Game’s End Part 1

by Mamare Touno

  His conceited manner of speaking sounded just like a puppy’s woofing to Isuzu, and she didn’t mind a bit. Besides, where the taverns of Akiba were concerned, Siden’s Tavern was a bit below average. Its good location made it popular, but its prices and status were only so-so.

  Um, no. That’s not really the sort of place you can brag about.

  Although the name sounded good, the “royal suite” on the second floor of the inn was perfectly ordinary lodgings for Adventurers, nothing more.

  It was quite like a golden retriever to brag about a place like that, Isuzu thought.

  Of course that was cute, too.

  “I see. By the way, why aren’t you in a guild, Rudy? Aren’t you going to join one?”

  “Tying my brilliant talent to one place would be sin itself, wouldn’t it?” Rudy answered, posturing, then gave her a casual wink.

  I’ve never met anyone who could wink that naturally before. Rudy’s amazing. …Well, amazing and dumb.

  Rudy was dumb, but the decision of whether or not to join a guild was up to individual players.

  It wasn’t something for other people to find fault with.

  “I see…”

  “But you have natural beauty, Miss Isuzu. I’ve never heard such a moving solo performance. You really do seem to love music. …You’re reliable in battle as well. I’d never seen a Bard with a two-handed spear before.”

  “G-geez, Rudy. Shut up…” Isuzu shot back.

  She’d chosen the two-handed spear only because it seemed to go with something she’d seen in her father’s collection: a rock star smashing his guitar on his amp.

  It was a fairly heavy weapon, and even she was surprised at how oddly easy it was for her to use. Wood basses might not look it, but even they weighed about fifteen kilos, so maybe it was only natural that she could swing a two-handed spear around. In other words, she thought, anything was possible with practice.

  “Ha-ha-ha-ha! I like your spirit, Miss Isuzu! You’re a rare companion; it’s relaxing to be around you. We both live in Akiba, you know. We’ll run into each other even after the training camp. I hope you’ll keep an eye out for me!”

  “Mm. Me, too.”

  Isuzu nodded, simply.

  They weren’t likely to get out of this world anytime soon.

  Battles were scary. Sometimes memories of the pitch-black emotions she’d felt when she was in Hamelin came back to her, and it felt as if her chest would be crushed.

  Even so, Isuzu had music right there with her, and she had friends. If she couldn’t go home yet, she’d just have to make the present as nice as possible. Isuzu had learned that determination from Minori, and because of it, she was able to accept Rundelhaus’s words at face value.

  “Oh. In that case, I’ll add you to my friend list, Rudy. If I hear about any good money-making opportunities, I’ll call you. We also need to go get Mentaiko Toasted Sandwiches sometime. Fu-fu-fu! Okay, adding, adding…”

  “Uh—”

  Rundelhaus’s face clouded.

  It was the expression of someone regretting a mistake.

  Of someone reproaching his own naïveté.

  Isuzu’s menu screen wouldn’t let her add Rundelhaus to her friend list.

  6

  The sound of violently clashing swords echoed through the forest.

  Sword striking shield.

  Ax and spear, each seeking out the other’s weakness.

  In one sprint, Shouryuu closed the distance between himself and the Kannagi he was fighting. The young player was level 38, and he’d just taken some distance and begun to chant, preparing to unleash Sword’s Mystic Spell.

  Shouryuu added a follow-up attack with Razor Edge, a fundamental Swashbuckler sword skill, blocking the chant as he closed the gap between them.

  Coughing, the young player fell. Shouryuu lent him a hand, helping him to his feet.

  “I know you want to get some distance before you chant, but if your opponent picks up on your intentions, he’ll stop you. You won’t have to worry about things like that if you’re up against regular monsters, but enemies get stronger, too, you know. You’ll have to get better at teamwork.”

  “So I really was too slow?”

  “Not too slow, exactly. More like too honest. I’d think about picking up more action patterns.”

  The young man nodded meekly in response to Shouryuu’s advice.

  By level 40, players were in the Elder Tales middle class. In order to acquire the practical skills needed to reach this level, it was necessary to make it through a considerable number of battles. His level was probably good enough for artisan’s self-defense, but if he was going to get by as a fighting Adventurer in the future, he’d need combat abilities that were more than just window dressing.

  Now that Elder Tales was no longer a game, this was an important point that made the difference between life and death.

  Adventurers in this world might be deathless, but they did feel pain.

  According to players who’d died, the pain was quite possible to endure. They said it was about like breaking a bone, for example, or being hit by a car (although these things hurt far more than enough), but even without the pain, the disadvantages were significant.

  For one thing, there was the problem of time.

  When Elder Tales was a game, time in this world had moved twelve times as fast. For every two hours that passed in the real world, a day had passed in this world.

  This had been a measure taken because of the game’s quests. Some quests had events that only happened at night. If the real world and the Elder Tales world had run on the exact same time, when it was night in the Elder Tales world, it would have been night in the real world as well.

  If the system had been run that way, users who could only ever play Elder Tales during the day could never have cleared these quests. Players were humans who lived their lives in the real world, and naturally, there was a regular rhythm to the times at which they played the game.

  To accommodate these players, time had been adjusted to run twelve times as fast in the game world, so that one day would pass roughly every two hours.

  However, now that Elder Tales had become another world, the players—in other words, the Adventurers—existed inside it. Unlike when it had been a game, they needed to take breaks, and they needed to sleep.

  For that reason, they found themselves in a situation where destinations that could have been reached with an hour’s journey when playing the game—in other words, destinations that were twelve hours away—now took a full two days to reach, since the journey included breaks and camping.

  Under the current circumstances, with the Fairy Rings and all other methods of travel greatly restricted, that trend was even more noticeable.

  Whether they were going to a dungeon or to a zone where high-level enemies appeared, simply getting there was hard.

  The upshot was that experience points meant more than they had in the game. The number of experience points required to level up hadn’t increased, but the number of points that could be earned per hour had shrunk considerably. Naturally, it also took more trouble to recoup the property and experience points lost through death.

  Considered this way, you could say that battles themselves had become more difficult to approach. Since death didn’t exist, in a pinch, every player was guaranteed the bare minimum of physical safety, but Adventurers who put themselves in combat on a daily basis needed to acquire skills with considerable determination.

  The young Kannagi probably understood this. He raised his katana and began running through a sequence of moves, over and over, his expression serious.

  Of the recovery classes, the Kannagi class was based on an Asian concept, and it was possible for its members to carry katana.

  It wasn’t clear how it worked for the rest of the world, but on the Japanese server, male Kannagi were often called negi—a term for a senior Shinto priest—while female Kannagi were known as miko. The suikan shirt and red hakama appr
opriate to those names were dedicated equipment that could be used only by players at or above level 40, and they must have been a goal for many players.

  Many items in Elder Tales had been added by subcontracting companies, and the Japanese server had lots of exclusive equipment for Kannagi and Samurai in particular. Some—like Sacred Sword—were items that boosted magic abilities, and these were popular with Kannagi who played solo, like this young player.

  Shouryuu looked at the young man and grinned.

  His form wasn’t bad. Fundamentally, Kannagi was a recovery class; save for a few exceptions, he wouldn’t be able to learn special skills that involved close-combat weapons, but the training itself wouldn’t be a waste. Being able to use both long-range spells and close-range weapon attacks dramatically increased the variety of combat maneuvers. Even among other Kannagi, this could become an advantage.

  Just as Shouryuu was about to show the Kannagi one more thing—a practical method of walking—he whirled around as if he’d been stung.

  Bad premonitions are always correct.

  The gloomy sound of the bell that rang just then was something Shouryuu would probably never forget. It wasn’t a sound from reality. It was a signal sent from the menu.

  The ominous sound signaled an incoming telechat.

  “Shouryuu?! Come to the beach, quick!”

  “What’s wrong, Miss Mari?”

  “Sahuagins are comin’ up out of the ocean! The newbies are— ghk. …Hurry!!”

  Leaving the telechat connected, Shouryuu yelled to the nearby, young Kannagi: “Get everyone together! It’s an emergency!”

  He didn’t know what things were like on the beach.

  He didn’t know the sahuagins’ numbers, or their military force.

  However, the telechat audio was grainy, Marielle’s breathing was harsh, and he could hear the sounds of battle. The players at the coast were low-level newbies. That meant there were lots of high-level Adventurers there with them, but depending on the enemy’s numbers, there was no telling what the situation was.

  What’s going on?! Do sahuagins even appear here?!

  “When you get everyone assembled, contact me by telechat. —Check in with me every ten minutes, too!”

  Flinging those words over his shoulder, Shouryuu broke into a run. Quickly, he blew his summoning whistle, racing through the grove as if he couldn’t wait for the horse.

  Of course, it was important for someone to be here with the midrange players as well. However, the newbies at the coast were thirty levels lower.

  Sahuagins were a species of monster.

  As their name meaning “green water-dwelling demons” suggested, they were demihumans who lived in oceans and lakes. They looked like fish that had sprouted arms and legs, and their bodies ranged from pale gray to dark blue all over. Most of them had brown spots.

  Their heights could be anywhere from 160 centimeters to—for the biggest—over two meters. They probably weighed a hundred kilos, give or take.

  They had webs between the fingers of their thick forelimbs, and because they breathed with gills, they were able to live underwater. On top of that, possibly because they could also use their lungs to breathe, they sometimes came up on land.

  It wasn’t clear whether the problem was with their skin or the way their bodies were built, but they never went far from the water, which meant this type of monster was very rarely seen in ordinary wastelands or dungeons.

  In terms of intelligence, they were on par with goblins, and they often used throwing spears or tridents as weapons. However, that was all Shouryuu knew about them.

  He hadn’t fought them very often.

  Their levels were…from 20 to about 30, I think…

  A chestnut horse had come galloping up beside Shouryuu, and he leapt from his run up onto its back, then spurred it straight for the coast at full speed.

  The horse ran.

  Through groves bursting with greenery. Through gooseberry bushes hung with berries.

  Down field roads through hill country that was marked off like tiles.

  Cumulonimbus clouds, the symbol of summer, floated in the blue sky.

  What a beautiful sight.

  That was what Shouryuu felt, even at a time like this.

  Even though the summer was so calm and beautiful…

  In his ears, from the open telechat transmission, he heard harsh breathing, clashing swords, and the shrill sound of magic splitting the sky.

  Beyond it were the sahuagin’s roars, like gnashing teeth, and the chaos of battle.

  He could hear the quiet sound of something dripping… Was Marielle bleeding?

  Shouryuu was assailed by a sense of urgency, as though he had a stone stuck in his throat.

  The horse raced through the grounds of the abandoned school, now empty, and then made a beeline for the coast. This wide hill road was probably a farm road from the Age of Myth. The rotted utility poles on either side were buried like useless signposts. Leaping over fields of rapeseed blossoms and ridges of greens, Shouryuu’s horse ran hard.

  When he reached the coast, passing fleeing newbies as he did so, it was the front line of a battle. There, among members of the Knights of the Black Sword and Keel, Marielle was fighting to protect her companions.

  Shouryuu drove his horse in among the sahuagins, kicking down a few that had held tridents at the ready. The high level–exclusive warhorse fought freely, responding to Shouryuu’s expectations.

  “Miss Mari!”

  “Shouryuu!”

  Shouryuu barred the way, shielding the pale Marielle. Shouryuu himself was the leader of the Crescent Moon League’s combat team, so it was his job to fight to protect her. He was up against sahuagins, whose levels were low, but their numbers were so great they buried the coast.

  “Miss Mari, get back!! We need to call back the groups that are scattered at area camps. Hurry!!”

  Drawing his twin swords, Shouryuu leapt at the sahuagins—whose hideous forms were neither fish nor reptile—with movements as splendid as those of a young classical Chinese opera actor.

  He turned himself into a gust of wind, charging again and again, not even avoiding the blue-black sprays of blood. There was no strategy or deliberation here. He only ran at them, threw himself into the melee and cut them down recklessly, striking at anything within reach.

  Shouryuu didn’t know yet.

  He didn’t know the sahuagins were coming up on land one after another, flooding the coast. He didn’t know this wasn’t an isolated battle, triggered by chance, but the beginning of a crisis like a dark cloud that was assailing the Zantleaf peninsula.

  Wielding his twin swords, the boy scattered sparks into the air, fighting simply to protect his companions.

  < Log Horizon, Volume 3: Game’s End, Part 1—The End >

  AFTERWORD

  Hello! It’s been two months since we last met. I’m Mamare Touno.

  Thank you very much for buying Log Horizon, Volume 3: Game’s End, Part 1. There are two parts to this one, and Log Horizon, Volume 4: Game’s End, Part 2 will be in stores next month. Log Horizon: brought to you on a monthly basis. I’m deeply indebted to everyone involved. To those of you whose allowance won’t stretch far enough, I’m really sorry! Still, as with Part 1, Part 2 is scheduled to be jam-packed with content.

  ……

  ………

  And now that I’ve role-played as a responsible adult, I’ll talk about the Bon Festival dance.

  The weather here is hot one day and cool the next, but where I live, it’s almost Bon Festival dance season. I live in Katsushika Ward, one of Tokyo’s leading Shitamachi neighborhoods, and this means it’s one of the greatest Bon dance towns in the world. How amazing is it, you ask? When this season rolls around, to keep the schedule staggered, the neighborhood association schedules Bon dances every weekend, and the Tokyo Ondo song is in heavy rotation. Women’s associations that have trained hard all year for this head out to nearby neighborhood associations’ Bon
dances and show their stuff in a type of diplomacy.

  The streets are alive with the boom ba-boom and tak-takalak of drums, and the sounds are more a part of everyday life than at the Samba Carnivals of Rio or Asakusa.

  And why are festival food stalls so absurdly alluring, anyway?

  The scent of scorched sauce, the color of synthetic-looking sweeteners… It’s obvious they can’t be good for you, but I can’t get enough of ’em.

  So, when I happened to run across a Bon dance venue, I e-mailed my little sister Touno a photo of yakisoba, and she replied, “Now I’m mad.” I had no idea what she was talking about, so I sent her a photo of grilled squid, and got a “You’re annoying.” Since there was no help for it, I sent a photo of a chocolate-covered banana, and her response was, “Curl up and die.” When I got carried away and sent a photo of roasted corn, I got a phone call.

  If she wanted to eat some, she could have just said so.

  Come to think of it, when we were kids, I told my sister, “The Bon dance food stalls are run by guys from the neighborhood association. They’re volunteering for the sole purpose of making kids happy, so every time a food stall sells something, they run a huge deficit.” Maybe because our family was in business, Young Touno was an unpleasant kid who talked about profit and loss starting in elementary school.

  In connection with that, I seem to remember Little Sister Touno making a terribly sad face when she bought yakisoba that year.

  Of course, that’s all in the past now.

  I brought her some, and we scarfed it down messily.

  It’s not that I really want to eat like a pig, but with festival fast food, the image of devouring it greedily is important. Eating that way makes you feel like you’re spending extravagantly.

  After Sister Touno had eaten for a while and had a full belly, I started telling her the “Bon dance food stalls are run by guys from the neighborhood association” story, and she got super mad at me. Apparently she remembers. Tch.

  Since there was no help for it, I made up random stuff: “These days, food stalls are becoming standardized, and they’re run by franchises. Food stall placement is increasingly being done electronically, and a group based in eastern Japan sends ingredients out to food stall proprietors from a central kitchen, so their gross margin ratio is several times that of regular restaurants.”