The Lone Sniper: I Was Just Minding My Own Business Sniping Players, and I Ended Up Becoming a Raid Boss

Chapter 9

Even if it's called a centipede, it's mechanical, so the revulsion isn't too bad. Plenty of women are weak against bugs, so on that point, making all the enemies machines was the right call.

I fly above Centipede-chan's charge to dodge, steady my posture with thrusters, and plant three rounds in her head.

Her head's durability dropped about 3 %? Still 97 % left. I'll need another ninety-seven shots to take her down.

"Coming?"

Centipede-chan backs off, and a purple energy courses through the cannon in her mouth.

Three-second charge. A sphere of violet energy hurtles toward me. One direct hit would blast me away, but she's slow and it's simple to evade. I jump sideways off the line of fire, keep flying straight, and chip away at the head's durability with the Colt Government in my right hand.

Snipers have low armor. I absolutely must not take any hit.

"Gigii!!"

With a shrill cry, Centipede-chan dives into the sand.

Her icon vanishes from the corner of my map.

"Oh dear, she's hiding."

A rumble approaches. I use my thrusters to move away from the source. Boom! Centipede-chan erupts from the epicenter of the tremor and stretches her body skyward. Her head eclipses the sun.

(Solar glare—can't see the mouth cannon...!)

With her head fixed fifteen meters up, Centipede-chan spits a beam. The beam is fast; it grazes my right arm.

"Took a hit."

The damage itself isn't much. The problem is the status ailment—bug—caused by that attack.

Poison Virus: a bug that inflicts damage at fixed intervals. Space Girls have durability values—HP, in other words—assigned to each body part. My right arm's durability is dropping fast.

(If I lose my right arm, my damage efficiency will plummet. Stop... stop!)

The drain halts at 1 % remaining. Looks like durability can't hit zero from poison damage alone.

Even a graze does this, huh.

"...Nice. A fight on the razor's edge... games have to be like this."

With an M1911 in my right hand and an Army Knife in my left, I face Centipede-chan.

---

The player named Sheena was searching for a Space Girl on Space Station ch2921.

"She's not here either. She said she was a beginner, so she should be in one of the nearby channels..."

The Space Stations keep increasing as the player population grows; they started at ch1 and now reach ch2922.

"Hey, Sheena! She's not on ch2920 either!"

"Sheenacchi, ch2922 is a bust too~"

"Roger."

While chatting on voice, Sheena keeps searching.

"Like, seriously, is this sniper really worth spending so much time looking for?"

"She is. I definitely saw it—her landing a shot on a meteor."

"Whoa! And she's a beginner, right?"

"That's exactly what's weird! No way a beginner's on the moon!"

Exactly. Sheena agrees it's odd.

The moon is an ultra-high-difficulty planet. For a beginner to reach it is practically impossible; there's no reason to go. All that awaits is an instant kill by White Meteor or a Machine World Beast.

Yet Sheena had confirmed the sniper really was level 1, and nothing in her behavior suggested deceit. No reason to trick Sheena there.

A level-1 sniper had indeed been on the moon, and that sniper had shot a bullet at the meteor, an entity with meteor-like speed.

"Anyway, there's no sniper with that kind of sense anywhere else. Our team needs her."

"We do want a sniper. Our team's shooting ability is trash."

"Right. We have someone who misses a target five meters away."

"Ugh... all right, fine! But if we still have zero leads in an hour, I'm out!"

"...Fine. That's acceptable."

There are far too few clues.

She'd captured the girl's appearance with auto-record and shared it with her friends; the name "Shiki" had also been shared. But they still didn't have her player ID. If they had that ID, countless ways to track her would open up, but without it there was nothing.

"Wait, let's check the Ship Dock logs."

Sheena heads to the Ship Dock and has one of the guide-girls show her the spaceship usage history.

Player names, player IDs, destinations, and landing coordinates scroll past. You can choose not to keep these logs, or delete them later. Actually, most people delete them.

But a beginner might not have touched those settings.

"Bingo. Shiki... flew to the Desert Planet four hours ago. It could be a different Shiki, but this is my only bet."

Sheena contacts her two friends and begins prepping a three-seat spaceship.

――――――Afterword――――――

Centipede-chan's base stealth is 100; when she burrows in sand it doubles. So if your radar value is 200 or higher, you can still detect her on radar even when she's submerged. When your radar value equals the target's stealth, the icon appears on radar—radar wins ties.