Sword Art Online Alternative – Gun Gale Online Chapter 7

14:17.

Less than 3 minutes until the second satellite scan. That was also how long they would be at the edge of the forest.

“Wha? What did you say! Aren’t they cheating? ——The partic.i.p.ation of pros in the game is prohibited!” 

Hearing M’s guess that the six people of remarkable ability were fighting pros, LLENN took offence.

M, who seemed to be thinking about something, answered after several seconds.

“There shouldn’t really be a rule about prohibition. I don’t know if they’re here officially or independently, but it’s not strange for them to use GGO as part of their training and partic.i.p.ating in SJ to test their ability. This has been hypothesised ever since the FullDive technology was created.”

Hearing M’s overly calm words, LLENN thought ‘Well, that is true.’ and decided to go back to thinking about SJ. While playing a game, she had to think about the game.

“What should we do? Right now, those people are the closest team, right? If we don’t defeat them, we can’t take up positions in the urban area, right? With them as our opponents, can we really win?”

M replied immediately.

“Impossible.”

“That fast!”

“They’re opponents that I’m not sure we’d be able to win against even if we had six people. Winning with two people is just impossible. Even if we decreased their ranks by one just now…… well, it would probably be the same.”

“Then what do we do? I know! Why don’t we take up positions here? You know, if any teamcrosses the highway, we could shoot them from here!”

“I’ve thought about that, but that’s definitely unfavourable. There’s a sniper on the other side. If you peek out, you’ll be shot immediately. Meanwhile, an enemy team might come from the west.”

LLENN, whose suggestions were cut down one after another, did not get angry, as she agreed with each comment.

They continued being on lookout in the forest; the clock displayed 14:19. Only 1 minute until the next satellite scan.

“What are we going to do? What are we going to do next?”

LLENN was slightly panicking, as she was unable to do anything within the 20 minutes after thegame started, and

“Do you feel lucky? Has your life so far been blessed with good luck?”

M suddenly asked this question.

“Come again? I wonder……”

Concerning her height, her good luck was close to zero, but that aside, she thought about how she was born in an affluent household, surrounded by kind family members, and how she was raised without any problems,

“Well, yeah. I’ve been lucky. I’m a lucky girl!”

She answered, although bluffing a bit.

“Good. Let’s bet on that good luck. Check the next scan here, and if we are lucky, we'll immediately rush towards the highway. Prepare in advance.”

“G-gotcha, is there time to ask for the reason?”

40 seconds remaining.

“Yes. This is just my guess, but I believe that a considerable number of other partic.i.p.ating teamswould gather in the urban area because of that loud battle just now. In that case, there’s a high chance that there is a team close to that company of pros and another battle would ensue right after the scan. Using that as a diversion, we’ll run through the highway in the blink of an eye. We’re going to abandon the idea of hiding in the urban area, and instead go for the centre of the residential area. After the next scan, we’ll go to the wilderness from there.”

“I see…… Gotcha.”

20 seconds remaining.

“Count the dots on the scan to find out the number of annihilated teams. Hammer the location of the surviving teams into your head. Of course, you can ignore the ones that are far away. The enemies that we can encounter within 10 minutes, or those who are within 3 km range from us, are the threats.”

While saying that, M got up and took out his satellite scan terminal. LLENN followed suit. And then, the screen lit up.

14:20.

SJ’s second satellite scan began.

This was the first scan that LLENN saw. She concentrated on staring at the screen. Just the outline was enough, as she wanted to know the location of her opponents. She did not want to go through that march, in which she did not know where her enemies were, again. 

As if the artificial satellite was coming from the north-west, dots on the map lit up one by one from the upper-left side of the map on the terminal’s screen. Moreover, it was fast, so there probably wasn’t much time until the scan ended.

“Let’s see, as for the annihilated teams……” 

The teams that have left SJ were displayed as inconspicuous gray dots. While counting those, LLENN memorised the location of the s.h.i.+ning dots.

In the north-western prairie, there was one annihilated team. Another one in the swamp below it. As for the forest, the teams that were shooting each other at the beginning seemed to have avoided annihilation - no wipe outs. As for the desert and wilderness, since the field of vision there is quite open, it seems that there were a considerable number of battles there - four wipe outs in total. 

Right now, the area up to the very south-eastern edge was scanned completely.

Even without touching them to confirm names, it was obvious that the dot s.h.i.+ning on the border of the forest and highway referred to them. There were another two dots in the forest, but fortunately, they were 3 km away.

The gray dot at the north extremity of the urban area was, of course, the machine gun group. In other words, in merely 20 minutes, seven teams have already dropped out of the battle royale, and sixteen remained.

Of course, it was impossible to tell whether all of the members of a team survived unwounded, or only a single person remained.

Speaking of the pro group that displayed their frightening power just now——,

They were in the urban area as expected. About 1 and a half km away from them.

They overlapped with a building, so they were probably at a high location. It was obvious that the two people who rappelled down the building ran at full-speed and quickly set up in anotherbuilding. The skilful snipers keeping a watchful eye on the surroundings from a place with a good field of vision and cooperating with their comrades on the ground—— it was a strategy that could also be called an iron wall.

And so,

“Ah!”

LLENN unintentionally shouted.

Wasn’t that a light dot in the square to the south of the pro group, and another two in the square to the left?

“M-san! Look!”

“How lucky. Us two. On the other hand—— those guys aren’t lucky.”

LLENN raised her face and saw M, unusually, smiling.

“Then!”

“Yeah. We’ll leave those unlucky three teams to the pro group and run. You can cast aside theponcho.”


Without even waiting for the scan to end, the two put away their terminals.

LLENN got her head out of her poncho and threw the poncho away to her rear. Her full-pinkappearance. In a half-rising posture, M folded his M14 EBR’s bipod and finished his preparations for running out of the forest.

They had to rush out of the forest, where trees protected them, into a dangerous location once again.

“Go on my command. Not yet——”

*Gulp*, LLENN swallowed her saliva and put more strength into the hand holding her P90.

At the next moment, they heard gunshots from the urban area.

A mix of light and heavy gunshots. A considerably loud start of a battle. It’s almost unmistakably the three teams making contact.

“Alright, go! Go! Go!”

At M’s command, LLENN broke into a run. Out of the forest and towards the gra.s.sy slope. Running at full-speed towards the highway.

“But wait! I shouldn’t run off too far, right?”

LLENN asked M while running,

“Whenever you do so, I’ll tell you to stop.”

Was his answer.

‘Hu-h? He told me to stick together in the forest, but I have to be the forerunner going ahead of him? Wouldn’t I be the one to get shot first?’

Although LLENN realised this, it was too late to return.

‘Honestly, using the leader as a decoy, this black team(1) is such a sweatshop!’

While thinking about such things, LLENN agilely jumped over the guardrails of the highway with her tiny body.


“M-san! No enemies in sight nearby.”

“Alright. Wait until I catch up.”

LLENN and M continued running through the highway.

LLENN was leading by das.h.i.+ng at the speed of an average sprinter or faster.

Having trained her agility, she was able to run at the speed of a car. At her rapidly increasing „maximum speed“, LLENN would feel befuddled.

To her right was the forest and to her left was the urban area. While looking out for enemies in her field of vision, she waited for M, who came from behind in the shadow of a broken car.

When she first emerged from the forest, she noticed that absolutely no wind was blowing in thisfield. This was considerably advantageous for a sniper.

M was much more slow-footed than LLENN, but even so he came kicking the concrete at full-speed. Once he slid into a place where he could hide his large figure,

“Alright go!”

He ordered while holding his M14 EBR so that he could always provide supporting fire.

Their figures were most likely completely visible from the forest or urban area while they were running, but no one fired at them.

Instead, they heard loud sounds of a battle all the time.
 

Turning the clock back a bit to 14:20. Just before the second scan——,

What M expected occurred in the urban area.

Some time ago, hearing the loud noise of battle mainly caused by the Zen-nihon Machine Gun Lovers,

‘„I don’t know who that was, but with so much shooting, the surviving team can’t be unscratched.“’

The three teams in the vicinity with the exact same idea gathered in the urban area, drawn in by the noise of battle. Of course, they could not have known that the other party was completely unharmed, and moreover, was comprised of highly-skilled members.

And so, just after the second scan began——,

“Wha?” “Are you kidding me!”

The two teams that were in the same square and only about 200 metres apart were completely surprised. The routes to their destination were different, so they had yet to see each other, but their enemy was really close.

At that moment, the two teams’ course of action greatly diverged.


One of the teams had members wearing uniform jumpsuits, with a hornet motif emblemattached to their left arms.

It was a group with their main arms mainly being submachine guns like ≪H&K MP5≫, ≪WaltherMPL≫, and consisted of only nimble characters that stressed the importance of agility.

All six of them,

“Oh whatever, let’s get them! Everyone, let them have it with everything you’ve go-ooo-t!”

“Ah yeah!” “Attaaack!” “Roger!” “Let’s get’em!” “Mothe-er!”

Began their a.s.sault in cheers, as if to say that this was their place of death. They dashedenergetically through the broad road, towards the opponents that were probably around the corner.

The other team had tattered garments. All of them wore a green scarf around their necks as theirteam’s icon, .

These guys, unfortunately, could not make a prompt decision and promptly execute it.

“They’re awfully close! Le-Let’s run away!”

“No, there’s another team down the slope! And another up in the buildings! We have nowhere to run away! We need to attack them head——”

“Idiot! What are you going to do if they surround us? Are you planning to hide inside the buildings——”

“I don’t wanna end up in an indoor battle!”

“You guys, stop squabbling! Follow your leader’s orders.”

As they continued quarrelling, they were suddenly showered with bullets by the team that came from the opposite side of the road.

Submachine guns excelled in rapid-fire power, but as they primarily used pistol ammo, thedamage dealt wasn’t as great.

Only one of the two unlucky people, who were shot at the same time, died during the surprise attack. 

The remaining five people who were hit but did not die resolved for the fact that they no longer had a way to escape and began a ferocious counterattack against their opponents. Guns like the ≪AKM≫ and the ≪M16A3≫ began roaring.

Atop the broad road, a grandiose battle between the two groups, holding their ground less than 100 metres away, shooting ceaselessly and throwing grenades at each other, erupted.

Both parties had a sufficiently clear view of their opponents’ position, thus whoever turned their backs would lose. Rather than hiding, they continued to shoot and shoot, change their magazinesand shoot again——

Before long, one of them died, then another one, and thus a grand battle of attrition began.

The cameras floating in the sky continued overlooking the battle heartlessly.


Snickering at this scene was another team of men, who were about 1 km away.

The six members were all wearing reddish brown camouflaged clothes and were equipped with ≪AC—556F≫ a.s.sault rifles made by Sturm, Ruger and Co..

This was a ≪Mini-14≫ gun, which was like an M14 downsized to 5.56 mm, but with a metal folding stock attached and with the ability to shoot in full auto. It was compact and its performance was reasonably good, but it was an unpopular and cheap gun in GGO.

Having heard the sounds of a battle erupting nearby, the team leader,

“Alrighty! Those guys made contact! Let’s go around and ambush them!”

Said these words. A comrade of his asked.

“What are we going to do about those guys up in the building?”

“They’re still too far. They’re not in a suitable range to take us on with snipers. They won’t hit us if we run.”

“I see.”

“Alright, everyone, let’s go!”

Thus, this team began running, planning to benefit from the other teams' fight.


In order to run at a full-sprint on a broad road, they ran along the centre of the road, rather than by the side of the buildings littered with plenty of debris, and thus,

“Confirmed a team in the south side. Six heads. Their weapons - AC—556F. From now on, we’ll dub them „delta“.

It wasn’t as if they would know that they were being observed by the snipers via binoculars from within the building, and that the snipers had even given them an alias.

The delta leader’s judgement that they wouldn’t be sniped at this range as they ran was by no means wrong.

At a 1 km distance, an ordinary sniper rifle wouldn’t be able to hit them. The targets were so far away that a sniper would need to have an anti-materiel rifle, which was still effective at this range, as well as befitting remarkable skill. The judgement that the level of threat would be low was reasonable.

However, their misfortune was that the satellite scan did not display the team’s excellent detached force of four on the ground.

The men with their faces hidden in balaclava calmly sent orders to their four comrades via their communication items.

“Delta are advancing to the west along the third southern road. Let them pa.s.s by the side of the cinema, then follow them. Wait until the battle between bravo and charlie is over.”


“Oh, f.u.c.k this!”

The man holding an AKM, an improved version of the AK-47 that greatly resembled the original in outward appearance, cursed loudly.

The style of his garments was based on the militia that could be found in troubled areas in the world—— jeans and a leather jacket, with a magazine chest rig on his chest. He had a green scarfon his neck.

The man was lying, holding his gun horizontally, at the side of a broken vehicle left on the large street. He could only look through the underside of the car, with its punctured tires , to see what lay ahead of him, but he didn’t see anything move in his narrow field of vision.

“O-oi! Is anyone nearby?”

He shouted with a desperate look, but there was no answer.

It seemed that all of his comrades that had been working together until just a few moments ago had either died or ran away.

His own hit points had been reduced considerably. He had been hit with 5 bullets at close range by the submachine guns of the a.s.saulting enemy team. Of course, they counterattacked, so he was sure that he killed one of them by hitting him in the head with several bullets, and another one should have been hit in the legs.

And then, 5 seconds after he asked,

“Ooo! I’m ali—ve!”

He heard this answer from somewhere.

A smile of relief returned to the man’s face. And then,

“Oo! Where are you? Are you alright?”

“Yeah, somehow I am! But my hit points are in the deep red!”

He clearly heard the second answer coming from much closer than before. He probably left the building he had been hiding in and came to him.

“Alright! Let’s link up and run away.”

The man said as he raised his AKM, but the answer was,

“Ah, that’s impossible!”

“Why?”

The man should have been more composed before he asked.

If he was, he would have probably seen the information in the upper-leftmost corner of his field of vision, in other words, the hit points of his comrades, by moving his eyes. He would have realised that all of them were completely black, and all the names were marked with an X symbol.

“Well, look! That’s because——”

Sticking his head out from the shadow of the car, he saw his conversational partner 6 metres in front of him. The man wearing a black jumpsuit firmly held an A3 type MP5, and pointed his muzzle at him. Red lines that spread from it entered his vision, and dyed his field of vision in deep red.

“I am an enemy, you see!”

He fired once.

The 9 mm Parabellum bullet fired from the MP5 created a vivid hit effect in his right eye. The man lost strength in his body and fell sideways. His AKM fell on the concrete and made a dull metallic sound.


“Hah……”

The man who shot with the MP5 sat on the ground. Signs of being shot shone throughout his body, he had barely any hit points left and was in the deep red.

He turned around and saw the corpses of both enemies and allies, with a 【Ｄｅａｄ】 markers.h.i.+ning above, scattered all around the large road. He calmed down, looked at the information displayed in the left corner of his field of vision, and saw that all but him were wiped out.

“Aah…… What am I going to do alone after this? I wonder if I should surrender.”

Such a mutter unintentionally came from his mouth.

However, immediately afterwards,

“No, well, I should try holding out until I die……”

As he said this, he took out a cylindrical first aid kit from his chest pocket, and applied it to the nape of his neck. With his hit points flas.h.i.+ng, his gauge began to recover.

The man looked at his wrist.w.a.tch, and saw that it was 14:27. Before he went out to hide as he recovered his hit points over the next three minutes,

“It’s a hit-or-miss!”

The man got up with a smile to start running again, but his body——

Was pierced by 5.56 mm bullets that came flying at him in succession, and his recovering hit points were quickly reduced to zero.

The amount of corpses on the large street that could no longer speak increased further by one more.

The man, who shot ceaselessly in full auto with his AC—556F from the other side of the road,

“Aw yeah! That’s what I call profiting while others fight, score!”

Energetically raised his right fist in joy.

It was a team that had been hiding in the shadow of a building until the battle ended.

Since around 1 minute ago, they had been observing the development of the melee. They thought to attack anyone who tried to run away, but almost everybody died before that.

It seemed that the MP5 guy was the last one standing, thus the leader slowly came out from the corner of the building and gunned him down.

“We did it! Battle royales are nice because things like this happen. It’s an easy victory when we can attack them from behind!”

A team member standing by behind a building, diligently guarding the rear, said cheerfully.

“Well, we’ll end up the same if we let our guard down.”

Just as the leader said those self-admonis.h.i.+ng words, four powerful plasma grenades fell out of the fifth floor window.

A bluish-white light of explosion completely enveloped them, and wiped out their hit pointscompletely——

They personally learned that, in a street fight, they had to watch not only their surroundings, but for attacks from above as well.

The masked man who threw the plasma grenades instantly contacted his men who were far away.

“Bravo, charlie, and delta. Annihilation confirmed. No injuries.”

A masked man inside a building,

“Roger. Check the next scan at your position. Wait for further instructions while being on guard for any attack from any direction.”

Answered thus.

Another man sat nearby, with his Remington-made, bolt action sniper rifle ≪M24≫ placed on acamera tripod. He was the man who ma.s.sacred the machine gun group with his accurate sniping.

Without raising his head, he asked his leader,

“About that pink guy who ran through the highway at a breakneck speed, and the huge guy who followed him just now—— What are we going to do about them?”
 

At 14:29, just before the third satellite scan,

“Hyaa! We did it we did it!”

“We made it somehow.”

LLENN and M finished running through the highway without seeing any enemies, and reached the residential area at the centre of the map.

“And n.o.body fired at us!”

“Yeah.”

While moving out of the urban area and the forest, they constantly heard loud sounds of battle, but there wasn’t a single bullet aimed at them.

Of course, they were likely held down by someone, but there was the possibility that n.o.body fired at them as they judged that they wouldn’t be able to hit their targets since they were running.

They had run approximately 3 km, so their average speed was about 18 km per hour.

A marathon runner’s average speed was 20 km per hour, so their quick pace was quite good. Incidentally, LLENN, who had raised her agility, could go much faster than that, but it was a speed that M’s „character ability“ could barely pull off.

The fact that they weren’t breathless, didn’t sweat, and their throats weren’t thirsty after all that running was the good thing about being in a VR game.


The region the two had arrived at was filled with apartment houses and low-rise residences, and, aside from the road, it had an obstructed view. 

No matter how they looked at it, the buildings reminded them of a foreign, rather than a j.a.panese, exclusive residential district.

Of course, it was a ghost town, thus the feeling of desolation wasn’t odd. They also saw corroded cars with punctured tires and large trees that had toppled over due to their growth on the road. In the garden, there was a large lawn mower that had become rusty and red.

The buildings looked to be crumbling, and a lot of them had collapsed. The paved road was full of cracks and gra.s.s grew vigorously out of those crevices. The submerged region should be wide, but, fortunately, the area they were in had not been flooded.

The two approached the entranceway of a detached house with a barren lawn and withered trees, and, just to be sure, they checked in case anyone had set traps.

The possibility that the team who had their starting point here set up a large number of grenadeswasn’t zero. A b.o.o.by trap which consisted of a wire being set along the entrance was a simpletrap, but it was easy to get caught in it.

“It’s fine. Enter slowly. Watch out for traps indoors too.”

“Roger.”

The two slowly entered, and checked for traps again. Upon confirming that it was safe, they hid indoors.

The living room in the house was cluttered, but not to the extent that they couldn’t enter; it was disordered in a pleasant manner.

Out of consideration, there were no human remains, in other words, human bones, left behind by the people that pa.s.sed away during the last war in GGO fields. If it was reproduced, the urban and other areas would end up looking like a picture of h.e.l.l, full of human bones.

However, aside from that, the production was truly impressive and finely done.

Even in the house that LLENN and M had intruded upon, there were plenty of items that shed light on the life of the people before the last war.

There was a picture of a smiling family in a silver frame on the fireplace where a bit of gra.s.s grew. There were broken and unbroken dishes in the sink. There were seemingly old magazines and newspapers scattered around at the side of the sofa.

The details of how this Earth came to a great war were written in these newspapers and magazines. Unfortunately, they were all in English.

She once heard this story from Pitohui.

After taking down a dog-like monster in the ruins of a small church, Pitohui entered a room further inside. There, she found a beautiful wedding dress and tuxedo, which glittered due to the skylight, hanging on a clothes hanger.

“It was a scene that made me break into tears. „Let’s get married, even if the war that destroys humanity is drawing near“, that’s the kind of emotion of two people who loved each other that they conveyed. It was as if even that doggy was frantically trying to protect them.”

Pitohui gave an unusual gentle smile,

“That’s a nice story.”

LLENN shared her honest impression,

“So, I tore both the dress and tuxedo into shreds with my shotgun.”

“What a waste!”

“Well, it’ll resp.a.w.n when the next guy finds it.”

Setting Pitohui’s lovely personality aside, GGO’s graphics designer who thought about such details and reproduced them did a terrific job.


Several more seconds until 14:30, the third scan. LLENN’s wrist.w.a.tch had stopped vibrating a long time ago.

The two took out their satellite scan terminals and produced a map before their eyes. Last time, a total of seven teams had dropped out and sixteen survived; now then, how much has changed in 10 minutes?

The third scan began from the south-southeast and continued to the north-northwest. Speaking in clock terms, it would be from 5 o’clock to 11 o'clock. It seemed that the satellite’s...o...b..t was high, as the scan was much slower than before. Having calmed down, LLENN looked at the map and decided to count the number of surviving teams.

One by one, dots began appearing in the southern fields, the desert and wilderness zones.

Then, gray dots denoting wiped out teams began rapidly appearing. Although it was wide, there were eight dots in this area alone. 10 minutes ago it was four, thus the count had doubled.

In particular, there were three new gray dots near one another in the surroundings of a ruins in the centre. Even LLENN understood what happened. They had probably tried to take control of an advantageous ruins area and ended up in a melee fight.

In this area, the survivors numbered only two teams at the moment. Both of them were at least 5km apart from east to west, and a bit away from any dead teams too.

LLENN couldn’t tell how many members survived, so she had absolutely no idea how strong these two teams were either. Did they possess frightening power, with which they had mostly slaughtered other teams, and were now moving without worry, or were they left with a single man, who was frantically trying to escape?

Either way, both groups were far away from them, thus it seemed that LLENN’s group could ignore them for the next 10 minutes.

As the scan proceeded to the north, it displayed the urban area.

What they saw then were three gray dots in mostly the same place. And close to them, there was a dot of a surviving team s.h.i.+ning in the same place as last time. This was all in perfect accordance to M’s prediction,

“Wow……”

LLENN looked at M, then at that pro group and let out her impression.

As the scan drew close to the centre of the map, the residential area, LLENN tensed up. The north-eastern, in other words, upper-right, part of this area was where they were located at. If any other dots lit up, those would be the people that they would have to fight against next. It was possible that they had not noticed that someone was hiding in the next, no, this very house.

The result was——,

“No one’s here…… Whew!”

In the residential area, there was unmistakably only a single dot. There were no dead teamseither.

The scan proceeded to the north; there were zero new dead teams in the swamp. There was one surviving team, and it seemed that it had taken up position at the crashed s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p.

In the north-western prairie, there were two dead teams. In other words, the count increased by one since last time. There was only one surviving team and, if this team handled both the other teams, they were probably powerful.

And lastly, inside the forest, there were no deaths and the survivors numbered two like last time. Looking at it closely, these two teams had barely moved at all since the last scan.

At the moment, there were eight new wiped-out teams, and the total now rose to fifteen teams. The survivors numbered eight teams. With such progress in just 30 minutes, SJ would probably end within 1 hour, just as Pitohui had said.

The scan hadn’t disappeared yet, but M raised his rough face. Time for a strategy meeting.

“We’re lucky.”

M first said that, and LLENN cheerfully gave a large nod. And then,

“M-san, who do you think will become the next threat to us?”

M answered in his unchanged calm tone.

“First of all, the two teams in the forest are close, but we’ll ignore them. Both teams seem to be stubbornly glaring at each other. They’ve probably lost some of their comrades in the first battle and they probably want to settle the score.”

“Probably. They’re the kind of guys who are waiting in vain to ambush each other.”

“We’ll also ignore the team in the prairie, as we are sufficiently far away. Let’s hope that those guys are planning to attack the forest teams from behind. About the team in the swamp s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, they’re probably the ones who took care of the ambus.h.i.+ng sniper team. They’re currently in an advantageous position, so, unless an extreme case arises, they won’t move out.”

“Hmmhmm”

“As for the two teams in the desert and wilderness, honestly speaking, I can’t antic.i.p.ate their move. Are they skilled or are they merely the remnants of a defeated team? Particularly, I can’t read the actions of the team that’s near the ruins. They should be taking up positions in the ruins, but why aren’t they doing so?” 

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too.”

“Even so, we can ignore them for now until the next scan. The problem is——”

“As I expected…… those pros? They’re in the city.”

“Yeah. ——We have no chance of winning without taking them down. Now that the number ofteams decreased considerably, they’re probably going to come out of the urban area. Their goal isn’t victory, but to gain battle experience, so the odds of them continously ambus.h.i.+ng people is low.”

“But they’re strong, right? We can’t win, right?”

At LLENN’s words,

“Yeah.”

M nodded once. And then, he laughed while grinning broadly.

“But, having seen this scan, I’ve noticed a chance of winning, albeit a low one. If we do well, we can possibly win against those guys.”

“Ooh!”

“For that, LLENN, your help is needed. You’ll likely need to shoot with all you have and put in great effort.”

“Ooh! That’s fine! I’ll do whatever it takes! Tell me your plan!”

“Alright. First——”
 

NOTES
 

1. ^ In j.a.panese, the equivalent of the expression “sweatshop” is ブラック企業 (black business), thus a “black team” is a derogatory term for a team that abuses its members.