C-Rank Ranked Match — Sniper Sense

The planet I’ve come to is called the Gold Planet. Apparently it’s a different thing from Venus¹; Venus, for its part, exists perfectly fine as its own separate planet. The clouds are gold, the color of a Kinto’un² cloud, and the ground, the mountains, and the forests are all built out of golden crystal.

“Welcome to El Dorado! I’m Pamela Paparepparuppappappa of the gold-ingot people!”

“Uh-huh.”

My spaceship, as if drawn in by a magnet, touched down in a town on the Gold Planet called El Dorado. A town built entirely of glittering gold, and as rowdy as Las Vegas.

The gold-ingot person (NPC) standing in front of me is a middle-aged guy poured into gold tights. How do I put this… he’s intensely tacky, and more than a little gross. I’m getting the feeling I might not like this town very much…

“Sorry to spring this on you the moment you arrive, traveler, but I’ve got a favor to ask. The truth is, a swarm of Golden Tanks has cropped up near this town, and I’d like you to take them out.”

“Uh-huh…”

“Subjugate them and I’ll hand over a reward.”

A sub-mission. Which is to say, a mission with no major story development attached to it. No harm in accepting, then.

“I’ll do it.”

“Thank you! You’re a lifesaver!”

All right then, guess I’ll head out hunting straightaway.

“Whoops, before that…”

I head into the inn and lay a hand on the capsule bed, which sets it as my respawn point. Since the town counts as a base, this bed won’t get destroyed. It does run a rental fee of 1,000 chips a day, though. I’d better not forget to cancel the contract when I leave the planet.

“Prep done—there we go.”

I step out of the inn. And just then, someone snatches my right hand from behind.

“Eh?!”

“…”

I turned around to find an awfully cute Space Girl standing there.

“Hey, you—you’re a Sniper, right?”

“Y-yes.”

Pale-purple twintails, a near-futuristic sailor uniform, a miniskirt. Cute from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, and yet somehow scary all the same.

“I want you to help me out with something for a sec.”

A sweet, honeyed aura and a dangerous, predatory one coexist inside her. If I had to compare it to something, I’d say a carnivorous plant.

My small-animal (loner) instincts are screaming at me not to get any closer!

“I’m terribly sorry, but I… I actually have an errand to run just now.”

“You won’t even hear out a request from Shinkai Tsubasa?”

Huh? What, so suddenly…? This person’s player name is ‘Tsubasa.’ So just now… was that her real name? Why would she blurt out her real name all of a sudden?!

Wh-what a weird person!

“S-s-sorry! I’m busy, so—”

“I won’t force you. See, Tsubasa’s request—it’s one only a truly skilled Sniper can grant. If you’re not confident in your sniping, you’re free to turn it down~♪”

“—!!”

Getting tangled up with this person doesn’t look like it’ll end well. But being taken for someone who lacks confidence in my own sniping… that, I can’t stand.

“I-if I’m good enough for it, I’ll help.”

Me and my stupid pride! What am I doing putting it first at a time like this?!

“Thank you~! I’ll give you an autograph later~!”

An autograph? What for?

“This way, this way! Hurry, please!”

“O-okay.”

I run along, dragged by the hand.

The place Tsubasa hauled me off to, hand in hand, turned out to be… a giant casino.

A casino… the hidden mid-boss of any RPG!

It’s the classic pattern. The casino devours all your playtime while the Demon Lord waits in vain for you to show.

“Just a little more, ’kay~”

Inside the casino, the spot Tsubasa steered me toward was…

“Do that one!”

That… a shooting gallery?

First off, right in front of me is a table laid out with all kinds of rifles. Past it sits a circle maybe a meter in radius, tagged with a name: ‘Shooting Position.’ I take it that means I’m meant to shoot from inside the circle.

A hundred meters out from the circle, belt conveyors run in parallel rows, prizes lined up along the top of each. The nearest is 100 m out, and from there they’re spaced at 50 m intervals, the farthest sitting 700 m away. The prizes themselves are stuffed toys, furniture, figures, that sort of thing. Nothing like armaments or Expansion Parts, nothing that looks like it’d be the slightest use in a fight.

“You want me to do this?”

“Yeah! I want that stuffed teddy bear with the little white wings, the one way at the very back~. The prizes switch over at twelve o’clock, see~. So it’s urgent! Please! Hit it for me and I’ll make the reward worth your while~”

“…O-okay. Could I have you cover the challenge fee?”

“Of course!”

Tsubasa covers the 10,000-chip challenge fee, and the game begins.

First came an explanation from the dealer (a gold-ingot person).

“The guns you may use in this game are limited to those laid out on the table there. Swapping guns partway through is prohibited. Within a single game, only one type of rifle may be used. And you get six rounds at most, whichever one you pick.”

Every rifle here fires live rounds. Real-world models, the whole lot of them.

“Do you see that a target is attached to each prize?”

“Yes.”

Something like an archery target is stuck to every prize.

“Hit that, and the prize is yours—even if it never falls off the conveyor.”

“I see.”

“Conversely, if you don’t hit the target, the prize isn’t yours, even if the impact of your shot happens to knock it off.”

The targets are all on the small side. The stuffed toy I’m after runs about 30 cm, but the target stuck to it is only 10 cm or so across.

“Please be sure to fire from that circle there—the Snipe Circle. Inside the circle you’re free to shoot lying down or sitting, however you like. One thing to note, though: inside the Snipe Circle, your scope stays fixed at 1× magnification.”

“Huh?!”

In other words, it’s no better than looking with the naked eye.

But that means outside the circle, I can use my scope, right…

This Space Girl body of mine has enhanced eyesight, sure, but picking out a small, moving target 700 m away is flat-out impossible. My only play is to range the distance and position through my scope from outside the circle, then fire the shot clean through.

“Before we begin, you’ll select one row from among the thirteen belt conveyors. Please be aware that if your round strikes a prize on a conveyor you didn’t select, it won’t count. And since rounds don’t pass through the prizes, shooting through a prize in front to hit a target behind it is impossible.”

Huh, so there’s a fair bit of challenge to this.

If I go for the very back, then every prize on the conveyors in front of it turns into a wall. Twelve rows of moving walls. Threading a bullet past all of them into a moving, 10 cm target 700 m out. And the conveyors run faster the farther back they are, with the very last one clocking something like 80 km/h.

A pretty nasty piece of game design. Sniping a mosquito at 700 m would be easier than tagging the prize at the very back.

This wasn’t how I pictured my day going. But honestly? It looks like a whole lot of fun. My trigger finger’s practically itching.