Sword Art Online Alternative – Gun Gale Online Chapter 7

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 grassy 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.

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 assault 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.

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 pass by the side of the cinema, then follow them. Wait until the battle between bravo and charlie is over.”

“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】 markershining 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 flashing, his gauge began to recover.

The man looked at his wristwatch, 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-admonishing 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 massacred 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?”
 

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 Japanese, 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 grass 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 booby 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 passed 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 Hell, 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 grass 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 respawn 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.

1. ^ In Japanese, 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.

Chapter end