1

“Oh… Huh?”

Isuzu heard a sound like a wordless sigh. It seemed to come from the man beside her.

Which made sense, because she hadn’t really understood the meaning of what Rundelhaus had said.

“That is all we have. All our music. We love our familiar old melodies, of course, but no other music exists. It’s been that way ever since I was born. I think it’s probably been like that for a very long time. I thought it was only natural, and I never questioned it.”

“Rudy.”

“When you Adventurers appeared, all sorts of things happened. Many of them were frightening and sad, but at the same time, lots of wonderful things happened as well. Food proved to have flavor, articles we’d never seen nor heard of filled the markets, and the sort of music that throbs in our chests and makes us want to shout came into being.”

“But that’s—”

“And you—both the Adventurers and you, Isuzu—went around giving it to us as if it wasn’t important at all. You played songs without discriminating between Adventurers and People of the Earth. Do you remember Bloom Hall? The serving girls who work there are all enthusiastic, but have you noticed that they change regularly? Among People of the Earth, serving in that hall is very popular work. That’s why they change at set intervals. Did you know there are several young elves who visit that hall regularly, drinking money in hand? They’re traveling bards. They learn new songs at Bloom Hall, work frantically to memorize them, and then spread them all across Yamato.”

Isuzu realized that she looked so flustered that even she could tell.

She desperately clenched her hands into fists on her knees, and they sat trembling. But even when her nails dug into them, the pain felt distant and unreal.

Yet the words Rundelhaus spoke drew her ears and eyes to him, forcing her to understand.

“Do you remember the inns and taverns we’ve visited since we began our journey? One modest song from you, and they were so happy they cried. Remember? They really were happy. We’d never heard such cheerful, noisy songs before. The kind of songs that raise our spirits and make us want to start dancing or break into a run. Or the kind that make us want to be with someone special, and to express our gratitude to those close to us. We’d never heard anything like them. You brought them to us, Mademoiselle Isuzu, and it made you a hero. ‘Thank you’ is an inconvenient phrase. It’s too simple, and no matter how grateful we are, we can’t find any better words. Even so, everyone was truly happy.”

“Ah, oh… Rudyyy.”

Fat tears were rolling down her face.

All sorts of emotions were swirling inside of her, but she couldn’t put them into words.

Of course it made her happy to be wanted. When people complimented her, she could tell there was a risk she’d get a swelled head over it. Still, when she looked at the big picture, that feeling was trivial—barely there at all.

The feeling of wanting to tell them they were wrong was much greater.

She felt guilty that they’d been so moved by an amateur performance like hers, that she of all people had made them feel that way. Isuzu hadn’t been the least bit serious about it, not in that sense. Of course she loved music. She’d nearly sung herself hoarse, had strummed her lute vigorously enough to break her arms. Still, she really couldn’t imagine that was enough to justify the gratitude the People of the Earth felt.

What an awful thing, she thought.

Having only forty-two songs ever since you were born? It was unthinkable.

A world like that was impossible.

In that case, what were they supposed to do on lonely nights? What about when they were congratulating their friends? Or when they were so happy they could shout, or when they felt crushingly inferior?

Without songs, how could they live?

Isuzu had simply had fun as she’d played gig after gig. That was all. She hadn’t had even a speck of the nerve or the resolve it would take to be that sort of person, to play music someone had never heard, to change other people’s lives, to change everything like that.

“I mean, I…”

She couldn’t find the words.

Everything seemed to have swelled and solidified inside her chest, and she didn’t know what to say. She’d spoken only because her tears had pushed her to. Rundelhaus simply met her gaze, quietly.

“I’m…a fake, and…”

She hadn’t meant to do it.

Up until now, she’d never even thought about what the People of the Earth were feeling.

Isuzu groaned miserably, wordlessly. Her fists were trembling disgracefully. “What I do isn’t like that. Those are songs from my world, and I’m…”

“But it is true that we were happy.”

She’d never meant to do anything like that.

She hadn’t meant to give them something so outrageous, so enormous.

She’d only sung songs she missed, familiar tunes from her father’s collection.

What Rudy was grateful for was her father’s property, not Isuzu’s.

In other words, Isuzu was just an amateur, and a cover act at that.

The shame and guilt wouldn’t let her stop crying. On the contrary, she sobbed harder. Isuzu realized she’d been deceiving crowds of people. They weren’t even her songs, but she’d gotten puffed up and sung them, had let herself be flattered and carried away, and this had been the result.

She’d never even imagined it, but it was only natural. Isuzu had stolen the achievements of the bands and singers she’d loved so much and had acted as if they were hers. To people who were hearing them for the first time, they had sounded like Isuzu’s songs, and on top of that, they’d even been grateful to her.

This world was far more of a blank than Isuzu had ever dreamed.

A world that, up until now, had had only forty-two songs.

Her heart felt as if it were being crushed, and her lips quivered.

That meant she was a horrible thief.

Isuzu had taken this pure, white world, where music was limited, and soiled it with her vanity.

“I mean, I’m a-an amateur, a cover act— So you’ve got it wrong, and…”

She was sniffling so hard that her nose hurt. It made her feel even more wretched, and more tears came.

The mucous membranes in her nose hadn’t been very strong to begin with, and they made audible snuffling noises.

She wanted to apologize. She desperately wanted to say she was sorry.

She just had no idea how to do it.

She had done something irreversible.

“Mademoiselle Isuzu.”

“I-I didn’t mean to, I wasn’t trying to trick…”

“Isuzu.”

He’d spoken firmly, and although Isuzu’s eyes had been on her hands, she looked up, startled.

Rundelhaus was there, right in front of her.

In the light that filtered through the window, the night wind ruffled his soft golden hair.

He was gazing at Isuzu, his usual clownish expression nowhere to be seen. His pensive eyes stared straight at her; the will and solicitude they held pinned Isuzu in place, and time froze.

Right now, Rundelhaus seemed more gallant than she’d ever seen him.

Abruptly, Isuzu realized something.

Rundelhaus was older than she was.

“Sometimes the People of the Earth assemble at the guild center in Akiba.”

“Waeh?”

The only response she could manage was a miserable one, choked with tears and snot.

“More and more People of the Earth are gathering in Akiba. It’s affluent, it’s safe, and it offers all sorts of excitement, so it’s a place they dream of going. It isn’t just the bards I mentioned; blacksmiths, tailors, chefs, and even simple servants and maids come to Akiba. By spending several months there, they can learn techniques they couldn’t learn in other towns even if they spent their whole lives trying. They can become all sorts of things.”

“L-like you, Rudy?”

“Hm. Yes. That’s right. I became an Adventurer. They have things they want to become, too.”

Isuzu’s question had been hoarse with tears, and Rundelhaus went on in a gentle voice, “However, living in Akiba is difficult for People of the Earth. The Adventurers are kind, and you aren’t unjust. You seem to be fair, and I think you are good neighbors, but that doesn’t mean there are no differences. There are all sorts of them, and worries and trouble besides. We gather in order to discuss those things.”

“I…see,” She scrubbed at the tears that were still falling.

When he put it that way, lots of things made sense. Once or twice a week, Rundelhaus went out in the evening. He didn’t seem to be adventuring or going shopping, so she hadn’t known where he went, but apparently he’d been going out to talk with the People of the Earth.

“It’s a formal group; advisers are sent from Water Maple Manor. That said, all we do is split into teams of about ten individuals and discuss our concerns over dinner. Since I live at the Log Horizon guild house as an Adventurer, I often advise others… At any rate, that is what the gatherings are like. What do you think we talk about most often, after our concerns?”

Isuzu shook her head, like a child.

Rundelhaus seemed to have gone far away. It made her lonely, and she felt as if she were a fool who understood nothing.

“We tell one another, ‘Such-and-such is amazing, really excellent!’”

He spoke firmly, smiling as if something made him proud.

Isuzu couldn’t follow the conversation, and Rundelhaus continued, explanatory. “Do you know the skill that involves folding iron and striking it? How about the method of sifting flour so that the grains are uniform? Did you know that if you put strong Black Rose Tea in a mister and spray it on your tomatoes, you’ll drive the bugs away? Have you seen the fishing gear that allows you to catch fish without using bait, or the sturdy futons that are resistant to dirt? There are so many, many new things. It’s a wonderful town. All that abundance, and the Adventurers don’t hide it. Of course the People of the Earth have a difficult time there, but they’re lucky, too. Every day, something happens. The things we couldn’t do yesterday might be possible today. Tomorrow will be different from today. In Akiba, those words mean exactly what they say. —And your songs are part of that brilliance, Isuzu.”

Isuzu couldn’t say anything.

She just kept her eyes fixed on the smiling Rundelhaus, and tears continued to roll down her cheeks. His words had cut her deeply.

His encouraging look had shaken something in her, something she hadn’t even noticed. The enigmatic, powerful, hot feeling that had been born inside her brought her very near to panicking.

Isuzu had thought that Rundelhaus was a great friend.

This was because he had clearly said that he wanted to become an Adventurer. When she’d learned that this friend—someone only a little older than she was, someone on the verge of changing from a boy into a young man—had decided what his future would be, Isuzu had felt a touch of respect for him. It had nothing to do with the results. She’d admired the strength it had taken to make that declaration. He had a firm sense of self, something she, a country high school girl, didn’t have at all.

Even as she blustered about puppy dogs and walks, on that point alone, inwardly, Isuzu thought she couldn’t measure up to Rundelhaus. Even if he was an easygoing, thoughtless, corny friend, she knew his true self was noble and proud.

But it hadn’t just been Rundelhaus.

It was likely that all the People of the Earth who gathered in Akiba were like that.

They all had something they wanted to become, and they spent every day working to get there. Apprentice blacksmiths, apprentice tailors, regular tradesmen and street vendors, probably even the salesclerks at restaurants—each of them had an image of the self that they wanted to be someday.

To the People of the Earth, the town of Akiba was something completely different from what it was to Isuzu. It was a shining place that could make actual dreams come true. Or, no, it was possible that this entire world required dreams and determination from the People of the Earth who lived in it.

They were said to be far weaker than the Adventurers, but their words and their spirit completely floored her. It made her terribly embarrassed that she—an irresponsible high school kid with no particular dreams for the future—had sung songs for people like that.

Isuzu had sung about dreams and hope and love. She’d sung about sunny tomorrows, and the counterculture, and highways, and even Snoopy. She’d sung without really thinking about it. She realized that she hadn’t given any serious thought to the meaning of the lyrics she was preaching.

That was so embarrassing, and so pitiful, that it made her want to run away.

The idea that she hadn’t given much thought to the songs she’d sung and their meaning came as a shock. She had said she loved music, but she hadn’t thought about what that meant.—even though the People of the Earth had seen their dreams in her.

Isuzu felt a fierce sense of inferiority and guilt.

She’d never felt this wretched before, not once in her entire life.

Heavy tears welled up endlessly in her eyes, as if she were a child.

The most miserable thing of all was that even then, Isuzu liked music. Even though she’d made such a horrible mistake—even so, songs echoed inside of her.

“Rudy.”

“What is it, Mademoiselle Isuzu?”

“I want to be alone.”

“……”

The words just weren’t there.

Isuzu gazed at Rundelhaus with red eyes.

She knew that unless she said something, Rundelhaus would stay with her the whole time. He’d probably give her words of sympathy and encouragement, too… But that would be too dishonest. Isuzu needed time alone, and she needed it this very night.

The feelings of inferiority and guilt, the shame and the pain, were all hers. She had stolen songs, so these were natural penalties, and while she faced that pain, she wanted to be alone.

After all, even without that, Rundelhaus had given her many, many things.

“Go back t-to the room. I…have to do this myself.”

“……”

Rundelhaus watched Isuzu, concerned.

She knew he felt that way, but she stubbornly refused to meet his gaze.

“All right, Mademoiselle Isuzu.”

“Mm.”

Rundelhaus stood there for a moment. He seemed as if he was about to say something, but after a little hesitation, he left.

There, frozen in the night, Isuzu made up her mind. She would fight.

She had prepared to face herself, and for Isuzu, it was the first real battle of her life.

2

In the morning mist, Touya quietly slipped out of the inn, checked his surroundings, and drew a deep breath.

The town was still cold, but the pale light of early spring shone down upon it.

From far away, he heard a series of tiny shouts. People were fishing from boats in the river. When he looked around, he saw a group of People of the Earth walking toward the hills, probably for farmwork. It had been that way in Choushi, too: As a rule, the People of the Earth were very early risers.

That said, the town wasn’t filled with noisy energy, either.

Even if it didn’t feel that way to Touya and the other Adventurers, for the People of the Earth, mornings in March were still pretty frigid. They’d used up all their fuel over the winter, so in this season, the People of the Earth tried to maintain constant temperatures in their houses by keeping everything shut up tight. The people out on the streets were trotting instead of walking. Of course, this was because it was early morning; once things warmed up a bit, people would probably be drawn out by the sunlight, flooding the avenue. After all, Saphir was one of the biggest towns in this area.

Without settling on any particular destination, Touya began to wander around, arms crossed behind his head.

Rundelhaus, who seemed to have been up until late the night before, had been asleep, and he hadn’t heard a sound from the girls’ room. Touya could have just gone back to sleep, but he hadn’t felt like it, so he’d stolen out of the inn quietly, being careful not to wake the rest.

Even in Akiba, Touya preferred to spend his time outside, rather than cooped up indoors. On Earth, there would have been a wealth of indoor entertainment, such as WebTV, handheld games, manga, and tablets, but Theldesia was different. In a revolt against his past, when the simple desire to go outside had been selfish, his tendency to want to spend time outdoors had grown even greater.

Touya sauntered down the wide avenue.

This avenue was the highway they’d followed to get here. Near the town, there was still ancient asphalt on the ground, so it was solid and tough. It was also wide enough that two carts could pass each other.

In the old world, this place would have been a built-up urban area, too. Touya remembered Shiroe saying that it was a large city on Suruga Bay. Here in Theldesia, it was one of the larger People of the Earth towns. At this hour, there weren’t any shops open, which meant he couldn’t kill time by looking around in them, but since Touya wanted to walk all alone, it was actually better that way.

On the outskirts of the town, he greeted some People of the Earth and helped them carry a little cargo.

He also drew his sword, took a few practice swings, and tried out some stances.

Time passed slowly in this town, and Touya liked that. Isuzu and the others had spent all their strength on the show, and Minori wanted to gather information. Taking their wishes into account, they were planning to spend at least one more night here.

Touya had plenty of time, and he used it to enjoy his first solo excursion in a long while.

He liked having fun and getting noisy with his friends, too, but walking alone like this, as if testing his legs, gave Touya a sense of satisfaction. It didn’t feel bad at all.

Once it was past noon, people grew more active, and children and housewives hanging out laundry appeared on the short main street. A Person of the Earth who was grilling fish by the roadside gave Touya some, and as he ate, he watched the town at his leisure.

This wide avenue was made of red clay, and he knew it continued farther west.

When he’d walked ten minutes west of the town, the streets petered out and the fields grew more numerous. Before long, he came out on a big river.

“Come to think of it, Choushi was on a river, too,” he said to himself, absently.

When he wondered why that was, he realized that water would be more plentiful near a river, and that would make it a more convenient place to live and plant fields. He’d also learned the term “alluvial plain” in school. As the river flowed, it created the plain. Hey! In other words, this Saphir town is on an alluvial plain, he thought, and felt like smacking his hands together in recognition.

One thing he’d learned over several stints of camping was that slopes were startlingly inconvenient. Both camping on them and cooking on them took a whole lot of work. Creating fields would probably be brutal. After all, there was this thing called “gravity,” and as long as everything was acting normally, water wouldn’t flow uphill. If there was a flat area near a river, it was only logical for people to gather there and build a town.

When Touya had thought that far, he muttered to himself: “School actually comes in handy, huh?” He hadn’t thought there was any point to social studies, but apparently he’d been wrong.

When he reached the water’s edge, he turned right. That was upstream.

He had no particular reason. He’d remembered the back of a woman with hair the color of dry grass plumes, and his thoughts had wandered aimlessly.

The surface of the river was calm. This was probably because the ocean was near, and also because the river was fairly wide. Several small boats floated on it, and fishermen were untangling whitish clumps on their decks. Apparently those were nets. If he strained his eyes, he could see fish jumping, wet and inky black.

Touya walked along a path that ran by the river. There were pine woods, and he crossed a plank-floored bridge over a thin stream that looked like an irrigation canal.

Upriver and to the right, he could see Mount Fuji. “Sacred Mount Fuji,” in this world.

Over half of it was wrapped in a cloak of pure white, and it certainly did look majestic. Since there were no other mountains around to interrupt the view, it was far too beautiful.

There was a boat shed at the far edge of his vision, with a pier that jutted out over the river. There was a woman out on that pier with her back turned to him, causing Touya to pause. He was starting to think he had a bone to pick with the gods. This had to be some sort of cosmic setup.

He hadn’t meant to avoid her or hide from her, but he hadn’t been able to call to her for quite a long time.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning, Touya.”

Dariella seemed to have noticed him when he approached the pier; she turned and smiled at him. Even as Touya greeted her, he felt ill at ease.

When he was with this woman, he often felt that way.

He stopped knowing what to talk about.

In the first place, up until now, beautiful women past twenty hadn’t been part of his life. When he thought back to last year, the only women around him had been Minori, their mom, and his homeroom teacher, who was about fifty. Naturally, he’d had some female classmates whose names and faces he remembered, but he didn’t know enough about them to say he’d known them.

Even in his current life, Minori was his little sister, and Serara and Isuzu were comrades, even if they were slightly older. Since they formed parties with members who were part of the same generation, that was only natural. He went to the West Wind Brigade to study sword fighting, and there were lots of women who made a pet of him there, but since they were just treating him like a kid, that was probably a bit different.

Tetora didn’t count, of course, and Akatsuki didn’t really seem like an older sister type… Not that he could tell either of them that.

If he’d had to say, Marielle and Henrietta might be close. They weren’t this type, either, but they were pretty women. Still, no one had ever made him feel as bewildered as Dariella did.

“Won’t you sit down?”

“Umm, okay.”

There were several wooden crates on the pier. They were old, but still sturdy.

The fishermen probably used them as chairs. They were perfect for casting fishing lines from, but they also had a beautiful view of the Favorwell River, hazy with morning mist.

Dariella was sitting in an elegant, flowing pose, her knees neatly together. Touya kicked his legs out in front of him and sat down, holding on to the edge of the crate.

There was a faint, sweet fragrance in the wind.

Touya couldn’t think of a single thing to talk about, and he sat there feeling uncomfortable. He thought it was odd that even though he’d known full well that he’d feel this way if he sat down beside her, not speaking to her hadn’t been an option. Maybe it was because they’d been traveling together, even if it had only been for a short time, and ignoring her seemed as if it wouldn’t be right. Still, Touya didn’t know whether that was really the only reason. Ignoring this woman was difficult for him, that was all.

“You’re up early, Touya. Were you out on a walk?”

“Yeah. I’m not always up early, though. It just sort of happened today.”

“I see. Mornings are cold at this time of year, but that makes beds all the more heavenly, doesn’t it?” Dariella smiled gently, then giggled at her own sentiments.

Her soft-looking hair was bound together and spilled across her shoulders, swaying over her cape.

“Did you go for a morning walk, Dar—um, Miss Dariella?”

“Yes. I’ve never been able to sleep soundly, so I often spend this time of day outdoors… Provided I’m somewhere that allows that sort of thing.”

Touya had averted his eyes, feeling uneasy, but Dariella didn’t seem to mind his attitude. She smiled happily and went on, calmly.

“I live an itinerant life, you see. My job sends me here and there; I see and learn all sorts of things, and then I write about them. When I’m traveling, this time of the morning is precious. After all, I can see and hear lots of things without anyone getting in my way.”

“Where do you usually live, Miss Dariella?”

Her velvety words made Touya a little uncomfortable, and he asked his question to block them out.

“I make my home near… I suppose it would be near Ikoma.”

“Ikoma?”

“It’s much farther west than we are now. In the terms you use, it would be beyond Kyoto.”

“Is that right…”

Geography he wasn’t used to surfaced vaguely in his mind.

All Touya knew about it was that he thought Kyoto might be above Osaka on the map, to the right.

The only thing he knew about where they were now was that it was roughly halfway between Tokyo and Osaka, on the Pacific Ocean side. “Beyond Kyoto” might be about midway between Kyoto and Osaka. As he thought about those general spatial relationships, Touya felt something unexpected.

In his old world, if you were going by bullet train, it took about three hours to get from Tokyo to Osaka. In this world, it probably took more than ten days. Even if the Half-Gaia Project had shrunk the distances, traveling through dangerous, undeveloped mountains and fields was a lot of hard work.

Even so, what Touya had felt was that it was also unexpectedly close.

On this journey, Osaka and Kyoto had seemed much closer than they had in his old world. Closer than in twenty-first-century Japan, with its bullet trains.

It was probably because Touya knew that they’d journeyed this far on foot, and if they went that far again, they’d be there. Right now, Touya knew how they’d manage to get there, and how hard it would be. He also had the confidence that he could make it happen.

When he’d gone to that distant city, three hours in a bullet train had seemed like forever, and when he’d arrived, it hadn’t felt real to him somehow. Now he could walk there on his own two feet.

“Still, I live alone in a little hut in the mountains. It isn’t the sort of place people visit, so when I want to breathe the atmosphere of a town, I go traveling.”

“Isn’t that kinda dangerous?”

“I’m used to it. Besides, since Plant Hwyaden began to provide security for the highway, it’s much safer.”

This was a term he heard often lately—the name of the enormous guild that governed western Japan. Touya had heard it was similar to the Round Table Council. It was an organization based in Osaka, and it supervised lots of Adventurers.

“That’s the guild in Minami, right?”

“Yes, that’s right. It’s a band of knights headquartered in Minami, and it protects the peace in Yamato.”

“They’re knights?”

“I’ve heard they are a new band of knights that have appeared to maintain order in Yamato, now that the Ancient Knights of Izumo are no longer here. People also say they’re a sign of the transition from the age of the Ancients to the age of the Adventurers. As a matter of fact, Plant Hwyaden has some very impressive achievements to its name.”

Was that how it looked to the People of the Earth? Thinking that made sense, Touya asked, “What sort of achievements?”

“First and foremost, they restored order. From Minami westward, damage inflicted by monsters has declined significantly. We think their new machines and river management may make farming easier as well.”

So they do the same sort of stuff the Roderick Trading Company and Shopping District 8 do, Touya thought.

“Employment has increased, too. In Minami and elsewhere, the People of the Earth say that there are many more jobs that pay well now, and they’re happy. There is a lot of work that involves looking after the needs of the Adventurers. Minami is a wealthy, lovely town.”

Touya had heard something of the sort.

She smiled softly. “It doesn’t interest you, Touya?”

“No, it does…sort of.”

He did think he’d like to see a town like that. There was more to the world than just Akiba; this journey had really brought that fact home to him. He’d also learned that traveling suited him even better than he’d expected. He’d thought it might be harder or more boring, but it was fun. If he was with his friends, he thought he’d like to go see it.

However, visiting that town was the subject of just his curiosity and idle interest.

He had no intention of heading there now, or of going there with this woman.

“In that case, Touya, if you get the opportunity, do come to visit me.”

Touya had turned away from her, and she stroked his head.

She ran her slim, white fingertips through his hair; it tickled, and Touya grimaced.

“If you come, I’ll be your guide. Let’s go places together.”

In response, Touya shrugged.

“You’ve been avoiding looking at me for a while now.”

“No, I haven’t.”

Dariella had sounded as if she was teasing him, and his reply was cross. The moment he said it, he started to feel as if he’d fallen for a trick. She’d seen through his childish rebellion. He knew this, and he felt himself getting very cranky.

“You don’t hate me, do you, Touya?”

“I hate when you’re like that.”

Words have tails on ’em, Touya thought.

The tails were linked to other words, so when you were talking about something, you had to make sure you knew where the other ends of the tails were. If you didn’t, you’d end up blabbing stuff you hadn’t meant to say. Touya had thought he’d learned that when he was in his wheelchair. All he could think was that, this time, the devil had made him do it.

Touya felt the tail on his words drag the next words out of him:

“Because you’re always smiling.”

Dariella’s expression clouded.

They’d met by chance, and they’d be parting before long. This wasn’t the sort of thing he should be saying to someone like that. Touya already regretted it.

“What of it?”

He hated the way Dariella smiled as if she was trying to gloss things over.

He couldn’t stand the way she smiled with those black eyes, like monsters’ eyes.

He hated the gentle attitude, and the way she’d touched his hair.

“Even if you’re not smiling, your face is weird.”

And so, when hurtful sorts of words came out of his mouth, even he was taken aback. He must have been far more irritated with this woman, this beauty with hair the color of dried grass, than he’d thought. He felt the sharp words trace the outlines of his own emotions.

Dariella’s expression grew fainter, as if it had cooled down, and her eyes were just as he’d thought they’d be. They looked as if she’d given up, as if nothing mattered to her anymore. Her lips were drawn into the shape of a crescent moon, but there probably wasn’t anyone who would have considered it a smile.

There it was: The expression Touya had seen in a mirror, long ago.

It was terrifying, but it was still better than the just-for-show smile she’d worn up until a moment ago.

At least this one showed a little of the real Dariella.

“That one’s better.”

“Why would you say that?”

Touya looked away.

He hadn’t meant to say it, which meant that even he didn’t know why he’d said it. He thought it had probably been chance, or coincidence, or some other dumb reason like that. He just hadn’t liked it, that was all.

He’d seen the inside of Dariella’s clenched fist, so he’d done something uncalled for.

“No real reas—”

Touya started to speak, but broke off.

He’d spotted something small but clear in the northern sky. An ominous black shadow.

It was the first sign that an ordeal was bearing down on the town of Saphir.

3

After midday, Saphir was bustling and lively.

There were lots of small settlements on this plain, where harvests were abundant. As their central hub, it was Saphir’s job to accumulate resources. On top of that, the town was right on the highway that linked the East with the West. It was a city of commerce, and it saw lots of merchant traffic.

In early March, it was still too soon to say that spring had really begun, but the snow had started to melt, and the water in the Favorwell River was rising. This was the time of year when wild vegetables began to sprout and dishes celebrating spring appeared on dinner tables.

Recently, as the high-performance vehicles made in Akiba and Minami began to flow to merchants, the amount of traffic had gradually increased. The choice of whether to build another inn or add on to the existing one had been the biggest topic in town for the past few months.

Minori and Serara were walking down the town’s avenue together. They were on their way to stock up on food and consumable items and to gather information.

As a city of commerce, Saphir had a market and shops with a decent selection of merchandise. They weren’t shops for Adventurers, but considering the articles they were looking for, it was actually more convenient this way.

They’d made proper preparations in Akiba, and the bulk of their supplies were seasonings and goods that kept well. They’d made sure to eat the fresh foods first, so they were nearly out of them. They’d always intended to replenish their stores at the towns they visited.

“They’ve got potatoes, greens, and strawberries!”

“Should we buy some strawberries?”

“Yes, let’s!”

The pair put clusters of wild strawberries into their tote bags, adding them to the things they’d already bought.

Since the bags weren’t the magic sort, they were quite stuffed and bulky already. As the bags hung from the girls’ hands, the People of the Earth teased them, calling them “young wives.” There was really no help for it.

“Wahh… Oh, don’t call us that.”

“We, um, we’re not! We aren’t that yet.”

Serara squirmed and Minori protested (tentatively, her face red), but the mood didn’t last long.

They were shopping, according to plan, but there was something that worried them.

“Telechats aren’t getting through.”

“It’s true…”

They’d noticed that telechats weren’t connecting while they were camping, but at the time, they had brushed it off as “one of those things.” In any case, the telechat function wasn’t easy to activate well if you couldn’t use both hands. You had to gesture in order to select another party from your friend list or accept a telechat. In consequence, if the other person was fighting or doing some other type of work, the telechat might not get through. That was the difference between regular telechats and party telechats, where you could get a message to the whole group just by shouting.

As a result, it was fairly common for the other party to not respond to a telechat, particularly if that “other party” was Shiroe. He tended to be in meetings quite a lot.

However, Boreas’ Moving Temple had worried them, and when they’d investigated, they’d learned that it really did have the effect it was rumored to have. It seemed certain to them that the telechats weren’t simply “not connecting.” They were being jammed.

They didn’t know what the range of the effect was, but at the very least, telechats seemed to be restricted throughout the entire town.

The range seemed far too wide to be the effect of the Moving Temple they’d passed near the Boxroot fortress, and Minori thought there might be another Moving Temple somewhere in town. However, they had no intention of searching for it. Even if they found it, they didn’t know how to shut off the effect, and if they broke it or something, they’d probably call another sort of trouble down on their heads.

“I think it’s probably because of that Moving Temple,” Minori said. “I don’t know where it is or what sort of effect range it has, but even so.”

“I think you’re probably right.”

“Yes…”

This was a headache for Minori as well.

The white wolf cub at Serara’s feet seemed to have picked up on the mood. It looked dejected, too.

“What should we do?”

“Um…”

Minori’s eyes went to the notebook in her hand. There was a folded map of the vicinity between its pages. It wasn’t something she’d drawn herself. It was a map of the surrounding area that Shiroe had copied for them.

Their destination wasn’t that far away. They were planning to make their preparations here, in Saphir, then go into the mountains. It wasn’t a reckless move. If they left from this town, they’d be able to follow the river up the mountain. That was why they’d traveled along the Pacific side in the first place.

In terms of distance on the map, it was probably about twenty kilometers. Even taking into account they’d have to climb mountains and would need to find and hunt their targets, it didn’t seem all that hard. At the earliest, they’d be able to return to the town in three days, and no matter how long the trip dragged on, it probably wouldn’t take a full week.

“I don’t think it’s going to take very much time,” Minori said decisively.

“Maybe about three days…?”

“A little more than that.”

“Once we come back here, we’ll be safe, right?” Serara asked.

“I think so.”

In fact, it was that very thought that had brought them to the town.

Minori had meant to ask Shiroe for advice once the telechat function was back, but right now, the circumstances wouldn’t allow it.

“If we could only talk to Shiroe…”

“If we could talk to Nyanta…”

Their words overlapped. The two of them gazed at each other, seriously, then burst out laughing. Apparently they’d been thinking the exact same thing.

As a matter of fact, they had a lot of things they wanted to ask about.

The Odysseia Knights.

The disquieting magic item known as Boreas’ Moving Temple.

Roe2, the woman who overlapped with Shiroe in Minori’s mind, no matter what she did.

Something was changing in a big way. Minori could feel it clearly, the way the echoing rumble of the earth traveled across great distances.

Still, she didn’t know what it meant. It felt as if she’d gotten a secret message, but bits of it were written in a foreign language. It was terribly irritating.

“This is so frustrating. I’m sure Shiroe would understand it, but…”

“Minori…”

As Serara consoled her, Minori mentally switched gears.

She was still quite inexperienced, so she didn’t have time to wallow in pessimism. She had to solve the problem in front of her. The current issue was whether they should make for the Redstone Mountains or abandon their journey here and turn back.

There were advantages and disadvantages to both courses of action.

Pressing forward when they couldn’t report in or ask for advice via telechat was definitely dangerous.

However, on the other hand, Minori couldn’t say whether turning back now would be any safer. Since they didn’t know the effective range of that peculiar magic item or how to disarm it, they might not be able to use telechats even if they returned to Akiba.

Bringing back a report was important, but this was Shiroe they were talking about, and Minori had the feeling he’d gotten information about that temple just about the time she and the others had.

In that case, should they go forward, or start back? Staying in this town and investigating was another option. Under the circumstances, letting the Magic Bag quest determine their moves didn’t seem like something Shiroe would advise.

The question What would Shiroe do? was the only clue she had regarding how to think indicated to Minori that she clearly wasn’t experienced enough, but lamenting that wouldn’t get them anywhere.

“I wonder what Roe2 is going to do.”

“You know, that’s a good question.”

“She said she was going to Ikoma…”

“Do you suppose she’ll go with Dariella? She doesn’t need to go mountain climbing with us.”

“True.”

Having realized this, the two of them quickly made their remaining food purchases and discussed returning to the inn.

They’d told Roe2 about going to the Redstone Mountains, but depending on the situation, they might part ways here. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to look around the town to see if there was anyone who could repair Adventurer summoning pipes.

They’d passed several Adventurers as they were walking around, and it had planted the idea in Minori’s mind. If it came down to it, they were prepared to sell the cart in town, but if possible, they wanted to buy horses and take it back to Akiba with them. It was the first cart they’d ever purchased, after all. Minori was rather attached to it, and she thought her friends probably were as well.

“But Minori, we’re staying here tonight, the way we planned, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“Then do you think Isuzu will be feeling better by this evening?”

“She’s staying shut up in the room, isn’t she…?”

Isuzu had remained in their room, saying she wasn’t feeling well. Rundelhaus seemed to know something about the situation, but all he’d say was that she’d be better soon. Isuzu had been a bit strange since the previous night. They thought she’d finally returned to the room early in the morning, and she’d seemed to be brooding. It worried them.

“I’ll make Isuzu’s favorite mentaiko potatoes tonight!”

“Can you make those, Serara?”

“Of course! We bought potatoes, and we have mayonnaise.”

As they made their way back up the avenue, their conversation died away.

The wolf that had been gamboling around Serara’s feet pricked its triangular ears bravely, then began to run around in circles, glaring up at the sky and howling a warning.

“Hmm? What is it?”

Distantly, Minori heard Serara’s easygoing voice.

Something had bled into the color of the hazy March sky and was moving slowly, with Sacred Mount Fuji behind it. The flock, which was closing in on them from far in the distance, was obviously what Minori’s group had come this far to find: wyverns.

More than a hundred wyverns were approaching the town of Saphir.

4

One individual had sensed the wyvern stampede.

Nyanta had touched down once—lightly, on tiptoe—on the angular train, and he used Unicorn Jump to leap again without killing the momentum of his plunge from the griffin. Taking a trajectory that would have been possible only in fantasies in the old world, he slipped between the trunks of the trees using Quick Step, while using Lightning Step in the direction of his fall.

Putting his body’s superhuman abilities to work, Nyanta sped up among the rustling green of the forest.

He felt burning sadness and anger deep in his gut.

With all his might, he slashed at the black spirit monsters that were invading the forest below him. Heavy bodily fluids clung to the tips of his swords, and he wasn’t able to finish the creatures off in one attack. Even adding a special skill that sent the damage of his range attacks through the roof—a Swashbuckler specialty—wasn’t enough to kill them instantly. Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t win. Nyanta was level 90, and the Nightshade Servants in front of him were just a bit over level 40. Silently, Nyanta swung his rapiers twice, cutting down shadows that had been trying to slip past him on either side.

Nyanta was aware of the general situation, or at least of its visible aspects.

As a representative of Log Horizon, he’d been sent to provide support for Minori’s group, and he’d come this far by griffin, keeping an eye on them as he went. A black cloud of wyverns had appeared in the town of Saphir, about twenty kilometers from him as the crow flew. In the process of trying to discover where those wyverns had come from, he’d realized that they’d been driven from their home in the Redstone Mountains as the result of a siege, nearly a mountain hunt, by Nightshade Servants. He also knew that the battle between the two forces was escalating, threatening to engulf Saphir.

When he’d expanded his reconnaissance upstream, he’d discovered this train and had learned that the struggle was the result of an intentional plot.

That was why he was angry.

His heart was screaming that it was a completely unbelievable, impossibly stupid move—until his eyes found a lone magician on horseback.

“Rondarg.”

“Oh-ho… To think we’d meet here.”

There was a distance of about ten meters between them.

The forest had been warped by magic, and the dismal-looking Sorcerer who answered Nyanta was in an odd sort of clearing.

Neither of them was a stranger to the other. Where Nyanta was concerned, they’d seen each other several times from a distance in the player town of Susukino, and they’d come into conflict during Serara’s rescue. Rondarg seemed to have remembered that as well: The look he turned on Nyanta was somewhere between irritation and hostility.

However, Nyanta didn’t have the leeway to go along with Rondarg’s hurt feelings.

On the surface, Nyanta’s usual calm was intact, but his anger underneath was so strong it was nearly unmanageable. It was bad enough that, if possible, he would have liked to slash apart all the Nightshades in the area with his rapiers.

“What are mew doing here, Rondarg? What is that train? What are those black shadows, and what do mew intend to do with Saphir?! What’s going on, Rondarg?!”

More demanding than asking, Nyanta confronted the other man with crossed swords.

“Rondarg!”

“Bwah-ha-ha.”

He responded to Nyanta’s reprimand with a terribly superficial laugh.

One of his cheeks warped sardonically. He seemed like a completely different person from the man he’d been in Susukino. The atmosphere he wore was degenerate: terribly shallow, irresponsible, and disheveled. His cracked laugh really didn’t seem like an expression of relaxed confidence.

“What am I doing here? I’m here for work I was hired to do: guarding and guiding the train. As you can see, the train’s a magic vehicle. The black shadows are summoned creatures, Nightshade Servants. We don’t intend to do a thing with Saphir, or at least, I don’t. What’s going on? —That’s no concern of mine.”

Rondarg didn’t seem inclined to hide anything.

To Nyanta, it looked as if he didn’t see enough value in anything to try to cover it up.

Even so, that answer hadn’t held a single one of the things Nyanta wanted to know. Rondarg’s reply hadn’t shown him anything beyond what he knew already—in other words, what he could see by looking.

“Don’t glower like that. I don’t plan to fight you. It’s the same for you, no? I’m not doing anything. I took a job request and I’m on guard duty, that’s all. That business in Susukino… Okay, sure, I regret that. Threatening People of the Earth just might be a bad thing. Is that good enough? Out of the way, Swashbuckler.”

Up on horseback, lazily dangling the staff he’d taken from the holder at his waist, Rondarg gave a little smile and sighed, speaking to Nyanta as if he were tired. He seemed casual, disinterested, and as if he just didn’t care.

“Do mew know what mew’re doing, Rondarg?”

Sensing something suspicious about the man, Nyanta took a step closer.

“I know. I’m getting paid and doing my job.”

“I mean the consequences of that, Rondarg!”

The man responded with a tense smile.

“That bit wasn’t in the manual—but I didn’t get one, mind you, so that’s only natural.”

He couldn’t have sounded less concerned, and that pierced something very deep inside Nyanta.

It wasn’t because Rondarg’s words and the future they indicated had caught him by surprise. On the contrary: He’d been afraid someone would say those words to him at some point. But they were something Nyanta had hoped he wouldn’t have to hear.

When the Round Table Council was established, Krusty, the leader of D.D.D., had asked Shiroe whether there was a possibility of war with the People of the Earth. Shiroe’s answer had been, “I understand that that’s something for the Round Table Council to consider, not for me to think about now.”

How many of the people in that meeting had accurately caught the meaning of that response? It was something Nyanta thought about, now and then. Krusty seemed to have gotten the message. In his own warped way, he’d tried to help Shiroe. However, Nyanta didn’t know how well the other youngsters had understood.

Shiroe’s words had been both a prediction and a warning.

That response hadn’t admitted the possibility of war, nor had it denied it.

It wasn’t a question of whether or not there would be war. It was at an earlier stage than that: It pointed out the fact that they were in a world where war could occur, and it was advice to the effect that each individual who lived there needed to come up with a way to confront the possibility of war.

Shiroe had tried, more earnestly than anyone else, to face the question he’d detected. Nyanta knew that Shiroe harbored secret pain. In this one matter, he thought that he might be closer to Shiroe than Naotsugu, who was young and optimistic, or Akatsuki, who admired Shiroe.

Nyanta respected his too-serious friend, who was less than half his age, and he himself had also faced the fact that Shiroe had pointed out.

Shiroe and Nyanta thought that the possibility of a war between the Adventurers who lived in Yamato had fallen low enough to ignore early on. Fundamentally, Japanese people had a strong aversion to war. Especially if it was a war with other Japanese, emotional inhibitions would come into play. There might be violent incidents and desperate, stress-fueled crimes, but the possibility of all-out war had always been small. That was true even now, when Yamato’s Adventurers were divided between the Round Table Council and Plant Hwyaden.

The possibility of war between the Adventurers and the People of the Earth was higher. In particular, if there were a lot of Adventurers who didn’t acknowledge the People of the Earth as human, the issue would probably develop into a big problem. However, although the possibility was high compared to war among the Adventurers, they hadn’t thought it was large enough to worry about. Their combat abilities were too different. Domination and conquest were far more likely than war.

In this warped world, Adventurers and People of the Earth complemented one another. It was structured so that they supported each other in production, in consumption, and on every other front. Nyanta thought that the Round Table Council’s achievement in making that fact common knowledge at such an early stage was great beyond measure.

The remaining combination was war among the People of the Earth, and neither Nyanta nor Shiroe had been able to give an answer with regard to that one.

After all, neither of them were People of the Earth. They’d been brought up to believe that war was bad, and they had a strong desire to reject it, even if it was between People of the Earth. However, if the People of the Earth resolved to go to war, did they have the right to stop them? They weren’t sure. In theory, it was true that the other party had sovereign authority as well.

On top of that, considering the technological development that had followed the Catastrophe, there was a fear that if the People of the Earth went to war, even if the Adventurers didn’t actively contribute, they would end up playing a part in expanding the scale of the conflict. He hadn’t spoken with Shiroe about this, but it was likely that it was a fragment of the future Shiroe had his eye on.

“Rondarg, do mew intend to seed war across this world?!”

“I intend no such thing. The ones who might be thinking that are the People of the Earth who issued this quest for me.”

Those words touched off the clash between Nyanta and Rondarg. Nyanta performed repeated thrusts, loading them with accusation, closing the distance between himself and his foe.

“Mew’re aiding them!”

“So what?”

Rondarg waved a hand, and five spheres of light appeared. Impatience Bolt cut between the caster and Nyanta, emitting tiny arcs of lightning. It was a defensive Sorcerer spell that would automatically retaliate against any close-range attack. Sorcerers were almost never on the front lines, so this wasn’t an important spell for them, but its force was comparably large, and it could serve as the starting point for player-versus-player tactics.

Nyanta’s left arm was smacked away and went numb.

He should have been able to avoid that attack, but an impulse he hadn’t been able to control had driven him forward.

“Many People of the Earth will be lost!”

“It’s what they want. They’re fighting because they want to.”

“Mew could head it off before it starts.”

“Haven’t seen a quest like that around here, Swashbuckler!”

Nyanta struck down Rondarg’s Frost Spear and Burned Stake the moment they were unleashed. Nyanta, who fought with twin rapiers, was among the fastest of the Swashbucklers at sensing activations and interrupting the chants; he was particularly good it. However, at the same time, his own biggest skills had been sealed. Rondarg was trying to shut down Nyanta’s mobility with Astral Bind, which meant he couldn’t use any finishing skills that would leave him wide open.

Even so, ordinarily, Nyanta would have been able to use calm, clever countertechniques to make the match go his way, and he sensed a bitter immaturity in the fact that he couldn’t do it now. His rising emotions were disturbing his control more than he’d anticipated.

“So mew can’t do it without a quest, Rondarg?!”

“Silence, hypocrite. I—I— This world didn’t invite me.”

A cry of bitter grief rang out.

Rondarg, who still wore that shallow, apathetic smile, was crying.

“Look. This world didn’t send me an invite. I’m not needed. Did you get asked, ‘Do you want to go to another world? Yes/No’? Did you choose? I didn’t. I just got pulled in here; nobody asked me. I didn’t get a choice, and I wasn’t welcomed, either. You people were invited, right? That’s why you can be so laid-back, right?!”

“No. Not a single one of us was ‘invited.’”

“I don’t care how it was for you. At the very least, though, I wasn’t asked. I got dragged into this world; it didn’t matter what I wanted. The world didn’t care what I thought; it just tried to use me for its own ends… And so I’m going to use it however I want. Am I wrong, Swashbuckler?!”

A fireball burst into existence. It split into two, then four, then flew at Nyanta with a groaning howl. Nyanta intercepted the attack spell with a throwing card he’d taken from his coat. The silver scrap of iron punched through the fireballs, blocking three of them, but the remaining one made it to Nyanta’s slim swords and scarred them.

You’re wrong.

He wished he could tell him that. Nyanta wielded his rapiers, feeling as if he were being crushed. He slashed through Rondarg’s howling, raging spells and knocked them away, but although this was a fight he should have been able to win hands down, its end was a long ways away.

Rondarg wasn’t wrong. At least in Rondarg’s world, he wasn’t wrong. Even burning with anger as he was, Nyanta understood that. That was what was tearing him apart.

Rondarg’s rage and howls were justified. Rondarg was a victim, and that situation should be rectified. The Adventurers who wanted to return to their old world should have their wish granted promptly and should be compensated.

Of course, it couldn’t possibly be all right for Rondarg to hurt other people or trample on their rights in order to make his own wish come true. Those were the rules of society. However, that society itself hadn’t invited Rondarg. At the very least, he said it hadn’t.

Rondarg was admitting that he wasn’t a participant in this society.

Rondarg was an outsider. He was an outsider to everything there was.

Here, Rondarg was at war with the world. Since he was fighting a war, he thought it didn’t matter what he did to the world, and he wasn’t wrong. It was easy to say that ethics should be observed even in war. However, if asked whether the Catastrophe had acted ethically as far as Rondarg was concerned, the only answer was the bare fact that it hadn’t. In other words, he only wanted fairness: Ethics had been ignored in his case, so he would ignore ethics in return.

There were many Adventurers in this world who harbored the same pain, and they were the ones the town of Akiba had averted its eyes from. Rondarg’s pain was something Nyanta had felt once, something all Adventurers had experienced. In fact, he couldn’t object to his anger.

If someone who thought like that had existed on Earth, if an individual there had considered themselves at war with society, society would probably have been able to use physical force to suppress them. It could use its police force to apprehend, restrain, and imprison them. Depending on the situation, the army might be mobilized. After all, their revenge would be the equivalent of terrorism.

By doing this, society could hand down some sort of punishment. However, the punishment would be “elimination.” It wasn’t the absolute justice of society that made this possible. Society could eliminate individuals with violence only because it had greater numbers; in simple terms, because it was strong, because it could fight.

This didn’t absolve the world of its sin in forcing injustice on an individual without their consent.

“…It’s the same for everyone.”

Nyanta had lowered his swords, and Rondarg’s air disturbance spell Turbulence leapt at him.

Rondarg was frightened and desperate, and his attack sliced into Nyanta.

However, Nyanta couldn’t bring himself to block it, or to return the slash.

It wasn’t that his anger had disappeared. Enough sorrow had enveloped him, surpassing his rage, and all that remained was a crushing pain.

Nyanta couldn’t solve Rondarg’s problem. It was likely that no one could.

It would be possible to eliminate Rondarg with violence, but Nyanta couldn’t believe that to be just.

There had been meaning in rescuing Serara. It was probably lucky that he’d been able to confront the Briganteers in Susukino while he was shielding her. It had meant that Nyanta and his companions had been able to get by without really looking at Rondarg face-to-face. Even now, Nyanta’s Log Horizon comrades were at his back. Because he knew this, he kept desperately searching for words that would reach the man.

5

“Rondarg… It’s the same for everyone.”

In a fight, he could win. He could send Rondarg to the temple, and he could wipe out ten or twenty black spirits. However, that would be a kind of defeat. That awareness was slowly stealing into Nyanta, awakening a pain so great he wondered where his desiccated heart had been hiding it.

And so he frantically searched for words that could reach him.

He thought of Touya. He thought of Minori. He thought of Isuzu and Rundelhaus.

His thoughts went to the children of the Crescent Moon League.

Serara’s bashful expression rose in his mind…

Nyanta remembered all of his young companions.

“It happens to all children, Rondarg. As far as they’re concerned, people, or at least children, are all brought into life unfairly.”

Thin lightning bound Nyanta’s arms like briars. His HP bar was falling.

He didn’t have much time left, and there were only a few words he could get out.

Nyanta knew that those few words probably wouldn’t reach Rondarg. It would take a miracle to get a message like that through to someone in pain, and unfortunately, Nyanta was only a powerless commoner who was unable to work miracles.

“There are parents who will tell them, ‘Mew were born because we loved mew.’ Those are very mewtiful words. However, they’re nothing more than self-satisfaction on the part of the parents. They can’t overturn the fact that the children weren’t asked for their consent before being dropped into the world. Some children are saved by them, but others are not… All people receive life that way. In this world, and in our old world, and in every world!”

So tough it out.

He couldn’t say that.

Even if it was suffering that everyone experienced, each separate instance of that suffering was an original, something felt only by that particular person. If someone had said that to Nyanta when he was drowning in pain, he would have responded with his fist, just as Rondarg was doing now. In addition, Rondarg wasn’t the only one raising a fist.

In that sense, this world was filled with sorrow.

Rondarg couldn’t be judged by the laws of the People of the Earth. The laws of the Adventurers couldn’t do it, either. Rondarg hadn’t agreed to participate in either group.

To Rondarg, his own injury and destruction were outside his sphere of interest. Nyanta felt as if he understood that pain. When people lose someone important to them, they lose the world. Nyanta had managed to regain it, but it had taken a long time. He’d also been lucky.

“Kill me, Swashbuckler! It doesn’t matter if you do it. Death doesn’t exist here. I’ll never end, and even if you can preach at me, you can’t conveniently exile me. Am I wrong?!”

He wasn’t wrong.

That was certainly one possible ending.

There was an abyss in front of Nyanta, a divide. Rondarg’s irresponsible, careless attitude was directed at the whole world. He’d decided he wasn’t a resident of the place any longer. As a result, he didn’t care what happened to himself or it. Of course, to keep his body alive, and to kill time, Rondarg had to do something, and he called those things quests. He’d decided the world was “that sort of place.” For that reason, Nyanta’s words probably wouldn’t reach him.

However, even if this was the truth as far as Rondarg was concerned, the world held other things. All worlds did.

Nyanta finally realized the true identity of this twisting pain.

Rondarg’s suffering and curse were things all Adventurers could experience. Even Nyanta and Shiroe weren’t exceptions. Not even Minori and Touya, Rundelhaus and Isuzu, or Serara, a girl like a place in the sun.

Nyanta had been searching for words to say to Rondarg, but that hadn’t been all. The root of Nyanta’s pain lay in wondering what he would be able to do for his precious young friends if they were possessed by a similar curse. It was a real possibility. Any Adventurer could become a Rondarg. That was why Nyanta wanted to save him. He wanted him to be saved.

He remembered Minori. That solemn little girl had resolved to follow in Shiroe’s footsteps. Touya’s resolution was to protect his sister, and Rundelhaus’s was to become an Adventurer.

Young people were reborn.

Children who’d been brought into this world unfairly, by force, became young people and resolved to be born again voluntarily.

They carved their identities on their hearts, were born a second time of their own accord, and began to walk into their own lives as infants. It was a sacred contract, and it had been made by a succession of people. It had linked people together, all the way to the present.

In order to protect that, Nyanta thought, he wouldn’t mind turning himself into ashes. He would have done absolutely anything for Rondarg, if doing so meant the man would understand that.

After all, even Shiroe, someone Nyanta liked very much, had concluded that sort of contract and ended up with his own guild.

However, his wish was in vain. The staff Rondarg brandished emitted a flood of unlimited mana, and half-crazed magic that had abandoned both aggro and control swelled and grew.

Then, just before it engulfed Nyanta, it vanished.

“‘Screech, screech, screech.’ Talk about noisy.”

The military saber that had impaled Rondarg’s neck from the back slid out of it again, and a red-haired woman appeared from behind him. Her eyes were narrowed in a smile. Her expression was cruel and bewitching, filled with joy, yet simultaneously like steel.

Rondarg’s bloodshot eyes rolled in their sockets. As his body collapsed, he looked up at the woman and seemed to mutter something, but the words came out as a welter of bloody foam.

The woman looked just a little surprised. As if to prove that the surprise was artificial, her face crumpled, and she spoke downward at Rondarg. “My, my. A message?” There was a viscous, bubbling sound. “Ah, that’s a shame,” she told him. “That’s not a language I know.” Kicking him out of her way, she gazed steadily at Nyanta.

The way she giggled softly, even though there was no telling what was funny here, seemed to warn of deep abnormality.

“Aren’t Adventurers great? You can kill and be killed all you want.”

“Why—?”

“Huhn? …Oh. I just shut him up for a bit. It’s nothing—just like sending him into the next room. Isn’t that right? For you Adventurers, anyway.”

“No!”

Nyanta had shouted it, but he couldn’t prove it.

Rondarg, whom he’d failed to persuade. The People of the Earth woman who’d killed him.

In this world, where death did not separate everything, what “wasn’t right”?

“Whoops, beg pardon. I’m Mizufa Trude, ‘the General Who Dominated the East.’ I’m the field commander here.”

She was gorgeous, bursting with vitality.

Her tall, toned body was wrapped in a military uniform, and the saber she held was wet with blood. He was forced to admit that there was a certain beauty about her, although it wasn’t the sort you’d find in a painting. She had looks that might have earned her the envy of the lovely princesses of Eastal, but she warped them with a coarse smile and blocked Nyanta’s way, her attitude suggestive.

“So mew are Rondarg’s client. Is this how the People of the Earth do things?”

Nyanta felt as if his body was enveloped in white flames. He couldn’t hold back his hostility.

In all likelihood, it would have been impossible to persuade Rondarg. Even so, it felt as though the woman in front of him had stripped him of that chance. His irritation was a bit like self-reproach, and it was merciless.

“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Still talking in your sleep this late in the game… People of the Earth? Adventurers? It doesn’t matter.”

Nyanta was gritting his teeth, and Mizufa smiled at him, her voice beguiling.

“Everyone that’s born into this world uses the cards they’re dealt to kill each other. The strong use their strength as a weapon. The weak use their weakness.”

With that smile still on her face, almost as if this were routine for her, Mizufa slashed at him. As Nyanta parried the saber, his expression twisted in surprise. It was heavy. From the force behind it, it was hard to believe this was a Person of the Earth’s sword.

“You’re questioning domination and military rule? You don’t even die.”

“Why do mew want war?!”

He thought of Shiroe. Of that clumsy young man’s dream.

Nyanta’s guild master’s oblique goodwill had probably predicted this fight. Shiroe’s insight was correct. Too correct. So much so that even their very best attempts hadn’t been enough to prevent it.

“I’ll burn my own life with the alcohol of war. Dance, undead Adventurer!”

“Viper Slash!!”

He’d intuitively understood the meaning of the word.

Undead.

Since they didn’t die, the People of the Earth didn’t even consider them living creatures.

The name was ominous, but Nyanta couldn’t deny it.

He couldn’t tell her she was wrong, either.

However, that had no bearing on the battle. Like a poisonous snake hunting its prey, the Swashbuckler’s sword techniques slipped through Mizufa’s guard, slashing the top of her shoulder open. Nyanta was a veteran swordsman. He was also burning with fury. He had no intention of forgiving this soldier, female or not.

But Mizufa paid no heed to the blood that dripped from her wound like rose petals. She held her saber at waist level, thrusting and swinging, pressing Nyanta hard.

“Odysseia’s in that town! That band of suicidal cretins. Spoiled little brats who’ve gone crazy from homesickness. Don’t you worry, they’ll spread death around for you!”

“Why?!”

“No need to ask for reasons. If people get stabbed, they die. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! This is amazing! Fantastic! I just might fall for that keen sword of yours. There’s no intent to kill in your blade, though!”

“Are mew proud of that? Of having the intent to kill?!”

Lightning sketched a lacy pattern in midair.

Striking the line of the blade up again and again, burning with white rage, Nyanta aimed for the base of Mizufa’s throat. Early Thrust, launched as a follow-up attack, had already knocked the woman off balance.

When the world had gone still for the decisive blow, the clash was halted by the hilt of a sword, still in its plain wooden sheath.

With a deeply troubled expression, the long-haired man who’d come between Nyanta and Mizufa sent both of them flying.

6

A flock of wyverns were attacking the towns on the plain.

It was probably one of the residents’ and administrators’ nightmares.

As a rule, if an attack on a town or other residential center was predicted, considered in terms of damage to living spaces and production bases, the best plan was to get as far away from the town as possible and counterattack from a remote location.

Even if they managed to drive them off and there was no direct damage to humans, if the town and its surroundings took damage, it was very likely that the indirect damage would harm their ability to live normally. In the world of Theldesia, with its medieval methods of food production, damage to the production bases could prove to be fatal. Therefore, town walls were a medieval wisdom, intended to protect living spaces from external enemies.

However, there were situations when this wasn’t possible.

They might be midclass monsters, but Wyverns were a serpentine type of flying dragon with tiny arms. Although they didn’t breathe flames, strike with their front claws, or boast magic attacks, they specialized in aerial mobility, and in this they were the equal of more legitimate dragons.

Their levels depended on the area in which they lived and were distributed over a fairly wide range—their lowest levels were 40, though some individuals approached level 90. The wyverns that lived around the Redstone Mountains should have been comparatively easy to deal with.

“Checking individual levels: Forty-two, forty-six, forty-three…fifty!”

Minori made her report, a telescope held to one eye.

With levels like those, it would be possible for even Touya and the others to bring them down with relative ease. That was why they’d come to the Redstone Mountains from Akiba in the first place.

However, that was true only if they were going up against a few at most. Alternatively, if they holed up in a shallow cavern and took the attacking wyverns down in an orderly fashion, Touya thought they might be able to defeat ten or so.

They didn’t have the sort of force that could stand against the several dozen wyverns that wheeled freely in the sky.

“Minori, big sis Serara! Let’s get out of the town first!”

“Right!”

Besides, the town’s location was a very bad one.

The surrounding terrain was open country with sweeping views, and the town of Saphir, which they needed to protect, was right in the middle of it. Wyverns were characterized by their high-speed flight, and for a fight with monsters like that, it was very nearly the worst possible battlefield.

Although this wasn’t like being attacked by a horde of demihumans, the way they had been in Choushi, it was just as hard to deal with, or possibly even harder. Defending against groups of demihumans was difficult because of their numbers. When they infiltrated, demihuman armies used repeated wave-type invasion units that outnumbered the defending forces.

On the other hand, the wyverns’ numbers weren’t that great, but they had despair-inducing aerial mobility. Defending forces that weren’t able to mount long-range attacks would be no use as a wall, and if the defending unit fell apart and the town’s residents fled, they would be pursued, and the result was sure to be a tragedy.

Wyverns excelled at flight, and they probably thought that bringing their steel tails down on the backs of fleeing People of the Earth to eat their soft meat was an appealing form of recreation.

Under the circumstances, it would be hard to have a projecting mobile defense: The enemy’s mobility was greater. Of course, their group was currently short on fighting power in all senses of the word, not just mobility. Even if their group had been level 90, they couldn’t protect the town completely with a single party of five.

Even if they were on the distant horizon, a flock of flying dragons had appeared like a black mist and was making for the town. The uproar that erupted in Saphir was no small thing, but it didn’t reach panic levels.

People of the Earth with frightened faces seemed to be fleeing into the town’s sturdiest buildings. Touya’s group of three Adventurers ran between houses whose windows were being slammed shut.

When the outskirts of town came into view, they learned why the People of the Earth were evacuating more calmly than they’d expected.

Although there was no telling where they’d assembled from, they came across a group of more than ten Odysseia Knights heading into battle. The Knights wore matching mantles, and one after another, their expressions fevered, they broke into a run on the road that ran beside the river. They were bound for the cultivated fields that lay farther out, and they clearly meant to intercept the approaching beasts.

“Move!”

With one brusque word, another group of Odysseia Knights ran past Touya and the others. There were six members in the group; two of the rear guards were carrying the Moving Temple. Together, they sprinted toward the battlefield, eyes bloodshot, swords drawn.

“Touya, don’t go out in front.”

“I know.”

“Even if we joined that fight, we wouldn’t be any help. Let’s handle the defense here.”

“Right.”

Following Minori’s instructions, they made for a reservoir one street over from the avenue. It would be a good location both for keeping an eye on their surroundings and for meeting up with the others.

“Minori, what about Isuzu?”

“I just contacted Rundelhaus. They’re both getting their equipment together and are on their way here.”

“O-okay.”

“It looks like there’s still time. Don’t panic.”

As Touya spoke to his companions, he was watching the combat in the distance.

The figures looked no bigger than miniature dolls, but it was a strange battle to begin with.

The Odysseia Knights fought by charging, swinging their swords as if they’d gone mad, clinging to the wyverns and summoning enormous pillars of lightning. Naturally, they got wounded, and the animals were growing progressively bloodier.

Viewed one way, they were a brigade of ten-odd knights making desperate charges, fighting valiantly to defend the town without a thought for their own safety.

However, Touya felt a horror that made the hair on his arms prickle up at the sight of the figures sprinting through puddles of blood without even being ordered to charge.

“Touya. Touya…”

Minori’s voice was trembling.

His twin was observing the battlefield with a telescope Naotsugu had given them. Straining his eyes in the direction the cylinder was focused, Touya realized what she was looking at.

The Odysseia Knights’ levels were nearly 90.

That was almost double the wyverns’ levels. However, the wyverns’ numbers were several times greater than the Knights’. Their Guardians and Samurai kept using Anchor Howl to draw the wyverns to them without a thought for the surrounding balance. If they hadn’t done this, the dragons might have headed for the town.

However, if they summoned an unlimited number of enemies, even if their levels were higher than the monsters’, it would be hard for them to stand against them. As a matter of fact, they were falling.

Then they turned into light and scattered…

…And resurrected at Boreas’ Moving Temple, which wasn’t far away.

Over and over, Touya clenched the sweaty hand that was resting on the hilt of his katana involuntarily. The quiver in Minori’s voice was only natural.

They recognized that iridescent light. They’d grown used to the light that shone when monsters were defeated, and while they didn’t want to remember it, Touya, Minori, and the others had gone through losing Rundelhaus and regaining him at the temple.

What they were seeing now was the same thing, or at least something very similar.

But this felt more like a nightmare.

The resurrected Odysseia Knights got up as though nothing had happened, joyfully retrieved their swords, and returned to the battlefield. Touya even thought he heard crazed laughter as the knights abruptly turned back to the fighting, although it couldn’t have been real.

Being resurrected by the temple wasn’t an easy thing.

According to Shiroe’s explanation, the action cost you a commensurate amount of experience points. Right after you resurrected, you didn’t even have enough HP. That was true of the Assassin who’d just resurrected and set off running. With his Health still low, he dashed over, leapt at a wyvern as it skimmed close to the ground, and clung to it. He struck at its wings with his great sword, and they fell in a tailspin.

Didn’t they value their own lives at all?

The words “brave charge” rose in his mind, but Touya couldn’t think of it as anything but an unfunny joke.

“…Yeah.”

Touya tried to encourage Minori, whose voice was shaking, but the reply seemed to stick in his throat, and his voice wouldn’t come out normally.

Sharp lightning seared their retinas.

It was Lightning Nebula, a wide-range Sorcerer attack spell. The swirling electricity inflicted lightning damage over an area with a ten-meter radius. It was a powerful offensive spell, one Rundelhaus had learned only recently.

They’d tested it out several times and had learned that it made it hard for the vanguard to hold on to its aggro, so Touya’s party had decided not to use the spell in actual combat until they’d practiced with it a bit more and had worked it into their team plays.

Out on the battlefield, that spell burst open, pulling in a few wyverns and nearly the same number of Knights. With a sound that didn’t match the gruesome sight, iridescent bubbles popped.

After the space of a breath or two, the Moving Temple shone with the same light and resurrected the knights.

The magical coffin vibrated with a low-frequency sound. To Touya, it almost seemed cursed.

“They come up with some pretty interesting stuff, don’t they?”

“Huh…?”

“That’s a resurrection device, isn’t it? A guide beacon that marks a place of rebirth, just like the temples. I don’t have any memories of it, but it seems like a very useful item… I wonder if someone invented it.”

“Big sis Roe2.”

Touya looked up at the woman standing next to him.

Roe2’s white coat-mantle fluttered, and her expression was relaxed and confident. It made her seem reliable, but right now, it also looked vaguely alien.

“You look pale, young Touya.”

“That thing’s bad! A thing like that—it’s weird!”

Touya shook his fist.

He was trying to get this uneasy feeling across to Roe2.

“No, it’s not weird. It’s aligned with the laws of this world. If it weren’t, it wouldn’t work. Since it exists, there must be some sort of structure and principles behind it. You’re free to deny it, but that won’t make it go away, you know.”

“That’s not what I meant…”

Apparently Touya’s words hadn’t reached her.

Or, no, they probably had gotten through; the conversation was meshing, after all. However, that meant only that his meaning had gotten through to her; it wasn’t that she shared Touya’s impatience and fear.

“Besides, from what I’ve seen, they seem proactive about providing Empathiom.”

“Huh?”

“If they’re obliging enough to die that much, the collection efficiency rate will be high. I’d imagine it’s really helping the Genius-collectors out. Or, no… Did they arrange this in the first place? That would call for surveillance in and of itself.”

“What are you talking about?! They’re dying! We’ve got to do something!”

Touya was flustered, but someone restrained his hand.

When he turned to look, Minori was standing behind him. She was biting her lip and watching him—no, watching Roe2.

Minori’s eyes were blazing, and Touya knew she was thinking about something in earnest. To her, thinking and making resolutions were indivisible from each other. Touya’s twin wasn’t yet specialized on that point. At the sight of her expression, his head cooled down all at once.

When Minori’s eyes looked like that, she was strong. It was weird for Touya to say this, but she had become so fierce, straightforward, and tough that it was hard to believe she was his twin.

Still, on the flip side, she was also very fragile, so Touya held her hand tightly.

“I understand that that’s a point of contention, but Touya, Minori… It looks to me as though it’s what they want.”

Roe2 went on in a singsong voice, her cool eyes still turned on the battlefield.

“They want to die. They want that temporary, kaleidoscopic flashback, like an anesthetic. As the toll, they donate Empathiom.”

“Roe2…”

“Not that I know much about it. I don’t understand why you’re building such an inefficient society in the first place. Still, come to think of it, the knowable world has always been far smaller than the unknowable world. Since the understandable territory is as tiny as the tip of a needle, there’s nothing odd about not understanding.”

With the distant fight as the background, Minori’s palm, damp with sweat, conveyed to Touya how unsettled she was. At some point, she’d stepped forward, as if to shield Serara behind her. Minori met Roe2’s gaze, and after significant hesitation, she asked a question, quite plainly.

“Who are you, Roe2? Where did you come from, and where are you going?”

During the moment of anxious silence that followed, Roe2’s eyes went round.

Then she swept her coat out lightly, throwing her shoulders back as if this were a first meeting, and faced Touya and the others squarely.

7

Abruptly, interrupting their conversation with Roe2, a lump of heat appeared.

It was Burned Stake, one of the Odysseia Knights’ attack spells. Even through a layer of air, the high heat became pressure and bore down on its prey, dashing the wyvern it targeted out of the sky. Pebbles and dust mingled with the hot air, and Touya shielded his eyes with his left arm. When he looked over, Minori, Roe2, and Serara were protected by the faint gleam of barrier spells. That was enough to satisfy Touya, and he released a sharp flash from his right arm.

He’d activated Izuna Cutter without a weapon, and it became a whirlwind, ripping apart the area in front of him and clearing his field of vision. Then he saw the Odysseia Knights retreating toward them en masse and the flock of wyverns.

“What are they doing?!”

The words were almost a yell, and they came out involuntarily.

In order to keep the damage to the town to a minimum, they had to keep moving forward as they fought. Hadn’t the Odysseia Knights moved away from the town to fight because they knew that? Until just a moment ago, both sides had been evenly matched. Although the Wyverns were large in number, they were all around level 50, and so even without the Knights’ disturbing suicide attacks, the wyverns and the level-90 Adventurers had been keeping each other in check. It had looked like a battle of attrition, and for that very reason, Touya and the others had watched, white-knuckled, with the town at their backs.

However, in the moment they’d been distracted by Minori and Roe2’s conversation, that balance had crumbled easily.

The wyverns glided low, slicing through the wind with the moaning sound unique to living creatures, one never heard with airplanes or helicopters. Touya drew his weapon and slashed at one in the same movement, intercepting with Helm Splitter, but the blade only slid over the tough hide.

The wyvern’s level might be far below the Odysseia Knights, but it matched Touya’s, and on top of that, it was a party-rank monster. It wasn’t an opponent he could defeat with one attack. That said, the fighting was too confused for him to gather aggro.

“Ruuuun!!”

Beyond Touya, who screamed fit to burst his throat, a steel dragon slammed into the base of a ruined building like an enormous throwing axe. The whole building shook with the impact, leaning like an ancient tree.

If People of the Earth had been hiding in that building, there had definitely been casualties. In fact, People of the Earth had burst out of the surrounding buildings, their eyes wide with terror. They’d realized that this area was no longer safe. It wasn’t clear whether anyone had been hiding in the building, which was beginning to crumble, but there were definitely still People of the Earth in the area.

“Touya, over there!”

Serara was pointing at a black shadow. A Nightshade Servant. Touya had no idea what they were doing here, right in the middle of combat, but that wasn’t the important part. What was important was that the thing several Nightshade Servants were lifting up, then slamming into the ground, was Boreas’ Moving Temple.

It was clear that they had been the ones who’d broken the Odysseia Knights’ battle lines. However, on the other hand, the Nightshade Servants were attacking the wyverns as well. Although their movements conveyed intelligence, their actions were filled with the intent to plunge the battlefield into further chaos.

“Erg! I’m going!”

“Oh! Touya?! Ah, wa-wait! I’m going, too! Wolfie!”

Touya, who’d broken into a run, put on a burst of speed.

Lone Dash was a Samurai special skill that greatly increased Touya’s movement speed for a brief time. Ordinarily, the skill was adjusted to suit the support spells provided by the rear guard. When combined with Electric Flash, it was possible to leave any companions far behind. However, Touya flung away even that hesitation and charged at the Nightshade Servants.

In the midst of concentration so fierce it narrowed his field of vision, he used Floating Boat Crossing, leaving the whistle of the wind behind him. Soujirou wouldn’t teach him attack skills, but he’d been almost obsessive about drumming the walking method into him. Lowering his body using this method, he remembered the attitude Naotsugu had taught him: Get a good look at the enemy’s positions, then seize a place for yourself right in the center.

Twisting his body through slight openings, he ran as though he was skimming the ground, vigorously cutting loose with his katana. He swung Whirlwind Cutter like a cyclone, sending the Nightshade Servants flying.

“Touya!”

With a cry that was almost a scream, Serara ran up to Touya and cast Pulse Recovery on him, even though she was still out of breath. As his scrapes faded, Touya glared at the Nightshade Servants with blazing eyes.

The Moving Temple at his feet was probably unusable.

It was emitting a sound like a low moan, and from time to time it ejected gouts of crackling lightning. It was obvious that mana was leaking from the destroyed parts.

From what Touya had seen, the Odysseia Knights had been guarding three or four Moving Temples. That meant they wouldn’t be wiped out immediately just because this one had been destroyed, and they probably even had spares.

However, even so, there was no doubt that these Moving Temples were vital points for the Odysseia Knights. The Nightshade Servants were edging back, as if they were keeping wary eyes on Touya’s gaze. Their movements were strangely human, and it was creepy. Touya felt malice in them, a spiteful intent to throw the battlefield into confusion.

…But those Nightshade Servants were shattered by a single, enormous attack that plowed into them from the side. Without even taking proper aim, a maul that was over two meters long and looked a bit like an industrial tool had pulverized the group. The Adventurer who held it was swaying on his feet, and tarry-red blood leaked from the gaps in his armor.

The armored Adventurer probably held an important position among the Odysseia Knights. Touya swallowed hard at the sight of the level-90 destruction that had been inflicted right in front of him. He’d known an attack at that level was strong, but its power was insane. The circular dent in the ground seemed more like the result of an impact from construction machinery than a person.

Touya watched the knight with wary awe. However, the other man ignored Touya, or rather, he didn’t even see him. Turning toward the wide avenue on unsteady feet, the man shouted:

“From this point on, we move the battle into the town!!”

Behind him, he knew Serara had gulped at those terrifying words.

“Nightshade Servants have appeared! Kill them all! As long as we keep the wyverns earthbound, they’re just targets. Lure them into the buildings and kill them! Kill them all, don’t let a single one escape! Kill, kill, and die!”

A wordless answer went up from the knights.

At the arrogance of it all, something inside Touya finally snapped.

The roiling emotion he’d kept shut inside ever since they crossed the Boxroot Pass burst forth, overflowing, raging with a force he couldn’t control.

“Touya?!”

He’d struck the knight’s armor with his fist. His fist shuddered and ached.

He didn’t care; he hit him again.

As he’d expected, hitting the heavy metal armor was like punching a dump truck. He wasn’t sure whether the other guy had even noticed.

“Hey!”

However, as Touya struck, he also yelled. Compared to this giant, imposing man, his own arms and legs seemed as skinny as disposable chopsticks, but he didn’t stop.

“Hey!”

He’d gotten worked up, and he couldn’t control his cracked voice. As he struck him over and over, his fists split and bled, but were healed by the dancing light of Pulse Recovery.

“Hey!!”

On the third yell, the Adventurer stirred slightly, as if he’d finally noticed him. Touya felt it, even though, due to the helmet, he couldn’t tell where he was looking.

“Why? Why are you doing stuff like that?! Why…? They’re all gonna—why are you like that?! The Nightshade Servants, and the wyverns, and the Odysseia Knights!”

The feelings were too strong; they burst inside him, and he couldn’t turn them into words.

In response to the pain, Touya squeezed his weaponless left hand into a fist near his chest. It was a gesture he’d repeated over and over again in his wheelchair. However, this wasn’t like before, when he’d stared at the ground. Touya didn’t even spare a glance for the pain. Instead, he lifted his head and glared at the knight.

“Why are you doing crap like this?! People live here!”

“We don’t live here.”

It was a curt response.

The words made him so mad he thought he might go crazy.

“That’s not what I meant! Why are you so… There’s gotta be some other way, right, brother? Another way to fight, a better way—”

“Kids should mind their own business.”

“Why are you doing that? It’s basically suicide! You know you guys could do better…”

In the end, that was what it was:

What Touya had felt had been unfairness.

These people had to be able to fight some other way. There had to be another way to do it.

The Odysseia Knights were level 90, and adults. If they were adults, shouldn’t they be able to do better than this? Even in a hell where Touya, who was just a kid, could only grit his teeth, they ought to be able to do something.

He’d had to be quiet and obedient to avoid causing trouble for his family. He’d learned to clown around so that they wouldn’t worry about him. All the time, at any time. No wonder he’d been caught by Hamelin. He’d been doing as he was told in order not to cause trouble for adults, so it was almost as if he’d intentionally let them trick him. It was all Touya’s fault for being a kid. Because he was a kid, because he was weak, his wishes slipped through his fingers. Or rather, he wasn’t even allowed to wish in the first place.

The rage at this unfairness, the stuff he’d always held in check, roiled up. Touya had cursed himself for being a child for a very long time. Adults were able to determine their own lives, and yet…

He hated being treated like a kid. He couldn’t allow it.

He remembered Dariella’s white fingertips with a twinge.

The soft sensation as they’d combed his bangs off his forehead.

The fist he used to strike this knight was an extension of that past. It was true that Touya was a kid. However, if this Adventurer was going to call him “a kid,” shouldn’t he show him something else? If he was a proper adult, he should have shown Touya the answer Touya wasn’t able to find.

If he didn’t, Touya’s heart would break.

“It’s none of your business.”

“That’s not what I’m saying!”

He lashed out at the man, letting the anger inside him take control, but the man stopped his fist with his iron gauntlet, then squeezed it hard. Touya wouldn’t budge, and the man leaned forward a little, speaking to him in tones that seemed to be cursing him.

“It’s not suicide. Nobody dies in this world. That means there’s no such thing as suicide. We want to go back—we’re going home. If we die, we get to see our families. Did you know that? If you die, you get to see just a little bit of our old world. You get to dream about that world. That place has to be connected to it.”

It was like a voice that blew from a long-term care ward at night.

A voice reminiscent of the dim blue light late at night in a ward that held patients who would be in the hospital for a long time, a ward that almost never got visitors. A voice that had nowhere to go.

Touya had been burning with anger, but at the sound of that voice, he felt terror, as if he’d had icy water dashed over him.

“Listen. I was supposed to get married in summer. Once that happened, I was planning to quit this game. I even went to a condo exhibition. I’m going to have a wife. I can’t keep messing around with this kid stuff. I’m going home.”

The man matched the angle of his helmet to Touya’s face, as if he were peering into it.

However, Touya sensed that the man’s eyes weren’t looking at him; that they weren’t actually seeing anything at all. The knight in front of him wasn’t seeing this world anymore.

“Next time the rent renews, I’m moving. My girl’s kind of a pain; she wants to move out of her parents’ house, and she keeps griping to me about it every day. I have to get hitched soon and bring her over to my place. She’s high-strung, so I’ve gotta take care of her. Over there. See? Even you hate this farce, right?”

If Touya said he didn’t want to go back, he would have been lying.

But it wasn’t that he wasn’t toughing it out.

Still, Touya knew: There were some words that shouldn’t be said. He might be a kid, but he was a guy. There were words guys just had to swallow. Once, those words had been, “I want to play soccer.” Touya had gotten used to swallowing them. Life was much better if everyone was smiling.

Why didn’t this guy understand that?

His raging emotions overflowed. Tears poured over his cheeks.

“The world is always the real thing. There are tons of people who are living like it’s important!” Touya howled.

As he spit out the words, the idea that this was all he could say made him feel hopeless.

“Quit spouting crap. There’s no way in hell this world is the real thing. Like there’s any reality where you don’t die even if you die? If you die, you have to actually be dead. If you die and stuff doesn’t go quiet, it’s a game. Because people like you don’t die, because you let ’em call you ‘Adventurers’ and butter you up and then live on and on and on—because you people won’t die, we can’t get out of this world.”

“That’s not true. I don’t know what you guys think, but this world is—”

There was something he wanted to say.

The young knight was wrong.

He wanted to scream, Is whether we die or not really that important?!

He wanted to ask the guy if he’d ever died in the old world. Of course he hadn’t; there was no way he had. If he’d died, he wouldn’t have been playing Elder Tales. He wanted to yell, Who decided that if you die it’s real and if you don’t die it’s a game?

Touya remembered getting hit and sent flying like something out of a cartoon, and the way the asphalt had shredded him like grated radish. He’d seen for himself that his bones were white. Not only that, he’d seen his trapped pelvis tilted at a weird angle.

Touya had seen death. It meant “the end.” The driver who’d hit Touya had passed away in the next bed over in the ICU. After a long, painful stretch of rehab, Touya had recovered enough to live in a wheelchair, but the driver hadn’t made it through the night of the crash.

The university hospital where Touya had been was almost like the netherworld.

Late at night, through a painkiller-induced haze, the hospital ward had looked as still as the grave. Someone died practically every day, and speechless patients were carried in. The nurses were all kind in a professional way, but none of them said much. Touya’s attending physician was an individual whose gloomy expression seemed stiff, as if it had been pasted on. From what Touya knew, hospitals were entrances to the next world, and the people who lived there were beings halfway between the dead and the living.

…And so Touya knew death.

After all, for a little while, he hadn’t been alive.

That was why he wanted to tell this guy that this was the wrong way to resolve things.

If he wanted to get back to the old world where death had been, if he was seriously thinking about death, then he really shouldn’t do anything suicidal. He shouldn’t be able to fight a battle in which all the People of the Earth might die. He wanted to scream that at him.

But Touya couldn’t voice a single word of those feelings.

He’d glimpsed the young man’s dull eyes through his helmet, and he recognized them. They looked like Touya’s when he’d been told he’d never walk again. They weren’t the eyes of the living.

“If you’ve got a problem, report it to the admins. At worst, I’ll get banned. And if you don’t, you go die, too.”

Shoved away, Touya looked up at the world from a pile of rubble.

The battle around him was growing fiercer every moment, and the world of death was expanding.

8

That world of death was simultaneously unfolding within the sea of trees as well.

“Kazuhikocchi.”

“It’s been a long time, Captain.”

Kazuhiko, a young man who looked like a ronin, wearing an undershirt, a riding hakama, and a sleeveless campaign jacket known as a jinbaori, looked far more mature than Nyanta remembered. The wrinkle between his furrowed eyebrows clearly showed his distress.

He’d always been a young man with a sense of responsibility.

Kazuhiko had been the Tea Party’s offensive commander.

“Out of my way, Kazuhikocchi! There’s something I must set right.”

“No. I can’t stand down.”

Nyanta had taken a step forward, and Kazuhiko directed a sharp slash at the ground near his feet, opening a crack in it.

Nyanta didn’t stop. Glaring, he closed in on Kazuhiko, his former companion, who had changed beyond recognition. Kazuhiko glared back at him with eyes that were just as intense.

“Are mew involved in this?”

“My social obligations demand it.”

Kazuhiko spit the words out. He was the old comrade Nyanta knew, and at the same time, he was a different man. His eyes held a determined will, but they were also dark and dull. He looked like a man who’d charged ahead even though he hadn’t yet sorted things out in his mind, and who carried many scars while he did so.

Nyanta had heard about Kazuhiko’s current situation from Shiroe, in general terms.

Shiroe had said he’d taken on the task of making Plant Hwyaden healthy from the inside. However, Kazuhiko’s eyes really weren’t the sort of color anyone could have called “healthy.” They were like a bottomless swamp that had swallowed intense anger and sadness without releasing a single bubble, and yet they radiated a rigid, steely will.

“You Adventurers are such slugs!” Mizufa interjected with a sneer. “Always so terribly nice. Operation Crimson Night has already succeeded!! This is why you can’t be the heroes in this world. Go on, go sleep! I mean, it’s not like you’ll die, right?!”

Apparently as far as Mizufa was concerned, Nyanta and Kazuhiko’s chance meeting was just a waste of time. Even as Kazuhiko held her back, she unleashed a slash that used her whole body.

As he struck Mizufa’s saber away, Nyanta was forcibly separated from Kazuhiko.

He wanted to interrogate his onetime companion about his real motives, but this female soldier insisted on following him around.

“You could probably run right through Hades’ Breath and the Nine Great Gaols of Halos, couldn’t you?”

“I did run through them.”

The good old Debauchery Tea Party days—those were memories like a bygone summer afternoon. In his memory, they sparkled and shone with exquisite brightness. However, what had been days of adventuring for Nyanta and the others meant something else to Mizufa. She laughed, her beautiful red lips twisting with humiliation and indignation.

“Ah, yes, I bet. Your sword, your boots, and even your gloves are just dripping with magic. I can feel it! That and the strength of the spirit that fills you from head to toe! People like me don’t have that stuff.”

Nyanta didn’t understand what her smile meant.

Nyanta was a resident of Akiba, and when it came to the vicious malice the People of the Earth held, he was as innocent as a child. In the next instant, that fact would be brought home to him.

It was a scintillating sword dance:

On one side, Mizufa, a warrior far above the People of the Earth; on the other, Nyanta, a Swashbuckler who wielded twin rapiers and was famed for being the fastest of the Adventurers.

The battle went on for three rounds, then four. Both sustained shallow cuts, but neither made a fatal mistake. Depending on how you looked at it, they almost seemed like a perfectly synchronized team.

However, the end came suddenly.

“You Adventurers are strong, aren’t you? Yeah, you’re strong. Strong. It’s no good, though. —Your kindness will kill you. Your desire to save the People of the Earth will kill ’em! All right, what are you going to do about that?!”

Mizufa had exposed her white throat to the tips of Nyanta’s blades.

Nyanta’s swords didn’t stop. The high-speed battle had stolen that leeway from him. Joy had appeared in the woman’s eyes. There was no way he could kill her, and even if she did die, she’d be able to kill Nyanta with her death. She had a strange, malicious confidence that if she died, she’d be able to drag not Nyanta’s body but his spirit along with her.

In the moment he understood this, fear ran up Nyanta’s back.

This world was filled with death.

There were creatures that lived by breathing death. That terror trapped him.

Just before Nyanta skewered Mizufa’s throat, Kazuhiko, the ally who’d charged through so many raids with him, grabbed his sword.

“Mizufa. It’s over.”

The woman had stepped forward in an overly familiar way, and Kazuhiko put out his left hand, stopping her.

His lips were tense, and only his eyes were turned toward Nyanta. He seemed to be making some sort of appeal.

“What do you think you’re playing at?! You’re just a guard, Kazuhiko! Did you forget the code of the Ten-Seats?!”

“Orders from Nureha. Plant Hwyaden just got orders from the very top. We’re retreating. The maneuver’s been canceled.”

“Kazuhikocchi…”

Nyanta’s former comrade’s voice was like cold mud.

The tone of that voice alone was enough to make Nyanta not want to forgive the organization called Plant Hwyaden.

However, one of the people who led that group was Kazuhiko, and another was Indicus. In other words, Nyanta’s old companions.

What had happened?

Loathing for the darkness he’d just touched in the Person of the Earth soldier warred with worry for the onetime companion he was on the verge of losing.

Nyanta brooded over this, ashamed and irritable. “What is Plant Hwyaden thinking? Kazuhikocchi, what are you—”

“That’s enough hot air out of you.”

Mizufa nearly took a step forward, but in one motion, Kazuhiko drew his sword and slashed at her, and at Nyanta, too. The impact of the bright white blade went deep enough to crack the earth. It was probably the Assassin attack known as Extermination, but even to Nyanta’s eyes, its force was far from normal.

It went beyond the realm of the Adventurers.

“This could have been much worse, you know.”

“……”

Sheathing his sword with a heavy, resonant sound, Kazuhiko turned his broad back on the speechless Nyanta. To Nyanta, it felt like the dark clouds that covered this world had come to his former companions in the Debauchery Tea Party as well.

“You get by without killing a Person of the Earth, Captain. And…”

“And…”

Kazuhiko gave a little smile. It was an ordinary smile, the kind that was heartrending when seen on a battlefield. The wry smile his old friend wore was the same as it had always been.

It was that smile that stopped Nyanta in his tracks, more than the sword.

Accepting the smile, like a riddle that had been handed to him with no answer, Nyanta stood stock-still in the forest for a very long time. He looked like a statue, and even after he no longer sensed any humans in the vicinity, he didn’t move.

Even when the sun set, even when the area sank into darkness, Nyanta couldn’t move an inch, not even to sheath his drawn sword. Even the moon, which rose after a little while, was unable to move him.