Phantom Bullet 1

by Reki Kawahara

  It made another register sound, and the black photon sword buzzed into existence on top of the panel. I picked it up, and the employee thanked me for my purchase, then hurried back in the direction she’d come from.

  “Well, no taking it back now,” the girl said, giving me a look with her head tilted at forty-five degrees. “To each their own, I guess.”

  “Hey, if they’re selling this, it must be possible to fight with it.”

  I gripped the short cylinder and held it out in front of me. When I clicked the switch with my thumb, it vibrated with a deep sound and a three-foot blade of purplish-blue energy crackled out of the base.

  “Ooh,” I murmured. I’d used my fair share of swords, but never one that was made of insubstantial light. Upon further examination, the blade was nondirectional—a narrow, circular cylinder like the handle.

  I held it out at midlevel and tried the motions for the old SAO One-Handed Sword skill Vertical Square, which was so familiar that I didn’t need the system to give me any help with it.

  The blade of light growled satisfyingly as it cut a complex path in the air and came to a dead stop. Naturally, I felt no inertial resistance, as the blade weighed essentially nothing.

  “Wow,” the girl exclaimed with surprise, clapping her hands. “You seem to know what you’re doing. So that was a move from a fantasy world, huh? Maybe you’re tougher than I gave you credit for.”

  “I’m not that special…This thing sure is light, though.”

  “Of course it is—that’s about the only thing it has going for it. But assuming you’re fine with using that as your main weapon, you’ll still want an SMG or a handgun for your sub. You need something to keep folks from getting too close.”

  “…I see. I suppose you’re right.”

  “How much do you have left?”

  I checked my window and found that out of the 300,000 credits I had, only half was left. She blinked in surprise and slumped.

  “Ugh, those lightswords are so expensive. Only 150K left…Since you’ve got to pay for ammo and armor, too, we might be limited to handguns.”

  “Um, I’ll leave all the decisions up to you.”

  “You’ll want a live-ammo gun for the BoB. For keeping people at bay, accuracy might be better than power. Hmm…”

  She walked slowly past a case of handguns, then pointed to one.

  “It’ll leave you with very little, but this FN Five-Seven would be good.”

  Her slender finger pointed out a small automatic pistol with a smooth, rounded grip.

  “Five…Seven?”

  “It’s the caliber—5.7 mm. That’s smaller than your average 9 mm Parabellum, but the bullets are shaped like rifle rounds, which gives them an advantage with accuracy and penetration. Because they’re special bullets, you can only share them with the FN P90 submachine gun, but that doesn’t matter if this is the only gun you use.”

  “Uh, I see…”

  The explanation flowed out of the pale-haired girl’s mouth so naturally that it made me slightly more curious about her.

  As GGO had fixed genders, I knew the player herself had to be female, too, but her race and age were beyond me. My instinct told me that her age wasn’t that far from mine.

  Of course, anyone who played an MMORPG long enough learned about the items within. Asuna and Leafa could spend minutes and minutes talking about the swords and magic in ALO.

  But I couldn’t help but feel that something was different about guns. And from what I understood, half of the guns in GGO were actual weapons that existed in the real world. All I could envision after hearing about these weapons was blood and slaughter. This girl around my age dove into this world enough to be a veteran player with detailed knowledge of all kinds of guns. I had to wonder what motivated her to do all of this…

  “Are you listening?”

  “Uh, yes, of course.” I snapped back to reality. “I’ll take it, then. What else should I get?”

  I purchased the Five-Seven handgun she recommended, along with plenty of backup ammunition, a thick bulletproof jacket, a beltlike accessory called an anti-optical defense field generator, along with a few other odds and ends. The 300,000 credits I’d won from the bullet-dodging game were clean gone.

  The photon sword on my right hip and the Five-Seven on my left tugging with an unfamiliar weight, I walked out of the store to see the sunset had turned a shade redder.

  “Well, you’ve really been a huge help. Thank you very much,” I said. She grinned behind her muffler and shook her head.

  “It’s fine. I didn’t have any plans until the prelims begin anyway. Oh!” She stopped and checked the simple chronometer on her left wrist. “Crap, the entry deadline is at three o’clock. We might not make it to the regent’s office unless we sprint…”

  “Huh? You hadn’t registered yet, either?”

  “Nope.”

  Following her pale-faced lead, I checked my brand-new digital watch. The time read 14:51.

  I looked up and quickly asked, “Are there any means of teleportation or something like that? Items, or spells, or special powers?!”

  “I’ll explain as we run!” she shouted, turning around and racing north up the street. I followed the waving muffler. Within a few seconds I had caught up, and she looked over to see that I was close before she continued.

  “Here in GGO, there’s only one method of instant travel the player can control: dying and returning to the resurrection point. The spawn point in Glocken is close to the regent’s office, but you can’t lose HP in town, so that’s off the table…”

  We ran at full speed, weaving around the NPCs and players walking the street. It was all I could do to keep up. It was already hard enough to get used to the lower vantage point than what I enjoyed in ALO, but she was also extremely quick. It was the absolute body control of someone who had mastered full-dive movement, not just the effect of good stats.

  She checked her watch again and pointed down the street.

  “The regent’s office is over there. It’s at the north end of the market, which is still nearly two miles away. It takes five minutes to register, so we need to get there in three minutes!”

  Far away down the length of the straight main street was a giant tower glowing red with the light of the setting sun. It was a straight shot there, but even without the worry of cramping up, it would be extremely difficult to cover two miles in three minutes while avoiding pedestrians.

  If I failed to make it in time for the registry period, that was my own fault for inadequate preparation, but the blue-haired girl running beside me would have easily made it if she hadn’t been sidetracked helping me. I looked over, feeling guilty. She had her teeth gritted and her eyes straight ahead, full of determination. In between virtual breaths, I heard quiet words escaping her lips.

  “…Please…please, be in time…”

  The first round of the upcoming Bullet of Bullets tournament had to mean more to this girl than just some game event, I sensed. She had some important reason that compelled her to participate…

  I looked around the area, searching desperately for some means to get her to the tower in the less than three minutes we had remaining. Immediately, a sign caught my eye.

  Part of the street to our left had been expanded into a kind of parking area, featuring three small automobiles in primary colors. The panel behind them featured a glittering neon sign reading RENT-A-BUGGY! The meaning was clear.

  “That’s it!”

  I grabbed her hand and tilted her to the side. She stammered in surprise as I practically pushed her over the shoulder of the street into the buggy rental area.

  The machines were all three-wheeled cars with one in the front and two in the back. I practically tossed the girl onto the rear step of the red buggy in front and jumped into the driver’s seat. The meter nearby had another fingerprint scanner like the ones I used to shop for gear, so I slapped my hand on it. It rang me up and the engine came to life.

  Fortunately, t
he front half of the buggy worked exactly like a motorcycle did. It even operated in manual. I squeezed the handlebars and hit the throttle. The gas engine roared and the buggy shot out into the street, the front wheel floating off the ground.

  “Aaah!”

  A cute little scream reached my ears from behind, and two small hands grabbed me around the stomach.

  “Hang on tight!” I yelled unhelpfully, then broke into a pavement-burning right turn and hit the gas. With a few shifts into higher gear, we were quickly moving at over sixty miles an hour. The overwhelming power of it finally made me glad that I’d bought that antique manual bike in the real world, rather than an electric scooter like everyone else.

  I darted left and right around the futuristic four-wheel cars on the road, shifting up and down rapidly. The girl’s voice hit my ear again.

  “H-how is this possible?! These buggies are supposed to be so hard to drive, even the guys can barely handle them!”

  Sorry, I actually fall under that category, I thought to myself, but found an excuse.

  “Umm…well, I did play some racing games years ago—whoa!”

  The large bus ahead of us abruptly changed lanes, forcing me to squeal the rear tires in an evasive maneuver. I dropped a gear and accelerated again to pass the bus. It was the year 2025—it made sense that very few people had experience with stick shifts anymore. Even at the driving school, the standard vehicle everyone learned on was an electric scooter. I went to the trouble of getting that midclass license with manual training because Agil’s friend was giving me the motorcycle for free, but it wasn’t until later that I realized pawning off the Thai-made machine on me was actually just a scheme to save him the junking fee. Some people said that it was only a few years until it was outright illegal to ride gas-engine vehicles…

  I was torn out of my thoughts by sudden laughter just behind my head.

  “Ha-ha-ha…Wow, this feels great!”

  It took some time to recognize that the voice was coming from the cat-eyed girl. It never occurred to me that someone so tense and somehow lonely would have such a carefree laugh.

  “Go, go…Go faster!” she shouted. I glared at the approaching regent’s office tower, still more than half a mile away, and returned her encouragement. Head down, kicked into top gear, the engine screamed, and the speedometer said we were nearly up to 125 mph.

  At that speed, we would close the distance in just a matter of seconds.

  But the brief cheers of delight the girl emitted during that short period left a strong impression in my memory.

  The three-wheeled buggy came sliding to a sideways stop in front of the wide stairway leading up to the regent’s office.

  I checked my watch: just over five minutes until three o’clock.

  “We can still make it! This way!”

  The girl hopped off the rear step, grabbed my hand, and started running. Her profile had already regained that sharpness that reminded me of a blade—or a high-powered gun. I tried not to waste too much brainpower wondering which of the two was her real side.

  At the top of the twenty-step staircase was the unbelievably huge metal tower. It had long, streamlined curves on the front and back, with the occasional antenna disc or radar dome poking out.

  “This is the regent’s office, which most people call the Bridge. It’s exactly on the opposite side of town from Memorial Hall, where you started,” she explained, pulling me along.

  “Bridge? It doesn’t look like a bridge,” I noted. She tilted her head.

  “No, it’s because it’s the bridge of a ship. They call it that because it was the command center when Glocken was still a spaceship.”

  “A spaceship…No wonder this place is so vertical, then.”

  “Exactly. The SBC in the name stands for Space Battle Cruiser. Every time you enter an official event or do some kind of in-game registration, it happens here,” she noted. We passed through the entrance to the first floor of the Bridge.

  On the inside, it was a very large, circular hall. Round pillars with detailed, futuristic designs rose up to the tall ceiling in a cross pattern. Large panel monitors lined the walls, lighting the dim interior with the color of upcoming-event advertisements and commercials for real-life companies. Most notable of all was a promotional video for the third Bullet of Bullets tournament, which was playing on the big screen dead ahead.

  But I didn’t have the time to stand around and stare. The girl pulled me along to the far right corner. There were several dozen tall, narrow machines along the wall. They looked a lot like the ATMs or multicontent vending machines you’d see at a convenience store.

  The girl pulled me over to one of them and explained as quickly as she could.

  “This is where you enter the tournament. It’s just a common touch-screen machine. You know how to use them?”

  “Yeah, I’ll give it a shot.”

  “Good. I’ll use the one next to you, so just ask if you need help,” she said, taking her spot on the other side of the panel that separated all of the machines. I thanked her and looked down at the panel.

  The home screen on the monitor said SBC GLOCKEN REGENT’S OFFICE, and to my surprise, all the menus were in Japanese. When I checked out the game’s official site before diving into GGO, everything was in English. Fortunately, they had at least put some work into localization.

  I poked through the menu for a few seconds until I found the Bullet of Bullets entry button and pressed it. That brought up a form asking for name, occupation, and other data. There were 180 seconds left.

  The form was annoying. Why couldn’t the system fill in my character name automatically? And what was my occupation, anyway? Then I noticed a small caveat at the very top.

  It read: Please enter your real name and address into this form. You may still participate with missing or falsified information, but you will be unable to receive the high-ranking prizes if you do.

  My fingers stopped still. My intention in entering this tournament was to make a name for myself and get Death Gun to target me, but my MMO instincts couldn’t help but salivate at the word prizes. Usually that meant ultrarare gear that couldn’t be won normally…

  I started drifting toward the K key for Kirigaya before my better sense won out.

  This wasn’t a game excursion for pleasure. My primary duty was to make contact with the player known as Death Gun and ascertain the true nature of his powers. If Death Gun actually had some kind of supernatural power within the game, revealing any private details was unwise. There was no guarantee that Death Gun wasn’t actually involved with the game’s administrators somehow, and able to access private player data.

  I shook off the temptation of that rare loot and sadly left the entire form blank, hitting the SUBMIT button at the bottom.

  The screen refreshed with a message saying that my entry had been accepted, along with a notice of the time for the preliminary tournament. The date was today—the time, thirty minutes from now.

  “All done?” the blue-haired girl asked from next door. She had finished her entry as well. I nodded, relieved.

  “Just barely. Really, I can’t thank you enough for everything. Plus, I caused you plenty of trouble…”

  She grinned. “It’s all right. The buggy ride was fun. Anyway, what’s your opening block?”

  “Umm…” I looked down at the screen again. “Block F, it says. F-37.”

  “Oh…I see. They must have put us in F together since we registered at the same time. I’m number twenty, so that’s good. We can only meet in the final.”

  “What do you mean, ‘good’?”

  “As long as you reach the final of your prelim bracket, you’ll still be in the battle royale, whether you win or lose the last match. So there’s a greater than zero chance we can both make it in. But if we do meet in the final, just because it’s the prelims…” Her catlike eyes sparkled. “Doesn’t mean I’ll go easy on you.”

  “Yeah…I get it. If we meet up, it’s all-or-nothing.”
I smiled back, and returned the monitor to its home screen. A question occurred to me.

  “For being a Western game, why is all the Japanese on this console so solid? The official site only had English on it.”

  “Oh, that. Zaskar, the company that runs GGO, is based in America, but they have some Japanese people running the JP server. From what I hear, GGO kind of works in a gray area both here and there, legally speaking.”

  “Because of the money conversion system,” I followed. She smirked.

  “Yep. In a way, it’s like private gambling. That’s why their public home page only has the bare minimum of information—not even an address. It’s also why managing your character or setting up an electronic money account to transfer your credits to real funds can only be done in-game.”

  “It’s…quite a game.”

  “And that’s why it’s kept almost entirely isolated from the real world…but because of that, it feels like my current self and my real self are two different people…”

  I blinked in surprise, as a shadow seemed to briefly fall across her eyes.

  “…?”

  “Uh, n-nothing. Forget it. Anyway, we need to get going for the competition. It’s just below us, in fact. You all ready?”

  “Yes,” I said, and she took me by the hand. Toward the rear of the first-floor hall, a number of elevators were lined up on the wall, and she hit the DOWN button on the rightmost one with a slender finger.

  The door slid open at once and she slipped inside, then hit the B20F button. Clearly the tower extended both upward and downward from here. I felt a very real sense of dropping, which eventually slowed and stopped. The door opened.

  When I saw the darkness beyond, my breath caught in my throat.

  It was a circular dome, about the same size as the hall we’d just been in. The lights were as dim as possible, with most of the illumination coming from sad little arc lamps set into metal cages.

  The floor, pillars, and walls were all a mesh of gleaming black metal and rusted fencing. Crude, simple tables lined the walls of the dome. A giant multiscreen holopanel hung from the ceiling. But the screens were black, displaying only the words BOB3 PRELIMINARY ROUND with a bloodred countdown, currently under twenty-eight minutes.