The Gold of the Kunie

by Mamare Touno

  The ring of clashing swords, of blazing flame and freezing cold spells.

  He wasn’t frustrated because he’d failed to win.

  What frustrated him was the fact that he hadn’t done all he could, hadn’t accomplished what he’d needed to do.

  However, Akatsuki’s burning eyes didn’t hold the slightest trace of fear.

  She might have been defeated, but she hadn’t lost.

  Shiroe didn’t know what had happened, but as he looked at her, he sensed that they were the same. That pain was Akatsuki’s treasure. The pride of someone who’d resolved to fight, pride that must be retaken.

  That meant there was no need to comfort her.

  “I messed up. My predictions were too naïve. —I didn’t believe completely.”

  He’d been reluctant with his words.

  He’d been reluctant to take others’ hands.

  He’d been reluctant to give it his all.

  “I don’t understand.”

  The voice seemed to be on the verge of tears, but it was desperately trying to encourage him. Shiroe wanted to tell her, It’s all right. I understand. I know you’re working hard, Akatsuki. I know you’ll understand someday. Maybe you’re a little lost right now, but it’s a detour you need to take.

  …But he couldn’t say it yet. The petite young woman was fighting. Shiroe was fighting, too. Neither of their raid battles was over.

  “It’s funny. I never thought I’d get to meet you here, Akatsuki.”

  “Yes, my liege. It’s funny.”

  So he touched Akatsuki’s small, round forehead, praying to the inlet that all the things he couldn’t tell her would get through to her somehow.

  Mistakes couldn’t be erased. However, as Adventurers, they could stand up and try again.

  “…And so I’ll try one more time.”

  “I’ll try again, too, I suppose— Everyone taught me.”

  Countless phosphorescent particles drifted down over the two of them.

  This world was one horizon leading to eternity, with all emotion etched into it.

  That understanding made the world’s light even clearer.

  From far away, the sound of the surf rolled toward them.

  It washed over the shining beach, lapping at Shiroe’s and Akatsuki’s ankles.

  Shiroe smiled at his friend. Their time was ending.

  However, it was linked to their reunion.

  He moved the hand he’d set on Akatsuki’s head slightly, feeling troubled. As a rule, right about now, he could have expected a flying kick from her. Don’t treat me like a child, et cetera. But because it didn’t come, and because Akatsuki’s expression was serious, he wasn’t sure how to stop.

  Akatsuki, looking perplexed, began to say something. The music of the water kept Shiroe from hearing her voice, but he didn’t worry over it. The sensation of her hair, like fine, cool silk, remained on his fingertips.

  Its softness definitely saved Shiroe.

  3

  When William opened his eyes, he was looking up at a ceiling so high that it blurred in his vision.

  A hoarse voice spilled out of his stinging throat.

  He knew how pitiful and mangy his face looked, but he couldn’t hold back the rumble that seemed to be leaking out of him. In the only resistance he could manage, he rubbed his arm roughly across his eyes. He didn’t even have to check to know that they were wet.

  He’d been crying like a child. The disgrace of it crushed his chest.

  Around him, low, moaning voices rose, one after another.

  The members of Silver Sword were automatically resurrecting, one by one.

  This was the entrance to Abyssal Shaft, the beginning of the zone.

  William’s group had been wiped out, brought back to this place, and revived.

  It was the sort of annihilation that always accompanied raids, but it was something different as well.

  Three raid bosses had appeared and kicked William’s unit to pieces.

  This informed Silver Sword of two facts:

  First, that there was no way they could win this fight.

  Second, raids were built on a very delicate balance between being winnable and unwinnable. Guilds that had gotten equipment together and trained repeatedly fought through battles that were like walking a tightrope, and in the end, they won: That was a raid. Therefore, if three large-scale boss battles linked together like that, there was—without exaggeration—absolutely no chance of victory. The more used to raids one was, the better one understood this.

  There was no possibility that they could win this fight.

  It was despair that painted William’s heart pitch-black.

  The second news was even worse. No—it was bad beyond comparison. If raid bosses were able to band together now, and if it was happening everywhere, it meant there was no longer a single raid in the world that Silver Sword could win.

  Of course, in a raid that players with very low levels—say, level 50—could attempt, if an extra boss appeared, they might be able to deal with it. However, when William’s group thought of raids, that wasn’t what they pictured. They weren’t banding together to seek out weak enemies and torment them.

  The raid William and the others wanted was the type where they fought an enemy on their level and their blood seethed in their veins, and that type of raid had just died.

  The breath William spat out was stone cold. An indescribable listlessness was torturing him.

  The same could be said for his companions. Their low, crushed-sounding voices went on endlessly.

  Anything William had been able to understand must have been clear to everyone in Silver Sword as well.

  They hadn’t even needed to be annihilated: The instant the raid bosses had appeared from the great gates of the coliseum as reinforcements, the raid members had known.

  This world had rejected them.

  Forcing his limp body to move, William sat up, only to see Silver Sword in the process of being crushed. It wasn’t the sort of scene where anyone could have said nonsense like, “I don’t want my comrades to see me looking pitiful.” Simply being wiped out wouldn’t have done this to them. Hearts broken, the members just lay there or curled up, without the energy to stand. They were suffering, all vitality gone.

  To Adventurers, physical pain wasn’t lethal. What was searing their souls was the brand of having been exiled from the world.

  He heard sobbing. Disgraceful weeping, escaping from full-grown adults.

  William knew the reason behind it. He’d been in contact with it himself until just a moment ago.

  Losing memories was nothing. William could declare this more firmly than D.D.D., who left a safety margin when they acted, or the Knights of the Black Sword, who pressed forward with their captures through strong teamwork, or Honesty, with their damned egalitarian principles. This was something Silver Sword could say precisely because it had, without question, been wiped out more often than any other raid guild on the server.

  The instant between death and resurrection when they were shown their own mistakes and imperfections, that soul-chilling torrent of memories, chipped away at raiders’ souls. They needed to win only a little. No matter how many mistakes they’d made, they could make a fresh start, saying they’d corrected their errors and had grown… But how could they cancel out a mistake they couldn’t fully atone for, or regret they couldn’t shake?

  Voices reverberated inside him like echoes from the past.

  “And? What is that good for?”

  “Wow. A game, huh…?”

  “On a PC? These days? What’s wrong with social network games?”

  “You stay home on holidays?”

  To hell with that.

  William spat the words out.

  “Well, sure, you don’t look like the type that gets asked to go sing karaoke and stuff.”

  “You mean you talk to the computer, right? Yikes…”

  “Why don’t you pick a hobby that could be useful to you s
omeday?”

  “Mm, yeah, there are people like that out there, too. Why not?”

  To hell with it.

  William roughly wiped his face.

  He attempted to leap to his feet, but pathetically, his knees were quaking.

  He tried to yell, but realized he had no words that would encourage his friends. What was he going to do, inspire them? Tell them they’d win the next one? He couldn’t do that. It would be a lie. Then should he tell them to shake it off and invite them to go find a different raid with him? Leave this place and run home… That was impossible.

  Could he scowl at them and deliver a parting shot of “Let ’em say what they want,” as usual? There was no way he could. His comrades were lying there, prostrate with apathy, and words like those wouldn’t reach them.

  William’s mouth hung open, and his gaze swam.

  He saw Dinclon. Touko. Junzou. Eltendiska.

  He gazed at his friends, one after another.

  Then, before long, he stopped being able to look at anything except his own feet.

  William was watching his own guild crumble, and he didn’t even have anything to say to them. His heart had been knocked down so many times; every time, it had been shown its own flaws and laziness and had pieces shaved off it, and now there was nothing left in it for him to offer them.

  William searched desperately.

  He looked for words he could share with his comrades.

  However, he found nothing in his frightened, cringing heart.

  He heard a voice mutter, “So, what, is this the end?”

  He didn’t know who it had been, but one of his companions had probably said it. At the words they’d heard from a corner of the sprawling hall, everyone sucked in their breath. After all, it was something that scared everyone here to the point where they’d been trying not to think it.

  Those words set a question even William couldn’t run from right in front of him.

  We’ll go back to Susukino and become a good guild that keeps the peace.

  The People of the Earth will probably be grateful. This world runs on the law of the jungle, and the Ezzo Empire in particular gets a lot of monster attacks. People are desperate to protect their way of life. That’s what Susukino’s like, and as long as Adventurers behave themselves, they’re popular there. We could even mingle with the People of the Earth, get girlfriends and stuff. We don’t have to stick with raids; if we’re just conducting defensive quests in the area around the town, Silver Sword’s combat abilities are good enough.

  It was so utterly ridiculous that William felt as though his insides were on fire.

  “Maybe so. Probably so. I think so. But so what? To hell with that.”

  Surrendering to his frustration, William rebelled, without a thought for the consequences.

  That probably wouldn’t be a bad way to live.

  It was a way of life that skillfully avoided trouble in this other world, purchasing safety.

  …But it was also exactly the same as the words of “advice” the adults with know-it-all faces had given William.

  “Yeah, we lost. Total annihilation. We might be through. It was probably useless. Like those other guys always say, we’re probably just idiots who’ve been doing stupid stuff this whole time. We’re shut-in game junkies. Total rejects. —But who cares? We already knew that. We’re doing this with our eyes open. Still, we like games. We chose this.”

  It would be okay to end it. That was what William had thought.

  However, even if they lost, even if they were through, there was something they couldn’t ignore.

  There was something they absolutely couldn’t just leave.

  William went on, as if the blazing, roasting heat inside him had given him a shove.

  “It’s nothing big. We lost in a raid, that’s all. This stuff happens all the time. No need to be shocked. All this means is that the wins-and-losses data recorded on the server will go up by one, or it won’t. ‘Games are just kid stuff. It’s about time we grew up and went back to town’—I’m never gonna say that. I won’t let any of you say it either. We lost, and maybe we’re crap maggots and the lowest of the low, but I won’t let even God say it was useless.”

  To William, raids were something special.

  They were the heart of Elder Tales, which gave them about the same meaning as “the center of the universe.”

  “What does the bit data recorded on the server mean, anyway? Is that what you asked? It’s got meaning. Because I decided it did. I decided it was something awesome, something fantastic. The lot that believes there’s some ‘correct value’ that the powers that be decided, and that it plays the same way for the entire country… Guys who believe a line like that can’t understand this. Guys who say ‘The value you people believe in is stupid, and that means you’re wrong’ won’t understand this as long as they live. No matter how dumb we look, no matter what kind of a gilded fake it seems to be, if I—if we—think it’s awesome, then it’s awesome. Isn’t that choosing? I’m here because I chose to be!”

  To him, this was a sacred oath, and he wouldn’t let anyone diss it. With a chest-searing pain that he couldn’t hold back even by gritting his teeth, William harangued them.

  At some point, the members of Silver Sword had sat up, or planted themselves on the ground, and they were looking up at their guild master and field battle commander.

  “We spent time in Elder Tales. We spent a long, long time there. Tough enemies showed up, and we took up our swords and our bows and charged at them. We rushed them, yelling like little kids. Then we either won, or we lost. Yeah, that’s right, all of that was just bits on the server turning into ones or zeroes. What about it? We got obsessed over it. That’s awesome. If we won, we were flying high, and we’d celebrate the victory. We’d divvy up the fantasy-class stuff equally and drink a toast. If we lost, we’d get frustrated, hold a review meeting and kick up a ruckus until after midnight. If you want to call that pointless, you go right ahead. Maybe it’s a toy or a showy trinket, but it doesn’t matter. If we think it’s awesome, and we decide to sink our time into it, then it’s the real thing!”

  William howled. He expelled the heat from his lungs, loading it with resentment and bitterness.

  But that was as far as it went.

  The flames that had pushed him into motion blazed up all at once, burning him to ashes body and soul, and vanished. Victory and defeat belonged to combat; they were a part of it.

  Raids were the most sacred of all battles.

  They were something that should not be violated.

  Making light of them meant showing contempt for the enormous amount of time William and the others had spent striving for them. William’s group had lost the match, and now they were broken. There was no way to reverse that.

  As a result, there were no more words for him to say.

  There wasn’t a single thing that could rouse his comrades.

  “…I mean, we were like that, you know? That’s what we were, right? I dunno about guys who have all sorts of stuff. Guys who can live cleverly and be popular have pretty much everything, so they can just get by on that. Do you have something like that? Anything’s fine. Anything that can take you as far as you want and help you make friends with anybody. It could be brains, or looks, or a cheerful personality, or funny jokes. Anything’s fine, so do you have something like that, the stuff that makes guys who shine in real life all shiny? Do you? …I don’t. I don’t have one single thing.”

  Even so, still looking down, William went on in a low mutter.

  It was no longer a secret that belonged to a sacred battle.

  It certainly was true, but compared to the magnificent Elder Tales, it was trivial. In short, it was William’s small, personal confession.

  He no longer had anything that would let him throw out his chest and address the members. Even so, the guild master of Silver Sword continued to face them.

  4

  “Listen. I never said it before, and I
couldn’t say it before, but you’re my friends. Without the game, see, I can’t make friends. Seriously lame, right? What a loser. But because I had the game, I managed to get by. And because I had the game, I knew what you were thinking. When I game, I think, ‘Oh, this guy wants to be recovered,’ or ‘This one’s dropped back, but she really wants to move up,’ or ‘This one’s all hesitant so they can’t say it, but they really want this armlet that boosts magic strength.’ And that’s not all. I think things like, ‘This person really thinks about what’s best for their friends,’ or ‘That one’s a coward, but they’re shouting at the top of their lungs,’ or ‘He’s tired, but he psyched himself up and logged in today.’ I can tell stuff like that. I really do understand.”

  William desperately strung together scraps of words that wouldn’t flow smoothly.

  It was fragmented sincerity, and not the least bit organized.

  It was the last remaining flame, no more than the tip of a fingernail.

  Elder Tales had taught William a lot of things. If it hadn’t, there was no way a high school kid who was bad at talking and couldn’t make friends could have made it as a guild master.

  He doesn’t understand others’ feelings. Self-righteous. Inconsiderate. Uncooperative. Can’t stick with anything. Can’t read atmospheres. Doesn’t try to be part of the group.

  Even an isolated boy who’d been told things like that—who had thought that, if that was how it was, his critics could shove it and he’d have none of it—had been able to make a few connections in Elder Tales. He’d treasured those connections and protected them, making sure not to treat them carelessly. As long as William had lent his ear to the very first friend he’d taken into his thin arms, Elder Tales revealed many secrets to him.

  The first secret he’d learned had been teamwork.

  With some players, it went well, and with others, it didn’t. Some players were skilled, and some were lousy. Slowly, he’d figured out what he had to do in order to work with them. In short, William just had to match their pace. When he’d thought a player was lousy, he simply hadn’t understood what they were trying to do. If he synchronized himself with them, most players’ moods got a lot better.