[First Collab] A Sniper’s Job (1)

We were transferred into an urban district.

The map seemed designed to resemble a ruined city where fighting had been raging for some time: commercial buildings were half-collapsed with their interiors exposed from the outside, some doors were buried under rubble, and while some buildings could be entered and others could not, you also had to watch out for attacks from above in the accessible ones.

《Ughhh, of all places, we got this map…》

《This map is practically designed to murder long-range snipers!》

《Mm. This is pretty rough for beginner Veru-chan》

Just as the three of them said, this was supposed to be one of the harsher maps for Snipers because it had so many buildings and so few clear lines of fire.

The reason was that the buildings here were not particularly tall.

That meant you could not simply snipe people one-sidedly from upper floors or rooftops, and because most positions were still within assault-rifle range, enemies could easily shoot back. There was no real distance advantage, and once they learned your position, they could enter the building and close in on you.

I could not see the comments myself, but I imagined they were overflowing with either sympathy for me or mockery.

《Veru-chan, does Sniper have a penalty for using submachine guns?》

“No, I believe there was none unless one was carrying a sniper rifle. Of course, there were no buffs either.”

If you equipped a submachine gun while carrying a sniper rifle, your movement speed dropped, making it harder to escape.

On the other hand, you could at least use one until you found a sniper rifle, but that was about the extent of it.

It was basically something you could carry as a stopgap.

《Crap, the box has a sniper rifle and an assault rifle…》

《There was a shield pistol in the box on the third floor!》

《Mm, I’ve got a launcher here》

《Gaaaaah! I knew it! The urban-map curse!》

What Effie-san was shouting about was the way the urban map made it strangely easy to find primary weapons while subweapons almost never appeared.

I had watched videos of various maps myself, and for whatever reason, the urban map really did seem deliberately balanced that way.

The sniper rifle we picked up was an original in-game model called the 『ELEPHANT666』.

Come to think of it, since this game was set in the near future and had superpowers and all that, it did not use the names of real guns.

The 『ELEPHANT666』 was a bolt-action sniper rifle with extremely high damage per shot and an absurdly long effective range, making it a weapon intended for extreme-distance sniping.

Unlike a semi-automatic rifle, it used a bolt-action mechanism, so there was a delay between firing one shot and being able to fire the next.

In short, on a map that was already bad for Snipers, I had also ended up with the kind of weapon that could not compensate through rapid fire.

Apparently, things like this were exactly why Snipers had recently been the first class people dropped from four-person teams.

《Veru-chan, keep that for now until we find you a submachine gun》

“What, I am a Sniper, after all. So long as I have this—”

I stopped speaking there, pressed the “R” key to load the weapon, and moved the mouse.

I turned my view toward the third floor of a building diagonally ahead.

Right-clicking would have made me look through the scope and brought up the reticle, but there was no need for that.

Click.

Almost simultaneously, an explosive “BOOM!” blasted through my headphones from the game, and a log appeared in the upper-right corner of the screen.

《—Huh?》

《Wha…》

《…Eh》

What appeared in the upper-right corner of the screen was known as the kill log.

In this game, taking damage to the arms, legs, or torso usually resulted in what was called a downed state, where you were left crawling on the ground and could still be revived by a teammate.

But a headshot—meaning a direct shot to the head from a sufficiently powerful weapon—bypassed the downed state entirely and resulted in instant death.

When you merely downed someone, the shooter heard a special sound effect instead, and nothing appeared in the kill log at the upper right.

So the fact that my name had appeared there meant it was the latter case: I had just killed a player named Tofumaru.

“—Well, something like that. The recoil is a wild beast, but the bullets themselves fly along a very obedient trajectory. Therefore, I have no need for a submachine gun.”

《…Wait, seriously? Huh? Seriously?》

《Wait, Veru-chan didn’t even look through the scope, right!?》

《…Effie-neesan, you might’ve found something absolutely insane…》

“What are you doing? That gunshot may have been heard by another team. Should we not be moving soon?”

The 『ELEPHANT666』 was quite loud, so it would not have been surprising if another team had already heard the shot and started closing in.

I had heard that the basic rule for Snipers was to relocate after every shot, so it seemed best if I moved off on my own.

If I could report the positions of anyone coming after us, we might even be able to turn the situation to our advantage.

Oh, right—my job was supposed to be both Sniper and lookout, so maybe I was the one who should move?

In that case, I needed to get outside first and check the surroundings.

“Well then. I shall draw them along while firing a few shots.”

I gave that brief announcement and immediately started moving—or at least I was about to, when I spotted two more people standing out in the road, apparently thinking this area was still safe.

I flicked my view toward the one who seemed to be holding an assault rifle, then clicked.

There was no way I would finish loading in time for the other one, so I gave up and hurried away while recalling a conversation I had had with Yuzu-neesan just a few days earlier.

————A question I had posed to Yuzu-neesan the other day when she arrived carrying a mountain of souvenirs.

“What kind of role do you want me to play, Yuzu-neesan? Do you want me to drag the team down and attract hate? Or do you want me to show enough skill to actually contribute to winning? That’s what I was asking.”

Yuzu-neesan blinked rapidly at those words and fell silent for a moment as though thinking it over before finally speaking quietly.

“…If possible, I want you to win the tournament.”

“Win?”

“Yes. Vtubers might compete and feud with other agencies less than people in some industries do, but it still frustrates me when people say things like, ‘FPS streams are more fun outside Gem Pro.’ But I’m in a position where I have to support the whole agency, so I don’t want to force our talents to push themselves too hard.”

Yeah, I understood that feeling.

I understood the dilemma Yuzu-neesan had told me was unique to an agency, but anyone would be happy if the group they supported became number one.

And in Yuzu-neesan’s case, Gem Pro was something precious that she had practically helped build from nothing, so I imagined that feeling was probably stronger for her than for anyone else.

“Those girls—the Gem Pro girls—are all very close, kind, and dear to me, and they genuinely love the agency. But quite a few of them still shrink back whenever FPS games come up. That’s why I’ve tried to avoid taking FPS-related sponsorships whenever possible. I told myself it couldn’t be helped, because it could create friction between the talents.”

“But still,” Yuzu-neesan continued, staring down at her own hands.

“Even so, Effie, Rion-chan, and Snow-chan have been working hard to carve out an FPS niche for Gem Pro. Partly because they genuinely love the games, of course, but also because they want to give Gem Pro viewers who enjoy FPS streams something to watch. I’ve watched them work so hard, and I’ve never stopped wondering whether I should support them or make them give up.”

“…I see.”

It really was a difficult situation.

She could not simply dismiss the feelings of people who were working hard for the agency and for its viewers, but at the same time, I did not think Yuzu-neesan wanted to force girls who were bad at FPS games to participate either.

Was it called being caught between two sides?

That was exactly the kind of situation they were in.

“Because things were like that, newcomers and girls who weren’t good at FPS games couldn’t play them on stream even if they were interested. Viewers would ask whether they were joining Effie’s team, or tell them they should join, and it created an atmosphere where saying no became difficult. Some of them even lie and say they aren’t interested. I want you to change that atmosphere.”

“Would winning really change it? Wouldn’t people just say, ‘You’re a Vtuber from the tournament-winning agency, so you’d better produce results’?”

“That might happen too, but I’d be fine with that. You can simply ignore malice. What I want is to keep them from suffering because of the viewers’ good intentions. Some girls only want to try it a little or just play for fun, but then viewers casually say, ‘Why don’t you join the team?’ and if they refuse, people start making pointless noise about them ‘not getting along.’ It becomes a vicious cycle. But if the team becomes strong enough to actually win tournaments, then it becomes easier to answer, ‘I’m not good enough right now, but I’d like to join someday,’ or to say, ‘I’ll have them teach me.’ And as long as the team already has a full roster, viewers won’t keep finding excuses to tell every talent to ‘join the team.’ It would give them more freedom to play however they want, and I think it would open up more kinds of work for them too.”

“…I see.”

If things turned out that way, then it really did seem as though the current situation where they were “suffering because of good intentions” could be resolved somehow.

So it was not only explicit malice that caused trouble—good intentions could also lead to strange speculation and problems, huh.

“…I really am glad I didn’t join an agency.”

“W-Wait, that’s not what I meant!? I was only talking about Gem Pro’s current situation! Things aren’t usually this troublesome, and our girls are good about supporting one another, so people don’t normally make a huge fuss over weird things!”

“Ahaha, I know. —But I see. In that case… you want me to run wild, right?”

I asked with the ferocious smile that suited the person I had been back when I was the Demon Lord.

Seeing that smile, Yuzu-neesan widened her eyes and audibly swallowed.

“—Kukuku. There is still far more about this map that I do not know than what I do… but very well. Entertain me, humans.”

Forgetting entirely that I was streaming, I spoke those words in the same mindset I had possessed back in my days as the Demon Lord.