After the Storm, and Before the Storm (Premium)

by Sakon Kaidou

  He had no idea when he’d received them, but his status summary was displaying a whole bunch of status effects.

  His movements were so sluggish that he couldn’t even see to hold and use his medicine.

  The status effects were there because ten-odd seconds ago, Gerbera had used her Poison Hunter skills.

  “My arm... MY AAAARM!”

  He had no idea when it had happened, but his left hand was gone from the wrist down.

  Only now did he realize that he’d lost an important part of his body.

  This had happened ten-odd seconds ago, when he’d crawled over to his medicine, only to touch a mine placed there by Gerbera’s Trap Hunter skill.

  He’d missed each and every single attack.

  He didn’t perceive anything.

  He couldn’t perceive anything.

  Everything that Gerbera did while merged with Alhazred using its ultimate skill could never be noticed the moment she did it.

  The very fact that you had been attacked would reach you a whole ten-odd seconds late.

  “G-Grinding Shockfist! Grinding Shockfist!”

  Using his remaining hand, Gakido frenziedly used his ultimate job skill to attack his surroundings, but alas, Gerbera wasn’t close enough for it to reach.

  She stood at a distance, bowgun in hand, watching and waiting for her prey to grow weaker.

  Once he raised his upper body, she silently shot his left eye.

  He lost half of his vision instantly. It scared him, but he had no idea that it was caused by an arrow piercing his head.

  He reached for the area and unknowingly touched the arrow, making the wound worse.

  Gakido was already as good as dead.

  Three of his limbs were gone, his HP was almost non-existent, and the many debuffs were weighing down on him.

  Even so, Gerbera didn’t come close to him.

  She simply waited.

  Not saying a word, she waited until the very last moment.

  As she was now, she wouldn’t make her presence known until the very last moment.

  That was her greatest change since entering the gaol.

  She would keep a cool head and relentlessly chip away at her opponent’s life until they died.

  She wouldn’t let her guard down or allow anyone to perceive her.

  She had become perhaps the most haunting hunter of all.

  Once Gakido stopped moving, Gerbera, while keeping her distance, finished him off with a fire magic gem. Flames embraced him, but Gakido didn’t even realize it until his death penalty came. However, before he went, he was able to whisper a short sentence.

  “It’s a nightmare...”

  ◆◆◆

  Bow Hunter, Gerbera

  After the incident with Gakido and his merry crew, we returned to the café, and I was now having some of our leader’s coffee along with a simple cake.

  This was nice and all, but I was still in a bad mood.

  “Hey,” I called out to our leader.

  “Yes?”

  “You called that a test, but... wasn’t he just really weak? I don’t feel like it was even a fight.”

  Gakido had been about as easy as Rook from when I’d fought him back before I was sent to the gaol.

  He was nothing compared to the KoD, Hannya, Candy, and Fu’uta.

  He must’ve been one of those third-rates who focused too much on their SJ!

  “Perhaps,” said the leader.

  Ah. I knew it.

  So basically, I was still one of the weaker people here in the gaol.

  “Ugh... This is hopeless... I’m pretty sure I’m the weakest Superior...” I lay face-first on the table, as dejected as I had been when I’d first logged in today.

  I had no idea why, but the leader was making a slightly different smile.

  What’s so funny?

  “By the way, about your nickname...” he began.

  “I can’t call myself ‘The Unknown’ yet.”

  I had to win against the KoD first.

  Hold on. If even our immortal King of Crime had lost against him, what chance did I have? What a downer of a thought...

  “Perhaps, but Gakido gave you a very good one, didn’t he?” the leader asked.

  “Eh?”

  He had? D-Did he mean “Fake-Breasts?!” If that became my nickname, I’d have to quit Dendro for good!

  “The name he gave you is... Albtraum.”

  ”Albtraum”? Umm... that means “Nightmare” in German, right? Better than what I expected, but... “Nightmare”...?

  “Isn’t that common?” I asked. I felt like there’d be at least a few “Nightmares” in every country.

  “I would say it’s a good start.”

  Hmm... it wasn’t weird or anything, so I didn’t really mind it.

  “Then I guess I’ll be Gerbera the Nightmare for now,” I said.

  “Excellent. I will tell that to our regular customers.”

  “That’s kinda embarrassing. Please don’t.”

  “Well, these names only gain meaning when others give them to you and start using them regularly.”

  I cringed.

  That hurt the side of me that desperately wanted to be called “Unknown.”

  I’ll just change the subject.

  “By the way, do you have a nickname?” I asked him.

  “I’m confident I had one... but haven’t heard it used for so long that I’ve forgotten it. If only it was as easy as Miss Hannya’s, it would never have left my memory.”

  Oh yeah, hers was just “Hannya.”

  Thinking of her reminded me of the time the leader and I had gone shopping and she’d mistaken us for a couple.

  She’d just popped out and attacked, screaming, “COUPLES IN THE GAOL?! I CAN’T EVEN SEE MY GUY!”

  It had been crazy scary. I’d used my ultimate skill, but even it had done nothing against her trampling. I’d even had pain on because of training, so it had hurt a lot, too...

  If the leader hadn’t been there to become The Saint and heal me, I would’ve gotten the death penalty on the spot.

  “Speaking of Hannya, I haven’t seen her in a while,” I went on.

  Besides the leader, she was the Superior I met most often. Was she busy in real life or something?

  “Ohh, you didn’t know?” the leader asked.

  “Eh?”

  “She was released yesterday. She gave us this cake as a parting gift. She made it herself, apparently.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  The cake was good, but I couldn’t tell that it was homemade. This reminded me that as long as she didn’t snap, Hannya was actually a very feminine lady.

  Also, I’d heard of it happening, but I still had a hard time believing that anyone could be released.

  Of course, we did plan to escape.

  “...Hm?” I murmured.

  Hannya... had been released?

  Hannya, the woman who went on a murdering spree whenever she as much as saw a couple, had been released?

  Hannya, the woman who’d destroyed more buildings here than any other Superior, had been released?

  Hannya, the woman who was known for her low boiling point even among all the low-lives here, had been released?

  “...She’ll be back in no time, won’t she?” I asked.

  In response to my words, the leader broke his usual smile and cracked a wry grin — a rarity for him.

  Epilogue: After the Storm, and Before the Storm

  April 6th, 2045, Quartierlatin Country, ruins

  “Ughh...” Rising Sun’s Blue Screen was moaning in front of the plant’s console.

  He was doing official work investigating the ruins.

  Thanks to Ray and Barbaroy’s help, he’d received a very lucrative quest. He was very thankful for that.

  For a clan as insignificant as theirs, this was a true stroke of luck that he probably hadn’t deserved, what with the bad karma on him from the incident at Torne.

  Regardless, it was a ve
ry good quest, and he’d feel indebted to Ray and Barbaroy for a while.

  The only problem was that he was the only Master who’d received this quest.

  There were other people who wanted it. Some had gone through introductions that didn’t involve Ray and Barbaroy.

  The reward was very good, so of course there were many who would have liked to work alongside him.

  However, the quest had the condition of having high-level engineer or mechanic grouping jobs, and those were rare even among Masters who’d moved from Dryfe to Altar.

  No one else fit the conditions as well as Blue Screen did.

  As a result, he was facing the ruins’ computers all on his own.

  “Shit... I’m playing Dendro, but it feels like I’m working IRL,” he grumbled as he typed away on the console.

  Despite his complaining, he did excellent work, easily unlocking many systems that had left tian scholars stumped.

  “Ohh, another cyclic code security program. Dream of Electric Sheep — Gremlin.”

  He used his Embryo to dull certain functions of the systems while scanning the data for anything significant.

  “Heeey, how’s work?! I got ya somethin’ to eat!” Dum-Dum entered the plant and called out to Blue Screen. “Makin’ any progress?”

  “I’d say so. But man, is it just me, or is what we’re doing right now really far from what a usual PK clan does?”

  “Well, we lost Vermin, so now we’re a clan of just us two. We don’t have a lot of options, so we should be thankful for good jobs like this.”

  “True,” Blue Screen nodded as he ate some of what Dum-Dum had brought. “Any changes in town?”

  “Nope, wouldn’t say so. You’ve still got tons of repair and search quests. Lookin’ for lost items is basically all I’m doin’ right now. Speakin’ of which, I found a small engine in one of the hidden rooms in here.”

  Dum-Dum’s Embryo, Mary, was specialized in tracking, and with it, looking for lost items or people.

  This side of his Embryo didn’t see much use back in Torne, but it was actually the Embryo’s main feature.

  He led a PK clan, but many would say that he was better suited for something else.

  “An engine, eh...? What’s the name?” Blue Screen asked.

  “Identification wasn’t enough for it, so all I got was ‘Reactor.’ I handed it over to the Altarian research group stationed here in town. We’ll see what they find out. Oh! By the way! This old man in the plaza had this fancy-lookin’ orchestra. They were playin’ Engelberg’s music, and they were so goddamn good!”

  “Oh, that’s the composer you like, right?”

  “Hell yeah. He’s not releasing anything new at the moment, though. Well, he’s old, so maybe he retired?”

  Blue Screen continued working even as he chatted with Dum-Dum.

  “Hm?” he said suddenly, coming across an interesting set of data.

  It was design data that had to be inputted into the plant’s production line, and the monitor displayed some sort machine’s blueprint along with the corrupted name, “Crystal ■■■■■.”

  “The data’s corrupt?” Blue Screen muttered. “Now that’s something not even Gremlin can... Wait, there’s something more.”

  There was more data. The folder had another, completely undamaged machine blueprint.

  It displayed what clearly looked like a mechanical horse and had the name “Mass-Production Prism Steed, Second Model.”

  It was a gift from the past.

  The ruins containing a warped hope were now showing a light of hope untainted.

  ◇◇◇

  April 6th, 2045, Prism Rider, Ray Starling

  Thursday.

  My few, yet long, days in Quartierlatin had come to an end, and it was time for us to leave.

  Azurite was going back to the capital, and we were accompanying her.

  We were planning to go all the way to Altea today, then make our way back to Gideon.

  It was basically my Dendro hometown, and it felt like I hadn’t been there in ages.

  The entrance to Quartierlatin was growing ever more distant, and I saw all the people seeing us off.

  Azurite was here unofficially, so the only ones there were the people we’d met here.

  There was Shirley and all the other people from the inn we stayed in, Countess Quartierlatin, and Veldorbell.

  Tom had already returned to Gideon. Veldorbell had stayed behind, but I hadn’t gotten to see him much, due to differences in online times.

  Still, every now and then, I could hear Veldorbell’s music echoing through the town.

  He claimed he would stay here a bit longer, saying that, “I have something I wish to do, but the people of this town need the consolation my music provides.”

  I’d also met the two Rising Sun guys here, but they hadn’t been able to see us off because of all the work they had going on in the ruins.

  Apparently, they’d found a way to mass-produce Prism Steed replicas and were now extremely busy producing and deploying units to the knights.

  For a moment, I worried that I’d accidentally pushed too much work on them, but B3 said, “They’re getting something from this, so don’t worry about it too much.”

  Anyway, with that warm goodbye, we left the town, but the inside of our carriage, drawn by Silver, was so cold that I could feel it here on the coachman’s seat.

  We were in B3’s extremely luxurious, comfy carriage, and that seemed to have upset Azurite a bit.

  It seemed to bother her that B3 was riding something this fancy after doing significant damage to the kingdom, and B3 seemed to be worried that Azurite would take it away as compensation.

  “And I was pretty sure they’d hit it off,” I sighed.

  “Their personalities may be a match, but human relations aren’t so simple,” Nemesis commented.

  “That’s true...”

  That also meant that there wasn’t any fundamental incompatibilities between them, so I could still hope that they’d eventually get along.

  “Phew...”

  Anyway, if you ignored the confrontation at the end, my time here after the incident at the ruins had been very peaceful.

  I’d felt the same after Franklin’s Game. The contrast between the chaos during major incidents and the peace after them was really staggering.

  I really hope we don’t get anything that could cost irreversible losses anytime soon, I thought.

  “I’m not certain if you can hope for that,” said Nemesis. “The problems between Altar and Dryfe are still unsolved, and let’s not forget that this is Infinite Dendrogram. Even if nothing happens here, there could be major incidents happening in a distant land right this very moment. This world is vast, after all.”

  “True...”

  In that way, it was just like in real life. Something was always happening in a place you couldn’t see or reach.

  “And that is why you cannot stop yourself from reaching out and preventing any tragedies you encounter, no?” Nemesis said.

  “Maybe,” I admitted.

  I just disliked things that could leave a bad taste in my mouth, but it felt like I’d been constantly running into such events ever since I’d started Dendro.

  Perhaps that was what made these peaceful, uneventful days so dear and precious, like the clear sky after a violent storm.

  Even if another storm was inevitable, the fact that none of them continued forever was what allowed human hearts and minds to carry on without breaking.

  “After the storm, and before the storm” seemed like the best way to describe these past few days.

  To be Continued in the Next Episode

  Afterword

  Cat: “And here we are! The tenth volume! Double digits! I’m the usual afterword cat, Cheshiiire!”

  Six: “I invaded the afterword last time, but now I’m here from the start. I’m Six, Sechs Würfel.”

  Cat: “Oh... the number?”

  Six: “I considered using �
�Evil,’ since I’m a bad slime, but I ultimately decided to go with this.”

  Cat: “If it hadn’t been for Xunyu and her ‘Xun,’ we’d all have a nice animal theme going on here, and now we have another mold-breakeerrr.”

  Six: “I would’ve used ‘Slime,’ but I feel like that takes too much space. Shu’s ‘Bear’ is already pushing it.”

  Cat: “What would you pick if you could use an abbreviation?”

  Six: “BoM. (Blob of Malice.)”

  Cat: “Wow... That sounds like the nickname of a portly Mafia boss who kills anyone who says it. It suits you well, King of Criiime.”

  Six: “Anyway, I’ve introduced myself, so let’s move on to the comment from the author himself.”

  Dear readers, thank you for your purchase. I am the author, Kaido Sakon.

  After announcing the anime recently, I’ve received lots of words of encouragement from people hopeful for the production. Director Tomoki Kobayashi and everyone else on the team are working very diligently, and I believe the end result will answer your expectations.

  Also, I can’t reveal who they are yet, but the people working on the music are brilliant, as well! I am certain they will be revealed by the time volume 11 is released, so please wait for that, too.

  Speaking of releases, the spin-off manga where Juliet is the main character should have begun serialization in Monthly Comic Alive. Please enjoy Juliet and company’s adventures drawn in La-na’s beautiful, cute, and cool art style!

  I am the one writing it, by the way, and as I mention in the cover comment, this has increased my workload yet again. It’s a happy kind of hardship, but I won’t deny that it can be painful sometimes... I’ll persevere, though.

  My series is making new leaps and bounds this year, but don’t forget that Kami Imai’s manga adaptation of the original story is still going strong! The climax to the second volume is very fiery!

  Now, let’s talk about the upcoming volume 11.

  It’s planned to be the last volume to release before the anime starts airing, and the timing makes me feel like the hand of fate is at work here.

  Ray and company will soon start their adventure once again in the anime, and the volume coming out right before the airing begins happens to be a prequel about an event that happened sometime before Ray first set foot in Altar — an attack on the country by an unfathomably dangerous creature.