The Gold of the Kunie

by Mamare Touno

  In the midst of concentration so deep his field of vision seemed to have lost all color, Shiroe finished his reading.

  Before they reached 720 seconds, it would be possible to destroy Ibra Habra of the Third Garden. The effect of Shiroe’s Karma Drive would recover the MP of companions who’d landed critical hits on the serpent. If that output shifted the damage, they’d be able to finish off Ibra Habra in seven hundred seconds at the latest.

  After that, they’d turn all their fighting power on the frost giant Tartaulga and take it down.

  In terms of their remaining MP resources, this was a battle with very little leeway, but they could win by a narrow margin.

  It might be thin ice, but it was the possibility of victory.

  He’d keep the calculations that could get them there uninterrupted until the very end. Shutting his overheating heart into an icebox, Shiroe made a request:

  “Keep the damage output at this level, please.”

  “You heard Machiavelli, people! Get the lead out, crush ’im! Don’t you dare hold back!!”

  Just as William issued that order to the group, ominous black clumps dropped into the hall.

  Plop.

  Plop.

  They stuck to the ground, then stood up and, with inhuman movements, leveled their weapons.

  An advance party of shadows—warriors born from fragments of Ruseato of the Seventh Garden. Their fighting potential was far below the boss’s, but even so, they could take on several Adventurers easily.

  Choking back a scream, Shiroe hastily looked up. What he saw was jet-black darkness, seeping out of the gallery that led to the coliseum. The darkness, which had spread across the ceiling, hung down, forming drops like heavy oil, and then released the shadow warriors.

  True, Ruseato probably couldn’t get through the barred gate.

  However, the dark, human-sized soldiers it generated had slipped through the gap in the gate, just as Shiroe and the others had, and had appeared on this battlefield.

  5

  This wasn’t a development Shiroe hadn’t seen coming.

  The shadow warriors were kin produced by Ruseato. Shiroe had anticipated that, and once the battle had begun, they would follow the Adventurer party in here. However, he’d expected a handful of warriors that had escaped defeat. The stain that spread over the ceiling was vast, and there were far too many of the shadows.

  The number of shadow warriors generated is equal to the number of people who inflicted damage on Black Ruseato.

  Shiroe was the one who’d seen through that.

  In this battle, they’d finished subjugating all the shadow warriors who had pursued them out of the coliseum by the time they began their attack on Ibra Habra of the Third Garden. As that was the case, the number of shadow warriors serving Ruseato should have been zero.

  Then, since Shiroe and the others had moved on, there shouldn’t have been anyone left to inflict damage on Ruseato. Ruseato shouldn’t have been able to generate shadow warriors again. There was no reason for this many to exist—

  At that point, Shiroe arrived at a single possibility:

  Ruseato had run itself through with its own halberd.

  Having inflicted damage, it had created one shadow warrior.

  Then that warrior and Ruseato itself had inflicted damage on the black armor again, gaining two more kin. Then they’d repeated the process. Ruseato had obtained an army by sacrificing itself—something which hadn’t been possible before—and that army was the black shadow that had seeped out of the passage.

  “Vanguard!”

  That thought left Shiroe in less than a moment, and his mouth screamed instructions.

  Just a little longer. He wouldn’t ask for seven hundred seconds. If they had six hundred seconds, they could defeat Ibra Habra. Then they’d have excess manpower. They had to buy that time.

  How long had it taken them to reach this great cavern? How much time had passed since they’d started fighting? If Ruseato created shadow warriors once every two hundred seconds or so, and their numbers kept doubling, how many were there now? Thirty-one. At most, sixty-three… The answer to his calculations came at once. If it was the latter number, all he had for that was despair, but it if was the former, they probably still had a slim chance. Even as he was embarrassed by that probably, Shiroe yelled:

  “Charge and kite them—”

  This maneuver was the equivalent of a suicide order. Junzou of Silver Sword was on the verge of responding to Shiroe’s order—the order to drag shadow warriors along behind him and run—but a powerful raider jumped out and beat him to it.

  “Gwaaaaaaaaaaaah! Move it! Phantom Step! Wyvern Kick! Aaaaaaaah! Taunting Shout!!!!”

  Pulling off a two-stage jump as though he’d managed to find a foothold somewhere in midair, Demiquas leapt into space like a rocket, then spun like a top, screaming. It was the howl that the warrior classes used to taunt. Although it was only for an instant, Shiroe saw that Demiquas had captured the attention of all the shadow warriors.

  As Shiroe and the other raid members looked up, the long-haired Monk, who’d shifted from his moment of stasis into a fall, seemed to be looking for Shiroe, an expression of rage on his face. He moved so fast that Shiroe lost sight of him, and in that instant, his stance fell apart.

  With no idea what had happened, Shiroe rose up, then felt himself yanked backward at overwhelming speed.

  “!!”

  He knew Naotsugu was yelling something. However, in the midst of the receding scenery, he couldn’t catch the words.

  Apparently he was traveling through the enormous cavern at tremendous speed. As if he’d been thrown into a washing machine with a giant drum, Shiroe went through a series of abrupt accelerations and slowdowns.

  A shadow warrior suddenly appeared in front of the stunned Shiroe and attempted to bring its great scythe down on him, but his vision rolled sickeningly, and the warrior was blown away. The culprit was a huge greave with a fiendish silhouette.

  “Get lost! Phantom Step!!”

  Leaving behind a group of enemies that was about to close ranks, Demiquas leapt into the air again.

  He had Shiroe by the scruff of the neck and was swinging him around.

  “What are you—”

  “Shaddup, ya damn four-eyes! Wyvern Kick!”

  The hot, stinking blood that splattered across his cheek calmed Shiroe down.

  He didn’t know whether Demiquas was planning to smash up the raid and get revenge on him this late in the game, or whether he actually had an idea that could help them win. However, it was a fact that Demiquas had grabbed Shiroe by the back of the neck and was treating him like prey he’d bagged.

  Still, this situation… This might not be bad…

  If you looked at it from another angle, Shiroe was fixed artillery that had been equipped to Demiquas.

  Once he’d realized that, there was just one thing to do. Shiroe scattered Enchanter spells, the ones that were ridiculed for being weak, around the area.

  Demiquas was probably using Drag Move. It was a special technique meant to be used on one enemy in a group; it made them target you, regardless of aggro, and you dragged them along as you moved. Either that, or he was using his arm strength, which was past level 90, and simply carrying Shiroe like luggage. With Adventurers’ extraordinary health, this would be possible. It could be either one.

  However, the important thing now was to tear the shadow warriors away from the main raid team.

  “Head for the northeastern passage!”

  “Shove it! What’re you bossing me around for?!”

  “Mind Bolt!”

  “Damn Enc!”

  Still, even as he swore at him, Demiquas seemed to have changed his course.

  He kicked the black, smooth, featureless shapes away, bulling through them, and headed for the passage even as countless enemies targeted him. Shiroe put together information from his violently rocking field of vision. He’d managed to confirm about twenty warriors. If he
took the ones outside his field of vision into account, there were probably around thirty. If Demiquas stood still, even if he had support from recovery spells, he’d be rendered unable to fight in fifteen seconds. Without support, it would be half that. Shiroe didn’t even want to think about what it would be like for him, but the answer to that had been clear ever since he started playing Elder Tales: He’d be lucky to last three seconds.

  “Shiroe, hey!”

  A shadow had been bearing down on him, its attitude low, ready to leap at him, but its head swelled, then burst like a watermelon.

  William had sniped it and finished it off.

  “You don’t need to cover for us. Defeat Ibra Habra, please.”

  “Look, Machiavelli—”

  “William! Take down the enemy!”

  Shiroe didn’t know what his voice had managed to convey to that proud guild master, and he had no confidence in how much emotion he’d managed to load into it. Even so, William squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, his expression anxious, then yelled: “All attack units, concentrate your damage on Ibra Habra! Sorcerers! Don’t hold back! Let ’er rip!”

  His field of vision flowed as if it were melting, and they dodged past Tartaulga’s club.

  Ducking his head away from the overwhelming mass that grazed the back of his skull, Shiroe noticed the white film that was approaching their feet.

  “That’s Tartaulga’s Midnight Sun. It’s going to disrupt your movement; use fire and—”

  “The hell do I care?! Lynx Tumbling!”

  Ignoring Shiroe’s advice, Demiquas ran as though scoffing at the frozen binding spell. With Lynx Tumbling in him, Demiquas ran up, using the club that had been brought down as a foothold, reached the frost giant’s craggy arm, then its shoulder, and kept right on going. Because of the horribly cold air, Tartaulga’s breath was always white. Demiquas slammed a foot into its cheek and sped up even further.

  This man-powered roller coaster began to run with all the safety devices removed, taking an insane course that would have sent all its opening day riders to the hospital.

  Loop, tornado, slalom. Dragging several dozen shadows behind him on invisible threads of aggro, Demiquas launched into a terrifying escape sequence.

  Behind them, Shiroe heard a voice scream. He didn’t know what it had said. However, he thought it might have been words of encouragement. This was Silver Sword, and the words they’d send at a fellow raider who was leaping into the jaws of death were pretty much a given.

  They barreled into the pitch-black passage, and the sounds of the raid battle grew fainter. There were 580 seconds left in the subjugation battle in that big cavern, and it had to go on. Once that ended, they’d need to rescue Dinclon, who was fighting the frost giant.

  That meant the two who were racing through the dark passage weren’t able to let their guards down for a moment.

  For the past little while, Shiroe had been firing the few attack spells he had, one after another.

  Astral Bind and Nightmare Sphere. If he hit the shadows with spells that had motion obstruction and petrifying effects, he could delay their pursuit by a few seconds. He couldn’t pull in many of them, but his mantle was getting wet and heavy with sweat because of Demiquas, and if he didn’t reduce the pressure from their pursuers, Demiquas’s HP wouldn’t last. Just like his HP, Demiquas’s MP was falling rapidly. It was the price of his reckless escape. In any event, it was a stroke of luck that the passage they’d leapt into went downhill. They were both still alive, and the passage went on into darkness.

  “Don’t use Wyvern Kick for a while, all right?”

  Demiquas ignored Shiroe’s request.

  They could see the first of the shadow warriors, but they seemed to be about thirty meters away. Shiroe abandoned an attack spell he’d started to cast—they were getting out of range—and switched to support spells that focused on transferring MP to Demiquas. In a situation like this, they needed mobility more than attack power. Shiroe concentrated on switching spells, and Demiquas ran flat-out, carrying him away, into the depths of the darkness.

  Shiroe didn’t know why Demiquas had taken him and run.

  As it had turned out, their kiting, which had made good use of restraining spells, was going very well, but he couldn’t be sure whether that had been Demiquas’s plan or not.

  Shiroe didn’t understand this outlaw’s thoughts in the first place, and he couldn’t begin to sympathize with him.

  Even now, after they’d lived together on this long raid, although it had faded, stubborn, deep-seated doubt remained.

  In ruined Susukino, Demiquas had subjected the People of the Earth to tyranny.

  Of course he had no intention of saying that all the blame lay with Demiquas. The confusion and misunderstanding of the Catastrophe had probably given him the impression that this place was just like the world of the game. You could also take the view that he’d been driven by terror, and, to hide that fact, had taken things out on others. He’d heard later that, even when Elder Tales had been a game, the Briganteers guild had attracted players with bad manners. Maybe extreme actions stemming from tough talking within the group had become habit.

  Shiroe felt a certain persuasiveness in all these circumstances, and he was capable of understanding them. However, even so, deep down, he wasn’t convinced.

  Demiquas had abused People of the Earth and violated their rights. Shiroe had heard he’d even sold them.

  On top of that, he’d stalked Serara and frightened her badly.

  Those were tastes Shiroe didn’t possess. He couldn’t understand them, and he didn’t think he could forgive them.

  He didn’t like this guy. That had always been Shiroe’s evaluation of Demiquas.

  Apparently, while he’d been thinking these things, quite a lot of time had gone by.

  All Shiroe could see was the dark passage that flowed past him. He didn’t know how much distance they’d put between themselves and the shadow soldiers, but he didn’t think it would be a good idea to widen the gap too much. Demiquas had taunted and attacked them mercilessly. He didn’t think that army would forget their aggro, but worst-case scenarios did happen. If the shadows turned back and made for the big cavern again, this raid would fail. Even now, it wasn’t clear whether they’d managed to draw out all the soldiers.

  “Stop; you’re getting too far ahead. Wait a little.”

  But as if he couldn’t hear the words, Demiquas kept running.

  Irked, Shiroe had to yell for him to stop over and over before he finally did. Demiquas had rubbed him the wrong way, and Shiroe raised his voice, objecting:

  “What are you thinking?! If you keep going this way…”

  Before he could get the rest of the words out, Shiroe was thrown into the passage and rolled, coming to a stop when his back struck the wall. As he opened his eyes partway, rubbing his arm by the passage wall, Demiquas spoke to him.

  “Hey. Enc. Say my name.”

  Giving in to his irritation, Shiroe drew a breath, intending to call him “Dental Care”; then he looked up, and chose silence.

  Feeling as if he were seeing Demiquas for the first time, Shiroe searched for the continuation of the words he’d lost.

  Demiquas was leaning in to look at him, his expression stern and resolute. He’d opened his eyes so wide they looked as if they might pop out, and it was clear he’d spit out those words because he was hanging on to something he could never give up.

  Thanks to that expression, the protest Are you seriously asking stupid questions when we’re under this much pressure? had disappeared from Shiroe’s mind.

  It was likely that everyone had a wish they couldn’t give up, just as William did.

  Shiroe had one. If he hadn’t, he probably still wouldn’t have been affiliated with a guild.

  Even Demiquas had one.

  In the midst of time that was moving slowly, Shiroe thought, speculated, and discovered that the anger inside him was very similar to self-hatred. During the Catastro
phe, Shiroe had felt the helplessness of being unable to do anything, and he’d been so excessively repelled by it that he’d taken it out on Demiquas, who was leaning on the fact that he couldn’t do anything and acting like a despot.

  Of course Demiquas had done things that couldn’t be forgiven. Shiroe had had to rescue Serara. However, did he have the right to judge Demiquas? That was doubtful. Shiroe was Shiroe; he wasn’t the law.

  Besides, even if I did have the right to judge him…nobody should have the right to steal someone’s name.

  Shiroe realized he’d been stubbornly refusing to say Demiquas’s name.

  He wasn’t like this outlaw. He wouldn’t acknowledge him as a fellow human.

  That was the attitude he’d taken.

  “Demiquas.”

  “Yeah.”

  “—Demiquas, I can’t stand you.”

  “Back at you, Shiroe of Log Horizon.”

  Shiroe and Demiquas had finally come to an understanding.

  They’d reached an understanding about the fact that they couldn’t reach an understanding.

  And so, Shiroe was about to say, but he wasn’t able to continue beyond that.

  The outlaw had set the palm of his hand against his chest, and when it moved—slightly, yet brooking no argument—Shiroe’s body flew through the air as if it was some kind of joke, then rolled down the passage again. He’d curled himself up, and he rolled like a soccer ball, winding up at a great steel door that was closed, coldly and tightly.

  “Shiroe, you die on the other side of that. I’m busy fielding these guys.”

  Tossing the words over his shoulder as if to shut down Shiroe’s argument, Demiquas broke into a run again. Cloaked in green light, at the end of the dark passage, he blinked two or three more times, then drifted, like a comet.

  All sorts of feelings he couldn’t put into words layered one over another, and Shiroe was left alone in the dark passage.