by Mamare Touno
Ultimately, they had no choice but to spend it here, quarreling and making up again. As far as Calasin was concerned, being able to talk things over was the absolute minimum. The mere thought of all-out war with an unkillable opponent made his skin crawl.
“That’s right. Long story short, we’re alive, so even if we’re beaten hollow, there’s nothing for it but to search for the next thing and look for a bright spot or two as we go. If we win big, in the future, that big win might make people arrogant and lead to another war. That’s what business is: No matter how things go, it doesn’t end that easily.”
“You’re a tough one.”
“Well, in private-sector businesses, common sense is all about customers and safety management, and the budget doesn’t smile on departments that don’t generate profit. Unfortunately, though, we’re not salaried workers. And so, Duke Sergiad: Would you sell the Round Table your inventory?”
Sergiad’s eyebrows shot up, and he murmured, “What is it you need?”
Calasin responded with the straightest face he could manage. “To begin with, the slacker princess, perhaps.”
With the pillar of rainbow light that climbed to the moon behind them, the two figures stood frozen like statues, and for a long time, neither of them moved.
5
Taliktan, the Genius of Summoning, had broken a huge hole in the wall and leapt through. Golden hair swinging, Riezé intercepted him: Frost Spear, a spear of ice that gushed cold air.
Of the three elements that Sorcerers controlled, cold air was less popular than the others. This was because the attack classes were meant to kill enemies, and the direct damage dealt by ice spells was relatively low. For instance, the electric spell Lightning Chamber and the fire spell Burned Stake did far more damage, but Riezé still placed her focus on ice spells. In her opinion, the balance between firepower and MP consumption was good, as were the length of the cast times and the force per strike.
In general, long cast times were considered a drawback, but if you were able to predict the enemy’s movements, they turned into an advantage. That was true this time, too. A spell that used up the time the enemy spent moving on a long chant held destructive power commensurate to its cast time. When the white-haired Genius appeared in the hall, she sent it right at his nose. Another advantage was that, of the spells Sorcerers used, this one was excellent at hampering the enemy’s movements.
As Taliktan tottered, Koen and Yuzuko launched full-power attacks.
“Still…,” Riezé murmured.
That had been very rough.
When she’d heard about the maneuver, she’d doubted Shiroe’s sanity, and even now, she thought it was preposterous. She didn’t know the actual number of stories, but that broadcasting tower couldn’t have been less than thirty meters off the ground. Shiroe’s plan had involved not only leaping from the open rooftop, but linking that act to kiting.
The outcome had been successful, but it still struck Riezé as far too absurd. Although, truthfully, it was possible she was merely bound by fixed ideas. The maneuver actually had succeeded, and they’d managed to drag Taliktan into the melee in this music hall.
“This isn’t like Master Shiroe…I don’t think…”
“Nah, that’s not true.”
Nazuna leapt lightly backward in a move as if she had eyes in her back, coming to stand beside Riezé, and answered her.
“Shiro did the same thing, this counselor stuff, on the Tea Party. I dunno what the world thought about us, but we were a rough, random bunch. Today, he’s just like he was back then, that’s all. This is normal.”
Nazuna, who’d leveled her katana alertly and was glaring at the enemy, smiled faintly as she boasted.
She was probably telling the truth.
Riezé had misread Shiroe. He was the driving force behind the Round Table Council. Someone who had contributed to the alliance with Eastal, the League of Free Cities. A hardworking man of the world who undertook the task of arranging things among the guilds and organizing information. An able official, a competent administrator, a worker with political abilities, a strategist—those were the concepts through which she’d seen him. Yet, they were only a part of him.
Her staff moved automatically, rapidly spinning one spell after another.
A Sorcerer’s role was to concentrate firepower. Each spell had a cast time, a bind time, and a recast time. This meant it wasn’t possible to use the same spell several times in a row, so they ended up using the recast time as the chant time for another spell. Sorcerers fought by combining anywhere from five to ten types of spells to create a cycle, and then repeating that cycle.
It was easy to say, but it was actually pretty difficult. Even if a spell was standardized, its performance differed slightly from Sorcerer to Sorcerer. Furthermore, the special skills, style, and equipment a player had changed recast times, so the spells that could be linked together in a play cycle changed as well.
For instance, there were some enemy monsters that had resistance to fire damage. When dealing with those monsters, the flame spells in a cycle got in the way, but naturally, when taking those spells out, the whole cycle broke down. In other words, did the Sorcerer have several types of cycles custom-made? Could they maintain the spells at the unconscious level and choose them to suit the circumstances? These were the abilities that were required from Sorcerers on raids.
As a member of D.D.D., Riezé had sufficiently mastered eight cycles. Four of those were the type that could be connected to different cycles by adding internal branch points, to cope with abrupt accidents. There weren’t many Sorcerers that well trained. Among Elder Tales magic classes, it was one of the pinnacles of sophistication.
However, even to Riezé, Shiroe’s spell cycles seemed unique.
For most spells, chant times were between two and ten seconds. That meant it took anywhere from a minute and a half to two minutes for one cycle to complete. With a simple observation, anyone could tell which spells were being used and how they were linked together. Nonetheless, she wasn’t able to read the scale of Shiroe’s cycles.
Even so, he wasn’t simply chanting spells as he thought of them. That would have resulted in weak connections and lost time, which would have reduced the final damage output.
No such loss was visible in Shiroe’s spell chants. She could see the traces of some sort of diligent study. Yet even still, she didn’t understand how the cycles were structured. Had he learned such an abundance of cycles that it wasn’t possible to read them entirely in a day or so of fighting together, or was this some other, different technique?
His MP isn’t going down. It’s falling, but the recovery is balancing it. He’s maintaining the combat skills, even as he circulates the ranks and controls them. That’s what the frequent instructions to break through the front line are for.
Shiroe was giving shape to an idea that would have been laughed down as a joke, even if someone had managed to come up with it. There were errors, of course. They were there, but the sort of precautionary measures that would cover for them had already been taken.
He hadn’t instructed Nazuna to fall back a moment ago just to keep her MP in reserve. It had been in order to recover the recast time from the big technique Great Purification Prayer—
Actually, no, that wasn’t it: It was intended to block Taliktan’s gaze and line of fire, which he’d turned on Isuzu and Rundelhaus. Or rather, Shiroe had made it look that way, when it was really so that she could act as an observer and give Soujirou advice from the rear, as someone who was very skilled at executing team plays with him.
The true intent behind Shiroe’s instructions stayed vague while only the group’s effects accumulated, light racing along countless paths toward victory. Riezé was also a raid commander, and she had a Tactician subclass. It was her job to see an encounter with the enemy as a story and read it carefully. However, even for Riezé, the story Shiroe was reading now was too wild, and her comprehension couldn’t keep up.
Shi
roe probably hadn’t chosen a protagonist for his story.
Anyone could corner Taliktan, using any method.
That was no doubt what he was thinking.
Under Shiroe’s command, there was no clear casting even for the attackers and the supporters. Even Kushiyatama—the close-combat Kannagi and “rampaging miko”—was brandishing her blade as if it felt good.
“Count ten seconds. Requesting Barriers on Naotsugu, Nyanta, Koen, Akatsuki, and Soujirou!”
“Aye-aye, sir!”
Nazuna responded to Shiroe’s directions in a teasing voice, then chanted Purification Barrier. In an instant, translucent walls that shone madder red appeared and were applied to her allies. It was a preemptive defense spell, cast when an attack was anticipated. At that command, Riezé instinctively knew that a large attack from Taliktan was on its way.
“Hurry… Four, three, two… Now!”
As Riezé glared at him, Taliktan raised his twisted staff high, unleashing purple lightning. The bolts burst at close range, and Riezé averted her face from the light, but her Mystery, Chiron Tablet, kept tracking the battle log.
The barriers had definitely obstructed the lightning attack, but even then, Naotsugu and its other targets had taken enough damage to lose more than half their HP. It had been Taliktan’s most powerful attack. If the barriers hadn’t made it in time, and if they hadn’t defended with pinpoint accuracy, there was no question that the front line would have collapsed.
As she registered that fact, Riezé turned pale, but through her fear, she searched desperately for an answer. Taliktan’s lightning had avoided Riezé and headed for Nyanta. Riezé had been right in its path. She hadn’t had a barrier, and if it had gone straight ahead, it would have turned her to charcoal. Why had it avoided her? Why had Nyanta been targeted? More than anything, why had it been predicted so perfectly…?
“Why, huh? How did Shiro know who was gonna get hit?”
As she asked that question, Marielle was turning white. The answer was…
“An upper-rank aggro list–penetrating attack.”
Shiroe and Riezé’s voices overlapped.
An “aggro list” was a theoretical index of the aggro Taliktan felt. Assuming the threats the monster sensed were converted into numerical values, this attack targeted the top five names on that list.
It wasn’t as if that realization had been a very big one.
In addition, except for this being very nearly the first time they’d seen it, it was a deduction that was only natural for a raid commander, nothing to be proud of. But that wasn’t the problem. The issue was that Shiroe had read off the top names on that aggro list by himself, as if it were only natural.
Aggro wasn’t a numerical status. Those who had inflicted great damage, those with powerful recovery spells, those who were nearby. It was something inside monsters that took all sorts of conditions into account and changed kaleidoscopically. As the main tank, Naotsugu boosted this aggro to its maximum in order to pull monsters to him, so now, when Taliktan was fighting him head-on, it was clear he was at the top of the aggro list. However, second place and below had to be deduced from the progression of the battle up to this point.
Not only that, but in the world after the Catastrophe, it wasn’t possible to check the battle log in a window. She didn’t think Shiroe had acquired the Chiron Tablet Mystery, so how had he known? The answer sent a strange chill through Riezé’s spine, along with a sort of spooked awe.
With Chiron Tablet, it was possible to visually confirm the battle log. Everything that happened in combat—including damage inflicted, damage received, its attribute and range, frequency, recovery, and even applied effects—was converted into readable text. That was the Mystery Riezé had.
However, through observation and insight, Shiroe had simply surpassed her Mystery.
Riezé had just experienced Shiroe’s Full Control Encounter.
“What’s the matter?!”
At the sight of Kushiyatama, who’d rapped out the question and was racing toward the front line, her heart trembled.
Akatsuki leapt as if there was a translucent staircase in midair. Her valiant figure was splendid.
Nazuna seemed to be unleashing relentless attacks, and she was perfectly positioned to shield the rearguard from the line of fire. Riezé was able to understand her consideration.
“This is fun, isn’t it, Miss Kushi?”
“Exactly!”
Riezé broke into a run as well. The gloom in her heart had cleared completely.
She’d thought that what Krusty’s command had and hers lacked was charisma, but she’d been shown that that wasn’t all. What Calasin had said had been true: Shiroe was the same type as Riezé. The true meaning of those words had been nothing less than that Riezé still had a long way to go. Thinking that being the same type of person meant she could do similar things was conceited and an insult to Shiroe. It was because she was similar that she understood this.
True, like Riezé, Shiroe was a rearguard-type commander. That meant he didn’t have the sort of charisma Krusty did. Still, even so, he was far ahead of Riezé.
Precisely because they fought with calculations and insight and preliminary investigations, the difference in experience and the number of battles fought was brutally clear.
“U-fu-fu-fu-fu. Ha-ha-ha-ha!”
Riezé struck down rubble that had come flying toward her with Pride of Queen, then kicked the ground with her long legs.
Fun. Shiroe’s command was fun.
There were still many things she couldn’t see.
There was a lot of territory her hands couldn’t yet reach.
Instead of humiliation and inferiority, this made Riezé feel ambitious and as if she were soaring.
“I’m afraid I was conceited. This is the legend of the Tea Party. People flattered me, as the captain of the training unit, as a member of Drei Klauen, and I grew arrogant, thinking that I had to protect things in Milord’s absence, but I’m still very green. Even as a raid member— Miss Kushi, I have a request.”
“Accepted!”
“No questions asked?!”
She spoke to Kushiyatama, who was paying out a storm of countless slashing attacks right next to her, and received an instant response. It was magnificent. Worries and hesitation and those gloomy days were all disappearing, like shadows dissolving in the sunlight.
“—Because you’ve started being open with people, Ri-Ri.”
Riezé smiled at her mischievous old D.D.D. guide.
The requests she’d never been able to make properly were possible for her now.
If she couldn’t do something on her own, she’d just have to ask other people. Now that Krusty was gone, D.D.D. needed all the reliable people it could get. There was no doubt that Kushiyatama had understood the request Riezé hadn’t put into words. That was why she’d come along on a raid like this one with her.
“Listen to you. I’m all fired up now. I’m blazing! —Configure Lamination Syntax! Set target— Pierce it! Frost Spear!!”
The spear of ice split, warping the space in the multilayered magic circle.
Pouring all the mana she had into it, Riezé unleashed an attack spell.
6
“Defense of Doctrine Barrier!!”
Minori fired an emergency Kannagi defense spell. The barrier’s level was in the fifties, and to Shiroe and the other players whose levels were over 90, it seemed fragile. However, Shiroe had been just about to order her to do that, and she’d stolen a march on him.
He smiled a little.
Minori’s response had been unexpected… In a good way, naturally. As a result, the attack team had gained a very slight advantage, a few seconds’ worth. The current members weren’t the type to let that chance slip by them.
Their skills had already been sufficiently polished by the combat up to this point.
In the first place, all the members except for the younger group from Log Horizon already had raid experience. But ev
en that younger group was watching how D.D.D.—who had the basics down solidly—was doing things and absorbing their methods wholesale.
Their advanced capacity for teamwork was the result of high morale and the ability to focus.
They’d meshed tightly with the personality of their enemy Taliktan as well. Taliktan, who was waving his arms around, was no more than a typical close-combat boss now. The short-range attacks he unleashed with his staff and arms were powerful; he also had that aggro list–based lightning attack that wiped out a whole range and thunder that inflicted negative statuses across a wide area— But in a manner of speaking, that was it. He was the perfect opponent for a raid drill.
When Taliktan turned back with a great flourish of his hand, several magic circles appeared, and goblins and giants manifested. Tension raced over the field, but Shiroe canceled it out.
“That summoning didn’t use the iron tower, only his innate abilities. There aren’t many of them, and there’s a limit. Stay calm and deal with them.”
He wasn’t actually certain about that.
Still, it was important to be decisive here. As if playing off his words, Naotsugu yelled, “What, anything goes?!” in a joking voice and charged. Akatsuki followed him, hiding in his shadow; she flickered as she went, then vanished from sight.
A tremendous number of attacks were striking Taliktan. Dread Weapon clung to Hien’s Assassinate. The teamwork between the Magic Attack and the Weapon Attack classes was growing more accurate as well. The powerful attack pierced a group of goblins, who sacrificed themselves to protect their master, and bore down on Taliktan.
Lightning that streaked toward Kushiyatama was repelled by Tetora’s Reactive Heal.
Their opponent’s defense had been pried open, and grabbing their chance, Nyanta and Koen rushed in. Soujirou’s Echo Rebound kept Taliktan from striking back.
Isuzu’s spell-song reinforced Rundelhaus’s flame spell, and in exactly the same way, Henrietta chanted Maestro Echo, turning Riezé’s ice spell into a round. The two powerful Magic Attack teams were protected by Yuzuko’s golem and Isami’s katana, which had Kurinon’s support.
