by Mamare Touno
The sun had set completely, and Naotsugu, Shiroe, and Akatsuki were beginning to regret having stayed so long in the Imperial Gardens forest. Since the monsters wouldn’t attack recklessly, they could have found a suitable ruin or a likely looking grove and camped there for the night, but instead they walked down the highway, which was littered with abandoned cars and dump trucks, under the glow of the Magic Light. Akatsuki had insisted that, if they were going to sleep anyway, they’d sleep better in a place with real beds. Either way, their packs were stuffed with monster hides, fangs, and other loot. They had magic items they’d taken from the monsters as well, and they’d have to go back to town to cash them in.
Naotsugu was in the lead, and every so often, he’d turn around to check on Shiroe and Akatsuki.
It doesn’t look like they’re having any trouble walking. No matter what they say, they have stamina to spare. It must be the level-90 thing again.
That was a relief.
Unlike the other two, Naotsugu was a genuine vanguard warrior, and Warriors had excellent stamina, muscle, and agility scores. Having reached level 90, Naotsugu had enough energy to fight for more than an hour wearing heavy armor that had to weigh forty or fifty kilograms, something that surprised even Naotsugu. Even if he’d completely exhausted himself, his strength would start to return after just a few minutes’ rest, and he was confident that he could lift close to three hundred kilograms, provided he didn’t have to hold it for long. His strength seemed to be nearly inexhaustible.
Shiroe and Akatsuki were different, though. Shiroe’s specialty was intellectual work, and although Akatsuki was astonishingly swift, she was a lightweight fighter who lived by her agility. Both of them said that, since they were level 90, they had quite a lot of stamina, but Naotsugu always felt that it would be better for him to match their pace than expect them to match his… Still, it looked as though he didn’t need to worry about that tonight, at least not yet.
They were lucky: The moon was bright, and they had the light from the magic lamp, too. Unlike in the forest, although there was rubble scattered here and there and cracks ran across their path, the once-paved asphalt road sloped gently and was easy to walk on.
“The gobs aren’t attacking…”
“And they’re not gonna. Not with three level-90 players here.”
“I like the ones that wear dinosaur bones on their heads. The way they strut around like they’re impressive is funny. Cute, too.”
There goes short stuff, talking crazy with that deadpan face of hers…
Akatsuki probably meant the goblin shamans. They were members of the goblin leader class who could attack with flame and ice spells, and they showed up with retinues of low-ranking goblins. It was definitely funny to watch them act like big shots and hand down orders, but Naotsugu could say with utter conviction that they weren’t cute.
“You like critters like that, short stuff?” he asked, just to check.
Akatsuki said simply, “They’re cute. They die fast, too.”
That last bit made sense—they were enemies, after all—but it still didn’t explain why she thought they were cute.
“Most magic-user enemies act like they’re big and important, but their armor’s tissue paper and their HP’s practically nonexistent.”
Akatsuki answered in a matter-of-fact tone. There was no telling how she’d interpreted Naotsugu’s question.
“They really should stay away from the action, but they just swagger right up to the front, so it’s easy to take them out. I creep up close using Hide Shadow and spike ’em in the neck with my short sword, and they go all limp and drop like marionettes with cut strings. I love that.”
……Whoa. Way to leave Shiro without a leg to stand on, kid.
Naotsugu shot Shiroe a sidelong glance. He’d obviously taken damage from that comment. Everybody knew that all magic users had low Defense, so Naotsugu didn’t think it was anything for him to get depressed over. Akatsuki hadn’t meant any harm by it.
Even so, Shiroe looked glum, and Akatsuki looked oblivious. Watching the two of them made Naotsugu tired.
Shiro’s a smart guy, but he reads too much into things and thinks about stuff too hard… He’s a worrywart, that’s what he is. I wonder what’s got the Counselor so nervous…
To Naotsugu, Shiroe seemed to be holding back. Naotsugu had no idea why he was doing it, but it did feel as if he was. He’d felt that hesitation when they belonged to the Debauchery Tea Party, too. Shiroe was the type who tried to do everything by himself. Lately, that particular trait had started to seem like a rare virtue. Even so, a Guardian’s job was to protect the players around him. Not being relied on made him feel as if his job had been taken from him. It was irritating. He wished Shiroe would count on him, even if only for the things he was really good at.
“Well, we magic users can be pretty gutsy when we have to be.”
“Hm? You have tissue paper armor, too, my liege… Don’t worry about it. I’m your ninja. I’ll protect you.”
Apparently not noticing that Shiroe was very close to folding, Akatsuki kept sending lethal comments his way. It’s like listening to a couple of kids, Naotsugu thought, fully aware that Shiroe entertained similar thoughts about him most of the time.
Except for the absurd dialogue, overall it was a quiet night. They did see the long shadows of skulking goblins, but whenever Naotsugu and the others turned their way, the goblins panicked and ran.
“It’s because this is the zone right next to Akiba,” Shiroe said. “High-level monsters don’t show up here. If they did, new players would die all over the place.”
It had been more than ten days since they got pulled into this world, and in that time, not a single new player had appeared. What was happening to their real-world versions? Had their entire group vanished off the face of the earth? Were they comatose vegetables? They didn’t know.
…This is one of those ideas, but what if “we’re” all actually still there, right where we’re supposed to be, living like we usually do?…Whoa. If that’s true, we’ll have no place to go back to. A blowout sale on absolutely-nobody-needs-us going on right now. Or what if it’s like one of those books, and as far as the real world’s concerned, we never existed at all? Like we were never born or something. That would bum me out, too.
Not that you’d know it to look at him, but as his thoughts showed, Naotsugu read fantasy novels. However, at this point in time, there was no way for them to check any of those theories.
It might have been “just ten days,” and it might have been “ten days already.” No doubt opinions on that score varied wildly from person to person, but gradually, whether they liked it or not, Naotsugu, Shiroe, and Akatsuki were getting used to this world.
Even though it was contorted by two sets of restrictions—the Elder Tales specs and the physical laws of some other world—this world did have its own rules. This was true even of unrealistic phenomena, such as the fact that all food, without exception, tasted like soggy rice crackers. Yes, lots of things were unreasonable, and they frequently felt irritated by the unreasonableness. Even so, there was nothing for it but to understand those rules and live within their limits. That was what it meant to belong to a world, whether that world was a game world or the real one.
Since we don’t have any idea how to get back home, I guess the world we’re standing in is the only one there is, and it doesn’t matter whether it used to be a game or not… Still, it’s actually not bad. Swinging a sword around, adventuring… Once you get used to ’em, they’re not bad… I bluffed and told Miss Mari that things weren’t half as bad as they could be, but maybe I said that because I’m the one who really wanted to hear it.
A big part of Naotsugu was already starting to adapt to this life, and that was all for the best. He hadn’t had any complaints about the real world, not at all, but if asked whether he’d sell off a chunk of his soul to get back, he’d have to confess that he didn’t really know.
It’s not like I h
ad a girlfriend who’d show me her panties, and I haven’t seen my folks in almost two years… I’d gotten used to my job, but did it really feel like a job worth doing? …Well, no.
While he was absently thinking about this and that, they’d crossed from Ichigaya into Kudanshita, and now they were just two gates away from Akiba. This time, they were planning to head into Akiba from the top of the Ochanomizu hill, without cutting through the Forest of Library Towers zone. The slope that led to the Roka Charity Hospital was a gentle incline that stirred faint feelings of nostalgia. From the Japanese garden on the right of the road, broadleaf trees stretched branches shaggy with leaves out over the road like open overcoats.
The moon was visible through the fragmented gaps in the overcoats, between the leaves, and it went into shadow several times.
Abruptly, Naotsugu and the others scattered in all directions, putting distance between themselves and the shifting flecks of moonlight on the road.
!!
Naotsugu was in the middle of a step forward, and without slowing, he struck at the darkness in front of him with the shield he still wore on his left arm. A cry of pain rose from the shadows. Naotsugu sensed Shiroe a dozen meters behind him, backing away. He concentrated on the presences he could sense in front of him, careful to pay attention to his surroundings as he did so.
That’s one, two… Three? Four of them?
This wasn’t a situation they hadn’t anticipated, but now that it was actually happening, his mouth had gone dry. The tension he felt when battling monsters was nothing compared to this.
All of a sudden, there was a low, steady sound, as if someone was dragging a bundle of metal.
Gkh! I’m not gonna make it!!
Without stopping to check behind him, Naotsugu tried to jump back, but a chain reared up like a snake and coiled around his ankles. It wasn’t a completely physical metal chain. It was a magic-generated semisolid binding spell.
Naotsugu had been thrown off-balance in midair, and the spell rendered him completely unable to move. A colorless, soundless ripple of magic surged up from behind him. Dispel Magic. One of Shiroe’s spells. The magic dissolution spell destroyed the magical chain that had slithered up from beneath his feet.
Excellent reaction support, as usual. Okay, Counselor! What now?!
Exhilaration and the urge to fight were welling up inside him. The confidence that he’d be able to protect Shiroe, and that Shiroe would have his back, filled him with energy.
“Naotsugu, series formation! They’re PKs; four visually confirmed. I’ll pin down their locations. —There!!”
Shiroe yelled on the moonlit road in the dead of night. As he did so, a magic arrow flew from his staff in a burst of pale light. Mind Bolt was one of the Enchanters’ basic attack spells, one that targeted a single enemy and inflicted a set amount of damage. The damage was far less than what a Summoner or Sorcerer of the same level could inflict, but the spell saw frequent use as a basic Enchanter self-defense spell. Shiroe always lamented his spells’ lack of power, but Naotsugu had never once seen it as a problem. A well-timed small spell was much more effective than a huge spell that missed its target.
“Enemy sighted!”
Shiroe’s spell had given Naotsugu exactly what he wanted this time, too. Although it was only for a fraction of a second, the pale fox fire glow illuminated the PKs lurking in the shadows as it streaked through the darkness. Obeying Shiroe’s instructions, Naotsugu quickly put some distance between him and the darkness in front of him, ending up about halfway between the darkness and Shiroe. He was right in the center of the two-lane road.
Naotsugu could have charged the enemies he’d spotted in the darkness. However, for now, he backed up and regrouped. In a series formation, the distance between him and the end of the line was important. Too much distance, and the end’s shaky defense would leave it wide open.
“There’s guts for you. PKs… Huhn.” Naotsugu spat out the feelings seething inside him. “Gone straight to acting like animals ’cos you miss your mama? A surprise attack isn’t enough to warrant a victory party, guys.”
The opponents he was facing weren’t monsters. They were players who liked doing the sort of thing Naotsugu hated most.
PK stood for “player kill” or “player killer.” It could mean either the act of attacking and killing other players instead of monsters or a player who did such things.
The town of Akiba was a designated noncombat zone, but the fact that combat was expressly banned in some zones meant it was perfectly okay in others. The administrators of Elder Tales allowed fights between players. However, due to a number of in-game factors—for example, the low success rate of PKs, the high risk, and cultural issues on the Japanese server (even online, Japanese people were orderly and disliked violence between players)—had meant that player killing wasn’t a very popular act.
One of the reasons for the low PK success rate in Elder Tales had been the existence of a mini-map that displayed on the screen and showed all the beings in the immediate area, including players, monsters, and non-player characters.
Another was that high-level characters would automatically avoid attacks launched at them using any method that matched their skill set, whether or not the player did anything. In other words, surprise attacks weren’t very effective. On top of that, although player killing wasn’t banned in Elder Tales, harassment was. PK wasn’t harassment in and of itself, but there were cases in which killing the same person over and over or verbally abusing an opponent had been considered harassment, and harassment carried a high probability of getting slapped with a warning or penalty by the game corporation.
In addition, the standards for whether or not something constituted harassment were pretty vague and subjective. Although player killing was technically legal, in a few cases where the victim had been female, it had been judged harassment and the problem user’s account had been abruptly suspended.
Due to all those reasons, player killing was considered very risky.
Now that they’d been pulled into this other world, though, things were different. During battles here, that mini-map didn’t exist, not even on the mental menu. No matter how high an Adventurer’s level was, if they didn’t see the attack coming, the auto-evade function wouldn’t activate. Unless the actual player was a martial arts expert, they probably wouldn’t be able to stay constantly on the alert.
On top of that, decisions regarding harassment had been made by a supervisor at the game corporation who went through the play logs and dealt with incidents after the fact. When Elder Tales was a game, order had been maintained by this corporate “hand of God.” However, in this world, that convenient salvation didn’t exist.
Surprise attacks were far more likely to succeed. The risk of an incident being reported as harassment was low. On top of that, player killing was a very tempting proposition. Since PKs could take all the money a defeated player had been carrying and several of their items, the rewards were much greater than anything they could win in a battle with monsters. Some items would always belong to their bearer and couldn’t be reassigned, but about half of the normal, tradable items in players’ packs would be scattered around the immediate area the instant the player died.
The advantages and disadvantages had been flipped, and in the current Elder Tales, player killing was on the rise.
3
Well, we lasted through the surprise attack anyway…, Shiroe thought, holding the staff he’d infused with fox fire. The other side has a terrain advantage and the advantage of numbers, and they’ve gone over their game plan beforehand. They’re ready for this. Our advantages, on the other hand…
He ran through the spell icons he could use. He’d registered all the spells he used regularly in shortcut slots so that he wouldn’t have to locate them on the mental menu screen with the cursor. They were right there, ready to use. However, before Shiroe had time to level his staff and prepare to chant, several players appeared from the darkness of the ruin ahea
d of them.
The bone-dry asphalt crumbled, sending a weirdly loud sound through the quiet night.
Four shadows had appeared. One Warrior type. Two brigand types. One healer. Four was a lot, and from the confident way they walked, he guessed their levels weren’t low.
“Drop your packs and leave quietly, and we’ll let you live.”
The Warrior delivered the usual line in a condescending voice.
The words drew a wry smile from Shiroe.
Sounds like somebody’s been reading too much manga.
Although they’d grown fairly used to monster battles, battling players would be completely different. Unlike monsters, which were guided by their animal instincts, there was no telling what a human enemy would do. That was scary enough, but on top of that, the malice behind the attacks was impossible to tune out. Monsters sometimes projected intent to kill, but PKs hit you with an intent to plunder. Their malice was the type that wanted to make an easy profit from other players’ work.
Shiroe’s palms had grown slick with clammy sweat. He was actually grateful to the guy in front of him for perpetrating that clichéd line and easing the tension.
“A Guardian and a magic user, huh? Resistance is futile, but feel free to try. As you can see, it’s two against four.”
The bandit who’d spoken seemed to be in charge of the group. The two longswords that hung at his hips marked him as a Swashbuckler. Of the twelve classes, only Swashbucklers and Samurai were able to fight with two swords without using any special equipment or work-arounds.
“What do you want to do, Naotsugu?”
“Kill ’em. I’ll fillet ’em, then grind ’em into hamburger. These guys murder people for fun, so you know they’ve been prepared to get offed by some other guy since they were in diapers.”
