At 2:19 and thirty seconds, a number of things happened all at once.
First of all, Kenta reported back to David between his various recruiting attempts around the maze.
“It’s looking good, Leader! I can tell from the cursors! We’ve got a whole bunch of people going south!”
In the rampart tunnel to the northwest, David confirmed that no one was within fifty yards of him, then spoke to his teammate in the tower. “All right, we’re going to move. Lux?”
“Ready! I’ll give it a shot, Leader!” came the response.
David hurled a smoke grenade. A burst of yellow smoke appeared in the maze town, spreading and rising.
“Confirmed!” said Lux. He was looking in that direction through binoculars from the northeast spire of the center keep. He could see the maze from above, so he was able to give directions to a certain extent.
Being as complex as it was, he couldn’t give the most direct route, but he at least had a better idea if the current path was a dead end ahead, or if it was one the player had already passed through.
While it was a cheap advantage—some might call it cheating—this was simply a privilege of those teams who had members who had gotten into the castle early.
The drawback was that, by focusing on the team leader, he could not provide the same help to Summon at the west gate.
“Sorry, Summon,” said David. “All I can say is: Good luck!”
“No worries, boss. Let’s meet in the middle.”
“Yes. In the middle,” his captain replied.
“Leave the rear to me,” said Vivi. The two of them rushed out of the tunnel they’d been hiding inside the entire time.
✦ ✦ ✦
“That’s weird… The enemies are all moving really far south,” said Sophie, feeling suspicious at noticing the lack of cursors as she stomped along through the maze. “Ohh! Are they moving toward Llenn…? Boss! The enemy’s converging on your location! I think someone’s intentionally giving them directions!”
Nearby, Rosa and Tohma scowled.
“Yeah, that sounds right,” Boss replied through the comm. “We’re surrounded by enemies at this point. I’m sure that’s cleared things up around you, though.”
“Yes, true!”
“Then head straight for the middle. Don’t attempt rescue. There are too many of them.”
Sophie had only one choice of reply.
“……Roger that!”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Mmm, I’m bored. Wanna play a word game?” suggested Clarence, lying on her back at the top of the spire, clutching her AR-57. She was completely relaxed.
“Now’s not the time…,” muttered Tanya, who was also lying down to avoid being sniped. She had just learned of Boss and Llenn’s predicament through the comm. Unlike Clarence, however, she was maintaining a vigilant watch on the stairs.
There was a grenade in her hand; if anyone started coming up, she was ready to pull the pin and drop it into the hole over the steps.
Clarence was listening to the LPFM chatter through the comm as well, so she should be aware that her team was in danger, Tanya assumed.
“‘Time’… Time rhymes with…rhyme!”
She had to take that back. Clarence wasn’t aware of anything.
“Wait, that makes no sense!”
✦ ✦ ✦
In the real world and in GGO, the clock struck 2:20 PM.
At that moment, Llenn followed M’s lead and stopped moving, because there were too many enemies around them.
Bzzzzzt.
Thanks to that, she promptly noticed that the Satellite Scanner in her shirt was vibrating.
“There’s something on the device!”
“Probably info. You look at it for the group and tell us what it says.”
“Got it.”
She did as he said, pulling the device out of her shirt pocket and looking at the screen. There was a message that started with Additional Information at 2:20, which she read aloud.
“Um, it says, ‘I intentionally forgot to say that this castle will also crumble from the outside in. At two thirty, everything will fall away, bit by bit…’ Huh? What is this crap?!”
“Just read all of it, Llenn. Remember, stay calm,” Fukaziroh admonished.
“‘Everything will fall away, bit by bit, until only the center remains. In other words, the final stage! Enjoy your last battle up there! Good luck!’ The end!”
“Gah! What the hell is that?! Screw you, asshole!” Fukaziroh exploded.
“What happened to being calm?” asked Llenn, who felt positively cool in comparison.
“What? Are you serious?”
The members of Llenn’s group weren’t the only ones who felt like panicking.
“In less than ten minutes…”
“That’s all we have…?”
“And if we don’t finish her by then…”
“We’ll all die.”
✦ ✦ ✦
✦ ✦ ✦
These comments came from the shallow—er, enthusiastic, income-oriented—men who were dead set on killing Llenn for the million-yen bounty on her head.
They were now faced with a simple question:
Keep chasing Llenn for a chance at earning that million-yen bounty? Or give up on it and rush for the keep as soon as possible?
“Um… What should we do?”
“They’re definitely better off heading for the middle of the castle right away,” someone in the pub said.
Their screens all contained the Additional Information at 2:20 message, too, of course. Many of them jeered and laughed when it appeared. It was easy to sit back and enjoy the pageantry when you weren’t in the middle of it.
“Better to go for the castle…because?” asked a man who was drinking yet another virtual root beer. He’d lost track of how many it had been.
“Because,” the other person replied, “Llenn is obviously going to rush for the castle like crazy. She’s very fast and dangerous. Her chances of surviving are higher. And you’ll still have a chance to kill her in the final battle at the keep. It’s better to head for the center now, rather than risking it here.”
“Ah, I see. Yes, that does seem to be the more rational choice.”
“Assuming the folks in the maze aren’t totally blinded by money, of course.”
“On the other hand, if they’re all going for greed, that increases the chance that Llenn won’t make it out, right?”
“True, but I think that Llenn will find a way out of this mess.”
“Because?”
With a dead serious expression, the man answered, “Because she’s my Llenn.”
“She’s not yours! Hey, we just did this bit!”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Are you serious?!” Clarence cackled happily, still lying on her back in the narrow space at the top of the spire. She was surprised, but even more than that, she was delighted. It meant her location was safe. That was the kind of person she was.
Clarence was also on her back, holding the Satellite Scanner over her face with her left hand. Yes, like a smartphone in bed. Right before you drop it directly on your face as you start drifting to sleep.
Next to her, Tanya sounded hopeful. “Does this make things easier for Boss and Llenn? People won’t want to die, so they’ll all come toward the middle, right?” She was still gripping a grenade in her hand.
“No,” said Clarence in English.
“Why English?” Tanya asked. She shook her head. “I mean, why do you think that?” she tried again.
“Because, the whole time in SJ5 so far, we haven’t had the chance to do the team battles we’ve been looking forward to. I’m guessing there aren’t many teams with all members still alive, and nobody’s been able to regroup. So in that situation, wouldn’t you focus on getting a million yen, rather than trying for a team victory?”
“That’s a good point…”
✦ ✦ ✦
“What now?”
There was just one question on the mind of the guys who’d surrounded Llenn’s position.
Do they keep chasing after her, trying to get a million yen? Or do they give up on that, prioritize survival, and rush for the middle of the castle?
“What now? It’s obvious! I’m on the hunt for that bounty!” said a man who was just fifty feet away from the target. He wore black fatigues and held a Benelli M3 automatic shotgun. “If you wanna go to the center, go. I’m not gonna blast you in the back. I don’t wanna waste my shells. Every one of these is for Llenn!”
The man’s powerful greed—I mean, soul—struck the hearts of the others nearby, whose names and faces he hadn’t known until moments ago.
“My team’s all jacked up anyway…”
“And it’s not like winning Squad Jam is going to pay out a million yen…”
“Plus, our chances of winning are super low anyway…”
They all had a different excuse, each one more pathetic than the last.
“I’m gonna shoot for that million yen after all!”
In the end, the group that had already been lured by riches were unanimous in agreeing to continue their pursuit of Llenn.