“Here we go; it’s a full-on battle!”
Naturally, the audience in the pub was thrilled.
Whether Japanese warlords from the Sengoku era or cavalry battles from medieval Europe, this kind of large-scale, two-sided group battle simply wasn’t something you ever saw in GGO.
The overhead camera caught the two lines of players, rapidly coming into range. There were only two hundred yards of space between them.
“Who’s got the advantage, you think?” someone wondered.
“Ordinarily, the side that’s spread out and waiting has the edge,” said the orthodox mind.
When one force was charging fast, only those at the head of the movement, or the ones on the wings of the formation, could shoot. Conversely, everyone on the defensive side had a clear shot.
But there were special rules this time.
“If you have ten times the hit points, even a bunch of shots won’t kill you yet, right? Or uh…send you to Heaven, I guess?”
“True. So as long as the charging side puts up with the pain of getting shot, they can punch a hole right through the defense, huh?”
A hundred and fifty yards left.
Because of the rows of overlapping barricades in between, neither side had fired a single shot yet.
“What happens if the charging side breaks through the center? They’ll be where Vivi’s team is, yeah?”
The image on-screen made it clear. Located around ten yards behind the center of the Vivi Army’s lineup were the four members of ZEMAL. They were spread out at intervals of about twenty feet, with two watching left and right in the fore—and two watching left and right in the rear. In other words, full-perimeter defense.
“Nothing’ll happen. Ghosts can’t attack the living, remember?”
“Aha, gotcha. And that’s what Vivi’s aiming for.”
“What do you mean?”
A hundred yards left.
“The offensive side can break through the defense, but what happens when there’s four living behind them?”
“Oh! I know! They get tossed backward!”
“Exactly. It’s a two-tiered defensive line, both ghosts and living. Once the attackers are rebuffed by the living, the defense’s ghosts will finish the job.”
“Ah, I see…”
Fifty yards left.
The defensive side fired first.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Yaaaaah!”
“Doryaaaaa!”
Tomtom and Shinohara uttered sweaty man-roars over the thudding of their machine guns. They created a pincer effect of heavy fire from the edges of the formation against the group rushing for the center of their line.
That was the cue for ninety ghosts to start shooting.
Instantly, the world was full of clamor. There was so much shooting happening that it was impossible to hear it stopping and starting. It was just a constant, raging roar.
“It’s and y…! I think getting !”
Thane was shouting something from behind the line, where he had retreated, but no one else could make out the words.
Hundreds of bullets raced toward the long, vertical spear of charging enemies in a cloud of death. Naturally, as the head of the spear, Pitohui took a ton of hits.
“Bwaaa-ha-ha-ha-ha! Damn, that hurts!” she crowed. Her body was covered in damage effects.
But it was still far from the ten-times damage needed to kill her, so she kept running. In the meantime, the KTR-09 in her left hand fired wildly.
The men who followed behind her did the same. They ran as fast as they could and unloaded the maximum possible firepower at their disposal. Because the Pitohui Army was plunging straight toward the center of the defense, they got blistered by shots from either side of them. But they still weren’t dropping dead, and as long as they didn’t, they ran.
And most importantly, the ghosts farther on the inside of the spear formation were not easily hit by those bullets.
“Switch!”
“Oh, fine.”
That was one of Pitohui’s strategies, too. By having the inside and outside of the formation periodically switch places, they could alternate who was doing the guarding against enemy shots.
Some shots hit the barricades around the area, but shots from ghosts had no effect on the obstacles. The only thing that happened was the bullets being deflected.
The attackers fired as they ran, sending many of their bullets to hit the men who stood in place, shooting back. But the defenders were holding their ground, too. There was a long way to go before they started getting summoned back to Heaven.
This bizarre situation, which did not feel like it represented a shoot-out, led to the Pitohui Army drawing very close to the Vivi Army’s defensive line. Thirty yards left.
“Hya-ha-ha-ha-ha!” Pitohui cackled as she ran.
“I’m gonna kill her!” said one man, who set aside his gun and started to throw a plasma grenade instead.
He would have preferred to keep shooting, and he didn’t want to throw the plasma grenade out of fear that it would hurt himself, but there wasn’t a better option.
He pulled the dull-gray sphere out of his pouch and was about to press the activation switch—when his upper and lower halves separated and fell to the ground, three feet apart.
“Wh-what happened…?”
He had no idea that, from four hundred yards away, M had sniped him without a bullet line. A direct hit from an antimateriel rifle to the stomach would easily split the torso in two. Ordinarily, that would mean instant death, but now they were ghosts.
“Whuh?”
The upper and lower halves began to move on their own, as though drawn by magnets, until the wire-frame cross sections fused, and the avatar’s skin and clothes returned to normal.
He’d lost enough hit points for three lives over. The plasma grenade that had been in his hands was gone.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Hya-haaa!”
As the point of the spear, Pitohui was the first to reach the defense, twirling the lightsword in her left hand and roaring.
“Damn youuuuu!” bellowed a man with an M4A1 assault rifle, who shot back without faltering a step.
“Move it.”
“Guh!”
She kicked him out of the way. Once in the midst of the enemy, there was just one thing for Pitohui to do:
She hurled the KTR-09, which had emptied out its drum magazine, into the waiting face of some stupid sap, spun around and drew another photon sword with her right hand, then began a dual-blade reign of madness in the enemy’s midst.
All she was doing was running around and flailing her arms, but because the all-cutting power of the photon swords was so great, she left a trail of players behind her whose hands had been cut off, dropping their guns and falling victim to the Pitohui Army’s gunners, or losing their legs and rolling on the ground, and… Well, you get the point.
“Hya-haa!” Pitohui howled, literally hooting and hollering, until she finally inflicted ten lives’ worth of damage to someone, turning him into dwindling motes of light.
“One ticket to Heaven!”
Of course, there were many, many men trying to shoot Pitohui, but M took it upon himself to pick off the targets who posed the highest threat, so she was still doing fine for now.
“Wa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
The sheer force of the lunatic woman was enough to put the gun-toting men on their back feet. And they found themselves getting shot by the rest of the Pitohui Army coming up behind her.
“What a joyful scrum! In any era, the only true law is chaos! A dual-bladed menace on the loose! We are witnessing the birth of a new school of swordfighting!” jabbered Thane animatedly.
“You wanna go next?!”
“Nooo!”
Pitohui cut him into four pieces or so. Then she moved on to her next prey.
That hadn’t been enough to send Thane to the afterlife. When his body reconnected, he said, “Being resurrected as a ghost is a truly, indescribably strange experience. But it’s also rather fun. In fact, I daresay that if implemented as a play mode in GGO, many players might find it enjoyable! This has been Thane, reporting to you live from the battlefield.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Damn youuuu!” howled Tomtom.
He pointed his gun in the direction of where Pitohui was chopping up his comrades to pieces and sprayed full auto fire with his FN MAG.
A number of the bullets struck Pitohui, who made a show of pain. “Oh! Ow! Ow, crap!”
But that was only a minority of the shots.
“Hey! It’s us, you idiot!”
“Is your brain a machine gun?!”
“Owwwww!”
Most of them smacked into his own side, interfering with their ability to fight and concentrate. In the meantime, the highly motivated men who’d been at the lead of the attacking group with Pitohui tore into the defenders.
“Doryaaaaa!”
“Kill ’em aaaall!”
They split off to the sides and engaged in close quarters combat. Some used combat knives, while others charged with bayonets, if they had them. Some switched to pistols and enjoyed the experience of up-close fighting.
“God dammit!”
“Don’t fall back! Give ’em hell!”
There were also bloodthirsty—scratch that, passionate GGO players on the defensive side as well. They rushed into the midst of the fray, leaving their positions to do so.
The scene was now a mess.
Since shooting rarely actually killed anyone, it was a constant rattle of endless gunfire. It was hard to distinguish friend from foe, so some people were just randomly attacking without really knowing what they were doing.
And then the main force—or at least, the thickest part—of the Pitohui Army pressed into the line and broke through the defensive quarantine.
“We’re through! Let’s go!”
The triumphant chargers continued to rush, slowing for nothing—
“Vivi! Your life is ours!”
—straight for the ZEMAL leader.