As the clock turned to 2:10 PM, M’s foot took its first barreling step out of the tunnel. At the same time, Boss shouted, “What…? M, wait! Don’t go out there!”
She was too late.
✦ ✦ ✦
A number of things happened, all at once.
✦ ✦ ✦
Llenn’s scan terminal vibrated, drawing her attention to the words that appeared on the screen.
✦ ✦ ✦
Special rules for SJ5, two ten additions.
Satellite Scan will not activate within the castle.
Instead, within the town inside the ramparts, the names and distances of any players within fifty meters will become visible to you as cursors, starting from the closest. (If unwanted, cursors can be turned off by tapping them in the air.)
✦ ✦ ✦
Around him, M could see a castle courtyard area in brownstone. The spaces between structures were as narrow as any back alley, only six to ten feet across. To either side, one-story houses were crammed together, their walls closing in on the path. There were no visible entryways, so the “houses” were really just obstacles meant to turn the place into a maze.
Beyond the brown walls, three cursors appeared in succession, from closest to farthest. Each one popped into existence with a cute little ping! sound, solely inside his brain. It was very helpful and hard to miss.
[ KEES 41m ]
[ BOB 46m ]
[ YAMACHAN 49m ]
“Shit!” M swore, immediately stepping back into the tunnel.
But it was too late.
✦ ✦ ✦
Anna was watching M as he jumped out of the tunnel ahead of her. A small green cursor appeared over his back.
[ M 5m ]
✦ ✦ ✦
Around three meters behind Anna, Fukaziroh saw the same cursor, only with a different number.
[ M 8m ]
In her case, the cursor overlapped with the wall of the tunnel. In other words, whether there was a wall or a house in between or not, the cursor, name, and distance would always be visible, telling you where the nearest players were at all times.
✦ ✦ ✦
“M was there! I saw his cursor for a second! Did you see it, too?”
“Yeah, it was twenty-four meters to the south! If M’s here…then it’s possible that the pink shrimp actually is in the event, too, right?”
“Yeah! Let’s go get ’em! Screw winning; I want the hundred million credits!”
These were the three players whose locations M had learned: Kees, Bob, and Yamachan.
✦ ✦ ✦
“We’re screwed,” M spat bitterly, retreating into the tunnel.
“I’m sorry… If only I’d warned you a few seconds earlier,” Boss said, feeling responsible. But it wasn’t her fault. It was just the worst possible timing, that was all.
“Sophie, Rosa, Tohma, you’re all good, right?” she asked her teammates. She could see their remaining hit points, so this was more about all the other circumstances.
Sophie replied, “I’m all right, but I’m in the tunnel. Before this—things were bad!”
“Well, at least you’re okay. We’re at the south gate.”
“Oh! We’re on the north. Basically the opposite side!”
So they were two miles away, as far as you could possibly get on the circular zone.
“The north end…,” Boss murmured.
M replied, “We’ll do whatever it takes to survive. Tell them to do their best.”
“Got it!”
✦ ✦ ✦
On the opposite end of the circular castle walls, inside the tunnel from the north gate, hid the three remaining members of SHINC: Sophie, Rosa, and Tohma.
Sophie: the short, wide, dwarflike one.
Rosa: the stout, freckled mom type, tall and red-haired.
And Tohma: the slender, black-haired girl with a green beanie.
Sophie and Rosa were SHINC’s machine gunners, the brunt of their firepower. Both of them used the Soviet PKM.
Since SJ2, Sophie had also carried around the Degtyaryov PTRD-41 antitank rifle. While it was called an antitank rifle, they would not be shooting any tanks in Squad Jam.
It was simply a large-bore antimateriel rifle, or in other words, a super-powerful sniper rifle. Tohma, the team’s best sniper, was the one who would fire it.
Even Sophie, who had a considerable carrying capacity, couldn’t carry both and had given up her machine gun for a while—until the special rules of this event came into play. Now Sophie could carry around her favorite PKM like usual and actually use it.
Instead, the PTRD-41 was Sophie’s second loadout, which Tohma was carrying in her inventory, along with the ammo. When the time came to use it, they would switch out to materialize the gun, which she would promptly hand back to Tohma to use.
This wasn’t the way the loadout-switching mechanic was intended to work, but it wasn’t against the rules, either. Everything was fair play here.
The secondary loadout Sophie was carrying was a GM-94 grenade launcher, which had come into use in the previous quest, the Five Ordeals. This was a very odd weapon: a pump-action grenade launcher that could fire four times in a row.
If they conducted a gear switch, it would appear in Tohma’s hands, where she would consequently hand it back to Sophie.
✦ ✦ ✦
Up to this point, at least so far, the three of them had played SJ5 comfortably, suffering only minor damage at worst.
Sophie’s starting point was the mountainous region in the northwest part of the map, while Tohma had been on the highway south of her. They had both quickly found a hiding place and waited out the first hour without being spotted by anyone.
Rosa started out near the northern edge of the snowy field that took up the southeast quadrant of the map. There were no obstacles in the snow, making it ill-suited for waiting. Instead, she walked over to the city, which was barely visible from her location.
There, she’d found a tall building and hidden inside it, hardly making a sound—and because of that, she had almost become a victim of the massive blast caused by the suicide bomber going after Anna and M.
The blast had ripped through the building, and because the glass was already broken, it had sent everything inside flying all over the place. She herself had been tossed out of the room she was hiding in like a vigorous sweep of dust. The tumbling left her dizzy.
The silver lining was that she wasn’t inside to get trapped under the building when it collapsed. Ultimately, she only suffered some minor damage.
If she’d been closer to the center of the room, she wouldn’t have been tossed out and instead would have gotten crushed and died. So that was lucky.
After Anna rushed past the blast, Rosa gave up on catching up to her and headed farther west. She had evacuated to the wasteland area and found a large boulder shrouded in mist, which she had used for cover.