Phantom Bullet 1

by Reki Kawahara

  Copyright

  SWORD ART ONLINE 5: Phantom Bullet

  REKI KAWAHARA

  Translation by Stephen Paul

  Cover art by abec

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  SWORD ART ONLINE

  ©REKI KAWAHARA 2010

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by ASCII MEDIA WORKS

  First published in Japan in 2010 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.

  English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo, through Tuttle-Mori Agency, Inc., Tokyo.

  English translation © 2015 by Yen Press, LLC

  Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First Yen On eBook Edition: June 2017

  Originally published in paperback in August 2015 by Yen On.

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  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  ISBN: 978-0-316-56090-0

  E3-20170525-JV-PC

  “I’m telling you, the theory that AGI is the One True Stat is total nonsense,” screeched a high-pitched male voice, echoing off the walls of the spacious pub. “Sure, Agility’s an important stat. Having an extremely high firing speed and evasion were enough to make you one of the best—until now.”

  The owner of the cocky voice was a player in a four-sided holo-panel, floating high in the middle of the dimly lit establishment.

  The panel was playing a popular program called This Week’s Winners on the Net channel MMO Stream. You could watch their videos on real TVs or computers, but given that they also streamed into the inns and pubs of countless VRMMO worlds, most players preferred to watch it in-game.

  Especially when the segment’s guest happened to be from their world.

  “But that’s all in the past now. I’ve got one simple message for all my friends who wasted their lives raising AGI for the past eight months: Rest in peace.”

  His obnoxious taunt was met with boos and jeers from the large pub, and a few glass bottles and mugs flew across the room, smashing against the wall into little polygonal shards.

  But one man did not join the raucous shouting. He waited on the sofa in the back, curled up into a ball. He eyed the rest of the pub with a cold stare from between the low ghillie suit hood and the thick cloth that covered the lower half of his face.

  The gloating man on the program was bad enough, but the slack-faced idiots gazing at the holo-TV were even worse. They all booed and shouted, but it was almost more of a game to them than a serious protest.

  He couldn’t understand what made them act so empty-headed. The man on the program had seized the mantle of the game’s best player through sheer coincidence and was now its greatest exploiter as well. He was taking a share of the subscription fee that every player in the game paid, reveling in his pro gamer status.

  Everyone must have felt the same jealousy and hatred of the gloating champion. If that dark emotion was ugly, then hiding it and pretending to laugh it off was both ugly and farcical.

  The man felt his entire body tense beneath the suit. A breath hissed between his clenched teeth. It wasn’t time yet. He would pull the trigger a little later.

  Back on the holo-panel, the camera zoomed out to show the program’s host sitting to the right of the champion, as well as another guest on his left.

  The host, a girl dressed in technopop fashion, bubbled, “Those are some pretty powerful words, but I guess I should expect that from the top player in Gun Gale Online, the most hardcore of all the VRMMOs.”

  “Well, I figured I’d only get one chance to be on MMO Stream, so I gotta say my piece while I can.”

  “Oh, but you’ll be competing in the next Bullet of Bullets, won’t you?”

  “Of course. And I’m in it to win it,” he declared directly at the camera, brushing back his long, blue-silver hair. The pub erupted in boos again.

  MMO Stream was not produced exclusively for Gun Gale Online (GGO), but the guests and host were all in avatar form. This Week’s Winners was an interview program that hosted the best players from various virtual reality massive multiplayer games, and the current guests were the champion and runner-up of the Bullet of Bullets, the battle-royale tournament held last month in GGO.

  “The thing is, Zexceed,” the runner-up interrupted, clearly tired of hearing the silver-haired man preen, “isn’t BoB all about solo encounters? There’s no guarantee you’ll have the same results a second time, so it’s rather silly to act like this victory was guaranteed by your player’s build, if you ask me.”

  “No way. This result was a manifestation of a general trend in GGO. I realize that you don’t want to admit this, Yamikaze, as you’re playing an agility build,” the champion Zexceed retorted. “It’s true that until now, pumping up your AGI so you could rapid-fire live-ammo weapons was the prevailing style. You’d earn a bonus to evasion that way, too, which helps make up for the weak durability rating. But unlike a single-player game, the balance of an MMO changes over time. When you’re dealing with level-based systems, you can’t rearrange your stats freely, so you have to allocate those points with an eye toward the future. The best style in one level zone might not be the best in the next. You understand that, right? The guns we’ll see next will have higher and higher strength and accuracy requirements to equip. This idea that you can just dodge out of harm’s way in every encounter is going the way of the dodo. The battle between me and Yamikaze was that process in a microcosm. Most of your gun’s power was neutralized by my bulletproof armor, and yet 70 percent of my shots landed. I’ll say it right now: We’re entering the age of the STR-VIT build.”

  The man named Yamikaze grimaced with displeasure.

  “But…that’s only because you succeeded in getting a rare gun whose strength requirement was just within your grasp, right before the tournament started. How much did you pay for that?”

  “Nuh-uh, that was a drop, fair and square. But if you want to put it that way, the greatest stat of all is your real-life luck. Ha-ha-ha!”

  The man on the sofa moved his right hand, staring at the laughing, silver-haired Zexceed on the holo-panel with utter loathing. He found the grip sticking out of his waist holster and squeezed the cool metal. Very soon. It would happen very soon. He checked the time readout in the corner of his vision. One minute, twenty seconds.

  At the table nearest to him, two players nursed their mugs and muttered to themselves.

  “Keh! Listen to him prattle on. Who do you think started the whole AGI build movement in the first place? It was Zexceed!”

  “Now it looks like that was all a trap to draw the player population down the wrong direction…And we fell for it, hook, line, and sinker…”

  “Think that means his new Strength and Vitality fad
is another bluff?”

  “Makes you wonder what’ll come next. Boosting Luck?”

  “You should try it.”

  “Hell no.”

  They both cackled. The sound only made the man’s anger hotter. How could they laugh like that, knowing they’d been fooled? It made no sense.

  But those stupid chuckles will freeze on their tongues very soon. Once they see true power—who the real champion is.

  It was time.

  He stood without a sound. He strode between the tables, step after step. No one paid him any attention.

  “Fools…You will know terror,” he muttered, and came to a stop directly beneath the holo-panel in the center of the pub. He pulled a crude handgun from the holster on the waist of his ghillie suit.

  It gleamed black and metallic, like pure, compressed darkness. Even the grip was metal, and in the center of the vertical serrations on the handle was a star-shaped brand. By any standard, it looked like any old automatic pistol, nothing special.

  But this gun had true power.

  He clicked the slide back, loading a fresh round, then slowly, easily held the gun directly upward at the huge holo-panel. Right at the forehead of the cocky, laughing Zexceed.

  He held the gun in place for a few moments, until uneasy murmuring broke out around him. Although PKing was essentially unlimited in GGO, the exception was in town, where attacking others was impossible. He could fire the gun, but not only would it not harm any players, it wouldn’t even affect the environment.

  His pointless display caused a few stifled giggles to arise around him, but he kept the black gun trained perfectly still, using an isosceles stance. In the midst of the holo-panel, Zexceed was still taunting.

  Somewhere in the real world, Zexceed’s actual body was lying down, wearing an AmuSphere on his head, while he was logged in to the MMO Stream virtual studio. Naturally, he would have no way of knowing that there was a player pointing a gun at his image on TV in a certain pub in the business quarter of SBC Glocken, capital city of the world of Gun Gale Online.

  Despite this, the man opened his mouth and shouted for all to hear.

  “Zexceed! False victor! Taste the judgment of true power!!”

  With the shocked stares of the entire room upon him, he raised his left arm, tracing a cross with his fingertips from forehead to chest, then left shoulder to right.

  As he lowered his left hand, he pulled the trigger with his right. The slide blew back, producing the yellow flash of gunfire. There was a sharp, dry pop.

  Beneath the dim lights of the pub, the metal bullet flew directly into the holo-panel and created brief little splintering effects.

  That was it. Zexceed was still glibly chattering away on the program.

  Actual laughter broke out now. Some of the crowd groaned and muttered about how embarrassing the whole display was. Meanwhile, Zexceed’s voice was audible above the murmurs.

  “—don’t you see, even if you include stats and skill selection, the ultimate factor is the player’s ski—”

  He stopped midsentence. The pub focused on the holo-panel again.

  Zexceed was frozen in place, his eyes wide and mouth open. His hand slowly, slowly rose to clutch at his chest.

  The next moment, he disappeared, leaving only a 3D-modeled chair behind. The host quickly spoke up.

  “Uh-oh, looks like he lost connection. Don’t change that channel, folks, I’m sure he’ll be right back with us…”

  But no one in the pub heard her. In dead silence, they were all looking at the man again.

  He lowered the gun and held it vertically, then slowly turned, his eyes lingering upon the various denizens of the room. Once he had completed a full rotation, the man held the black gun high and shouted again.

  “…This is the true power, the true strength! Carve this name and the terror it commands into your hearts, you fools!”

  He sucked in a deep breath.

  “My name, and the name of my weapon, is…Death Gun!!”

  He returned the firearm to his holster and swiped the menu open with his left hand.

  As he hit the log-out button, he felt a tremendous sense of triumph, and with it, an even stronger, burning hunger.

  1

  “Welcome. Party of one?”

  The waiter bowed graciously. I told him I was waiting for someone, and then looked around the spacious café. A loud, carefree voice broke the calm, from a table near a window in the back.

  “Hey, Kirito, over here!”

  The hushed, refined chatter that had flowed atop the classical background music fell silent, replaced by disapproving stares. I hunched my shoulders and rushed over to the source of the shout. With my faded leather flight jacket and distressed jeans, I was firmly out of place next to the middle-aged, manicured women of wealth on their shopping trips, who filled the room. Their irritation at the party responsible for summoning me here was growing by the moment.

  If my partner had been a lovely young lady, that would be one thing, but it was a man in a suit who waved me over. I plopped into the seat across from him, not bothering to hide my dissatisfaction.

  The waiter instantly swooped in and offered me a glass of water and a fresh hand towel, along with a menu. I grabbed it, noting the leather finish, and the fellow across the table piped up.

  “This is on me, so order whatever you like.”

  “I figured as much,” I replied as I looked over the menu, only to discover the cheapest item on it was the chou à la crème at 1,200 yen. I quickly made to order a simple cup of coffee, but it occurred to me that this man was a highly paid official and would just expense the meal, putting it on the taxpayers’ tab. Feeling like an idiot, I ordered a string of items, trying to act natural.

  “Erm…I’ll have the parfait au chocolat…the mille-feuille framboise…and a hazelnut coffee,” I said, somehow managing to avoid tripping over my tongue. The total came out to 3,900 yen. I almost felt like finishing with a hamburger and a shake and demanding the change. Incidentally, those items were chosen randomly off the menu, and I had no idea what I was actually getting.

  “They’ll be right up.”

  The waiter departed smoothly and I looked up with a sigh.

  The man across the table chowing down on a giant serving of pudding piled high with cream was Seijirou Kikuoka. He featured thick black-rimmed glasses, an utterly plain haircut, and narrow, fussy features that brought a Japanese language teacher to mind—but despite all of this, he was actually an ambitious fast riser within the government. He worked for the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ Telecommunications Bureau, Advanced Network Division, Second Office: known within the ministry as the Virtual Network Management Division, aka “Virtual Division.”

  In other words, this man was a government agent—or scapegoat—in charge of monitoring the chaotic and lawless VR world. He often lamented that he’d been sequestered in this position, and I believed that was probably the case.

  Misfortunate Mr. Kikuoka carried the last blissful bite of pudding to his mouth and looked up with a mischievous grin.

  “Hi there, Kirito. Sorry for forcing you to make the trip out here.”

  “If you were really sorry, you wouldn’t ask me to come to Ginza.”

  I wiped my hands with the faintly citrus-smelling hand towel, then added, “Plus, I don’t know why you think you should call me Kirito.”

  “Oh, don’t be mean. Wasn’t I the first person who rushed to your bedside when you woke up in the hospital a year ago?”

  Sadly, that was true. The very first person to visit me after my awakening from that game of death was Kikuoka, who’d been a government agent working for the task force on that case.

  At the time, I used polite speech with him, but as time went on and I realized that he was not contacting me solely out of altruistic concern, I gradually got more snarky and sarcastic. Or perhaps he was manipulating me into that attitude—but I was probably overthinking it.

  I glanced at Kikuoka, who seemed to b
e seriously considering another order for himself, and warned myself not to let him manipulate me.

  “I heard they found some huge rare-earth deposit in Sagami Bay, and all the senior officials from the appropriate ministries were dancing a jig to ‘Turkey in the Straw.’ Yet here you are, wondering if you should pony up for another cream puff,” I jabbed.

  Kikuoka looked up, blinked several times, then beamed.

  “Doesn’t matter, because none of the profit they make excavating that will go to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. I think I’ll hold off, for the benefit of the national budget.”

  He snapped the menu shut and I gave him another sigh.

  “Can we get to the business at hand, then? I can already guess what it is: another virtual crime needing hands-on research?”

  “I love how quick you are on the uptake, Kirito,” Kikuoka replied without missing a step. He pulled out a super-thin tablet computer from the briefcase on the seat next to him.

  That’s right—he’s using me, a survivor of the Sword Art Online Incident, the worst online crime in Japan’s history, as a provider of information.

  According to what I’d read, the regular police called their informants “cooperators” or “monitors,” and the act of periodically handing out rewards in exchange for information was called “managing contacts.” If that was the case, you could say that that Kikuoka was “managing” me with the occasional piece of cake.

  That wasn’t exactly a good feeling, but I owed him for breaking the rules and telling me which hospital Asuna was being kept in. If I hadn’t had that info, I wouldn’t have been able to find Asuna Yuuki so quickly again in the real world. That meant I wouldn’t have learned about Nobuyuki Sugou’s diabolical scheme, nor would I have been able to prevent him from taking Asuna as his own.

  So for the time being, I was content to be Kikuoka’s monitor. I just wasn’t going to bother kissing his ass, or holding back from ordering the most expensive cake on the menu.

  Meanwhile, my benevolent manager, totally unaware of what was running through my head, traced a finger along the tablet and slowly muttered, “See, the thing is, the number of virtual-space crimes are on the rise again…”