by Mamare Touno
Since they pestered him to, Shiroe showed the twins around a variety of zones near Akiba, and went shopping with them, and answered all sorts of questions.
“Would you like me to give you some slightly better equipment?” he’d asked once. Even good equipment would only be level 10 or so. At level 90, Shiroe could easily purchase that at the market, in the hundreds if he so wished.
However, Touya turned down his offer. “Huh? I don’t need that. I mean, we’re out here playing the game, right? Collecting stuff’s the best part. If I just take it, it’s like I’m playing for nothing.”
Minori, bowing again and again, said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please excuse Touya’s impertinence. It’s just that you’re doing so much for us already, Shiroe! Having you play with us makes us much happier than any present could!”
Precisely because they were like this, Shiroe was able to relax and coach them. The twins didn’t treat him as a veteran player who was worth using, and playing with them was a fun experience.
Things had gone on that way right up until the day of the Catastrophe.
4
“Twins, huh? How ’bout that. And then?”
“‘And then’ what?”
“Do you not know what happened to them after that, my liege?”
After Shiroe told them about his meeting with the twins just to make conversation, they hit him with that question.
The orange light from the fire threw their wavering shadows onto the hilltop tent, and the mood in the camp was peaceful.
“They’re on my friend list… I’ve seen them several times since the Catastrophe, actually.”
“So they did get pulled in, huh?”
“We were together right up until it happened, so yes. We were all sent back to Akiba, but then we got separated.”
“I was teleported from a ruin as well.”
In the instant the Catastrophe occurred, all players seemed to have been forcibly relocated to the nearest town. As if they’d remembered that, both Serara and Nyanta looked thoughtful.
“You shoulda said something to ’em,” Naotsugu said. “I bet they’ve got it pretty rough. Amateurs getting caught up in something like this…”
All the members of the Debauchery Tea Party had been good at looking out for people. Some had been better than others, but among them, Shiroe remembered, Naotsugu had been particularly good at making sure the newer players were taken care of.
I guess you can’t really be a Guardian—the guy who protects everybody—if you’re not good at looking after people. …Although, in Naotsugu’s case, I think the way he talks puts him at a disadvantage.
Even if he treated Akatsuki like a kid, then got knee kicked for it, every time a battle broke out Naotsugu was the sort of guy who’d do his absolute best to make sure his companions went unharmed.
“Well, mew had a lot going on, too, didn’t mew, Shiroechi?”
As he spoke, Nyanta poured hot tea into his tin mug. It wasn’t real tea, he’d said; just a mixture of herbs and dried apple peel. Even that makeshift blend felt like a blessing to Shiroe and the others, who’d drunk only plain water for so long. Akatsuki was holding her cup in both hands to warm them, as if it was something very precious.
“True. For the first few days, we were pushed to the limit, and I didn’t have the leeway to think about much else. Besides, the next time I saw them, they’d both joined a guild.”
To be accurate, Shiroe hadn’t been the only one who hadn’t had any leeway. None of the players had. No one had the energy to think about anyone besides themselves.
“Oh yeah?”
“The recruiting was aggressive back then.”
At Akatsuki’s words, Naotsugu nodded, saying, “Now that you mention it…”
“What were they, level twenty? That or close.”
“I think they’ve probably leveled up a bit more by now.”
“Then joining a guild was probably their best move. I mean, they barely knew right from left.”
As Naotsugu spoke, he stretched hugely and, in the same motion, turned completely around to face Shiroe.
“So, was that Minori girl cute?”
“……Buh?”
Now that he thought about it, Shiroe had only looked at the twins closely when Elder Tales was still a game. At the time, they’d been nothing more than polygon models on a screen, so there’d been no way to tell whether Minori was cute or not. Since he hadn’t spoken to them face-to-face since the Catastrophe, it wasn’t the sort of question he could answer.
“Yeah, that. Forget about that. You used voice chat, right? Couldn’t you tell from her voice whether she was cute or not?”
Even after Shiroe told him he didn’t know, Naotsugu persisted.
Akatsuki seemed a bit disgusted by their conversation. She just looked at them coldly, as if to say, “Good grief, there they go again.”
When Shiroe glanced at Nyanta as a last resort hoping for help from her reprisal, Nyanta was busy being chivalrous. “Serara-chi, aren’t mew getting a bit chilled?” But even as Shiroe thought it wouldn’t hurt Nyanta to spare a few scraps of that chivalry for his old friend, Naotsugu pressed him further.
“Hmm. If I had to say, ‘Yes, she was cute’ or ‘No, she wasn’t,’ I’d say… Look, I really don’t know. When she talked, she sounded feminine and polite—as if she’d been well brought up, you know? Maybe. I thought she might have been from a family with good breeding, although not quite like Henrietta’s family.”
As Shiroe explained, remembering as he spoke, Naotsugu nodded along at almost every word. He seemed incredibly happy.
“Well, sure. That’s just how middle school girls should be!”
“Heck, why specify an age range?!”
“Stupid Naotsugu…”
He nodded, agreeing with Akatsuki—absolutely!—but immediately afterward, she told him, “You’re being ridiculous, too, my liege.”
“When we get back, let’s check up on ’em. Date city! I’ll be the vanguard! You’re the wingman, Shiroe! Girls are so great.”
“Well, we agree on that, I guess.”
“So you do like panties, huh, Shiro!”
“No, I don’t!! I’m no more interested in panties than the average guy.”
Even as he thought this was turning into a hassle, Shiroe agreed to Naotsugu’s proposal. The hassle came not from having to contact the twins, but from having to take verbal jabs from Naotsugu, and there was no help for that.
Naotsugu had been getting bullied by Akatsuki lately, and so even Shiroe was sympathetic.
After that, their fireside party continued late into the night.
They spoke tirelessly about guilds and each other, about delicious food and this world’s starry sky, and the night grew later and later.
The five Adventurers’ laughter echoed over the orange flames and the first flavorful meal they’d eaten in ages. It was so pleasant that no one was willing to speak up to end the experience. It was gentle and comfortable, and they didn’t want it to be over.
Akatsuki and Serara had begun to nod off, leaning against each other. It was adorable, and even Naotsugu, who was always getting mauled by one of the pair, smiled wryly and draped a blanket over them.
By the time Nyanta finally declared it time for bed, the eastern sky had already begun to gray.
“Ahh. Man, did I eat! I haven’t had food that awesome in ages. It would’ve been worth the trip to Ezzo just to get that meal. Yeah, all trips should be like this.”
Naotsugu’s steps were a bit unsteady from his fatigue and full belly, but the words he murmured were exactly what everyone was feeling.
The five of them curled up in their sleeping bags and drifted off to sleep in the warmth of the fire.
5
From the next day on, their journey went smoothly.
After all, Shiroe, Naotsugu, and Akatsuki had made it safely to Susukino all by themselves. Now their group had acquired Nyanta, a brilliant attacker, and Serara, who, although h
er level was low, could use recovery spells.
If Serara could heal superficial wounds of the sort they’d pick up in a fairly aggressive attack, their range of potential tactics expanded. There was no danger of losing to the monsters or wild animals in the field zones.
That said, it wasn’t a forced march, either.
Shiroe and the others took care to travel at a more leisurely pace than they had during the first half of their journey. After drastically oversleeping at their first camp, they chose a good time to leave during the morning and traveled by griffin. Since there were restrictions on how long they could use the griffins, they landed at a little past noon and traveled slowly, by horse or on foot, beginning to look for a place to camp early in the afternoon.
They pitched their tent before dusk, then took their time preparing dinner. Naturally, what they made was camp cooking, but compared to the meager fare they’d had up to the present, everything was a fantastic feast.
Of course, Nyanta also did his best to bring variety to their meals. The stew he simmered slowly over the small fire was very well received, and it brought a splendid warmth to their camp under the stars.
The five of them talked about all sorts of things.
Serara didn’t discuss the details of the harassment she’d experienced in Susukino, but although still frightened, she seemed to be getting over it now, which was a great relief to Shiroe and the others.
However, unexpectedly, Serara seemed to have fallen for Nyanta, and the only one who hadn’t noticed was Nyanta himself. The fact that Serara seemed to think she was successfully hiding her feelings from Shiroe and the others—including Nyanta—was both adorable and heartwarming.
When she was apart from Nyanta, Serara’s eyes would inadvertently begin to search for him. At dinnertime, when they gathered around the flames, she always sat unobtrusively beside him, looking happy.
The fact that Nyanta planned to come back to Akiba with them and make the town his new base of operations seemed to be the best news Serara had heard yet. She had hugged the catman in spite of herself, coming very near to upsetting the pot, and had been terribly embarrassed.
As he watched her, Naotsugu smirked like an unruly little kid who had just come up with a prank. Shiroe thought it was a bit mean of him, but he did understand what he was feeling. As might be expected from the fact that he’d called himself an old man, Nyanta hadn’t had a single romantic rumor attached to him at the Debauchery Tea Party. To the two of them, who knew Nyanta’s past, this was huge news and a noteworthy event.
“Still. I wonder what she sees in middle-aged guys…”
“That’s not nice, Naotsugu. This is Captain Nyanta, remember? It’s the Captain’s magnetism.”
“Serara has good taste.” Akatsuki spoke nonchalantly while the two of them snickered together.
“You’d go for Nyanta, too, Akatsuki?”
“The sage is a first-class swordsman.”
Akatsuki nodded politely in response to Shiroe’s startled question. Shiroe thought that was a weird basis for evaluation, but he satisfied himself with the thought that her respect for his battle tactics worked precisely because they were both close-range attack classes.
It was true that Nyanta’s laid-back maturity made him very reliable.
Although he kept advertising himself as an old man, viewed objectively, Nyanta was probably in his early forties or late thirties. He had a slender build, and although his eyes were a little squinty, he was quite good-looking.
Hm… Could Captain Nyanta…? I bet he could…
As Shiroe thought—with his fingers near the tip of his chin, a pose he tended to fall into when doing so—something seemed to occur to Akatsuki. She came closer and tugged at his sleeve.
“My liege. My liege.”
“What?”
“You aren’t a swordsman, my liege, but I think you’re very skilled.”
Realizing she’d meant to cheer him up, Shiroe gently touched Akatsuki’s smooth bangs and thanked her. Looking slightly troubled, Akatsuki announced, “I haven’t said anything important,” and deliberately turned away, which tickled him a bit.
As they were flying over the Aabu Highlands, ominous dark clouds that seemed mixed with India ink began rapidly bearing down on them from the distant southwest.
Naotsugu spotted the lowering clouds up ahead and strained to get a better look. They were far away, but every once in a while he thought he saw cracks of white light running through their interiors.
“Heeeey! Shiro~. Captain Nyanta~.”
Without taking the time to launch the telechat function, Naotsugu yelled down to Shiroe and the others, who were flying about ten meters below him.
“Looooks like we’ve got some incoming rain clouds~.”
When Shiroe heard him and strained his own eyes, he saw that the sun really did seem to be blotted out in the west. Possibly because the air was growing heavier, the griffins were having trouble gaining altitude.
“Shiroechi. It’s a bit early, but I think we’d do well to find a place to shelter from the rain.”
That proposal came from Nyanta, who’d calmly set up a telechat. Shiroe checked the rain clouds again, then raised his right hand. Together they veered away from the path of the wind and began their descent.
The village where Shiroe’s group took refuge was one of the small hamlets that dotted the vast Aabu Highlands. In the old era, the location had probably held a farming village. At the intersection of several unpaved roads, about twenty wooden buildings huddled close together.
They almost hadn’t made it in time.
Right after the griffins landed just outside the village, with a roar they felt deep in their chests, lightning began to race across the sky. It was one of those abrupt early-summer weather changes.
Shiroe and the others hastily made for the center of the village.
The place seemed to be a typical farming village, the sort that could be seen all over each of the five territories on the Japanese server.
In the world of Elder Tales, where it was said that scientific civilization had been mostly destroyed and the environment had reverted to what it had been a thousand years ago, rich soil had returned along with the thriving wild animals, and in areas where there were few monsters, farming had made a comeback.
Of course, the residents of this sort of farming village weren’t players.
They were non-player characters, and they called themselves People of the Earth.
When Elder Tales was still a game, a large percentage of the quests had involved traveling to villages like this one, which were nearly ubiquitous, and solving all sorts of problems and incidents. This type of village was often the setting for an adventure or the stage for some sort of event.
The village streets were filled with housewives in white blouses and skirts of thick, soft material and young cowherds with dogs at their heels, all rushing around; no doubt they’d noticed the change in the weather. Farming people of all ages and types appeared, hastily putting away farming tools or struggling to herd sheep into sheds.
As Shiroe and the others had predicted, the large house in the center of the village was both a shared storehouse and a public hall. This sort of thing was common in frontier settlements.
“Hellooooo!”
Naotsugu called into the interior. He’d taken the lead and was the first one inside the big wooden building, where the refreshing smell of dried grass hung in the air.
“Yes, yes. You’re travelers, I take it?”
The old man who appeared was an NPC, and he introduced himself as the village’s organizer. He looked to be about sixty, with white, close-cropped hair and thick glasses. As might be expected from a pioneer organizer who lived in the wilderness, in spite of his age, his spine was still straight, and he seemed fit as a fiddle.
After he listened to their story, his manner brisk and professional, he offered to lend them a roof for a night at a low rate.
Shiroe’s group thanked him and ente
red the storehouse.
It seemed to be a place where hay was put up for the winter, and it still held a mountain of leftover straw. By that time, the rain clouds had completely blanketed the area. The early-summer rain pelted the village with drops that, while not cold, struck like large lead shot.
As Shiroe turned back to the village street from the door, glancing up at the dark sky, he heard a cheerful voice behind him.
“This’s great. I love haystacks!”
Naotsugu sounded delighted.
In this other world, which had inherited the convenience of the game world, sleeping bags and tents performed fairly well. However, although they were passably comfortable, in the end sleeping bags were sleeping bags. Sleeping on the ground all night left them chilled, and their muscles were often stiff and sore.
Compared to that, sleeping on a haystack would be just as comfortable as sleeping in a bed at an inn.
“Mew’re right. This looks quite cozy.”
Akatsuki, who’d been exploring the large storehouse confirming the locations of windows and the back door, nodded too. Although the building was wooden, the walls had been daubed with clay that acted like plaster, and there were no drafts. The interior was cool and dry, and it smelled clean.
Now, with the rain pounding down as if it were trying to put holes in the roof, they felt they’d been quite fortunate to reach this frontier village.
“Do mew suppose there’s a place to start a fire?”
“Nyanta, I found a hearth over there.”
Nyanta had already begun to worry about dinner, and Serara pulled him away. As if to say they left all that to the others, Naotsugu and Akatsuki had begun to break down the haystack. They seemed to be preparing to make beds for the five of them.
“Hey, what’s with that itty-bitty bed? Is that for a hamster or something?”
“Shut up, stupid Naotsugu. Make your bed over on that end.”
As Shiroe was listening to the two of them squabbling, smiling wryly, the old man they’d met earlier spoke to him.
