Game’s End Part 2

by Mamare Touno

  When the veterans had rushed over and looked at the sea, they had let out groans of despair. There were numerous white waves. Far more than one or two hundred.

  This is…

  Marielle felt it, too.

  Choushi was a peaceful town that was designed around fishing and farming. This meant that the town was built along the Great Zantleaf River, and its shape was long and drawn out. Consideration had been given to flooding and the ebb and flow of the tide, of course, and even at the narrowest places, there were at least a hundred meters between the residential areas and the beach. …But that was still close.

  To make matters worse, that hundred meters wasn’t a hundred meters of forest or mountain.

  It was simply open beach a hundred meters wide, sandy or rocky, which fishing tackle and boats were normally dragged over.

  It would be next to impossible to defend the town—which exposed its long, broad side to an open space like that one—from that many sahuagins.

  Maybe not even “next to” impossible… Sure, we can survive pretty easy. All we have to do is run home. I bet we can prob’ly even beat all those sahuagins, although it’s gonna take time. But completely protectin’ the town and keepin’ all the People of the Earth in one piece… We might not be able to do that…

  Still, as Marielle stared wordlessly at the foaming surface of the ocean, she heard the creak of bowstrings being drawn back on either side of her.

  On her right was Naotsugu. Touya stood next to him.

  On her left, newbie Assassins and lots of Warriors were nocking arrows. Shouryuu wasn’t good with bows, but even so, he was holding a throwing knife that looked like a thick metal skewer at the ready.

  “Hand down an order, Miss Mari. Give us a shot in the arm.”

  Naotsugu was grinning widely.

  At that smile, Marielle’s feelings grew lighter.

  There was nothing to stress about.

  Marielle always had encouraging companions with her, friends who had supported her. Their smiles alone made her feel as if her heart had grown wings.

  “Sure thing, hon. Um, let’s see. …Uh, okay, folks!”

  Marielle raised her voice.

  The foaming water in front of her seethed more restlessly, surging toward the mouth of the river.

  “Thanks a bunch for helpin’ out up till now! Thanks to you, there wasn’t one single death from Choushi, and we made it through the goblin attack without lettin’ too many fields get ruined. That’s somethin’ we should be real happy about. It’s gonna be just a bit longer, though. The show isn’t over until we beat this enemy, too… We won’t have protected the village all the way through. Help me out for one more battle. I know you can do it. Okay, let’s go! Move out!!”

  Bowstrings sang one after another.

  When this had happened three times, Naotsugu took the lead, running for the coast. Shouryuu and Lezarik followed. Nyanta, who brought up the rear, gave Marielle a jaunty little wave.

  Here and there, parties of Adventurers were charging toward the coast.

  However, a closer look revealed several groups that weren’t charging. When she sent a questioning look at Minori, who had withdrawn to a bend in the farm road and sat down where she had an open view of the coast, the answer that returned to her was “They’ll need alternates soon.”

  The opinion was so level-headed that Marielle was a bit taken aback; it made her wonder if Minori was really a middle schooler. Still, she was perfectly right: If they were going to hold back numbers like this at the very last minute, right before they came up on land, the fatigue would make alternates a must.

  A fierce battle was beginning at the coastline. As such, it would probably be a good idea for Marielle to rest up, too.

  Long-term battles took a ferocious mental toll on the Recovery classes. Marielle was a high-level Cleric, and her abilities would be sorely needed in the fight ahead.

  4

  Midrount Equestrian Gardens.

  At present, simplified defenses were being set up here, and units were being organized at fever pitch. Since the military units that had been organized and issued posts had already departed in rapid succession, the camp held only about a third of the entire army now.

  The situation was extremely fluid, too.

  Apparently Krusty and his infiltration strike unit had already begun to engage the enemy before dawn that morning. Reports from the observation team estimated about one thousand casualties on the enemy’s side. In the near future, they’d probably learn just how much significance that number had as a part of the whole.

  Although he’d been given the nickname Counselor, Shiroe wasn’t well versed in real-world military affairs or tactics. As a result, he didn’t know whether that number was large or small, or whether the damage would be enough to cause the goblins to retreat.

  In general, he’d heard that if 30 percent of an army’s total forces were rendered unable to fight, the army was said to be nearly annihilated. To Shiroe, this wasn’t much more than trivia, but something about it perplexed him.

  During battles with the goblins, had any enemies ever fled? When he thought about it, although he couldn’t say there hadn’t been any, he thought that, in most situations, it had been to the last goblin standing. Elder Tales had been a game, after all. Game monsters wouldn’t take to their heels, let alone surrender, until that stage.

  That meant his faintly remembered knowledge might be wrong, or maybe that sort of real-world tactical knowledge didn’t apply in this world. It was also possible that goblins or demihumans in general were exceptionally bellicose and had no concept of “retreat.”

  On the other hand, though, there had been good news as well.

  During that morning’s battle, Krusty’s group hadn’t sustained significant damage, and they’d wiped out the goblin army’s magical beasts and two giants. Provided the main forces of the goblin army didn’t have anything really extraordinary, it was probably all right to leave them to Krusty’s legion raid.

  In any case, if an enemy Krusty and his group can’t handle shows up, our chances of victory won’t rise no matter who in Akiba goes up against it.

  Of course, compatibility varied among enemies. If they got intel on the enemy, they could take steps to counter it by reorganizing.

  In other words, even if Krusty and the others lost, it wouldn’t mean the enemy was one they couldn’t beat. In the days of Elder Tales, during large-scale battles, they’d learned how to win by being annihilated over and over again. Information always saved the ones who came after. In a contest of practical strength, it was only natural that the contestant with the most information on their target had better odds of winning.

  However, in a confrontation where they had no intel, the legion raid Krusty was currently leading was without a doubt the strongest weapon Akiba had.

  We can leave the nerve center of the goblin plunder army to Krusty.

  With a small tunk, Shiroe placed a black pebble in the center of the map. That was Krusty’s position. Next he set a whitish, misshapen pebble at Midrount Equestrian Gardens, and a smooth, green pebble at the village of Choushi.

  At the moment, the place that needed the most watching was Choushi.

  Of course he’d received reports that they’d been attacked by sahuagins, and that pained him, but what was more important was the fact that if the sahuagins managed to take that cape, they might even go ashore in Maihama.

  One thing both towns had in common was that neither was expecting an invasion from the sea.

  Why had the sahuagins even appeared?

  He wasn’t clear on the reason, but Shiroe thought the cause lay with the army the Goblin King had unleashed. After all, they’d appeared simultaneously. It could also be a maneuver by the Sahuagins meant to capitalize on a war that had already begun, but either way, it meant their army would be split in half.

  I’d already made allowances for that…or I’ll just have to bluff that I had, I suppose.

  Shiroe had been
fiddling with a slightly larger pebble, and he set it on the map with a thunk. The pebble was streamlined, and oddly cute: It looked a bit like a waterfowl with folded wings. He’d placed it on the ocean.

  The experimental steam-driven transport ship Ocypete.

  They were using it at maximum rotation.

  After Krusty’s group had disembarked, the Ocypete had waited for reinforcements at the abandoned port of Narashino, but they would have reached the ship by now. It would be out on the ocean, leading the four full raids Shiroe had organized, bound for Choushi.

  The Ocypete was a transport vessel, and it wasn’t armed. In that sense, it was a plain, unaffected ship.

  However, since the ship was a prototype, they’d reinforced its hull so that they could run various strength tests, and with all the armor plating it had, its defense was probably high. In addition, as far as shipboard weapons were concerned, all they had to do was put the Adventurers on it.

  The units Shiroe had specially organized were heavy on Summoners and Bards. Summoners were weaker at direct long-range magic attacks than Sorcerers were, but when you took into account the fact that they could use long-range attack spells based in the spirits they summoned, their range expanded to twice that of Sorcerers. Bards could provide backup for their magic attack power, avoiding the risk of exhausted MP.

  Then it was just a race against time.

  Shiroe consulted with the telechat operators who were constantly coming into the tent, determining organization and placement for unit after unit.

  In this war, simply winning wouldn’t be all that difficult. However, the trouble was that, if they destroyed the goblins’ main army, it was just as likely that many goblins would form rogue tribes and go around wreaking havoc on the territories of Eastal.

  Shiroe remembered the People of the Earth village they’d stopped at on their way back from Susukino. That good-natured old man, and the village laborers with their sheep. Of course, in a dangerous world like this one, they would be expected to defend themselves, and, although it wasn’t likely to happen, even if they did die, he thought there would probably be no help for it. However, if there was still a chance to save them, it was only natural that he’d want to do it, and fortunately, Shiroe was in a position that would allow him to try.

  No doubt it would be fine to leave the subjugation of the main goblin army to Krusty. The problem was how to deal with that goblin plunder army of just under twenty thousand when it disintegrated and dispersed.

  By organizing smaller, mobile units that were separate from Krusty’s strike unit—the one that was attacking the central forces—and using them to surround the perimeter, they’d keep any damage the goblins did contained in the mountains somehow. He needed to draw up a strategy for that maneuver and give concrete shape to its tactical aspects. That was the issue Shiroe was currently facing.

  The key to the general strategy was to drive the Goblins into the hilly region at the center of Zantleaf.

  In order to make that happen, Krusty’s group was fighting at the edges of the main goblin unit and working clockwise from the west, as though they were “peeling” the army. Fortunately, the goblins were taking advantage of any chances they got, and they’d already sallied quite far in the direction of Zantleaf. If they continued to lure them in, it should be possible to lead them to an ideal position.

  If he distributed Akiba’s forces in such a way that they’d support Krusty, and they managed to seal the goblins into Zantleaf—the tip of Chiba on the Bousou Peninsula in the real world—it would make the surrounding areas significantly safer. The ultimate weak spot in that strategy was the defense of the village of Choushi, and the soldiers that were being sent over on the Ocypete.

  “Aren’t you going to the battlefield, my liege?” Akatsuki asked.

  She’d followed him all the way here—in order to guard him, she’d said—and she was sitting on a cushion that had been set out inside the tent.

  “I’d like to. I can’t leave this place just yet, though. I haven’t finished all the organizing… Well, the end of that should be in sight within a day or two. When that time comes, I’ll move.”

  “I see.”

  Akatsuki nodded.

  Shiroe was a griffin rider, one of fewer than two hundred on the server. In terms of speed in the air, only wyverns were able to match them.

  If they had to mobilize a unit and march through the mountains, it would take time, but if Shiroe was traveling alone, he’d be able to race to either Krusty or the village of Choushi in about thirty minutes.

  That was one of two reasons Shiroe was currently based here: One reason was that being close to a large number of telechat operators meant he could quickly issue orders to the entire army. The other was that, in a fluid military situation like this one, he wanted to stay halfway between Choushi and Krusty’s unit so that he could run to either one.

  Shiroe was in the middle of building an army-wide communications network.

  If they managed to get that in place, the expedition was already an assembly of experienced Adventurers, so they’d probably be able to carry out the operation semiautonomously. The plan was to set up leaders for each party, establishing lines for reports and orders. Shiroe’s group would organize a horizontal network between units, and position telechat operators as a vertical network. They would sort out the information that came up through the telechat operators and note it down on the map, making developments visible.

  The strategy Shiroe came up with wasn’t terribly advanced, nor were his tactics.

  It was a familiar situation:

  Order the situation and make it visible. Once you discover discontinuity, investigate it thoroughly, find points worth noting, then “produce” them in order to show them off to good effect. Shiroe’s “scheme” was really only a collaboration between investigation and production.

  …And most of it was the sort of work he was doing now: Dull tasks that would never be seen publically. Good grief, Shiroe muttered to himself. I’m just a paper-pusher.

  However, as if to drown out Shiroe’s thoughts, a telechat operator’s voice echoed through the tent.

  “Mister Shiroe! The summer camp group just encountered sahuagins at the village of Choushi. It’s sixty Adventurers against at least a thousand sahuagins. They’re drastically outnumbered!”

  “Tell the Ocypete to hurry! Then call Calasin. The final organization materials are already drawn up. We’ll get the communications network up and running in a day—no, half a day!”

  Shiroe spread documents with a vast number of notes out on his desk. About a dozen telecommunications officers stood around him, looking down at them. As Shiroe began to fill them in on his predictions for the future with clipped words, his voice held no hesitation.

  For now, they had to complete the command transmission network as quickly as possible.

  And then— Shiroe bit his lip, his mind racing.

  5

  “Haa…! Haa…!”

  Calming his ragged breathing, Naotsugu gulped down the water he’d taken out of his bag.

  As he ran his eyes over the area—covering for Shouryuu, who was so tired he’d sunk down to the ground—he gave a strained smile: This is a pretty nasty situation.

  Naotsugu, Nyanta, Shouryuu, and Lezarik were currently taking a short break at the foot of a pine tree a little ways from the coast. You couldn’t really have called it a rest, though.

  The battle that had begun that morning had gone on for four hours already, a merciless, continuous struggle under the blazing summer sun.

  This was Naotsugu’s group’s third break, and the previous two hadn’t lasted more than ten minutes each. The sahuagins were trying to come up on land at many points, and there weren’t many Adventurers. In a situation like this, when they had to make defensive cover function effectively with small numbers, teamwork between parties was vital. If the Adventurers gathered in one place, the sahuagins would invade through the holes that would inevitably open up.
r />   And if that happened, the village of Choushi was right behind them.

  Of course they’d asked the village chief to have the People of the Earth take refuge in buildings whose defenses seemed solid, and the young men had probably taken up arms and were preparing to fight.

  However, even so, they were nothing more than the ordinary residents of an unwalled town. How much of a fight could they give the sahuagins? The answer was: Only enough to buy some time before they were overrun.

  At the waterline in front of him, three groups of newbies were fighting again and again. True, from Naotsugu’s perspective at level 90, they were clumsy about a lot of things, but their fight was worthy of being called a brave one.

  Still, even so, the heartbreak of being midlevel remained: Sometimes their defensive formation loosened or came close to cracking apart.

  There was no help for that. The power and range of their techniques was far too different from what Naotsugu’s group had. The fact that they didn’t have the high-level magic items that Naotsugu and the others practically took for granted also made a big difference.

  Elder Tales had an Item Lock system. Nearly all high-level magic items needed to be “locked” in order to be equipped, and afterward they could be used only by the Adventurer who’d locked them.

  It was probably easiest to picture if you imagined having an item that was calibrated to you, for your exclusive use. Since locked items couldn’t be equipped to strangers, it was harder to steal and resell them, and even if you died, you wouldn’t lose them. They sometimes unlocked hidden abilities as well.

  Once they’d reached level 90, like Naotsugu’s group, even players who belonged to regular guilds had a few high-level magic items. Veteran players like Shiroe who went on tough adventures ordinarily had several dozen high-level items, and even some legendary items.

  These magic items weren’t simply high-performance weapons or defensive gear. Sometimes they came with unique special abilities, and some of them could even rewrite their bearers’ special skill performance.