Game’s End Part 1

by Mamare Touno

  World Fraction.

  Spirit Theory.

  In his research of world-scale magic, Li Gan’s current interest had been narrowed down to these two points.

  A problem of souls, Li Gan had called it. That was the Spirit Theory. Shiroe wasn’t a specialist, and he hadn’t been able to understand the technical aspects, but on the whole, the theory seemed to be as follows:

  In general terms, the immaterial power that moved humans and demihumans was known as “spirit.” Spirit wasn’t a solid entity; instead, it was a body formed of two types of energy, yang and yin, adhered closely together.

  According to Li Gan…

  Yang energy was the energy that drove the mind. The human mind existed on top of this yang energy. Strong yang energy meant that the heart’s power was strong, and it influenced the force of magic. MP was an expression of the yang energy’s strength.

  Yin energy was the energy that drove the body. The physical toughness of the human body was greatly influenced by it. If the yin energy was strong, in addition to physical toughness, it strengthened the body’s spiritual energy as well. Warriors and other weapon attack classes used it in battle. It made itself apparent in HP as well, but the best expression of yin energy strength was life force.

  When humans stopped being able to live, first of all, the body stopped moving. At this point in time, the mind was healthy. However, the link between body and mind was severed, and the mind became trapped in darkness. This was because the information that should have flowed through the yang energy—the consciousness—had ceased to come from the yin energy—the physical body that could feel the light of the outside world.

  Then the yin energy began to disperse. As mentioned earlier, yin energy was life force, the fundamental energy of the body. As a result, the sturdier and higher-level the body, the longer this dispersion took. The yin energy of beings that were low-level or frail dispersed in minutes, but for tougher beings, the dispersion continued for half a day. This process was called “degradation.”

  The resurrection magic employed by the recovery classes was used on corpses in this state. It worked by gathering the yin energy that had diffused into the surrounding atmosphere, reconstructing it, and returning it to the body.

  If there wasn’t enough life force, the healer used their own life force to reconstruct it. The information needed for the construction was created by calculating backward from records that remained in the corpse in front of the healer. The loss of experience points was apparently due to an error during these calculations, an inevitable deterioration of information.

  Now, then: If resurrection magic was not used and the yin energy dispersed completely, the body became unable to maintain its current state. In physical terms, it began to rot. For the People of the Earth, at this point, death was final. …Yes, he hadn’t expected it, but resurrection magic worked on the People of the Earth as well, provided it was used directly after death.

  On the other hand, when Adventurers’ degradation was complete, or at the point after death when the Adventurer wished it, the body and its equipment broke down into particles. The power of their yang energy was used to transmit these particles to the temple, where their bodies were automatically reconstructed. In addition, the life force that filled the temple was used to restore their yin energy. The yang energy was then recombined with the restored body, which resurrected the ego.

  As a result of this seemingly miraculous ability, although both yang and yin energy were expended to the limit, and some experience points were lost due to the deterioration of information…Adventurers came back to life. For all intents and purposes, they were immortal.

  According to Li Gan’s research, this was the system of death in this other world, and of the Adventurers’ resurrection.

  “It bears a startling resemblance to the demihumans’ reincarnation system,” Li Gan had said.

  “When a demihuman meets its end… Or rather, when it degrades, its body rots like those of the People of the Earth, and its equipment is left behind. However, on the other hand, its yang energy is immediately given life as another being. It may take anywhere from a few years to a decade for it to reach maturity, but this is reincarnation and immortality.”

  In a way, it was a horrifying idea.

  Of course, this was a hypothesis that Li Gan and his master had been researching, and it wasn’t something the average Person of the Earth knew. However, if it was true, the demihumans might be far more troublesome enemies than they’d thought.

  Shiroe had asked if, in that case, the demihumans had memories of their previous lives, memories from before they’d died.

  “I can’t give you any real answer about that. There are two elements involved in this matter.”

  Li Gan had searched for words, as if answering wasn’t easy.

  “First, yang energy is the seat of the mind. In demihumans and Adventurers, this is indestructible. The mind, personality, vows, temperament: Without a doubt, all these things are stored in the yang energy as information. We know that memories, or at least most of them, are stored in yang energy as well. However, on the other hand, we also know that memories are stored in the physical brain. As I’m sure you’re aware, the body is the territory of yin energy. In other words, memories are an information continuum that spans both yin and yang energy. Since that’s the case, we hypothesized that memories might be lost during degradation and the reconstruction of the yang energy, and in fact, this phenomenon has been confirmed. Death causes the deterioration and loss of memories.

  “Yang energy is also the seat of the emotions. As that’s the case, ‘poisons’ such as terror, despair, and weariness could circulate even in an immortal being. As a practical issue, it’s possible that the yang energy in demihumans was distorted by the curse of the First World Fraction, and that it remains so. Even if minds in that state retain their memories, they’ve lost the power to recall them at will and recognize them as their own past. It’s probably rather like schizophrenia, or as though the person is seeing their own memories as a story.”

  In that case, death…

  In this other world, death was not without risk.

  That was a terrifying fact as well.

  Though, it was possible to say that all of this was still just a hypothesis.

  However, most of Shiroe was sufficiently convinced that it was fact that he silenced that doubting voice. It was like a sense of smell, something older than logic. Life without end… It couldn’t possibly be without risk.

  Li Gan said that memories were stored in both yang energy and the brain…

  It wasn’t that he believed this magician’s fantasy magic theory without hesitation, but it had reminded him of something.

  It was the structure of the Elder Tales game, or rather, of all online games. Shiroe and the other players had sat at their computer desks at home, playing in the world of Elder Tales. In general, all online games were meant to be enjoyed under those conditions.

  Didn’t that mean that shy, real-world university student Kei Shirogane had acted as the yang energy?

  Kei Shirogane the player wouldn’t die, even if his character did. He had only to set the resurrected Shiroe in motion again and restart the adventure.

  To borrow Li Gan’s theory, the logic would be that Kei Shirogane had all the memories, and Shiroe only had a body.

  However, that was when Elder Tales had been a game.

  Although there was no telling what magic had been at work, the current Shiroe was Shiroe himself, and he existed entirely in this other world.

  In other words, Shiroe’s yang energy was here. It wasn’t in the old world, safe and snug in front of a computer desk. The continuity of his memories was no longer protected. Death would mercilessly scar his yang energy.

  Shiroe called up his status screen.

  It held a counter for the number of times he’d died.

  The number reflected Shiroe’s long play history, and it wasn’t a small one.

  However,
since the Catastrophe, Shiroe hadn’t died once. It had seemed creepy to him, somehow. Even when he knew he’d come back, he’d felt fear and visceral dislike. Put into words, that was all it was, but… That must have been true for all the members of Log Horizon.

  He didn’t know how extensive the memory loss was.

  He was certain it wasn’t happening on a large scale.

  If that had been the case, Akiba would have been in an uproar long ago. For each separate time, the loss was probably too small to notice. Alternatively, it might be selective: Unimportant memories, the sort the person wouldn’t even miss, might go first.

  It might be a completely insignificant amount, no different from the memory lapses that happened all the time in everyday life.

  But how am I supposed to say that…?

  He hadn’t told Michitaka or Krusty about this.

  He’d told Akatsuki to keep quiet, too.

  Still, he’d have to tell them someday. It was an issue that affected all the players.

  In the darkness, Shiroe turned over again.

  The dark was endlessly painful.

  2

  “Patrol approaching. Um… Maybe five? Five of them, I think. They’ll be here in about ten measures.”

  Isuzu made her report in a small voice, peeking out very slightly from the arch.

  Um, ten measures would be… About twenty seconds?

  They were in the first burial chamber on the right side of Forest Ragranda. It was a room just before the broad corridor itself began to descend in wide steps. It was about five meters square. There was no door; the arch connected it directly to the corridor.

  In this ancient tomb, which held several stone caskets, Touya and the others hid, holding their breath.

  Five Skeletons were slowly patrolling the passageway, according to Isuzu’s report. She was the party member with the highest stealth capabilities, and so she was the one who hid and spied. Past experience told them that one Skeleton would use a projectile weapon.

  “We’ll do this the way we planned.”

  At Touya’s whispered declaration, the other four nodded. As they’d planned, they scattered to various points in the room, then checked the equipment they held.

  It’ll be okay. We talked it through, so we should be able to do it. Besides, even if it turns out like it always does…it’s not like we’ll lose anything.

  Touya muttered to himself, silently.

  …Nah. There’s no way we’ll let it turn into a fight like that.

  They wouldn’t let today’s battles be like yesterday’s. Everyone held that firm resolution inside them. You could see it in their faces.

  It was the fifth day of their dungeon expedition.

  As it turned out, yesterday, the day it had rained, they hadn’t gone into the dungeon at all.

  Touya and the others had talked until past noon, asking questions and explaining their special skills. They’d quickly decided that they would have to actually see the skills to understand, and so they’d gone out into the forest. They could just as easily have gone into the dungeon and tested them in action, but if someone had had a question partway through the dungeon, the enemy would have pressed forward, and there would have been no time to explain.

  In the world of Elder Tales, there were lots of monsters and wild animals within the fields. In particular, goblins, orcs, lizardmen, and other demihumans had built up significant forces in this ruined world, so there were quite a lot of them.

  However, although there were many monsters, the fields they stalked through were vast. Even if it had been condensed to half its size, Elder Tales inhabited a project that replicated the entire planet, and its area was in a whole different league from ordinary MMO games or consumer RPGs.

  Consequently, unless they attacked a monster settlement or had themselves followed and continually attacked, the odds of encountering a monster were pretty low. As a rule, once a battle ended, if they wanted to get a good rest before the next battle began, they could do so.

  On the other hand, in dungeons, the concentration of monsters was different. They were headquarters, after all, or regional fortresses. They were also far smaller spaces than the field zones, and the fact that they might hold several hundred of the same type of monster was a possibility that couldn’t be ignored.

  As a result, battles in dungeons happened one after another, and the intervals between them were shorter than they would have been outside. Frequent battles with short breaks made it easy to exhaust MP, and classes such as Samurai, whose special skills all had long recast times, weren’t able to recover their special skill use limits in the spaces between battles.

  Dungeons also had their own unique issues with light sources and three-dimensional space restrictions.

  In fields, battles generally began when there were about ten meters or more between players and the enemy. This was because, in many cases, they spotted each other at great distances.

  However, in dungeons, an enemy might be waiting the instant you turned a corner or entered a room.

  All sorts of factors combined to make battles in dungeons so tough that it was impossible to compare them to field battles. There was a clear difference in the skills it took to hunt enemies of a certain level in dungeons, and the skills required to do the same thing in fields.

  Over the past few days, Touya and the others had seen for themselves just how formidable dungeons were.

  That was why they’d confirmed each member’s abilities thoroughly, one more time.

  While this was true for the properties of separate special skills as well, when it came to different combinations, the numbers were vast, and countless questions arose. For example, how much damage did Circular Carol’s additional magic attack damage do, and what was the probability that it would occur?

  If a sword skill “mowed down the area around you,” how big was the attack’s range, and what sort of damage could it do? Each individual question seemed simple and unimportant, but there were many combinations, and sometimes the answers were unexpected.

  By evening, they’d managed to come to a stopping point in their analysis of special techniques, but then the question of how they should use them came up.

  It was after that point that Minori began to explain patrol files, formations, operators, and field monitors.

  —Light, scraping footsteps were coming closer.

  In terms of distance, the Skeletons were probably about five meters away. Silently, Touya made a hand sign to the rest of the group. Their faces were tense, but even so, they nodded in unison.

  Touya scanned the group. Then, without hesitation, he leapt into the corridor. As Isuzu had reported, the approaching monsters were a patrolling platoon of five Skeletons. Touya drew his sword, unleashing Izuna Cutter on the group of Skeletons in almost the same motion. The deep crimson shock wave snaked through the air, shallowly wounding one Skeleton’s arm.

  Confirming this, Touya threw himself back into the burial chamber and sprinted into its depths. The dry sound of approaching bones was loud and chaotic. Up until a moment ago, the rhythm of the footfalls had been the one used for patrol. Once they’d been spotted, of course the enemy would run toward them. It wouldn’t take them more than a few seconds to close the distance.

  The Skeletons that rushed in were blackened in places, and a ghostly aura hung about them.

  Pale flames burned in their dark eye sockets. Of the five Skeletons that had passed through the arched entry, four charged deeper into the room, making for Touya, while the archer remained by the entrance.

  However, this was something everyone in the party had anticipated.

  “That one’s yours!”

  As if pushed by Touya’s yell, Isuzu struck at the Skeleton Archer’s hands with her two-handed spear. Minori also swung the katana she held, although she wasn’t used to it.

  The two girls’ attacks might have done as much damage as could be expected to the undead, but they didn’t stop it from moving. Unless they were comple
tely immobilized, undead monsters didn’t shrink from pain.

  “…If there’s only one of you, I have a spell that’s more appropriate than Orb of Lava. —Take this! The magnificent magic of a Sorcerer! Lightning Chamber!”

  Feeling a strange, twitching sensation, Minori and Isuzu jumped back.

  In the instant the advance discharge sketched a pentagram, the Skeleton Archer was trapped by purple lightning. The Sorcerer’s electrical spell ran from floor to ceiling, then back from ceiling to floor, dealing massive damage to the target and turning it to carbon.

  “Awright!”

  Having seen this from the depths of the room, Touya grinned. He had his back to the wall, had taken on the four Skeletons, and was fighting them without giving an inch. Serara was handling his recovery.

  “Current HP at eighty-four percent. Current status sustainable!”

  Through a combination of Pulse Recovery’s regular recovery effect and, when that wasn’t enough, an additional Instant Heal, Touya withstood the four enemies’ attacks. He was also managing to keep his HP at 80 percent.

  Of course, his body hurt.

  The attack power of the Skeletons’ hand axes was pretty formidable, and if it hadn’t been for the healing, Touya wasn’t sure whether he could have lasted a minute. Now, though, Serara’s recovery spells were firmly supporting him.

  “Minori, check. Isuzu and Rudy, prepare to attack.”

  At Touya’s voice, the other members responded, taking their appointed positions. Minori went to the nearby arch. Rundelhaus and Isuzu came around behind the four Skeletons, which were completely focused on Touya.

  “Are these fellows completely boiled already?”

  Arrogantly, Rundelhaus looked down on the Skeletons.

  “Yeah, I had time, so I cast Samurai Taunt on ’em twice each. They won’t go for you that easily, Rudy.”

  “That’s good to hear. I can relax while I work, then.”

  Rundelhaus immediately began to chant an attack spell.

  Isuzu did as well. Even though she’d started last, she was the first one to complete her spell. When she stuck the spear into the ground, the bells at the base of its head rang, and the sound waves turned into a directional, destructive shock wave that soaked into the Skeletons.