Hold over Myriad of Worlds

Sitting back in my seat, I looked at Sinon sitting next to me and Shupigeru on the opposite side.

~"Just ask what you want to ask, don't make the atmosphere awkward."

-"You..."-Shinon was unsure how to start, but in the end, she spoke what was on her mind.-"Why didn't you tell me?"

~"Identity can be a burden. For both one possessing it and one who interacts with them."~I said with a smile.~"I believe that the greatest point of virtual reality is the possibility of getting rid of those walls built in reality and just being yourself, or at least being what you wish was yourself."

-"..."-Shinon looked at me, surprised.

~"I believe you wouldn't act as relaxed next to me knowing who I was, and I also think that you wouldn't want to tell all about yourself to a person you had met not that long ago."

-"That... You are right, sorry."

~"I don't mind. I also apologize for keeping you in the dark."

-"You are that Yue, right? The Emperor who solved SAO? Is it true that you are married to both great stars, Eden and Elysia?"-Shupigeru asked like an avid fan would, but the malice concealed in the last question, along with a quick glance at Shinon, made his acting fall flat.

~"I'm him, though I advise not to read too many gossips, nor make your opinions based on them."

-"I actually also wanted to know something. What made you take part in BoB? I believe you don't need any more popularity, not to mention a cash prize."-Shinon returned to her previous self and talked to me like she would before.

~"Let's just say that I was asked to compete."

-"Huh?"

~"Don't worry, you'll most likely know by the end of the competition."~I looked at the screen showing upcoming matches, and seeing that Shinon was to compete next, I wished her good luck.~"It's your turn to fight now, have fun."

-"Thanks. I can't show anything shameful after your fight."

The preliminaries continued without much suspense. Most of my opponents were resolved the moment they entered either my or my drone's vision, only one or two managing to fire at me. A few hours later, I entered the main tournament as one of the favourites for the win.

As the battle royale will begin only tomorrow, I returned to the real world and met with others working with me. Taking the AmuSphere from my head, I spoke to Fuxi and Nuwa, who were nearby.

~"I'm back. Any movement?"

-"As you predicted, at least five different IPs tried to hack into either GGO servers or AmuSphere login data servers to find your location."-Nuwa handed me logs of the intruders.

-"We traced them back, all but one came from the US, and at least three had been linked to the CIA."-Added Fuxi.

~"As expected. I hope they have good, clean gloves on."

-"Aside from that, the main point was that only IP that came from outside the US, Japan to be exact, was positively identified to belong to a SAO survivor, a Laughing Coffin member XaXa to be exact."

~"Good, with a direct link, we can make the investigation more aggressive. Contact Mei and send her all the information. Also, have Fu Hua watch over one player during tomorrow's competition."

-"That Shinon girl?"

~"Yes. My intuition tells me that she is inadvertently linked to the situation at hand."

-"How can a normal tenahe Japanese girl be connected to what is effectively the US's mafia?"

~"Check her friend, Shupigeru. Something is off with him."

-"Sure."

-"Yue, Mei wants to speak with you."-Fuxi handed me headphones she was just wearing.

-"Yue."-Mei's voice sounded from the headset as her face appeared on the screen.

~"Mei, how are things on your side?"

-"We have made some progress, though there are both good and bad results."

~"I'm all ears."

-"First, we have found a list of 'agents' or rather a mob that was employed to steal Rath's data. Through them, they gathered some SAO survivors with the promise of absolution, revenge, and, of course, money."

~"A list just lying around?"

-"That's the first bad news. Most likely they were discarded, or are just a smoke screen."

~"The lives of a few criminals are nothing for our technology."

-"Indeed. As we began to dig deeper, we found some pieces of information that pointed to Omnica Corporation being involved in all of this."

~"Oh? Finally taken the bait?"

-"Not fully. This is the other bad news. Only the radicals had entered our trap. I can't find any solid link to the other members of Omnica Corporation."

~"Even so, it's enough for our goals."

-"I think so too. So, am I to start closing the net?"

~"Wait until we crack down on the 'agents' so that they believe their missdirection worked."

-"Sure, I already have the 'stolen data' prepared for them."

~"Good, if they start using that, then their robots will advance by at least 50 years in less than a decade, and with that, the stage will be set."

-"Leave the rest to me."-Said Mei before disconnecting the call.

After returning the headphones to Fuxi, I stood up and went to the window that overlooked the city below. As I watched people busy with their lives, I was approached by Felis, who was previously lying on the nearby couch.

-"What are you looking at, Yue?"

~"Just clearing my mind a little."

-"Ohh..."

~"..."

-"..."

~"Don't just be silent here, what's matter?"

-"I should be asking that!"-Felis looked at me, annoyed.-"We should be on vacation, having fun. But you are nonstop working or daydreaming! Hmpf!"

~"This..."

-"You worry about Miss Artoria?"

~"Even you can see that, huh?"

-"Hey!"

~"Sorry. Indeed, I'm concerned about the situation that happened to her and for Nobu's world overall. What happened there is nothing less than an apocalypse in a certain sense. If not for the time being practically stopping when I'm here, I would rush there the moment I was alerted by da Vinci a few hours before we traveled here."

-"Nobunaga is already taking care of the situation there, you don't have to worry about anything bad happening.~"

~"Even so..."

-"Don't think about that. Let's have fun for some time, and when you're relaxed, we can go back. Cheer up!"-Felis pats my back, trying to cheer me up.

~"Thanks."

-"We're friends, aren't we? There is no need for thanks between us."

~"Right."~I smiled at Felis.

-"Just pay me extra when you visit my shop!"

I rolled my eyes and looked outside once again. She was right that aimlessly thinking about an issue I didn't have much information about was useless, but worry still remains.

The next morning, I quickly entered GGO, and soon, I was teleported to the stage of the main contest of BoB. The place I 'landed' was the desert found on the northern part of the map, but I was close enough to the center city that I would be able to reach it before the first scan.

Not wasting time, I immediately departed, launching three drones from my inventory on my way. I left one to hover directly over me while invisible to detect any approaching opponent, while the other two flew forward to scout the city. My idea was to find and secure three buildings in the vicinity of each other, turning them into my domain full of traps while using their high points as sniping nests.

I entered the city with a little over six minutes before the scan, and so I had already found a good location. I moved there and started laying traps, decoys, and even hidden zip lines to travel smoothly between the buildings. I used my cloak to shield myself from the first scan, but I used one decoy to show on the map a few hundred meters from my actual location.

From time to time, shots would sound around, and by the time I set everything up just for the second scan, out of thirty participants, seven were eliminated. From curiosity, I checked Shinon's location during the second scan, but seeing that she was far away on the southern side of the map, I focused on the players in the city.

There were eight other players present in the city, and two of them were close to each other, and as there were no sounds of shots, I assumed they were cooperating. And so, I decided to target them first, as they posed the highest danger due to their alliance.

Sending one of my drones to follow them, I positioned the other two around the remaining two buildings where I set my traps. Luckily for me, the enemy duo was about to cross a street I had a clear view of, so I prepared my shot and waited for their move.

Watching the drone's feed, I saw as they approached the street and stopped to look for any ambushes. As I once again hid myself from scan, they had no possibility of knowing my approximate location, so despite being quite careful, they weren't careful enough.

As soon as one of them poked his head out of the corner, his eyes met my bullet right in front of him. Before he could comprehend what happened, a sound of two shots echoed around, and his head and chest exploded. One down, one to go.

As his friend was still behind the corner, I watched on the drone feed how he retreated further away, most likely contemplating whether to run or try to fight. Sadly for him, he won't have a chance to decide, as under the cover of my gunshots, I had my drone drop a grenade at the place he had just backed off to. As he was still disoriented, he missed it entirely, and a second later, he was torn to shreds.

Confirming two eliminations, I quickly backed off from my spot and moved to another building, one with a good outlook on my previous position, knowing that sounds of anything close to a sniper rifle will make anyone rush to eliminate the shooter. In three minutes, I have changed my position and remotely armed traps set in my previous spot.

And soon, a loud explosion sounded, but due to the confined space, I'm unable to confirm if anyone was caught up in the blast. I monitored that building for a little longer, but seeing no one entering or exiting, I simply let a drone hover over it while I formulated my next plan of action.

There were still more than ten minutes until the next scan, so waiting around was too wasteful. None of my drones had spotted anyone recently, and so, I decided to change my strategy slightly. Binding both smoke and a special noise grenade that simulated rifle fire, I sent it toward the third tower, which I had rigged full of traps.

As it was flying, I placed small pieces of plastic explosive around my sniper nest. Two minutes later, everything was set up, and so I aimed where my drone was and shot a few shots while my drone had set off the smoke grenade. A few seconds later, I had it use the second grenade, while I detonated the explosives around my window, smiting those places being hit by inaccurate counterfire. I also sprang at that moment, running in a way that was easily noticeable from below.

When I entered deeper into the building, I saw on my drones floating around that three different players fell for my little play, one ran after my drone, two toward me. While controlling my drone to make some slight noise to lure that player into traps, I hid in a previously prepared blind spot, while detonating EMP charges set around my building.

Those grenades are somewhat unpopular, though I find them highly practical due to their certain capability: disabling any electronic equipment of a player. From a simple electronic red dot on their rifles, to even advanced aim assists in helmets. Everything goes off, including the shields against light-based ammunition.

This is where my second secret weapon, created by Vill-V, comes into play, and the original Optic Bow. Compared to hot weapons, it had only one advantage: untraceability. Without even mentioning live-amunition weapons, even optic guns were loud enough to be easily heard from tens of meters away, but this bow was perfectly silent, and the arrows were almost invisible in flight.

Taking it into my hand, I waited as a hushed cursing, along with rapid footsteps, could be heard from the outside. The foul-mouthed player burst into the room, and after quickly looking around, he walked forward to secure the location and repair his equipment. At this moment, I drew the bow's string, and after a pale blue arrow formed, I let it go at the enemy. Without him knowing what had happened, my arrow lodged into the back of his head, eliminating him on the spot.

As this assassination was occurring, my drone successfully led the lone player into one of the traps, but sadly, he still survived the explosion, though his legs were crippled. This effectively meant he was out of the picture, so I ignored him for now. If he won't surrender before I deal with the last player, I will return to finish him then.

The last player was still unaware of what had happened, but hearing the explosion now and before, he was careful not to step into mine himself. Because of that, I had a slight issue locating him, but as he wasn't used to sneaking around, he finally made a loud enough noise for me to find him.

I moved to the adjacent corridor and made one of my drones fly next to the window of the room where that player hid. Somewhat surprisingly, my target this time was one of three female players taking part in the tournament, though that won't give her any advantage.

As entering the room would put me at a disadvantage, I moved to the other side of the wall she was sitting on and placed plastic explosives in a way that, by exploding, would create a hole big enough to let me throw a grenade in. Pulling the pin out, I timed the explosions so that after the hole was created, the grenade would explode just behind the wall. And so, moments later, two consecutive blasts sounded, demolishing the wall and the player with it while covering me with dust.

With both targets dealt, I looked at the drone feed showing the crippled player, but to my surprise, not only was he dead, but the player responsible was still in the vicinity, as I heard muffled shots from the screen. Sending my drone to look around, I ran toward that place, but as I was about to exit the building, I stopped because my drone spotted something unexpected.

Lying hidden behind one of the cars, with one leg crippled because of a shot, was Shinon. And slowly approaching her was the person I was sent to find and unmask, Death Gun.