by Mamare Touno
“E-even if you kill us, we’ll come right back. We didn’t lose to you!”
The bandit leader blustered, but with Akatsuki’s short sword pressed to his neck, he couldn’t even move.
Akatsuki glanced at Shiroe, a question in her eyes.
She was asking for permission to kill.
Shiroe heaved a deep sigh. If they’d wanted to, it wouldn’t have been out of the question for them to tie the man up, torture him, and take everything he had, but Shiroe really wasn’t a fan of torture. He doubted he’d be able to actually go through with it.
We could just let him walk, of course. But even if we did…
The guy probably wouldn’t thank them for it. He was even more unlikely to give up and never PK again. He’d feel as if he’d been insulted and resent them for it. In any case, in this world where death was a mere shell of itself, it was doubtful whether crime or punishment worked the same way as they had in their old world. Even Shiroe knew that.
Still, did that mean “anything goes”? Shiroe was pretty sure it didn’t.
I guess there’s no help for it.
Shiroe gave Akatsuki a nod. With no hesitation, she plunged her sharp short sword into the PK leader’s neck. Blood spurted out, red even in the dark, but turbid and cloudy. As Akatsuki nimbly sidestepped the blood, the fallen leader’s items and money scattered across the area.
With that, the PK attack was truly over.
4
“People said things had gotten rougher. I guess it’s true.”
Naotsugu mused as he picked up items. Shiroe shrugged. In front of the bandits, he’d pretended that they’d had everything under control, but as a matter of fact, it hadn’t been an easy win. There had been six enemies, and most of them had certainly been fairly high level, if not actually level 90. Naotsugu had been using special Defense techniques, and even he’d lost nearly half his HP. What if Akatsuki hadn’t quickly dispatched the members waiting in the shadows? Or even earlier: What if she hadn’t promptly taken cover or understood what Shiroe really meant when he said “four visually confirmed” and gone to work as a commando unit of one? The battle could easily have gone the other way.
Of course, both Naotsugu and Shiroe kept a card or two up their sleeves. Probably Akatsuki did as well. Still, although such cards were a way to turn the tables in a fight, using them required a cool head. A panicked player would have serious trouble turning the tide, even with a brilliant trump card. In order to play a card like that, you needed to have a chance at winning—in other words, a cool head and a plan. They’d won this time because the bandits had put too much faith in the strength of their numbers and because Shiroe’s group had better teamwork.
“I wonder if there are any more PKs lurking around here.”
Akatsuki cocked her head slightly to one side, looking up at the cluster of abandoned buildings.
“I shouldn’t think so,” Shiroe answered.
In player kills, surprise attacks were everything, and they needed to be launched from suitable locations. Any closer to Akiba, and victims might escape into the city. That would be too much of a handicap for the PKs.
…Although we’d better not let our guard down. Things really are getting dangerous.
There was one more reason they’d been able to beat back the PKs, Shiroe thought: the information that public order was deteriorating. They’d heard rumors that player kills were occurring more frequently. The PKs would launch surprise attacks in the field zones around Akiba, waiting until it was dark and visibility was bad. The group they’d just fought hadn’t seemed new at this. Their skills had obviously been seasoned to the point where they could easily be overconfident.
Shiroe and the others had proceeded with caution in large part because they’d heard that rumor, and their caution was the reason they’d noticed the shadows watching them from the treetops.
“Dread Pack, huh…? I dunno, guys. That’s a pretty generic name,” Naotsugu muttered, spitting out the words and making no attempt to hide his disgust. He’d found the guild name in their personal information. Dread Pack.
“There’s no help for that. You can’t expect good taste from a guild that PKs.”
Akatsuki sympathized with Naotsugu.
Well, I’m mad, too.
Shiroe sighed.
Naotsugu hated PKs. So did Shiroe, for that matter.
There were several reasons. However, Shiroe suspected that all those reasons were afterthoughts, and that, deep down, it was very simple. The heart of the matter was that most PKs were seriously uncool.
To Shiroe’s mind, the mere idea of swiping items and coins that other players had worked hard to get was uncool all by itself. Even less cool was that coins and items gained that way would never get one to the top.
Taking treasure that other people had worked for meant that the thieves never set foot in the difficult zones where that treasure could be won. That meant they couldn’t stumble onto undiscovered places or solve mysteries and they’d never find items that no one had ever seen before. As a play method, player killing would never let you stand on the front line of an adventure.
PKs were incompetents who couldn’t do anything but steal other people’s achievements, and they’d never be anything more than parasites.
That was what Shiroe thought of them anyway.
Talking about “cool” and “uncool” may mean nothing to the players who’ve been trapped here, though… Maybe there’s no help for that. We’re all living pretty close to the edge mentally.
Unfortunately, that state of living close to the edge was fast becoming the accepted norm.
“I’ve heard that rumor, too,” Akatsuki murmured.
“From what I hear, Tidal Clan, Blue Impact, and Canossa are killing players, too,” Shiroe told her.
“I dunno. It’s just… Between this and that, I know everyone’s pretty close to snapping. I know. But. How do I put this… Don’t they have anything better to do?”
“Like…?”
“Wax philosophical about panties and stuff.”
Akatsuki took an obvious step away from Naotsugu. Then she peered around the area and took another step back.
“She took two steps back on me… Two!”
Naotsugu sounded glum. Shiroe thumped him lightly on the shoulder to cheer him up. With a desperate expression on his face, Naotsugu attempted to launch into a speech about how marvelous panty fetishes were, but at Akatsuki’s “Quiet, sex fiend,” he fell silent.
Their party’s power dynamics were rapidly becoming established.
Something better to do…
The fact that there was nothing was a problem in their present situation. If all one needed to do was keep themselves alive, there was cheap food available. True, it tasted like soggy rice crackers with absolutely no salt, but it would keep a person alive, so they couldn’t complain too loudly. Their situation was nowhere near as bad as it had been in some areas of their old world, in Southeast Asia or in war zones, where whole countries were gasping for food and children’s hunger showed in their glittering eyes as they starved to death. It was also likely that it would never be that bad in the future.
In the world of Elder Tales, food items were made by combining several ingredient items, and ingredient items could be gathered in the field zones. Meat could be taken from monsters killed in battle, mushrooms and edible wild plants could be gathered, marine products could be caught, grain could be grown, and fruit could be picked from fruit trees. It was still too soon to tell whether the concept of seasons existed in this world, but at the very least, it had in Elder Tales. From the feel of the air, it was currently early summer. The fields were overflowing with ingredients. In that case, even newbie players who hadn’t hit level 10 yet would be able to find ingredient items in the comparatively safe fields near Akiba.
A bigger issue was whether the players with Chef subclasses—and there weren’t many—would turn those ingredient items into food. From what Shiroe had heard, though, lots of p
layers had changed their subclasses to Chef over the past ten days. Since absorbing nutrients was one of the basic requirements for life, it was a pretty good strategy.
The same went for clothes. Hides could be taken from animals, and hemp and silk could be used to make cloth. If one wasn’t picky about the statistical performance of their equipment, a production-class artisan could make a set of clothes in ten seconds or so. Shoes and almost all daily necessities could be obtained from Tailors, Blacksmiths, and Woodworkers. Carpenters handled larger items, while Artificers created delicate jewelry and mechanisms.
It was easy to find housing: As long as a person didn’t care too much about safety or comfort, one could spend the night in any abandoned building. It cost about five gold coins to rent cheap lodging, an amount even a level-10 player could get by defeating a few goblins. If a player wanted more, of course, they could rent comfortable lodging by the month or find a place at a guildhall with a group or even own a house, but if they were content with just having a place to sleep, there were any number of simple ways to get it.
…All of which meant that, in this other world, there was no need to risk one’s life or work long hours if surviving was the only item on their agenda. As far as “survival” was concerned, conditions would never be that miserable.
Although, if you asked me whether that was “living,” I’d say it was more like just not being dead…
To Shiroe, this lack of having to struggle to survive was linked to having lost all purpose in life. People were left with “nothing better to do.”
Of course, in this world, they were free.
They almost seemed to be a bit too free. Naotsugu would probably say, “A purpose in life? Something better to do? Just figure that out for yourself and get to work. You could talk about cute girls or protect cute girls or…” He’d be right, and Shiroe had no intention of arguing with him.
However, there were people who could say that and people who couldn’t. In addition, the sort of people who were drawn to gloomy thoughts because they hadn’t managed to find something they could devote themselves to could be found anywhere. The sort of people who convinced themselves they were big and powerful by tormenting other people, for example.
It’s the same with PKs. There are lots of far easier, safer ways to survive here. Anyway, you don’t need a lot of money just to live. There’s no need to kill players just to get money.
Even if there had been, player killing would never work as a survival strategy. It was completely different from the sort of thing that happened in extremely impoverished countries, where people were forced to turn to robbery just to survive.
To these guys, player killing was their “something better to do.” A way to feel fulfilled, something separate from just surviving. It struck Shiroe as incredibly uncool somehow.
“Hey, what the—?!” Naotsugu yelled.
“What’s the matter?”
“These guys only had sixty-two gold coins. Total. How sorry is that?!”
Akatsuki and Naotsugu had finished checking through the items they’d picked up, and it sounded as though the financial haul had been disappointing.
“They had some decent items, though.”
“Well, sure. They were PKs. They knew it was risky,” Shiroe pointed out. “Unless they’re complete idiots, they probably left everything except the bare necessities in a safe-deposit box. The items they had were probably stolen from some other player.”
The other two sighed heavily, grumbling about wasted effort.
5
It was the middle of the night by the time they got back to Akiba.
Lately, the streets seemed to be seething with menace. Rows of stalls still stood in the center of town—in the plaza in front of the station, for example, or the great intersection or at Akiba Bridge—and they still drew a fair number of customers, but on the shadow-filled outskirts of town or in tangled alleyways crowded with abandoned buildings, wary players kept their distance from strangers and went about their business without speaking to anyone.
Order really is beginning to break down…
For the past several days, this one included, Shiroe and the others had been out in the field zones, battling. In the few days following the disaster, sharing information in town had been very meaningful, because there had been all sorts of things that they’d needed to confirm: information on food and places to sleep and basic information about the world’s structure and specs. Once they had that basic information, though, Shiroe’s group had elected to gather information on the field zones and discover what had changed about battles. It was a decision they’d made together after talking things over, but the hunt for information was taking longer than they’d expected. There was a huge gap between using spells and techniques and using them well. Naotsugu and Shiroe had always thought so, and somewhere along the way, Akatsuki had begun to agree with them.
However, naturally, the bigger the gap between “using” and “mastering,” the more training it took to close. They reviewed the properties of every single technique, researched how to use them, and experimented. Even as a game, Elder Tales had been complicated, and the amount of information had been enough to make beginners weep, but battles in this other world were twice as hard… Correction: dozens of times harder.
Take Cross Slash, for example. It was a double-slash attack in the shape of a cross and a starting point for Guardian attacks. As a basic foundation technique, it was quick to learn, but it was also used a lot. According to Naotsugu, in this other world, there were more than five ways to start this technique. “You can start with a diagonal slash down from one shoulder, then immediately slash up again from below. That’s the basic version. But you can also start from the left shoulder and cut back up the other way. That version’s probably for lefties. Then there’s a version where you sort of charge in, start with a horizontal slash, then segue into a downward slash.”
Sword techniques—or rather, the basic motions of combat—seemed to be stamped into their bodies. According to Naotsugu and Akatsuki, the two combat class players, if they wanted to fight and they spotted an enemy, their bodies would do the rest. However, controlling those fine motions apparently required quite a lot of practice. Whether it was the sort of practice martial arts had required in their old world was anyone’s guess, but the cycle they repeated—think, experiment, think again, correct—was the same for Shiroe as it was for Naotsugu and Akatsuki.
One private discovery Shiroe had made was that launched spells were more likely to hit home if he used his staff to specify the target, rather than simply chanting from the shortcut key. These small but important discoveries about single techniques weren’t very useful in solo play. Using them, not only in practice, but also against enemies in actual combat, didn’t go well if they were fighting alone, either. The teamwork between the three of them was important, too.
They’d tried dividing their roles into “tank,” “offense,” and “commander or support,” but establishing teamwork wasn’t that easy. Naotsugu had to think about how to draw the enemy in to make it as easy as possible for Akatsuki and Shiroe to defeat or incapacitate them. Akatsuki had to notice which of Naotsugu’s attacks would create gaps in the enemy’s Defense. They had to intentionally accumulate this sort of knowledge and experience.
That burden weighed heaviest on Shiroe. Since he was issuing orders, he had to know what both his friends could and couldn’t do, their habits, and their timing. If he didn’t, their formations would remain rough. There were countless things to remember and questions to sort out, and lately, their daily routine had consisted of refining their understanding of these things with agonizing slowness.
Marielle and her Crescent Moon League also helped Shiroe’s group tremendously. As a guild established to provide mutual support, the Crescent Moon League didn’t have many high-level Adventurers, but as a proper guild, it did have plenty of members. That meant the guild could battle in the field zones to earn materials while simultaneously gath
ering information in town. In specific terms, the guild had established three teams and set up a daily rotation where one would gather materials on the outskirts of the city, another would collect information in town and take time to unwind, and the third would create items. Since the teams rotated between tasks, it was a pretty efficient system.
As they’d promised earlier, Shiroe and the others traded the information they’d gathered on field zones over level 60 for the information Marielle’s group had collected in town. They also took food items from the guild and repaid them by selling guild members high-level goods at wholesale prices. It was a division of labor—each group specializing in the field they knew best.
Mari said there were some very stressed-out players. I bet the PKs have something to do with that, too.
Shiroe had sighed a little while ago, half guessing. The sigh was due to the fact that this wasn’t information he’d collected himself; he’d heard it indirectly from Marielle. That said, now that he’d actually experienced it firsthand, he had to admit it was probably fact.
Shiroe, Naotsugu, and Akatsuki cut through the station interior—a prime spot for market stalls because of its roof—and headed for the plaza in front of the station. In the real world, the plaza had held a pedestrian sky bridge, but in this world, it was a wide-open space embellished with moss-covered rubble and grass. The buildings in all directions had fallen into ruin, but the first floor of every one held shops. Most of the commercial facilities in Akiba were concentrated here around the plaza.
There were Blacksmith and Tailor instructors, non-player characters who facilitated commerce between players and helped artisan players who were just starting out. In addition to teaching techniques, these characters would lend players sewing tables or iron-melting furnaces free of charge. Most of the items in circulation in this world had either been won from monsters or dungeon treasure chests or been handmade by the artisan classes, but non-player characters did sell basic weapons and protective gear to help out low-level Adventurers. The commercial facilities around the plaza housed non-player characters like these, too.
