Chapter 477: Nostalgia

Author's Preface

Or perhaps, a dream.

In the beginning, there was only screaming and terror.

When I had just started, I was always the one being killed.

Before I knew it, I had started getting used to being harmed by others, initially just to protect myself.

When did it happen? Honestly, I don't remember, but at the very least... in the end, it is an undeniable fact that I was laughing uproariously while watching people being chewed up by beasts.

I regretted it; I shouldn't have turned around using only my neck. I should have moved my entire body without resisting the presence I felt. Shaving the bridge of my nose, the bullet passed from the corner of my eye straight through my temple, crushing and gouging out my left field of vision along with my eyeball itself.

"A-Gah, guh...!!"

But I caught him.

Hiding isn't the only thing this tiny body is good for. Even if it ultimately proves futile, a physique that has discarded even the bare minimum muscle mass required to protect itself from the environment is far more agile in this dense jungle than an athlete's build.

"Found, youuu...!!"

The clicking of the tongue of the man who had completely blown out my left eye, and the sound of gunfire from a compact pistol—one that finally looked like a normal handgun size only because it was gripped by the hands of a young girl—echoed almost simultaneously.

"You used it, as a shield...!!"

"And it was a rare drop, too...!!"

Like I care, idiot, shut up with the nonsense and die. I'll be incredibly generous and give you my thanks for the left eye, complete with a ribbon on top.
Guns, guns, guns, every single one of them. The bastards making expeditions out of this server had gotten far too annoying.
I had come to lightly massacre them, but everyone else had died. Every single one of them was head-shotted by a musket, the longest-ranged firearm among all the weapons that washed ashore on this "Isolated Island," excluding cannons.

"Die...!"

"Scary, you're so scary μ-skY. That's exactly why you need to die...!"

So he was hiding a shotgun on his back; my flank was gouged out, but I can still keep going.

"Tch... The target is too small...!"

Fire. His cheek blew away, and beneath the blood mist (effect) indicating damage, his disgustingly white molars were visible.
The Derringer possessed the lowest firepower of all guns, but it also had the lowest recoil. Without even giving him a chance to breathe, I thrust the survival knife gripped tightly in my right hand straight forward.

"Geuh."

"Fugyah."

Th-This bastard... he slammed his fist right into my gouged-out flank. Even though my avatar is tiny, if my stamina wasn't comparable to an adult's, I would have been dead long ago.

"You, bastard...!!"

"Hyu, hyufu... you, damn, brat...!!"

Heat seemed to be escaping from my flank; I probably didn't have much time left. If I put distance between us I'd die, and I seriously doubt someone on this island would miss their aim just because some air was leaking from their throat.

"........."

"........."

One, shedding mud-like blood (damage effect) like tears from both her crushed left eye and her gouged flank, and the other, pulling out the knife lodged in his throat while letting his left arm—barely clinging on to a left shoulder completely destroyed after being pumped full of bullets and knives repeatedly—hang lifelessly.

Yet, we were both smiling. I could see the smile twitching on only one side of his face with my remaining right eye, and I was fully aware that my own cheeks were pulled upward.
I had exhausted all my surefire victory patterns; the techniques that had taken down about fifty people were completely useless against this guy. It was frustrating, it was infuriating, but more than that... it was fun.

Right now, I couldn't even bring myself to care about the agonizing pain that felt as though I was still being scorched by a blowtorch; it was as if my brain was sparking dangerously.
How to kill him? I can't use my eye, and he can't use his arm. My flank was gouged out, but I tore open his throat. If we weren't here we'd both be long dead by now... but we can still fight, we can still kill, we can still enjoy this.

Readying the Derringer with two rounds left and my very last survival knife, I moved forward, low and fast.
My opponent had a handgun; if I stopped in a straight line, I'd die. Drag-shot, quick-scope, whatever you want to call it, escaping that monster-like aim was completely impossible unless I kept moving.

"4, 3, 2..."

"Hyu, hyuha... How, many shos... I wonder, fu?"

Damn it, he reloaded. Just what kind of acrobatics let you grab bullets from a holster using only your ring and pinky fingers? How many did he load? At least one, I don't think he managed five, but... my lack of options had come back to bite me. If I had just thrown the knife, it might have settled things.

"............"

"............"

A brief silence; it only grew quiet for a split second because the "pause" in our breathing arrived at the exact same timing... and we both moved at the exact same time as well.

The sound of gunfire. Two shots from the revolver he held, while I jumped, throwing in feints to the left and right.
As a result, lead bullets passed through the spaces where my left leg and right eye had been just seconds prior. Two meters left.

Sprinting across the firmly packed humus soil, two more shots rang out.
The result was one graze, no problem. One meter left.

"───Guh."

But here, the hole opened up in my flank proved fatal. Due to the accumulated damage, strength drained from my body; the moment my momentarily blurred vision refocused, what I saw was his foot closing in on me...

"Gu, puh...!?"

"Hyuhaha."

The tip of his toe dug into my solar plexus. My vision flickered, and my body was blown backward accompanied by agonizing pain and intense nausea.

"Got, you."

"Gyah!"

My fading consciousness was forcibly yanked back by the agonizing pain in the back of my head and the pressure on my chest. It seemed I had been stomped on while lying on my back, my movements completely pinned down.

"Hyu, hyu."

It seemed he was just as desperate as I was. His face was pale; had a lack-of-oxygen penalty triggered or something?

The right hand holding the knife I had tried to swing was shot through. But that was a bluff; discarding the Derringer, I called a beat-up Automatic Handgun (Desert Eagle)—one with a severely low usable count but unparalleled firepower—to my hand and thrust it right at him.

"Die."

"Ie."

Because he was distracted by my right hand, my muzzle—readied a step behind—and his muzzle were thrust in each other's faces at almost the exact same time.

Putting strength into the fingers resting on the triggers, seeing that strength being put in. Smiling at each other, feeling joy in killing, finding enjoyment in being killed, as if to savor this very moment──────

And right there, everything snapped to pitch black.

Now then, which one of us won again............

Author's Afterword
Because it's a game.