26. Shooting

Chapter 48: 26. Shooting

How far could an ordinary person jump with a running start?

The answer was six meters.

Then how wide was this street?

At a glance, no less than eighteen meters.

So Carl was not trying to jump onto the apartment building across the road. She was inviting the sniper to take a shot in a posture that left her no way to evade.

The same shot that had detonated the grenade in midair.

Every sniper had their own shooting memory. It could be classified as muscle memory, or called a conditioned-reflex shooting method. It was carved into their bones during training. The better the sniper, the more they possessed this instinctive reaction. And clearly, the person Carl faced was that kind of sniper.

Even faster than the time it took for the optical implant's feedback to reach the brain, the sniper had already raised his gun and pulled the trigger at Carl.

The angle at which he raised his gun was exactly the same as when he had detonated the grenade.

When using a gun to hit a target at the same height, the height at which a sniper raised the weapon would not change. The grenade had been detonated when it reached the third-floor level, so Carl leaped to the same height.

Carl deliberately kept herself at roughly the same height as the grenade while slowing her own firing speed slightly.

Carl had prepared before the sniper. If she wanted to shoot, she could have fired first. But once she fired, the moment her bullet struck the sniper, the sniper's Nekomata would strike her at the same time. Whether the sniper died or not, Carl did not know, but she would definitely be dead. So she chose something even riskier.

The angle of the raised gun was right. The muzzle was in exactly the same position.

Then there was no mistake.

At the instant the Nekomata bullet left the sniper's barrel, Kenshin's bullet was already waiting in its path.

During the Battle of Gallipoli in 1916, a miracle had occurred: two bullets collided in midair. What were the odds of that?

One in seventy billion.

Carl knew she did not have that kind of luck, so she chose to shoot a stationary target.

A muzzle whose elevation and angle had already been determined, one that only needed a life to verify it—wasn't that a stationary target?

For Carl, this was not one in seventy billion. It was one in two.

Guess right, live. Guess wrong, die.

That simple.

Fortunately, Carl's luck with one-in-two odds was quite good. She always guessed right, and when facing a stationary target, she could think of no reason she would miss.

One bullet intercepted the Nekomata round halfway out of the barrel. The two bullets exploded inside the sniper rifle's chamber, and the resulting debris and fragments ripped the raised Nekomata open like a flared trumpet. Then the other bullet passed through the shattered rifling and struck the sniper in the head.

Sniper rifles were rarely designed for rapid fire. In the past, it was because gunpowder residue left in the rifling affected accuracy. Nowadays, repeated firing could easily damage a tech sniper rifle and throw off its precision, especially for a sniper rifle like the Nekomata, which already required frequent maintenance.

Unlike the Nekomata tech sniper rifle, however, the Kenshin in Carl's hand was a pistol capable of rapid fire. The moment after the first bullet left the barrel, the next one was already on its way.

The head couldn't be as tough as the body, could it?

With that thought in mind, Carl began to bleed off the force of her fall.

When jumping from a height, she could not roll immediately; her spine would not withstand it. The proper method was—

Recalling Trauma Team's instruction from the braindance, Carl landed on the balls of her feet, then let her heels follow. She immediately leaned forward, relaxed her body, braced herself with both hands, bent her knees, used the force rebounding from the ground, and naturally sprang forward again.

After completing that sequence of movements, Carl successfully shed most of the force from the fall. But her body hurt as though it had been torn apart, and she still could not stop.

When Carl fell from above, the attackers had yet to react. Or rather, they had left Carl to the sniper. But after Carl landed safely, even the dullest among them realized they should point their guns at her.

People could not outrun bullets—or at least, Carl could not yet. So she had never intended to run.

The attackers' weapons were clear enough: Shingen smart weapons. Smart weapons were good, but they had a small flaw: they needed to lock onto an enemy before they could guide their shots.

She rolled again and took cover behind a car. Carl felt that she was getting more and more skilled at rolling.

After clearing out the apartment building opposite them, there were no attackers in her current position who could directly aim their guns at her. But a car would not hold up as cover for long, so in this critical moment, Carl used her final move.

"Help!"

Over the comms, Carl chose to call for help from her companions.

And they did not disappoint her.

"I'm coming, Carl."

Jack charged straight out of the apartment building where the sniper had been, holding a corpse in front of himself.

"Jack Wells is here!"

He shouted, drawing the attackers' attention.

Jack had always been the kind of person who stood at the very front, helping his partners draw fire. He was someone worth trusting.

The instant they saw Jack, the attackers turned their guns toward him.

But after piercing through the corpse Jack held up, the bullets from their guns stopped against the surface of his Subdermal Armor.

Because smart pistols required so much sophisticated technology, more than half of their structure consisted of smart equipment, leaving little room for the weapon itself. As a result, their bullets did not have great penetration. While some smart pistols could, after precise lock-on guidance, curve around obstacles to hit enemies behind them, they still lacked the ability to punch directly through heavy defenses.

In other words, Jack could hold them off for a while.

Only for a while, because those were still machine pistols. With enough bullets, they could still tear Jack apart.

But Jack was not the only one.

"Don't worry. You'll be fine, KK."

Maine actually rushed out as well, carrying a large stone with grooves on its surface as a shield. With the two of them helping, the other mercenaries, who had been too suppressed by the sniper rifle to even raise their heads, seized the opportunity to strike back at the attackers as their suppressive fire weakened.

"Don't underestimate us! Do you really think you're a match for us?!"

They were all mercenaries who had fought through blood and fire on the streets. They had the instincts for it, and every one of them recognized this as the best opportunity to counterattack.

"Without the rocket launcher and sniper keeping us pinned down, you think your Smart Weapons are enough to compete with us? You think you're worthy?!"

On the streets, there was a popular saying, half jealous and half true.

Only cowards who can't aim their muzzles straight use Smart Weapons in a gunfight.

When they could use more powerful kinetic or tech weapons, who would choose Smart Weapons?

PS: During firefights in the game, only Jack never complained even a little about your sudden attacks. He would always charge to the front and help draw enemy fire. (Thinking about it later, maybe it would have been better if he had not been so brave. But then Jack would not have been Jack.)