The Hope They Left Behind (Premium)

by Sakon Kaidou

He took something out and threw it to me.

  As I caught it, it made a hard jingling sound.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “The payment for my stay here. Could you give it to the hostess? Oh, and please tell her that the food was delicious and the hot spring felt amazing. I could feel my exhaustion just... fade away.”

  “...Okay.”

  He was one of Dryfe’s special soldiers and he’d infiltrated Altar, but... he really didn’t seem like a bad guy.

  “What if that’d been a bomb? You’d be one-armed again,” commented Azurite.

  “Ah.” I hadn’t even considered that.

  “You’re easy to fool, aren’t you?”

  “No I’m not. Sure, I had a secret player killer in my party, didn’t know my brother was the KoD until the thing at Gideon, and drank the drug-slime mixture Franklin gave me, but that’s it, really.”

  “...Let me rephrase. You are absurdly easy to fool. Such a simple man.” She looked at me with an indefinable expression.

  Dr. Mario watched our exchange with a friendly smile, then said, “It’s a shame, but I must take my leave now.”

  “You truly believe you can escape?” Azurite pointed her blade at him.

  “My dear. I already have,” he replied, and a split-second later he vanished, leaving behind only a small bird.

  “Wha—?!” Azurite exclaimed.

  I gasped. “That’s...”

  I recognized the creature. The bird was a monster created by Franklin. It was designed for Castling — a skill that switched the position of the user and the target monster. Gideon’s Masters often called it “Chimaera Wing.”

  “Well, he’s a Dryfean soldier,” I murmured. “No surprise that he has access to Franklin’s stuff.”

  Castling couldn’t have taken him too far, but the man had moved fast enough to dodge Azurite’s blade. Catching up to him would be a challenge, to put it lightly.

  “Might as well assume we lost him,” Azurite sighed. “He’s a special soldier. He might have prepared something for us in the ruins or its surroundings. We should urgently hire someone to investigate.”

  “You think he... or Dryfe, rather... will do something there?”

  “Yes, I do. In fact, I came here exactly because I assumed Dryfe will make a move.”

  “Huh?”

  I didn’t really understand that. I figured she’d known Dryfe would make a move, but I hadn’t thought she was here because of that. What did that mean?

  “That aside,” she sighed again, “don’t you think you showed him a bit too much? He is a Dryfean special soldier. The portrait from the ruins is one thing, but he could’ve assaulted you just for your Prism Steed.”

  “Well, I was told that all original owners were at risk of being attacked for them.”

  Even B3 would’ve attacked me if she’d been an active PK and if I hadn’t been her friend.

  “I’ll run into people gunning for Silver sooner or later,” I said. “Besides, he analyzed Silver for me. My gratitude for that outweighs the risks.”

  “Is that how it works?”

  “In my mind, anyway. Also, I know he’s from Dryfe and all, but he really doesn’t seem like a bad guy.”

  He hadn’t hesitated to teach me, an enemy Master, about the pre-ancient civilization. He could easily have lied, but Azurite had confirmed that he hadn’t.

  Enemy soldier or not, the man seemed cordial and honest — qualities you rarely found in bad people.

  “You really are simple,” Azurite grinned wryly. “But I have friends in the imperium, as well, so I can’t deny those words.”

  “You have friends in Dryfe?” I asked.

  “Yes. Our countries used to be allied, after all. I was a transfer student there, and...” She gained a nostalgic look and fell silent. “Oh, this is no time to talk about the past.”

  True, we went off on a tangent.

  “Back to the matter at hand...” she said. “According to Truth Discernment, he didn’t speak a single lie, but we should still be cautious.”

  “Speaking of which, how long were listening to us?” I asked. “You make it sound like you were there from the start.”

  “That’s because I was. I tried to call out to you, but you began speaking to him before I could.”

  I had no idea she was there! I thought, somewhat surprised.

  “Again, he didn’t lie... but his manner of speech was off in more than just quirkiness. It was technical, designed to conceal the truth without saying a lie. Most army men know how to speak like that. Special soldiers doubly so.”

  “Yeah. I also feel that he wasn’t lying, but it did seem like he was hiding something.”

  It had to be related to the portrait — something hadn’t felt right about the way he was talking about it.

  “As for what it is...” I said, pondering.

  He’d claimed, without lying, that Dryfe had no need for Prism Soldiers. However, that was still only Dr. Mario’s own take on it. We couldn’t rule out the possibility that Dryfe would come for them anyway.

  Besides, even if that didn’t happen...

  “These ruins might contain more than just the Prism Soldiers,” I said.

  ◆◆◆

  Quartierlatin, mountain

  “So there was no point in trying to fool them, huh?” the man named Dr. Mario muttered. Thanks to Castling and his own two feet, he was now a fair distance away from the youngsters he’d just talked to. He wasn’t using his speech quirks anymore — this was his natural mode of speaking. “Knowing them, they’ve probably figured out what I was hiding.”

  He was speaking about what he’d seen in Ray’s photos.

  There was a part of the text that he hadn’t read aloud:

  “Here, within this facility, we will complete the anti-incarnation superweapon, Acra-Vesta, and the mass-production of the Prism Soldiers, and one day defeat the countless Incarnations of Beasts.”

  The part he’d kept secret spoke of a weapon that would make the Prism Soldiers pale.

  It wasn’t news to him, though. He’d already concluded that the ruins contained a supreme weapon based solely on the objects the other explorers had brought him.

  “A pre-ancient civilization superweapon...” he murmured. “We might be dealing with something as powerful as the Imperstand... or perhaps something greater.”

  He heaved a heavy sigh, both because he had to deal with something like this and because ignoring it wasn’t an option.

  “I can’t let it end up in the kingdom’s hands... the imperium would suffer if I did.”

  The special soldier looked at the mountain hiding the ruins. His eyes were bright blue, but his glare did nothing to complement the vividness.

  Ray might have felt that he looked tired, but that was an understatement — the eyes were downright devoid of the spark of life.

  He reached into his inventory, took out a magic comms item, and connected to a certain number. “Logan,” he said. “Are you near?”

  “Yeah. I’m in the nearby mountains. You?”

  It was Hell General, Logan Goddhart. He was his collaborator in this operation. The only one, in fact. But that mattered little, for he was sole, but many.

  “They found me out,” Dr. Mario said.

  “Now, listen here...!”

  “Easy there. They only figured out that I’m a special soldier. They still don’t know who I really am.”

  “They ought to know that you’re the only special soldier who backed the current imperator and survived the civil war for the throne! Then again, Altar’s idiots don’t know shit about Dryfe’s internal affairs.”

  “The operation starts in the morning, just as planned. Our goal is to either capture or destroy the superweapon in the ruins, Acra-Vesta.”

  “Understood. But why aren’t we doing a night assault? My devils can see in the dark.”

  “Not even the kingdom knows where Acra-Vesta’s stored yet... and I need some time to prepare.”

&n
bsp; “...Oh yeah, that.”

  “Mm-hm, I need more Edelvalsa marionettes. I brought some with me, but these numbers won’t do. If I use Marionette Platoon Creation right now, I should have a thousand by morning. That’s the maximum I can control at the same time. You go ahead and create your Demi-Dragon-class devils — at least two thousand of them.”

  “That’s more than we originally planned...”

  “Well, the plans have changed. We didn’t know about the Prism Soldiers in the ruins, or that Altar’s The Lynx and the Unbreakable were here, too. It’s necessary to be a bit excessive.”

  The Hell General was silent. I alone am already a bit excessive, to be honest, he thought. The second in Altar’s duel rankings? Some promising noob? A bunch of machines? They’re nothing to me.

  “Anyway, summon more than planned. Besides that, the plan is the same. I’ll go secure the technology while you keep Altar’s forces occupied.”

  “All right.” Logan didn’t speak his thoughts and simply agreed. “I’ll respect your decision and accept this quest, Field Marshal Gifted Barbaros.”

  ◇◇◇

  Prism Rider, Ray Starling

  The Prism Soldiers might not be the only kind of weapon in the ruins.

  Even if the constructs were of no use to Dryfe, the spies from Dryfe were bound to make a move if they were interested in the other thing.

  We rushed to use comms magic and warn the countess and the guild that the imperium might do something. Good thing Azurite had taken a guild comms item the last time we’d gone there.

  “There’s one good thing about Dryfe’s involvement in this,” said Azurite. “If they attack, it will confirm that the second weapon truly does exist. We certainly won’t overlook the far greater danger these ruins hold.”

  I shrugged. That’s one way to look at it.

  “But man, this escalated quickly,” I muttered.

  At first, it had just been the Prism Soldier factory, and now we also had some other weapon and Dryfe. I had a feeling that this whole thing might turn out to be even more trouble than Franklin’s Game.

  Still... no matter what came, I’d face it head-on.

  “Dr. Mario knows that we’re stopping the ruins tomorrow,” I said. “Assuming Dryfe attacks, when do you think it’ll happen?”

  Would they come to take the weapon before or after the Prism Soldiers were all shut down? Or would they wait for the actual war?

  All cases seemed likely.

  “I haven’t heard of any movements from Dryfe’s army,” said Azurite. “If they attack sometime around the deactivation, it’s bound to be a blitzkrieg with a select few.”

  “A small, handpicked force, huh?”

  “Yes. Special soldiers like that ‘Mario’ person, or Masters who excel at battle.”

  That reminded me of what Franklin and Hugo had done in Gideon, but this wouldn’t be anything like it. Back then, they’d used The Clash of the Superiors and Cyco’s compatibility with Gideon’s Masters to declaw the kingdom’s forces.

  This time, they had no means of doing anything like that, so they’d likely use pure power.

  “The numbers would be low, though, surely,” added Azurite. “These ruins were discovered a mere three days ago. They haven’t had the time to prepare in the way they did in Gideon.”

  “Even Masters who could pull something like that off are few and far between, yeah,” I said.

  Of course, the same could be said for us. The only Masters here were the few who’d come to explore the ruins and the ones who had Quartierlatin as their main haunt.

  If Dryfe did what they’d done in Gideon and brought a Superior, the only one who’d stand a chance would be Tom, our previous duel champion.

  Or maybe...

  “Regardless, we must be alert,” Azurite said.

  “Yeah. How many Masters do we have?”

  “Well, there are the ones who took the quest to stop the ruins, but...” Azurite fell silent mid-sentence.

  I knew exactly what she didn’t want to say.

  Yesterday, she’d said that she was against using Masters in war. She would tolerate our help in exploring the ruins and stopping the factory, but she didn’t want to force us into a direct clash with Dryfe.

  This was like a pre-war skirmish. She probably thought we had no place in it.

  “The other tian fighters and I will stand to defend,” she proclaimed. “You join the other Masters and stop the ruins.”

  The gravity of the situation clashed with her line of thinking, causing anguish you could almost hear in her tone.

  Still, I couldn’t agree.

  “No,” I said. “I’ll stay on the surface and fight Dryfe’s Masters.”

  “Ray!” she exclaimed judgmentally.

  I didn’t give in. “Didn’t I tell you that Masters would come to help Altar when it needed them?”

  “...You did.”

  “And I also said I’d be one of them. So yeah, I’m fighting Dryfe’s Masters tomorrow, and that’s final.”

  I was choosing to fight, just as I’d said I would.

  “But that’s my role! I thank you for your help with the investigation, but you Masters mustn’t take part in—!”

  “Speak up.”

  “...Eh?”

  I knew I had to fight, but I didn’t know why Azurite was so against it. I needed to find out her reasons before the battle began.

  “Why are you against us Masters joining the war effort? Give me a reason. Tell me your feelings.”

  “M-My feelings?”

  “Why don’t you want us in the war?”

  I couldn’t make a choice that respected her feelings if I didn’t even know what they were.

  Azurite fell silent, but it didn’t seem to be because she didn’t want to talk about it. She was just conflicted... contemplating something.

  Soon enough, she opened her mouth, “Very well... I have two reasons, actually. The first is that I simply don’t trust Masters.”

  I’d already guessed that one. Thanks to the war, many Altarian tians no longer trusted Masters, and Azurite was among them. Masters had killed her mentor, Langley Grandria, and her teacher, the Arch Sage, and for all I knew, there might’ve been many more. I really couldn’t blame her for not trusting us.

  “But the reason I refuse your assistance is different,” she went on. “I don’t hold any mistrust towards you.”

  That was as good as saying she trusted me. And yet she was still rejecting me.

  “My second reason... is my late father’s words.”

  “Your dad’s?”

  “Yes...” Azurite said. “He was one of the people in the center of Altar’s government, and he thought a lot about the stark increase in Masters that started four or five years ago.”

  That was more or less when Infinite Dendrogram had come out. Shu and the other first-wave players had gotten online and started messing things up or solving them.

  “He used to think a lot about what would happen if these powerful, immortal beings kept growing in power and number.”

  “Did he think we’re a danger or something?”

  “No... the other way around, in fact. Father considered Masters to be inhuman agents of revolution who would lead humanity and the world to a better future. In his eyes, you were akin to divine messengers I’ve read about in legends.”

  “Divine messengers?” I raised an eyebrow.

  Well, that’s an... interesting way to look at us.

  It made me think of the Extra-Continental Vessel, the god and the servants, but that was probably unrelated.

  “That’s why my father refused to hire Masters for war,” she said. “He believed that there was no future for a world in which Masters were seen as nothing but sellswords for war. You are so much more than that. You are saviors from another world.”

  I was silent. Wow, he sure put us on a pedestal.

  That line of thought didn’t even align with the vast majority of Masters. After all — all of us had s
tarted out with the intention to play.

  Even if there were people like me, growing to value the lives of those who called this world their home, none of us came here to make this world a better place.

  I was pretty sure not even Miss Aberration was an exception, and she was a damn cultist.

  If Azurite’s father really was a big name in Altar’s government, this misconception might’ve been one of the reasons why the country was in such a dire state. After all... we Masters were no saviors or divine messengers.

  “You don’t agree with him on that, do you?” I asked.

  “I don’t. Even so, I’ll follow his words until the end. They... They were our last...”

  She fell silent again.

  From what I could tell, her father must’ve died in the war.

  Not even a year had passed since then. The memory had to be fresh enough that merely talking about it opened the wound again, making it hard for her to speak.

  I silently pondered. It was easy to say that she was just a slave to her father’s memory, but if it was near and dear to her heart, who was I to ruin it for her?

  I couldn’t take that angle, so...

  “Before I came here, someone told me this,” I began.

  “Eh?”

  I began to quote. “‘You can become a hero or the demon king, a king or a slave, a good person or an evil person. You can do something, or you can do nothing. You can stay in Infinite Dendrogram, or leave it. It’s all up to you. If it’s possible, then you can do anything you want.’”

  I was speaking about myself... or, rather, us Masters. That was what Cheshire had told me when I’d asked about the goal of Infinite Dendrogram.

  “Who said that?” asked Azurite.

  “Those were the words I was told before I came to this world as a Master,” I answered. “As far as I know, most Masters are told something similar.”

  According to Figaro, his control AI had seen him off with, “Blessings upon your days and the freedom they bring.”

  That was most likely the thing the control AIs — the devs — found most important.

  Basically... it was all about freedom.

  “Masters are free,” I said. “Whatever we do is up to us to decide. We’re not some single mass going around changing or destroying the world.”

  She was silent.