“A million yen!” the man screamed, rushing off down the corridor.
“There goes another one. He was easy,” Kenta commented, looking around for the closest cursor after Murachi’s. “Better keep moving.”
✦ ✦ ✦
2:17, a bit more than three minutes after Llenn’s team left the tunnel.
Up to this point, there had been no unfriendly contact with opposing players. In other words, no battle.
Llenn could now see ten cursors in total—the three with Kees, the four after that, then another three—but the distance between them was not closing significantly.
First it would seem like they were getting closer; then they would stop and move away. It seemed like the maze was just that twisted, because their opponents were not closing the gap.
Of course, thanks to the invisible ceiling over their heads, they couldn’t get sniped from the top of the castle, nor blown up by grenades lobbed over their way.
They must have been quite visible from the center keep, the outer ramparts, and the bridges that connected the two. You would have expected a sniper to try to shoot them already, but there hadn’t been a single shot so far.
The base of the cake that was the center keep was getting a little bit larger. At first it was just barely visible, when it was five hundred yards away, but now it was taller, closer, and more imposing. Due to the maze, it was impossible to measure precisely, but she guessed that they were halfway there.
As the rear guard, Llenn was the one watching behind them. In fact, she was basically walking—no, trotting—backward, so when they reached a dead end in the maze, Fukaziroh had to tell her, “Whoa, Llenn, stop!”
She turned around. Before M, the lead member of the group, the path ahead came to an end. The walls were all the same color, so unless you got fairly close, it was hard to tell if it was really a dead end, or if there were side passages at the end. The whole thing was very nastily designed.
M came back this way, stomping past Llenn. The shield and MG5 looked very powerful in his hands. Following him went Boss, then Anna.
For the past few minutes, Boss and Anna had each been holding a spare magazine in their left hands, each belonging to the Strizh handgun that their entire team carried. Every now and then, they used a thumb to pop out one of the 9 mm Parabellum bullets and drop it alongside the wall.
If M turned down a path and saw a bullet lying on the ground ahead, he would therefore know that they’d already been this way. A very Hansel and Gretel strategy.
The rest was up to M’s mental mapping ability.
M’s geographic sense was unparalleled, thanks to his experience as a stalker. (As a reminder, children, do not follow his example.) He never got stuck in the same place twice and was steadily finding the most efficient route to the middle of the castle.
There were ten enemies within 150 feet. If they had to pass down the same hallway, battle would be unavoidable. If that happened, M was ready to use his machine gun in the lead to overpower them. Surely he could handle about ten people, if needed.
With each member using their wits and abilities to the fullest, the group smoothly made their way through the maze without any combat. It felt like they might actually make it.
Llenn was just allowing herself to taste the sweet, syrupy allure of that possibility, when something else dashed a bucket of cold water over her head.
Beep, beep, beep, bee-bee-beep, beep.
The rapid-fire pinging of new cursors appearing.
“Huh?”
Bee-bee-beep, beep-beep.
“What the—?”
“Hang on, what’s this all about?” yelped Fukaziroh, alarmed by the sudden increase in enemy cursors within fifty yards, all closing in quickly.
Wow, even Fuka understands that this is a crazy situation, Llenn thought.
No sooner had the words entered her mind than Fukaziroh continued, “You really want to come see my adorable beauty up close, eh? Fine, the more, the merrier! Step on up to catch a glimpse of me, and I’ll give you all signed grenades.”
Sorry, it was Fukaziroh who was crazy.
“Tch!” Boss snapped.
“This is…not good,” Anna said worriedly.
Try as she might, Llenn could not prevent these comments from raising her hackles. Maybe Fukaziroh had said what she did in an attempt to keep Llenn’s nerves loose and comfortable. Oh, who was she kidding—of course that wasn’t it.
She waited for what M would say.
“……”
And when he didn’t say anything, then the fear set in.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Yo! You after the hundred million credits, too?”
“That’s right. So make your choice: Either we kill each other here over nothing, so the winner gets to chase after the prize alone and is beaten up, or we call a temporary truce and stay healthy, betting it all on getting that lucky kill shot.”
“I don’t even have to think it over. I’ll take the latter. There are two things almost as important as your life. One is money, and the other one is money. I got a car loan to pay off.”
“Exactly, money is everything. I’ve got a newborn to support. So that’s our choice.”
“That’s our choice. Oh, and…congrats.”
Here and there, other conversations were taking place, often with quite different details, but all leading to the same outcome: temporary team ups.
Let’s call their team the Wannabe Millionaires. Was there an abbreviation for that? Willionaires? Who knows.
None of them were from MMTM, SHINC, or ZEMAL, of course, but they did include the armored soldiers of T-S. There was a member of NSS, the historical cosplay squad. There were even some members of RGB, the optical-only team that once served Llenn’s team a bitter loss.
These were delightfully honest men who chose not their own team, nor winning SJ5, nor honor, nor glory—but the chance at a million yen in the pocket.
And now they were slinking farther and farther south around the castle.
✦ ✦ ✦
“It’s like a trade fair for the greedy!” someone in the pub yelled, either out of exasperation or admiration—or both.
The folks watching on the screens could see it all. In the big monitors mounted on the walls, or hanging from the ceiling, or floating in the air over their tables, they could see a very clear map of the castle: the final arena of SJ5.
By employing a pinch zoom out on their personal screens, the chaotic and tangled picture of the maze was made very clear. They could even see the characters’ locations and names along with their cursors. It was a god’s-eye view.
It made something else very clear, too.
The cursor for LLENN on the south side, grouped with her four companions, was increasingly becoming the focus of a large southward migration of players. Like ants drawn to sugar, many yellow cursors were flooding downward through the brown environment.
Of course, it was still a maze, so they went back and forth, left and right, but overall, they were making progress. Seeing the cursors closer to the center undeniably moving away from the middle made it clear how they were aiming for Llenn.
One eagle-eyed viewer spotted Kenta approaching an opponent in the southeast part of the map and making contact. Rather than disappearing, the other player turned and started moving south. When he realized what MMTM was doing, he spoke up to share his finding.
“Aha, so that’s what this is. A brutal strategy…”
“Freakin’ awesome!”
“That’s my MMTM!”
“They’re not yours.”
“Thanks for doing our usual joke.”
It was after 2:19 PM, and Llenn’s group was totally surrounded.
One person examining the zoomed-in map said excitedly, “Hey, holy shit! The pink shrimp doesn’t have a single route through to the center without crossing at least one enemy!”