Vol 3 Chapter 5 (1/2)
Chapter 5
SECT.14 - Shoot-out
The spectators in the bar──
Due to one of the cameras broadcasting s.h.i.+NC's situation the whole time, saw the whole thing clearly.
How the leader of the amazons, the woman with braided hair, shot her comrade with her own gun.
The p.r.o.ne leader half-rose up, readied her silent Vintorez sniper rifle, and fired a single bullet at the woman sitting firmly in place about 30 metres beside her.
The exceedingly heavy 9 x 39 mm bullet hit her left temple, causing instant death.
”Wha!”
”Hey!”
”Ooi!”
”Has she gone mad!”
”Haaaaah?”
”Why!”
Shriek-like exclamations enveloped the bar.
And before the ruckus settled down, they saw.
How, behind Sophie's corpse, the item she took out from her storage right before dying finished materialising.
And how the particles of light gathered, forming a long rod.
”What's going on?”
Pitohui's inquisitive voice reached the ears of M and the other members of PM4.
”Right now, one of the enemies… was shot in the head by the enemy leader and died.”
M explained awfully briefly. Unsurprisingly, Pitohui seemed to be stumped by this as well,
”Excuuuse me? Why?”
As she let out in an abnormal voice.
”Dunno……”
”Friendly fire? In that case, it's just like what you did last time, huh, M!”
Pitohui was filled with excitement, but none of her teammates reacted, neither with smiles nor irritation.
And right afterwards,
”Hey, I can't really see what's going on, so how was she killed… by that person? Details please.”
An additional question came from Pitohui.
M,
”Ah? Yeah. They came charging at us to close the distance, but we sniped one down. Right afterwards, at a range of 855, all of them dropped to the ground. However, one of them rose up and sat cross-legged, then was shot by an ally and immediately d──”
Was unable to finish saying 'immediately died'.
Because M's explanation was interrupted by Pitohui. With a shout.
”Drop as close to the ground as you can, now!”
The ones who knew the situation better than the ones fighting on site──
Were the spectators watching the broadcast in the bar.
When the item left behind in the dwarf woman's last moments materialised, the spectators half-understood s.h.i.+NC's strategy.
The particles of light formed a gigantic gun.
Its overall length was actually over 2 metres.
The barrel was a bare, simple, metal pipe. There was a bipod attached at its middle for support. The muzzle had a part, known as a muzzle brake, used to spout gas out to the sides and reduce recoil.
The barrel alone was about 1.3 metres-long. A larger value than the 〝overall length〟 of most a.s.sault rifles.
In order for a human to use it as a gun, the trigger, grip, and stock for supporting it with the shoulder were all located behind its centre of gravity.
At its sights, protruding from the left of the barrel, was a scope that should not have been there originally, meaning that it was custom-installed.
The name of this laudry pole-like and shockingly long gun was,
”《Degtyaryov Anti-Tank Rifle》!”
Several people at the bar shouted almost sim
ultaneously. Gun maniacs were creatures who wanted to say the name of a gun before anyone else.
And both of them were correct.
It was an 〝anti-tank rifle〟 adopted by the Soviet Union Army, which fought in World War II, in 1941.
Degtyaryov was the name of its developer and the 〝D〟 in PTRD. Hence, the name Degtyaryov Anti-Tank Rifle was also known in j.a.pan.
It is an ultra-high calibre rifle designed to pierce the still-thin armour of tanks at the time. Such a gun became unable to pierce tanks in the latter half of World War II, thus the 〝anti-tank rifle〟 category no longer exists and it is instead called an 〝anti-materiel rifle〟.
It was bolt-action and its ammunition was the Soviet Russian-made 14.5 x 114 mm bullet. This meant that the bullet's diameter was 14.5 mm and the cartridge was 114 mm-long.
Considering that M's M107A1 was .50 calibre, thus his bullets were 12.7 x 99 mm, it was clear that the ammunition of this rifle was an additional size bigger and had more force. Naturally, the power of the bullets was also far greater.
At the monster rifle that followed the M107A1,
”What the heck!”
”That's some antique we’ve got there!”
”How did they get their hands on it! That thing!”
”So they're going to counterattack with that!”
”So that's why they were carrying it in their storage all this time?”
”They sure thought it out…… With that kind of firepower, they can compete with M's s.h.i.+eld from the front.”
”They didn't have it last time, did they? They must have gone out of their way to complete a super tough quest to get it.”
The spectators who all shared the illness known as gun mania were fired up.
However,
”But, why? They can't really have a shootout at such a long range on such flat terrain, right?”
A natural question came forth.
They were glaring at each other on an awfully flat terrain.
Just like M and the others could not properly aim at the p.r.o.ne s.h.i.+NC, the women could not aim at M and the others without raising their guns to some extent.
On the other hand, if they just stood up to fire, no, sat down to fire, they would be perfect targets.
And most of all, it was impossible to think that one would be able to snipe accurately with such a heavy gun even while sitting, much less while standing.
Such an ultra-heavy-cla.s.s gun was intended to be fired from an elbow rest── meaning that it should be fired while set against something.
'How the heck are they gonna use that gun?'
This spectator's question was answered by the actions of the sniper using the gun.
The shooter of this monster rifle was the black-haired sniper right behind it.
Those who had seen the previous SJ would know.
That this woman, wearing a knitted hat on her black hair, was the most skilled member of the team and the person who was just a step away from using her Dragunov with a variable magnification scope to snipe LLENN down during the previous tournament.
Moreover, she was also the last character to die in the previous SJ.
She sat behind the corpse and slowly raised the approximately 2 metre-long, 16 kilogram gun that materialised in the meantime.
And then, she placed the front of the long barrel. Onto the left shoulder of the corpse of her comrade, who remained seated.
”Aah……”
At that moment, the spectators realised as a s.h.i.+ver of fear went down their spines.
The reason for the dwarfess sitting down in front of her enemies.
The reason why that leader woman shot her comrade to death.
And why she fired at her head from the left.
”Those women── are gonna f.u.c.kin’ use their comrade as a 〝s.h.i.+eld〟 and 〝emplacement〟!”
In Squad Jam──
A corpse would remain on the spot for 10 minutes as an indestructible object.
In that case, during that time──
A corpse would become an indestructible s.h.i.+eld.
Tohma raised the silver bolt handle of her PTRD 1941 with her right hand and pulled it toward herself.
Bullets so huge that it looked like just hitting someone with one would kill them materialised along with the gun in a waterproof cloth bag. They numbered 10.
Tohma picked up 1 of them with her left hand, some oil staining her gloves. A large quant.i.ty of oil was used on the bullets to improve the function of the gun.
She inserted a bullet into the gun through a hole on the underside and quickly pushed the boltforward to load it.
1 metre behind the corpse with its arms piercing the ground, she readied her gun in a kneeling posture.
Peeking through the scope quite a bit away from her eyes, she stared through the lens at the s.h.i.+eld she saw 855 metres away.
The moment she placed her finger on the trigger, a pale green Bullet Circle came into view, and the moment it contracted for the first time,
”I'll be── taking yer life!”
Tohma, operated by Milana, the group's Russian, muttered an aged line.(1)
And fired.
Rather than a gunshot, the sound it made was more like an 〝explosion〟.
”Drop as close to the ground as you can, now!”
Hearing Pitohui's voice,
”!”
M let go of his M107A1 and dropped to the ground on the spot. Gra.s.s and dirt entered his mouth.
”Huh?”
The fat man was slow to respond.
And, to his further misfortune, Tohma's Bullet Line was intercepted by the s.h.i.+eld in front of him, thus it did not enter his vision.
The 14.5 mm diameter bullet──
Hit the right edge of the fan-shaped s.h.i.+eld.
And was repelled.
As expected from a s.p.a.ce battles.h.i.+p's outer wallboard. Partially because of the fact that it was oblique, it could not be penetrated even by a 14.5 mm bullet from 855 metres away. Violent sparks scattered, an intense sound rang, but it held its ground.
However──
〝It didn't penetrate〟 did not mean 〝the power was not pa.s.sed on〟.
The kinetic energy of that bullet was tremendous. Due to the intense impact, naturally, extreme pressure was put on a sheet of the s.h.i.+eld.
The s.h.i.+eld was a powerful object that could withstand any heat or pressure.
The metal joints connecting the top and bottom of the s.h.i.+eld, however, were not that strong.
The joints supporting the pressured sheet at two points instantly bent like toffee and broke due to the twisting.
And then the sheet of the s.h.i.+eld burst backwards──
Landing a direct hit on the face of the man holding his Savage 110BA right behind it.
He was unable to utter a sound. Neither a scream, nor a complaint, nor a surprised squeal.
Hit by the firm sheet, the man's neck twisted to an angle that was impossible for the structure of the human body, and a red effect light, proof of the recognition of the damage dealt, came forth from it.
A 【Ｄｅａｄ】 marker lit up, indicating the position of the first casualty of PM4.
The moment the PTRD 1941 discharged, a tremendous blast a.s.sailed the surroundings, raising a huge amount of dirt from the dry ground.
Although the intense recoil jolted her body backwards, she was able to withstand it, in part because she had s.h.i.+fted her body forward with her kneeling posture.
Although the gun was bolt-action, it employed a peculiar system of 〝opening the bolt with the force of the recoil and ejecting the empty cartridge〟. GGO perfectly reproduced this feature.
Upon firing, the gun itself, including the grip── namely, almost the entire thing except for the stock applied to the shoulder and the cheek pad applied to the cheek, jerked backwards by roughly 65 mm from the powerful recoil.
Due to this force, the bolt handle flicked upwards towards the metal fittings at the back, opening it up. Which meant that the action of opening the bolt handle, which would normally be done by hand, was done by the recoil.
The opened bolt would retrude further due to inertia. An empty cartridge, with improved sliding due to the oil, was dragged out──
And ejected below the gun.
Tohma picked up another oil-drenched bullet and once again slid it into the gun from below. With the lowered bolt pushed forward and locked, she was once again able to fire.
”Next!”
What s.h.i.+NC chose for the 〝M’s s.h.i.+eld countermeasure〟, absolutely necessary to win the tournament,
”In any case, starting now we're getting our hands on a far stronger weapon!”
Was that simple.
'If we can't beat him with our current firepower, we can just get stronger 〝arms〟 and smash down his 〝s.h.i.+eld〟.
'In that case, what would that be?'
First, they considered using a grenade launcher like the ones f.u.kaziroh used. 'We could just attack from above where M's s.h.i.+eld doesn't cover him by making use of a parabolic trajectory.’
However, the maximum 400 metre range was just not enough. They had to get something that they could attack with from outside the 800 metre range of M's M14 EBR, or at least from the same range.
In that case, only one option remained.
Their goal was to acquire a large calibre and high-power anti-materiel rifle.
'Even if it didn't penetrate the armoured sheets, it should probably have enough punch to at least destroy the joints. Or even s.h.i.+ft the position of the s.h.i.+eld.’
As such, the girls made use of the little time they had in between their hectic studies, club activities, and intense practices to gather information.
They knew that merely 10 or so anti-materiel rifles existed in the j.a.panese GGO server, but,
『That is a thing of the past. Recently, it seems that the number of them being implemented suddenly increased, thus there should actually be more of them available, and easier to get than before.』
They got their hands on such a rumour. And their hopes grew larger.
Next, as if they were data collectors, they attempted to ask people who already had anti-materiel rifles how they were able to acquire them.
Every time they caught rumours of someone having one, they sought them out, but in the end, they only managed to get ahold of four of them and, furthermore, only two of them answered their question properly.
Both of them,
『I got it as a drop by miraculously clearing a difficult quest and taking down the boss.』
Uttered the same thing. As expected, they were not things that would be sold at regular stores.
Naturally, the chances of a person who had acquired one selling it were far lower than that for other guns; when one of them did appear on auction, it went for such a shocking price that it totaled 200,000 j.a.panese yen when converted to real money.
One of the two people who had given them an answer was a female player. A lovely, light-blue-haired girl named Sinon.
Of course, this was based on avatar appearance; the player could be an aged adult woman. This player named Sinon was so skilled that she could fight in the finals of the BoB. She was not the kind of opponent that anyone from s.h.i.+NC could rival in a one-on-one.
At that time, the ones to meet with Sinon were Boss and Anna, who managed to finish their homework early. Sinon went into quite a bit of detail, perhaps because they were all girls.
According to her, the depths of the dungeons below the capital Glocken was more difficult than the ones out in the wilderness, and thus it should be easier to get a rare weapon there. The probability should be especially high in places that you could forcibly fall into through traps. After all, that was the case for her.
Since that day, they began a reckless quest to acquire an anti-materiel rifle for the rhythmic gymnastics club.
After charging into areas that were, without a doubt, not clearable at their level, they were chased around by super gigantic boss-cla.s.s monsters and huge machines, and trampled by them at times. Yet they continued this merciless battle that did not allow them to earn any experience points at all, as they kept 〝returning by death〟 to the safe zone every time their squadron was wiped out.
After who knows how many times, when they had already lost count, the G.o.ddess of fortune smiled upon them.
This took place during a battle in a long and narrow dungeon that may have formerly been a subway station.
During a back-and-forth battle with their enemy── a machine that looked like a huge tank with numerous power shovels for arms, they were all shot up by its laser beams. Then, their machine gunner Rosa failed to avoid the monster's ramming attack, thus she was squished by its large caterpillar tracks and died with her body in tatters.
However, be it the result of her tenaciousness or her grudge, her right hand continued pulling the trigger even as her body was torn to pieces.
The PKM machine gun continued to function as if avenging its owner.
During the short moment before her corpse shattered into polygon fragments and disappeared, she had fired around 20 bullets at the side of the underground s.p.a.ce; some of these bullets. .h.i.t the pipes running along the side, opening holes in them.
With extreme force, hot water used to heat the underground gushed out from them.
The water gus.h.i.+ng out of the high-pressure hot water pipes landed directly on the machine. Perhaps because of the damage to its electrical system, its movements slowed down drastically. The steam enveloping it also dampened the power of the laser beams fired from the tips of its arms.
”Now's our chance! Attack at once!”
”Aww yeah!”
”Let's get 'im!”
”Crush it to pieces!”
”Uoooo!”
Enthusiastic, the five survivors a.s.saulted it simultaneously without paying heed to the hot water shower──
And they were immediately wiped out.
Regretfully, the damage they acc.u.mulated till then was just too great. If it were possible to win a conflict through spirit alone, no country would lose a war.
However, they found a clue to beat it.
Invading the same dungeon again the next day, they first set up explosives on the warm water pipes. Then, they lured the enemy there and ensured that it took an even bigger shower than last time, and at an early phase of the battle.
Afterwards, it again came down to brute force.
They pounded and pounded and pounded away at the now slow-moving opponent. By shooting its arms as they were about to fire lasers, they immediately threw its aim off.
Nevertheless, the merciless battle continued for over 30 minutes and, when the boss's hit pointswere nearly depleted, they even resorted to using all the plasma grenades in their pockets in a suicide attack, resulting in their deaths──
And they finally defeated it.
In the end, a shot fired from Tohma's Dragunov tore off one of its panels and hit the now-exposed part that looked like a nuclear reactor.
But then, aside from her and Anna, the two snipers who had been shooting from a distance, all of their comrades were wiped out because of the flashy explosion.
While a gaudy Congratulations string floated in the musty room, a single small window came out in front of Tohma, the one who dealt the last attack.
What materialised in front of her upon touching it was a laundry pole-like anti-tank rifle, the PTRD 1941.
For them, who only used Soviet Russian-made guns──
They got yet another Soviet Russian arm, as if they had been aiming for one.
Remembering Sinon's words that, upon defeating a boss with a French sniper rifle, she got a French anti-materiel rifle,
”I see, so the gun you get depends on the gun you use to defeat it, huh.”
Concluded thus. Whether that was accurate or not… none could answer.
When Tohma and Anna brought back the huge laundry pole── the PTRD 1941, their comrades, who had returned to town by death, were all overjoyed.
The way they embraced each other, cried together, and rejoiced showed not a hint of the bad relations.h.i.+p they had when they first met. These rhythmic gymnastics club girls had been face-to-face with death numerous times, guns in their hands, and had thus become irreplaceable comrades.