Game’s End Part 1

by Mamare Touno

  It seemed rather like a partial taolu (a sequential dance performed as training) from Chinese kenpo. The care she took not to drop her center of gravity and the easy use of her knees and ankles in the footwork vaguely resembled kendo, Japanese fencing, as well. It was a strange sort of dance.

  Lead left, feint right, half-turn… Twist your upper body, turn again. …Feint left, shift your body, lead right, two steps.

  Akatsuki repeated the form as if in a dream.

  When she’d repeated it so often she’d forgotten the passage of time, when the sequence of movements had melted together and begun to flow through her body almost like blood, she looked up, and there was Shiroe.

  “My liege?!”

  “Aren’t you going to sleep, Akatsuki?”

  “H-how long have you been…”

  “Uh, not long.”

  Shiroe approached looking slightly troubled, and gave one of the glasses he held to Akatsuki. “Not long” had probably been a lie. If not, there would have been no reason for him to have two glasses.

  How long had he been watching her? Akatsuki couldn’t hold back her dismay at the thought. She worked hard, though, and managed to keep it out of her expression as she took the glass.

  “Thanks.”

  The glass she’d accepted was filled with Garnet Tea. The taste was dull, but it was nice and cold, a good after-exercise drink.

  Shiroe sat down on a carved limestone bench at the edge of the fountain. The space left next to him could have easily seated three people, but although she had the space, Akatsuki didn’t have the courage to sit there.

  Akatsuki stood near Shiroe, drinking her tea with nothing else to do. Although she was standing close to him, she hesitated to stand directly in front of him, so she was about sixty degrees to the side.

  Ninja should always be this way.

  She’d muttered that to herself silently, but there was another reason: If she stood right in front of him, they’d be looking straight at each other.

  It wasn’t that being a ninja made her this subservient; it was only that she felt overawed, or awkward. Standing directly in front of Shiroe, face-to-face, made Akatsuki feel incredibly nervous somehow.

  “……”

  Still, Shiroe didn’t seem to have the slightest idea that Akatsuki was thinking this way. His expression was vaguely perplexed, as though he were watching something far away. It made him look terribly mature.

  Shiroe had sanpaku eyes, and when he stared at something, he tended to draw his eyebrows together (and he stared like nobody’s business), all of which made him seem like an obstinate young man. The endearing round glasses he wore let him fool some people at first glance, but if they were around him for any length of time, they’d be startled by the depth of his thoughts and the breadth of his imagination.

  In any case, it was generally hard to tell what Shiroe was thinking, but there were some things only Akatsuki knew.

  When you lived together as part of the same guild, like family, you saw people in all sorts of different ways. It was like that now, when he was sitting on the bench. Even though Akatsuki was short, she noticed things.

  For example, the whorl in the back of Shiroe’s black hair spun clockwise.

  Akatsuki thought it was really cute.

  At the very least, the tuft that grew from behind that whorl and curled up like a cowlick looked like a mouse’s tail in a drawing, and that was very cute.

  The cowlick was sticking up now, too, and she began to want to touch it with her fingertip. Of course, in the real world, both Akatsuki and Shiroe were college students. They weren’t at an age where they could make even that sort of trivial contact casually, so she shoved the urge down. …But.

  Still, my liege’s whorl is cute.

  That was what Akatsuki thought.

  “What do you think, Akatsuki?”

  “About what?”

  “…The people of this palace, or their reactions…?”

  Shiroe finished his sentence vaguely. Apparently this was about an impression even he couldn’t explain clearly. In response, Akatsuki gave a frank report of what she’d sensed.

  “I would say they’re intensely interested. Goodwill and hostility. About half of each.”

  “I see…”

  “I think the one bright spot is that, although they’re hostile, they aren’t malicious.”

  “?”

  Hostility meant animosity. It was what both latent antagonists and rivals would direct at them. On the other hand, malice was a clearer intent to cause harm to the other party.

  Once this was explained to him, Shiroe muttered, “Then you’d say it feels as if they don’t have a specific plan yet?”

  “Even if it is hostility, I think it’s probably jealousy and envy.”

  “Right… I’d bet there’s suspicion there as well.”

  Shiroe nodded several times, agreeing with Akatsuki’s words. Shiroe had probably been observing his surroundings in his own way, searching for the meaning of those words and glances. He’d asked Akatsuki about it in order to compare their answers, to reconcile their impressions.

  Over the past few days, wherever they went in the palace, Akatsuki’s party had been the focus of attention.

  After their dance at the ball on the first night, Henrietta and Shiroe had become the subject of rumors. Both had changed partners and danced five dances, and they’d been spoken to by many noblemen and their wives. They had taken Eastal society by storm.

  At the ball, Shiroe and Henrietta, and for that matter Krusty and Michitaka, had actively interacted with people, working to make themselves known.

  Petite, lovely Akatsuki had, at first, been viewed as an oddity.

  Common sense told that since she had appeared in the great hall, she was either a noble herself, a family member, or an attendant. Apparently they hadn’t been able to judge whether to treat her as family or as an attendant.

  However, when they considered the fact that Shiroe had danced with Henrietta and the quality of the dress Akatsuki wore, they decided to treat her more as a member of a noble family than as a noble’s attendant.

  After that, many people had spoken to her.

  Knights and the sons of provincial lords approached Akatsuki one after another. They offered her drinks, or asked her to dance. She didn’t particular mind these things in and of themselves, but she was quite clearly being treated as a child, and she couldn’t stand that.

  Akatsuki was an adult.

  Why did she have to have people doting on her and speaking to her as if she were in elementary school? The only ones in that hall who had looked at Akatsuki as an independent individual whose age equaled theirs were the sons and daughters of the nobles, and they had clearly been in their early teens.

  Why do I have to have children being considerate to me, as if I’m one of them?!

  Just remembering exasperated her to the point where she felt as if her stomach was on fire.

  In the real world, she’d been treated like this on a daily basis.

  They wouldn’t let her into pubs. They’d patted her head and told her she only had to pay the child fare. Kids’ brand clothing turned out to be just her size. She was sick of it. Because she was sick of it, in Elder Tales, she’d pretended to be a tall, silent male character, but the Catastrophe had put the kibosh on that.

  She’d been so annoyed at the party she’d very nearly drawn a kunai, but she restrained herself and ran away instead. She hadn’t wanted anyone to pay any more attention to her, so she’d used Stealth Travel and Silent Move and escaped from the hall.

  After that, for the few days until today, as a rule, she’d used the same methods to prowl around the inside of the palace.

  She’d hid in the shadows of carved pillars or generously draped velvet curtains, eavesdropping on the nobles’ conversations. She couldn’t get conspicuously close, of course. Akatsuki’s excellent ninja senses told her that the People of the Earth had spies lurking in the palace as well. In this sort
of secret warfare, unless there were well-laid plans, the person seeking things had an advantage over the person hiding them.

  The current conditions were nothing more than members involved in the same business agreeing that, as long as no one caused mischief, they’d turn a blind eye. It was spies agreeing not to get in each other’s way.

  However, what she’d learned from even that sketchy surveillance was that the nobles had far more spies in Akiba than they’d assumed. They seemed to have a great interest in Akatsuki and the other Adventurers, and in the Round Table Council, too.

  Moreover, it had become clear that the Catastrophe was already widely recognized in People of the Earth society, and that it was considered to be the first step in a large-scale change that would shake the world to its foundations.

  “I wonder if their hostility is due to issues of military force.”

  “It sounded that way.”

  The Adventurers had great military strength. Approximately half of the fifteen thousand people in Akiba were level 90. Even if they kept their estimate conservative and assumed the average level was 70, that would mean there were fifteen thousand level-70 Adventurers.

  That strength was far, far greater than any military force the lords held.

  One provincial lord had let slip, “In my territory, I have fifteen level-thirty knights, plus sergeants-at-arms. There are about one hundred peasant militia members… For anything else, I have to employ mercenaries.” If it was true, thirty Adventurers would be enough to subdue that force.

  “I see. I don’t think there was much falsehood in those numbers. That sounds about right for a minor lord in the Tohoku region.”

  “Do you think so?”

  Shiroe seemed to have looked into the matter to a certain extent beforehand. He affirmed what Akatsuki had heard.

  “Since that’s the sort of force they have, when despotic Adventurers like the Briganteers act like barbarians, they aren’t able to stop them. There’s no help for that.”

  “You’re right.”

  At present, the town of Akiba and the Round Table Council had absolutely no intention of starting a war. On the contrary: They wanted to cooperate with the People of the Earth and live in this world in peace.

  Of course, if it turned out they needed to fight the People of the Earth in order to get back to their old world, for example, a different debate would probably break out. At this point in time, though, there would be no merit for the players in opening hostilities with the People of the Earth.

  However, it would be too dangerous to blindly believe that the same logic applied to the People of the Earth.

  First of all, Akatsuki and the other Adventurers probably saw the world differently than the People of the Earth did. The nobles lived on the taxes they collected in the course of administering their territories. The Adventurers were an element of uncertainty in these activities, and they might think of them as a blot on the landscape.

  Next, and largest, was the problem of martial strength, as Shiroe had guessed.

  For example, how would it make you feel if there were a man with a machine gun in the room with you? Living in that room would probably be very stressful. Whether or not you could trust the character of the gunman wouldn’t be much of an issue. It wouldn’t matter how virtuous he was. This would be doubly true if he were a complete stranger. If a man with a machine gun were nearby, his very presence would be disconcerting enough.

  “We don’t have an accurate picture of each other’s abilities yet.”

  Shiroe’s words continued beyond that point.

  Even if they knew the Adventurers were powerful beings, the People of the Earth couldn’t know what their true abilities were. In terms of the previous metaphor, it was as if the man who lived in the room with you had “some sort of terrible weapon,” and you didn’t know whether it was a machine gun or a chain saw.

  It might be a trivial weapon, like a fruit knife or disposable wooden chopsticks, but in the worst-case scenario, it could even be a hand grenade or an antitank missile. In that case, the entire room would be blown to smithereens.

  Since they didn’t know what kind of weapon their opponents had, the nobles probably couldn’t decide whether they should defeat them with a surprise attack or live so that they never, ever made them angry, no matter how humiliating it was.

  “Should we stage a battle, to show them?”

  “No, that would be a mistake. There’s no point in spreading terror. Or rather, it would do all sorts of harm, even if it did us a little bit of good.”

  “I see…”

  Shiroe summarily turned down Akatsuki’s suggestion.

  Of course, Akatsuki wasn’t all that depressed by this sort of thing. This was the man Akatsuki acknowledged as her liege, and in the field in which he excelled—mental combat—she wanted him to fly so high she couldn’t follow him. All Akatsuki had to do was use the special abilities only she possessed to support Shiroe, and that was enough for her.

  Huh…?

  It was enough. But.

  It should have been enough. …But.

  She felt as if something was tugging at her, and it made her feel a bit out of sorts. Of course, since she didn’t know the reason for it, it was only a slight discomfort, and ignoring it wouldn’t cause any trouble.

  There’s no problem.

  The night was growing very late.

  If they stayed up any later than this, it might have a bad effect on the many plots and espionage wars that would begin once dawn broke. If it had been Akatsuki herself, it wouldn’t have mattered, but Shiroe was their head counselor.

  However, just as she was about to suggest he get some sleep, she felt magic, as if their surroundings had blurred slightly.

  Shiroe must have felt it at almost the same instant.

  He sprang up from the bench; at some point, a wand had appeared in his hand.

  Akatsuki also readied her short sword. Before Akatsuki and Shiroe, a thin man appeared.

  A scholar’s robe. An amethyst circlet on his forehead. He seemed gaunt, as though his skin had been stretched directly over the bare minimum of muscle. If this had been all, he would have seemed sinister, but an ironic sense of humor showed in the man’s expression, and it made him somehow appealing, even charming.

  In a theatrical manner, the man bowed his head once, then spoke:

  “Master Shiroe of Log Horizon, I presume. I am Li Gan of Miral Lake, Magician. I’d be honored if you remembered me on future occasions. …I’ve come tonight because I wish to converse with you.”

  1

  “Gyappiiiii?!”

  With a huge spray of sand, a boy tumbled through the air. After executing two, three beautiful spins in midair, he dove into the water head-first with an energetic kabloosh.

  “Oh, wow! Look at ’im go!!”

  Relaxing in the shade of a beach umbrella, Marielle watched, laughing loudly.

  This was Meinion Beach.

  It was one of the most beautiful white sand beaches on the Zantleaf Peninsula. It was also a convenient thirty-minute trip on horseback from the school where Marielle and the others were staying.

  Marielle took an iced soda out of the combination cooler and table that sat beside her and moistened her throat. She’d taken off her tank top, and the colorful bikini that had emerged from underneath was beach fashion itself.

  Her equipment, consisting of a beach umbrella, deck chair, and beach blanket, was also complete.

  Hawaaah. This is it. This is exactly it! Talk about paradise. Boy, could I not be luckier right now.

  Marielle was often complimented on her smile, but the one she wore now was ten times better than usual—an angelic smile that could melt anything.

  She didn’t have suntan lotion, but bodies in this world seemed to be pretty tough. The sunburn situation would probably work itself out somehow. Also, she’d gone to great lengths to get this swimsuit.

  In the days of Elder Tales, clothes had been nearly synonymous with equipment
. Elder Tales had been a battle-centric RPG, and equipment had meant armor and weapons. Underwear hadn’t been included.

  Of course, if you took all the equipment off the polygon models, underwear was displayed, but it had been a game safeguard, and its purpose had been mostly to keep users from seeing the important bits. More than anything, it had been meant to keep things age-appropriate, and all you’d been able to see was solid-colored underwear that wasn’t sexy at all.

  This underwear was only seen on the character screen; it didn’t actually exist. At this point, it wasn’t even shown, so if they took off their clothes, a naked character would be displayed. …And when the character display was naked, they were naked, too.

  However, underwear was important. In the first place, Japanese people who’d spent their lives in an ordinary, civilized society couldn’t stand going commando.

  If they could get them, they knew they’d be able to change into them, but underwear required fairly advanced sewing techniques. Just as the citizens had nearly decided that production would be impossible and were about to give up, light shone in.

  That light was the existence of swimsuits.

  Beautiful graphics had been one of Elder Tales’ selling points, and it had had many special items, including items that could change your appearance. Swimsuits were one such item. In many cases, they existed as rare recipes, and specially designed swimsuits were sometimes given away at events as presents.

  Of course, swimsuits and underwear weren’t the same thing.

  There were differences in moisture absorption, and in whether or not they chafed your skin if you wore them for long periods. However, the Catastrophe made them close their eyes to petty differences like these. As a result, the underwear crisis in Akiba had been mitigated by skilled Tailors.

  Meanwhile, after the establishment of the Round Table Council, using the new item production methods Tailors were beginning to produce more “proper” underwear made of cotton and silk.