The Gold of the Kunie

by Mamare Touno

Shiroe’s support was so subtle that, if this had been the very beginning of the zone capture, he wouldn’t have noticed it. What had he called it, Mind Shock? It was a spell that used the shock wave from an impact to make a monster’s consciousness go dim. The monsters he normally went up against would have been one thing, but it was only able to stun the raid monsters that appeared in this zone for a second at most. However, that one second was enough for Demiquas: He got out of the enemy’s attack range with Monkey Step, turned back, and unleashed a big spin kick, Dragon Tail Swing, as though he were sweeping over the surface of water.

  Demiquas’s full-power charges and devastation all fell within the parameters of Shiroe’s estimates.

  That escape and the subsequent spin kick had looked like Demiquas’s fierce combat, but Shiroe had merely let him perform them.

  Of course, the guy didn’t have Demiquas’s attack power or martial arts.

  All he’d done was cause a little distraction and use a measly reinforcement spell. There was no way he’d be able to take down a powerful monster with makeshift trickery like that.

  However, what mattered was the fact that Shiroe had guessed what Demiquas was about to do, and had been able to help him without his catching on. Shiroe was predicting Demiquas’s actions perfectly. Demiquas had expanded his skills enough on this raid to know what that meant.

  Someday, I’ll slaughter him.

  When I do, I’ll do it in front of everybody.

  I’ll smash that pasty face and make him drown in tears of remorse.

  I’ll get a fantasy-class on this raid—

  Boost my level, polish my techniques—

  Demiquas bounded around, destroying one enemy after another.

  His class, Monk, was a Warrior class that had both attack power and the ability to keep fighting. Although he didn’t have as much offensive power as the Weapon Attack classes, his HP and ability to handle abnormal statuses were incomparably high. That meant he could charge into the midst of the enemy and survive, and it also meant he could stand his ground, even in the raid boss’s attack range, and keep right on attacking. Demiquas kept on shoving, kicking, mowing down, and attacking to the very limits of his techniques, moving as his blazing body dictated.

  Yet the battle progressed with painful slowness.

  When they were temporarily cornered, William’s feverish commands managed to get them on their feet again. The frontline defenders and healers, keeping the enemy weakened: If this vertical line was functioning properly, they wouldn’t be wiped out easily. Then they simply had to eliminate the shadow warriors and chip away at Ruseato’s HP, suiting their actions to the combat situation.

  It took time, of course. During that long time, countless decisions were made, and they all had to be dealt with calmly, deliberately, without error, and promptly. This series of actions was all there was to raids.

  Demiquas was heat.

  Demiquas was flame.

  He evaded the attacks of the enemy in front of him, pierced them, destroyed them.

  He leapt at Black Ruseato, brandishing fists of thunder as if to shatter its armor.

  His mind gradually emptied until he was simply immersed in the fight, propelled by erupting heat. No more thoughts of when he had been in rotten Susukino; no more thoughts of the day he’d fought Nyanta. Demiquas thought of nothing and became one with the battle.

  As a result, he didn’t realized that the situation had changed until he heard a scream go up behind him.

  It would have been harsh to blame Demiquas. Even for experienced raid members, it had been far too sudden. The enormous iron grates set in the eastern and western sides of the coliseum had opened completely. From the dark gaping holes, Tartaulga of the Fourth Garden, a frost giant with white eyes and frozen whiskers, and Ibra Habra of the Third Garden, a fiery serpent like a living, writhing corona, appeared.

  No sooner had the monsters taken half a step into the coliseum than they unleashed storms of ice and flame from either side. Their target was the Fourth party, which had been concentrating all its attacks on Ruseato. The party was annihilated in an instant, and the side effects alone did massive damage to the rest of the unit.

  At the preposterous sight, Demiquas felt an disturbing fluid rush into his mouth from his innards.

  This was too much.

  Demiquas and the others were fighting Ruseato of the Seventh Garden right now.

  Wait your turns, he thought.

  They’d fought Ruseato and kept exterminating his kin, the shadow warriors. When the balance had tipped ever so slightly and the enemy’s numbers increased just a little, Demiquas’s group had been in danger of being wiped out.

  Just when things had started to go smoothly. Even though that path had been no more than a faint possibility, like stepping onto thin ice.

  Now, at this point, here came two bosses whose ranks equaled Ruseato’s.

  Even Demiquas could tell, very clearly.

  They couldn’t win.

  This wasn’t about tactics or strategy.

  The difference in fighting power was so overwhelming it destroyed trivial little tricks like those. In order to fight these three at the same time, they would have needed a legion raid with ninety-six people, not a full raid of twenty-four.

  Deep in his ears, he heard a flat voice he’d heard somewhere before.

  This world isn’t a game anymore. That’s finished. Your time is over.

  The realization came to him, then: Just the way Adventurers put together strategies, the monsters left their posts to concentrate their power.

  If Demiquas had been a guardian of the dungeon, this would have been an obvious tactic, the first one he came up with.

  Combine their strength and exterminate the Adventurers.

  That natural thing had happened, and that was all.

  The air of the coliseum, which had frozen with that terribly cruel despair, was shredded by screams it was hard to believe had come from human throats.

  A face the size of an extralarge advertisement on the wall of a movie theater closed in on them: The frozen giant had bent over and brought its fist down on the members. There was a sticky, splattering noise, and then the Summoner was just a stain in the coliseum.

  The counting voice that had put Demiquas at ease was gone.

  Demiquas roared, charging like a gale at Shiroe—who was just standing there, stunned, eyes wide—and shoved him hard. Shiroe rolled three times, four, before Naotsugu caught him. It put him outside the range of the Frost Giant’s twisted club.

  “Take that, ya damn coward,” Demiquas laughed at him.

  In exchange, his left leg had been crushed to a pulp, but he’d gotten to see Shiroe look like an idiot, so he was still ahead.

  Kill those cheating raid bosses! Demiquas spat on the ground.

  However, neither Demiquas nor Shiroe managed to escape the brutality of Ibra Habra of the Third Garden, the flaming serpent whose writhing body shed a rain of fire. It wasn’t just the two of them. Naotsugu, Tetora, and William. The veterans of Silver Shield, who were stronger than Demiquas, and who’d crushed him like a bug no matter how many times he came at them.

  All their moisture was gone in an instant, and in the midst of flames that made their bodies twist in agony, the twenty-four members of the conquest unit were annihilated, just like that.

  5

  Having just passed through a hut where a foul smell drifted, the line of Krusty’s shapely nose warped slightly. The members of his guild called him thick-skinned, but even for him, the stench of the goblin dwelling had taken its toll.

  Takayama had accompanied him, and it had been so bad her eyes had begun to smart partway through.

  Compared to the hut’s interior, with its soiled straw and accumulated filth, it was far better outdoors, even under a freezing winter sky. In any case, Adventurer bodies were sturdy when it came to environmental differences like cold and heat.

  This seemed to be true for Krusty as well.

  He shrugged his
shoulders once, then left the goblin dwelling behind him, as if he had no further use for it.

  The dwelling was primitive—just a shallow pit dug in the earth, with a post set in the center and lots of tree branches and grasses piled up around it to act as a roof. There were several like it clustered in the surrounding area.

  This was one of the goblin villages in the Silverluck Mountains. This part of the wilderness held countless villages like this one, each with about fifty dwellings. Together, each encampment had probably been home to roughly three hundred goblins.

  By now, most of them were deserted.

  The Akiba Expedition Army Krusty led had subjugated about 30 percent of them.

  They assumed the remaining 70 percent had gathered at Seventh Fall, where the Goblin King reigned.

  It had already been a month since the expedition began.

  During the interval, Misa Takayama and the rest of the expedition army had explored the surrounding area, confirming the locations of goblin villages and sometimes attacking them. The army’s advance had been slow and careful.

  From the beginning, the idea that the conquest of Seventh Fall and the defeat of the Goblin King wouldn’t be difficult had been common knowledge for the Round Table Council. During the blank period of the Catastrophe, the goblins of Eastal had bred prolifically, and had reached a scale not often seen in history. To the People of the Earth, this was a disaster straight out of their nightmares.

  However, to the Adventurers of Akiba—or at least to the combat guild members who’d reached level 90—they weren’t a big threat. Although this was a raid to storm Seventh Fall, according to Krusty, if they went in with a select group of several dozen members, it should be possible to put down the Goblin King inside of two days. Takayama agreed with this prediction.

  In the first place, the defeat of the Goblin King wasn’t the goal of this operation.

  The goal was to secure the safety of the People of the Earth who lived in northeastern Yamato. That meant the problem was the several tens of thousands of goblins themselves. Even if they successfully subjugated the Goblin King and the now-leaderless goblins then overran the Silverluck Mountains, they would have to declare the operation a failure.

  With that in mind, the headquarters with which Krusty and Takayama were affiliated was moving with intentional slowness and combing the mountains. At present, there were several dozen Adventurer units deployed in the Silverluck Mountains, scouting and sporadically engaging in combat.

  As a result of this maneuver, which was a bit like chasing fish into a net, most of the goblin villagers seemed to have gathered at Seventh Fall. They thought they were mustering forces to begin their opposition to the Adventurers, but to Takayama and the others, it was merely a development that matched their strategy.

  Takayama followed Krusty, making for the stream.

  Members of D.D.D. were investigating the interior of the village and the area around it. That said, under the circumstances, it wasn’t likely that any Goblins had remained behind. They were only confirming the situation, and no one was all that tense.

  Krusty and Takayama traveled along a small path, cutting off conspicuous branches as they went.

  The well-trodden path was probably an animal track the residents of the village had used when they went to collect water, but Goblins were less than 140 centimeters in height. These two individuals were tall, and as they made their way along the path, the thick branches at face level snagged them and made it hard to walk.

  When they emerged on the dry shore at the river’s edge, the wind made them narrow their eyes. It carried a chill that swept away the gloomy air, and it felt pleasant to Takayama, but beside her, her guild leader expression wasn’t good.

  She’d noticed this tendency of Krusty’s around the time the Libra Festival had ended, and it seemed as though the anguish was growing more severe. Riezé had been so worried she’d wrung her handkerchief, but up until now, Takayama had left it entirely alone. This was because Krusty was a grown man, and she’d thought it would annoy him to have someone of the opposite sex worrying about him.

  Though I suppose being an adult doesn’t have much to do with it. Boys are always delicate, at any age.

  Takayama’s workplace experience made her think this.

  Besides, she’d known Krusty for a long time. She knew more or less what that worry was about. That was why she’d thought she’d take this chance, when they’d left the headquarters and gone scouting, to talk with him about it, just a little.

  “Milord?”

  “Hm? What is it, Ms. Takayama?”

  After a time lag so slight it was barely noticeable, Krusty turned a pensive face toward Takayama.

  “You don’t seem to be feeling well lately. Is something troubling you?”

  “Hmm.”

  Krusty brooded, covering his mouth with his fingertips. He was wearing thin leather gloves today, instead of his usual Adamantite Steel gauntlets. His midweight armor suited his sturdy frame well. He was a good-looking guild master. The series of people who were fooled by this was never-ending, but it was certainly useful as far as administration was concerned. Harboring this impression, she asked straight-out about what she’d felt:

  “Are you bored, sir?”

  Looking down at Takayama out of the corner of his eye, Krusty thought for a little while. Then, as though ducking the question, he put on a dignified expression, smiled wryly, and raised both hands as if he’d given up.

  “…That’s a problem. Yes, I’m bored.”

  “Put up with it, if you would.”

  “I’ve put up with a lot of it, and here I am today.”

  Takayama sighed heavily.

  She’d thought this was probably the case, and she’d been right.

  Krusty looked intellectual, and it was true that his actions were logical and precise. He had the brains and the charisma to bring people together. He’d launched and managed D.D.D., the largest guild on the Yamato server—truly an achievement to be proud of. D.D.D., which had absorbed 1,700 members, was larger than a midsized corporation in the real world.

  However, that public image wasn’t all there was to Krusty.

  This alabaster young man, who had been placed in charge of running even the Round Table Council, was terribly mischievous and had a fickle personality.

  One fact that Takayama and a few of the other veteran members knew was that Krusty had created the enormous organization known as D.D.D. because he’d wanted to see what would happen. In the first place, D.D.D. wasn’t a guild. It was part of a personnel exchange system Krusty had thought up, and the guild was just one of its structural elements.

  Apparently, one day, Krusty had had a certain thought:

  This Elder Tales game is terribly interesting. However, in order to get absolutely everything interesting out of it, you need lots of acquaintances and friends who’ll have fun adventuring with you. The administrators are aware of that, and they actually talk about it. There are all sorts of systems for finding companions built into the game… But if the users created a personnel exchange system that surpassed all that, and if they used that system to conquer end content in the form of raids… Wouldn’t that be rather interesting?

  That was why D.D.D. had been formed.

  In other words, it hadn’t needed to be structured like a guild. The guild system had just happened to exist in Elder Tales, and it had been convenient, so they’d used it. Back when Elder Tales had been a game, the focus of D.D.D.’s activities had been audio chat and their headquarters’ website, and both these systems had been proposed by Krusty. The periodic directors’ meetings and the personnel distribution system, which focused on raid unit division, had been his ideas as well.

  He seemed to have been interested in constructing an autonomous organization in which the divisions produced results by acting independently, rather than being commanded by him personally. For that very reason, even though D.D.D. had grown so powerful, it had managed to remain a well-ventil
ated organization.

  This had continued even after the Catastrophe. Krusty had seen the establishment of the Round Table Council as a rare, potentially beneficial opportunity, and had sought to expand his organization further and make it more autonomous. As a result, Krusty’s curious drive to “see” had been satisfied, but the number of ways were dwindling in which he was required to contribute to the administration.

  In short, he’d gotten bored.

  Takayama understood her friend’s feelings quite well, and she also thought they were troublesome. Although Krusty was bursting with talent, he was the type of man who had so much of it he was hard to associate with. His talent was excess power, and, for better or for worse, it sowed unforeseen trouble and confusion around the area.

  When Krusty was bored, nothing good ever came of it.

  He certainly wasn’t an outlaw, and since he was a rational human being, the final results were often beneficial to those around him. However, the commotion and work that occurred in the process were a pain in the neck for Takayama and the others. It had seemed to her that the boredom had been somewhat alleviated after he’d discovered Raynesia, but she might have been overestimating the girl.

  It’s unreasonable to push this onto the princess, isn’t it…?

  When she thought it over carefully, she was filled with remorse.

  She had to say a few words, at least. When, thinking this, she caught up to Krusty—who had gone on ahead, strolling down the stream—he was leaning over, inspecting the rocks that were strewn around.

  “What is it?”

  “Hmm…”

  Krusty readjusted his glasses, which had slipped a bit when he bent down, and held the object he’d picked up in front of her eyes. It seemed to be a spearhead.

  The mountain stream drew a great arc in that area, and at the inner edge of a deep pool, there was a dry riverbed littered with rocks that were smaller than a child’s fist. Patches of lingering snow remained here and there, but in summer, it would have been the sort of cool mountain scenery that invited barbecues.

  Krusty kicked several rocks, rolling them away with his toes. He seemed to have found traces of something.