“Dammit! It’s not fair! The million yen is gonna get away!”
From down below, Llenn and Fukaziroh could hear someone lamenting their escape. Thanks to the barrier blocking any shots from down there, they could run on top of the maze.
But while they could avoid being stuck in the passageways, it was still a maze, even atop the walls. They could see the center of the castle, but they couldn’t just run straight toward it.
They ran down the narrow wall, turned, ran some more, turned, continued running, turned again, and so on. Their goal was only two hundred yards away on a straight line, but it was taking ages to get there.
And that was when a bullet line reached for Llenn’s back at an angle.
“Get down, Llenn,” Fukaziroh warned lazily.
“Ah!”
She followed the instruction, dropping to hug the top of the wall. A 7.62 mm bullet zipped right over her back.
The man with the M700 who’d gotten on top of the wall was sniping at her. He was about 150 yards away. That was sure-kill range for a sniper rifle. If Fukaziroh hadn’t noticed him and his bullet line, Llenn would be dead.
“You punk!”
Llenn spun around atop the wall and pointed her P90, but she was too late.
“Take this!”
Fukaziroh was not the target, so she stood boldly and shot several grenades from her grenade launcher, Rightony. Pomp-pomp-pomp.
The trio of grenades flew with unerring accuracy toward the sniper and the rifleman behind him.
“Got ’em,” Fukaziroh said, pleased and certain.
They were standing atop a wall. The grenades didn’t even need to hit them as long as they landed nearby. The explosions would knock them clean off the narrow walls. Though they weren’t plasmas, even the regular grenades were dangerous enough in this situation.
But the men leaped out of the way.
One dropped down on one side of the wall, and the other leaped down on the other. The grenades exploded against the wall and barrier, but the invisible surface blocked the explosions and shrapnel from going down.
“Tsk!” Fukaziroh hissed, but she decided it was fine after all. “At least they fell down; that’s all that matters.”
She had just turned around when the man with the M16A2 popped his head back up and fired with one hand. It was a three-shot burst, and one of the bullets pierced Fukaziroh’s shoulder.
“Aaaah! How dare you!”
She hurled more grenades. The man’s face and arm vanished under the barrier again. The grenades exploded, but the men weren’t damaged by them, it seemed.
“What the hell?” she demanded, confused.
“They’ve got a sling draped over the wall!” Llenn announced, watching through a monocular.
She could see how the two men were hanging from the top of the wall by each holding an end of the four- or five-foot-long leather sling that went with the M700.
So that was how they could slip under the invisible barrier and find safe cover.
“Very clever…”
She pointed the P90 at them and fired full auto. You couldn’t snipe with a P90, so this was just covering fire to keep them in check. It was still better than not shooting anything. Maybe she would get lucky and a stray bullet would hit the sling and cut it in half.
The shots landed close to where the men were hiding. Based on what she could see through the monocular, the sling was just fine. The man popped up again, aiming his gun.
“Dammit! We gotta run!”
“Crap!”
Llenn and Fukaziroh started running. Their path was only twenty inches wide.
✦ ✦ ✦
As Llenn ran the other way, the man with the M16A2 held tight to the sling with his left hand and kept his feet planted against the side of the wall, aiming with only his right arm for support.
This was quite an extreme firing position, but his targets were running rather than fighting back, which meant he had plenty of time to take aim.
He squinted, watching carefully as the bullet circle, pulsing with his heartbeat, centered over the targets, which were already small and now getting smaller. Once the two things almost perfectly overlapped, he murmured, “That million yen is mine…”
The M700 man holding on to the other end of the sling as a counterweight replied, “Remember, let’s split things evenly this time.”
“You got it.”
A high-pitched gunshot echoed across the castle interior.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Gaaah!”
The man with the M16A2 gasped in pain, and the man with the M700 started dropping down the wall.
“Wha—?”
He fell the whole fifteen feet, totally baffled, and landed on his butt.
“Gwugh!”
He didn’t die, but he suffered a decent amount of damage.
“Whoa…”
The sling was still in his left hand. But on the other end, which his partner had been holding, was just the man’s arm. It had been torn off near the elbow but still gripped the leather tight.
The cross section of the arm was drawn in polygonal mesh and flickered red. It was clear at a glance that he’d been shot with a powerful 7 mm bullet, which tore the limb in two and dropped him down on the other side.
“But who shot him—and from where…?” he muttered to himself. No one could tell him the answer.
✦ ✦ ✦
“You owe me for that one, Llenn.”
Flat on her stomach in front of a retaining wall atop the outer castle structure 180 yards away, Shirley pulled the bolt action of her R93 Tactical 2 and pushed it forward again to load the next bullet.
“I guess we are teammates, technically speaking.”
✦ ✦ ✦
As for why Shirley was atop the outer rampart, she had determined that she couldn’t win in the maze and climbed up the outside wall instead. It was as simple as that.
If she slipped and fell, she would travel ten thousand feet, but Shirley climbed it anyway, using nothing but her hands and feet. She was very, very careful, determined to avoid certain death.
Shirley was experienced with outdoor activities and had been climbing before in real life, but this was her first attempt without a lifeline.
She went very slowly, as careful as a turtle’s walking pace. Even then, she lost her grip and nearly died on three different occasions.
Luckily for her, because she was so careful, the process took a long time, and when she finally reached the top of the wall, it was already past 2:20 PM.
Thanks to the announcement, by the time she was up top, nobody was still around on the top of the rampart—or the bridges connecting to the central keep. They didn’t want to wait around and fall victim to the collapse when it started again in less than ten minutes.
While Shirley was climbing, the players who had been on the rampart—the ones happily shooting the helpless players who’d been running for their lives toward the castle gates—turned and fled toward the center of the castle.
They ran and ran, down massive bridges thirty yards wide and five hundred yards long. Players in the center shot back at them, and a fair number died, but some did reach the center safely.
That was the situation when Shirley finally ascended the rampart and pulled her rifle back out. She was crawling on hands and knees when she heard very clear sounds of gunfire. It was close. And some of the shots were the familiar rattle of a P90.
Is that Llenn?
She rolled over to the other side of the rampart, clutching the gun to her chest. That was faster than crawling.
Then she looked over the edge and saw, about three hundred yards away, Llenn and Fukaziroh running over the top of the maze, and two men shooting at them.
Shirley took aim and fired. It was a quick snap and took less than a second.
She’d been aiming for the arm and hit it perfectly. The man whose arm she shot off fell down, and so did the one on the other side of the wall.
“Did they fall? I dunno what happened, but I think we’re safe now! C’mon Llenn, hurry!”
“You don’t have to tell me!”
They didn’t know about Shirley’s act of kindness. They couldn’t have.
“Go right up there, Llenn.”
“Can I trust you on that?”
“Yeah. Rightony said so.”
“We’re going left!”
They hurried over the top of the walls, making their way toward the keep.