A Line That Must Not Be Crossed
Honestly, I never had particularly bad feelings about sniping.
I'd done my share of it myself. Not long ago a sniper had even saved my life, and what I was doing right now was sniping in its own right.
Being called a psychopath was fine too. I had no intention of denying the truth. I'd heard it so many times it was old news; that much couldn't even scratch me.
But even for me, there was a line that must not be crossed.
"Ha…?"
The moment I saw the donation message, my reason clouded over.
Ara was the benefactor who had boldly stepped up for my sake. That was why I had offered to help her, why I had sworn to protect her.
And someone was going to kill a person like that—right in front of me?
While cowardly watching someone else's stream, no less?
"…Ara."
"Uh, y-yeah…?"
"Could you wait here for a moment?"
Not wanting to show how angry I was, I spoke in the softest voice I could manage as I opened the eyes I'd kept shut.
Blue washed over the pure white world, and the flow of mana began to come into view.
VR gear and virtual reality were, in the end, a fake world built with magic. Because of that, I could look upon the essence of this world with far less effort than in Reality, where magic had never originally existed.
"I'm not losing anyone again."
I threw off the thick fur coat I'd been wearing. A heavy coat would only get in the way of swinging a sword.
"So just stay right there and wait, okay?"
The magnetic field enclosing the map was closing in. Roughly five minutes remained until the next shrink.
The enemy's position was the lighthouse on the island beach. Ours was a tiny shack in the middle of a snowfield.
Within five minutes, I had to deal with the bastard camping on top of that lighthouse.
With nothing but a single sword in hand.
So I forced my cognitive range wide open, headache be damned. I never wanted to lose anyone again.
Even if it was only inside a game, I never wanted to go through the pain of losing someone I meant to protect a second time.
"I'm going to catch him right now."
My loosened mind snapped awake, and every cell in my body seemed to stand on end. My heart pounded until it ached, and the hand gripping my sword trembled. It was a tremor born of pure rage.
"Ugh…!"
"Haneul?!"
"I'm fine. It's just a side effect of releasing the medication…"
"No, that means you're not fine at all!"
I lightly ignored Ara's words and opened the door.
Before the donation sound had even finished, I set my hand on the sword hilt and stepped out of the shack.
The instant my feet touched the snow-blanketed field, a chilling gunshot rang out.
Bang—!
The moment that first report cracked, the world began to slow.
I could see the vast current carved by the cold winter wind. And I could see the inflection point forcing its way through that flow—the trajectory of the incoming bullet.
The round arcing from the lighthouse was aimed squarely at my head.
But once it had been read, there was no way a bullet would touch me. I lightly leapt across its path, and from the spot where I'd just been standing came a soft thud.
"Hup…!"
Taking that sound as my signal, I drew a deep breath and ran. The moment I pulled my sword free, a second trajectory locked onto my head.
Without hesitation I swung the mana-wreathed blade.
Vertical Slash — Fall
Clang—!
A bullet split cleanly in half grazed my cheek. Ignoring the stinging cut, I looked toward the lighthouse again. In no time the distance between the sniper and me had closed to roughly fifty meters.
Desperate third and fourth shots rang out, but this time the trajectories never even came near me. Panic-fired rounds didn't fly particularly true.
"Hoo, hoo, hoo…"
Breathing hard, I pressed myself against the base of the lighthouse.
The enemy had hastily grabbed a submachine gun and was spraying bullets down at me, but I was already hidden in the lighthouse's blind spot. No amount of spraying would reach me.
After a brief wait I peeked out—but there was no sign of him at all.
"…Hiding?"
A lighthouse built on a cliff was a perfectly isolated place with nowhere to run. The only exit he could flee through was the door I was standing in front of.
But I heard no footsteps coming down the stairs.
Which meant he was camping the stairwell with his gun trained on the climb.
"Hey. You told me to come, didn't you?"
I deliberately leaned out from the blind spot as I called. The plan was to throw my sword the instant he came out to get me.
"So I came. No welcome gift?"
But nothing happened—no one burst out.
Wondering if maybe my voice had been too quiet, I checked Ara's stream, but that wasn't it either. If it was faintly audible even at the shack a hundred and fifty meters away, it had to have reached the top of the lighthouse.
"Well. Guess he got scared."
Muttering that, I circled the lighthouse.
Weathered by years of wind and waves, it was far from sound. Gouged and cracked all over, it looked one step from collapse.
"Heh. You think that means I can't catch you?"
I murmured under my breath and took a few steps back. When I increased the mana held in my eyes, a searing red pain hit and the colors of the world shifted.
It was a world where blue currents and black currents intertwined. In the cracks, stones glowed blue as if saying hold here, while other gaps were painted black as if warning danger.
Ignoring the chat trying to stop me, I raced up the tower along the path my eyes showed me.
There was no time for him to react. The bastard aiming his gun down the stairs never saw me vault onto the lighthouse from outside.
"I told you I'd catch you, didn't I?"
Kiiiiing—!
The vast mana gathered in my scabbard roared. It was the maximum an E-rank Awakened mage could draw out.
I had no intention of letting him go gently.
So I drew the sword art made thoroughly for cutting people down.
"I told you I would never let go."
In the blink of an eye, three blades of wind shot forth. The first slash shattered the submachine gun; the second and third cleanly severed his arms and legs.
His body, robbed of its center, staggered and toppled backward. I caught him with a rough hand before he could finish crossing the Sanzu River and hauled him back up.
"Aaagh…!"
"Could you cut the theatrics? When it actually hurts, you don't even have the mind left to scream. You don't even think of speaking."
This was the guy who'd been peeping at Ara's stream thirty seconds ago and toying with us. There was no way his immersion was jacked up like mine.
And his limbs hadn't actually been cut off either.
The sensation in his arms and legs had simply gone dead for a moment; control over his in-game limbs had briefly vanished. Because of the censorship filters, his limbs still looked perfectly intact.
That sight irritated me, just a little.
"Heehee. You… get to hurt a bit too."
In a virtual world, you can never feel the fear of death. Except in special cases like mine, what comes after dying is usually just a respawn.
I didn't like that.
After trying to kill someone precious to me—after digging into my painful memories—he just dies and that's it? Unforgivable.
"If I'm the only one who hurts, that's just too unfair, isn't it?"
"Ghh…"
"With immersion at ten, maybe twenty percent tops, what are you even hurting over? In reality it's nothing more than a light cut."
At least he had some stubbornness; he refused to open his mouth to the end. I bunched his collar in my fist. Conveniently, this place was perfect for gifting him an ending that suited him.
"Earlier. You said you'd kill her, didn't you?"
A high lighthouse.
In a fake world, the best place to instill the fear of death.
"Ever cut off your own arm while fully conscious? Heh. Your arm is being eroded, and all you're holding is a dull knife caked in monster blood. Ever tried sawing off your own arm with a blade you can barely even lift?"
As I spoke, rage spread through me like a gradient I couldn't stop. Dark stories I'd kept buried in my heart spilled out without restraint.
"Human bone is harder than you think. In the cold, with a hand shaking so hard you can barely hold it, with a blade that isn't even sharp—it will not cut."
I poured mana into my forearm, and the limp man's body lifted in one hand. Dragging him up the stair landings, I went on.
"But even the best healer can't regenerate a severed arm. So I had to cradle the arm I'd cut off with my remaining hand and make it back to the rear. Wandering through the cold hugging a severed arm—that is what dying feels like."
Bang—
I kicked open the door to the lighthouse roof and looked down. On the far side of the lighthouse, a sheer cliff dropped roughly a hundred and fifty meters.
"Haa, haa, haa…"
Breathing hard, I propped the man's body against the railing. Only then did his tightly sealed mouth open.
"W-wait…"
"Shut up. I have no intention of letting you stall for time."
There are two ways to exit Survival Mode.
One is a manual exit. Manipulate the interface with your hands and you can leave on the spot.
But sometimes you end up unable to use your hands. When both hands are lost to a monster attack or an explosion, the automatic exit countdown begins.
The time it takes for the system to judge a player incapacitated is roughly one minute.
I'd subdued him about forty seconds ago. The auto-exit was about to kick in.
"I'll let you experience one percent of what dying feels like. So you'll never say that kind of shit again."
"W-wait! Intentional team-killing is a ban—"
"Heh. So what."
I cut him off with a thin smile. With immunity privileges, a ban was nothing to fear. I opened my clenched hand, and the man's body dropped straight off the cliff.
"Aaaaaaaagh—!"
"Bye~"
I waved with a bitter smile. Listening to the scream fade in a gradient, I sheathed my sword and turned to head back down.
"Haneul!"
"Ah…?"
That was the moment I came face-to-face with Ara.
Thanks to my sharp senses, I had never once failed to notice someone approaching from behind. So the experience of a person appearing without any warning was completely unfamiliar to me.
"Hyaak?!"
A death cry burst out of me before I could stop it. I was so startled my heart hammered hard enough to make me briefly forget what I'd just done. Without meaning to, I stumbled several steps backward.
"Kyaa?!"
Which then made Ara jump in turn. I'd overreacted so hard that Ara, who'd come to fetch me, ended up the one getting scared.
Leaving the chat that had dissolved into laughter behind me, I asked Ara,
"Ah—what brings you up here?"
"Whew… You looked like you were in a bad way, so I got worried and came. Your face was worrying enough for it."
"M-mine…?"
"Yeah. Honestly… just now, you were a little scary."
"…Ah."
I'd come wanting to help Ara, and all I'd done was cause trouble.
It felt as if the bright world had been dyed dark.