by Mamare Touno
However, as the penalty, the golem began to freeze over with a cracking sound.
The golem boasted a huge body, and as its appearance suggested, it had lots of HP. However, it was only “a lot” in terms of the minions Summoners could summon. These minion-class summoned creatures had about a third of the combat strength of an Adventurer at the same level. That meant they also had one-third the HP. Even if the golem was slanted toward defense and toughness, its HP didn’t even equal Akatsuki’s.
However, it was possible for it to last five seconds against the murderer’s attack, and with those five seconds, Akatsuki and the others could shift into their next action.
“Pulse Recovery… There ya go!”
Holding a rod that resembled a broom, Mikakage cast the unique Druid healing spell, Pulse Recovery, on Akatsuki from behind the wrecked hood of a decaying microvan. A vivid green glow began to pulse over Akatsuki’s heart, guarding her. Her HP gradually replenished itself in time with its rhythm.
At Mikakage’s feet, Allie, a little girl whose gestures exactly mimicked Mikakage’s, was also casting a spell. Alraune, plant spirits, were able to help out in combat just like the other summoned minions, but more important, they had a special ability that boosted the effect of their summoner’s recovery spells. Shy Allie squeezed her eyes shut and brandished a tiny ladle. This wasn’t out of fear: She was desperately, heroically trying to help her mistress.
After the Pulse Recovery spell came a ranged recovery spell, then an instant recovery spell. Mikakage cast more healing spells on Akatsuki, one after another. She was using the unique Druid healing work, which combined several recovery spells, in an attempt to heal Akatsuki, who’d been wounded during the fierce battle. This devoted act, which ignored her remaining MP, recovered Akatsuki’s HP to about 80 percent.
Akatsuki didn’t thank her. She didn’t have the time for that.
Her current mission was to draw all the murderer’s attacks to herself, and to sprint down the central avenue. The only way for her to express her gratitude was to carry out that mission perfectly. Her mind was more focused than ever before, and Akatsuki understood this very well.
The range of her senses widened, growing as clear and calm as the surface of water, grasping the state of her surroundings.
Marielle, who was running along behind her, was continuing to chant Response Activated Recovery so that the spell wouldn’t be interrupted. The Monk girl who was acting as a mobile attacker and her Cleric partner were from the West Wind Brigade.
Feeling a sizzling, burning sensation on her skin, Akatsuki leapt in the opposite direction from the Monk girl.
Byakkou, the Summoner who’d created that opening for her by summoning the golem earlier, had summoned Lance Dísir from an enormous magic circle. Clad in pure white dress-style armor, the spirit hurled a shining spear that had seven branches. It was a sub-variant spell of Combat Skill Summoning—Sword Princess. It was the Summoner’s greatest attack spell, and yet it was unable to do lethal damage to the murderer. That was only natural: Raids weren’t so easy that they could be finished up with an attack spell from one person, no matter how strong. However, the continuous attacks were wearing a hole in the rock.
As Mikakage and Byakkou cast attack spells and recovery spells one after another, Akatsuki’s group dashed through the pair’s area. They couldn’t stop. Akatsuki and the others had to lead the murderer to the target location, and besides, if Mikakage and Byakkou kept casting spells at that rate, they’d burn through their MP in less than two minutes.
“You can do it!!”
A bright cheer that wasn’t at all suited to a scene of mortal combat reached her. As the murderer bore down on her with a face like a demon, over his shoulder, she saw Mikakage waving so hard it seemed as if her arms might come off. Akatsuki’s chest grew warm. It wasn’t just due to Pulse Recovery.
“Update! Ten more meters!”
With Marielle’s supporting voice at her back, Akatsuki danced through space as if to cut out the moon. They’d passed through the Mikakage-and-Byakkou area. There were ten meters until the next area. It was like a winter parade that traveled through a variety of attractions. Lugurius’s abilities increased in response to the number of Adventurers who were within fifty meters of him. This meant they could only station a few people within a fifty-meter range.
However, if the combat time dragged on, those few people would burn through their MP and grow exhausted. In addition, with only a few people, they wouldn’t have enough damage output, and combat time would inevitably be drawn out. As a result, they’d wear down much faster. It was a vicious cycle.
In order to break through that, Riezé had come up with this raid tactic. They’d set up several circular areas with fifty-meter radii in several places around Akiba, distributing them so that they didn’t overlap. The squad with Akatsuki at its center would lead the murderer through these areas, using the firepower and recovery abilities of the members stationed in the areas to recharge and attack at the same time.
As Akatsuki ran, she thought of the remaining areas.
She swore she’d keep running until morning if she had to.
She knew that Marielle’s encouragement had been growing less frequent for a while now. Akatsuki was an attack class, so she could watch her remaining MP and be stingy with her special skills as she fought. The damage itself would probably drop, but that only meant the battle would drag on longer. However, Marielle was a recovery class, and things were different for her. If Marielle was stingy with her recovery spells, it would lead directly to Akatsuki’s death.
For that very reason, precisely because she was leaving that heavy responsibility to others, Akatsuki wanted to protect them. She didn’t want to lose. The equipment that hugged Akatsuki’s body, the protective spells that supported her, the various arts that healed her—none of these were hers.
In order to repay the treasures she’d borrowed, Akatsuki charged ahead, rushing onward.
Seeking sharper steps, faster slashes.
Inside Akatsuki, something clicked into place.
Lowering her body into a slight crouch, she stopped breathing for a moment. The image that rose in her mind with that stance acted as a trigger, activating a special skill: the Tracker’s “Hide Shadow.” Ordinarily, the special ability could be activated only from the command menu, but Akatsuki had added conditions to her martial arts and trained until she could activate it.
Almost as if her life force was draining away, the sense of presence evaporated from her black-clad body. Akatsuki was fading.
Even Akatsuki stopped knowing where she was. As the demon sword flew toward her, its attack stood out sharply in her fixed field of vision. Akatsuki was leaving herself open to an attack that would strike home. However, there was another Akatsuki watching the scene from somewhere else. “Hide Shadow” had evolved to “Shadow Lurk,” and the separated life force was traveling straight across the battlefield.
Akatsuki ran through the murderer’s attacks, which whipped up a freezing blizzard.
The shadow that looked like Akatsuki and Akatsuki’s own perspective were in different places.
As proof, her shadow flickered and blinked, blurring as though the blizzard was erasing it, and, like a phantom, it negated every attack.
In the midst of overwhelming acceleration, Akatsuki reached the murderer’s back.
She wasn’t able to hold this state for long periods.
The special skill was active for only a brief time, while Akatsuki stopped breathing and froze her heart. A skill that could take an ability that was ordinarily used for infiltration work or evading monsters’ senses and forcibly activate it during combat: This was the Mystery Akatsuki had acquired.
Pointless.
With the speed of a swallow in flight, Akatsuki swung her short sword.
The attack, which had come at the murderer suddenly from behind, left a shallow cut on his neck. To think that even when she’d launched an attack on a vital spot from t
hat illusion, he’d been able to avoid a fatal wound. The power of the demon sword was limitless. But…
Pointless.
There was no delight at having a wish fulfilled in Akatsuki’s heart.
She held her breath and activated Shadow Lurk again. The shadow double appeared immediately, and she used it as camouflage to leap out of the way of a triple thrust from the demon sword.
Evading the large pellets of ice that accompanied the thrusts, Akatsuki sped up even further, dancing over the murderer’s sword.
The Mystery she’d acquired was the same as that demon sword.
A skill that operated on external logic that went beyond Elder Tales.
The power Akatsuki had wished for was the same as that blizzard-crazed demon. The young innocence that had longed for it seemed terribly embarrassing to her now.
A green pulse dwelled in Akatsuki’s chest, and a cloud of powdery golden scales surrounded her.
There was power in the gauntlets on both her hands, and the black clothes she wore protected her.
More than that, the hands that had been waved so hard they’d seemed in danger of coming off… The words that had been spoken to her. These small affirmations warmed Akatsuki.
Mysteries—or Overskills, as some called them—were a state beyond the changes of the Catastrophe, reached through individual effort after understanding the system in Elder Tales. They were insignificant tricks, and they were also the result of training. In the end, although Riezé had instructed her in the eight Mysteries D.D.D. had grasped, Akatsuki hadn’t been able to learn a single one. Just as, for example, Nyanta’s cooking was a combination of Nyanta’s Chef subclass and his own, real skills, every Mystery required awareness and study on the part of the person in question in order to be complete.
They weren’t something you could learn how to use simply by having someone explain them to you.
They weren’t the sort of thing you could acquire in an instant, the way you could level up if the game system granted permission.
You didn’t try to acquire Mysteries. You simply worried endlessly and trained, and the Mysteries lay beyond that.
“The real lesson is that you can say the Mysteries don’t mean much,” Nazuna had said. Those words had engraved themselves into Akatsuki. These weren’t powers that existed so you could boast about being a high-class Adventurer. They were more important: fragments of the “something” Akatsuki had brushed against that day.
In order to demonstrate this, Akatsuki ran. To vanquish her own naïveté, which had wished for power, she slid her short sword from its sheath. Even if it tore her apart, she had to shatter that demon sword.
The true form of Akatsuki’s Mystery, Shadow Lurk, was her Tracker subclass’s Hide Shadow. It was a special movement method that she shouldn’t have been able to activate during combat, but which she’d forcibly activated in this real, post-Catastrophe world, using it in combination with Road Mirage and Trick Step to create doubles. It was a set of wings Akatsuki had made for herself, wings that were hers alone.
With a sharp report, the swords bit into each other.
Even with all those support spells, even with all this assistance, the murderer’s power still far outstripped Akatsuki’s. Even as she was showered by long breaths crazed with the scent of blood, as their swords locked and pushed at each other, the murderer leaned on Akatsuki, overpowering her.
I have to get some distance and drop out for one attack.
Having reconfirmed the strategy, in order to evade the lean man in front of her, Akatsuki released Stealth Blade in pinpoint mode. She’d shown the murderer this skill many times; he’d dodge with the left half of his body, and she’d use that opportunity to get some distance… Or that was what should have happened. But.
“Like this? Huh, like this?”
The murderer had let her pierce his side without defending, and he smiled with an expression of intolerable delight. The demon had lost HP in order to close the gap, and hellishly cold air was seeping from him. In a mere moment, the blizzard solidified, becoming ice, and the murderer froze his own wound, and Akatsuki’s sword along with it.
Having lost her only weapon, Akatsuki took a hard blow from the arm the man swung at her.
6
“I’m okay.”
Akatsuki got up.
The momentary carelessness had pushed her HP to death’s door. She didn’t even have 5 percent left… But she was still alive.
Marielle had come running up to her, but even her recovery magic had little effect. Her MP was very low.
“I’m sorry. Really… I’m sorry.”
Marielle’s strained voice hurt Akatsuki’s heart. Marielle hadn’t done a single thing wrong. Even though this was her first raid, just because she’d been put on a team with Akatsuki, she’d had the role of main healer pushed onto her; that was all. Akatsuki wanted to comfort Marielle, but she couldn’t think of the right thing to say… And so she repeated herself, putting all the feeling she had into the words:
“I’m okay.”
The words were a bluff, but that wasn’t all they were. They were based in her sincere wish to reassure someone she liked. She wasn’t putting on a bold front; Akatsuki had wanted to express her gratitude to Marielle. There was no way even to confirm whether that short exchange had gotten the message across. As Akatsuki broke into a run, as if to shake free of the exchange, someone flung a short, spinning, sticklike object at her.
“Great timing. Take that with you.”
A twenty-fifth girl, who’d poked her head out of her workshop, pushed her goggles up as she spoke to Akatsuki.
The sheath was still warm when she caught it. In Akatsuki’s hands, which were growing numb with cold in the blizzard, heat surged from the blade, as though it had just been born.
“…Ringing Blade Haganemushi.”
“Nope. Haganemushi—Tatara. Reforged.”
When she looked closer, the length was different. So was the grip. It was designed for Akatsuki. More than that, the flavor text shown in the item appraisal was different.
“I can’t…pay this much—”
“Win.”
Tatara, the Amenoma Swordsmith, spoke over Akatsuki, who looked as if she was about to cry. It wasn’t the merchant’s usual absent, sleepy voice. It had a strong ring to it.
“Defeat that thing with my sword.”
She pointed: Kawara of the West Wind Brigade, who’d been acting as a guerrilla, was fighting.
Even as a mad dance of snow and ice sliced her up, even as she was smeared with bright blood, she yelled bravely, fighting courageously. The murderer’s primary target was Akatsuki. Even now, his eyes were turned toward her. However, in order to protect the fallen Akatsuki from the murderer, the girl was making fine use of her Monk skills.
“Akatsuki. You’re all set, hon.”
Marielle, who’d continued casting recovery spells on Akatsuki, nodded. It was time.
No words were necessary now.
Like an arrow shot from a bow, Akatsuki ran across the earth in a straight line. She sent her Shadow Lurk doubles flying for one attack. She switched her grip on her new short sword and swung it: Accel Fang. The murderer went on the defensive with Hail Blade Byakumaru, and the sword locked with Haganemushi Tatara. Under a storm of iron, in which the blades grated against each other with a tearing sound, Akatsuki blurred and vanished.
Appearing behind the murderer’s back, she launched a Venom Strike at his head. The man deflected the poison-laced strike with the side of his head, then forced his body in and swung his certain-kill blade at Akatsuki, who was still in midair.
That attack could only have inflicted a fatal wound, but Akatsuki evaded it easily, as if she had a foothold. Help had arrived.
“That weak endgame of yours is just like Shiroe’s.”
Nazuna had leapt in like a bullet.
Half-turning her body in a splendid motion that made it impossible to believe she was still wearing tall wooden clogs, she leapt in
to the air. She curled up, kicked the murderer’s blade up, then got some distance and began running parallel to Akatsuki. Possibly because she’d felt eyes on her glamorous body, her expression twisted, but there was no carelessness in her gaze.
“Okay. If you’re Shiroe’s junior, you’re pretty much my junior, too. I’ll pitch in and help so Soujirou won’t worry.”
Akatsuki nodded.
The demon was chasing them down the central avenue with the force of a tank, and when they turned, they were in a gap between buildings where the bricks on either side seemed to press in on them. The blizzard was compressed by the narrow space. As they scattered it with Nazuna’s barrier spell, Akatsuki and the fox-eared beauty sprinted away.
“What’s the matter?”
At the words, which were so gentle it was hard to believe they were being chased by a monster, Akatsuki looked up at Nazuna. She wore a smile that was mischievous, and also kind. “Well, you’re crying,” she told her, and Akatsuki wiped the outer corners of her eyes. She couldn’t say it was nothing. She was happy.
Even though she’d been so close to death, even though she was still being chased by a terrible enemy, Akatsuki no longer felt the terror of losing something. Right now, surrounded by a crowd of friends, she was fighting her first raid. For the first time in her life, she felt the warmth of comrades she could stand with as equals.
Akiba’s night was a battlefield now.
It was a stage for Akatsuki, Raynesia, and the other Water Maple girls.
It was also stirring enough to renew her longing for Shiroe. Of course Akatsuki had loved the gentle, intelligent young man she’d chosen as her liege before, but she was confident that her feelings for him were even stronger now. Preparing a place for someone else to belong was a noble thing. Making a place where someone could spend their days happily was very difficult. And Akatsuki’s liege, who’d known both the difficulty and the importance of it, was someone worthy of her affections.
