Jormungandr bullet, Cold Grenade, Frost Missile, Jormungandr bullet, Vortex Shield, Jormungandr bullet.
That was the most damaging combo sequence I knew. Six full attacks, in four seconds.
I didn't even need the last few hits. Halfway through the sequence, Alice's HP had already fallen to zero. But I kept firing.
Her bloodied body went limp. Wounds riddled her chest. She dropped her sword into the void. I screamed and kept firing, even after I had finished the sequence. Even after I knew I had won.
「Green team has slain an enemy,」she told me. That was when I stopped. I heard her words not from a disembodied voice from the sky. Those were the struggling, raspy words of a dying girl.
Her body grew translucent. Pieces of her drifted away and dissolved into motes of light. The mastermind behind these games, finally at her end. After all that she had given, after all that she had taken, it was me who killed her. I looked her in the eyes. The light had left them, and she did not look back.
"What last words do you have?" I asked, my voice shallow and trembling. My whole body was shaking.
「You played well, Sophia.」
...Was that all? After everything she had done, after everything we all had been through, did she have nothing to tell me besides that?
What remained of her faded away into nothingness.
The void began to emit a high-pitched hum. A blue light lit the darkness all around.
I blinked. When I looked around after the light faded away, Hei and Doublerift were by my side.
The night sky hung overhead, aglow with the flames of destruction. The fallen city of Platinum surrounded us. We were back.
The battle was over.
"What happened? Where's Alice?" Doublerift was the first to speak among us.
I collected myself. I was still shaking, and I felt lightheaded.
"I think I killed her," I said.
As soon as I spoke those words, an invisible force lifted me off the ground, then flung me sideways. The world blurred and spun as I was tossed against my will through the air. I fell into something hard. When I regained my senses, I realized I had crashed into the base of a skyscraper. The brick wall behind me cracked from the impact. The pain and nausea began to register.
When I looked up, I saw Dionysus staring down at me. Rage twisted his face into a monstrous form.
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I conjured a Cold Grenade to defend myself, and took aim. But he pointed a finger at me. Every fiber of muscle in me went limp. Jormungandr fell from my hands, and the blue bead that was my Cold Grenade rolled out of the barrel harmlessly. No strength remained in me, not even for my heart to beat.
Countless shafts of light, pointed and barbed, filled the air around us. Their tips were all converged upon me. They pulsated in every color imaginable. Something was horribly wrong about them. I wanted to close my eyes. I wanted to look away. But I couldn't move. And each moment I spent looking at them, I grew sadder for the man in front of me. If my death would ease his grief, I supposed I deserved it.
A flash of steel cut through my vision. It came from behind Dionysus, a horizontal slash that crossed his neck.
With my blurred vision, I saw Sylvie, the Knight of Anomalies. She stood behind Dionysus, drenched in blood, her sword outstretched.
"...You're still alive," Dionysus gasped.
"That makes one of us," she said.
The shafts of light around me shattered and disappeared. Strength returned to my body, and my heart began to beat again. I coughed, choking on air.
Dionysus' head tilted sideways for a moment, before falling off his neck. Then and there, he died.
I grabbed Jormungandr, and aimed it at Sylvie. She had no right to just kill him with an attack from behind –
"Snap out of it," she told me. "His light arrows brainwashed you."
Before I could reply, Doublerift knocked the gun out of my unsteady grasp.
Hei came running to me too. He put an arm behind me, and I allowed myself to sink into it limply.
"Give her a couple seconds and she'll be back to normal," Sylvie said.
I inhaled and exhaled, and took time to collect myself. It was as she said. I think my mind was my own again.
Doublerift and Sylvie looked at each other.
"You survived," Doublerift said.
"Barely. Dionysus got my HP down to single digits, so I had to get rid of my HP bar."
And that was when I noticed, Sylvie didn't have an HP bar anymore. She was the only one among us without one. I had no idea how her abilities worked. They didn't call her the Knight of Anomalies for nothing, I supposed.
The survivors of the city emerged from the surrounding wreckage. They flocked towards us, uncertain and cautious. Many had been wounded.
"It is over," Doublerift told them. "Alice is dead. The games are over. From now on, you are free."
Among the survivors, I spotted familiar faces. There were several members of the Liberation's Call Syndicate that Doublerift ruled over. Kevin the Skull Knight was there. In his arms he carried a limp, fading body. It belonged to Dr. Arseniev. Doublerift approached them.
"He's gone, boss," Kevin told Doublerift.
"You did well," Doublerift said.
Dr. Arseniev did not respond. A moment later, he dissolved into motes of light.
"And I'm not boss anymore," Doublerift told Kevin.
As more and more players gathered around us, the distant sound of a train horn filled the air. Without much thought to it, we all followed in its direction.
A couple blocks away, we found a train. It was a red train, modern and sleek and unblemished. It stretched for several cabins long along the shattered road, without a track. Its engine was running. Its doors were open. Bright white lighting lit the inside of the train, and rows after rows of seats lined its two sides, with an aisle down the middle.
I had seen it before, in the memories of Alice and 6E12.
The train was the final rank, Diamond. It was that train that would take us home.
Doublerift approached the door of the train. He turned around and looked at the assembled crowd. He looked at us, at Hei and me.
"Congratulations," he said. "You have survived the death game."