably get its attention with a shot anywhere, but she wanted to hit a vital point to conserve the gun’s energy.

Sinon would shift her left hand to hit the switch on the flashlight attachment, use three seconds of light to take aim, then fire. She exhaled, inhaled, and started to move her hand.

But she never actually turned on the light.

Dat-dat-dat-dat-daaaan! There was a quick series of bursts, and Sinon jumped on the spot. It was the sound of a live-ammo gun, and a very high caliber one at that.

Her first thought was that the players who’d been attacked by the centipedes had come back to recover their gear. But Sinon had spent over an hour traveling away from the ruins. Unless they had her bugged somehow, they couldn’t possibly track her here.

The roaring of the large monster confirmed that. It was very clearly an angry roar, in contrast to the earlier howling meant to warn others of its territory. She could see bloodred damage effects spilling from its body.

There was another peal of thundering gunshots, but this time, she saw it happen: To the southeast of the rock, on Sinon’s right side, a number of orange lights flickered briefly atop a small hill. A moment later, effects of the bullets hitting the creature’s left flank lit up, and its bulk lurched to the side.

The effects vanished right away, but Sinon’s eyes had enough light to make out the form of the monster. If one word could describe this thing, that word was dinosaur.

Sinon’s apartment in the real world was in the Yoncho-me block of Yushima in Bunkyo Ward, adjacent to Ueno Park. When she had time to kill, she sometimes went to the art galleries and museums there. Her favorite was the National Museum of Nature and Science, which had hosted a dinosaur exhibit this summer. She wasn’t crazy about dinosaurs in particular but had given it a look out of curiosity. The highlight was a full-body fossil of something called a deinocheirus, meaning “terrible hand.” The enormous arms and claws certainly convinced her of why it was called that.

The monster protecting this rocky mountain was very similar to the deinocheirus. Its back rose upward like a hill, with a long neck atop it, a pointed head, and powerful arms and legs. Unlike the illustrations at the exhibit that imagined what the deinocheirus looked like, however, this one wasn’t covered in feathers; instead, it had rough, armor-like skin. It seemed to be about sixteen feet tall and twice as long.

The dinosaur faltered with the impact of the large-caliber bullets but quickly recovered. It turned toward the hill where its attackers waited, pawed at the ground with its specialized front legs, then charged. With each footfall from its five-ton body, Sinon could feel the vibration in the earth around her feet.

The front slope of the hill formed a rather steep little cliff, and even a dinosaur would have trouble running right up. The players ought to be shooting it a third and fourth time, but now the hilltop was silent, for some reason. Who was attacking the beast anyway? If it wasn’t Suttocos and his friends coming after Sinon for their gear, was it another group of GGO players who had ventured out farther? But why did all the guns sound like the exact same type?

To Sinon’s amazement, the dinosaur maintained its powerful momentum and slammed its heavy head against the cliffside. That attack rumbled even harder. Cracks spread outward from the impact point.

The dinosaur then backed away, its head lowered, and tensed to charge again. At last, a third round of gunfire sent a series of red eruptions running across the dinosaur’s raised spine. This time, however, it did not falter; apparently, the protuberances on its back gave it higher defense there.

“Goaaaah!” the dinosaur bellowed, and it bounded forward on its tree-trunk legs. It slammed into the same spot on the cliff with another headbutt. The cracks reached the top of the hillside, and clumps of dried earth fell downward.

Sinon thought she heard faint screams, and she squinted for a better look.

Along with the earth, a figure also tumbled down the side of the hill, which was about thirty feet tall. One of the people atop the lip of the cliff lost their balance as it gave way beneath them.

“……Good grief.”

She was so exasperated by this display of amateurism that she forgot about the pain in her throat and leaped out of her hiding spot. She didn’t know who the attackers were, but working with them was her best chance at eliminating the dinosaur and getting some water to drink. She thought about sneaking over to the spring while the battle raged on, but she hated the thought of being targeted by the dinosaur and attracting the anger of the attackers as well.

Sinon gripped the Bellatrix with both hands as she rushed toward the cliff from the south. The fallen player was trapped under rocks and couldn’t get up. A fourth set of shots rang out from the hilltop, but the number of bullets was fewer. The dinosaur was unconcerned, and it lifted its front leg, threatening the fallen player with its deadly claws.

“Over here!” Sinon shouted, turning on her flashlight. The bright light pierced the darkness and struck the dinosaur’s head. It briefly stopped with confusion, and she used that chance to shoot the Bellatrix in its yellow eye.

There was a comparatively weak pshu! sound, and a pale-green beam of light shot forth, penetrating the dinosaur’s right eye.

“Gyaooooo!!” it shrieked. The beast smashed into the cliffside, having lost its balance thrashing about. More of the cliffside crumbled, and large amounts of dirt and rock tumbled downward. Above its head, which was similar to both a crocodile’s and a bird’s, a red ring cursor appeared, but she didn’t have time to stand there and read.

She lowered her gun and turned off the light, then rushed to the fallen player, pushing hard against the large boulder trapping the player’s leg beneath it.

“Get up!” she shouted, offering her hand—and then her eyes widened.

The collapsed figure wasn’t a human. In a broader sense, you could call him humanoid, but at the very least, she had never seen an avatar like this in GGO.

The figure had a squat body covered in brown feathers, with the head of a bird of prey.

In other words, a birdman.

He reminded Sinon of the harpy-type monsters from ALO, but he was more birdlike in this case. His body was covered in armor made of cloth and leather, and he held a simple rifle in his hand. This couldn’t be a player or a monster, but an NPC.

Sinon reversed course and thrust her hand out again. Even if his appearance was 70 percent bird, she would surely find common understanding with a fellow shooter (even if she had no evidence to back up the assertion).

It wasn’t clear if the birdman understood her, but his hawklike eyes blinked once, and then he grasped Sinon’s outstretched hand. She pulled him to his feet and saw that she was about two inches taller.

“Can you run?!” she asked.

But the birdman answered her in a language she couldn’t begin to comprehend.

“    .”

She had no idea what he said, but there was no time to figure that out now. The dinosaur was shaking vigorously, trying to throw off all the cliffside earth that had landed on top of it.

“This way!” Sinon shouted and began to run for the rear side of the hill. The birdman followed her on naked feet that looked like an ostrich’s. There was red light streaming from his left leg, but the damage didn’t seem too serious.

The hill was circular in shape, about a hundred feet in diameter and fifty feet tall. There had to be a path on the other side that the birdmen had used to reach the top of the cliff. Or maybe they flew…But no, that couldn’t be right. Their wings had atrophied—or perhaps evolved—into arms. The feathers from shoulder to elbow were more ornamental than anything and certainly not designed for actual flight.

As they ran, her new companion abruptly shouted, “   !”

She spun around and saw him pointing at the cliff with a clawed hand. She couldn’t see it very well in the dark, but she could tell there was something like a ladder there. Sinon turned as hard to the left as she could with her momentum and leaped onto the ladder. This wasn’t just some rope ladder thrown down temporarily but a fixed feature that had been pounded into the rock surface with stakes. That must have meant the birdmen didn’t coincidentally decide to attack that dinosaur tonight but had tried picking it off many times from the top of the hill.

Sinon hurried up the ladder as fast as she could go. The Bellatrix was back in its holster, so if the birdman tried to attack her from below, her ability to return fire would be delayed, but she didn’t think he would betray her now.

Sure enough, she was able to climb the entire fifty feet of ladder without interruption. At the top of the hill was only a small selection of shrubs, with the rest being rock and sand. She’d hoped for a little bit of water but saw nothing. Her TP bar was down to 4 percent.

Thinking about it brought the sensation of thirst back with a terrible vengeance, sending Sinon to her knees. A few seconds later, the birdman reached the top of the hill, so she asked him, “Do you have any water…?”

But the birdman just blinked at her, confused. She glanced at his body and saw only two tool bags on his belt and no canteen. If he was an NPC, he wouldn’t have a virtual inventory, so whatever she could see was everything he held.

So in the next four minutes—make that three and change now—she had to defeat the dinosaur and get back to the spring at the base of that mountain, or else she would die.

And I refuse to die.

Sinon summoned all her willpower to get back to her feet, then tottered into a run toward the west side of the rocky mountain. Within moments, she saw a number of silhouettes (birdhouettes?) along the cliffside. They were aiming their rifles at the base of the cliff and had their backs to her. It seemed they were going to open fire on the dinosaur for a fifth time.

But from what Sinon could see of the dinosaur’s HP bar, it was still at nearly 80 percent. Their rounds of gunfire hadn’t even taken off 10 percent each time. If they stayed up here at the top of the hill, the dinosaur couldn’t attack directly, but the only target they could hit was the thick hide of its back. It wasn’t doing a lot of damage. And based on the size of the sacks on their belts, they weren’t flush with ammo, either.

“Wait!” she shouted, causing the line of birdmen to flinch. The feathers around their necks stood on end. They whipped around, pointing their guns at Sinon.

“   ?!”

“     !!”

She raised her hands on sheer instinct and tried to argue her cause. “I’m not your enemy! I want to help you beat that dinosaur!”

“   !!” shouted a larger individual who stood a head taller than the rest. His rifle was steady on her. Nothing she could say was going to get through to them.

Her TP bar was at 3 percent.

I guess this is as far as I get, she lamented.

Then an impact almost as powerful as an explosion slammed the entire hill. The dinosaur had struck the cliff with another headbutt. The lip of the cliff crumbled spectacularly, and the birdmen leaped back from it, crying with dismay. The dinosaur’s roar set the night air on edge.

That sound was enough to bring back Sinon’s will to fight, just as it was running out.

She could wallow in despair once she died. As long as there was a single pixel left on her TP bar, she would fight to survive. She just had to make her intentions known to the birdmen and get their help to beat the dinosaur. There had to be a way to do that.

What would Kirito do in a situation like this? He probably wouldn’t rely on words. He always used action—whipping everyone into battle through the sheer brilliance of his sword and the willpower contained within it. Sinon had no sword, but she did have a partner. And she was the only thing Sinon could rely on here.

She opened her ring menu and quickly moved to the STORAGE icon. In the list there, she selected the name of the gun she’d stored hours ago and brought it back into the world.

The moment the gigantic antimateriel rifle appeared atop her window, the birdmen screeched in alarm. Their guns were more like the old-fashioned muskets that matched the bullets she’d found in the cave—in no way comparable to her Hecate II, a high-precision weapon created with modern production technology. Of course, it was strange that the birdmen could use guns at all, but this was her chance to get them on her side, while they were impressed.

“You and you! Support the barrel from each side!” Sinon commanded, pointing to the largest one, who seemed to be their leader, and the one standing next to him. They tilted their heads in puzzlement. The gesture was so distinctly birdlike that she nearly laughed, but she held it in.

“Hurry!” she tried again. “We have to shoot while the dinosaur is stunned by the headbutt!”

But the birdmen did not react. It seemed they weren’t going to respond to words in any way. There were android NPCs in GGO that spoke a mysterious language, too, but once you got a language conversion chip during a quest, they would sound Japanese again. There was probably a similar thing she needed to do to be able to speak to the birdmen, but there was no time for quests right now.

“Please, you just have to hold it up!” she begged a third time. That was when a smaller figure leaped in from behind—the first birdman, who she had saved from the rubble. He gave his right shoulder to the middle of the barrel. Instantly, the support her player window was giving the gun vanished, and the massive weight of the gun pressed onto the birdman’s shoulder.

He squawked with exertion, and Sinon hurriedly reached out to the gun, grabbing the wooden grip with one hand and supporting the body with the other. But even with two of them, the best they could do was keep it off the ground. They couldn’t carry it to the edge of the cliff like this.

Her TP bar was at 2 percent.

“Urgh…Grrrgh…!”

Grunting and heaving, Sinon tried to push the rifle forward, despite its being well over her Carry Weight limit. To the right of her HP bar, there was an icon like a red paperweight that was flashing rapidly. A small window appeared before her eyes, saying Physique skill gained. Proficiency has risen to 1, but she didn’t care.

The birdman holding up the barrel was doing his best to keep it raised, but his body was slowly sinking with the weight. With each struggling moment, more fine feathers came loose from his shoulder, until this began to create damage effects on his skin.

Sinon’s efforts were reaching their limit, and she was just about to fall to her knees—

—when a large hand grabbed the barrel close to its end.

The blinking of the paperweight icon slowed down. She looked up and, for a brief moment, met the eyes of the leader of the flock.

“  !” he shouted, then lifted the barrel and rested it on his left shoulder. That didn’t lessen the load until it was under her Carry Weight limit, but she felt like they might be able to transport it now.

The three of them proceeded forward unsteadily and moved the massive rifle to the edge of the cliff. She wanted to deploy the Hecate’s bipod to rest it on the ground, but that wouldn’t give her the right angle to aim at the dinosaur all the way at the bottom of the cliff.

“Crouch down and keep holding it up!” she instructed, knowing the birdmen weren’t going to understand her. But they quickly knelt, and Sinon stuck her cheek to the side of the Hecate and tilted the muzzle downward with all her strength.

But the dinosaur was already recovering from the wobbliness of its most recent collision. Its burly head was pointed in their direction, and it was backing up, preparing for its next blow. That wasn’t good; if it hit the cliff now, the Hecate could tumble out of her grasp and off the side of the hill.

The dinosaur’s HP bar, shaped like a combination of ring and pillar, also displayed the target’s name in Japanese. It read Sterocephalus, which certainly sounded like a dinosaur, although she didn’t know what it meant.

Regardless, the head of the sterocephalus was protected by thick, shell-like armor, and perhaps even the Hecate couldn’t break through it. And that was assuming she could actually hit that target at all, at a time when she couldn’t even lift the weapon. It was going to be nearly impossible.

So she’d have to aim for its huge torso instead, preferably the heart. But the sterocephalus wasn’t even exposing its sides to her, much less its belly. Could she shoot its heart all the way through its back?

Her TP bar was down to 1 percent remaining. Sinon had sixty seconds left to live.

“…Firing now!” she exclaimed through a throat drier than the wasteland sands.

But before she could pull the trigger, the leader birdman supporting the muzzle lifted a hand and shouted, “     !!”

The other birdmen lined up on either side of Sinon and aimed their muskets. The old-fashioned guns, which didn’t have the benefit of rifling inside their barrels, could barely break the surface of the dinosaur’s hide. They couldn’t hit it in the heart. But with another short cry from the leader, they shot in unison.

Within each musket, the flint on the end of the hammer scraped the frizzen, creating sparks that lit the priming charge in the pan. A moment later, the gunpowder within the barrels exploded and propelled the bullets out of the muskets with a tremendous bang!

The spray of bullets almost entirely missed the dinosaur. Instead, they gouged out the ground around its feet, creating a huge wave of spark effects.

“Gwoeaaah!” roared the sterocephalus, standing on its rear legs and lifting its front arms high in the air. The action exposed its whitened belly, which was not covered in heavy natural armor.

This is it.

Sinon aimed through the scope at a spot she suspected was the sterocephalus’s heart, then hastily pulled the trigger. The blast it produced made the muskets sound like toys. Orange flames shot from the muzzle brake. Even with three people holding it, the recoil was too great, throwing Sinon and the two birdmen backward, along with the gun itself.

But Sinon was certain of what she saw. The .50 BMG round struck the center of the sterocephalus’s chest, creating an eruption of damage effects.

As they landed on their backs, the massive dinosaur’s HP bar began to plummet. Down and down it went, from yellow to red—to zero.

She could hear the rumbling of the giant beast falling to the ground, even from atop the cliff. A new message appeared before her eyes: Sinon’s level has risen to 16. She was momentarily stunned at the huge jump in levels—but then it occurred to her that maybe it would refill all of her gauges. Sadly, the tiny sliver of TP was not moving. She had forty—no, thirty—seconds until it was gone.

With a trembling finger, she tapped the Hecate next to her and put it back in her inventory.

In concert with that motion, the birdmen all raised their muskets high in the air and issued high-pitched shouts. The leader and the one Sinon saved got to their feet and joined in the exultation.

But there was no time to watch. No time to descend the ladder behind her, either.

Sinon got to her feet and sprinted for the cliffside. She had to banish her fear and leap off the fifty-foot hill. With her upgrade to level-16, she could probably survive an outright fall of that height, but she wasn’t trying to gamble that hard. Instead, she was aiming for the toppled body of the sterocephalus.

Her feet landed on the relatively soft flank of the dinosaur, and she bent her knees to tumble forward on a diagonal, hoping to deflect as much of the impact as possible. Ever since Kirito had taught her that fall damage in Seed VRMMOs changed depending on if you fell or if you braced yourself for impact, she’d practiced it in ALO. Thanks to that, she lost only 10 percent of her HP bar, but there was only a single pixel of TP left.

She slid down the dinosaur’s flank and hit the ground. Her vision clouded slightly, although she couldn’t tell if that was just adrenaline or a simulated effect of such. There were about two hundred yards from here to the glimmering spring at the base of the rocky mountain. She could sprint there in about ten seconds.

Gritting her teeth, Sinon launched into motion. One, two, three steps, and she was at a full sprint…and that was when the TP bar silently depleted.

The worst feeling of dehydration yet burned her throat. The looming rock blurred so that she was seeing double, and she closed her eyes.

I guess that’s it.

She waited for death to arrive, leaving her last words for the Hecate II in her inventory:

If I lose you somehow, I’m going to do everything it takes to get you back.

The strength was draining from her body. She collapsed forward onto the ground. Gravelly sand brushed her cheek. Her avatar was disintegrating into………

Nothing.

It wasn’t disintegrating at all.

Instead, she noticed that the HP bar in the upper left corner was now decreasing. So when TP reached zero, it wasn’t instant death, just the start of the damage to her HP. Her eyes shot open as she lay prone on the sand.

“You could have warned me of that first!” she grumbled.

No one answered, of course. She steadily lifted herself up. Death hadn’t come for her yet, but there was no time to waste. The HP bar was decreasing fast enough that she could see it plummeting. Her new grace period was maybe a minute long at best.

Sinon’s vision was still doubled, which told her that it was a visual-effect warning that she was at death’s door. Struggling to her feet, she resumed running for the rock ahead. She bumped into smaller ones along the way, and by the time she crossed the two hundred yards thirty seconds later, her HP bar was under the halfway point.

There were beautiful, delicate flowers at the base of the rock, and a pristine surface of water swayed beyond them. She swore to herself that if this turned out to be a poisonous swamp, she would track down the people who created this mysterious world and pump them full of lead. She crossed the patch of flowers and knelt at the edge of the water.

Sinon had no cup, so she thrust her hands into the flickering sky of stars below. The water was shockingly cold. She lifted her hands to her lips and drank deeply, without bothering to taste first.

“Ah…”

She gasped. Then she scooped and drank again. And again. And again.

The dropping of her HP bar stopped, and the TP bar began to recover, but the rejuvenation she was feeling completely overrode any attention for small details like those. Scooping the water with her hands felt too slow, so she lowered her mouth directly to the water to slake her thirst like animals did.

She never wanted to leave this rock. She wanted to build a house and live here. Sinon drank and drank from the life-giving pool, not even noticing that her TP bar was already back to full again.