Hell

Front Line was a PvE multiplayer game.

Each team fielded roughly a hundred players.

The setting was a battlefield of small-scale skirmishes — hold the outpost against waves of monsters. It felt less like a game and more like a training exercise.

Which, in a way, made perfect sense.

Front Line had originally been built by the World Government as a combat-training program. It lost out to a rival system, got released to the public, and eventually took the shape of a game. That was the Front Line we had now.

Maybe because of that pedigree, the fidelity was genuinely solid. The pristine white of a Siberian snowfield, the shattered bones of a ruined city, the hopeless look in an NPC's eyes — all of it felt real enough to touch.

"…That's a little unpleasant."

The obsessive detail made ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠me frown without thinking. The scenery was dragging up frontline memories I'd buried deep, so I pulled my gaze away from the leaden sky.

I spread my fingers at a right angle and a blue window bloomed between them — my avatar's stats inside Front Line.

Overall rating: roughly an E-Rank Awakened. The blurry line between an Awakened and an ordinary human — strong enough to be awkward about it.

"The fidelity is actually pretty good, huh?"

"Ah-ah. Good things come to those who wait."

My real-world self and my in-game avatar weren't all that different. The avatar I was running looked, at a glance, like a short high-school girl — long black hair, black eyes.

I'd agonized over it more than a little. I didn't want to put my real appearance on full display, but if the body felt too alien I wouldn't ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠be able to fight properly. Changing only the hair and eye color was my hard line.

Which meant I was honestly a bit nervous.

I hadn't shown myself in front of people much. I'd always fought under a cloak, and even at official appearances I'd never put my body on display.

But I couldn't put it off forever. The viewer count had already slipped under eighty, and even I was getting sick of a black screen.

Talking my way through a broadcast only got you so far. Once real combat started, there was no way I could keep the feed off, right?

"Haa…"

So I checked my own reflection in a ruined building.

Beyond the cracked glass stood a girl with a near-future rifle in her hands. Seventeen years old, tactical helmet on, a ballistic vest that left her midriff bare and shorts short enough to show every inch of her thighs.

Unlike my real face, heavy with dark circles, the avatar's eyes carried a bright, almost spring-like confidence.

Honestly, she didn't look bad. If you ignored the fact that the outfit looked less like a soldier heading into combat and more like someone doing military cosplay, there was a pretty girl on the other side of that glass — the kind anyone would glance at twice.

"…Fidelity's great and all, but why is the outfit like this?"

I muttered it under my breath and flipped the feed on. The stream flickered for a second, then a blue light came up on the camera.

"A promise is a promise… so I'm turning the screen on."

Tweaking a broadcast UI from inside a VR world wasn't hard. Maybe because it was a virtual space, the settings panel popped up the moment I thought about changing the layout.

I pulled my mask up, took two steps back so the whole figure would read on camera, and — feeling awkward about the fully exposed midriff and navel — hugged the rifle a little closer as I hit the stream button.

"So? Not too weird, right?"

"Oh…?"

An overwhelming flood of chat rolled in — more than eighty people had any right to produce. I watched for a moment, curious how long it would last, but the firepower never dropped.

Between the people screaming dayum and waugh, long-form body praise started stacking up, along with chat yelling at me to take the mask off. The unmoderated chat window was a mess worthy of the word chaos.

And yet somehow… it didn't feel bad.

Rough as the delivery was, this was how the viewers showed they liked me. Being the center of attention — it felt pretty good.

"Whoa, whoa~ relax~ can we cool it a little?"

But I couldn't just sit there watching. A message that the match was about to start bloomed dead center on my screen.

So I walked over to the NPC standing in front of the transport.

"Will you deploy to the front line?"

"Yes."

The moment I stepped into the massive transport — big enough to swallow a pair of tanks — the overheated chat cooled off a notch.

Only then did a few questions with actual nutritional value start showing up.

"Guys, can you not see my stats right now?"

An E-Rank Awakened was just a slightly stronger human. Even if you could handle basic mana, shooting a gun was always going to hit harder than swinging a sword.

Most trash mobs could be handled with anti-behemoth rounds anyway. At the D-rank Gate level that was the backdrop for Front Line, almost nothing showed up that a rifle couldn't deal with.

"I'm E-rank right now. Unless you can stab a thousand times a minute, a gun's stronger. Heheh — not exactly what the Swordsmanship Gallery mod should be saying, huh?"

I was still running my mouth when the sky above us bled red. The signal that a Gate had started eroding reality.

With a hiss-shhh, the transport's doors began to open. Five hundred meters up, the fierce wind whipped my hair around my face.

I ignored the viewers screaming as usual and pulled a few magazines from my kit, tucking them into the pouches under my chest.

That was when my familiar weight came back. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Gear like a full kit didn't suit someone who fought light and fast. Same went for the parachute.

A full battle was already raging under my feet — who had time to leisurely pop a chute? Do that in a real fight and the monsters' anti-air units would turn you into Swiss cheese.

"This actually has a higher survival rate!"

So I yelled it with confidence and jumped.

BOOM—!

The snow piled on the ground exploded and my vision flipped. A blue-glowing outpost, swarming monsters, players fighting back — all of it snapped into place.

I didn't have time to explain anything to the stunned viewers. Dropping into a capture match mid-fight meant the situation was already halfway to a riot.

A makeshift radar station sat in the middle of a city square, cover piled around it. A werewolf came charging over the barricades — I put a rifle round through its skull and white particles burst apart.

At the same time a blue bar floated up over my head — the indicator tracking the current state of the battle.

What that bar was pointing at was a clear allied defeat. NPCs were dying; players were peeling off one by one into the respawn queue. I dropped a few monsters that lunged at me in a hurry, but it didn't change the tide.

THOOM—!

I switched to shotgun mode and a D-rank beast came apart in pieces. Ducking behind cover, I swapped magazines in a blur and asked the chat,

"Ugh — is this game always like this at the start? No matter how I look at it we're getting our asses kicked!?"

Following the chat, I lifted my eyes. The clock floating over the middle of the battlefield read 13:48.

"What? It's only been thirteen minutes since the match started."

"Everyone already pulled back? These useless—!"

In a brief lull I looked around, and all those allies were simply gone. In the ruins of a fallen outpost, the only one left was me.

Right. Just me.

No one to put my back against, enemies on every side trying to kill me — exactly like the battlefields of Siberia.

A place where a human life was worth less than a few artillery shells. A hell where the despair, terror, rage, malice, and madness of monsters and humans all ran together into one.

I had fallen back into a place like that.

"…Hh—"

My breath started to catch.