Sword Art Online Light Novel Volume 06

Phantom Bullet (ファントム・バレット) Part 2 is the 6th book in the Sword Art Online Light Novel series, published on December 10, 2010.

Summary
Kirito entered the finals of the Bullet of Bullets (BoB) tournament to find the truth about the mysterious Death Gun. Assisted by the sniper Sinon, he fought for his life and others to stop a mysterious but lethal force.

Chapter 7
Kirigaya Kazuto was eating his lunch when his sister Suguha began interrogating him about a new competitor on the Bullet of Bullets competition named Kirito. With clever maneuvering, she caught Kazuto in his lies and told him that she knew that he converted his ALfheim Online (ALO) account into Gun Gale Online (GGO). She then confessed her worries about Kirito going away, but Kazuto reassured her he would come back. Kazuto was unable to tell Suguha about his real reason for converting to GGO - he had some unfinished work to be done, especially since he had met a survivor from the Player Killing (PK) guild Laughing Coffin from Sword Art Online (SAO). Kazuto headed over to the hospital where he first woke up after clearing SAO, where Nurse Aki was waiting for his arrival. When she saw he was in distress and offered counsel, Kazuto confessed to her he had killed people in SAO and that he felt guilt over it, but Nurse Aki assured him that, sometimes, a minority had to be sacrificed to save the majority, the fact he felt remorse over the matter meant he still remembered what he did, he did the right thing in protecting others, and he had a right to consider the people he saved.

Chapter 8
Asada Shino was hanging out with Shinkawa Kyouji as she angrily reminisced about the preliminaries the day before. Kirito, an absolute amateur to GGO, had surprisingly made it to the finals, and to top that, had actually beaten her. Shino was irritated by everything that Kirito had done: his mannerisms, the fact that he pretended to be a girl, his overwhelming ability in game, and his explanation to her of his preference to not hit a girl. Kyouji remarked how she was uncharacteristically focused on someone else and offered his help in retribution, but Shino, who nevertheless admired Kirito's style and skills, declined and vowed to defeat him in a fair fight. To her surprise, she found herself imitating a gun with her hand, when such an action would normally have triggered a panic attack. After she quickly desisted the action, Kyouji grabbed her and expressed his admiration of her strength, both in the real world and in GGO, and that he wanted her. Shino responded by saying that she did not have that sort of feelings for him, but that if he was willing to wait for her, she might one day accept. Later, Kyouji met up with Sinon in-game as his avatar Spiegel and confirmed her promise that she would wait for him. After he left, to her irritation Sinon heard Kirito calling her from behind.

Chapter 9
Kirito recollected his memories of the previous day; «Laughing Coffin», «Death Gun», Sinon, Bullet of Bullets, 30 finalists, and finally, fear. He saw Sinon and asked her to guide him through the rules of the tournament. The map was ten kilometers in diameter, and every 15 minutes, a satellite probe was sent into the air to map the location of each contestant. The goal naturally was to be the last one standing. At Kirito's request, Sinon revealed three other new participants in the Bullet of Bullets: «Jūshi X», «Pale Rider», and «Sterben». After pondering on the names for a while, Kirito hinted to Sinon about his previous life in SAO and about the «Laughing Coffin» guild. As they headed off to the waiting dome to prepare for the arena, Kirito promised Sinon that he would stay alive until she could kill him.

Chapter 10
Within the first 30 minutes, 8 players had been eliminated from the tournament. After defeating «Shishigane» as her second target and the ninth casualty, Sinon checked the «Satellite Scan Terminal» to find «Pale Rider» chasing «Dyne». As they were closer to her position than «Lion King Richie» and since the latter was in a highly defensible position, she decided to move after the former two. When she had reached the bridge over the river dividing the area, she settled down to a sniping position, and as Dyne made his way to the end of the bridge and moved into a prone position for Pale Rider, she prepared to eliminate her former squadron leader. However, Kirito snuck up on her while she was distracted, but instead of killing her, he requested her to wait and watch what happened, to which she grudgingly agreed.

When Pale Rider appeared on the far end of the bridge, Dyne opened fire, but the new player, lightly armored and with high strength and speed stats, dodged all the bullets and defeated Dyne. As Sinon turned her targeting sights towards him, Pale was suddenly hit by a Stun Bullet and immediately paralyzed. Shocked by the unexpected action, as they hadn't noticed any other enemies near the area, Kirito and Sinon began speculating on how anyone could have accomplished such a feat and how they managed to get close. Suddenly, «Death Gun» stepped out of the shadows and walked towards the immobilized player, carrying a «Accuracy International L115A3», also known as the «Silent Assassin». As the cloaked player switched out the sniper rifle for an ordinary handgun, pointed it at Pale Rider, and made the sign of the cross, Kirito urgently ordered Sinon to shoot the former. However, Death Gun managed to dodge the bullet and fired a single round into Pale Rider's body. As the status effect finally wore off, the latter leapt to his feet and aimed his «ArmaLite AR17» at the former, but suddenly collasped and convulsed before being forcibly disconnected from the system. After Death Gun pointed his handgun at the video cameras broadcasting the tournament for a while, he returned to the shadows and disappeared, both from sight and the Satelltie Scan.

Confused at how the cloaked player had managed to cheat his victory, Sinon was stunned when Kirito announced that Pale Rider had been killed both in-game and in real life, and that the rumors about Death Gun's power to kill players in the real world were true. As Kirito headed off to find and stop Death Gun, Sinon chased after him and reluctantly proposed a temporary alliance to chase after the murderer, to which Kirito also reluctantly agreed to. Immediately afterwards, they were ambushed by «Kakouton», and the duo focused their efforts on defeating him.

Chapter 11
Asuna, Klein, Lisbeth, Yui, Silica, and Leafa were spectating the game from Kirito and Asuna's rented room in Yggdrasil City in ALfheim Online. As the girls speculated about Kirito's true motivations for converting his account and why he hadn't appeared on the cameras yet, they witnessed Pale Rider's victory in his fight with Dyne as it was being streamed live, then his paralysis and disconnection by the apparent hands of a cloaked player who appeared out of nowhere. The new player, identifying himself and his weapon as Death Gun, made his proclamation of power in front of the cameras, ending his speech with the phrase «It's showtime», a catchphrase frequently used by the leader of Laughing Coffin, PoH. A shocked Klein immediately realised that the mysterious player was a former high-ranking player from the Laughing Coffin guild. After Silica explained the history of Laughing Coffin to Leafa, Asuna realized that the possible presence of a Laughing Coffin survivor in GGO was the reason behind Kirito's conversion, and immediately left ALO to contact Kikuoka Seijirou.

Chapter 12
After a brief inner rumination on the nature of stats and character builds in GGO, while Kirito effortlessly parried Kakouton's «Norinco CQ311» assault rifle barrage with his «Kagemitsu G4», Sinon noticed a longing to understand Kirito's strength that transcended the virtual and real worlds. After finishing Kakouton with a single shot from her «PGM Ultima Ratio Hecate II», Sinon hypothesized that Death Gun would be moving to the abandoned city north of their position.

When they reached the outskirts of the city ruins, having seen no trace of their target, they realized they still didn't know Death's Gun's actual character name. As they pondered over their remaining suspects, «Jūshi X» and «Sterben», Sinon theorized the former to be Death Gun, as both names had the character for death, reversing the pronunciation of one name would make it sound like the other, and the X vaguely resembled a cross. With no other suggestions, Sinon and Kirito decided to target Jūshi X first if both suspects were in the city. Checking the Satellite Scan, they found Jūshi X in a stadium but no sign of Sterben, seemingly confirming their suspicions. Kirito decided to rush directly into the stadium and draw Death Gun's fire while Sinon would provide cover and snipe their target.

However, as Sinon was heading into sniping position, all the while contemplating her fight with Kirito after they eliminated Death Gun, she suddenly was hit in the upper left arm by a stun bullet from her blind spot. Bewildered by what and how it happened, Death Gun suddenly appeared in her sights, revealing himself to have been wearing a «Metamaterial Optical Camouflage mantle», which explained how he was able to hide from the satellite probe. As Death Gun, now confirmed to be Sterben, walked up to Sinon's prone form and wondered aloud if the Kirito he was facing in GGO was the same Kirito from SAO, he switched out his Silent Assassin for his handgun and pointed it at the downed sniper, declaring that the real Kirito would be enraged by the death of a comrade. Sinon managed to pull out her «MP7 sub-machine gun» sidearm but froze when she noticed that Death Gun's handgun was a «Type 54 "Black Star"», the gun that she had used five years ago to kill the bank robber, triggering a panic attack. At the last moment, Kirito fired several shots from a sniper rifle to drive Sterben away, then threw a smoke grenade to create some cover before jumping in to carry Sinon's petrified avatar and equipment away.

After a few seconds of frantic running, Kirito hurriedly found a buggy and horse rental point and commandeered the only operational buggy. Driving a short distance from the rental point, as her paralysis finally wore off, Kirito ordered Sinon to destroy the only functional mechanic horse to prevent Death Gun from catching up with them. The sniper took aim with her Hecate, but to her shock, she found herself unable to squeeze the trigger. When Sterben appeared, Kirito held onto Sinon and raced the buggy away; to their surprise, Death Gun began chasing after them on the mechanic horse, expertly utilizing it without any of the difficulty other players experienced, even for those with horse-riding experience in the real world. While Sinon begged Kirito in terror to accelerate, Sterben, due to the lighter load in passengers the mechanical horse had, closed the distance between them and began firing at the pair with the Black Star. Sinon, completely overwhelmed with fear, was unable to respond to Kirito's pleas to snipe their pursuer, but when Kirito then suggested shooting Death Gun himself while she drove, her protective feelings of ownership and identity over her sniper rifle spurred her to attempt aiming again. As she was still unable to exert force on the trigger and the aim was too unsteady for an accurate shot, Kirito reached back and grabbed her hand before driving up a car as an impromptu ramp. Realizing that Kirito strength came from his attempts to do his best, to fight with his full ability despite his fear, Sinon managed to fire a single shot. She missed Sterben but hit the fuel tank of an oil tanker behind him, triggering a large explosion and destroying the horse.

After driving for some time into the northern desert, Kirito and Sinon encountered a cave where they could hide from the Satellite Scan and avoid Death Gun, as his camouflage cloak could not cover his footsteps or footprints in the sand. As Kirito began using a first-aid kit to recover his lost hit points, he regretfully told Sinon he saw Sterben abandoning his horse just before the explosion. He also explained his quick assistance to her aid when he had seen that Jūshi X, who preferred to pronounce her name as «Musketeer X», was a genuine female player. After quickly killing her, he had taken Musketeer X's «Mk 14 Enhanced Battle Rifle» and smoke grenade and rushed back towards Sinon, realizing that she was in trouble when he saw her lying on the street. Humiliated at how her rival was comforting her like a child over her momentary lack of alertness and how he said he could have suffered the same fate, she was confused when he announced his intention to fight Death Gun despite his fear, because now he had things to protect in the real and virtual worlds, and did not want to risk other players dying by letting Sterben win. Unwilling to continue living in fear, even desiring to die alone after the death she had caused five years ago, Sinon refused to remain behind. When Kirito protested and claimed part of him would die with her, Sinon snapped and demanded him to protect for the rest of her life, asked if he would really be willing to touch the hand of a murderer, and declared her hate for him, despite his attempts to console her.

After crying her tears dry, Sinon rested her head on Kirito's lap and confessed her role in the bank robbery incident five years before in the real world, and how she killed the robber with his own gun to protect herself and her mother causing her her fear of guns. She went on to explain how she was able to avoid that fear in her avatar persona, how Death Gun's appearance had relapsed her personality back to her real one, and how she could not run away without confronting him and her weakness. To her surprise, Kirito explained his own situation: how he and Sterben were SAO survivors, the raid on Laughing Coffin and the lives he was forced to take in that event, and the reason he was in GGO and why he had to defeat Death Gun. When Sinon inquired how he had managed to overcome the memories of the people he killed, Kirito clarified he had not overcome or truly forgotten them, but perhaps it was supposed to be that way; accepting the weight of his memories and actions was the least he could do to atone for them.

Kirito and Sinon began discussing Sterben's actions and motivations in GGO. As they wondered why Death Gun had switched to his sniper rifle instead of his handgun against Kirito back at the stadium, the reason behind making the sign of the cross before shooting, and why he did not use the handgun on Dyne back at the bridge, Kirito asked Sinon for details on any possible connections between the victims. After Sinon elaborated on the tournament prize system and how it offered rewards in the real world, Kirito deduced the secret behind Death Gun. There had to be two people behind the killings; one attacked the target in-game at the same time the other killed the character in the real world, likely with a lethal drug. He further postulated that by using the invisibility cloak, Death Gun could have waited at the BoB registration place and stole character information, such as their street address, and later gave the address to his accomplice, who would infiltrate the target's home, bypassing outdated electronic locks, and kill them. Suspecting that the real world accomplice had already snuck into Sinon's apartment and was waiting for the right moment to strike, Kirito determined that they would not do anything until then and that he would be forced to abort if Sterben was defeated. The two decided to have Kirito lure Death Gun into range and reveal his position before letting Sinon finish him.

Chapter 13
After Kikuoka Seijirou logged into ALO as Chrysheight and reached the other players at Agil's cafe, Yui explained the origins of the Death Gun incident, upon which he further revealed to the group of the speculation and conclusion he and Kirito came to while discussing the validity of Death Gun's claim. Asuna revealed their discovery that Death Gun was a member of Laughing Coffin and that they should use that knowledge to determine his identity from among the SAO survivors, but Seijirou protested that the only information the Virtual Division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications had on SAO players were their real names, character names, and final levels, thus Death Gun's real name and address were indeterminable. Upon learning from Seijirou the coordinates of the hospital that Kirito had logged in to GGO, Asuna immediately rushed over to his location, where she would wait by his side until he woke up.

Part 1
Kirito and Sinon hid in a cave, avoiding the Satellite Scan. It seemed that nobody was around them. By counting the screen, Kirito noticed that only 28 out of the 30 participants were visible, whether dead or alive. That would either mean that somebody was hiding or another person was killed by Death Gun - 1 hour and 45 minutes into the game. They came up with a plan to take out both «Yamikaze» and Death Gun, then they would have their 1v1 fight.

Part 2
Kirito drove the buggy into the center of the desert. He then used it as a shield. Coming in from opposite directions were Death Gun and Yamikaze. Sinon was waiting to snipe Yamikaze from a high area. She had gained the courage to shoot her Hecate II again and was waiting for the perfect moment to take out Yamikaze. She only had one chance, because after that first shot, there would be a shot line that would make the next shot easy to dodge.

Part 3
Kirito remembered faintly about the night where Laughing Coffin was destroyed and captured. The person that was Death Gun was most likely the player that had held the «Estoc», but he just could not remember the name of the player though. Kirito nearly dodged a bullet.

Part 4
Sinon sniped Yamikaze and he immediately died. She then pointed her Hecate II toward Death Gun. He quickly reacted and shot a bullet straight back at her. Her scope was destroyed, but she was able to destroy Death Gun's L115A3 «Silent Assassin». Death Gun pulled out a weapon that seemed to be like a sword. Sinon was shocked as she had never heard of another blade in GGO other than the one Kirito was wielding. Kirito was damaged in the left shoulder.

Part 5
Asuna entered the hospital worriedly. She immediately rushed to Kazuto's room with Yui, who was connected by a voice speaker, and was worried after seeing Kazuto's heart rate rise from being stabbed by Death Gun.

Part 6
Death Gun was definitely part of the Laughing Coffin guild. Kirito revealed to Death Gun that he had solved the mystery behind the in-game and real world killings. He also revealed that after he remembered Death Gun's SAO name, he would be able to track him down. Sadly, Death Gun informed Kirito that he would never know his name because Kirito did not spend the time to even hear it while Death Gun was being dragged off to prison in SAO.

Part 7
Kirito was stabbed in the side and left with only a sliver of HP. He immediately did a backflip and retreated. Sinon, no longer able to support from a long distance due to her missing scope, charged into the battlefield hoping that Kirito could hold off long enough until she got there.

Part 8
Worried, Asuna screamed out Kirito's name as she noticed SAO Sword Skills being used. Kirito was gravely injured, his face was pale, and his skin was cold. Yui told her to grab his hand. Even in-game, Kirito would be able to feel her radiating warmth.

Part 9
In his last moments, Kirito remembered the name and epithet of the Estoc user, «Red-Eyed XaXa». At the same moment, Kirito felt warmth envelop his hand. He remembered that he still had his gun by his side. By using the gun, Kirito was able to mimic «Double Circular», a Dual Blades Sword Skill he had mastered in SAO. Death Gun's avatar was sliced in half, his final words saying that it was not over.

Part 10
Kirito told Sinon to immediately call the cops when she exited the virtual reality. He also contacted Kikuoka and told him to send police immediately over to Shino's house. They knew that somebody in the real world was or had been in Sinon's room, waiting to kill her. Then, to finish off the game since they didn't want to fight more, the two decided to commit a double suicide by using a grenade. This allowed both of them to be crowned as the victors of BoB.

Chapter 15
Shino hadn't noticed anything strange happen after getting back to reality. It didn't seem that anyone had been in her room. The doorbell suddenly rang, and outside was Kyouji. She let him inside noticing how quick he was, it had been only a matter of minutes since she exited GGO. Kyouji recounted what he saw in the tournament when Kirito and Sinon were very close together while in the cave. He demanded a reason for it, since he "loved" Shino. Kyouji pushes her onto the bed, screaming that he loves her. The fear of being raped flashed through her brain, but that was not what Kyouji wanted. He wanted to kill her by injecting her with «Succinylcholine», a poison that could stop her heart if given in generous amounts. Attempting to stall for time, Shino talked to Kyouji, asking him the reason behind Death Gun. He revealed that the person that had been in SAO was his brother and that there were actually three people in this plot. Shino fought her way out of his grasp and reached for the model gun that was in her drawer. She was not able to shoot it, so she ran for the door instead. Right when she reached it, Kyouji grabbed her leg. Suddenly, Kazuto burst through the door and attacked Kyouji. Kyouji stabbed Kazuto with the syringe. Luckily, Kazuto had accidentally forgot to remove one of the metal plates that he had been attached to while at the hospital (it had been used to monitor his homeostatic levels), blocking the syringe. Police car sirens could finally be heard from a distance.

Chapter 16
A few days later, Endo and her gang teamed up on Shino again. This time, they asked for 20,000 yen from her; Endo also brought a real gun in hopes of scaring Shino. Knowing that she had to stand up for herself, Shino finally faced her fear of holding a gun. She took the gun from Endo's hand and showed her the ability of «Sinon». Endo, scared, was speechless while Shino walked off. Kazuto was waiting for her in front of her school. They went to meet with Kikouka to be debriefed on the case. The Shinkawa brothers had been taken into custody; their third accomplice, Kanamoto Atsushi, another member of Laughing Coffin, was still on the run. Kikouka revealed that Shinkawa Shouichi had written a note to Kazuto stating that "it" was not over. After clearing things up, Kazuto and Shino go to Dicey Cafe where Asuna, Lisbeth, and Agil were waiting. Although Shino had secretly gorwing feelings for Kazuto, she realized that Kazuto and Asuna were a couple and decided to step down a little. Soon, the veteran SAO players confessed to her the true reason for bringing her here. A former female worker from the post office where Shino saved many people faced her with her four year-old daughter. The worker apologized to Shino for not attempting to find and thank her, but the woman, along with her daughter, thanked her whole-heartedly for the heroic deed she had done that day.

Adaptation Notes

 * In the web novel, rather than ending the Bullet of Bullets in a tie, Sinon instead managed to beat Kirito in a duel, using a hidden Photon Sword to block Kirito's strike as he came at her, repelling both of their blades apart, giving Sinon time to shoot Kirito with her Hecate II at point-blank range.

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