Chapter 557: A Nostalgic Old Friend Seen Through a Swallow's Ideals
Author's Preface
To all the brilliant duelists reading this novel, you naturally voted for Shaddoll in the Structure Deck poll, right?? You'd better have???[*1]
Tsubame Kazaya is absolutely convinced that he possesses an exceedingly decent human nature.
At the very least, while he might occasionally get the impulsive urge to shoot someone in real life, his sense of reason keeps him strictly compliant with morals and rules. Furthermore, thanks to the bizarre connections forged in Saba-Gan, the company he inherited from his father is currently experiencing unprecedented hype. Just recently, he gifted his father a trip around the world as an act of filial piety, and thanks to that, the development of Scrap Gunman proceeded with extreme comfort.
"How's the turnout?"
"Ah, President! Look at this, it's a huge success!"
"Nice. Where should we go for next year's company trip?"
"You're getting way ahead of yourself〜... Personally, I'd say Macau."
"...How much did you lose in Vegas last time again?"
"One million yen."
He felt a sense of unease at his subordinate's excessively instantaneous gambling habit. See? Decent human nature.
...Kazaya conveniently ignores the fact that, at the very least, truly decent people don't constantly verify their own normalcy.
Scrap Gunman is a masterpiece poured with all the never-fading feelings of nostalgia and reminiscence smoldering inside Kazaya. Covering all the firearms that appeared in Survival Gunman, and receiving full backup from Utopia Corp's "Supporters," it faithfully recreates every sensation of firing, reloading, and handling that Kazaya remembers. Combined with the new AR controllers, pre-order calls are already flooding in.
Or perhaps it's an investment in Swallows Nest itself, seeing as they managed to strike a deal with Utopia Corp—a company that constantly runs at the very forefront of high technology and rarely interacts with other enterprises... But even as a second-generation president, he inherited his father's keen nose for sniffing out business opportunities.
"Now then, I wonder if anyone will manage a clear?"
A few of the premium ticket holders who entered early had challenged Scrap Gunman, but so far, not a single one had cleared it.
Part of that is simply because the difficulty is set rather high, but more than anything...
"Right now it's... yeah, a high school couple, maybe?"
"They're amazing, they're already completely used to the system. They haven't dropped a single stock yet."
"Heh."
In this demo play, while the difficulty is raised, the players themselves operate on a stock/lives system. Therefore, it was a consideration meant to let them fully enjoy Kazaya's ideal difficulty without the game ending instantly... But sure enough, the two currently playing had taken some damage, but there was no sign of their stocks decreasing.
The difficulty this time is set to what will be "Hard" in the retail version. Meaning, Kazaya actually held back quite a bit. Unlike the "Survivor" difficulty—which he tuned with absolute seriousness to a level impossible to clear unless you were a veteran of the Greek-letter servers—Hard is a difficulty that even athletically gifted employees who are used to Scrap Gunman can clear.
However, the two currently playing were incredibly contrasting.
"Is the girl doing some kind of sport? Her movements are smooth."
"You can tell?"
"I've overseen testers with experience in soccer, track and field, and even Muay Thai as a rare case, haven't I?"
"...I still haven't forgiven you for loudly praising me to the point my nickname became 'Muay Thai' for a while, you know."
"With the Las Vegas incident, isn't your current nickname 'All-In'?"
Perhaps they were dividing roles, but the girl intercepting the trash Scrads had completely seamless movements overall. She was likely practicing martial arts or something similar, because the act of connecting every single motion into a single fluid line isn't something you naturally pick up in daily life. And even if she had cultivated that sense in VR or something, it's hard to imagine maintaining a physical condition capable of answering those reflexes in real life without actual experience.
"Then what about the boyfriend over there?"
"That's........."
It wasn't that he didn't understand; it was that the boy was the exact opposite type from the girl, who was presumably his girlfriend. That is, he was connecting the dots using empirical rules accumulated from clearing countless games: "They'll probably place an enemy right here at this timing."
At the very least, in the law-abiding country of Japan, it's extremely difficult for a normal citizen to become intimately familiar with firearms. But inside VR games, those restrictions are vastly lifted. That young man is probably a seasoned veteran of zombie panics or FPS games. His timing for reloading and upgrading was exceptionally brilliant.
"Is something wrong?"
"No, just a bit curious........."
But that wasn't all.
Survival Gunman... Scrap Gunman, which faithfully recreated the providence of that isolated island as much as possible, had intentional quirks baked into the recoil and bullet trajectories of its firearms. Simply put, while a bullet might look like it's flying straight, a random deviation measured in millimeters is secretly applied to the aim. Furthermore, partly due to the nature of AR games, the range of the guns is short, and as petty revenge for not being able to implement muskets, the upgrade scaling for assault rifles is slightly nerfed.
Scrap Gunman, fully supervised by Kazaya......... Strictly speaking, the optimal solution for the first stage playable in this demo is to push through using the default pistol and the special "Slug" bullets, under the absolute prerequisite that you never miss a single reload or upgrade timing.
However, Saba-Gan quality wouldn't let things end there. In this demo play, there is a slight "trap" designed to exploit player psychology. He wondered if they would realize it in time......... and then,
"!"
"W-Wow, he's amazing, he already noticed it."
That is true, yet it is not.
Because this game relies on gun controllers and the suction-scavenging action, it's easy to forget, but naturally, physical actions like punches and kicks can also serve as attacks. Whether you realize this or not vastly changes the difficulty......... However, that wasn't what caused Kazaya to marvel.
Scrap Gunman is a message released to the narrow yet wide Japan by the man who once called himself Atobird.
A message stating that even though they can no longer meet on that isolated island, it wasn't the end. The winds of that isolated island are certainly still blowing even now──────
He says all these grand things, but to summarize: it's a Saba-Gan Veteran Detector.
It's not like he wants to expose the real lives of the guys who killed each other on that island or anything; the fundamental foundation of Scrap Gunman's creation is driven by the highly personal motive of wanting to smirk at play videos and say, "Ah, this guy played it."
"Seriously, is a massive catch like this even possible?"
"President?"
"Hahaha, look at that, Tama-san. You don't see someone who can pull off point-blank shots on such a tightrope every day."
He knows. Both the former Tsubame Kazaya and the current Tsubame Kazaya know.
Where did the polite playstyle from earlier go? Right now, he was stepping on a Scrad clinging to the bed of the AR-reproduced armored vehicle, punching it away, and twisting his muzzle straight into the gaps of its armor to fire... AR is a type of reality too. The sight of him fighting against the highly detailed Scrads with zero hesitation shook Kazaya's memories to the core.
A small figure diving into point-blank range without a shred of hesitation, whether the opponent was human or a giant beast. Even Atobird, a veteran who conquered every firearm category on the γ (Gamma) Server, couldn't help but think, "With someone like that around, no wonder the μ Server turned out like that." A silent assassin driving wedges of instant death into the gaps of human consciousness—the little girl who plunged the μ Server's island into a vortex of horror games.
"Eh, could they be an acquaintance of yours?"
"I wonder. It's our first time meeting in real life, after all."
"...Depending on the situation, that's a police matter. Please don't cause any problems until you pay out our bonuses."[*2]
Inside the special booth, the smile forming on the young man's lips—the only part not covered by his goggles—perfectly matched the blood-soaked little girl still burned into Kazaya's memory to this day.
Author's Afterword
By the way, there aren't many criminals among Saba-Gan veterans, because killing and being killed became so normalized that they reached a pitch-black enlightenment of "Doing this IRL is just... nah."
And there are many who use that crazy Saba-Gan experience in their current jobs.
Like a manga artist who writes overly realistic Battle Royale stories, a police officer whose efficiency at suppressing knife-wielding thugs is way too good, or a self-proclaimed martial artist who beat an illegally doped boxer to an absolute pulp.
Translator's Notes
- [1] Structure Deck Poll / Shaddoll: A reference to the 2019 Yu-Gi-Oh! OCG Structure Deck Theme Poll, where the Shaddoll theme won first place, leading to the creation of the "Rebirth of Shaddoll" deck.
- [2] Police Matter: The term used here (事案 - Ji'an) is often used in Japanese internet slang to refer to a suspicious incident or a potential crime in progress, particularly referencing a suspicious adult expressing intense interest in a minor (alluding to Sunraku's μ-skY avatar, which was a little girl).
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