C-Rank Ranked Match — Return Of The Raid Boss

The Konpeitou were an Army 108 strong, and their trade was player-killing. Their main line of work was hunting down the beginners who’d built up chips on the Gold Planet and efficiently stripping the money off them.

They had ruled far and wide across this vast planet. Now they were the ones trapped in a nightmare. A nightmare in which the players who were supposed to be doing the hunting had themselves become the hunted.

“Wh-what?! What in the world is happening?!”

One of the gold-clad soldiers was running for her life. Same as always, she’d come to the ‘hunting grounds’ with two teammates, but the instant they arrived, one of them took a headshot. Then the other caught a sniper round to the back of the head, fired from the exact opposite direction of the first shot, and was deleted.

The lone survivor scrambled to flee, but it was already too late. A sniper round came ricocheting toward her through the forest of gold crystals, and though she barely managed to twist away, it only bounced off a crystal behind her and punched clean through the back of her skull.

“…Why…? Why this…?!”

Deleted.

For the past several days, the attacks had kept coming. Again and again, Konpeitou members were being shot clean through by some unknown assailant.

The sniping itself was one thing; picking enemies off with ricochets was a feat they could still wrap their heads around. What was truly terrifying came the moment they closed within 200 meters of this ‘mystery shooter,’ when countless rounds would ricochet in every direction, converging on them from all sides at once.

The color and power of the laser rounds left no doubt they were assault-rifle fire. And yet, if the shooter really was a single person, then judging by the sheer rate of fire, she couldn’t be handling just one gun. She had to be working two at once. Two assault rifles, weapons meant to be gripped in both hands, fired simultaneously. On top of that, her ricochet math was flawless. To exploit ricochets under that monstrous recoil, with her hit-correction layered on top, was a feat that defied all reason. And it was precisely because the Konpeitou had made these gold-crystal fields their hunting grounds that they understood, better than anyone, just how abnormal that was.

After she’d sunk half of the Konpeitou, the survivors came to regard the ‘mystery shooter’ as a raid boss.

The Konpeitou pooled their numbers and switched to bringing the ‘mystery shooter’ down with sheer force. But numbers made no difference. She had already fully awakened. Countless laser rounds, like the threads of a spider’s web, sealed off their escape, pinned them where they stood, then tore them apart with shots from their blind spots.

“What is this storm of bullets?! —Gyah?!”

“Run! Get away from here!!”

“Run where, exactly—?! Waaah?!”

“Somebody go pin this shooter down!!”

“No way, no way!!”

“Why…? Why…?! Why are we, the hunters, the ones being hunted?!!”

“This is bullshit! I only joined because they said I could make money!!”

“Forget it, forget it! I’m quitting this Army!”

Some of the Konpeitou managed to catch the ‘mystery shooter’ on their Radar, but not a single one ever caught her in their sights. This place, where laser rounds ricocheted freely, was her stage and hers alone. Once she had the terrain memorized, no enemy stood a chance.

The Konpeitou’s nightmare dragged on for five days, from July 31st to August 4th. By the end, defectors were pouring out of the Army, and its numbers had been cut to less than half.

‘The Ricochet Washer.’

She earned that name for making the gold-clad PK players wash their hands of the game, over and over.

August 4th. Night.

I’d come to the shop on the station.

“Money’s piled up nicely, and my level’s high enough. All that’s left is to sort out my gear for the Ranked Match.”

Player-hunting doesn’t do anything for your level, but I’d been killing Machine Beasts between hunts, so I’d managed to push mine up to the required line too.

This is my Konpeitou-hunting loadout. Every last member of the Konpeitou ran Jamming Armor, so instead of the Enhanced Radar I went with the Radar Enhancement Core. But in a Ranked Match, where people bring far more varied gear, the Enhanced Radar is obviously the better call, so I’ll swap the Radar Enhancement Core out for it.

After that, I switch one Shield Piece slot over to a Bullet Piece, and one assault-rifle slot to a different weapon (that one comes later). The Precision Enhancement Core I only slapped on because I had a slot to spare; for the Ranked Match, I’m planning to run a different Expansion Part.

The last thing is to break in the Bullet Piece in the training room. It’s already 9 PM in real time, so heading out to explore a planet is obviously off the table.

Still, right up to the very end, not one member of the Konpeitou ever managed to lay eyes on me. I suppose that’s all the people holed up on such an early-game stage really amount to. It leaves me feeling a little unsatisfied.

“Hm?”

Something had arrived in my message box. Not the Infinity-Space box. This was the full-dive machine’s own message box, the one tied to my account. When I opened it:

‘A friend of yours is here, Big Sis. I’ve got them making themselves comfortable in the living room right now.’

It was from Azuha.

“A friend…?”

I shouldn’t have a single one of those anywhere on Earth.

‘Their name is…’

“Huh?!”

The name of my visitor was… Tsukigami Seika.