Time in the game world moved in step with time in the real world. The blood-red sunset had gradually faded, and darkness was bleeding back in. The sun had already sunk beyond the horizon, its last remaining light disappearing as though it were being swallowed, while a clear full moon had risen in silence.
The sky, though changed in color, was not gray or oppressive. If anything, it was unusually clean. No clouds had gathered there. Moonlight brightened the night until the sky looked almost translucent, and the desert's dry gray-yellow was hidden beneath it. The gravel seemed draped in a dark veil, plain and close to deep blue, transformed into something like unreachable moon sand.
Shouichi lifted his head. Red light filled the sockets of his eyes as he looked up at the quiet night sky.
Faint colors began to appear there, as if a painter were using pointillism, then drawing the brush out in clean strokes, leaving trails of color across the dome of the sky. That lovely light gave a strange beauty to this tournament battlefield that had been choked with gun smoke during the day.
In truth, it was the scientific glow of satellites orbiting tens of thousands of meters overhead. Now and then, a line of starlight could be seen cutting across the night. This world was set on a wasteland after some distant war, and around this planet still floated the wreckage of old defeated warships.
Some of them, tugged by gravity, fell and became those streaks across the stars.
What a vast stage.
What a carefully realized world.
One day, this game would surely be updated until its stage moved into the endless reaches of space. Through the imagination of skilled designers, modelers, artists, and planners, it would ignite the urge for adventure buried in people's hearts and reveal one possible world after another.
That was the world of guns. Its ceiling was still high. It could still go much farther.
It was not limited to something like a floating castle of only one hundred floors. It was not Aincrad, where the end of the world had been set from the very beginning.
But.
The red light in his eye sockets flickered faintly.
This desert, the weapon in his hand, the satellites tens of thousands of meters above him, even the far-off river of stars. All of it was false. It was only data. The corpses lying across the ground of this deathmatch map were false too. Their souls were probably waiting in boredom for the battle to end.
And calculating what kind of reward they would get afterward.
He sighed in regret.
After once seeing what real players could be, these people looked like rotting meat in a trash can.
After spending two years inside a true cage of death, even this so-called highest-level tournament felt painfully dull.
In truth, he was not drunk on killing itself. What fascinated him was still that sense of freedom. No social systems binding him. No family rules. No expectations pressing down on him like a weight.
He no longer knew when it had begun, but those fairy-tale days had become everything to him. A plain boy in a rough cloth shirt and leather boots, carrying a crude iron sword on his back, opening a wooden door while his parents called after him, crossing green fields, wading through long rivers, climbing high mountains.
Even now, he wanted to believe there was a holy place somewhere in the world, waiting on a frozen snow mountain for him to light incense there with reverence.
Fairy tales were beautiful.
Fantasy was beautiful.
The deepest black and evil in them amounted to little more than dragons abducting princesses and wicked witches. Heroes did not have to trouble themselves with complicated values. They only had to defeat evil and uphold good, and people would respect them, praise them, remember them.
How wonderful that kind of identity was. A way of living where you only had to face hardship straight on, without twisting around corners, and success would follow. The crowd would cheer.
It had been a long time since he had thought about these things.
What he still remembered was that single violent heartbeat, when he entered the floating castle and learned that it had been given the heavy meaning of real death.
That world had been real, and he had loved it. Once the boundary of death no longer separated the two sides, they could truly be said to have lived there.
The hunts each day. The satisfaction of growing stronger. It had been so clear, so intoxicating.
He let his ragged cloak sway and felt that fullness from the inside out. That sense of strength, of power strong enough to pierce the virtual and kill a person, made him feel complete.
How wonderful that kind of identity was. Success earned by carrying obsession all the way to the end, until everyone had no choice but to look at you.
The lightless darkness of the Black Iron Palace, the endless hunger and thirst, had been like purgatory. Not for his body, but for the soul that had once been ordinary and lost. For more than a year of imprisonment, he gritted his teeth, endured the torment, and practiced sword skills. Even after his weapon was taken from him, his empty right hand still gripped an imagined rapier.
Again and again.
As if driving it into the heart and throat of the only man he recognized and admired.
Striking with everything he had.
No matter when it was, no matter how many worlds you changed, no matter how many faces you wore, you still stood at the top.
And not through talent. Through your methods. Your will. That desperate strength of a drowning man fighting for the surface.
What made you search for the one real thing, the one true satisfaction, inside a false world?
Surely it was the same confusion and helplessness I felt.
In that vast sea of data, you and I were lucky enough to meet.
You were like another me. A stronger me, living in that world.
The time I spent fighting with you was always exhilarating. We talked about the direction of countless games and about tactics, like seekers huddled together in a dark room.
You and I were escapees.
Failures.
For someone like me, who could not find any goal in this impossible real world, you were my only friend.
You had always been ahead of me, leaving only your back for me to see. Now you seemed to have returned to reality and found a hope strong enough to save the lost, helpless first half of your life. With your own hands, you killed the dream world both of us should have been chasing.
That was probably the greatest masterpiece of your life as a player.
The only pity was that I could not keep up with you.
And this time, I could not even see your back.
What a shame.
The Thousand-Mirror Gate, that magnificent stage, was not where you and I crossed blades. That should have been the moment you were at your maddest. That was when you were stronger than you had ever been.
He walked to the corpse of another player he had defeated.
Yamikaze.
One of the current top AGI-route players, and supposedly the strongest player on the Japanese GGO server in both strength and technique. Yet that ghostlike gunman had fallen six hundred and fifty-three meters away, struck by a bullet from the Silent Assassin. Shouichi had been watching this "strongest player" for a long time. He knew Yamikaze's movement data at full output down to the finest detail.
That bullet had looked like divine prediction and luck.
In reality, he had spent half a month preparing to fire it.
That, too, was a technique he had learned from that man.
A mortal's technique.
The only thing everyone possessed equally was the time they still had left. Use it, compress it, and turn it into a blade.
"Your battle with Didos... what did it make you understand? What did you gain from it?"
His low, hoarse voice came out as he looked down at the corpse of the "strongest player." Yamikaze's consciousness was still online, but his avatar had already lost. From where Yamikaze lay, all he could see was the hem of Shouichi's tattered cloak.
"This is the last one. Other than me, other than you, and other than the sniper you're protecting, he was the last player left on this battlefield."
"So, Yurnero, give me your answer one more time."
He looked around the empty battlefield. The crimson light in his eye sockets began to burn.
"I threw everything away to make this false Thousand-Mirror Gate again. So answer me here, one more time!"
"The way we always have!"
"Show me how to keep going!"
"I have nowhere left to run. Nowhere left to hide!"
"Let me hear your answer!"
On the battlefield littered with corpses, the lone gunman roared.
"Satoru!!"