Log Horizon, Vol. 1 (light novel)

by Mamare Touno

  After they’d been pulled into this other world, one of the things that each player had been startled by, then promptly gotten used to, was that there were far more non-player characters here than there had been in the game. Although no accurate count existed, it felt as though there were between six and ten times more non-player characters now. As a rule, possibly because it had been that way in the original game, basic services in the urban zones were provided twenty-four hours a day, year-round. However, the non-player characters in this world also needed to sleep, eat, and rest. The increase in characters might have been due to the need for extra workers to pick up the slack. In any case, there certainly were more of them.

  The non-player characters kept to their own schedules, living in rooms above or at the back of their stores. That said, they didn’t buy items players had made or magic items they’d won, so it was hard to say whether they were full participants in the economy. Unlike in the game, they spoke and reacted just like humans, and sometimes it was impossible to tell them apart from players without looking at the status screen.

  “Want to buy something somewhere? Maybe grab something to eat?”

  Naotsugu put the question to Akatsuki, sounding a bit dejected.

  “…Um. What do you think, my liege?”

  Akatsuki passed the question straight on to Shiroe in a tone as apathetic as Naotsugu’s. Food in this world was nothing to get excited over, and they looked depressed at every meal.

  “Mm… Wait a bit,” Shiroe answered. “If Mari’s still up, let’s stop by the guild.”

  At Marielle’s Crescent Moon League, the food would still taste the same, but the meal itself would be slightly better. The effect atmosphere had on a dining table was not to be underestimated. Besides, they were on their way back in from a hunt, and they also had the items they’d taken off the PKs. They could sell them to the Crescent Moon League at low prices or have them worked into created items and sold off through the market. It seemed like the least they could do.

  Shiroe opened the menu and sent Marielle a telechat request. He hadn’t thought she was likely to be asleep yet, but even then, the speed with which she answered startled him.

  “If it isn’t Shiro! Where are ya, kiddo?”

  Marielle’s greeting was the same as always, but Shiroe thought she sounded slightly flustered.

  “We just got back into town.”

  “Come by the guildhall.”

  “Are you sure? You’re all still awake?”

  “I was just thinkin’ about callin’ you. It’s fine, c’mon over.”

  “I’m with Naotsugu and Akatsuki right now. They’re invited, too, right?”

  Akatsuki had been introduced to Marielle in the course of their dealings with the Crescent Moon League. They’d visited the guildhall many times, and Naotsugu and Akatsuki had gone hunting with the younger guild members, so by now, both were considered familiar faces.

  “Well, sure. Even better, actually. I’ll be waitin’.”

  The telechat cut out. In the background, behind Marielle’s voice, Shiroe’s ears had caught the sounds of flurried activity. Apparently, even at this hour, the Crescent Moon League guildhall was fully open for business.

  “What’s up, Shiro?”

  Naotsugu’s tone was light, but he seemed to have picked up on Shiroe’s change in mood. That was part of what made him so good with people, Shiroe thought. He turned to the other two.

  “Let’s go to the Crescent Moon League. It sounds like something’s up.”

  6

  The Crescent Moon League hummed with bustling confusion. Shiroe’s group was shown in by a young healer with a puppyish air about him, and once the boy had ushered them to the guild master’s room, he turned on his heel and scampered off, too.

  The room was even messier than it had been on their first visit, but Marielle herself had somehow managed to clear the reception set and was putting out tea things. Off to the side, Henrietta was frantically cleaning Marielle’s office. It was already the middle of the night, but the guild showed no signs of going to bed. One boy carried items. A guild member was checking a pile of weapons. The whole place buzzed with an atmosphere of restless haste, as if they were packing for something.

  “I’m sorry about all this, Master Shiroe… Oh! Oh, my! If it isn’t my darling Akatsuki!”

  On spotting Akatsuki, Henrietta flung her broom away, ran up, and pulled the girl into a tight hug. This had been happening ever since they’d first introduced Akatsuki to Henrietta. Henrietta harbored a fanatical passion for cute girls, and apparently, Akatsuki had scored a critical hit. Henrietta’s height was about average for a woman, but Akatsuki was easily more than half a head shorter, with the result that the hug looked for all the world like a black cat who was reluctantly putting up with a playful human.

  “Welcome back, you three. I’m afraid it’s a lil bit messy in here. Do me a favor and pretend you don’t see it, ’kay?”

  Watching Henrietta and Akatsuki out of the corner of her eye, Marielle set her hands together in a light “Please?” gesture and gave a smooth, playful wink. Shiroe sighed.

  “What happened, Mari?”

  “Oh, now, hold your horses. No need to rush. Go on, sit down. I’ll pour some water for you. Colored water! It’ll be almost like tea! Eh-heh-heh-heh!”

  At Marielle’s urging, the three sat down. Shiroe and Naotsugu took the sofa. Akatsuki hadn’t managed to disentangle herself from Henrietta, so with no other options, she sank down onto a large beanbag chair.

  “…Well. Right.”

  Although she’d had them sit down, Marielle couldn’t seem to get started. Apparently it wasn’t an easy subject to broach.

  Shiroe watched her steadily for a while, then finally gave up and started the conversation himself.

  “Are you going on an expedition?”

  “Yep. Yes, we are.”

  “Where to?”

  “Well… To Ezzo. Or rather…Susukino.”

  The town of Susukino was one of the five major cities on the Elder Tales Japanese server.

  In the Half-Gaia Project, the area administered by the Japanese server was roughly where Japan would be on the actual globe, and its shape was very close to that of the real Japan. The only difference was that distances were halved and area was only about a quarter of the real area. This fictional Japan—or Yamato, as it was called in the game—was roughly divided into five countries. The area that would have been Hokkaido in the real world was the Ezzo Empire, Shikoku was the Duchy of Fourland, and Kyushu was the Nine-Tails Dominion. The main island, Honshu, was divided into two areas: Eastal, the League of Free Cities in the east, and the Holy Empire of Westlande in the west.

  The Yamato archipelago, the game analogue for Japan, was home to tens of thousands of players and many non-player characters known as People of the Earth. Naturally, it also held many towns and countless small villages, but among these settlements, the five major cities were special entities. Susukino, Shibuya, Akiba, Minami, and Nakasu were the five cities that players could choose as their starting points for the game. Naturally, these cities had a full range of convenient commercial facilities, the difficulty level of neighboring zones was adjusted to suit beginning players, and support-type quests were plentiful. Each of the five cities had its own temple, and when players died, they were resurrected in the nearest one. As all these factors showed, the cities had been designed to be used as home bases.

  In addition, the five major cities were linked to each other by huge, unique gates known as “transport gates,” which guaranteed free travel to and from any city.

  …Or at least they had up until the disaster.

  Players had begun referring to the incident as the Catastrophe, and the name was rapidly becoming established. In some quarters, it had been known as “the other world transition” or “the summoning” or “the exile,” but since no one had any idea what had caused it or even what exactly had happened, the Catastrophe had settled into common usage as the s
afest term. Shiroe thought the Catastrophe probably felt preferable to—and a little more reassuring than—“the other world transition.” Words like transition and summoning felt final, as if they were admitting they could never go back. Shiroe felt that same unease, and it was likely that that nagging feeling had made them choose the Catastrophe over the other alternatives.

  “I hadn’t heard anything about the transporters being up and running again.”

  “That’d be because they’re not. We don’t even know if they’re actually broken or if it’s somethin’ else.”

  Marielle began to explain the situation to Shiroe and the others; she seemed to feel a bit more optimistic now that the conversation was actually under way, although she kept her eyes lowered as she spoke.

  “I know I’ve said this before, but the Crescent Moon League isn’t a big guild. We’ve picked up a few more members, so now there are twenty-four of us. We’re almost all in Akiba, in this guildhall, but there’s one girl up in Susukino. Her name’s Serara, and she’s a real sweetheart. A Druid. She’s one of the newest players we have; she’s only level nineteen… Well, I guess that’s not important. She’s a little timid and kinda shy. A bit of an oddball, too. She said she started playin’ Elder Tales because she wanted to be a merchant.”

  Henrietta picked up the explanation. “On the day of the Catastrophe, Serara was in Susukino. They were recruiting players for a level-20 dungeon strategy game there. Everyone at the guild was busy at the time, but Serara wanted to go hunting and polish her skills, so she went up on her own… It was just a temporary party. It sounds as if she met and played with the other members who’d been recruited in Susukino, but then the Catastrophe struck. The transport gates went down, and Serara was stranded,” she said, sighing deeply.

  “You’re going to go get her, then?” Shiroe asked.

  Marielle and Henrietta nodded.

  “Not that we know much about it, but has anyone gone to Susukino since the accident?”

  Akatsuki asked for all three of them.

  That thought had crossed Shiroe’s mind as well. If the transport gates were unusable, there were two ways to travel. One was to make several short hops through the Fairy Ring transport devices that were scattered across the zones, heading for the destination that way. The other was to make the long trek across several dozen zones on foot, heading north.

  Fairy Rings were natural magic circles made of monoliths or mushrooms that were mostly located in field zones. They formed a teleportation network for the Elder Tales world: Anyone who entered a Fairy Ring was transported to a different Fairy Ring. The connections between Fairy Rings were determined by complex calculations that were influenced by lunar cycles. A player who used them skillfully could make a journey in the shortest possible time, but if they timed their jumps wrong, there was no telling where they’d be sent.

  “Not a soul, as far as we know. Everybody’s got their hands full just tryin’ to get through the day. Nobody’s got the time or the energy to worry about the other cities—not to mention that usin’ the Fairy Rings without bein’ able to check solution sites is right next door to suicide. That said, if you head for Susukino on foot and on horseback, you know it’s gonna take over two weeks to get there. There are several tough spots on the way, too. You couldn’t just wander over out of curiosity.”

  She was completely right.

  Before the accident, players had traveled all over the Japanese server, going anywhere they wanted. Travel was so easy that some tough guys had even mounted expeditions to areas on the Korean and Chinese servers. The transport gates in the five major cities had made travel faster, and the Fairy Rings had been an incredibly convenient mode of transportation: As long as one checked the timetables on a solutions site in advance, they could use them to go anywhere in the blink of an eye.

  In addition, when Elder Tales was a game, the concept of camping hadn’t existed. No matter how remote the area, all one had to do was find a relatively safe spot and log out. Then, of course, players had been able to return to their cities using Call of Home.

  “Hold it. What about Call of Home? …Oh. Wait.”

  “Exactly. Call of Home is automatically overwritten the instant you enter a city with a temple. If Serara used it now, she’d just be sent back to Susukino. It won’t bring her back here.”

  Call of Home was a teleportation spell that instantly took players back to the last player city they’d visited. Although all Elder Tales players could use it, chanting it took several minutes, and since it could only be used once in any twenty-four-hour period, it wasn’t a good way to escape from a battle. In the game, players had used it when they were done playing for the day and wanted to return to a city before logging out.

  However, even if she used this spell, the stranded girl would only return to Susukino, the city she was currently in. On top of that, the transport gates weren’t working, and without checking the timetables on a solutions site, the Fairy Rings were useless, a ticket to an unknown destination.

  “Why are you going to rescue her now?”

  Akatsuki cut in. Shiroe also suspected that was the core of the issue.

  “Because…”

  Henrietta hesitated. Her hands, still holding Akatsuki, tensed.

  “Mm. Well. So, um… We’d been plannin’ to rescue her for a good long time, for starters. You know she’s gotta be lonely, all that way up north, all by herself.”

  Even Marielle, who was trying to continue, seemed to be choosing her words carefully.

  “…Mari.”

  “Don’t go lookin’ at me with those eyes, kiddo. They’re pretty sharp. You’ll scare off all the cute girls.”

  “Mari.”

  Marielle seemed to be backtracking, avoiding the topic, so Shiroe pressed the issue.

  “Well… Okay. This is hearsay, mind. It sounds like Susukino’s worse than Akiba, as far as public order goes… Agh. Enough, I can’t. I’ll just say it. No ‘sounds,’ no ‘hearsay’: Susukino is worse than Akiba… Serara got attacked by some hooligans.”

  There, in Marielle’s frilly room, filled with shades of pastel pink, the words sounded terribly ominous.

  It was true that urban areas were noncombat zones. Using weapons or spells to inflict damage was forbidden. It was also illegal to make it impossible for a player to move, either by blocking their way or by restraining them.

  However, that didn’t mean all criminal acts were forbidden, and even the ones that were forbidden weren’t necessarily impossible. Player killing was nowhere near the worst thing that could be done, particularly if the player in question was low level and female. There were no countermeasures for some things simply because those things hadn’t existed in the game world. In this world, they were perfectly possible…and the countermeasures still didn’t exist.

  “……”

  Akatsuki’s silence had acquired a dangerous edge. She understood exactly what Marielle had meant by “attacked.”

  “Ah. No. Nothin’ that bad happened. I didn’t say that. Still, there aren’t that many people up in Susukino to begin with. From what I hear, the population’s only about two thousand, give or take. In a city like that, it won’t be easy to run and hide for long. We have to get her out. She’s family, one of us. What else would we do? …So, here’s what I wanted to ask you about. And, uh, I do apologize. Lots of our members are still wet behind the ears, y’know? They’re all good kids, but we can’t trust ’em with too much just yet. If we don’t take our best members on the expedition with us, we probably won’t make it to Ezzo at all. While we’re gone, do you think you could, you know… Look after the kids we’re leaving behind?”

  “You shouldn’t need to stay here all the time. We’ve got a Sorcerer named Aizel. Do you remember him? The tall, skinny boy with blue hair. He’ll be in charge of the people staying here. Mari, Koryu from the combat team, and I plan to give this expedition everything we’ve got. We know it’s a very selfish request, and we’re hesitant to even ask it of yo
u, but please, Master Shiroe, Master Naotsugu… Precious Akatsuki. Would you look after the guild for us?”

  Both Marielle and Henrietta bowed in unison.

  Shiroe looked at the two bowed heads in front of him.

  He stopped breathing.

  His head grew quiet.

  Not quiet enough.

  He wished he could stop the blood in his veins, too.

  His thoughts accelerated.

  His concentration conjured up lightning in the darkness.

  In the real world, it was about 850 kilometers from Tokyo to Sapporo. In this world, the world of the Half-Gaia Project, the distance was 425 kilometers. Marielle and her group would be traveling on foot and on horseback. Some parts of the way would have been highway at one point or would have remnants of asphalt from the last century, but there would be far more unpaved wilderness and mountainous terrain.

  Even on a day with excellent travel conditions, they’d be lucky to cover fifty kilometers; on average, they’d be doing well if they managed half that… And even half wasn’t likely, if they took battles with monsters into account. If they covered twenty kilometers per day, they’d reach Susukino in twenty-one days. The whole trip would take about a month and a half. Marielle’s estimate was too optimistic.

  He felt his temperature drop about three degrees.

  It was the instinct that kept Shiroe afloat.

  It was a tangible feeling, a sort of presence.

  He knew Marielle’s journey would fail.

  They’d be as prepared as possible when they set out, of course. Marielle had said that she’d head into this expedition with the best of the Crescent Moon League, even though it might bring their levels down a bit. Elder Tales only allowed a maximum of six members per party, so naturally there would be six of them, and they’d probably take an excellent healer along.

  Even so, to Shiroe, this was something completely separate from levels or the sort of strength that could be quantified into a score.