Game’s End Part 1

by Mamare Touno

  Naturally, demand was high, and underwear was one of the most popular items Tailors made. The common sense they’d cultivated in the old world was strong, and even Marielle wanted to change her underwear regularly, and thus to have several pairs. In Akiba at present, underwear was one of the Tailors’ highest-earning items.

  Materials like hooks, lace, and elastic could be obtained by creating a suitable accessory item from the menu and dismantling it. The trick to making a better item lay in the workarounds and careful sewing methods used at this point. Since they were hand-sewn, they cost about as much as a midrange magic item. In gold coins, the price was a solid three hundred or above.

  If swimsuits were made using a previously installed recipe, it was possible to mass-produce them in a short amount of time, so they were cheap. These were, of course, plain versions that didn’t use rare materials. High-level fashion items cost a moderate sum, but as a veteran player who was fond of novelty, Marielle had several suits. She had hunted this one up from among the rubbish that slept in her safe deposit box.

  Marielle’s swimsuit was a bikini hot enough to have provoked involuntary admiration if she’d been on a beach in the old world. It wasn’t that the cloth areas were particularly scanty, but the acutely angled cut of the suit and Marielle’s patently unfair figure combined to make it look suggestive.

  Marielle might have been aware of this: She’d wrapped herself up in a cotton parka, but—

  There’s so many people here, all those eyes, and… Well, lettin’ everythin’ hang out seems, um… It’s embarrassin’ all by itself…

  Even so, Marielle was sure she’d be all right if she wore her parka. In fact, the sight of her bikini bottom peeking out from under the tail of the parka was actually more of a crime, but she hadn’t noticed this. Smiling away on her deck chair and enjoying her vacation to the fullest, Marielle was utterly at peace.

  “Miss Marielle, Miss Marielle!!”

  The boy who’d tumbled through the air a moment before came running up to her.

  He held a weapon that looked like a double-pointed spear, which meant he was probably a Samurai. Even in this heat, he was wearing leather armor, but because he had been pushed into the ocean, he was dripping with water in the sunlight; he looked like a puppy who’d just gone swimming.

  “Requesting treatment, please!”

  Another look showed that the boy’s head was bleeding heavily.

  “Sure thing.”

  Marielle nodded energetically, then sat up and activated the spell Healing Light. White light in the shape of a six-pointed star sprang from Marielle’s fingertip and was absorbed into the boy, recovering his HP in no time.

  “Yesss! Healed!”

  The boy put a hand to his wound, looking happy. The bleeding from his head seemed to have been cured completely as well. Healing Light was a low-ranking, instant-recovery spell; of the spells Marielle had, its chant time was relatively short, and the recovery amount was comparatively small. As a rule, it was a small recovery spell used to fill in the gaps when the recast time of a large-scale recovery spell wouldn’t be over soon enough, or when reaction-activated recovery wouldn’t quite cover everything. However, for a boy whose level was this low, the spell was advanced enough to completely recover his HP.

  “Thank you very much, ma’am!”

  “No worries.”

  Marielle smiled brightly.

  “Never mind that, get back out there! Go bag lots of crabs! I’d try attackin’ by slippin’ in from the side. Make sure to ask about situations that would let you use your special skills while you’re at it.”

  “Yes, ma’am! Understood!”

  The boy ran off, energetically kicking up sand.

  As Marielle watched him, he spotted a giant crab that had come up on land from the beach and changed direction. Spear at the ready, he closed the distance in one sprint. The crab was about a meter in size, and if it extended its legs to their full extent, it would probably be close to two meters. “Giant” indeed.

  The boy leapt in decisively, then struck the crab’s side with the spear point, as if to flip it over. This time, he managed to defeat it handily.

  There were five or six similar newbies around Marielle. They were the Adventurers with the lowest levels at the summer camp.

  Marielle had come down to the coast with the newbies as their leader.

  In summer, countless giant crabs known as Apricots landed on Meinion Beach. If left alone, the monsters went farther and farther inland from the shore and damaged livestock and fields, so the People of the Earth weren’t particularly fond of them.

  That said, they weren’t much of a threat, and their monster levels ranged from 4 to 8. Although there were differences among individuals, they were the perfect training partners for newbs.

  If the newbies spent all day battling on the beach like this, in combination with the leg and hip training on the sand, they would get quite enough experience points. If they took too much damage, all they had to do was come to Marielle and get a recovery spell.

  When MP ran out, they would take a break.

  Having a dedicated healer on board made it possible to conduct intense drills.

  Of course, it was a huge success as Marielle’s Operation Vacation as well.

  “Toryaaaaah!”

  “Why you! You, you! Go down!”

  “I’m gonna rip you a new one!”

  With the vigorous voices of the newbies in her ears, Marielle lay back in her deck chair. Sweat beaded up, but her cold glass of soda cooled it right down.

  This was truly time spent in paradise.

  She couldn’t stop her face from softening into a smile.

  Most of the new players here wanted to join production classes. These particular individuals’ levels were still as low as they were—even though it had already been three months since the Catastrophe—because of their aversion to battle.

  That in itself wasn’t a problem. The fact that Adventurers who were interested in production provided support from town made it possible for players from combat guilds to go out and earn money.

  However, in this other world, being exclusively production class carried heavy risks. If you had no combat abilities whatsoever, you couldn’t defend yourself when you needed to, and most important, Adventurer levels mattered to production-centered persons as well. In many cases, it was much faster to go out to a field and gather minor ingredients yourself.

  Possibly, these arguments had been successful.

  It was also possible that, although they’d felt these things for a while now, the production guilds hadn’t had enough of a support system for combat training, and they’d given up. The low-level newbies who had gathered on the beach seemed to be enthusiastically repeating the crab-hunting drill.

  There was a secret to this: They couldn’t back out, no matter how badly they wanted to, because every time they came near to giving up, Marielle hit them with a recovery spell and that sunflower smile. Boys’ pride is a sad thing.

  As for the girls, in an atmosphere of such desperation, they had no choice but to think, Well, there’s no help for it. I’d better boost my level a bit, too.

  The only one who didn’t have a clue that this reason existed was Marielle herself.

  Everyone’s workin’ so hard… Wow, what amazin’ weather.

  Marielle murmured sleepily, savoring her vacation mood.

  Midlevel players who had been dispatched from Keel and the West Wind Brigade were patrolling the beach as coaches and guards. Marielle’s only job was to wait here as the person in charge (or, if you asked Marielle, to enjoy her vacation), and to use recovery spells to heal the wounded who came to see her every now and then.

  Bored, Marielle turned over for the umpteenth time.

  The air was dry, with no humidity, and although it was quite hot, it wasn’t very unpleasant.

  …And so it was sheer coincidence that when she happened to glance offshore, she saw a white, foaming line. Shouryuu was passing
by, and on a whim, she waved him over.

  “Say, Shouryuu? What do you s’pose that is?”

  Marielle pointed at the white line off the coast.

  “Nn. I couldn’t say. …Bubbles? Maybe it’s a ship’s wake. Hmm…”

  However, in the end, that was as far as the conversation went.

  After a little while, the white line disappeared, and nothing in particular happened afterward. The group continued to hunt crabs until the sun began to sink, ending up with a ton of meat and shells.

  As Marielle and the others headed back to the abandoned school building to prepare for the evening’s production-technique training, the mysterious white line had completely vanished from their minds.

  2

  Isuzu and the others had been trying to conquer Forest Ragranda for three days now.

  Every day, their expeditions had ended in less than three hours.

  The strain was tremendous, and they weren’t able to stay in the dungeon.

  Of course, simply managing to stay in the dungeon for long periods wouldn’t be enough, but if their times were this short, it was a problem. It meant they were fighting only four or five battles.

  There was nothing to do but train more.

  Rundelhaus had concluded the matter that way, almost by force, but there was no way they’d be able to earn enough experience points in a mere four or five battles. Every one turned into a melee or a brawl, and they ended up wearing down their MP and their nerves and retreating with nothing to show for it. They did this over and over.

  Isuzu had changed out of her leather armor into normal clothes. It was tiring to wear heavy armor all the way back to camp.

  The advanced party was in the dungeon for about six hours every day, and since Isuzu and the others never lasted past morning, they had nothing to do, and they were bored.

  If they rested outside the dungeon for an hour, they would recover their HP and MP.

  That meant they could have gone back into the dungeon again in the afternoon and possibly earned a few more experience points, but Nyanta and Naotsugu had forbidden it. They didn’t know the reason, but it had been emphasized very strongly, and they couldn’t disobey.

  With no help for it, Isuzu and the others did chores, gathering firewood or drawing water, and took walks to kill time.

  From the angle of the sun, it was probably about three in the afternoon.

  Isuzu was on her way to a nearby pond.

  It wasn’t a very large watering hole, but it was fed by spring water, which meant it was cool and clear, and the group drew the water they used in their daily routines from it. Drinking it might have made them sick, so they hadn’t tried, but Isuzu’s instincts told her it was probably safe.

  Naturally, up here in the mountains, there were no baths.

  Although no one in particular had suggested it, Isuzu and the others had begun coming to this pond to bathe by turns.

  “!! —Hah!!”

  Compressed exhalations filtered out from the depths of the forest.

  Who could that be?

  Quietly, Isuzu detoured in that direction.

  It was Rundelhaus; he was exercising ferociously in the woods. Over his lavender clothes, which looked like the uniform of some distinguished boarding school, he wore a mage’s mantle, and he was soaked with sweat.

  She didn’t know how long he’d been working like that, but if the black stains on the ground were sweat, he might have been training ever since they left the dungeon.

  Rundelhaus thrust out his left hand, generated an enormous ball of flames, then compressed it to the limit, turning it into a fist-sized fireball. It looked like the process took a lot of concentration: Although he usually looked like a dandy, sweat beaded up all over him, and he was gritting his teeth.

  He threw the fireball, then swiftly put together a seal and stabilized it in midair before it hit the trees. Then he created a sphere of ice and cold air in the same way, launching it to destroy the flames he had released.

  The magic that he had converted into flames and ice clashed among the trees, sending up fierce clouds of steam. Rundelhaus kept moving, not stopping for an instant, avoiding the sprays of hot water that sometimes came his way.

  These magic attacks and violent evasions were probably a sort of drill meant to simulate a real battle.

  Isuzu spotted two lines that had been drawn at Rundelhaus’s feet. She couldn’t think what they were for at first, but after she’d watched Rundelhaus’s movements for a few minutes, she abruptly understood.

  It’s a dungeon corridor.

  The two lines that had been drawn in the soil stood for a dungeon passage. Rundelhaus was fighting a band of unseen Skeletons that was coming down it.

  He was constantly moving forward and backward, but he never crossed the lines on his left and right. He couldn’t: They were the corridor walls.

  How long did he drill?

  It seemed like a long time, but it probably hadn’t been more than five minutes. Rundelhaus knelt on the ground, exhaling hugely. In that position, he looked almost as if he were throwing up, and he made pitiful noises, desperately dragging air into his lungs.

  “…Um. Are you okay?” Hesitantly, Isuzu spoke to him from behind the trees. She remembered that one of her classmates, a girl with asthma, got like this when her symptoms were at their worst.

  However, her voice seemed to startle Rundelhaus to his core. He leapt to his feet in an instant as if he were on springs, turning to face Isuzu.

  “Why, Miss Isuzu. …Wh-what brings you here?” Rundelhaus smiled a princely smile, breezily combing his fingers through his bangs.

  However, his sweat-soaked bangs stuck flat to his forehead.

  “You don’t have to push yourself, you know.” As she spoke, Isuzu fought back a laugh. However, she didn’t seem to have gotten through to the young man. On the contrary, he was more than a little flustered, and he tried even harder to keep up appearances.

  “H-how am I pushing myself, exactly? I-I’m not. Not in the least. I was merely taking an afternoon stroll to hear the songbirds’ harmony, following where the forest nymphs led…”

  Simply speaking those words made Rundelhaus’s face turn purple.

  Well, sure, if he’s going to talk like a prince when he’s so low on oxygen he’s gasping for air. He’ll give himself cyanosis.

  That was what Isuzu thought, but even when his face had gone purple, Rundelhaus’s princely smile didn’t falter. Feeling sorry for him, Isuzu looked away, turning her back on him.

  “I-is that right…”

  When she spoke over her shoulder, she heard the sound of harsh breathing behind her.

  A guy and a girl alone in the woods, with no one around, and a man’s heavy breathing: Anyone would have assumed that a pervert had made an appearance, but to Isuzu, Rundelhaus seemed to be an extremely superficial guy, and she felt as if she was showing him warrior’s compassion.

  Hmm… Does that mean I’m weird?

  When she thought about it, her level was about the same as his. She didn’t know Rundelhaus’s age, but he looked to be in his early twenties, so he probably wasn’t younger than she was. Furthermore, he was a guy, and he wasn’t delicate.

  In terms of combat ability, the difference was overwhelming. Even when you considered that Isuzu was a support class and Rundelhaus was a pure attack class, his attack power was more than double hers.

  However, on a completely different level from actual abilities and conditions, Isuzu seemed to feel superior. It was a state of mind even she didn’t really understand.

  “Miss Isuzu— Erm. What are you doing here?”

  “I was going to take a bath… Oh, of course. You come too, Rundelhaus.”

  She didn’t sweetly ask Would you come with me? Under ordinary circumstances, even what she did say would have been unthinkable. But it seemed she had lost all sense of reserve where Rundelhaus was concerned.

  “To bathe?! I’m not in the habit of peeping on ladies’ baths! I’l
l thank you not to misjudge me!!”

  “Nobody said I was asking you go to in with me or peep on me.”

  Keeping her back turned, Isuzu delivered her retort in a tone that sounded both angry and amused. She heard Rundelhaus—who still hadn’t caught his breath—choke. It made her feel good.

  “It isn’t proper to let a lady walk through the woods by herself, is it?”

  Isuzu blushed a little. There was something terribly embarrassing about calling herself a lady. To be honest, it was an outrageous remark. However, once she’d said it, she couldn’t unsay it.

  “I suppose that’s true. Yes, as a guard, you mean.”

  The strength was returning to Rundelhaus’s voice.

  “I’ll escort you, then. There’s a spring, you said? Which way is it?”

  Isuzu turned around.

  There stood Rundelhaus, looking a bit flustered; his expression seemed to say, Yes, show me to it. Even though it was wet with sweat, his blond hair hadn’t lost its color, and when she looked at him, she saw that he really was handsome. In the real world, he could have done quite well as the protagonist of a girls’ manga.

  And even then, I don’t feel much pressure. …Maybe it’s because we’re in another dimension.

  “It’s over that way, Rundelhaus.”

  As Isuzu headed down the deer track to the pond, feeling slightly perplexed, the young man spoke to her. “Miss Isuzu. You can call me Rudy. It’s what my father and mother call me.”

  As Isuzu listened to his voice, she felt a bit self-conscious.

  3

  They were taken to an area Shiroe’s group wasn’t familiar with, deep inside the Ancient Court of Eternal Ice.

  This place was near the heart of the palace, and even though it was summer, it was filled with a cool silence. Just before the chill air went from cool to cold, the high-ceilinged corridor ended in a huge metal door with carvings on it.

  “All right: This is my den. Come in, come in.”