Sword Art Online Alternative – Gun Gale Online Vol 2 Chapter 1

The computer graphics were so detailed that the scene depicted on the large liquid crystal TVscreen barely differed from a scenery of the real world.

The sun was still up, yet the skies were dyed in red as if it was sunset; and an SF movie-like spaceship lodged in a swamp could be seen from a bird’s-eye view.

“I want to see that battle again! Can we rewind it? Karen-san.”

One of the uniformed high-school girls turned around, with her black braid swaying.

“By all means. As many times as you like.”

The tall woman who was the owner of the room, Kohiruimaki Karen, answered with a smile.

Having received consent, the high-school girl repeatedly hit the 〝slight rewind〟 button on theTV remote in her hands. Each time, the scene would change completely, until it finally stopped at the part that the girl sought.

The scene reflected in the CG video was an open location that looked like a foreign, high-class residential area. A crossroad on a broad street.

The video overlooked a quiet intersection from several metres above ground, where a cracked pavement, with various junk such as tyres, shopping carts, a small suitcase lying around could be seen.

Eventually, four men, dressed in camouflage and with black rifles in their hands, appeared on the screen. Of course, they were characters visualised with CG.

The men entered the crossroads and vigilantly surveyed the area. They were all wearing masks, thus it was impossible to tell their expressions. Their voices could not be heard either.

“Here it comes……”

A moment after one of the high-school girls muttered this, the on-screen suitcase cracked. It suddenly opened on its own like a baked hamaguri(2), and what came out was...

“There!”

A pink girl.

A small girl who wasn’t even 150 cm tall. Her combat uniform, boots, gloves, cap, magazine, and even the strangely-shaped device in her hands were all pink.

Then, the device spewed fire and a series of high-pitched gunshots came from the TV’s monitor, demonstrating that the device was a gun.

The face and body of the man closest to the pink girl was showered with in bullets, parts of his body that were hit shone in red, and small particles of light scattered from them. It wasn’t a depiction of fresh blood, only a CG 〝hit effect〟 created from light.

Then, the man lost his strength, collapsed on the spot, and a 【Ｄｅａｄ】── in other words, a red marker denoting 〝deathshibou〟, lit up with a *pikon* sound. He was dead.

The pink girl then fired at the next man closest to her while charging towards him. The man did return fire with his rifle, but not a single bullet hit the pink girl. Conversely, the man was turned into a beehive.

Thus, the second person was also killed in the time it takes to say ‘ah’, then the pink girl leapt to the side of his corpse to hide.

The surviving two men trained their rifles at the girl, but one of them obviously hesitated to fire, while the other fired, but could not hit the small target that was using the corpse as a shield. Like the ones before, he was shot and died.

The pink girl then rolled on the ground like a spinning top, and drenched the last man in a bloodbath of hit effects.

Having killed all of them in several seconds, the pink girl ran away from her current position with an extreme dash. She disappeared outside the screen at an unimaginable speed.

Having pressed the stop button on the remote, the high school girl,

“Yep, not matter how many times I see it, it’s still amazing! Karen-san!”

Said as she turned around once again, and Karen answered with a bitter smile.

“That was── I was able to do it because it was 〝LLENN〟.”

At that moment, she heard a strong reply from that small body.

“That’s the same thing! It’s the player who controls the avatar! That’s why, LLENN, the victor of the Squad Jam, is Karen-san right here!”

In this game called GGO, a battle royale tournament to 〝decide the strongest player〟 is held. It’s called the 《Bullet of Bullets》. Abbreviated to BoB.

The BoB is an event that raises a wave of excitement throughout GGO. The tournament had been held thrice thus far, and its scale continued to increase.

Having seen one such BoB tournament, a certain person was struck with an idea. 〝I want to see a team battle royale rather than a one on one fight〟.

That person sent a request to GGO’s management company, an organisation, known as 《Zaskar》, that is registered in the United States. And it decided to organise a game tournament with him as the sponsor.

It was a battle royale tournament, like the BoB, that consisted of teams up to six members──

And it was called 〝Squad Jam〟. Abbreviated to SJ. In the army, squad was the term for 〝teambuntai〟. Jam had the meaning of 〝being cramped〟.

As an individual-sponsored mini tournament, the SJ was held two weeks earlier on the 1st of February. It could not be compared to the level of the BoB, which had a live broadcast on a net broadcaster, but it was considerably exciting nonetheless.

The battles were only given a live broadcast in an in-game bar that became the main venue for the event. A fierce gun battle among twenty three teams unfolded in a special field that was 10km wide in all four directions.

The audience watched the broadcast, while enjoying drinks, to see which team would survive, and──

To everyone's great surprise, the winners of the battle, which took 1 hour 28 minutes and totaled 49,810 bullets spent, was a team that participated with only two players, the bare minimum.

One of the two was a rough-looking giant who excelled in shooting and whose character namewas 〝M〟.

The other was──

“Saki-chan, you and the others sure are serious, huh……”

Seeing Saki and the others watching the battle that they had lost many times over, reflecting on it, and using it as material for research, Karen remarked like an old lady,

“Well of course! It is a part of our club activities after all!”

“Come again?”

‘GGO and rhythmic gymnastics have some sort of link?’

Karen tilted her head at those unexpected words. Saki stopped pressing the video playbackbutton, and,

“Come to think of it, we have not told you about it yet, huh ──”

Began talking as the representative of the club.

“Around last April, in other words, after the three first-years joined, our teamwork was horrible”

“Is that…… so?’

Seeing the currently close group of six, this was extremely surprising, thus,

“I can’t imagine that at all……”

Karen remarked honestly.

“It was awful. It wasn't on the level where we would fight upon seeing each other, but whenever we had to perform together, we’d all fall apart…… Under the university’s coach’s instructions, we underwent training using FullDive technology── Karen-san, do you know about 〝FullDive Sports Simulators〟?

“No.”

Karen could guess what it was based on the name, but shook her head. Saki then explained.

“It’s training with an avatar with your physique using an AmuSphere. It’s currently popular among open-minded coaches, as there’s no danger when suddenly trying risky techniques.”

“Wow……”

Karen felt admiration. Thus far, Karen had only used VR technology to play (GGO), but in essence, it should be used for something like that.

“Of course, in the end, it’s just a simulation in terms of real physical strength, but it could be used to practice moves. It would be different if there were in-dive tournaments, but there aren’t any yet. Though there are rumours that they might eventually be held.”

“It’s educational. So your moves are so splendid because you've had training like that, huh.”

For the next hour or so──

Karen watched how the battle to the death between her and the six high-school girls’ avatars unfolded.

The video was rewinded again and again, changing the camera angle at times, and she answered Saki and the others’ questions.

At the lake that became the stage for their first battle,

“Yeah, I thought I was done for when I was sniped by Tohma. That sniping was truly magnificent. If it had been just a bit higher, an instant death would have been registered. I was saved by M-san’s rapid action here.”

After disembarking in the wilderness,

“Eh? The internal discord……? Ehm, how should I put it…… He had his circumstances, but couldn’t tell me about them clearly, so we ended up quarreling over a petty misunderstanding, you see; he was no longer able to continue with SJ, and tried to bring me, the leader, down to be able to drop out of the tournament. But, we resolved the misunderstanding afterwards. In the end, he did show up like he was supposed to, right? It wasn’t really a plan to use the leader as a decoy, but result-wise, that was the cause of our victory; strange, huh……”

At the first battle in the wilderness,

“As for the battle with Tanya, I believe that I probably won because I was much smaller than her. It was really a close call. I heard the sound of bullets coming from behind.”

At the scene where she was shot by Boss,

“I was startled by Boss’s silent gun. What a scary weapon it was. I didn’t notice it at all, , and let my guard down completely falling for your trap back then. I would have died there if mymagazine wasn’t hit instead.”

At the point when she ran away from the machine gun shower,

“I had no knowledge about plasma grenade barriers. I just didn’t have any other options, so I tried it out……”

After she began counterattacking and took down Anna,

“When I was glared at by Rosa with her machine gun pointed at me, I thought that I was done for. I wonder how many times I had that thought that day…… As for M-san’s sniping later on── it didn’t produce a Bullet Line. Since he sniped by manually aiming. Sly, but it can’t be helped.”

After the beginning of the grand one-one-one fight against Boss,

“The fact that that I was shot in the chest but the bullet hit the scan terminal, saving me, was…… a complete fluke. I think I’d probably be NG(9) next time. Because you all would have followed suit.”

And, at the scene of the final conclusion,

After the end of the video and Saki’s group’s review meeting,

“There’re still some sweets left── want some?

Karen enquired, and

“Su~re!”

Carefree smiles and a fully in-sync answer came from the six. There wasn’t the slightest deviation. They were awfully close.

Karen offered the remainder of the heap of sweets that she had bought.

She thought that she had bought too many of them and figured that she would just give the leftovers to her niece or eat them herself, but it seemed that they would be cleaned out today.

Despite their small bodies, all of them a were big eaters. Even so, none of them put on weight. Typical of a sports club.

Holding consommé-flavoured potato chips in her right hand, Saki enquired.

“Karen-san, I’ll ask frankly. If a second SJ is held, do you plan to participate?”

“Hmm……”

Halting her hand that held some shiokombu(10), which she had bought a large amount of as it was her favourite dish, though the other six hadn’t really touched it, Karen pondered.

She had magnificently won the first SJ. Considering herself back then, it was a most spectacular victory that was beyond her imagination. All the more so, for her feeling of satisfaction.

At the same time, there were a lot of issues. Getting into situations where it seemed that she would die many times over, due to carelessness, losing her P90 and so on.

The belief that she will try to do better if another one was held went up into smoke in her mind. There were no other team battle tournaments on that scale, and she had many dreadful experiences during the tournament, but she could not deny that she got the fruits of battle, the chance to go wild and had enjoyed it.

‘If I get an invitation from Pitohui, or team up with M──’

She had thoughts like that as well, but when she thought about M’s strange behaviour near the end of the last battle in the previous SJ, and Pitohui (in RL) who was probably the cause of it, she hesitated recklessly participating with them.

No, truth be told, even if she was invited this time, the possibility of her rejecting the invitation was high. Though she believed that she would not end up quitting GGO.

As for Pitohui, the next day after the SJ,

『Yay, congrats！』

She received this excessively short congratulatory message, but no other messages thereafter. Was she busy with work?

She had not received any contact from M either; well, he probably had nothing to say, so he kept quiet.

“A second one…… unless something really extraordinary happens, the chances of me participating are low, I guess…… Although some issues still remain, I can’t deny that I’m feeling like 〝I’ve had enough〟. Also, the team I had formed with M was only for that time.”

After Karen answered honestly,

“I see…… We are half happy, half disappointed. The thing that makes us 〝happy〟 is that a formidable enemy will not be taking part. But the thing that makes us 〝disappointed〟 is that we thought ‘We’re going to beat you next time!’”

Saki replied, representing her group's opinion. Feeling the fighting spirit of the girls staring at her fixedly from behind──

‘Your motivation is greater than mine. If we have another battle, I believe I’ll definitely lose……’

Karen thought, but kept quiet. Instead,

“But, if a second one is going to take place, is it really going to be held this quickly?”

“Hmm, I don’t know. But, if someone contributes money like what happened for the first one, I think that it can be held relatively easily.”

“I see, it’s sponsor-dependant, huh.”

1. ^ A jō (畳, tatami mat) is a traditional Japanese unit used for measuring the size of a room. It is equal to 1.653 square metres (the size of a Nagoya tatami mat).

2. ^ Common orient clam (Meretrix lusoria).

3. ^ Milana uses the first-person pronoun watashi, but in katakana. This is probably because Milana is not a native Japanese speaker. I wanted to use a weird font to account for this, but blogger doesn't really give me much to work with.

4. ^ Boku (ボク) is a first person pronoun usually used by boys.

5. ^ This one was actually ojama shimasu (お邪魔します, lit. (excuse me for) disturbing you), a set expression used when entering someone’s home. Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure how to translate it to keep the nuance.

6. ^ The original text used a modification and negative form of the expression uma ga au (馬が合う; lit. to suit a horse, to be a good match with one’s horse), which is used in the sense “to get on well with someone”.

7. ^ Throw a/the spoon (匙を投げる, saji o nageru) is the Japanese equivalent of “throw in the towel”.

8. ^ Shinkura (新クラ) is made from the first kanji of rhythmic gymnastics (新体操, shintaisou) and the first two kana of club (クラブ). That’s where SHINC came from, but I decided to leave the romaji version here because the name is in Japanese in this case, and no mention of the alphabet version is made.

9. ^ Abbreviation for “no good”.

10. ^ Shiokombu (塩昆布) are thin strips of kombu (edible kelp from the family Laminariaceae widely eaten in East Asia) cooked in soy sauce etc. then dried.

11. ^ Abbreviation for “background music”.

12. ^ About 24 US Dollars / 23 Euros / 16 Pounds Sterling. Depends on the current exchange rate.

Chapter end