by Mamare Touno
The thought struck Shiroe as a tiny bit funny, and he laughed.
He felt as if he’d been told, I’m the one who protects you, my liege, so mind your own business.
People were incredibly complicated. Shiroe knew Akatsuki was worried about him; that the friend who shoved him away brusquely with an angry expression actually worried twice as much as most people. He now knew that Akatsuki was worried about him, even as she was fighting somewhere far away.
This was no time to get discouraged in a place like this.
“I want them to win. Don’t you, Shiroe?” Tetora murmured as she sat cross-legged, rocking back and forth.
Her back was to Shiroe, and from where he was, he couldn’t see her expression. Still, her voice had been strong, and he was able to answer with an honest “Yes.” But then, it hit him: He wanted them to win. To have Silver Sword win. He wanted to break through this difficulty with this raid team, as one of its members. Tetora’s frank words took shape within his emotions and promptly became resolve.
“You say some good stuff sometimes,” Naotsugu quipped.
“I am a first-class idol, you know.”
As they gazed at William in the distance, Naotsugu and Tetora spoke to each other briefly.
That was all it took: Although the three of them hadn’t said anything in particular, their thoughts had overlapped. As a group, they didn’t know what form “winning” would take, or what it would feel like. However, whatever they did, they knew that they couldn’t let Silver Sword die like this.
That was already a set decision, and the only problem left was how to make it happen.
“And? What do we do? Got any ideas, Counselor?” Naotsugu asked, indifferent and cheerful. He’d phrased it as a question, but he was really just looking for confirmation.
Shiroe’s friend had no doubt that there was a way to break through this. He figured that Shiroe was bound to come up with something… And so, Shiroe pushed up his glasses and answered.
“There’s something I have to tell you, Naotsugu. You as well, Tetora. And William. The rest of them, too. I should have told you why this raid is necessary, and what’s inside this place, and why I want gold. I leaned on you, and I was trying to do it all myself. If you’ll forgive me… I have a slightly better strategy. Only slightly better. The odds of winning are fifteen percent.”
“Great, bring it on.”
“That’s perfect.”
“I also need to tell Kinjo and the others about our wish, and about the land of Yamato. This time, when we speak, I’ll look him in the eye.”
1
The Abyssal Shaft capture team filled a week with planning.
Reinforcement of their campsite; several dozen recons in force. Elimination of all non-boss-level enemies that could be subjugated. The unit made all the preparations they could think of, then headed into battle again.
Noticing that his breathing was growing shallow, Federico forced himself to draw in air.
The scene that spread before him was almost exactly the same as last week.
It was the overwhelming shape of the huge, dark purple figure enshrined in the center of the enormous coliseum: Ruseato of the Seventh Garden.
The arena that had been the site of the ferocious battle a week before was quiet, and not even clouds of dust were visible.
Keeping his attention on Shiroe, the party leader, Federico waited for the signal.
He thought the taciturn young man had changed quite a bit over this past week.
After that defeat, he’d begun to speak with all the members of the group frequently. He’d known the man was a knowledgeable Enchanter, but over that week, his skills seemed to have grown even sharper. He had a new staff which seemed to have come from storage, and Federico and the others had soon grown used to seeing him equipped with it.
This was no time for grumbling. They’d do whatever it took to boost their chances of victory. Federico and the others thought that in this situation, Shiroe had responded to them very well.
During the week, the raid team’s provisions situation had taken a turn for the better. That was thanks to Shiroe’s group as well.
They’d donated generously from their Magic Bags, which meant that both the amount and the quality of their meals had improved. Voinen, the amateur Chef in charge of meals for the team, was grateful. Some wondered whether Shiroe’s cadre had just been holding back on them until now, but there weren’t many such opinions, and they soon disappeared.
It was also true that Silver Sword had been treating the outsiders as guests. It wasn’t the sort of thing said outsiders could unilaterally blame them for wondering.
Besides, the annihilation had counted for a lot.
“Death” was horrifying and painful, but sometimes it bound people to each other. It wasn’t that they’d gotten along badly with their friends from high school or college, but this raid team was something special. Sharing that bitter experience had been significant, to the point where “friends” seemed like a less accurate description of their relationship than “comrades in arms.”
You can’t make friends with guys you hate, but…
Federico bit his lip and thought.
You can’t keep on hating comrades in arms.
This had been true with regard to Shiroe, and with regard to Demiquas as well.
Azalea, who was sitting with his eyes closed in apparent meditation, lightly raised his right hand.
Using Soul Possession, a Summoner special skill, he’d possessed a summoned servant monster and had gone on reconnaissance in its form. He must have released it: He shook his head two or three times, then delivered a brief report to William: “Still on standby, no change in position. No other enemies sighted.”
The result was just what it had been during repeated reconnaissance sessions over the past week.
The raid bosses seemed to have learned to work together, but they each had their own ideas and preferences, and their cooperation wasn’t perfect. These were words that Shiroe of Log Horizon had spoken several times over the course of the week. When you talked to him, he seemed to be a mild-mannered, philosophical young man, but if you believed the rumors from Akiba, he was a sinister mastermind who’d control even the armies of hell.
Either way, it’s not much of a problem, Federico thought.
It was true that Shiroe was introverted. His cross expression seemed to put up a wall. His explanations were complicated and roundabout. However, these were trivial flaws. The Silver Sword members weren’t qualified to talk about other people. They were a group of social rejects, all of them warped to some extent. Shiroe might be an eccentric, but in terms of Federico’s friends, he was a sensible sort.
Shiroe chanted keywords briefly, and a spell activated. It was the Elixir spell. This Enchanter support spell raised the base power values of the recovery spells its targets used.
His companion Voinen had turned the palm of his left hand upward and tested Heartbeat Healing. Warmth and a vivid green light showered down on Federico. The recovery amount actually had increased. Shiroe was moving along, casting support spells in sequence, and Federico sent grateful thoughts at his back.
The time for preparation was over. From this point on, it was Silver Sword’s time.
This was the continuation of the night when William had yelled as if he were spitting out his words.
A short countdown. Naotsugu launched into a run first, as if stealing time from the “zero.” The Second party’s guardian outstripped the other members by a wide margin, heading for Ruseato of the Seventh Garden all alone.
Not yet. Not yet…
Keeping their eyes on William’s left hand—which he’d stretched out horizontally—and the battlefield, Federico and the others sat tight. Gazing at Naotsugu’s back, they waited for the first attack.
“Castle of Stone!!”
Right in front of Ruseato, Naotsugu raised his shield and shouted. It was the absolute special skill of the Guardian, one that negated all damag
e. Using this ten seconds of bare invincibility, Naotsugu made it through the first big attack Ruseato launched, Hearken to the Moonlit Funeral Bell.
“Now!”
With a yell, William broke into a run.
Federico followed him so fast that they seemed to race.
Hearken to the Moonlit Funeral Bell and Kneel Before the Dark Silver Post were attacks from Ruseato’s Black Knight mode that could be described as certain-kill techniques. Unless you were the top tank—Dinclon—and loaded up with support and recovery, it would be tough to defend against those two attacks. Shiroe’s friend Naotsugu had gotten through one of them with a single Castle of Stone. In the previous battle, they’d learned that Hearken to the Moonlit Funeral Bell’s recast time was ninety seconds. In other words, Ruseato wouldn’t be able to use it again for another eighty-seven seconds. Right now, he had no powerful ranged attacks. Kneel Before the Dark Silver Post was a threat, but that targeted single players. Federico and the others could use this opening to move, safely and completely, to their designated locations.
For raiders, this was a natural team play, but the sight of a Guardian from a small guild pulling it off perfectly made the corners of Federico’s lips rise.
Even now, death was frightening.
However, their morale was higher than that.
In the instant when he charged shoulder to shoulder with his comrades, and the instant when they pulled off a difficult team play, Federico’s heart soared up like a glider riding the wind. It was probably the sort of emotion the world would have ridiculed as childish, but, to borrow the words of the guild master that Federico acknowledged, the world could go to hell.
The yell that night was a letter of challenge, thrown at the world, and just as it said, we’re doing this by choice.
Since coming to this other world, Federico had died many times.
Many times, he’d been taken back into those dark memories. He’d experienced his regret and despair all over again.
However, his Silver Sword comrades had never once appeared in those memories. When he’d talked to the companions around him, they’d said the same thing. That made Federico happy. Some people might say that, since it had been a game, that was only natural. Even so, he felt as though it was proof that, to him, Silver Sword was a place to belong and a group of friends he’d never been ashamed of.
…Friends.
It had been a long time since he’d started getting embarrassed about using the word.
At this age, thinking about where the line between “friends” and “acquaintances” fell was a pain in the neck, and even if he’d settled on definitions as far as the words were concerned, human relationships would only be what they were. Federico, a brand-new member of adult society, thought that getting particularly friendly and taking special care to avoid people were equally futile.
When he’d heard the word friends from his guild master, a mere high schooler, he’d teared up. The experience had startled him, because his own feelings were a mystery to him.
He might get back to the old world someday.
Maybe he’d return to a life of shuttling back and forth between his house and the office, remember this situation, and think that preparing to die had been ridiculous.
That wouldn’t be a bad thing, but if asked whether they could stop in their tracks right now, the answer would have been an emphatic “No.” This was a raid zone, and they were raiders.
“Viper Slash”
Leaping high into the air and using the dark purple gauntlet as a foothold, Federico swung his flamberge sword into Ruseato’s arm. Viper Strike didn’t inflict much damage, but the “blood loss” icon appeared, and Ruseato’s attack hit rate went down. The drop was 4 percent.
Raiders would never say “only four percent.” That 4 percent might save just as much in recovery spells. It might hold down MP consumption and let them keep fighting, and if Federico let his vanity do the talking, it was a 4 percent that might increase their chances of winning the battle.
Having picked up the role of tank from Naotsugu, Dinclon advanced.
He was one of the mildest-looking guys in Silver Sword, but he was fortified from head to toe in fantasy-class Fantasmal equipment, and his defense was on a level with “Black Sword” Isaac’s. In sharp contrast to his usual kind voice, Dinclon was screaming in a way that made Frederico’s eardrums tremble. It was War Cry. It had been extended through item effects, and it raised the status abnormality resistance of everyone around him.
Alongside the juddering vibrations, strength infused Federico’s body.
Compared to last time, Ruseato seemed almost sluggish. Circling around its back, he kept hitting it with a series of attacks, putting all that strength behind them. Quickly performing special, close-combat skills every which way and piling on damage was an attacker’s role. In terms of this particular strategy, the initial sprint was extremely important.
At the western edge of the coliseum, about ten meters away from the battle that surrounded Ruseato of the Seventh Garden, two subdued, metallic sounds rang out.
Ragoumaru, Silver Sword’s Samurai, had used Steel-Cutting Sword.
As their advance investigations had shown them, when one of the bars in the gate was severed, it created a gap that a human-sized figure could pass through with relative ease.
Watching this out of the corner of his eye, Federico kept attacking.
Not there yet.
The attackers redoubled their efforts all at once, and their ferocious attacks inflicted considerable damage on Ruseato. There wasn’t much Ruseato could do at this point. Naotsugu had negated the badly damaging attack it should have been able to rely on, and it didn’t have an attack that could break through Dinclon’s formidable defense.
If it asked its friends for help, Federico and the others would be thrashed promptly, but Ruseato hadn’t even lost 10 percent of its HP yet. It couldn’t possibly call for help yet… But even as he thought this, Federico bit back the fear he held inside.
There were no guarantees. They didn’t know when those two raid bosses might force their way in. Or if a different boss might appear, too—there were no guarantees about that, either. All they had were the zone map they’d confirmed through their reconnaissance, and guesses regarding the guardians’ system of cooperation.
As time crawled by, Federico and the others attacked and held out, waiting for the operation to begin.
They wanted to win.
Working only from that desire to persevere, they desperately piled on attacks.
Federico’s herculean strength swung his beloved sword, Breath of Muspell, like a small typhoon, connecting with Ruseato’s armor again and again. Under the red-hot onslaught, the grotesque armor cracked like crystal, and the flying shards of glass cut Federico’s bearded face. But that didn’t bother him.
Up until now, Federico had never thought of himself as that sort of person, but apparently he liked things to be fair.
He’d realized that during this past week.
His desire to win wasn’t due to the fact that he wanted to vanquish this tough enemy, or to win glory or treasure. There wasn’t a shred of anger or hatred involved.
He only wanted one thing: a just reward.
This was a raid that William wanted to win so badly, his eyes had filled with tears.
It was a battle in which Silver Sword had faced death time after time and pulled through.
He didn’t want to think it had all been in vain. He didn’t want to think that their attempts had been foolish and pointless. If that were the case, it would be far too tragic.
He bore no grudge against Ruseato. On the contrary: He actually respected it.
All Federico and the rest of Silver Sword wanted was proof, plain and simple.
You aren’t wrong. You were right, and you were tough.
That proof was the only thing they wanted.
“Threshold!!”
At William’s sharp cry, the buffers and healers started running
, detouring. Ruseato of the Seventh Garden was changing. Its cracked armor sloughed off as if it were molting, and its body turned the color of snow: It was transforming into White Knight mode.
The shattered black armor became a shadow-colored swamp and spread, generating countless warriors. The boss’s trap zone restricted the movements of all the Adventurers who were inside of it: It was a sticky ranged attack that bound their ankles. Avoiding that area, the raid team changed their formation.
“Hurry! Shiroe’s group is the shock team!”
Obeying William’s orders, the unit dived into the passage beyond the gate, one after another. At its other end was Ibra Habra of the Third Garden.
Federico’s group’s counterstrike had begun.
2
Demiquas was part of the group that had leapt into the western passage first.
The high-ceilinged granite passage, which was decorated with enormous columns, continued in a straight line. Further down, the passage was misty with twilight, but through reconnaissance, they’d learned that the flaming serpent Ibra Habra was in a great cavern at its end.
Demiquas looked around restlessly, but Naotsugu had taken off running straight ahead. Dem followed after, as if chasing him.
As a Guardian, Naotsugu protected his body with metal armor, and to Demiquas, he seemed like a sluggish turtle. He looked like he was hurrying desperately, but his speed was only half Demiquas’s, who wore light equipment. If Demiquas got serious and used Phantom Step or Wyvern Kick, he could leave him behind in the space of a breath.
However, if he did that, Dem would end up charging the raid boss first. In order to avoid that, although it was really irritating, he had to stay behind with the turtle.
The party was traveling in a column, with Naotsugu and Demiquas in the lead.
The First party had put Dinclon, the team’s main tank, at the back and was retreating, blocking the shadow warriors as it went. They probably couldn’t move fast. While the main defensive party was dealing with the enemies that followed them, it was Demiquas’s group’s job to take the lead in their place.
