The Reaper's Scythe Spares No One
"Haa..."
The sky, steeped in ash, was beautiful enough to turn the stomach.
No one remained who could say why the world had become this way. The human race was nearly extinct, after all. Televisions, computers, and everything like them already belonged to a world that could no longer be used. There were no convenient preserved rations, no warm bed, no clothes to change with the seasons. And in a world like that, I was still alive.
"Lucky."
What I found in a pit while wandering was a shotgun. A human with nothing but their body is shockingly frail; without a weapon like this, you cannot even set out to hunt. Even a wild boar, once nothing more than meat, would kill a bare-handed human on contact ninety-nine times out of a hundred. How fragile a life. And yet lives like that had once gathered and ruled this earth. It was astonishing, really.
"Hmm..."
Fortunately, the shotgun worked without a hitch. At worst the trigger was a little rusty and stiff. Nothing that would keep it from firing.
Clip-clop. Clip-clop—
And then, without warning, hoofbeats from the left.
"...Damn it."
The sound was not loud, but I swore under my breath and slipped behind a rock. If whatever was coming was only a horse, there was no problem at all. A horse is not the sort of animal that charges you for no reason just because it sees you, and besides the shotgun I had a rifle I had brought for exactly this kind of unknown.
But if those hoofbeats belonged to someone else's mount, and if that someone was not of my faction, then things turned very ugly. Better if I were the last survivor in this ruined world. I was not. More than a few humans besides me had lived through it, and a human, once survival is at stake, becomes more vicious than anything else alive. The moment people understood that the law no longer protected them, that survival was no longer guaranteed, how many had dropped into death? That I was still here was nothing but luck.
Clip-clop. Clip-clop—
By now the hoofbeats were close enough that if I so much as leaned out from the rock, I would see what they belonged to.
Do I keep hiding?
A horse is transportation, most of the time. In an emergency, it is also food. When bands of survivors formed, the first thing they secured was almost always horses.
"Could it be... them?"
The hope escaped my mouth, and I shook my head at once. Coming out this far today had been my decision alone. More than that, the direction of today's patrol ran exactly opposite this place. There was no chance they would ride a horse out here.
Fifty-fifty. Success would be a windfall. Failure might be death. I could simply wait for the hoofbeats to pass, and yet, somehow, I did not want to.
"Hoo..."
I let out a quiet breath and lifted my head above the rock.
And what I saw—
Clip-clop. Clip-clop—
A wild horse, no one on its back, not even a saddle. The gamble had paid off. A jackpot.
"Hahh..."
I steadied my breathing, drew the rifle, and aimed at the horse. I had no intention whatsoever of killing it. I only meant to fire ahead of it, startle it, and make it stop. No matter how hard I ran, a human could never catch a horse.
I set the muzzle well out in front of it, and in the instant I meant to pull the trigger—
A voice like that seemed to reach me.
"...Huh?"
What?
I could not breathe. Before I knew it my vision flooded crimson and went soft, and the gun I had been aiming at the ground fell. A metallic clack should have rung out. It would have. I never heard it.
I clutched my chest with a hand that shook hard. The hand was bright red. I covered the hole to stop the blood, and it would not stop at all. The moment that ceaseless flow began to soak the ground, a pain arrived that no words could hold.
"Ngh... ghh..."
No voice came. All I could do was roll across the ground with the breath that barely leaked out of me.
And like that, I died.
"What? What was that just now?!"
Tsubaki, of Stars Flow's 1st Generation, was deeply flustered.
There was Senior Nanase, whom she respected; the peers she liked; even the cute juniors. A few were missing, of course, but Tsubaki was happy from the simple fact that they could all gather and play a game together. A survival game, no less. Tsubaki, a novice, had been looking forward enormously to the sight of everyone pooling their strength and pushing through hardship together.
So when the hoofbeats came, she could not understand the Tsubakiz chat telling her to hide behind the rock, quick, because it was dangerous. Until now she had met only two of her peers, Hikari and Rinze. Hikari had declared that a proper villainess would survive proudly on her own, and had gone off alone. Rinze had said they should live together and gather materials, and then they had parted. Tsubaki had agreed on a meeting place and walked all the way here. If she ran into Senior Nanase or the juniors, couldn't she simply ask them to come along, the way she had with Rinze?
That was what she thought. Even so, she hid behind the rock as the chat told her to. A little later she raised her head and looked past it, and there was a horse running alone. At the sight of it the Tsubakiz told her to shoot ahead of the horse, and Tsubaki, without a shred of doubt, aimed down the path it was running.
In that instant a huge report went off, and Tsubaki's character pitched forward. What HP she had left was stained bright red. If she was not healed within twenty seconds, she would die. And there was no one nearby who could heal her.
"Does this game have enemies that attack with guns?"
An incomprehensible situation, and a chat she could not understand. Clutching a head gone dizzy from both, Tsubaki raised her voice and called for help, if only so she could live.
"Isn't there anyone who can help me?!"
"Hmm."
As if in answer, a voice came from behind her character. She turned the crawling body around, and there stood a woman with her face hidden behind a mask. The name floating above that mask was Izumi.
"Ah, Miss Izumi."
The only 2nd Generation junior she had never spoken with in private. Maybe this would be the chance. Thinking so, Tsubaki called out to her.
"Miss Izumi. Could you heal me, maybe? I suddenly got shot and collapsed. I don't know who did it."
Izumi gave no answer at all. She only circled around Tsubaki.
"Ah, did she turn voice chat off?"
Ashen City supported voice chat by default, but a player could shut it off whenever they liked. She had heard Izumi was the type who found talking to other people awkward, so the guess seemed plausible enough. Tsubaki switched to ordinary chat.
Still, no answer came from Izumi.
A moment later—
Bang!
With a second gunshot, Tsubaki's character died.
"AAAAAAAH?!"
It did not take Tsubaki long to grasp what the game called Ashen City really was.
She pulled the trigger without hesitation. Bang! Senior Namikawa's character, already down, met death.
"Th-there's n-nothing worth taking..."
"Huh?"
She looked at the chat window, then checked the in-game chat. It was just as the Iztomo had said.
...Now that she thought about it, it did seem as if Senior Namikawa had said something. She had been too busy checking the woman's items to hear a word of it. And there had not been a single thing better than what she was already using.
"...Th-the reaper is a law that's e-equal to everyone..."
Right. The Izumi of this moment was an outlaw of Ashen City. Her goal was to be Ashen City's reaper. Senior or not, no one escaped death in front of her.
"Mm, ah... nobody's tripped the detector yet."
Her tactic was simple. She did not bother building a real base. She scattered dummy bases, set detectors in them, and hunted whoever came close. Senior Namikawa, this time, had been pure coincidence, but this was still the foundation of the plan.
If she had to guess, Miss Akabane shared her taste in games and had probably played Ashen City already, so the trick was unlikely to work on her. Senior Kurokami, though, always tried to break through head-on and fair and square. Wouldn't she walk into it easily? And if luck held, Nacchan too...
Huh?
"I-if Senior Nanase falls into m-my trap, wh-what do I do?"
"Ugh..."
She was the Eighth Star. She could not kill Nacchan. But letting go of someone caught in her trap would stain a reaper's pride. A perfect dilemma, and one her brain had no hope of solving. While she worried over it—