The Knights of Camelot

by Mamare Touno

  That speech seemed to make a pretty good impression.

  Of course, if Shiroe had been listening, he probably would have said, “Don’t use me as the punch line.”

  After that, the conversation turned into a lively discussion of what sort of tricks to use when fighting a particular enemy and what should be done in this or that situation. For better or worse, the players in this world were gamers. Even if they’d been tossed into another world, once their souls had regained some of their energy, they wanted to learn.

  Meanwhile, Akatsuki was being held captive in one of the rooms.

  It was a room used by the women of the Crescent Moon League.

  The room was decorated with potpourri and a vanity, and although simple, it felt neat, tidy, and somehow elegant. In its center, Akatsuki was surrounded by five women.

  “All right, Akatsuki. It’s about time you resigned yourself, my dear.”

  “I refuse.”

  Akatsuki’s expression was, as always, so serious it made her look cross, but her eyes were flicking right and left, searching for some way to escape. However, she was completely surrounded, and she couldn’t find an opening.

  “Don’t be afraid. We’ll be gentle.”

  “Would you get it through your head that that’s a villain’s line?”

  The leader of the women, Henrietta—a Bard with bright, elegant, honey-colored curls—was bearing down on her, flexing both hands menacingly. Frightened, Akatsuki took a step back…straight into the arms of the tall woman standing behind her, who caught and hugged her.

  “You’re so little and cute!”

  “Don’t say ‘little.’ I’m older than you are. Probably.”

  The Crescent Moon League’s guild master was Marielle.

  It was quite rare for a woman to serve as the head of a guild, and it meant that the Crescent Moon League attracted rather more women than most other guilds. Not a few of these players were, like Henrietta—the Bard who managed the guild’s accounts, absolutely crazy for cute things.

  Akatsuki’s slight stature and sweet, doll-like face had won her many fans in the Crescent Moon League. There were, of course, guys with secret crushes on her, but the ones who were really enthusiastic and hard to deal with were her female fan club.

  “Ta-daaa! We’ve got three summer dress styles for you today.”

  “Wait. What sort of fight would anyone wear those to?!”

  Henrietta had begun to present the showy girls’ dresses, her cheeks flushed a bit in embarrassment—as though she had the wrong idea about something—but Akatsuki interrupted her almost immediately.

  Since she was dealing with women, Akatsuki couldn’t respond with a physical attack of the sort she visited on Naotsugu. All she could do was kick and squirm. Not only that, but since the women thought even this was cute, Akatsuki was left without any way to fight or the energy to do it.

  On top of that, the dresses they brought out—a violet cotton frock, an organdy dress frothy with lace and frills—were so young and feminine they made her dizzy.

  “I am my liege’s ninja! I can’t wear frivolous clothes like that!”

  “We have Master Shiroe’s permission. Come now. Give up.”

  “I’ve been tricked! My liege! You set me up, didn’t you?!”

  Going to her fate almost in tears, Akatsuki was mobbed by the crazed women.

  2

  The banquet reached its zenith, and the enjoyable time passed in a whirl of repeated thanks and congratulations, toasts and compliments on the feast.

  They ate enormously, drank fantastically, and made merry.

  It must have been about the time when the moon had set completely.

  The Crescent Moon League guildhall, which still held a faint echo of the banquet’s heat, was wrapped in the unique atmosphere that follows festivals: a satisfied, slightly wistful, happy tranquillity.

  The tables that had been set up here and there were littered with bottles of alcohol, plates of half-eaten food, and buckets of ice that had been used to chill drinks, like beaches after a typhoon.

  The guild members lay all around the room, under tables, on sofas, or curled up hugging cushions.

  Naotsugu was sprawled out on his back in the conference room, snoring, his arms and legs spread-eagled. Akatsuki, who’d been dolled up by Henrietta, the Crescent Moon League’s expert in all things feminine, had fallen asleep (possibly from exhaustion) on a large cushion that enfolded and nearly buried her.

  “—Whoops.”

  Shiroe caught a bottle that had been teetering on the edge of the table, then picked up a few more and tossed them into his rucksack together. The bag, a magic item that canceled out the weight of anything put into it, was also a powerful ally when cleaning up rooms.

  Shiroe and Marielle were the only two awake in the conference room full of sleepers.

  The table that had been pulled into the corner of the room still held a stack of several large plates and some leftovers, but everything that could have been bumped into and scattered across the room by a tipsy partygoer had been cleared away. Marielle, who’d been moving around the conference room laying wool blankets over her sleeping companions, put her hands on her hips and stretched. Then she spoke to Shiroe.

  “Think this’ll do it?”

  “Sure.”

  Somewhere, he heard a small murmur, as though someone was talking in their sleep.

  As Shiroe responded to Marielle, he smiled a little at the voice. Of course he kept his own voice low, so as not to wake anyone.

  “What now? Are you gonna sleep, too, kiddo?”

  “I’m not all that tired.”

  “I see…”

  Marielle came over to Shiroe, looking into his face as if she were seeing him for the first time in a very long while.

  “…In that case, why don’t I fix us some tea? Let’s go to the guild master’s office. No sense in hangin’ out here.”

  Beckoning to Shiroe, Marielle left the conference room. “Wait just a sec,” she whispered. As they went, she checked each of the rooms. In every one, sated from their feast, guild members slept on sofas, cushions, or right on the floor.

  “Tomorrow’s gonna be a big ol’ cleanup day.”

  “I’ll help.”

  “Now how could we let our guests help us clean?”

  When Marielle looked at the guild members, her expression was warm and gentle. Just being able to see her like this was enough to make Shiroe glad they’d accepted the mission.

  Tidying up only the bottles and platters that looked hazardous, the two of them made for the guild master’s office. It was the ultrafeminine room where, before their journey, they’d heard Marielle’s story and resolved to make the trip to Susukino.

  Only the large work desk seemed suited to the term office. The rest of the space was coordinated in pastel colors to the point where it might as well have been Marielle’s private room.

  “What’ll you have?”

  “Anything’s fine.”

  “All righty. Let’s see what we’ve got. …Hm…”

  Marielle brought some black-leaf tea from the beverages that were left in the kitchen. Made with black tea leaves, the tea could be drunk hot or cold, and varieties blended with fruit had a particularly clean, brisk flavor.

  The two of them sat on the sofa, finally relaxing for a bit.

  Shiroe was always the last one to fall asleep after a commotion like this one. It wasn’t that he disliked parties; on the contrary, he loved them. It was just that the more fun he had, the more he felt that he wanted to watch over it to the very end, and it kept him from falling asleep. It was a very old habit of his, and Nyanta and the others had always teased him about it.

  Marielle seemed to share that feeling; the way she’d looked lovingly at each of her companions as she’d covered them with blankets had made an impression on him.

  From the guildhall, they could feel the sleepers’ presence and, quite faintly, hear the sounds of people turning in their sleep. It
was far more reassuring than complete silence.

  “You really saved us this time, and I mean that. Thanks so much.”

  “Enough. We didn’t do anything that special.”

  Still slightly giddy from the festive heat of the banquet, Shiroe’s mood was light as he answered. He hadn’t expected to be thanked this heartily. Well, to be completely honest, he’d assumed they’d be thanked, but he’d never dreamed that everyone would thank them this way.

  He remembered the huge smiles of the good-natured Crescent Moon League guild members.

  If anything, Shiroe tended to be shy with strangers. He thought he was probably hard to approach, unlike Naotsugu and Nyanta, but the Crescent Moon League members had even come to him, offering him food and expressing their gratitude.

  I never thought we’d make them so happy…

  In actuality, he’d been prepared to be told that they had been out of line: Outsiders poking their noses where they didn’t belong; who did they think they were?

  He hadn’t been able to forgive the world for becoming what it had become, and he’d gone out of his way to undertake the long trip up to Susukino in an attempt to burn through that irritation… In other words, he’d done nothing more than push his own incredibly personal standards onto everyone else.

  Shiroe was fully aware of how arrogant that had been.

  I don’t regret it, but… I do know it’s nothing they should be thanking me for.

  For that reason, being thanked so freely left him at a loss as to how to respond. He felt rather humbled and ashamed.

  “If that wasn’t anythin’ special, I don’t know what is. We’ll have to think of a way to thank you.”

  “No, really, don’t worry about it… How were things here while we were away?”

  “Here, huh…?”

  At Shiroe’s question, Marielle’s expression clouded slightly.

  Shiroe didn’t ask her why. He only waited, swirling the tea in his glass.

  “Akiba’s…settled down a bit, I think. It’s more settled than it was anyhow.”

  “‘Settled down’…?”

  “Yep. PKs are way down. And public order… It doesn’t seem bad to me. I guess it depends on what you’re comparin’ it to, but still. At the very least, it feels better than when it was real awful. All of that’s better.”

  Marielle continued, searching for the words as she spoke.

  “…Listen, though. This atmosphere’s no good. I can’t really say what bugs me about it, but… What I mean is… Hmm. I can’t tell you, ‘This or that is bad, and that’s what’s wrong,’ but even so, somethin’s broken somewhere. I’d like to do somethin’ about it, but there’s nothin’ to be done. I’m pretty sure it’s ’cos the rankings have been hashed out.”

  Rankings.

  There was something disturbing and sinister about the sound of that word.

  “We’re a pretty small guild, y’know? Just under thirty of us. Plus, four of us are level ninety, and about half of us are level fifty or under. I’m not complainin’, mind, but as a practical problem, it’s a fact. It’s somethin’ objective, and we can’t change it. For instance, right now, D.D.D. is Akiba’s biggest combat guild. From what I hear, they’ve got over 1,500 members. I bet they’ve got more level nineties than we can shake a stick at. That’s another objective fact we can’t change.”

  Marielle set her glass on the table and continued, kneading her fingertips together.

  “Now I’m not sayin’ that’s bad. The big guys have their own big-guy problems; believe me, I know. But how should I put it…? Things like that are buildin’ up, and it’s gettin’ to the point where we can’t fix it… As you’d expect, the big guilds with all the equipment are doin’ well; that’s only natural. In some areas, places like that are settin’ the mood and the rules for the town. Like preferential use of the market, say.”

  “They’re doing things like that?”

  “These aren’t clear-cut ‘rules,’ mind. It’s just, with numbers like that… The big guilds are the ones who are actin’ all important. One way or another, see, they’ve got the power. If players that belong to those guilds act important to match, they get away with it, and they think that’s how it should be.”

  Ridiculous.

  Of course the big guilds had more members, and naturally they’d be more efficient at some things. For instance, the main source of income for fighting guilds was loot won from monster battles. In battles fought specifically to win loot, known as “hunting,” larger numbers were linked to efficiency. When it came to making efficient use of the materials won as loot, having lots of production classes and companions in-house let the guild develop many situations to its advantage. Still, that didn’t make each individual player who was affiliated with the guild any stronger, and it certainly didn’t make them more important.

  She would probably have laughed it off.

  She would have looked at the players who could do nothing but live huddled together in narrow-minded groups and laughed loud and long as she declared:

  “You people aren’t even the teensiest bit cool.”

  “Remember I said PKs were down? It’s the same reason. This guild here is tougher than that guild there. …Or weaker. With that hashed out already, there’s no point in fightin’ anymore just to make it clearer. Nobody who knows they’re gonna lose will go near somebody that could bite ’em. They just find another huntin’ ground. But most of those other huntin’ grounds are either far away or the huntin’s no good. Sure, PKs are down, but all it means is that the guilds have managed to segregate the zones they go to. The tough guilds have claimed the best huntin’ grounds as their turf. We can’t fight in town, so nobody’s lockin’ horns that way. Still, even so, these invisible territories are takin’ shape. That sounds like ‘rankings’ to me.”

  He hadn’t been drunk to begin with, but Shiroe felt the center of his head growing cool and clear. This was even worse than the deterioration of public order he’d been imagining. True, it wasn’t the worst it could have been. PKs were down, apparently, and there were probably fewer quarrels as well.

  But still, somehow… I don’t like this. It makes me sick…

  It wasn’t the least bit cool, Shiroe thought.

  A sense of revulsion churned inside him.

  “I can’t tell you, ‘This or that is bad and that’s what’s wrong,’” Marielle had said. For example, occupying hunting grounds might not be an admirable move, but was it wrong? Not necessarily. At the very least, there were no laws in this world, which meant no one could declare it was illegal.

  Patrolling a set area in order to gather items efficiently was a common method, and the more experience a player gained in an area, the more efficient they’d get. In other words, becoming an expert on an area wasn’t a bad strategy at all.

  Not only that, but the big guilds were expending significant resources to implement that strategy: They were using their members to police their areas.

  Shiroe had no intention of criticizing that strategy without hearing their side of the story.

  If those without power were allowed to criticize that sort of thing, the result would be something like “reverse discrimination” by the weak, and so he understood just what Marielle meant when she said that no one in particular was wrong. No doubt this was just “the way things went.”

  However, even then, he couldn’t quite reconcile himself to the idea.

  In this lawless other world, was it all right for those with power to dominate those without? If asked whether it was okay for the answer to that question to be this uncool, the answer was no. However, Shiroe knew that if the argument were taken to the extreme, his only grounds for saying no were his own preferences.

  “Didn’t the smaller guilds try to do anything about it?”

  “Well… Yes. Over the past two weeks, for example, there was talk of the smaller guilds formin’ a liaison committee, holdin’ down some huntin’ grounds and handlin’ it that way. …It didn’t work out, th
ough. Even with smaller guilds, there are slight differences in numbers, y’know? There were little differences of opinion that got people upset, and some couldn’t keep from bein’ selfish, and they fought, and things fell apart. Then several small guilds thought, If that’s the way it’s gonna be…, and they merged with the big guilds or with each other.”

  They did, hm? Shiroe thought.

  There was probably no help for that, either. It was easy to say “hold on to hunting grounds,” but whether a hunting ground was “good” or not changed depending on its level. No doubt there had been a nearly infinite number of ambitions regarding the hunting grounds each guild wanted to frequent, depending on the guild’s personality, its number of members, and their levels.

  Working together and occupying a hunting ground would take a large number of people who were able to curb their egos and cooperate. The larger guilds might be able to exercise control, but in a gathering of smaller, weaker guilds, debates were bound to break out, and the group would fragment.

  Come to think of it, the influence of the frozen transport gates and the Fairy Ring trouble showed through in this issue as well. There were tens of thousands of zones on the Japanese server. With only about a thousand guilds, it was hard to imagine having a shortage of hunting grounds under ordinary circumstances.

  However, now that the intercity transport gates were out of order and the Fairy Ring timetables were a complete mystery, the Adventurers’ movements were drastically restricted. Players with griffins, like Shiroe’s group, were extremely rare. Now that players had to rely on horses or their own two feet, the number of hunting grounds that were within a day’s journey of the town was more limited than it had been in the game.