Chapter 706: The Rabble's Ranks May Be Disorganized, But They Stand Strong
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For the man, the act of standing out was an occurrence far more important than wealth or honor. No, strictly speaking, wealth and honor were merely means to stand out.
From his kindergarten days until he reached middle school, he had never once lost a footrace.
In the summer of his first year of middle school, when he was finally outpaced by a friend who would later be known as the fastest in their hometown, he completely threw away his passion for running. Because he realized he could no longer stand out.
He reached his current place in streaming after becoming a university student.
Even if he acts out to draw negative attention, it still constitutes standing out well. In games, both clowns and thugs can equally become stars. With his lack of natural talent, this is the only place where he can satisfy the desire for self-display he has carried since childhood.
The gazes of third parties anchor him in place. Whenever he looks in the mirror, he feels somewhat vague and undefined, but the thousands, tens of thousands of gazes alone solidify the man known as Tsumabuki Shun into the concrete shape of "Payabusa."
───When he shared a story to that effect with his friend and partner, he was, understandably, completely weirded out.
"That's because you actually have something to be proud of, Reizei......"
While looking at his partner's stream video next to where he was operating the video editing tool, Tsumabuki...... Payabusa muttered quietly. Naturally, since he was inside his own personal Cyber Space, those words would never reach anyone else.
As he lightly dragged the console, one of the flowing videos began to play. It displayed a man with a bizarre head sprinting through a collapsing world. However, Payabusa's eyes weren't exactly looking at the person in the video.
Or perhaps, his gaze held a much more childish gleam—the desire to be in that very position himself.
"Nice...... Very nice, ShanFro. Just how much can I stand out in there?"
Both its realism and quality were on an entirely different level, strongly captivating the eyes of the masses. If that were the case, what if he stood upon all of that as his stage?
"You're the best, Shangri-La Frontier...... I shouldn't have prioritized sponsorships and neglected you."
He didn't need to be the strongest, nor the fastest...... He just wanted to stand out the most.
Dreaming like that naturally poured energy into his video editing.
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If you're going to die, fall forward. That is the life philosophy of Serizawa Suzuka.
It wasn't that she particularly wanted a life like a Sengoku-era warlord. It was simply what happened when Suzuka's thought process was put into words.
She hates being satisfied. She hates putting a finished game away on a shelf. Above all else, she hates the sense of accomplishment.
The thrill when challenging something, the chills running down her spine in the shadow of a setback when facing hardship, the bracing of her spirit when taking a short rest before booting the game up again. Suzuka's heart always wants to remain a challenger; what she wants to see isn't the view from the summit of the mountain, but the road continuing upward as she looks toward the peak.
That's why, even though game streaming was genuinely fun, she found herself equally dissatisfied with it.
"Shangri-La Frontier is amazing, isn't it?"
She wants to play a game she can't clear until she dies—that is the modest wish of Serizawa Suzuka...... the All-Night Knight Karintou. It was precisely because she knew it was an impossible wish that she had stayed away from Shangri-La Frontier. She felt that because she knew it was an incredible game, the sense of emptiness when it finally ended would be greater than anything she had ever experienced.
But she was wrong.
The walkthrough information, brought to light day and night by the hands of players who love lore and theory-crafting, is still nowhere close to revealing the full picture even now, as the game nears its second year.
Before long, reading walkthrough sites became Karintou's secret hobby, and her days were spent being captivated by the sheer vastness of the world of Shangri-La Frontier.
Just when she was thinking she couldn't hold back anymore, the invitation from the PayaGaru Channel arrived...... There was no longer any reason to refuse.
Karintou, having started a twenty-four-hour endurance stream, quietly muttered in the brief window before her Meteor Iron Mirror connected reality and the virtual world.
"I really want to enjoy Shangri-La Frontier."
Hopefully, forever!!
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Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, skipping a few to Golf, and Hotel—a total of eight people. That is the roster of the GUN! GUN! Mercenary Corps.
People who love FPS games met through an FPS game and stream FPS games together...... In other words, every single one of them is part of a breed that loves FPS from the top of their heads to the tips of their toes.
Unsurprisingly, those guys were playing an FPS game today as well.
"This is Bravo. Echo, one party in the building over there. No snipers."
"Roger, Echo throwing a nade〜."
『This is Golf, I'm gonna take some harassment shots at the party further past that building. Requesting timing.』
『This is Alpha, observing from the flank...... Standing by the window, now.』
Taaang! A crisp sound rang out. The bullet fired from the roof of the abandoned building tore through the sky and struck an enemy far in the distance. At the same time, the thrown grenade exploded, sending the two enemy groups into a panicked frenzy.
The GUN! GUN! Mercenary Corps hid themselves without pursuing any further and observed the situation. From the perspective of the other group, the only information they had was that they "got sniped from above." Therefore, judging the people scrambling frantically in the building they looked up at to be the culprits, they turned their muzzles toward the group that had just been framed.
『This is Alpha, nicely done.』
"This is Echo, thanks, thanks...... So, what's next?"
『This is Delta, commencing drone bombardment. Alpha, group up with Bravo's team and attack from two directions to whittle them down. Snipers, support the ones holed up in the building while shifting positions as needed.』
""Roger.""
The eight soldiers split into two groups, yet functioned as a single tactical unit, systematically hunting down the remaining enemies.
It was plainly obvious who held the initiative, and it wouldn't take long for the match to be decided.
......
............
"Hmm...... It's still not quite enough, huh."
"Especially when you think about the fact that we can play FPS in ShanFro."
While choosing to rematch without hesitation, they chatted in the lobby.
The members of the Mercenary Corps love FPS. To the point where, even in their youth, they held the absolute conviction that they would still be reaching for FPS games even when they became old men, as long as the genre existed.
That's exactly why they had one single complaint about FPS games.
"Well, it's not like you can do a street-survival game in real life, so I get why we're all fired up."
"Our viewer count is surging too. FPS is a team game, so it doesn't get as hype as fighting games. It'd be great if the player base keeps growing at this rate."
"Aiming to be the next Sylvia Goldberg? Or maybe Uomi Kei?"
"We can barely win against pros as it is, aiming for top-tier pro gamers like them is stretching it way too far."
"Then how about someone around Kaisaki-san's level?"
"Stop treating him like a compromise, that's rude."
FPS is, in essence, a game about shooting guns at each other.
That means it is a world that exists purely for the sake of shooting guns.
Any gamer must have thought about it at least once. For example, what if a massive horde of zombies came to school? What if terrorists invaded? What if you could use magic in real life?
Or, what if there was a shootout right in the middle of the city?
Their "goal" was to play FPS in a place that wasn't designed for FPS. They wanted to fight on a battlefield where the very act of pulling out a gun felt wrong. They didn't want to fight around the standard "Non-Combatants" placed purely for FPS flavor, but rather dive into a crowd of actual non-combatants and fight.
That's why when they heard guns were unlocked in ShanFro, they couldn't help but high-five each other. And to top it off, a massive-scale PvP event was happening...... It was harder to find a reason not to go.
"Think there'll be urban combat?"
"Of course there will be. If the royal capital and a massive city are going at it, one of them is bound to get cornered."
"Well, we still haven't actually gotten any guns yet, though!!"
"I wanna smell the scent of gunpowder in ShanFro too, you know!?"
"ShanFro guns probably run on magic or something, right?"
They placed no importance on which faction they joined, nor did they care what would happen if their faction won......... Because they were a mercenary corps, and the shape of justice changed depending on the game they were playing. They had no interest in shooting the defenseless, but at the end of the day, as long as they could pull the trigger and their bullets hit the "enemy," that was enough for them.
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Lighting a cigarette, he took a drag.
For this man, this was the routine he used to suppress his excitement.
"Fuuuuuーーーー………… Man, this really brings back memories of my student days."
It wasn't gambling, nor was it his primary profession. A burning, drowning sense of impatience and expectation, like waiting for a grand feast. It brought back memories of a "youth" that he rarely got to experience nowadays.
For the man, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
It was too far to reach, and even if he tried to catch up, his legs didn't have the strength to climb that high. In that case, all he could do was entrust his wishes to someone else...... And he was also confident that his judgment wasn't wrong.
"If anything, the Thirdrema side is closer to 'justice,' so they'll almost certainly side with them."
The smoldering smoke vanished into the sky. The man's house had a yard large enough that the smoke dissipated long before it could reach his neighbors, so he didn't need to worry about being a nuisance.
"Now then...... I wonder if Kei-kun will read my love letter?"
As if waiting for a wish upon a shooting star to come true, the pro gamer Kaisaki Hayate looked up at the sky and smiled faintly───
"Hottt!?"
And then, having dragged on the cigarette so long that even the filter between his fingers caught fire, his scream echoed into the night sky.
Author's Afterword
Payabusa: I want to stand out!!!!!
Karintou: I want to play to the fullest until I die.
Mercenary Corps: FPS! FPS!
Kaisaki: Love you.
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