Phantom Bullet 1

by Reki Kawahara

  The silhouette of Kirito against the setting sun across the horizon still had its eyes shut tight. His mouth was clamped down.

  Eventually, the tension drained out of the delicate avatar, and he spoke in a weak voice with just a hint of emotion behind it.

  “…I…I once blamed someone the same way you did, just now…”

  “…”

  Kirito glanced at Sinon and dipped his head briefly.

  “…I’m sorry. I was wrong. It’s just a game, just one match, but that’s exactly why I need to do everything I can…Otherwise, I don’t have a reason or the right to live in this world. I should know this already…”

  The swordsman from abroad raised his head and stared into Sinon with those black eyes.

  “Will you give me a chance to make it up to you, Sinon? Will you fight with me?”

  In her surprise, she momentarily forgot her anger. “Right now…?”

  The BoB prelims were more like encounters, battles that began without knowledge of the enemy’s location. Now that they had come face-to-face without fighting, there was no way to return to the starting conditions.

  But Kirito smiled weakly and pulled the Five-Seven from his waist holster. She tensed up automatically, but he held out a hand to stop her, and pulled the slide. The cartridge flew out and he caught it in midair, then returned the gun to the holster.

  Twirling the 5.7 mm bullet in his fingers, Kirito said, “You’ve still got ammo, right?”

  “…Yes. One shot.”

  “Let’s have a duel, then. How about…we separate to ten yards. You use your rifle, I’ll use my sword. I’ll toss this bullet up, and the fight begins when it hits the ground. How’s that?”

  Sinon was less surprised by this than exasperated. She did not realize that her anger from moments ago had somehow dissipated away.

  “Are you thinking that’s going to make for a proper fight? There is no way I can miss at ten yards. Between my skill proficiency, my base stats, and my gun’s specs, the game will guarantee a bull’s-eye. You won’t even have time to swing your lightsword. It would be the same thing as committing suicide.”

  “You don’t know unless you try,” Kirito sassed, his red lips curling into a grin.

  The moment she saw that look, a buzz ran up Sinon’s spine.

  He was serious. The swordsman actually thought he could beat her in a serious, Old West–style duel.

  Yes, there might only be one more bullet in the Hecate II’s magazine, which made him feel that if he could somehow dodge that shot, he could win. But that was foolish. You couldn’t “somehow” do anything to a bullet that was guaranteed to hit. The speed, accuracy, and power of her gun was miles ahead of that antique revolver in the shopping mall’s bullet-dodging game.

  But—what if there was something to Kirito? She couldn’t help but want to see that.

  Sinon nodded and said, “All right. That will settle this.”

  She turned around and took ten paces to the east along the center divider, then turned back to the sun.

  They were exactly ten meters apart. She raised the Hecate, set the stock against her shoulder, and spread her feet to brace against the recoil.

  In the real world, even the strongest man could not accurately fire an antimateriel sniper rifle from a standing position, but with enough strength in GGO, it was possible. The blowback would knock her off her feet, of course, but with only one bullet, that didn’t matter.

  She pulled the bolt and popped the last remaining bullet into the chamber.

  With her cheek pressed to the receiver, Kirito’s figure filled the entire scope, even at minimum zoom.

  There was none of the lifeless emptiness in his girlish beauty anymore. His obsidian eyes sparkled and flashed, and a confident smile played across his lips.

  With the bullet from the Five-Seven held between the fingers of his extended left hand, Kirito removed the lightsword from his waist. He flicked the switch on with a thumb, and the pale blue energy blade buzzed to life.

  At this point, anyone watching the Block F final had to wonder what the hell these two were doing. But that wasn’t their concern. One bullet against one blade. It shouldn’t have been a proper fight, but the prickling tension that curled the hairs on the back of Sinon’s neck was real.

  There is something to him.

  The Hecate’s sights slipped just a little bit. On the other end of the scope, Kirito’s lips moved.

  “…Here goes, then.”

  He flicked his thumb. The bullet went spinning, spinning, high into the air, glittering in the evening sun like a ruby.

  Kirito dropped into a crouch, his left side leaning forward and the lightsword in his right hand drooping downward. It was an easy stance, not a hint of tension from his toes to his fingertips. Yet there was an invisible pressure exuding from that fragile avatar, the pressure of one whose heart is in the sights of a gun.

  Sinon could tell that her own senses were heightening as well. The 5.7 mm bullet spinning through the air was moving far too slow. All sound disappeared, leaving only her body and the Hecate II. In fact, even the boundary between those two things was gone. Shooter and gun became one, a precision machine designed to hit a target with a high-speed bullet.

  The white reticle and green circle vanished from her view. The bullet dropped in slow motion, tumbling, turning, before the silent swordsman. It passed through the field of her scope and vanished, but she could still feel it: It spun end over end as it approached the pavement; its pointed head touched the asphalt; the game system determined that two objects had collided, generating the appropriate sound effect; the sound echoed through the AmuSphere as an electronic pulse, into the auditory center of Sinon’s brain, and—

  Ting.

  The instant the sound hit her ears, she squeezed the trigger with her index finger.

  Within her accelerated consciousness, Sinon witnessed and processed with vivid detail a number of phenomena that occurred in the next second.

  Orange fire spat from the large muzzle of the Hecate.

  Across the way, blue lightning split the darkness at a diagonal angle.

  Two sparkling comet lights split left and right into the distance.

  As the massive recoil of the antimateriel rifle toppled her backward, Sinon belatedly understood the meaning of what she’d seen.

  He cut the bullet.

  The instant that the bullet serving as the signal to duel hit the ground, Kirito sliced the lightsword diagonally, splitting the .50-caliber bullet that should have killed him in two. The two comet tails she saw were the pieces of the shattered bullet grazing the sides of his body as they flew apart.

  But that was impossible!

  It would be one thing if he guessed on the bullet’s trajectory, swung in blind desperation, and got lucky. But Sinon had deliberately pointed away from the center of his avatar, aiming for his left leg instead.

  Large-caliber bullets like the ones the Hecate shot added an extra effect called Impact Damage. At this ultraclose range, the impact effect meant that even a hit on the arm or leg would spread damage to the entire body, easily wiping out his HP.

  Being brand-new to GGO and having zero knowledge about guns, Kirito could not possibly have understood this. So if he was going to guess the trajectory of the bullet, he would protect the center of his body, naturally.

  Yet he accurately caught the bullet screaming toward his left thigh with the blade of his lightsword. It wasn’t a gamble. At that range, that speed, without any bullet-line assistance. But why—how?

  Even in that moment of shock, Sinon’s arms kept moving. She took her left hand off the Hecate as she fell and tried to pull out the MP7 on instinct.

  But before that could happen, Kirito closed the thirty feet that separated them with a lightning dash, bearing down on her. The blade in his right hand growled and lit her world blinding blue.

  She was going down.

  But Sinon did not shut her eyes against the blow. She kept them open, taking i
n the fan of sleek black hair splayed out against the giant setting sun—

  And then everything stopped.

  Sinon was still falling backward with the Hecate in one hand and the MP7 in the other, but still she did not hit the pavement. Kirito’s left arm was around her back.

  And in his right hand, the glowing blade was held still against her defenseless throat. The growling plasma sword and the distant whistle of the wind were the only sounds.

  Kirito was crouching deep on his left knee, while Sinon lay flat on her back. It was like a still frame from a dance scene.

  Those pitch-black eyes were right in front of her face. She’d never let anyone get this close in the virtual world, much less the real world, but Sinon didn’t even think about this. She just stared back at him.

  “…How did you predict where I’d shoot?”

  His lips parted on the other side of the energy blade.

  “I saw your eye through the lens of your scope.”

  Her eye. Her line of sight.

  The black-haired swordsman was claiming that he could tell where the bullet was going based on her line of sight.

  Sinon had never considered that someone in this virtual world might have that skill. A sensation, much like a chill but not entirely, shot through her back to the top of her head.

  He was strong. Kirito’s strength transcended this VR game.

  But that made the question even more pertinent: Why had he been curled into a ball and trembling in the corner of that waiting-room dome? Why had he clung to Sinon’s hand with those freezing fingers?

  An even quieter question escaped her lips.

  “If you have this much strength, what could possibly terrify you?”

  Kirito’s eyes wavered slightly, and after a brief silence, he sounded like he was holding something back.

  “This isn’t strength. It’s just technique.”

  For a moment, Sinon forgot about the deadly blade of light pressed to her throat, and shook her head fiercely.

  “Liar. You’re lying. You can’t cut a bullet from the Hecate with technique alone. You know something. How did you get that kind of strength? That’s…that’s what I’m here to learn…”

  “Then let me ask you,” he muttered, his voice low but burning with blue flame, “if that bullet could actually kill a player in real life—and if you didn’t kill them, either you or someone you care about would die—could you still pull the trigger?”

  “…!!”

  Sinon forgot to breathe. Her eyes bulged.

  For a second she wondered, Does he know? Did this mysterious visitor know about the event hidden in the darkness of her past, the incident that had blackened her life as she knew it?

  No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t know. But he’s probably experienced…something like it…

  The hand supporting Sinon’s back tensed hard, then relaxed. Kirito lifelessly shook his head, the tips of his long bangs brushing her forehead.

  “…I can’t do it anymore. That’s why I’m not truly strong. I…I didn’t even know the real names of the two or three people I cut down…I just shut my eyes, covered my ears, and tried to forget everything…”

  Sinon didn’t understand what he meant.

  But one thing was for certain. Kirito harbored the same darkness and fear that dwelt within her. And in the time that he’d spent waiting for the next match in the dome, something had happened—something that drudged up the darkness he’d thought was buried.

  The MP7 slipped out of Sinon’s hand and clattered on the asphalt. Her empty hand rose upward on invisible strings to approach Kirito’s white cheek, beyond his glowing sword.

  But just before her fingertips could brush him—

  The impudent smile returned to his face. There was still a look of pain in those dark eyes, but he shook his head and stopped her hand with a word.

  “So…shall we assume that I’ve won the duel, then?”

  “Huh…? Oh. Umm…”

  She blinked in confusion, unable to switch gears. He leaned in even further.

  “Would you mind resigning, then? I’d prefer not to slash a girl in two.”

  It was that shameless, rude, show-offy line that finally got Sinon to reassess the situation—pathetically and miserably immobile, held tight with a hand on her back and a sword at her throat, their bodies pressed together. And this scene was being broadcast live into the tournament dome, the regent’s office, and every pub in Glocken.

  Sensing the blood rushing to her cheeks, Sinon gritted her teeth and spat back, “I’m glad I get another chance to fight back. You’d better stick around in tomorrow’s final until I have a chance to take you down myself.”

  Then she turned her face away and shouted the command to resign.

  The time of battle was eighteen minutes and fifty-two seconds.

  Block F preliminaries for the third Bullet of Bullets were over.

  (to be continued)

  AFTERWORD

  Hello, this is Reki Kawahara. Thank you for picking up Sword Art Online 5: Phantom Bullet, the fifth in this series and my tenth published book overall.

  When it comes to online games, there are two other very popular genres aside from the MMORPG: the Real-Time Strategy (RTS) game, and the First-Person Shooter (FPS) game.

  I enjoy both types, but if I get started on RTS games, I’ll run out of paper, so let’s put that aside for now.

  As the name suggests, an FPS is a gun-based game in which the player sees directly from the perspective of the character he plays. This genre arose in America, and in terms of the number of games and players, they still easily lead the world. When playing online against them, I’ve often wondered if I was actually up against the great sniper Simo Häyhä. Just imagine me running around at top speed, then hearing a tiny pop from across the map, only to fall to the ground with blood streaming from my forehead. Or if it’s a close-quarters fight, they’ll easily dodge around my assault rifle fire, then run up and shank me with a knife (in this case, I wonder if they’re actually Steven Seagal reborn). Of course, that could be my own lack of skill speaking!

  PvP play in MMOs is very heavily affected by differences in level and gear, but FPSs are much more determined by player skill, as there’s little difference between characters’ in-game abilities. One of the inspirations for the Phantom Bullet arc in SAO was a desire to depict that kind of gaming “strength.”

  The problem is that while I enjoy FPSs, I know next to nothing about actual guns…You might think that I’m tossing out all kinds of gun names and terminology like it’s second nature, but that’s entirely an illusion I’ve put on. I’m sure that an actual expert in guns would read this and throw the book aside in disgust, but I hope you can accept any inaccuracies as “just within the game.”

  To my editor, Mr. Miki, for fixing up my drafts despite the many other tasks on his plate, to abec for the delightful illustrations of our two (hah!) heroines in this volume, and to you, dear reader, for noting my previous warning about getting off track last book and continuing onward anyway, I dedicate head shots of pure gratitude. Hope to see you next time!

  Reki Kawahara — June 10th, 2010

  Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Yen On.

  To get news about the latest manga, graphic novels, and light novels from Yen Press, along with special offers and exclusive content, sign up for the Yen Press newsletter.

  Sign Up

  Or visit us at www.yenpress.com/booklink