The Gold of the Kunie

by Mamare Touno

  It was fearsome offensive power.

  However, even that had been factored in. The damage obstruction, which had been canceled, was recast immediately.

  Dinclon, the Guardian at the head of the First party, was the leading edge of the unit. In terms of arrows, he was the hardest possible arrowhead. The steel Warrior, who’d had a series of recovery spells cast on him, reached the feet of Ruseato of the Seventh Garden and used the special aggro skills Anchor Howl and Taunting Shout in rapid succession.

  This marked the beginning of the battle.

  “Begin the assault!”

  From the Third party, William sent the message to the entire group.

  With support songs from Bards, varicolored magic and projectile attacks rained down on the raid boss. In a raid like this one, it was hard to tell, but a terrific number of weakening effects were layered over Ruseato now. This was another reason for incorporating all twelve classes into the full raid. Save for a few exceptions, the same weakening effect couldn’t be layered over itself, but a many-sided net cast by a variety of classes displayed its effect on powerful enemies.

  The fusillade of attacks clouded their field of vision for a moment, and heavy explosions seemed to rock the earth.

  Ruseato had swung its great steel weapon as if to gouge out ten meters around itself. The attack had killed two members and left several who had been engaged in close combat near death.

  The attack was so brutal that even Dinclon lost half his HP.

  However, the Silver Sword battle lines didn’t collapse.

  The unique Kannagi resurrection spell, Soul-Calling Prayer, teleported the dead to the feet of the caster and revived them. In addition to this convenient spell, which simultaneously evacuated the members to a safe distance and resurrected them, a Summoner who’d summoned a Carbuncle chanted Phantasmal Heal. This HP recovery spell, an oddity among the Magic Attack classes, didn’t measure up to a recovery spell from the usual classes, but it did more than enough to lighten their burden.

  Recovery classes besides the Kannagi prioritized recovering wounded members. While this was going on, Dinclon didn’t retreat a single step under Ruseato’s attacks.

  The powerful attack that had mowed down the surrounding area a few moments ago had probably been one of the raid boss’s certain-kill attacks.

  That attack had been branded on the eyes of the Silver Sword members. A shabby Summoner who stood next to William, holding an adorable, fluffy Carbuncle by the scruff of its neck, began to count in a steely, determined voice. As that voice rang out, everyone listened to it.

  Without exception, raid bosses’ enormous attacks had conditions.

  One major condition was—to use the vocabulary of the Adventurer-players—Recast Time. Powerful attacks couldn’t be unleashed back-to-back. Each skill had its own cool-down period. There was no telling whether that time would be ten seconds or thirty, but the cool-down time itself had to exist.

  As they’d discussed beforehand, the Summoner was counting in order to measure it. Of course he kept up his magic attacks, and he didn’t neglect his response to the combat situation.

  In the days when Elder Tales had been a game, they could just leave this sort of count to an external program, or—if handled in a low-tech way—to a stopwatch hung beside the monitor. Raid bosses’ every action had been analyzed by the millisecond from reference videos of recorded play, had been compared against the logs, and everything about it—attack damage, attribute, range, interval, motion, penetration rate, critical rate—had been laid bare.

  Raiders had shared that information through cloud services, discussed it in chat rooms, and gone on the attack with the latest, most efficient techniques.

  “Eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one…”

  A hoarse yet firm tenor voice overlapped with the sound of swords, the ring of clashing steel, and the noise of the thunder and flame attacks that raced through the air.

  The members each focused their five senses, desperately buckling down in an attempt not to miss anything that voice said, and not to lose sight of the enemy before them.

  In this world, where everything had been swallowed up by chaos, Silver Sword had continued to fight, and had rebuilt tactics as primitive and awkward as this one.

  It might have been possible to call it the ruined state of a once-powerful guild.

  That count was crude and undignified, yet it held a prayer that greedily hungered for victory.

  When the count, delivered in an unamplified voice, reached twenty-six, Ruseato of the Seventh Garden raised its great steel halberd. The fearsome attack of a few moments before was on its way.

  However, William’s companions showed no fear.

  The Assassins and Swashbucklers leapt through space.

  The Bards and Druids sprang back, putting distance between them.

  The Clerics cast defense-boosting status buffs in rapid succession on the warriors who’d chosen to tough it out.

  Handling the second attack like this was splendid.

  After the roaring blast had passed through, the attack had not caused any deaths.

  Some players had lost most of their HP, true, but the recovery unit’s spells were already healing the damage.

  They’d skillfully dodged one of the enemy’s attacks.

  The corners of William’s lips rose ferociously.

  That wasn’t all: The raid boss, whose very armor looked like a blade, had to be hiding all sorts of twisted attack methods. After all, it hadn’t even changed its shape yet.

  Still, this wasn’t bad. Even as he thought that things were going fairly well so far, William fired arrows.

  Before he was aware of it, his throat had sent up a savage yell: “More damage! Get the lead out, speed up and chip away at him!”

  He fired an astonishing number of arrows.

  As if prepared to dash themselves to pieces, the offensive ranks struck with their swords or unleashed flame, pulling Ruseato into ranged spells colored with light and darkness.

  William knew. Without exception, boss monsters that appeared in raid zones had vast HP. The amount was overwhelming. Dinclon, a level-94 Guardian in an ultra-top-class raid guild like Silver Sword, had a bit under eighteen thousand HP, and raid boss monsters had HP that ranged from one thousand to ten thousand times that much.

  Say Ruseato of the Seventh Garden’s HP had been shown on a meter. If it had been, they could have seen this, but although the offensive ranks were dealing out attacks without a pause, the reduction was truly miniscule. It was such a gradual fall that, on a meter, it probably wouldn’t have been visible to the naked eye. Still, keeping it up was the only way to defeat a boss.

  “Careful, watch its feet!”

  A sharp voice spoke. It belonged to Federico the Swashbuckler.

  Abruptly, Ruseato of the Seventh Garden began to move sluggishly, and a black substance that wasn’t quite a mist or a liquid flooded from under its feet. The substance moved, undulating, spreading rapidly, immersing the floor of the arena.

  “Damage detected, attribute: Poison! Action—No, it’s a move obstruction! Attack speed and force both down!”

  Dinclon’s report reached his ears. When he looked, something like a black, viscous liquid was wrapping around Dinclon’s plate boots and tugging at them, emitting faint lightning.

  For a moment, William hesitated.

  There was damage, but it was very slight.

  The flickering lightning was an attack that had been repelled by damage interception. The fact that lights as small as that were appearing one after another, and that the barriers hadn’t been breached, was proof that the damage was trivial. He could tell that it wasn’t inflicting serious damage even on the close-range attack members, whose defense was lower than Dinclon’s.

  A special attack that only inflicted slight damage, and which hindered movement—the instant William sensed danger, Ruseato of the Seventh Garden began to walk, its footsteps heavy.

  Dinclon used multiple Anc
hor Howls, trying to stop it from moving, but they were negated. With a bursting effect unlike the usual one, they rolled off the surface of Ruseato’s armor.

  A low-damage range binding attack.

  Realizing the intent behind it, William screamed:

  “Range interception! Range recovery!”

  As if his yell had thrown a switch, the unit moved.

  A barrier that looked like a translucent dome; faintly shining defense spells; the thin orange layer that indicated Reactive Heal… And yet a single attack blew them all away. Ruseato’s metal body, which had begun to lay waste, was more a weapon than a monster. An enormous construction machine was bounding around with the agility of a cat. It brandished its halberd as if licking the ground with it, attempting to cut down Silver Sword like it was no more than reeds, or sheaves of straw.

  Still. Even so.

  More than half their members were left.

  And, even as it quailed from the pain, a voice that refused to retreat was continuing to count.

  “First healer, maintain the front line! Second party, fall back, resurrect and restore, Third and Fourth reduce the damage seventy percent; prioritize restoration!”

  Deep in his throat, as if he couldn’t quite hold it back, William laughed.

  When he licked upward, the stuff that had dripped down the side of his nose tasted like blood.

  It was like concentrated iron. It was the taste of the raid William wanted.

  The enemy was strong, just as they’d anticipated, beyond what they’d predicted.

  And William’s group was still standing.

  The fight had only just begun.

  4

  Demiquas, who’d retreated ten meters in one move with Phantom Step, squeezed a blazing hot sigh from his lungs as he recovered his own HP with Resilience.

  The battle had fallen into an infuriating deadlock.

  Gritting his molars as if meaning to shatter them, he focused intently on the enemy.

  They had to inflict damage on Ruseato of the Seventh Garden as they parried its brutality, all while its armor was deep purple. That was just as their advance intel had said, and it had gone fairly well. Demiquas and the other close-range attackers had landed blow after blow on Ruseato’s obstinate armor, whaling on it and putting cracks in it.

  However, when those cracks had sketched a pattern like tree branches all over Ruseato’s body, it had shed the armor as if it was peeling a boiled egg.

  What had emerged was a Ruseato as white as a hospital ceiling.

  The armor that had been stripped from that bleached figure melted into the shadows at its feet, then stretched up, creating shadow warriors. The deformed warriors had thin, featureless silhouettes and held giant war scythes at the ready. Since they were entirely black, they looked like two-dimensional shadow-pictures.

  The white Ruseato unleashed beams of light, and Demiquas evaded them.

  Compared to what had come before it, it was a limp, weak attack.

  And now, thanks to his self-recovery, he was ready to charge again.

  Having spotted a good opportunity, Silver Sword launched repeated wave attacks, but the shadow warriors blocked them. Compared to Ruseato, both their range and their attack power were nothing. However, there were too many of them to ignore. Even now, there were already more than ten.

  The unit dodged Ruseato’s careless attacks, gradually taking down the shadow warriors as they did so.

  Dinclon, the main tank, really couldn’t handle this many enemies on his own. Five warriors, including that foul Naotsugu, had to draw them off.

  The shadow warriors surged in, like insects drawn by the scent of nectar.

  Demiquas took aim at the pack with Wyvern Kick.

  This flying, gliding kick had a field of fire of about fifteen meters forward, and it could be used both to move and to attack. It was Demiquas’s greatest forte, his absolut Geheimnis. If he unleashed this attack, Demiquas would land right where the enemy was thickest in a single bound. As a general rule, this was a bad move. Ruseato was a high-level raid boss, and it was hard to avoid his attacks, so if he shook off his healer and other reinforcements, Demiquas would be in a dangerous position. However, the black shadows in front of him were raid enemies, not bosses. To Demiquas, a martial artist, enemies that waved around big weapons like that were easy to take on.

  With a piercing fighting yell, Demiquas became a deep green meteor.

  He crossed the coliseum almost as if he were coasting through the air on a snowboard, crashed into the chest of a shadow warrior, and slammed a Tiger Echo Fist into its body, which left it looking like it had been pierced by a cannonball.

  Leaving an echo vibrating in his ears, the raid mob brought its scythe down as a parting gift. Demiquas repelled the attack by a bare minimum with Back Hand, then, squaring off slightly by raising his right knee until it almost touched his chest, he lashed out with Shadowless Kick.

  The enemy flew apart pitifully, like a dropped watermelon.

  However, since one shadow warrior had been defeated, Ruseato absorbed the darkness that had been generated, and it seemed to have recovered some HP.

  In other words, this was why they were taking one step back for each step forward.

  White Ruseato recovered its own health.

  The shadow warriors were catalysts for the process, and they also bought it time. Apparently, Ruseato’s white reincarnation recovered strength over a set period of time so that it could attack again. Then its armor would be dyed black once more, and it would unleash powerful attacks, moving tirelessly, as though it had just begun to fight.

  Outlasting that hurricane certainly wasn’t impossible, but that was assuming Ruseato was their only opponent. If the shadow warriors stayed, the vanguard, who’d lost the greater part of its HP to Black Ruseato, would fall to those great scythes.

  Healers supported the health of the raid unit. However, both the Kannagis’ barriers and the Clerics’ Reactive Heals had tolerance limits.

  It was nearly all they could do to fight Ruseato of the Seventh Garden by itself.

  They couldn’t afford to leave the mobs alive. That said, when they defeated them, they recovered Ruseato. For a short while, there had been twenty shadow warriors, and thanks to that, the unit had been pushed to the brink of collapse.

  Infuriatingly, the one to find a way out of that situation had been Shiroe.

  Black Ruseato generates a number of shadow warriors equal to the number of people who had inflicted damage on it.

  At that discovery, Silver Sword had rallied.

  They left the attacking to powerful attackers, while the healers and weaker members refrained. When they did, when Ruseato transformed into its white incarnation, they were able to decrease the number of shadow warriors it generated to ten or so.

  Shiroe the coward, who did nothing but give orders from the rear, was someone Demiquas meant to avenge himself on, someone he’d never forgive. He’d shattered Demiquas’s pride, had even destroyed the Briganteers organization he’d worked so hard to build. If only those three hadn’t come to Susukino, Demiquas and the others could have slowly acclimated themselves to this world. If only that Shiroe hadn’t come…

  He could forgive the cat-headed swordsman. The swashbuckler had blocked Demiquas’s path and swung his swords. However, from beginning to end, the coward among them hadn’t even looked at Demiquas.

  The man didn’t even seem to remember his name.

  Demiquas could clearly remember Shiroe’s expression when he’d reappeared in Susukino. When the man had seen Demiquas, he hadn’t looked troubled. That was fine. Shiroe was probably strong; Demiquas had seen that on this raid. In that case, at the very least, he could have sneered or looked contemptuous.

  However, the only emotion he’d seen in the damned Enchanter’s expression had been the thought, What a pain.

  Demiquas slammed the rage he couldn’t abide into a shadow warrior.

  Lightning Straight came back at him, as if to run him t
hrough.

  He evaded that attack with Phantom Step, kicked it upward with Aerial Rave, then landed a Wyvern Kick in its wide-open side. As it blew away, he slammed another Wyvern Kick into its back.

  Shiroe saw Demiquas as no more of an opponent than that.

  As if he could go without killing Shiroe! The thought was like flame, and it burned him to the core. Someday, he swore, he’d bring such pain down on Shiroe’s head that he’d regret he’d ever been born into this world.

  However, now wasn’t the time.

  Frustrating as it was, he didn’t have the ability right now. At this point, even he had to admit it. This Shiroe guy was tough. It was true for his equipment, too, but even his techniques outstripped Demiquas’s.

  When Demiquas had joined this raid, at first, he’d been planning on attacking Shiroe from behind. He’d laid monsters out as practice. He’d thought that had raised his spirits: His body had been a lot lighter than usual. Demiquas’s fists had vanquished the monsters, just as they were tearing apart shadow warriors now.

  He’d thought he’d gotten used to the atmosphere of the raid, but then he’d noticed a small sword icon spinning around his wrist. The unfamiliar icon was Shiroe’s Keen Edge… That was all it was: Demiquas had only been in high spirits from that guy’s reinforcement spell. When he looked for proof, he found it in spades. Haste, which had linked up attacks more quickly than usual; True Guide, which had let him break through the defense of attacks at higher levels than normal.

  Just like now.

  A shadow warrior that had approached to cut Demiquas down raised its great scythe.

  There was still half a second of bind time left for Wyvern Kick. Demiquas should have taken the attack by a hair, but it didn’t happen.