1

The journey was going smoothly.

Having escaped the ruins of Tekeli, Leonardo and the others were traveling through the land of Aorsoi. Their destination was the place where the land ended: the Far East. Japan.

However, they couldn’t just go blindly east.

It was easy to lump it all together as “wilderness,” but midwestern Eured was full of ups and downs. The land itself was a plateau, but there were several hundred mountains running across that high-altitude wasteland.

Of course, metaphorically speaking, those mountains were no more than wrinkles in the handkerchief of the earth. Compared to the vastness of Eured, they couldn’t have been that tall.

Even so, for the four people and lone horse who moved over the earth as if clinging to it, this wasn’t true. The mountains that appeared one after another like screens boasted heights of several thousand meters each.

Because the land was far too vast, their senses had been numbed, and it had seemed as though they could climb over them easily. With nothing to block it, the sky was just that wide.

To the north was one of the highest mountainous regions in the world, the Tian Shan Mountains. In Elder Tales, this area was called Tian Mai, and it was known as a place where species of dragon-type monsters lived and where no human had yet set foot.

Many new players found it surprising, but in Elder Tales, which utilized the Half-Gaia Project, unexplored regions weren’t all that rare.

Even if there was a twelvefold difference in the rate at which time passed, and even if the size of the earth had been halved, this land was vast. In addition, compared to the population of Earth, there were only so many players in Elder Tales. It might be a super-class MMO with a twenty-year history, but the population of all the servers put together was only seventy million.

The idea of exploring the whole world was a dream within a dream.

What had regular game play been like in Elder Tales?

Ordinarily, players would form parties with the members they planned to play with that day in the player town they used as their home base. Alternatively, if they were playing alone, they’d go shopping and make other preparations. Then, using the Fairy Rings, they’d travel to their destination dungeon or field zone. Once they reached their target zone, they’d adventure or do battle. That had been the general flow.

As long as they played that way, places that weren’t near the Fairy Ring network naturally ended up as unexplored territory. There was really no help for this, and conversely, precisely because that was how things were, it was possible to romanticize the exploration of primitive areas and the implementation of new content.

The introduction of an expansion pack typically meant that appealing fields, towns, and dungeons were designed for a previously unexplored place, monsters and treasure were distributed across it, a story was established within it in the form of quests, and Adventurers were guided there using the Fairy Rings.

The projects were a bit like planned community developments executed on a global scale.

But the region of Aorsoi had low population density. In other words, there weren’t many players, and it wasn’t very profitable. If other areas grew overcrowded, the developers would probably start paying attention to it, but at present there was only arid wasteland rolling away on all sides.

Four people rode through that wasteland on horseback.

Leonardo, Elias, and Coppélia each handled warhorses they’d summoned, while Kanami was on the hakutaku that KR was controlling with Soul Possession.

The morning sun shone down brightly and impartially over the group and the wide world.

It was easy to call it a wasteland, but its appearance wasn’t monotonous. The ground under their feet was crumbling, dull gray sandstone, but from the sheer, roughly five-hundred-meter cliff on their left, they could see a great S-shaped, winding river far below.

The river was probably more than five hundred meters wide. Although the land couldn’t have been drier, deep forests of vivid conifers lined the path the river had carved on both sides.

The green of those forests and the blue of the sky’s reflection in the river were so brilliant that it almost hurt to look at them.

The party was traveling roughly south across a plateau that looked down over the expansive river. There were a couple of reasons for this: Crossing the mountains would have been difficult, and if they were going east, they couldn’t do it very efficiently without finding a road they could traverse on horseback.

In addition, as long as they kept going south along the great river, if they happened to run out of food, they thought they could probably hunt some sort of game. When they asked what Kanami had chosen as her production class, they found out she had selected Chef. If push came to shove, they’d be able to count on her.

“If we keep going south, there’s a village.”

“You sure know a lot, KR.”

The Adventurer who was possessing the three-eyed hakutaku, a mystical beast that looked like a white horse, spoke to Kanami, who was on said beast’s back. However, from the volume of his voice, it was clear that he’d been addressing their surrounding companions as well.

This Kanami woman had a sort of natural leadership, or possibly a cheerful charisma, that pulled everyone around her in with her. She was willful, but there wasn’t even a hint of the deviousness that would have tried to force that will onto others, or of the greed that would have used her willfulness to satisfy her own desires. Her personality wouldn’t have gone over well with everybody, but you couldn’t hate her.

That said, acknowledging her charisma and respecting her were apparently two different things.

KR, who claimed to be her old friend, acknowledged Kanami’s leadership, but he didn’t seem to be relying on her sense of geography or surroundings in the slightest. They were crossing the wasteland on what were his very nearly arbitrary decisions.

For her part, Kanami seemed to generously accept this; she saw no problem with it. Looking at that relationship made it seem she was, if nothing else, made of impressive stuff.

“A village, you said?”

“Yes, well… It really could have been a town.”

“What do you mean, Sir KR?”

At Elias’s question, KR fell silent and kept moving forward. It seemed more as if he was thinking about how to answer him than as if he was ignoring him.

That was probably only to be expected.

Elias and Kanami seemed pretty close. He’d heard that they’d already been traveling together when Coppélia had joined them. Still, Elias was an Ancient. He wasn’t a human from Earth. It was hard to decide whether it was all right to explain parts of the Elder Tales game situation to him or whether those were still secret.

Since the time they’d made camp the other day, Leonardo and the others had been talking about the expansion pack, and Elias seemed to see it as ritual magic so enormous it affected the world itself. That understanding was correct, in a way—it did influence the world—but it missed the mark with regard to the fact that a game development company on Earth, somewhere outside this world, had created the place.

Leonardo sighed. It was program code that created this world, not magic.

Central Eured, the area around Aorsoi, hadn’t yet been sufficiently developed as game content. The topography had been automatically created from satellite photos and laser measurements, and the plants and rocks were program-generated fractal objects.

In the same way, the “village” they were headed for was bound to be a featureless place that had been generated automatically by an “automatic village creation program” based on random numbers.

On real-world Earth, villages were built based on the locations of rivers and the type of terrain. Then the villages were linked by roads, and if conditions were good, they would grow into towns and cities.

Although the world of Elder Tales had been designed based on Earth, even if it had a fictional history, it hadn’t actually gone through progressive development. This meant that, where there was a town of a certain size in the real world, the designers created a residential area, using this method to simulate the growth of villages in a general way.

For major cities, the game designers were involved from the very beginning, and they modeled them to be unique residential areas bursting with distinctive features. In particular, the cities where the game began—the ones known as “player towns”—had been given elaborate buildings and scenery, and many People of the Earth and facilities had been placed there.

Midsized cities were mostly places for People of the Earth to live. However, for those occasions when Adventurers visited, they had several shops and People of the Earth who’d been given special conversation data in order to move quests forward.

That said, smaller villages were created by the automatic village creation program.

Leonardo was just a player, and the only development system–related knowledge he had came from interviews on game information sites. However, according to what he remembered, once they determined the location, size, and population of a town, they just distributed wooden houses in ways that corresponded to the actual terrain, had some appropriate People of the Earth move in, and decorated the nearby scenery with farm fields and similar things. In other words, the automatic village creation program was a design support program that created villages that “felt legit,” even if they had no distinguishing features.

“Ordinarily, in terms of the traffic on the nearby river and roads and the scale of commerce, it wouldn’t be weird for the place to be a city or a town, but at this point, it’s just a village… That’s what he meant, Elias,” Leonardo said.

Over the past few days, Leonardo had built amicable relationships with the members of the party. Kanami didn’t have a fussy personality, and Coppélia was quiet and reserved about everything—a likeable young woman.

As a hero who’d been born to a fairy and a human, Elias was somehow incredibly difficult to comment on, but his personality itself was uncomplicated, and he was easy to get along with. If you kept an eye out for the delusions of grandeur that crept in sometimes (and he actually did have magic he could use, so you couldn’t unconditionally call them “delusions”), he wasn’t a bad traveling companion.

“Coppélia has detected a shape that appears to be the village up ahead.”

As she sat sidesaddle, dexterously controlling her horse, the small figure in the maid uniform pointed out a spot far ahead of them.

They could see the smoke from several cookfires rising like white threads into the transparent, glassy blue sky.

Even if the village had been automatically generated, they’d probably be able to replenish their supplies and get food to tide them over for a while. On top of that, if they asked, they might be able to learn about the state of traffic in the vicinity and find out how well the highways were maintained.

As things stood, they didn’t even know if they’d have to cross a desert in order to go east. Easygoing Kanami aside, the entire party was in agreement that they needed more information.

“Yes, that’s it. That’s Thekkek, the village I was looking for.”

So spoke KR in a laid-back manner.

2

Thekkek was a featureless People of the Earth village.

That was only to be expected. If something randomly generated by a program had character, it would be a problem. This “ordinariness” that generically matched the terrain was exactly what had been intended.

It was probable that each server and region had a list of general data and registered models. The houses in the dusty village were made of sun-dried bricks and gnarled wood, and they really did look as if they’d been built in the wilderness by a nomadic people.

The well at the entrance was built from neatly assembled dark gray rock—the only structure in the village that was. In the early-autumn sunlight, the broad-leaved tree that stood at its edge cast a deep black shadow.

There seemed to be about thirty houses.

Most of the villagers were inside, in neighboring narrow fields, or on their way back from the wilderness while following astonishingly large flocks of sheep. It was a small village, tiny enough to take in with one look around. Its entire population could have lived within one city block in New York. That seemed to be the entirety of this bubble that floated on the wasteland.

As Leonardo’s party traveled down the road that ran through the center of town, the People of the Earth moved out of their way. They seemed wary, but not afraid. Leonardo thought it was likely, even if they hadn’t had any direct contact with Adventurers, they’d at least heard rumors of them.

Up until he’d arrived at the Tekeli Ruins and encountered that hideous trap, Leonardo had traveled across the vastness of Aorsoi by himself. Due to his experiences in Big Apple, he’d avoided groups of other Adventurers, but he’d stopped at a few People of the Earth villages for necessities like food and oil.

Judging by that experience, the reactions of the People of the Earth in this village were par for the course.

“Say! Is there a place that sells food around here?”

Kanami, who was up ahead of Leonardo, cheerfully chatted up a local man, middle-aged and wearing a square cap on his head. He looked taken aback at being addressed, but after thinking for a little while, he answered her.

“There’s no place where you can buy cooked meals. We’re a tiny village, see. If you’re after travel rations, though, I think you could get some at Yagudo’s place.”

“Yagudo?”

“The village chief.”

From that brief exchange, they learned that this village had no independent shops.

You couldn’t expect much else from a town whose population wasn’t even three hundred; peddlers provided all the commercial goods they needed from the outside world. Leonardo had stopped by villages about this size before, and they’d all been similar.

“I see. Thanks!”

Saying that there was no need to thank him, the middle-aged villager returned to his house.

The People of the Earth around them also went back to their own jobs in twos and threes, tending the fields or drawing water. The Adventurers had probably struck them as unusual, but they seemed satisfied upon learning that the strangers were in the midst of a journey and had only stopped to replenish their supplies.

All villages are the same, Leonardo thought.

Though, he preferred this sort of awareness. The People of the Earth here were much better than the ones in Big Apple. Back there, all he’d seen in their faces had been despair and emptiness. In that case, the wary expressions in this village were far better. They were the sort of thing you often saw in wilderness villages, and if Leonardo had been in their shoes, he probably would have felt the same way.

Come to think of it, I’ve been traveling through Aorsoi all this time, but…

“Hey, Kanami? Elias? Where did you come from?” he wondered aloud. “Have you been traveling on horseback the whole way?”

“Yep,” Kanami replied immediately. “Well, though I guess we’ve been together since Ulster.”

“What’s Ulster?”

“Britain.”

“So you went to England, too? But then what was the Via de Fleurs business?”

“We ran into Coppélia near Paris. Before that, I circled around Europe. There were lots of things I wanted to know.”

Kanami’s answer sounded a bit absentminded; she’d gotten down from the hakutaku and was rummaging through her magic bag. Maybe Elias noticed; he’d also dismounted and was stroking his horse’s neck, but he helped her out:

“Lady Kanami and I met on the outskirts of Londinium.”

“Oh, really?”

Leonardo dismounted from his horse as well.

Traditionally, this area was populated by nomads. The People of the Earth—even the children—were skilled at horseback riding. However, he thought staying on his horse in the center of the village might be a breach of etiquette.

Coppélia was hesitating, and he gave her a hand.

She was unexpectedly heavy. It was apparently due to her armor, which looked like a maid outfit at first glance.

That said, Leonardo’s arms were stronger now that he was an Adventurer, and the weight wasn’t much of a burden. In this world, he wasn’t an IT worker–geek who holed up in his house and took in maintenance work for servers and e-commerce sites. He was an unbeatable ninja hero.

“You said you went around Europe. So, uh…how are things there?” Leonardo asked.

When he thought about North America—his home—hesitation came through his voice. It wasn’t clear whether or not Elias had noticed it; the Ancient sighed heavily and gazed into the distance.

He was looking at the western sky.

“‘Europe,’ hmm? The word isn’t familiar to me, but the western parts of Eured are as I expect you imagine them to be, Sir Leonardo.”

As he continued, Elias took his horse’s bit and began to walk.

“The coastal areas of Liderutz and the Land of Seven Queens have been sealed off.”

“Sealed?”

“Independent cities. Perhaps ‘city-states’ would be a better term. Both keep groups of Adventurers as if they were knight brigades and are protecting themselves and guarding against other cities.”

“Is there a war on or something?”

“No, not in so many words. However, the world is unforgiving. If left undisturbed, the monsters’ numbers grow, and they begin attacking people. Royals and aristocrats have chosen to fortify the cities in which they live and barricade themselves inside them. A few good rulers are working to defend their territories and maintain peace and order, but most small towns and villages, those with no defensive walls or soldiers, are being abandoned.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what I’ve said. Even if monsters attack, no help comes. At the very least, the lords’ soldiers don’t go to save them.”

“Why not? Even though it’s their own territory?”

“They claim that, if their main stronghold were to be attacked while they were off providing aid, more of their citizens would suffer.”

Elias’s face twisted in disgust.

“In order to protect themselves from monsters, they gather Adventurers and keep them close. However, you see, if a city has assembled Adventurers, the surrounding cities begin to fear invasion. And so, in defense, they must form contracts of their own with Adventurer guilds and set them to work defending their own cities. It’s an arms race.”

The sight rose vividly in Leonardo’s mind.

It was the sort of thing that seemed terribly likely to happen in this chaotic world.

“In the Land of Seven Queens and the Military Nation of Galient, the unions of People of the Earth have become mere figureheads. The venerable Ulster Knights Sword Alliance has fallen apart. The fortified cities are competing to see which of them can contract with the strongest, most celebrated Adventurer guilds. Cities that have successfully hired powerful Adventurer guilds advertise how safe they are, strengthening their influence over nearby farmers and traders. Because the church’s forces are also cozying up to the Adventurers, contract deposits are going through the roof.”

By “powerful Adventurer guilds,” he probably meant the sort of major guilds that took part in raids. Guilds of that size could put together legion raids, which were combat units composed of ninety-six members.

In Elder Tales, that was probably the strongest military unit in existence. Of course, the People of the Earth could put together armies larger than that, but each Adventurer had outstanding combat abilities, plus they were able to communicate using the telechat function. A unit of ninety-six Adventurers would have higher combat potential than several thousand People of the Earth.

“However, the money for those contract deposits is taken from the populace. In their attempts to cope with the Catastrophe, the nobles and lords have set heavy taxes everywhere and ruined public finance. It’s terrible—riots are breaking out. There are also some lords who want to pay Adventurers for their contracts in rights and interests, and in material goods.”

“Material goods…?”

“Please don’t ask. I don’t even want to say it. Although I don’t think much of the people who accept such things, either.”

“Even so.”

Hearing a murmuring voice, Leonardo turned.

It was Coppélia.

She went on, gripping her horse’s reins, her face expressionless.

“Coppélia says that life in the urban areas is safer than it is in the wilderness or in remote regions. The danger of life in a farming village is one thousand five hundred percent greater than it was in the previous year. This is due to the influence of patrolling Adventurers and uncleared quests.”

Leonardo and Elias had fallen speechless. Coppélia continued.

“Poison Ghouls appeared in Romalnes. Death that resembles a contagious illness is spreading through the People of the Earth who reside in that region. Coppélia subjugated fifty-six hundred and twenty-nine Poison Ghouls in the salt-sown land of Romalnes, and yet the situation did not change.”

“Why so many? All by yourself?”

“When Lady Kanami and I passed by,” Elias added, “Lady Coppélia was fighting alone.”

“……”

Coppélia nodded as if that was nothing.

Her pure white maid’s headdress wavered over her indigo bobbed hair. Did her struggle mean nothing to her? Still wearing no expression in particular, the girl impassively went on:

“On the green plain where Coppélia was fighting, there was a village very similar to this one. It was a commonplace village, the sort one can find anywhere. Commonplace villagers lived in it, four hundred fifty-nine of them. Conveniently for Adventurers, it had a Blacksmith who was able to repair weapons. It also had a grocer. Both were People of the Earth, and there was nothing particularly noteworthy about them, age and gender included.”

Leonardo listened closely to Coppélia’s voice.

“To Coppélia, that village was a very convenient base. Coppélia had been patrolling in order to hunt targets in the area, and she often returned to that village to have her equipment repaired, and occasionally to replenish items. On Coppélia’s seventh visit to that village, the village had acquired another resident. A young Person of the Earth child with no real distinguishing characteristics had joined it. The villagers requested a blessing from Coppélia. They seemed to anticipate that, as a Cleric, Coppélia would have beneficent abilities of some sort. Coppélia did not know how to give a blessing.”

It was a strangely moving story.

“Coppélia asked, ‘Do you wish to be healed?’ The villagers did not seem to understand. Coppélia used a level-85 Symbol of Sun. Because the villagers were ignorant, they seemed to believe that its effect was a miracle. They thanked Coppélia effusively. Coppélia learned to ask others what they wanted. It was useful knowledge.”

Coppélia gazed into the distance as if remembering something.

However, to Leonardo, it didn’t look as if she’d found what she was searching for.

“On Coppélia’s ninth visit to the village, the village’s population was zero. There were several dozen Poison Ghouls still in the village. Coppélia eliminated the targets, then went to the plain and continued to do battle. There were many targets, and Coppélia had no shortage of opponents. Her weapons broke, and the lack of a base where they could be repaired was inconvenient, but the results of her hunt were favorable. Even when her armor was destroyed and she lost her shields, Coppélia obeyed her orders perfectly. If she had not encountered Master, no doubt Coppélia would still be carrying out her previous orders.”

Leonardo couldn’t tell how the young woman felt as she told her story. She was only giving a report in a matter-of-fact way.

“Coppélia, you’re—”

Just as Leonardo started to speak to her, although he didn’t know what he should say, there was a loud crash, and a cloud of dust went up far ahead. It was beyond the house of the village chief that had been pointed out to them. There were screams in the clamor.

“Elias!”

“Yes, Sir Leonardo. Kanami’s gone. Tch! So she’s charged in again, has she?!”

Leonardo and Elias sprinted straight for the uproar.

3

Thekkek was a small village that had been built in the wilderness.

Naturally, its main street wasn’t even two kilometers long. Elias and Leonardo, who had Adventurer leg strength on their side, reached the site of the dust cloud in the blink of an eye.

“Hold it, time out!!”

Kanami had been blown in Leonardo’s direction. For a moment he considered ducking, but no matter how mouthy she was, Kanami was a girl, so he thought better of it and caught her. However, she was moving as though she’d been hit by a dump truck, and after catching her under his arm, Leonardo immediately tossed her aside.

“What do you think you’re doing, Croakanardo?!”

“You’re fine. I killed your momentum, so it’s not like you got hurt.”

Raising his blades, Leonardo glared at the building up ahead, which was something between a shed and a stable. He couldn’t provide a more specific guess than that because the building was already broken so badly that it was practically a ruin.

Some enormously strong being had gone on a rampage, snapping pillars, bursting through walls, and sending Kanami flying.

Next to him, Leonardo saw Elias level his transparent two-handed sword. His expression was tense, too.

“Lady Kanami, what’s over there?” he demanded.

“It looked like a little boy, maybe?”

“What?”

“It looked like a little boy.”

That was as far as the answer went.

With a roar, the shed collapsed in front of them. Something came flying out of the cloud of dust and crashed right into Elias. The People of the Earth, who’d dashed out of their houses to see what all the noise was about and were hanging back at a distance, screamed.

The thing that Elias had blocked with his sword was a lone boy.

His clothes and height were unremarkable, no different from the other children in this village. However, his expression was warped with insanity. With his teeth and hands, he’d stopped Elias’s sword as he crouched in a beast-like stance.

Elias had frozen up in astonishment. Taking advantage of the opening, the boy intentionally lost his balance, then flew into the swordsman’s chest with the speed of a black gale.

Their brief crossing opened a big tear in the pure white coat Elias wore.

Elias belonged to the renowned Knights of the Red Branch, and the lustrous garment was practically his trademark. At first glance, the cloth looked smooth, but it had outstanding resistance to blades, and its defense was higher than mediocre metal armor.

However, the boy had ripped that coat easily. He licked his long, overgrown nails.

Through the slit cloth on Elias’s chest, a faint wound was visible.

“Eli-Eli, you okay?”

“I’m fine, Lady Kanami. More importantly, that boy is—”

Without giving them time to talk, the boy leapt at Elias again. He moved with the speed of a wild animal, bending low. It wasn’t the stance of a bipedal being; it belonged to a quadrupedal beast. The black shadow shifted through mesmerizing changes in course, as if he were gripping the ruined ground with his feet, and launched himself at Elias from an unexpected direction.

“No!!”

At Kanami’s cry, Elias flipped his blade over.

The transparent two-handed sword interrupted its trajectory partway through, then swung down like a giant club. The boy leapt backward, away from the swing, but it hadn’t been the sort of attack that would wound him, so he seemed unfazed.

“Croakanardo…”

“I know.”

Ignoring the fact that she’d called him by that rude nickname, Leonardo picked up on what Kanami was trying to tell him:

The boy’s status.

His name was Sejin. His level was 34.

…And his main class was Gnoll.

It was impossible.

Gnolls were a type of malicious monster. They were a vicious race with doglike heads and small, round ears. They behaved like hyenas, hunting in packs.

They were highly intelligent, and they used leather armor and one-handed weapons. They were a type of monster known as demihumans, and they walked upright as a rule, but when fighting or traveling for long distances, they ran on all fours.

There were many similar monsters in the world of Elder Tales. Goblins, orcs, and lizardmen were the famous examples, but bugbears and kobolds existed as well. All of them were formidable enemies who built communities and menaced Adventurers in groups. Gnolls were one of the obstacles encountered by midlevel Adventurers.

Naturally, Leonardo had fought them before and was well acquainted with them. But gnolls did not look like this. They had thick hair all over their bodies, were dappled with sinister spots that were a color somewhere between gray and brown, and had shining yellow eyes, as if the moon had been set in their eye sockets.

They certainly didn’t look like People of the Earth, and they couldn’t mimic their shapes.

The deciding factor was that the boy’s—Sejin’s—status column was blinking. The “Gnoll” main class blinked repeatedly, switching with “Settler,” and the level flowed back and forth between 34 and 2.

“What’s happening here, Sir Leonardo?!”

“Don’t take him down!”

Leonardo yelled back, responding to Elias’s question.

However, he didn’t know what they should do, either.

Level 34 wasn’t very strong.

Elias had taken those two attacks simply because he’d been caught off guard and surprised. If he decided to take the boy down, it wouldn’t be hard to destroy him.

Elias’s quirk might not let him finish the boy off, but he would probably still be able to drive him into immobility.

Leonardo was sure he’d be able to kill him with a few attacks. Now that the dust had cleared, those rapid movements weren’t so fast as to be untrackable.

That wasn’t the problem.

“What the heck is this kid?”

“You don’t know, Croakanardo?”

“No, I don’t. Wait, do you know, Kanami?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking! Geez!!”

Leaving the useless Kanami, Leonardo ran toward the boy. Possibly out of feral caution, the boy didn’t want Leonardo getting anywhere near him; he leapt back five meters. However, Leonardo’s physical abilities had already completely locked onto his movements.

Easily matching his trajectory, Leonardo drew his twin swords in midleap.

“Don’t! Leonardo—!”

“Don’t be an idiot. He’s an enemy. If this keeps up, we’ll have victims over here!”

Using the motion of his bending body, Leonardo slashed at the boy’s torso with the sword in his left hand. He’d gone for the biggest target, and it had been a straightforward attack. No matter how the boy dodged, it would hit home. The attack wouldn’t be lethal, but it had sharp fighting spirit behind it, and it was bound to inflict great damage on Sejin.

“Gishaaaaa!!”

The boy gave a bestial scream. He hadn’t avoided Leonardo’s sword. On the contrary: He’d slammed his right palm vertically into its path. Leonardo had no time to brake the motion; the sword bit into the boy’s palm, splitting it in two, then cut its way through his arm, his elbow, and even his forearm.

The sword stopped when it reached his shoulder, but the boy was no longer a two-armed creature. He was an animal with two useless cords hanging from his right shoulder like ragged rubber tubes.

“Gishaa-shaa-shaa-shaa!”

Bloody spittle bubbled and dripped from his mouth, and his breathing was harsh. It wasn’t possible to call him a Person of the Earth anymore.

The throng of villagers gave heartrending screams and averted their eyes.

At this point in time, there was no way to tell whether the boy was from this particular village or an intruder from elsewhere. That was probably all for the best. The sight was so horrible that, if the boy’s mother had been here and had recognized him as her son, her heart would have been irreparably wounded.

Make him stop moving…

Leonardo steeled himself.

He hadn’t been holding back with that last attack, but he hadn’t attacked in earnest, either. With his next attack, he’d overload the boy’s motor nerves. It was Paralyze Blow, a paralysis attack. If that didn’t stop him, he wouldn’t hesitate to use Sweeper.

Having made up his mind, Leonardo wasn’t startled by Sejin’s surprise attack. He calmly stepped back, then slammed a front kick into his stomach, shoving him away. He even had the leeway to call to Elias, who’d circled around in front of the boy, who had been about to attempt an escape.

“Elias! Toss ’im over here!”

“Understood! Haaaaaah! Arm of the fairy of black night! Night Splash!!”

The boy had been flung into the air like a soccer ball, but using his feral sense of smell, he sniffed out his prey. When he slammed into the earth, he used the rebound and ran, staying very close to the ground. He sprinted, becoming a gust of black wind.

He was heading for Coppélia, who’d finally appeared, pushing her way through the shapes that had gathered at a distance.

When he saw the black shadow making for the unexpressive Coppélia’s small, kind figure, Leonardo abandoned all attempt at control. With a speed that must have looked like teleportation to the bystanders, he closed in on the boy’s neck.

In the midst of a moment so slow that even sound grew viscous, Leonardo saw a shining blue dead point on that neck. It was the marker for Sweeper, an instant-kill attack. If Sejin’s level had been 70, things might have been different, but at 34, it would be unavoidable, a grim reaper’s scythe.

“Hah!”

However, without giving an exaggerated yell or calling out the name of the lethal move, Leonardo selected Paralyze Blow. He knew this adversary was an NPC. He also knew he was averting imminent danger here. Even so, when Leonardo thought about lopping that head off, about forcing Coppélia and his traveling companions to see something like that, he felt a terribly visceral, unpleasant sensation that made his face twist.

Fortunately, the boy fell as if he’d been glued to the ground.

His motor nerves had been paralyzed, but he seemed to be trying to force himself to move anyway. His body spasmed over and over, like an insect, and Leonardo swiftly held him down. A muffled groan came from the boy’s throat.

Now that he’d restrained him, the boy was pitifully small, just a kid with a dark Aorsoi tan and the thin, sharply planed face unique to the People of the Earth who lived in this region. There was something ominous and gruesome about the fact that a boy like that was lying as paralyzed as a broken machine, a ferocious expression on his face.

“Coppélia…”

“It is all right. Coppélia is aware of the situation.”

Kneeling beside the boy, Coppélia chanted a recovery spell.

It wasn’t clear what she meant to do by recovering him, but the moment she approached, the boy seemed to change. As if afraid, or maybe agitated, his spasms grew more intense, and although he couldn’t speak, his faint, failing breath escaped his throat in gasping wheezes.

“Seven bells, white wings deserving of praise, use pealing fortune to do the will of the Lord—Sacred Cure.”

In a quiet, murmuring voice, she healed the boy’s paralysis.

The boy’s insanity couldn’t have been a regular status abnormality; it hadn’t been a familiar effect like paralysis. It had to have been something more terrible and mysterious. Yet even so, Leonardo’s misgivings aside, the ferocity drained from the boy’s face.

As Coppélia observed him calmly, one hand on his forehead, the boy’s breathing gradually quieted, growing regular. The bestial aura that had been there a moment before was gone.

“Did you…save him?”

Kanami asked what was on everyone’s mind.

Coppélia responded to those words with a nod, then swept a hand through empty space.

Leonardo thought he glimpsed a jet-black shadow that Coppélia’s fingers whisked away, but a moment later, all that remained was the cold, clear Aorsoi wind. It was as though nothing had happened at all.

4

“Yi gui? A plague demon?”

At Kanami’s words, Yagudo nodded.

“So…what’s that, exactly?”

“No idea. This is the first time I’ve seen one. I’d heard stories from peddlers, but…”

Yagudo, the village’s chief and leader, shook his head several times. His expression was grave, and he looked very tired.

Yagudo’s house was built of sun-dried brick. The door and windows were square and open, and the room was fresh and airy. The culture in this village was somewhere between nomadic and settled ranching; half of the buildings that could be called houses were simple things made of sun-dried brick, while the remaining half were tents made from thick cloth.

Some houses had been reinforced with wood or had built-in floors. Yagudo’s house also served as the reception room for the whole village, a place where visitors from the outside world were welcomed. As a result, it was twice as big as the houses around it, and it was composed of several square rooms built around a central courtyard.

Leonardo’s party was in a large, five-meter-square room in that house, talking with Yagudo about the disturbance that had just occurred.

“What sort of stories have you heard, Sir Yagudo?”

No matter whom he was talking to, Elias was always sociable and polite. In response to the question, Yagudo stroked his goatlike beard two or three times, then began to speak, remembering as he went.

“They say uncanny beings possessed by evil spirits have begun turning up in the Aorsoi wasteland. They call them ‘plague demons.’”

“I see.”

The view outside the window was gradually turning wine-red. Inside the room, Yagudo’s elderly wife had already fed the hearth fire and was boiling water.

“The plague demons appear in the wilderness. They’re said to be the survivors of destroyed villages, or lunatics, or possessed by devils. If the flocks are out at pasture, they’ll steal sheep. They kill the sheep right there and eat them. Because of the way they look, they’re called evil spirits or plague demons.”

The chieftain’s voice was low and hoarse.

“However, they don’t seem to attack villagers. They pass right by people as if they can’t even see them. That isn’t to say they don’t rampage. Some have seen them drunk on blood in the wilderness, as if they’ve gone mad. I also hear that, when they find an Adventurer, they attack them.”

Leonardo gave a small nod.

If the “Gnoll” he’d seen on the status screen had been the truth, then the situation wasn’t impossible to explain.

Gnolls really were vicious demihumans, but they didn’t attack People of the Earth. This wasn’t out of goodwill; it was because they were cunning and cowardly. They knew that, if they attacked a Person of the Earth, the whole group would take steps to defend against them. Those beasts tended to go after their livestock, not the People themselves.

On the other hand, if they saw an Adventurer, they would actively attack them. They knew that People of the Earth would run if they let them go, but they seemed to be aware that Adventurers were “enemies” who had come to drive them away.

If that boy had been a gnoll, it made sense that he’d attacked Kanami and had then attacked the rest of them. To gnolls, People of the Earth were mere insects, not worth attacking.

However, although that might explain why it had attacked Leonardo’s group, it didn’t explain why it had looked human.

“Sir Yagudo. We hadn’t heard of plague demons before. Have there been tales of them in this region for a very long time?”

“No, not at all. It hasn’t even been three months since we first heard of them ourselves. They appeared real suddenly,” the old man responded to Elias.

“In that case, was that boy, um…”

“Was he a member of this village?”

The answer to Kanami and Coppélia’s respective questions was “No.”

The boy did have the characteristics of a Person of the Earth from this region, but he apparently hadn’t been from this village.

The assailant himself was asleep in a corner of this same large room, wrapped in a blanket. In addition to fixing his abnormal status, the healing spell Coppélia had cast on him had recovered his split right arm, but he still hadn’t regained consciousness.

To Leonardo, the boy didn’t seem dangerous anymore. Most importantly, his status had stabilized so that his name was always Sejin, his level was 2, and his class was Settler. From the look of his sleeping face, he was no different from any other Person of the Earth boy, to the point where that buggy status seemed nightmarish.

“…That boy…”

“Coppélia guarantees that the boy is normal.”

Yagudo continued to examine the boy’s face carefully. There was no disgust in his expression, only pity.

“Do you suppose he was taken from some other village and is considered missing there?”

“There’s no telling. The boy’s boots are very worn, and his clothes are torn and ragged. It looks as if he’s traveled quite a long distance. I think he may have been wandering for several months.”

At Yagudo’s words, Kanami nodded.

From her attitude, Leonardo suspected that Yagudo’s guess might have matched some information she held and convinced her of something. However, Elias shrugged, and from the look of his expression, that wasn’t the case. In other words, she was just nodding.

They asked Yagudo several detailed questions after that, but he had no more information for them.

When Kanami put her innate charms to work, Yagudo gladly shared his provisions with them. Of course they gave him some gold coins in exchange, but Leonardo and the others were Adventurers, and as far as they were concerned, it wasn’t much money. Besides, in a remote village like this, they were just happy that someone had given them provisions at all.

However, after talking it over among themselves, Kanami’s group decided to stay in the village for a few days. This was because, according to Chief Yagudo, traveling merchants were due to visit in a few days’ time.

After hearing what Kanami had said, Leonardo had started wanting to make for the Japanese server, too. The idea of solving the mystery of the Catastrophe was so ridiculous that it just didn’t seem real to him, but the idea of the new patch was appealing. If he leveled his combat skills up past what he currently had, he’d be safer. That would definitely come in handy when it was time for him to return to his home across the world.

That said, the land of Aorsoi was a primitive wasteland. There was no guarantee that what had happened in the ruins wouldn’t happen again. It was probably too naïve to think that, even without information, as long as they went in the direction of the rising sun, they’d eventually reach Japan.

In any case, Thekkek was a small village, and the villagers almost never traveled. Naturally, the information they had was limited. The party wanted to buy consumable items, and it was clear that traveling peddlers would have more information about road conditions and similar things. On a journey across this vast continent, that information would be more precious than food.

Leonardo’s group had decided that, if traders were coming, getting information would be worth waiting a few days.

When making that decision, the party went out to the stable to discuss it. Naturally, this was so that KR could participate. KR seemed to have good hearing; even from the stable, which was next door, he’d followed what Yagudo had said.

Since they were going to have a discussion, it was convenient that he already knew what was going on, but KR was pretty cross. From what he said, a mare in the same stable had been making eyes at him.

“Check you out, KR! You’re so popular.”

“Hey, Kanami. ‘Popular’ is a much finer strawberry quartz charm… And I don’t want to hear that from you.”

Kanami had pouted over that retort and had been ready to argue further, but they’d ignored her and had their discussion. As a result, they’d finalized their decision to stay in the village for a few days. The fact that Yagudo had offered to provide the group with lodging had been a major factor. Leonardo and Elias were sharing one room, while Kanami and Coppélia shared another.

Naturally, KR would be in the stable, and although he’d complained, Leonardo and Elias had smoothed things over and managed to get him to agree… Although Kanami called it a “love hotel” and was very close to getting kicked by KR for a few moments there.

“Still, what do you suppose that was?”

“……”

At Leonardo’s words, his companions fell silent. He hadn’t expected to get an answer, though; he’d never seen a status display like that one before. All he could think was that it had been some kind of bug.

“I haven’t run into a phenomenon like that before.”

“Nothing springs to mind from the oral traditions of the fairy tribe, either.”

An unknown bug.

The idea made Leonardo shudder.

Sejin was a Person of the Earth, but could anyone guarantee that bug would occur only in People of the Earth? It was true that Adventurers seemed to be immortal in this world. Even if they fell in battle, they were sent to a temple and resurrected.

However, if they turned into something like that boy… If they ended up as something like that, could they still be called “immortal”?

Say there was a being that was warped that way, then simply did not die. For this world, that being would be a disaster. For the person in question, it would be an endless nightmare, a living hell.

“Is that the sort of ‘something’ that can be handled by casting an abnormal status recovery spell?”

The question had come from KR, and Coppélia answered it.

“Coppélia has determined that that is not the case. After all, by the time Coppélia chanted the spell in question, the status display had already returned to normal.”

“In that case, Leonardo’s paralysis attack served to cure the illness.”

“I think that idea’s off base, too.”

Leonardo took a moment to think, putting a hand to his chin. “My weapons are pretty good, but all they do is inflict additional flame damage. The technique I used, Paralyze Blow, doesn’t have any special auxiliary effects besides paralysis, either.”

“……”

At this, even KR, who tended to talk a little too much, went quiet. This was only natural. Absolutely nobody wanted to end up like that.

If all they had to do was deal with it, the matter was simple.

It was true that demihuman monsters were found across a wide range of levels. However, even if the range was wide, they were gnolls. The highest their levels really got was 70. To Leonardo and the others, they were nothing to be afraid of.

However, unlike combat abilities, there was something about that eerie illness that awoke a primitive terror deep within their hearts.

Wide, staring, lusterless eyes. A mouth from which canine teeth protruded and bloody saliva dripped endlessly. Four limbs, bent and warped, trying to force a human body to move like an animal. All these things were cloaked in a dark, ominous aura.

Even Leonardo didn’t want to fight that.

“Well, calm down. Look, it’s not like there are a ton of those out there.”

“That’s probably true. The villagers here said that was the first one they’ve run into. If there were a lot of them, more people would have seen them. That’s only logical.”

Kanami had spoken as if trying to smooth things over, and KR picked up where she’d left off.

Even as Leonardo nodded, agreeing with them, he didn’t quite feel satisfied. He had a hunch that the incident wouldn’t end just like that and that they would wind up getting more deeply involved.

He was right.

5

It was true all over this world, but at night in Aorsoi, the sky was particularly clear. Possibly because of the dry air, the sky was high and incredibly transparent, and the stars glittered like crushed white sand.

Unlike the night skies of Midtown, which were polluted with smoke and neon, there was no light from the earth, so even tiny stars that gave off a very faint light shone proudly against the thick cloth of the heavens.

This was night in Thekkek.

Somewhere, an insect sang in a voice like a shaken silver bell.

The sun had been down for two hours. Even though it wasn’t yet late enough to call it “night,” the village was already quiet. Orange light seeped from the square windows in the sun-baked brick walls, which were fitted only with wooden shutters.

It was about the time when most families had probably finished their evening meals.

Leaving the shed that had been assigned to their group, Leonardo emerged into the cool night wind.

As he stepped out onto the dirt road, a sky full of stars unfolded above him.

Even though it was a September night, a cold wind blew across the plateau.

Yet Leonardo was an Adventurer, so the cold didn’t affect him that much. On the contrary, the bracing air was pleasant.

In the midst of that night air, Leonardo walked through the village. He wasn’t plotting anything in particular, but his footsteps made almost no sound. This was partly because, since he was an Assassin, the movement was habit for Leonardo, and partly because he didn’t want to disturb the still night and its peaceful-looking village.

The settlement didn’t have an especially solid defensive wall. The only thing encircling it was a fence meant to keep the sheep together and to prevent animals from getting in. Beyond that, there was a region of cultivated fields. That said, even if they were “cultivated,” the soil was rough and dry, and it was enough to make even amateurs worry that it wasn’t suitable for farming.

Leonardo climbed up onto a large boulder beside the road that left the village to the south and sat down.

The rock was huge. In terms of height, it was about two meters. It was a funny shape, as if it had been polished all over, softening its edges, and its flat top seemed bigger than a bedroom.

Shepherds apparently used the rock as a lookout post. There was a threadbare cloth spread in the spot that overlooked the upper plains.

Far in the distance, the mountains stood like a folding screen.

He couldn’t say where they started or ended. The mountains ran to the edge of what he could see, and they really did look like the wall of the world. While they were eating dinner, elderly Yagudo had told them that the mountains were called Tian Mai. He’d said it meant “the seat of heaven.”

In the moonlight, even at night, the snow on the ridgelines glimmered slightly. I see, he thought. The sublime atmosphere about them did make them seem like heaven’s chair.

The wasteland of Aorsoi spread all the way to the foot of those mountains. There were patches of brush in places, and some things which could safely be called forests, but at this point, all of it slept in the damp night wind.

With the light crunch of footsteps on dry earth, Coppélia approached.

Leonardo registered her presence before he could see her. He turned easily and looked down at her small figure from the top of the boulder. She came up to the big rock with ladylike steps, then looked up at Leonardo.

“Are you acting as a sentry?” she asked.

“Nope,” he replied.

This was a People of the Earth village. It wasn’t like taking a nap in the depths of a dungeon. He wasn’t planning to get careless, but there was probably no need for the sort of wariness that would require a night watchman.

Leonardo simply hadn’t been able to sleep this early, so he’d slipped out of his room. He was a true New Yorker, and he loved staying up late.

Besides, he’d needed time to think.

Talking with friends was fun, and he didn’t hate cooperating with companions to get jobs done, but if he didn’t get some time alone, he got depressed. Leonardo knew being a geek meant having a place like that somewhere in your heart.

“Is that so.”

“Yep.”

The conversation petered out.

Aorsoi’s September night wind slipped past the two of them, caressing them.

They heard the low whinny of a horse and the songs of insects. A cloud covered the moon, then passed by.

Quite a long time had passed, but Coppélia only stood there quietly. She seemed to be gazing at the mountains that towered in the distance, the same ones Leonardo had been looking at a little while ago.

“Want to come up?”

“Yes.”

After hearing Coppélia’s response, Leonardo stretched out a hand.

She took it, and he pulled her up to the top of the rounded boulder. She brushed the dust away with her fingertips a few times, straightened up properly so that her skirt wouldn’t get wrinkled, and sat down.

Leonardo didn’t speak to her, and Coppélia didn’t pester him with unnecessary words, either. The night was quiet, and the only noises—the low hums of insects and the rustling from the wind—seemed to protect the stillness around the pair.

More time flowed past.

The stars twinkled, and in the distance, they heard the drowsy-sounding bleat of a sheep.

“You’re not bored?”

“No, Coppélia is not bored.”

Leonardo felt slightly bewildered.

As a geek, he didn’t have much experience talking to women. If he’d been doing something game related—in other words, fighting or training to improve his skills, doing some sort of production activity, or pursuing a quest—he would have had something to talk about, but situations like this were outside his area of expertise.

However, on the other hand, he didn’t feel uncomfortable.

He was all alone with a girl, a situation in which feeling stressed would have been perfectly understandable, but he was calm, and he didn’t feel ill at ease.

“What did you come out here to do, Coppélia?”

“To hunt.”

“Hunt?” Leonardo asked.

The term hunting wasn’t unusual. It was actually pretty common in MMOs. In general, it meant defeating monsters in battle. The narrow definition was taking down single creatures to get trophies, as opposed to defeating quest-specific monsters.

“Yes. Coppélia intended to go to the plains to the south of the village and search for prey.”

“Uh, it’s night.”

“In terms of nocturnal monsters, Coppélia determined that that would be convenient.”

“What about sleep?”

“Coppélia does not need much sleep.”

Leonardo was a little startled, but he shook it off. She might be telling the truth. Every now and then, there was that sort of player in Elder Tales. They typically thought, rather than wasting time, it was better to subjugate even minor monsters and get a little money.

Coppélia hadn’t looked like that much of a battle fiend, but experience had taught Leonardo that players’ appearances and main classes didn’t necessarily match their personalities.

And so the words “Want some company?” came out naturally.

They’d encountered monsters a few times on their way from the Tekeli Ruins to this village, and the average level had been around 20. They’d be no match for level-90 Coppélia, even though she was a Recovery class and low on attack power.

However, if they were emphasizing efficiency, since he was an attack class, Leonardo thought things would go much better if the two of them worked together.

“That will not be necessary. Coppélia’s plans have changed.”

“They…have, huh?”

“Yes.”

Coppélia’s answer was matter-of-fact. He couldn’t pick up any particular emotion from her tone or expression.

If she said it wasn’t necessary, then it probably wasn’t. Leonardo promptly gave up on pursuing the matter further. The question of whether a player earned money or just killed time should be up to them. If Coppélia wanted him to keep her company, he would, but he had no intention of being pushy in a misguided attempt to be nice.

Leonardo got to his feet.

Coppélia’s eyes followed him, but when he told her, “Don’t worry about it,” the indigo-haired girl nodded, seeming satisfied.

Leonardo tested the texture of the rock with his toes. It felt massive, heavy, and hard. Reassured that it would be all right to jump around a bit, he slowly leveled his swords.

The technique he activated from the icon that surfaced in his mind was Deadly Dance. He thrust out his left hand sharply. From that stance, with a shrill sound cloaked in cold air, the sword in his right hand flashed. The recast time for this skill was one second. A second later, he visualized selecting the icon again. Once again, he swung his right hand. This attack was sharper than the previous one.

Deadly Dance was a unique skill. When used back-to-back, its power gradually increased. It reached its maximum level on the eighth attack, and at that point, the damage inflicted was roughly three times what it was on the first attack.

The first attack inflicted only as much damage as a normal attack, and because of its stance—with the left hand thrust out and the hips lowered—its damage efficiency was fairly bad. If you planned to stop with one attack, you could inflict damage more effectively by using some other special skill. This attack skill was based on the assumption that you would be attacking several times in a row.

Leonardo repeated this a few times, putting his body through its paces. Over the past few months, he’d grown completely used to the sharp motions, and nothing about them felt strange. However, he sensed that this time would be a breakthrough.

Movements he wasn’t used to made his elbows and knees ache sharply.

Now that he had an Adventurer’s body, both his physical strength and his stamina had greatly increased. It wasn’t just a boost; he felt as if he were a completely different person. After all, this Adventurer body was exactly what Leonardo had dreamed of: the body of a hero.

However, when he put stress on muscles from angles he didn’t normally use, apparently heat did build up.

“Healing Light.”

Leonardo had been rubbing his elbow, and Coppélia chanted an instant recovery spell for him. Adventurers’ sturdy bodies would recover from a problem of that level in about ten minutes, but even so, the healing spell drew the heat away, and it felt good.

“Do you wish to be healed?”

“No, I’ll be fine in a few minutes.”

In response to Coppélia’s words, Leonardo thanked her, stretching as he spoke. As he spread his legs again and lowered his hips into the stance, he asked her a question:

“What do you think about the new patch?”

“Coppélia hears it has been introduced on the Japanese server.”

“Um… Okay, so, what do you think about going to that server?”

“As it is Master’s wish, it has been assigned a high priority.”

The conversation really didn’t seem to mesh with Leonardo.

Between Elias and Coppélia, this party was well stocked with mysterious characters. Well, to be accurate, Elias wasn’t human, so his eccentricity made sense. Besides, the greatest source of bewilderment was Kanami. It wasn’t often that you met somebody that loony. Leonardo thought that, since Kanami was the one who’d brought these members together, they were pretty much bound to be weird.

That said, he was completely overlooking the fact that he’d been included in that selection.

“About that ‘Master’…”

“Yes. It refers to Kanami.”

According to what he’d heard that afternoon, Kanami had spotted Coppélia fighting on the plain and had made her a companion. Maybe Kanami had saved her life or something, then. Over these past few days, he’d noticed that the attitude Coppélia took toward the woman was different from the one she used with her other companions. It was deferential, almost as if she was an actual maid.

Leonardo was open-minded about the way others chose to play, particularly with regard to how they spoke or dressed. After all, he himself habitually wore a cartoon hero costume, a green hooded mask and suit. During the game, everybody had the right to be a hero or anything they wanted.

For that reason, he had no objections to Coppélia’s attitude.

“What sort of person is Kanami?”

“”

Up until now, Coppélia had answered Leonardo’s questions instantly, but for the first time, she looked as if she was thinking. Leonardo stretched, slowly swinging his swords, and waited for her to speak.

Even he didn’t know how he could be this calm.

He didn’t think he’d really seen a cute adolescent girl since high school, and a memory of having talked companionably with one at this distance wouldn’t even have shown up in a recommender system. Even so, right now, he didn’t feel any more tension than he did when he was changing out a PC graphics board. He didn’t want to scratch up the terminal, so he had to work slowly and carefully, without hurrying—it was that sort of tension. Either that, or it was a mood that resembled consideration for others, which would have been even stranger.

“Master is like first light.”

“Huh?”

Coppélia pointed at the eastern sky.

“Right now, beyond that horizon, the sun is racing this way. It has only just set, but tomorrow morning at four thirty-eight, it will begin to pale.”

Coppélia’s eyes reflected the night sky, where the moon had just risen. They were an endlessly deep blue.

“At night, the sky is dark. Before dawn, it gradually begins to turn deep purple in the east. After purple comes indigo. Then ultramarine. It gradually grows more blue, but there is still no light. However, the blue alone is proof enough, and no one doubts that morning is on its way… That is the sort of person Master is.”

Leonardo didn’t really understand what she meant, but it was clear that Coppélia recognized Kanami’s value.

Storing that lone bit of information in his memory, Leonardo began tracing the movements of Deadly Dance once more.

6

There was a band that prowled through the depths of that same night, holding its breath.

It was a scouting party from the guild Lelang Wolf Cavalry.

There were three members. All were highly trained level-90 Adventurers.

“Well?”

“…South, I’d say.”

The Swashbuckler, who’d been crawling along the ground in order to investigate, answered briefly, then closed the shutter on his portable hand lantern. The item was built around a Hunan Rainbow Pearl, a magic item that gave off eternal light. It was one of the production unit’s recent creations: a piece of handiwork constructed with a mirror to amplify the light and a shutter to cover it.

Having checked the footprints again, the group mounted the Great Wolves that had been waiting nearby. These creatures, which resembled three-meter-long wolves, were mounts seen on the Chinese server.

Seated on leather saddles, the three scouts raced south over the dark steppe.

Traveling on horseback at night was difficult. The moon was visible, but even so, the bumps and dips of the terrain easily blended into shadow, and one wrong step could break a horse’s ankle. In an environment like that, Great Wolves had an overwhelming advantage over horses.

However, they hadn’t chosen to ride Great Wolves specifically because they were tracking at night. As a rule, all the members of the Lelang Wolf Cavalry guild rode the enormous mounts as the guild’s trademark.

The Wolf Cavalry had originally been based in Dadu, the Chinese server’s central city. However, after the Catastrophe, public order in Dadu had deteriorated badly. Three guilds that called themselves the Kings of China had fought one another; each of them had occupied important town facilities to hinder the others, and the city had fallen into chaos.

Zhu Huan, the very prescient leader of the Cavalry, had decided to leave Dadu early on. Their mount situation had also proved fortunate, because they had no trouble traveling long distances: Upon departing, all 480 of them had stuffed their property into bags and cleared out of their guild hall.

After that, they’d gone steadily westward. It had taken them a month to settle down in Shimanaikui. They’d established a guild hall there, and although it had taken them a month to stabilize, the Lelang Wolf Cavalry had found a place where they could rest easy. They were probably one of the luckier guilds on the Chinese server.

At present, the Wolf Cavalry acted as traveling guards.

In the Qing dynasty, this job had been known as biao shi, or “bodyguard.” They accompanied People of the Earth transport units as security personnel, protecting their cargo, property, and lives from monsters and bandits. On the other hand, if they failed in their mission, they paid their client money in order to fulfill their liability for damages.

By acting as traveling guards, they’d made a business out of one of the game’s most familiar quest duties.

Shimanaikui, which was known locally as “the City of Mare’s Milk,” wasn’t small. It had a resident population of about fifteen thousand people, and it was also a regional center of commerce.

It was likely that it had originally flourished as a relay base for merchant caravans: The town’s main streets were lined with shops selling dried provisions and curiosities from both East and West, and the city was rather wealthy.

However, since it wasn’t a player town, few Adventurers were around. It had a temple—which had been the Lelang Wolf Cavalry’s biggest reason for choosing it as a base—but there was no bank. As a result, the guild’s members kept most of their property in the guild hall’s safe and had the guild protect it.

Because of these restrictions, the Cavalry was more like a family than other guilds, and its horizontal bonds were stronger. The People of the Earth saw this, and it helped generate more confidence in them.

The guild generally sent out single parties in response to requests for guards. These parties consisted of six members: a warrior to act as a vanguard shield, a healer to recover the warrior and manage the party as a whole, and a good balance of magical and physical attack classes.

Depending on the request, the routes caravans took differed, and member selections were adjusted to suit the degree of difficulty. However, when it came to journeying over land-based trade routes, there were almost no threats in this region that six Wolf Cavalry members couldn’t drive away.

While on the one hand they worked as guards, on the other, the guild leader Zhu Huan was known for sending many scouts out in all directions.

Adventurers could be excellent scouts if they felt like it. The Weapon Attack classes, such as Assassins and Swashbucklers, had stealthy movement skills, while Magic Attack classes often had lights or special sight for seeing in the dark and could use summoned creatures that were convenient for long-distance reconnaissance.

The fact that all members rode Great Wolves, which were good on wilderness terrain and in the mountains, was also a big plus.

These patrols had begun as a project intended to keep the members from getting rusty during the times when they weren’t handling requests, and they’d had the secondary effects of improving public order in the vicinity of Shimanaikui and of bringing lots of information to the Cavalry.

By the time a month had passed after they’d set up shop in their new city, the People of the Earth had acknowledged the Lelang Wolf Cavalry as an important part of the town.

After they’d sprinted for a while, the three mounts caught the scent of water in the darkness.

It was probably a tributary of the Railnorth.

A little while after they’d come up against that tributary, the three of them spotted marks on the riverbank. The grass at the river’s edge had been trampled, and it was black and wet.

It wasn’t water. It was the blood of an animal.

“That’s a lot,” the Swashbuckler leader muttered, patting the neck of his wolf, who was whining at the smell of blood. Yet, the blood was already almost dry. Whomever they’d been, the ones who’d left this place had gone quite some time ago. Even so, the party was careful. Instead of using a bright light, they continued to use the shuttered hand lantern.

The group belonged to a specially assembled reconnaissance unit.

The recon unit was a large faction whose objective was to gather information in the southwest. When all its teams were combined, it had more than sixty members. The main unit was slowly moving due west, consolidating information as it went.

While their Cleric opened a telechat to the main unit, the leader explored the area further. Overturned rocks. Muddy soil that had been trampled firm. The unit they’d been chasing seemed to have met up with more of their companions—gnolls—here.

The creature that had been slaughtered had probably been a sheep or a deer, something along those lines. After having a bloody meal here, the group had set off again. The number of gnolls that had crossed the tributary had been more than twenty, less than thirty.

The leader, whose subclass was Tracker, determined this and informed the Cleric. Their report would be shared with the other surveillance teams, which, like this three-man unit, were scattered within a twenty-kilometer radius of the main one.

They were pursuing a gnoll tribe.

The Catastrophe seemed to have had a major influence on monster habitats, alongside everything else. On their journey from Dadu (which was on the eastern coast of the continent) to this area, the Lelang Wolf Cavalry had seen many monster tribes on the move.

The gnoll group might be part of that. About two weeks ago, the Lelang Wolf Cavalry had detected their movements—in connection with the destruction of a few caravans—and had planned and launched a large-scale surveillance operation.

If there were several hundred gnolls, this reconnaissance unit alone would be enough to annihilate them. Even if it was a scouting unit, its members had simply been chosen because of their tracking skills, and their fighting abilities were in no way inferior to those of the guard or combat units.

The Chinese server had a lot of light users, but the Lelang Wolf Cavalry was a hard-line guild, and the majority of its members were level 90.

Even if the gnoll group ended up requiring a raid, the possibility of sending in a specialized subjugation unit was on the table. In that case, the guild leader, Zhu Huan, who was currently on standby in Shimanaikui, would also come to the front.

“! Right. Understood!”

The young Cleric’s attitude had abruptly turned anxious, and tension ran through the group.

“What is it?”

“They’ve lost contact with Team Four, the unit that went southwest ahead of us.”

“Up ahead, huh?”

The Swashbuckler glared into the darkness. Had they run into some kind of trouble? According to their last contact, Team Four should have been a few kilometers west of their group.

“The main unit is requesting confirmation.”

They didn’t even need to think about it. They were the closest team, so they’d have to investigate. The Swashbuckler leader gave the order, and the three of them mounted again.

Once their masters were on their backs, the Great Wolves raced off into the darkness without waiting for a signal.

In the Lelang Wolf Cavalry, mounts were practically family, and by now they didn’t need orders from their riders. Picking up on their masters’ tension, they ran at full speed through the dark night without a whimper.

The wind that sliced at their ears was painful. It was still September—practically summer. And yet, the wind that blew down from the high mountains was cold and sharp. Running through it after sundown only made it worse.

The Lelang Wolf Cavalry was used to this sort of mission, and they’d turned the collars of their fur-trimmed jackets up and buried their faces in their mounts’ necks. As the beasts between their arms leapt, their temperature was high, and if they buried themselves in their fur, a little cold wouldn’t bother them.

Before long, about the time the moon began its descent from the top of the sky, huge pillars came into view, standing black on the horizon.

The distance was so great that the pillars looked small, but when they thought about it, they thought it had to be incredibly tall. Since there was nothing to compare them to, it was difficult to guess with any accuracy, but they seemed to be easily over thirty meters in height.

These things—which towered over all else in a world with no modern structures, not to mention in the middle of a wasteland—had a surreal immensity that made them visible even from the distant horizon.

As they drew nearer, the full extent of their imposing appearance was revealed.

They might have been made of steel; the structure looked like three poles standing together, and it didn’t seem to have an interior. This was why they hadn’t called them buildings—in other words, towers—but pillars. They looked as spiky as ancient weapons, and they almost seemed to be menacing their surroundings.

Ruined Colonnade Tonnesgrave.

The recon team leader muttered the name to himself, almost silently.

There were no accurate maps of this region.

To People of the Earth merchants, routes were everything. They didn’t need detailed maps of an entire region in order to conduct sales along those routes. In addition, the more seasoned the merchant, the less likely they were to carelessly let their knowledge and experience—their property—leave the confines of their own head.

Adventurers did need maps, and they actually created them, but Aorsoi was a savage land that they hadn’t really touched. They didn’t have enough information to make maps yet, and at the very least, there were no completed maps.

However, collecting information that would lead to map-making was one of this scout team’s regular duties. Due to his Tracker subclass, the Swashbuckler who led the team had patrolled this region many times, and he was well versed in the local rumors. As a result, he immediately understood that what he was seeing was the Ruined Colonnade that appeared in the old people’s stories.

“Stop!”

At his words, his two companions instantly halted.

In the hollow up ahead on their right, he’d seen a shadow move slightly.

When he strained his eyes, he could make out some gnolls. Far more than a hundred of them, perhaps over a thousand, were advancing through the hollow in complete silence.

For a moment, the three waited with bated breath upon the backs of their wolves, but it seemed they’d gone unnoticed: By nature, when gnolls discovered Adventurers, they attacked with insane ferocity. That said, as long as they were on these particular mounts, they weren’t in that much danger.

This was due to the difference in speed. Even if they got surrounded, they’d probably be able to get away. However, if that happened, it would be hard to continue their reconnaissance, and that was a disadvantage. Needless to say, if possible, they’d prefer not to be spotted.

“Why are there so many of them?”

The young Taomancer spoke to him in a whisper, and he shook his head.

He had no idea.

However, for now, it seemed clear that Team Four had encountered these things and run into trouble. After a little hesitation, the leader signaled the Cleric. It would make things choppy, but for now, they should probably send in a report.

“Tell them exactly what we’re seeing and retreat about a hundred meters.”

Watching his comrades’ Wolves slink backward, their bodies low to the ground, the leader leapt down from his own mount. After lightly tapping his loyal partner’s wet nose, he began to crawl forward on his hands and knees.

He wanted to get just a little closer, to see what the gnolls were doing and where they were headed. All else aside, it struck him as very strange that such a large group was advancing without so much as a cough.

Activating a Tracker special skill, he concealed his presence, then moved forward, taking care not to let his shape show on the ridge of the hill.

He approached the gnolls, taking quite a long time.

The hyena-like demihumans, dribbling saliva, seemed to be gazing at the pillars on the horizon as they advanced, their eyes filled with a sort of starving desire. They looked like opium addicts, and there was something eerie about them that froze the man’s spine.

His instincts were screaming at him to run.

However, he forced them down and continued his approach. In another ten meters, he’d be close enough to check their statuses.

Even as he dripped with greasy sweat, he went closer, and as he’d expected, the statuses belonged to monsters: regular gnolls and Gnoll War Mages. That wasn’t unusual; within races, demihuman monsters were often divided into several classes. Goblin and orc tribes included warrior and priest ranks, for instance.

The gnolls in front of him were Darkmancers, assault troops, and Wolf-Fang Captains, and their levels were mostly between 60 and 70.

He had the information he wanted.

Scouting any longer wouldn’t just be useless; it would be dangerous. If it came to fighting a hostile group of this size, they’d need the entire guild, or at the very least, a legion raid force. A three-man scout unit couldn’t do a thing.

On that thought, he slowly turned back, intending to tell the others to withdraw.

However, what he saw was a moon as sharp as a grim reaper’s scythe—and an enormous Black Dragon descending with that moon at its back.

In the midst of a lukewarm fountain, his vision was dyed monochrome, then immediately cut out.