Phantom Bullet 2

by Reki Kawahara

  “If we regroup, will you fight me properly next time?”

  “Yeah,” he said. Sinon stared into his eyes for about half a second before lowering her SMG. She didn’t take her finger off the trigger, just in case he did start swinging at her, but he only straightened up and laid down in the shadow of the bush next to Sinon. He pulled a small pair of binoculars out of his belt pouch and looked through them.

  She was both furious and annoyed that she seemed to be a secondary, if not tertiary, concern to him now. Why would he bother observing someone else’s battle? And where did he appear from in the first place? When she checked the Satellite Scanner just minutes ago, Kirito’s name didn’t appear within a kilometer of her.

  But Sinon chose to sit on these concerns for now and returned the MP7 to her waist. She put her arms around the Hecate and looked through the scope.

  Dyne was still down in firing position on this side of the long bridge. The way he held the SG 550 straight, without a single twitch, belied an impressive level of concentration. Despite having chased him here, Pale Rider wouldn’t be able to just pop out of the forest on the other bank.

  “Maybe the battle you were hoping to see isn’t going to happen at all,” Sinon remarked drily to Kirito. “Dyne’s not going to just lie around there all day. If he gets up to move positions, I’ll shoot him first.”

  “I don’t mind if you do…Wait a second.” Kirito’s voice went sharp. Sinon pulled her eye out of the scope and scanned the bridge herself.

  On the far bank, a player had just loomed out of the thick forest along the path. He was tall and thin, with an eerie pale-patterned camo suit. His face was invisible, thanks to a helmet with a black shield on the front. The only visible weapon was an ArmaLite AR-17 shotgun at his right side. This was probably—no, it had to be—Pale Rider, the man who chased Dyne here.

  Dyne’s shoulders stiffened on the other side of the bridge. Even at a distance, Sinon could sense the tension in the scene. On the other hand, there was no hint of unease in the way Pale Rider stood there. Slinking, he approached the bridge, showing no fear of Dyne’s SIG.

  “He’s good…” Sinon muttered to herself. Kirito’s body shifted. She looked over for a second to see his girlish face painted with an alarming strain. It was Pale Rider he was concerned about. Sinon had never seen the name or avatar before, but his skill level was clear from the way he moved.

  In the world of GGO, there was a future-predicting assistance system called the “bullet line,” which would be impossible in real life. But even with that, it was not easy to approach an enemy with a full-auto machine gun. The typical method was to run at a sprint from cover to cover, zigzagging to close the distance.

  But Pale Rider left himself completely defenseless, sliding forward toward the bridge. There was no terrain to hide him from gunfire. Even Dyne was visibly confused by this action, and this was exactly what he wanted to happen.

  But as the longtime leader of a PvP squadron, he clicked back into gear quickly. A second later, the sound of his precise Swiss SG 550 assault rifle rattled across the river.

  He shot at least ten 5.5 mm rounds, but Pale Rider evaded the shots with a very unexpected method—he leaped up onto one of the countless wire ropes supporting the bridge and began to climb it using nothing but his left hand. Dyne hastily followed his course, but it was difficult to aim upward when on all fours. His second burst of fire went wild, and Pale Rider used the momentum of the wire to launch into a long jump. He landed quite close to Dyne’s end of the bridge.

  “For a Strength-first build, he kept his weight total low to boost his three-dimensional movement ability…and his Acrobat skill is really high,” Sinon whispered at the same moment that Dyne got to his knees, determined not to fall for the same thing again, and pulled the trigger three times. But Pale Rider read that one ahead of time. The pale silhouette dove headfirst, just underneath the upward-facing line of fire. And not a clumsy dive, but a skillful, compact somersault using his left hand to push off the ground. When he stood up again, he was barely sixty feet from Dyne.

  “Son of a bitch!” Dyne growled in a familiar way, and moved to switch out his empty thirty-round magazine. But before he could, Pale Rider’s ArmaLite spat fire with a stomach-churning thud.

  There was no way for a shotgun to miss entirely at that distance. Several bullet-hit effects sprang up on Dyne’s body, and he flew backward with the force of it. But he was too skillful to give up on changing his cartridge, and was just pulling the gun up to his sights when another blast rang out.

  The second shot from Pale Rider, delivered closer than the first, knocked Dyne off balance even further. That was the danger of a shotgun: The damage was bad enough, but the movement delay was so powerful that its victims were helpless to prevent further shots from landing true.

  He should have sprayed fire from the hip, rather than trying to hold the SIG steady at eye level, Sinon thought, but it was too late for Dyne to make use of that advice, even if he could somehow hear it. Rider handily reloaded the AR-17 as he approached and pulled the trigger a third time, right in front of Dyne’s face. The twelve-gauge shotgun blasted a hail of shot that eliminated his remaining HP.

  Dyne fell backward, limbs splayed, and stopped entirely. A large red indicator reading DEAD appeared over his body, rotating slowly. Dyne was now out of the battle royale. In order to prevent any players from sharing information, he was prohibited from logging out during the tournament, and was forced to remain in the dead body, watching the rest of the battle play out as it aired on the stream.

  “That blue guy sure is tough,” Kirito whispered. Sinon nearly nodded, but frowned when she heard what he said next. “Is he the one…inside the cloak…?”

  Sinon was momentarily confused until she recalled that Pale Rider was one of the three names Kirito had demanded from her. In other words, he might be the one whom Kirito had fought to kill in that other VRMMO. And the name of that game might be—no, it had to be—the stuff of legend…

  She forced herself to stop thinking about it right then. Kirito had his reasons for this, but the weight of his past was his alone. She couldn’t shoulder the burden for him, and even if she could, she shouldn’t.

  Sinon turned off the Hecate’s safety to distract herself from that hesitation and whispered, “I’m going to shoot him.”

  Without waiting for a response, she put her finger to the trigger. Pale Rider had already left the scene of his victory and headed north along the river. She caught his slender back in her crosshairs and fine-tuned based on wind and distance.

  At last, Kirito croaked back, “Yeah…I get it. But if he’s really the guy…”

  If he is? He’s going to dodge a sniper’s first shot, sans bullet line, from just 300 meters, while facing away?

  You must be joking, she mouthed, and started to pull the trigger without hesitation, when—

  To her utter shock, Sinon caught a sight through her scope she hadn’t expected.

  Pale Rider’s right shoulder, clad in pale blue camo, burst with bullet fire, and his slender form lurched and fell to the left.

  “Aah—!” exclaimed both Sinon and Kirito, who was watching through his binoculars.

  He was sniped—and not by Sinon. From the deep forest on the far bank of the river.

  Despite her shock, she instinctually put all of her concentration into listening. She needed to figure out the direction and type of rifle blast that took down Pale Rider. But no matter how hard she strained, all she heard was the dry rustling of wind and the flowing of the river.

  “Did I miss it?” she wondered.

  Meanwhile, Kirito had the same idea. “No, there was no sound at all. What does it mean?”

  “The only possibility is…one of the quieter laser rifles…or maybe a live-ammo gun with a suppressor, but…”

  “Sapresser?”

  She glared at Kirito, wondering how many things she needed to teach the idiot before all was said and done, then gave in and explained, �
�It’s a noise canceler that goes on the end of the gun to keep it from being too loud.”

  “Ohh…a silencer, you mean.”

  “That’s another word for it. Whatever you want to call it, a rifle with one of them equipped can cut down on the sound a lot. It does negatively affect accuracy and range, plus it’s ridiculously expensive for a disposable item.”

  “I see,” Kirito muttered, nodding. He looked to the tip of Sinon’s Hecate II. All that he saw was a muzzle brake, and even a beginner like him could tell there was no suppressor attached.

  Before he could say anything, she added, “It’s not like I’m cheaping out by not using one. It’s just not my style.”

  She returned to the scope with a snort. Pale Rider was still prone on the ground. But it didn’t seem to be a one-hit kill. If it was fatal, the DEAD marker would be floating above him, as with Dyne nearby. Why wasn’t he running or fighting back, if he wasn’t dead?

  There were other questions, too. Sinon knew from checking the Satellite Scanner map that no one else was within a kilometer. That meant whoever this mystery sniper was, they were shooting from very far away. It also had to be quite a high-caliber rifle. But the larger the gun in GGO, the less useful a suppressor was, and the worse its downsides. It didn’t sit right with her that she didn’t hear the gunshot.

  At this point, Sinon remembered that she’d felt the same suspicions about the player right next to her, just minutes before. Without turning her head, she asked, “By the way, Kirito, where did you come from? You weren’t around this mountain when the satellite passed over, ten minutes ago.”

  “Huh? Well…I was tracking that Pale Rider guy from about half a kilometer, so I should have shown up on the scanner…Oh, no, wait. I get it.”

  “What?”

  “Actually, about ten minutes ago, I might have been swimming across the river. I was going underwater at the time, so I guess the satellite couldn’t detect me…”

  You swam across?! she nearly screamed.

  There was nothing in the game that prohibited swimming in rivers or lakes, and a fall into water didn’t spell instant death. But HP dropped continuously while in water, and a full set of equipment was too heavy for swimming. On top of that, a river of this size was impossible to cross alone without a frogman-style breathing apparatus.

  “H-how did you…?” she barely managed to squeak out. Kirito just shrugged casually.

  “I took off all my equipment first, of course. When you remove it in your status window, it goes into storage and doesn’t require holding in your hands; that’s a common rule to all Seed VRMMOs.”

  “…”

  She was dumbfounded. Getting the idea to swim across the river was one thing, but having the fortitude to remove all his defensive gear in the midst of a battle was unbelievable. With a heave of disgust, she said, “Well, if you were showing off your avatar’s undies, at least the people watching on the stream must have gotten a kick out of it.”

  “But doesn’t the livestream only show active combat?” he returned confidently. She snorted.

  “…At any rate, it seems that being submerged in water means the satellite can’t pick you up. That’s good to know. On the other hand, you went all that way to chase Pale Rider, and while he was tough, he wasn’t all that. If taking one good shot was enough to freak him out and paralyze him, he won’t…”

  Last, she was going to finish, but Kirito cut her off, binoculars pressed to his eyes again. “Actually, it doesn’t look like he’s freaked out… Look closer. There’s some kind of weird lighting going on around his avatar…”

  “Huh?”

  She increased the magnification on her scope. It was hard to tell in the intense light of the setting sun, but it did appear as though pale blue sparks the same color as Pale Rider’s camo were crawling over his body. She’d seen that effect before. It had to be—

  “An electrical stun round?!”

  “Wh-what’s that?”

  “Like the name says, it’s a special kind of bullet that runs a high-powered current that stuns its target. But you need a really high-caliber rifle to load one, and each round is prohibitively expensive, so no one uses it for PvP. It’s only useful when hunting major mobs with a party.”

  Even as she delivered this explanation, the sparks holding Pale Rider prisoner were fading. In less than a minute, the effect would be gone. But since it barely hurt his HP, it didn’t make any sense why someone would pull off such a difficult, long-range snipe…

  “—!”

  In the moment, she couldn’t tell if the shock that ran through came from her own body, or Kirito next to her.

  About 200 meters to the north of the bush in which they hid was the metal bridge, spanning the river from east to west. At the west end of the bridge was the confirmed corpse of Dyne’s avatar. About five meters north of him, Pale Rider fell over, having been shot by a stun round from the eastern forest. He would soon be getting to his feet.

  Just between them, a black silhouette bloomed from the shadow of the metal bridge’s support pillar.

  At first glance, it didn’t appear to be a player. The outline of the avatar was strangely indistinct. She stared at it hard, and finally understood why. Not only was the player wearing a tattered, gray, hooded cloak, the breeze was blowing it in chaotic directions, like some kind of swarm of vermin. Rather than a classic sniper’s ghillie suit, it was more like a “ghillie cloak.”

  “When did he get there…?” Sinon murmured unconsciously. It was almost certain that the cloaked figure was the one who sniped Pale Rider. But when did he leave the forest and cross the bridge? Even with the hiding bonus of the cloak, she would have spotted him if he crossed the empty bridge. Or did he swim, like Kirito had? If that was the case, she wouldn’t have missed him opening his window and manipulating his equipment.

  In the next instant, a new shock eliminated all of those minor questions from Sinon’s mind.

  The tattered cloak slowly moved forward, revealing the main weapon that had been hidden in the body’s shadow until now.

  “Silent Assassin,” she moaned.

  It was a massive rifle, nearly as long as her Hecate. The barrel was slightly thinner, but the many bolt holes crossing the body of the gun, the one-piece stock with advanced thumb hole grip, and the dark gray matte finish gave it a chillingly cruel appearance. But most notable of all was the long sound suppressor attached to the end of the barrel. No, it wasn’t attached—this gun was designed around the use of a silencer to start with.

  The proper name of the gun was the Accuracy International L115A3. It fired .338 Lapua Magnum rounds—weaker than the Hecate II’s .50 BMG rounds, but the L115 was not an antimateriel rifle. As one might guess from the default implementation of the silencer, it was built for sniping human targets. Its maximum range was over 2,000 meters. Those shot by it couldn’t see the shooter, much less hear the gunshot before they died. Thus giving rise to its nickname: the Silent Assassin.

  She’d heard that the fearsome rifle could be found in GGO, but had never seen one for herself. In fact, Sinon didn’t know of any snipers who could fight solo aside from herself. But the person in that tattered cloak had shot Pale Rider from deep within the woods on the far bank of the river. That wasn’t possible without the technique and willpower to control the expansion of the bullet circle, which was linked to one’s pulse.

  Who is he?

  She looked at the watch on her left wrist: 8:40 PM. There were still five minutes left until the third satellite flyover. That was a very long period of time for the current situation to hold.

  Through her scope, she saw the cloaked man set the L115 on his shoulder with lifeless precision. She squinted to see if his rifle might bear a sticker from his squadron, but aside from a thick cleaning rod attached below the barrel, there was no customization. As she watched him, he carefully slid over to the prone Pale Rider.

  Pale Rider had defeated Dyne without taking damage, and was clearly a talented player in his own
right. Sinon hadn’t heard of him before this, but she figured that he was well known in the distant northern landmass, like Behemoth the minigunner. But based on first look, the cloaked man had even more presence. Sinon felt a chill prickling her entire back, perhaps even more visceral than when she beat that enormous boss monster on her own to win her Hecate.

  But in order to be sure of the cloaked man’s strength, there was still one question to answer. If he had such a rare rifle and the sniping skill to match it, why did he bother with stun rounds, rather than live ammo? A single .338 Lapua shot to the head or heart would tear the lightly armored Pale Rider apart. Certainly, stunning him first to allow for a fine-precision kill shot would work, but the cloaked man stunned him and then walked right out of the forest, exposing himself to his still-healthy target at close range. It rendered the success of that high-difficulty shot meaningless.

  Sinon bit her lip, disturbed by the fact that she couldn’t even begin to guess what he was after. Meanwhile, Kirito was oddly silent. She wanted to check on him, but she couldn’t pull her eyes away from the tattered cloak.

  He was standing right in front of Pale Rider now, L115 still on his shoulder. He reached into his cloak, convincing Sinon that he must be pulling out his sidearm for the kill. It might be a small submachine gun; a full magazine at point-blank range would be enough to take down all of the target’s HP.

  “…Huh?” she muttered, startled once again.

  Instead, he removed what looked like a plain old handgun. She couldn’t identify it, because the gun moved into the shade of his body against the setting sun, but the silhouette made it look like a perfectly unremarkable automatic pistol.

  A bullet from a handgun was just as powerful as that of a submachine gun, but it wouldn’t have full-auto fire if the trigger was held down. It would take too long to empty enough bullets to eliminate all of the enemy’s HP, and Pale Rider was just about to recover from his paralysis. As soon as he was able to move, he’d fire his shotgun, and it would be the man in the cloak who died.