After taking down the Icebane Python even more easily than he had dealt with the OverLord, Samuro jogged back to Sinon, who was crouched in the snow with a look of pure exasperation. He sat down beside her and began reloading his weapons.
"You really did shoot her cleanly just now, huh?" Sinon said, half angry and half amused as she looked at his completely innocent face.
"It was fine. Blue Rose does very high damage at close range, and I didn't have room for a second shot. At point-blank range, shotguns don't care who you are." Samuro nodded seriously.
Sinon had finally grown used to his occasional nonsense, so she decided not to chase that part. She sighed.
"Can you explain it properly now?"
"Any player who can make it this far might be bad at the game, but their gear won't be weak. The Icebane Python is annoying, but there is no reason it should be able to eat a player alive. If she had a balanced build, trading damage with it should have cost about half her HP at most. And from what I saw of that female player's outfit, her armor was rare-class too," Samuro said. "There is no way she should have been bullied that badly by one snake."
"Is that really so strange...? What if she ran into other mobs before that?" Sinon asked.
"That's possible. But there's a safe zone not far from here, one where players exploring Isaro can log in and out. This is still a high-level ruin, and very few people would go through the trouble of solo farming it. If the login safe zone is nearby, then there's a good chance she had teammates."
"If she was in that much trouble, and her teammates were so close, they should have reached her already."
"Exactly. And when I asked her, she seemed pretty determined to get me in front while she recovered behind me."
Samuro sighed softly.
"She was probably bait. Her teammates were most likely waiting nearby, ready for her signal. Once she shot me in the back, they would come in and surround us."
Sinon understood now, but she was still a little lost.
"Does that really happen?"
"Of course."
"But the success rate must be terrible. What if someone saw her struggling and decided to rob her instead of helping?"
"No, no. Did you see that female player's avatar? Waist-length glowing green hair, a tiny waist, long legs, delicate hands, and serious curves. A girl like that, getting beaten down by a wild monster until she could barely lift her head? Would a high-level male player really just stand by and watch? Of course he would rush in to show how brave and amazing he is."
Samuro sounded genuinely impressed by the setup.
"Besides, there is one thing that is practically universal in online games: male players act like they have never seen a woman before."
He missed those power-leveling days.
Back then, all the effort he put into fighting honestly was nothing compared with one soft line from a girl on voice chat saying she did not want to lose. Opponents who had been helpless a moment earlier would suddenly catch fire, each of them playing like a top-class expert. Then they would chase him across the whole map like he had committed a crime, all because he had killed the girl too many times.
"That does sound strangely convincing," Sinon admitted. "But what if she really was just a cute female player in trouble?"
"She's already dead. Who cares now?"
The male player in front of her gave that answer as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
"..."
Sinon looked at him with another conflicted expression.
Click.
He snapped the fully loaded cylinder back into the Peacemaker. Then, while using his Search skill, he smiled faintly.
"See? Four or five people are coming this way. That's basically a full party."
Sinon could only press a hand to her forehead.
"PK tricks have layers. Sometimes you really don't know whether to laugh or sigh." Samuro nodded as if this were deeply true, patted her on the shoulder, and stood up.
Blue Rose in his left hand.
Peacemaker in his right.
With a sweep of his cold-weather coat, he sprang out from behind the low snowbank. His fearless figure looked like a top predator leaping out to devour the wolves charging toward him.
He would probably do what he had done in the previous fights. Charge straight into the enemy formation with style, send them one by one back to the respawn point with those light, free-moving revolvers, and make the bullets dancing around him look like servants trapped in his palm.
There was nothing Sinon could do about it. In this heavy snow, she could not function properly as a sniper at all. If things kept going like this, then her original purpose in coming to the ruins to train would not be fulfilled, would it?
She had her doubts.
If Samuro knew how bad the environment was, why had he cared so much about whether she was good at long-range support?
But someone as careful as him would not bring along a useless teammate for no reason.
Sinon was not worried about whether Samuro could win alone. She simply sat there, lost in thought.
And then...
The revolver gunman, who had looked ready to tear through the fight on his own a moment ago, came tumbling back around the snowbank and scrambled all the way to her side. He patted his chest, looking deeply annoyed.
"..."
Sinon fell silent.
"You..."
She spoke without expression.
"Why are all of them heavy builds? Dillon Aero M134D Minigun, damn it! That bullet curtain was an iron wall. How was I supposed to rush through that? And judging by how furious they looked, they're probably mad because I shot their girl in the head... Enemies in that state are the hardest to deal with."
The moment he finished speaking, a storm of bullets roared from the front, almost drowning out the wind and thunder.
Sensing the enemy's anger and the force of their attack, Sinon finally recovered some of the composure expected of a high-level player. Her expression turned serious.
"That's bad. A weapon like that is basically a meat grinder. Even the tankiest build would get shredded. Do we retreat?"
"Worth considering, but there may still be a way." Samuro looked thoughtful. "A super-heavy weapon like a Dillon Aero M134D Minigun has to drag their movement speed down to a crawl. The others also have to match that pace, or the formation breaks apart. And while that kind of killing machine is firing, the user can barely move."
"But you know this too, right? As long as we're inside its range, we can't launch any real attack."
The fact that he had just scrambled back in a panic was proof enough.
"If it weren't snowing like this, I could just fall back to the right distance and finish him with one bullet. But right now, that won't work."
Sinon felt the heavy presence of the Hecate II on her back and breathed in the cold air with a hint of regret.
"No," Samuro said suddenly, with complete certainty. "There is a way."
Sinon froze.
"Huh? B-but how? We can't expose ourselves to their line of fire, can we?"
Samuro only smiled with confidence.
Seeing him like that made Sinon hesitate again.
Thinking about it carefully, during their earlier clash in the wasteland, she had held the advantage in terrain and distance, yet he had still nearly found a chance to counterattack. With his absurdly high AGI build, reaction speed, and revolver accuracy, maybe if he pushed himself, he really could slip through that net of firepower.
That would be practically broken.
And yet, some part of Sinon believed he might do it.
Samuro seemed ready to move. He rose slightly, and Sinon, imagining the terrifying thing he might attempt, unconsciously slowed her breathing and stared at his next action.
Samuro braced himself.
But he did not rush out.
Instead, he hurled something black toward the front with all his strength.
Then another.
And another.
Five or six in total.
"At times like this, standard procedure is to throw grenades."
Once again, he nodded as if this were perfectly obvious.
"Huh...?"
Sinon stared at him, speechless.
"HSDK shock grenades. Wide radius, high damage. They're just a little expensive. Otherwise, they'd be mandatory gear." Samuro nodded, then silently began counting.
"One, two, three... Yeah, that should do it."
Boom!
Four or five blasts erupted one after another, shaking snow loose and throwing heat and shockwaves through the air. A storm of white surged ahead of them, and through it came faint screams.
"Looks like that did it. They were standing pretty close together."
Watching the minimap on his Search panel, Samuro saw several markers turn gray and decided his luck had been pretty good.
"..."
"...What's wrong? You look a little pale." Samuro looked at the silent Sinon.
"Nothing..."
She said.
"I just feel like an idiot."