But Satoru's earnest voice sounded far too real to belong to some imaginary virtual body. Seeing his expression, seeing his eyes, Shino found it impossible to laugh it off with a simple, You've got to be kidding me.
Really.
Who exactly was he...?
And in his eyes, there was also something else.
Something that could only be called killing intent.
Realizing that Shino had been left speechless by the chaos in her own mind, Satoru finally moved his gaze away, that stare sharp enough to pierce through anything, and looked once more toward the iron bridge in the distance.
As if pulled along by him, Shino turned her head and looked that way too.
The mysterious man in the tattered cloak, the one who had made Pale Rider disappear, lowered the gun he had pointed at the camera and glanced toward Dyne, who lay collapsed to the south.
The word Dead floated above Dyne's abdomen. He was still logged in, but he could not speak or even change his expression. There was no way to know what he felt about the strange battle that had taken place right beside him.
After holstering the handgun and settling the Silent Assassin on his shoulder again, the man in the tattered cloak began walking toward Dyne.
Was he going to attack Dyne even though he was already down?
Shino tensed at the thought. Satoru seemed to have reached the same possibility, and his brow furrowed as if he were weighing what to do.
Fortunately, the cloaked man did not draw the semiautomatic pistol again. He simply walked past Dyne.
He did not cross the suspension bridge. Just as when he had first appeared, he circled around to the other side of the large iron support and vanished. He was probably planning to follow the river farther downstream. Though they could no longer see him for the moment, from that position, his only route was along the river from north to south.
Once he started moving, he should appear in their field of view again soon.
"He's gone," Satoru murmured, though he had no real basis for saying it.
Shino looked at her watch.
8:44:50.
In another ten seconds, the third Satellite Scan would begin. She took the terminal out of her pouch and looked at the screen.
"You keep watching the bridge. I'll use this to confirm that guy's name."
"You won't see him."
Hearing that irritating answer, Shino suppressed the urge to fight him right there.
Still, he was at least keeping watch, so she waited for the map to update.
The scan began. Far above them, a spy satellite from the age of space warfare swept over the land, scanning every inch of the surface.
That electronic eye could easily see through ordinary cover. Unless someone was hiding inside a cave or, as they had already tested, underwater, there was no escaping its surveillance.
With a series of popping sound effects, points of light appeared on the screen. On the mountaintop farther south, Richie was still standing in place. He probably would not come down from the mountain until the tournament ended.
About eight hundred meters north of him, on a cliff in the shrubland, the next two lights were Shino and Satoru. Players far away would almost certainly assume the two of them were fighting at close range. They would never imagine that they were lying side by side in the bushes.
Hopefully, they would keep misunderstanding it that way.
Then, two hundred meters farther north, there was an extremely faint point of light. That was Dyne in his dead state. Normally, there should have been another point a little above him representing Pale Rider, but nothing was displayed there. And east of Dyne, beneath the iron bridge, there should have been the point for the man in the tattered cloak.
"Huh...? H-he's not there?!"
Shino blurted out, staring hard at the terminal's high-resolution screen.
No matter how carefully she looked, the only point around the iron bridge was Dyne's.
What had happened?
After a moment of panic, Shino barely managed to pull her thoughts back on track.
There was only one possibility she could think of. He had dived into the river to avoid the Satellite Scan.
In that case, this was...
"...a chance."
Hearing Shino's voice, Satoru raised an eyebrow. Seeing him glance over, she quickly explained.
"That tattered-cloak guy isn't showing up on the terminal. He must have gone into the river. That means he should have taken off his equipment. Once he gets back on land, it'll take him at least ten seconds to open his window and equip everything again. If we attack then..."
"What if it's only the handgun? With something like that, he should be able to keep it equipped while moving underwater, right?"
Interrupted halfway through her explanation, Shino answered with a dark look.
"I haven't tried it, but if he has decent STR and VIT, then probably... But even then, dealing with one handgun shouldn't be hard..."
"Forget it."
Satoru, who had charged through the preliminaries with such arrogance, unexpectedly objected. After a pause, he said, "That handgun killed Pale Rider. There's something strange about that gun, though I don't know what. And he has some kind of concealment ability, probably from his equipment. He had it when we ran into him at the Isaro bridge last time too. There's a strong chance we'd walk straight into a counter-ambush."
Shino shook her head lightly.
"...But I still can't believe that getting hit inside a game would really kill someone. No, before that, if what you're saying is true, then that man in the tattered cloak is killing people of his own will, right? That's impossible. I don't want to believe someone like that exists in GGO. This is only a VRMMO..."
Yes.
Even in the wilderness of Gun Gale Online, where killing was everywhere, to Shino, it was still ultimately a safe world.
There was no true malice here. No real killing intent. What bullets and gunsmoke expressed was simply the purified desire to outdo an opponent, to become stronger than anyone else. After all, in this world, no matter how many bullets someone fired or took, whether a few or several dozen, not a single drop of blood would be shed.
There was no pain, no wounds, and no real damage of any kind.
In other words, even if battle led to regret, it did not lead to hatred.
Even in that fierce battle, when Shino had fought Samuro and killed him with a headshot, leaving his death scene brutal to look at, what remained in her heart afterward was confidence, reflection, and respect for a strong opponent. She believed he felt the same way.
Otherwise, the two of them could never have gone on to explore the ruins together so peacefully afterward.
That was why she had chosen the world of GGO.
It stood between the weak version of herself in the real world and the hated memories of her past. She had prayed that if she kept fighting here, the confidence she built would one day outweigh the resentment and fear that still tormented Shino Asada.
True malice should not exist in a VRMMO.
If it did, then this was no longer just a virtual world.
Wouldn't that mean the darkness of reality, the very thing Shino feared and wanted so badly to look away from, had followed her here too?
"I... won't accept it. VRMMO players who don't just PK, but actually kill people... they can't exist."
To Shino's declaration, Satoru answered in a voice colored by sadness and memory.
"They do exist. That man in the tattered cloak, Death Gun, killed people in the VRMMO I used to be in. And he did it knowing full well that it would cause real harm. Of course, I'm the same."
At that point, Satoru let out another soft sigh.
"You know about SAO, right? The game they called the Death Game."
Three years ago, at the end of 2022, that incident had shaken all of Japan. Even Shino, who had not been interested in VRMMOs at all back then, had learned quite a lot from the daily news coverage. At the time, more than ten thousand young people had been trapped inside a virtual world.
Two years later, around six thousand were freed and returned to reality.
In other words, roughly four thousand people had lost their lives because of that incident.
Samuro was one of the survivors who had returned from that world?
And if what he said was true, Death Gun was too.
No, not only that.
His words just now contained an even more terrifying truth.
In that world, where death in the game led to death in reality, Death Gun had killed many players of his own will. He had known they would truly lose their lives in the real world, and still he had done it.
That was exactly what Shino had just described as a VRMMO player who actually killed people.
Someone like that was in GGO.
Logged in right now, at this very moment, on the field of the Third BoB Main Tournament.
And through some unknown method, he intended to truly kill other players just as he had in the past.
That was what Samuro was trying to say.
The instant she finally understood it through the chaos in her thoughts, cold sweat broke out across Shino's entire body.
Her vision began to darken. From the center outward, black spread in a slow, suffocating mass.
Something was hiding inside that darkness, watching her.
That gaze.
Lifeless, hollow, and clinging to her skin.
"Sinon!"
The sudden call made her eyes fly open. Beyond the receding darkness, Samuro appeared with a serious look on his face. Seeing those rather unremarkable avatar features of his somehow pushed down the signs of her phobia.
Shino let out a soft sigh and answered.
"...I'm fine. I was just a little shocked. Honestly... I can't believe everything you're saying right away, but I'm starting to think it isn't all a lie."
As Satoru nodded lightly, the cluster of lights displayed on the terminal in Shino's right hand began to flicker. The satellite overhead was probably about to leave. She hurriedly switched the map to global mode and confirmed the number of lights.
There were seventeen bright lights, meaning seventeen surviving players.
There were eleven dark lights, meaning eleven dead players.
Twenty-eight in total.
"As expected, the numbers don't match..."
There should have been thirty players at the start. Aside from Pale Rider, who had vanished when his connection was cut, one light was still missing.
That was probably Death Gun, hiding at the bottom of the river to escape the scan.
No.
Perhaps he had not merely dived underwater. He might still be moving.
Was he moving away, or coming closer?
If it was the latter, then at this very moment, he might leap out from the water east of the bushes where they were hiding and launch a fierce attack on them.
Just as that thought occurred to her, all the lights on the screen vanished. For the next fifteen minutes, they would have to rely solely on their own senses to find enemies.
She stole a glance to the east, but could not sense any sign of movement.
The man in the tattered cloak was probably moving north along the riverbed. His main weapon, the Silent Assassin, was terrifying, but in the end, it used a bolt-action system just like Hecate II and was not suited to midrange or close-range combat.
Rather than force a fight with two enemies, it would be more advantageous for him to create distance and erase his position first.
Thinking that, Shino let out a sigh and spoke.
"...Anyway, we need to leave here quickly. People who think you and I are fighting will try to come over and clean up after us."
"Yeah."
Satoru thought for a moment, then immediately looked at Shino and said, "Until the tournament ends, please hide somewhere absolutely safe. Never mind. Saying that probably won't help."
"O-of course it won't!"
Shino immediately shouted back in the loudest voice she could manage.
"I'm not going to copy Wooden Stake Richie and do something like that! Besides, there's no such thing as an absolutely safe place on this island. There seem to be plenty of caves in the northern desert area, but if someone throws a grenade inside, you'll die instantly."
"Then let's part ways here."
"Huh...?"
The unexpected words left Shino speechless for a moment. After blinking several times, she finally managed to answer calmly.
"W-what are you planning to do?"
"I'm going to keep chasing him, of course. He was the one who invited me here in the first place. But from the look of things, he wants to make the stage even grander. He's been doing everything he can to avoid fighting me for now. He probably wants to kill a few more people first, then come for me at the very end."
Satoru looked straight at Shino.
"I can't call myself a good person anymore either, but if possible, I still don't want this to get any worse. Before he finds those people and kills them through some unknown method, I'll take out anyone I run into first. He doesn't seem able to attack people who have already been defeated. He didn't touch that body on the ground earlier."
At that point, Satoru frowned.
"Sinon, don't go near that man. This tournament isn't just a game anymore. You shouldn't get involved."
With that, he stood and made to leave.
"Ah... wait..."
By the time Shino called out reflexively, his assault boots had already stepped onto the reddish-brown gravel. Then, without looking back, he began walking north toward the bridge.
Shino drew in a full breath and let it out in a silent honestly.
Then she immediately pushed through the bushes and stood. The branches and leaves broken by her rough movement scattered around her, vanishing as they drifted through the air.
"Wait right there!"
At her shout, the figure already twenty meters away stopped at once. Without even looking, Shino picked up Hecate II at her feet, slung it over her right shoulder, and caught up with Satoru. Ignoring the confusion on his face, she looked ahead and spoke.
"...I'm going with you."
"?"
"Listen. You're going to fight Death Gun, right? Even putting aside whatever that handgun can do, that guy is strong. Sure, you're pretty abnormal too, but if you lose to him before fighting me, then we won't be able to settle things here. I'm not exactly thrilled about it, but for now, teaming up and driving that guy out of this island, out of the BoB Main Tournament, is the right move."
After rapidly putting together the lines she had thought up while running over, Shino stole a glance at Satoru. He was frowning, wearing a conflicted expression that suggested he wanted to say something but could not.
His worry and confusion had probably won out. He shook his head.
"That won't work. You saw how dangerous he is. If you get hit, the real you might be in danger."
"But I don't know which way Death Gun went. Whether we stay together or split up, the danger is the same."
"...True."
After thinking for a few seconds, Satoru nodded.
Suddenly, his right hand moved like lightning. Shino realized he had drawn that katana. She had not even noticed where he had hidden it, but its cold gleam, like clear autumn water, was already flashing in the sunlight.
Is this guy trying to ambush me here and settle our fight in this situation?!
Shino tensed at once.
But at the same time, Satoru had already turned his gaze sharply to the west.
Following his line of sight, she saw several red Bullet Lines coming at them from the shadow of a large rock about a hundred meters away.
Someone's gun let out a full-auto roar. But the storm of bullets attacking them without pause was completely overwhelmed by Satoru's blade. Shino froze for about a second, then immediately reacted and dropped to the ground. Before she even hit the dirt, she had already taken Hecate II down from her shoulder.
As she entered a prone firing position, the rifle's bipod had already planted itself in the sand.
The moment she heard the attacker's gun firing full-auto, she had already been mostly certain. And sure enough, what she saw through her scope was not Death Gun's black cloak. The half-open helmet on his head, fitted with what looked like a plume, and the eyepatch-style aiming assist device over his right eye made him easy to remember.
It was the assault rifleman named One-Eyed Warlord, who had appeared in both the previous tournament and the one before that.
He was an experienced veteran gunner, but right now, his stern virtual face looked as if his jaw had dropped from sheer shock.
No wonder.
He had emptied an entire magazine in a surprise attack, only for some abnormal person to cut every shot down.
Only seeing it up close could make one truly feel the impact of that long sword dancing as it struck bullets from the air. Shino was left speechless. Sparks and ringing impacts burst one after another. With only one hand, he carved arcs of steel before him, forming an unbreakable defense.
Without retreating a single step, he stood in front of Shino and cut down every attack.
"Are you kidding me?!"
The voice that shouted was exactly what one would expect from an ancient Chinese warlord, or from a man whose face looked like it should be covered in a full beard. One-Eyed Warlord immediately hid behind the rock.
Satoru glanced at Shino, then spoke as if compromising.
"Then let's start with him. I'll charge forward. I'll leave support to you."
"...Got it."
Even so, Satoru charged out immediately and plainly, as if he did not care about support from behind at all. After a flurry of blade-slicing sounds, only seven or eight seconds passed before he came strolling back with his sword in hand.
Things had taken a strange turn.
Why had it ended up like this?
Thinking that, Shino tilted her head in distress.