Unknown Combat

After a bit of commotion, the game began.

Set against a near-future apocalypse, even the aircraft ferrying players to the battlefield had a distinctly sci-fi look to it. The cabin, tighter than the waiting lobby, was packed wall to wall with players.

Something I noticed every time I played: these people were dead serious about dressing up their avatars. Their outfits glittered. Their hair was extravagant. They looked less like they were heading into a fight and more like they were on their way to a party.

"Where am I dropping?"

I pulled up the map and checked our position. The battlefield was an entire small island. The aircraft was cutting across it from the lower left toward the upper right, and we had only just started, still passing over the early stretch of the island. I clicked a spot with the mouse.

Lower left of the island. A tiny clearing punched out of the middle of a dense forest. The aircraft happened to be flying right over it.

"Going!"

I hit the drop button and leapt from the aircraft. Wind screamed through my earphones. The island unfurled below, so lush it was almost beautiful — a river cutting across the land, stretches of thick greenery, even a village pretty enough to pass for a tourist destination.

The most obvious difference between this world and old Earth was technological progress. Not across the board — just in graphics, game engines, anything related to games, where the gap ranged from noticeable to enormous. Let's just say the Western otakus who ended up with the absurd power of Awakening abilities were something else. That was why Forgotten Story in particular looked stunning, though even the other games here would have been considered incredible next to anything from old Earth. The side effect was that people who already suffered from 3D motion sickness were in even worse shape. I wasn't one of them, so I didn't care.

"You people don't know anything! That bunker down there barely gets any traffic, and the farming is incredible!"

I pointed the mouse cursor at the little gap in the forest below. A bunker sat there by itself in the middle of the trees. Step inside and you got a random weapon, ammo, and if you were lucky, armor too. A completely stable way to gear up at the start without a single fight.

"Shut it."

The island rushed up fast, and a donation landed.

Unlike a regular donation, this one locked itself to the upper left of the screen and refused to disappear. A timer had appeared with it, so there was a time limit too.

"So if I win, I get a hundred dollars. That it?"

The chat exploded, and the pot on that mission started climbing fast. What had begun at a hundred dollars blew past two thousand before I knew it.

"Fine. I'll show you."

I couldn't lose now even if it killed me. I rolled my wrists and stared at the screen. Once the gliding avatar dropped to a certain height, the compact jetpack on its back fired on its own. From there a player could make small positional adjustments, and I steered just enough to come down near the bunker.

"Okay! Landed right in front of it!"

"I am not cute!"

I scolded the yanderes for treating me like a kid and stepped into the bunker. The gun that dropped this time was an assault rifle. According to the yanderes, this spot only ever spat out Tier 3 gear, but that didn't matter to me. What mattered was that I had a weapon at all.

"Oh! Armor!"

Luck was on my side. Armor had dropped with it — actual body protection. Personally I figured protecting the body beat protecting the head. Heads were hard to hit. Bodies were big. You got shot there a lot more, didn't you?

"So. About that 'safe asset' you all mentioned. Feeling nervous yet?"

"I've been living just ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠fine! What's wrong with all of you?"

Anyone watching would have thought I'd clawed my way through some wretched existence. My eyes stayed on chat, but my hands kept moving. I threw the armor on in a hurry and popped a skill.

Given the apocalyptic setting, the game's lore said humanity had adapted to a ruined world by developing special abilities, which was how skills worked. It felt a little odd to use that kind of setup in a world that already had real Awakening abilities, but Awakening didn't exist inside the game. Probably because a setting where people had Awakening powers and still got driven to the brink of extinction wouldn't have held together.

Anyway, every player started with three skills: Passive, Tactical, and Ultimate. Tactical skills had cooldowns. Ultimates needed a condition met and came with a long cooldown on top of that. What I used was a Tactical skill called Detection — it revealed every living thing within a five-hundred-meter radius.

"Don't sleep on Detection. Do you have any idea how good this skill is?"

A blue pulse rippled out from my character. Just as I'd expected — nobody there. I was about to leave the bunker in peace when something pinged on the skill, which lasted thirty seconds. I followed the blue arrow that had appeared on the left side of the screen, swung the camera, and spotted a small blue silhouette through the bunker wall.

That was another reason I called Detection broken. You could tell if someone was on the other side of a wall, and it even showed you their outline. At this point, wasn't it basically a cheat?

And these people have no idea.

Thanks to this skill, I had once coasted into the top forty without doing a single thing.

"Huh? Something's off."

Worried the person might come inside, I aimed at the entrance and waited. Then several more arrows popped onto the screen at once. Five of them. To make matters worse, the skill shut off before I could check them all. Six-minute cooldown. I had to hold out until then.

"How do you even know that!? What sound?"

A bunker had no windows, so all I had to do was hold the entrance. I split my attention between chat and the doorway, and they kept calling out where the enemies were.

"Then what am I supposed to do? The skill's on cooldown!"

What did these people even think about on a normal day to come up with that? The more I dug into the yanderes, the weirder the picture got.

But what's sound-play?

Chat kept telling me to sound-play, and I had no idea what that was. Everyone but me seemed to know, so it had to be famous.

"You listen to the sound and figure it out? That's possible?"

There were yanderes in chat actually doing it, so of course it was possible. I went quiet and focused on whatever was coming through the earphones.

Hmm... breathing? My character's breathing? No — was this my own breathing? Beyond that, I couldn't hear much of anything. The earphones were old, and the noise was bad. I held my breath and listened even harder, and then an enormous trumpet blast went off.

"Shit! You scared me!"

Wow. That actually got me. It startled me badly enough that a curse slipped out on its own. The trumpet's high note slammed into my ears so hard I could have sworn my heart was vibrating. It was still thrashing around in my chest.

"Ah, sorry. I didn't mean to swear."

"I know how. I just try to hold back as much as I can."

I figured swearing lowered your own dignity. That was what the word meant in my head. This, too, was an old memory driven in deep. Even now, just thinking about cursing brought back the director's shouting face.

"I'm gonna grab some water, okay?"

I took a sip to settle my rattled nerves, then picked the mouse back up.

"I'm weak to jump scares and sudden loud noises. So I try not to— WAAAAAH!?"

I had flailed when the trumpet went off. Because of that, the moment I swung the camera from the wall back to the entrance, I saw the open door and several people standing there — and jumped all over again. I shot up so hard my legs caught on the chair, and I sat down hard on the floor.

"Ow! That hurt..."

I rubbed my hip and the pain faded fast. There was a warmth there too. I figured it was just my body heat climbing from the tension and focus. If a third party had been in the room, they might have noticed the yellow light coming off my hand.

Anyway, once the pain was completely gone I plugged the earphones back in and sat down again. For some reason the people who had come into the bunker weren't killing me. They were throwing their hands up, or sitting down and standing up over and over.

"What are these people doing? Are they making fun of me?"

I pointed the gun at them and they still showed no interest in fighting back. Was it because they had numbers? They were looking down on me, right?

"Talk to them? How?"

Once the game started you couldn't even type in chat. How was I supposed to say anything?

"Noob! Thanks for the fifty! In-game voice?"

I opened settings and found the option under the game systems section. It was off. I flipped it on, and a woman's voice came through.

Not one voice — several. The people standing in front of me, most likely. Did I just... talk?

"Ah— hello? Can you hear me?"

Guess that confirmed it. The avatars that had been flopping around like live fish all froze at once and looked at me. The sudden stillness was a little creepy.

"Um... are you the Yan Sisters?"

Asking with my own mouth whether they were my fans was mortifying. If they said no after this, I might actually die of shame. Please let them be. Please don't let tonight be a blanket-kick night. I waited for the answer.

"Okay, why did chat suddenly turn into this? Why are you doing a bit!?"

And what kind of extra punishment was that? That was just them filling their own pockets. Not that I thought it was a bad punishment. They were all pretty, so if I got to hug them, I was the one coming out ahead. I could take that kind of extra all day.

"Ah, right. Should we?"

While I was still wrestling with the yanderes who had suddenly become drill instructors, one of the players shouted. On the map, a blue line was steadily closing in. An alarm must have gone off while I was busy fighting. I left the bunker and fell in behind them as they ran. When I swung the camera back, two more players were coming up on our rear, scanning as they went. A seven-person party, myself included, had been thrown together on the spot.

"Hey, you are the Yan Sisters, right?"

I asked again, still waiting on the answer I hadn't gotten. This time I wasn't shrinking. I was already half sure, and the reply came back exactly as expected.

Two more? Wait — squads maxed out at four, didn't they? How had this many people even grouped up?

"R-right."

What was it? That method you'd get hurt for knowing. I was dying of curiosity. They clearly had no intention of telling me, though, so I didn't press and just kept running.

Around the time we broke out of the forest, we reached a spot where two ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠vehicles were waiting.

No time to catch my breath. We piled into the cars and put distance between ourselves and the incoming EMP field. And just like that, without the faintest idea what was going on, a very strange adventure with the Yan Sisters began.