“Didn’t get the job done, huh…?”
In the tower next to Clarence and Tanya’s, sheltered within an identical alcove under the steeple, was Lux, a member of MMTM.
He was dressed in his usual uniform, a Swedish military camo consisting of many shades of green in angular patterns, plus a patch on his shoulder featuring the team logo of a skull with a knife in its mouth. As always, his trademark sunglasses were on.
Behind the stone pillars that surrounded the square tower space, he had a long sniper rifle set up on a tripod.
The gun was an F&D Defense FD338.
The AR rifles—such as the M16 or the larger-caliber AR-15—were the most famous rifles in America. Once the patent had expired, other companies were able to use its design to put out their own guns in the same style, one of which was the FD338.
One of its features was the loading handle being on the left side. It was not like the other AR-series guns, which had it higher up on the rear of the gun. There was a large muzzle brake at the end of the barrel, which directed the firing exhaust behind at an angle, reducing recoil.
As you might have guessed based on the rapid firing earlier, this was an automatic sniper rifle that could fire in semi-auto mode each time you pulled the trigger.
As the name indicated, it fired .338 Lapua Magnum bullets. That was a very powerful high-precision ammunition, the largest kind for a standard sniper rifle, boasting a maximum effective range of almost five thousand feet.
Because it was a bullet for long-range sniper rifles, it was primarily used in bolt-action rifles that boasted very high precision. So between the real world and GGO, there were not many rifles that could shoot them in semi-auto. Although there were conflicting accounts, this was said by some to be the first gun on the world market that could do so.
As the biggest gun freak on the team, Lux had paid through the nose for the latest model of FD338, which was very pricey within GGO, so he could use it in SJ5. Although he couldn’t tell his teammates, he had withdrawn quite a lot of his savings in real money to convert to credits. They would be horrified if they learned how much he’d spent.
Lux was the member of MMTM who had changed his main weapon the most.
In SJ1 and SJ2, he had used a 5.56 mm H&K G36K assault rifle, like his teammate Kenta.
In SJ3, he had felt the lack of a sniper was hurting the team, and so he switched roles to take a 7.62 mm automatic sniper rifle called the H&K MSG90. In the battle on the cruise ship at the end of SJ3, it came in very handy, keeping the team leader at bay when he was on the Betrayer team. Lux, however, ended up drowning.
But in SJ4, he was in battle with LPFM at the airport and toppled from his trike at high speed. Not only did he die from a vehicle accident, his MSG90 broke when it slammed against the runway surface and had to be scrapped. What a shame. It had been expensive.
In the recent Five Ordeals, he’d had no choice but to go into his gun collection and select the SDF Type 20 rifle. It was a 5.56 mm gun and wasn’t suited for long-range sniping, so he had once again selected a new gun this time around.
Lux was sitting cross-legged on the floor, with the tripod adjusted to the right height for him to aim the FD338 comfortably. He increased the zoom on the scope and examined the adjacent spire carefully.
✦ ✦ ✦
He had been lucky from the start of this game, being placed in the snowy field close to the castle and then spotting the towering edifice very soon after the game began.
Where he was unlucky was in heading straight through the gate in one shot—because he never saw that very important warning message printed on the wall in the generic Mincho font.
He had wandered alone through the nearly empty castle and the misty town inside and eventually arrived at the center of the keep.
Inside, he had climbed the stairs to reach the arena on the roof, where he hid behind the obstacles placed there. Of course, that meant he couldn’t see anything, and when no enemies came near him, he ended up spending a very boring hour in the empty fog. He was so bored that he nearly took a nap.
Then the time came at last, and the fog cleared…
Revealing several very tall spires, all quite close by. Oh, I didn’t know those were there.
He was a sniper, so he instantly knew that he’d have a major advantage by climbing them. He sprinted over, leaped inside one, and raced up the spiral staircase.
His next burst of good luck was that members of the despicable LPFM and SHINC were in the tower right next to his.
But then he was once again struck by bad luck, as his first shot on the careless Takarazuka girl, who was leaning way out with binoculars in hand, failed to kill her in one. Apparently, the shot had not been a direct hit on Clarence. His aim had been just off enough that it hit the stone pillar next to her and struck her on the ricochet.
She had been careless before, but now she wasn’t allowing any part of herself to be exposed. The other one, whose camo suggested that she was the silver-haired member of SHINC, was out of his field of view, too.
It was very frustrating that he had hit her yet failed to seal the deal, but he had to report it anyway.
He said into his comm, “Team Leader, I’m in place in the north-northwest tower of the keep. Ready to provide sniper backup. The Takarazuka from LPFM and the silver from SHINC are in the next tower over. I failed to get a kill shot. But I’m keeping their heads down.”
“Good job, Lux,” said David, his voice calm and soothing. Then he added, “Listen up, all of you. We’re joining forces with ZEMAL. If you see any of them, don’t shoot. Provide backup. Someone really wants to finish off the pink shrimp’s team themselves, so we’ll help with that. If that person gets to eliminate Llenn, they’ve promised to share the hundred million.”
Behind his sunglasses, Lux’s eyes bulged, but a smirk soon crossed his lips.
“Roger that! This is getting fun. Where you at, though, Captain?”
✦ ✦ ✦
Fifty feet of tunnel remained to go through.
No enemies shaded the bright exit. It was so bright, in fact, that there was no way to tell what it was like past that gleaming dawn.
The time was 2:09 PM.
“M, what do you think the next scan will tell us?” Boss asked.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. M was the kind of honest person who would admit when he didn’t know something, rather than find a way to avoid saying it.
Now that the map was nothing but the castle, would the Satellite Scan still happen the same way? Or would a different set of rules take over?
In SJ3, the Satellite Scan stopped happening once they were on the cruise ship. Instead, the scanners showed a detailed map of the ship and automatically updated with the locations of the surviving players every five minutes.
As he went, M gave directions to the teammates behind him.
“Once we get into the town, I’ll take the lead. The combination of shield and machine gun will be huge in cramped hallways. Boss and Anna, you provide support. Keep an eye above us in particular; there could be snipers on the outer walls of the keep. Fuka, bombard targets as needed. Just don’t shoot any level shots in close quarters. Llenn, continue watching the rear. If you have the chance, check your screen. There are no effective strategies from this point on. We’ll just keep moving toward the center and destroy every enemy we see. If you get any info from your teammates, Boss, let us know at once.”
The others murmured their assent.
Llenn was in the most protected position of all, but there was nothing she could do about that now.
All right. Let’s do this, she thought, right as they reached the end of the tunnel at 2:10 PM—the entrance to the town within the castle.
Six feet back, M lifted the shield on his left arm higher and held the MG5 with his right hand alone. “Let’s go. I’ll jump out first.”
The reason M bolted straight out into the light, rather than craning his neck to carefully peer outward, was to draw the gunfire of anyone who might happen to be waiting with their sights trained on the tunnel. He had the shield, which meant he was less likely to die right away than the rest of them.
Furthermore, if he had peered out with just his head, they would have fired directly into the tunnel, raising the chances of shots hitting the members farther back. That was something to be avoided.
In other words, he wanted all the heat himself.
“Hup!”
M’s large, powerful legs carried him forward into battle, just as the minute on the clock ticked upward.
At that very moment, Sophie contacted Boss for the first time:
“Boss! If you haven’t gone into the town yet, don’t go in!”