1

The light of daybreak shone down upon Leonardo.

In that flat glow, the wasteland looked terribly bleached out.

Kanami and the other two had headed for the ravine.

Saying they were going to warn the village of Thekkek about the emergency, Chun Lu and Ju Ha had also left without waiting for dawn.

Leonardo sat alone in the wasteland of Aorsoi, feeling as if he’d swallowed rocks. Before long, the indigo dawn passed, and the sun poked its face up over the horizon, but the day didn’t feel all that bright or warm.

The light illuminated all of creation impartially, but it only served to make the world look counterfeit.

In a world flooded with that luminosity, Leonardo kept thinking.

Even now, he couldn’t support Kanami’s course of action at all. The fact that he couldn’t understand it made it even worse. He had no idea what there was to be gained from confronting an army of more than ten thousand.

He just didn’t know what her eyes were focused on.

People of the Earth were People of the Earth. They weren’t human.

Couldn’t she understand that logic? They weren’t human. Every time that question rose in his heart, echo-like, Leonardo desperately shook it off, trying to convince himself that he was right.

“There we go.”

“Huh?”

When he turned around, he saw KR. He still looked like a beautiful white horse, but he’d folded all four of his elegant limbs and was lying on his belly on the ground, relaxing almost like an enormous canine.

“KR… You didn’t go?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“I mean, you’re… You and Kanami go way back, right?”

“Sure, but… Well, I’ve got something on my mind, too.”

Eyes half-closed, KR spoke lazily, as if he was savoring the temperature of the air.

Leonardo couldn’t agree with Kanami’s group.

What they were doing was folly, throwing their lives away for no reason, and he couldn’t go along with that. However, if asked whether he could continue the journey east alone, he had serious doubts he was capable. As if he’d seen straight through Leonardo’s hesitation, KR glanced at him with those intelligent eyes.

“What’re you going to do from here on out?”

“What am I…?”

He tossed a question at Leonardo, and sure enough, the man wasn’t able to answer it.

If he’d known the answer to that, Leonardo thought he probably would have been able to say a little more to Coppélia.

A capital collection bot.

That was what Coppélia had said.

What were bots, anyway? The history of the MMO-type online games that were Elder Tales’ predecessors went back to the 1970s. At first, due to poor communication channels and computer performance and to the cost of those facilities, the user demographic was small, and this had made the genre a minor hobby. However, as the Internet flourished, it had undergone major development.

In the early 1990s, ambitious titles that had formed the foundation of current MMOs were released, and from then up until the 2000s, they’d acquired many fans.

MMOs were characterized by the experience of multitudes of users interacting with one another within the game world. In such games, it was routine for the owners of items to either give or sell them to other players who wanted them.

When it came to selling items, at first people had used the in-game currency or had bartered other items for them, as the developers had assumed they would. However, as the popularity of MMOs heated up, players who wanted to buy high-rarity items and in-game currency with real-world money appeared.

Whether a thing is real or imaginary, if there is demand for it, prices will be set, and it will evolve into a market. The information that movable property in MMOs could have real-world monetary value rapidly became the new understanding in the neighborhood of the Internet.

Resources in the game had more value in the real world than most of the still-young players thought.

In the early 2000s, when the scale of economic activities in currently popular MMOs was stated in real currency and revealed to be larger than the GDPs of some small real-world countries, the trend became known around the world. The interior of the game world was semi-independent from the real world, but since it was linked to that world through the desires of its players, perfect freedom wasn’t an option.

In this way, the sight of in-game currency and items being bought and sold with real money became routine.

Of course, this practice was criticized for warping the normal game experience, and a significant percentage of game administration companies exposed it constantly. However, as long as there were people who wanted it and people who sought to profit by it, exposure was a Sisyphean task, and it wasn’t possible to prevent it completely.

Bots were a kind of program that had been thought up against the background of this era. They were a type of autonomous AI, and they were used to run an MMO character without a player.

Naturally, they weren’t capable of the sort of complex actions players performed, but they could continue simple, programmed actions for long periods of time. Bots were characterized by the ability to play in ways that humans were physically and mentally unable to handle, such as continuing to collect money and items in the same hunting ground for twenty-four hours straight.

There were a few players who used these bots on an individual basis, but the vast majority were used by traders.

In order to create points of connection with the daylight world, the underground society based in China and Southeast Asia used bots to win myriad items and money in MMO games. After all, neither taxes nor criminal investigations could reach them inside an MMO. It was the perfect place to collect untraceable capital and to convert underground money into respectable funds.

Since these bots ravaged hunting grounds and the game environment, serious MMO fans had come to loathe them.

A capital collection bot, set up in the MMO by a money-laundering group headquartered in China—that was what Coppélia’s words had meant.

If she was a bot, her vaguely mechanical way of dealing with things, her blindly repetitive hunting, and probably even her unconditional obedience to Kanami made sense.

It wasn’t a big deal.

She was a mechanical doll, just like the People of the Earth.

“Forget me, KR, what about you? You’re sure you don’t need to go?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It…doesn’t?”

“Kanami’s— She’s going to do what she wants, you know? If it gets her killed, she won’t have any regrets about it. She’s got a Pollyanna brain. The girl’s a serious pain in the butt.”

“Why is she so reckless? That idiot.”

“That’s not recklessness.”

“?”

KR’s laid-back attitude always came off kindly.

“It’s…all the power she’s got. She’s accepting everything with all her might. That’s what it is. That’s important. It’s kind of sad, isn’t it? Kanami has no concept of gears or brakes. That’s the sort of person she is.”

“So, she’s dumb.”

“Well, I’m not saying she isn’t.”

KR said the words with a snort, but he looked satisfied.

“Do you think she can win?”

“I think she’s got a good shot at it. I think that other young lady’s the one who’s worried. Kanami may not look it, but she’s got plenty of raid experience.”

“……”

“Did somebody say something to you?”

Back then…

When Leonardo had caught Coppélia’s wrist, she’d confessed to him that she was a bot. Leonardo’s words had frozen up on him, and she’d whispered to him in a transparent voice:

“In that village, Coppélia treated eighteen People of the Earth. She blessed forty-nine people. Coppélia did not know if either action had any effect. With regard to these actions, Coppélia was thanked three hundred nineteen times.”

Coppélia hadn’t said, And that’s why.

She’d only turned on her heel and followed Kanami.

He knew that. There was a thorny lump in Leonardo’s chest. A prickly, oppressive sensation. It irritated him and harassed him and made his chest heavy. It seemed to be urging him on.

The sensation was taking the beautiful wasteland of Aorsoi, illuminated by the flat morning light, and rotting it into a mess of hackneyed textures, and Leonardo knew what it was.

Those nasty, totally uncute, selfish, snotty little brats in Thekkek who hadn’t shown him the tiniest bit of consideration—it was the same sensation he’d gotten from them.

That prickly warmth had turned inside out and was raging inside Leonardo.

He knew.

He’d really known the whole time.

What would not the part-timer geek, but the unbeatable ninja-hero that Leonardo loved the most, do at a time like this? He’d known from the very beginning. After all, he idolized heroes more than anybody. He hadn’t even had to think about it: It was self-evident.

Leonardo was the one who’d been warped.

He’d been a coward.

He’d abandoned his hometown because he was afraid.

He’d hesitated to take the hand he’d been offered.

He’d had lots of warnings. This world was beautiful and abundant. They, the Adventurers, were the ones who hadn’t admitted that, who’d behaved insolently, and who’d turned it into a lawless wasteland. Leonardo and others like him had taken something that was correct and had ruined it with their selfish assumptions. They were the worst.

What would he, the coolest guy in the world, do?

He wouldn’t just stand around in a situation like this, looking on and doing nothing.

So what if the other people were machines or bots? He wouldn’t hesitate.

He wouldn’t blame his own cowardice on the other person’s value.

Master is a person like first light, Coppélia had said.

What had she meant, exactly?

Coppélia hadn’t said, Master is a person like the sun. First light was what came before the dawn. It was a sign that the sun was on its way. The messenger that slashed permanent darkness apart. It was a voice that said, It’s all right. Keep watching for just a little longer.

In that case, what was the “sun” that Kanami foretold? He didn’t know. He didn’t know, but that sun had shone into Coppélia’s soul. That was why she’d left on a journey with Kanami.

Leonardo turned it around, asking himself what he was. Not the sun; not first light, either. A gloomy, defeatist geek. However, He was different. He would probably leap over any darkness, bantering and cracking jokes as he went, and run off through the light. Leonardo knew.

The ambition inside Leonardo showed him his path.

If he thought he wanted to save something, then that meant the something was worth saving. Human, dog, cat, or bot, it didn’t matter.

On the contrary: Who cared about that stuff?

It wouldn’t hurt to have one more idiot who risked his life for AIs in the world, would it? Leonardo was a geek. However, he was a geek who worshipped heroes.

“I’m going.”

As Leonardo stood up, KR chuckled, deep in his throat.

“What? Got a problem with that? Huhn! If you want to laugh, go right ahead. Maybe my going won’t change anything, but I don’t plan to just shut up and let ’em hit me. I’ve got a new power, too.”

“No, I wouldn’t laugh. I’m not Indicus.”

KR got his white horse’s body to its feet, then stretched his neck out a long way and neighed. His voice echoed for a long time; the neigh shifted into a sound like birdsong, then into a high-density chant—and white light filled their surroundings.

“Things are heating up. Is this the endgame? It’s the endgame, right?”

When Leonardo opened his eyes again, squinting in the light, a man he didn’t know was standing there.

He was an elf, a skinny young man with his hair pulled back in a ponytail. His face was as pale as an invalid’s, and there was an entertained smile plastered over it. His equipment was unique: He was wearing a resplendent mantle with a tattered hem over a tracksuit. On top of that, he held two staffs, one in each hand. As magic-user equipment, staffs weren’t unusual, but using two of them at once was.

“Are you…KR?”

“Uh, yes?”

“—So you’re actually human?”

“What did you think I was?”

Snorting, the young man dexterously stuck his staffs into the ground, swung his now-free arms in circles, then stretched hugely. Considering the resulting, almost gratifying sounds, he seemed to have spent quite a long time hunkered down.

“How did you do that, and what was it?”

“Castling… You know: the emergency evasion spell that lets a caster switch places with a summoned servant creature.”

“What, that?!”

“I just teleported to this server from Japan.”

Leonardo was taken aback.

He’d been surprised by the fact that spells worked across server boundaries, too, but he was more startled by how versatile summoning magic was.

“All right, okay. Things are heating up. I’ll go with you.”

“Why?!”

“Well, this is interesting, isn’t it?”

“Don’t phrase that as a question.”

“I’ll make it a statement, then: This is interesting. Kanami’s pulling out all the stops. It’s a moronic explosion. Raging stupidity. On top of that, you’re going to give it everything you’ve got, right, Leonardo? In that case, I’ll shoot the works, too.”

Oh, Leonardo thought. This guy’s another idiot.

“I can’t use magic well while I’m possessing something else, see. If I’m going to experience something live and in the flesh, my human body is where it’s at. Mm-hmm!”

Even so, to have left Yamato, where he’d probably been safe, and come to a foreign land so easily, with no insurance… KR, who was wearing sandals, was grinning.

“—Even I…”

An enormous magic circle made of light radiated out from the staves he’d stuck into the ground and began to revolve three-dimensionally.

“I recognize that mask, y’know. I liked ’em.”

Even as he smiled bashfully, sounds like whistling wind and the resonance of the magic array continued.

“I want to brag, too. If a hero’s going to show off his new power, I have to show my stuff as well, don’t I?”

The shining lines that were drawn in the air twisted together in complicated patterns. As they watched, the outlines formed a complex wirework figure, sketching a vivid shape.

“A summoning…?”

“Awake, crimson dragon. Graceful, supreme ruler of the contract, wake from your garnet sleep and soar through the heavens!”

The deep crimson dragon he’d summoned picked the panicking Leonardo up in its jaws, then set him on its elegant neck. KR, who’d settled in behind him at some point, whistled sharply through his fingers, and a moment later they were racing up into the sky.

With the two of them on its back, the dragon flew higher and higher, almost as if it were melting into the Aorsoi atmosphere.

2

However, at this point in time, there was something that Leonardo, naturally, but also Chun Lu, who should have been familiar with the area, and even KR, had overlooked.

This was the fact that Thekkek wasn’t the only village in the region. There were People of the Earth villages over toward the ruins as well.

If, as Leonardo thought, villages in this other world were distributed randomly by an automated program, then there was a certain consistency to that distribution. The blasted wasteland of Aorsoi was dotted with many small, independent villages like Thekkek.

By this point in time, the incident had already caused a lot of damage.

Multiple gnoll units had crawled away from Tonnesgrave like tentacles, spreading out farther and farther, like wine spilled on a tabletop, until they’d engulfed several villages.

No disciplined will was evident in their movements. They were aimless, haphazard, irresponsible, and wild.

That was precisely what made their actions terrifying. After all, even if the gnolls had a mastermind or commander, that being obviously didn’t care about the current situation.

It didn’t care whether the several thousand gnolls won or lost their invasions.

It had no interest in how many People of the Earth died or were plunged into despair in the process.

The will that was visible behind the invasion seemed to state this eloquently.

“Rraaaaaaargh!!”

For that very reason, Elias howled.

He was an Ancient, and to him, this was an unforgivable evil.

Elias was an Ancient who had been raised by the fairy tribe. Ancients were spontaneous mutations born among the People of the Earth, and their origins varied. In most cases, they were born into People of the Earth family lines by coincidence, but there were quite a few who had special backgrounds.

However, whether they were born into ordinary families or, like Elias, came into the world as orphans, at a certain point in their lives, Ancients parted ways with the People of the Earth.

Their powerful combat abilities made it difficult for them to live in regular society. Many Ancients’ talents appeared when they were in their teens, and they were welcomed into the community of Ancients before they turned twenty. Some became aware of their identity as Ancients while they were still happy, but many gained that awareness in the midst of sorrow and pain.

One type of resignation all Ancients shared was a sense of isolation: the feeling that, while they had common roots with the People of the Earth, they were different beings. They probably got this idea from their combat abilities and their treatment by People of the Earth society, which, although it did respect them, treated them as aliens.

What’s more, Elias was a “forbidden child” raised by the fairy tribe, and that loneliness had dogged him with particular intensity.

As a result, he didn’t interfere in battles concerning People of the Earth. This was true of all Ancients. They had excellent combat abilities, and they had pledged to have nothing whatever to do with wars and political conflicts among the People of the Earth. To them, all such beings, from commoners to royals, were fragile creatures. There was no point in participating in their struggles.

As far as they were concerned, People of the Earth who killed other People of the Earth were not evil.

They were simply foolish.

People of the Earth were frail, short-lived, and weak, and they fought with one another and died because of this foolishness. That was the general view among all Ancients, Elias included.

To the Ancients, the People of the Earth were a bit like unwise children who had to be sheltered. When you watched them from a distance, they seemed precious and you wanted to protect them, but when you got closer to them, you were met with wariness and cold reservations. That was what they were like.

Of course, there were those who were high-minded and worthy of support. There were others who were innocent and lived ethical lives. When it came to saving them, Elias felt no reluctance; however, lending his strength to their power struggles was something quite different and—to him—inconceivable.

Ancients were guardians of the People of the Earth race, not of individual People.

“Hiyaaaah! Spirits of clear water, transform yourselves into a ten-thousand-foot blade and shine! Aqua Thousand Rain!!”

Elias’s roar became a long, crystal spear, blowing away the gnolls who stood in his path.

In this incident, his nose had sniffed out “evil” for the very first time.

This wasn’t the struggle for survival or predation that was seen among monsters, and it wasn’t based in greed, like the territorial struggles powerful People of the Earth sometimes conducted. Elias had detected the first indiscriminate evil he’d ever encountered.

Killing from a desire to destroy and steal.

He was familiar with that sort of murderous intent, but this was different.

Killing because nothing really mattered.

That disgusting sensation made the Ancient shudder.

For that very reason, he’d been fighting with everything he had.

Since he was under the fairies’ curse, he wasn’t able to finish off anything, even monsters. His attacks couldn’t drop his opponents’ HP to zero.

However, as if to compensate for Elias’s weakness, Kanami raced over the ground.

With smooth, feline motions, she leapt into the midst of the enemy, thrusting both her fists into separate opponents. From Dual Fist, she shifted into Wildcat Stance, executing a serial attack.

Choosing opponents whose health had been pared down by Elias’s wide-range offensive sword techniques, Kanami steadily paid out attack after attack. By nature, Monks were Warrior classes. They were supposed to draw the enemy’s attacks to themselves, but Kanami had abandoned that role.

Monks had very versatile abilities to begin with, and they were able to use “stances” to drastically change their own performance. By making skillful use of Iron Reno Stance, which was excellent for defense, or Tiger Stance, with its outstanding attack power, Monks could change their tactics to match the situation. This was one of their strong points.

Wildcat Stance, the stance Kanami had chosen, improved her movement and the ability to execute serial attacks. From a low stance that nearly hugged the ground, she paid out sweeping kicks and punching attacks that used both hands, finishing off enemies whose HP was already low.

Elias and Kanami advanced, moving ever forward, as if they were competing with each other. Fortunately, there was a ravine. A high river flowed along its bottom, and the banks on either side were about ten meters wide. Along these banks, a dense crowd of gnolls pressed toward the pair.

Both Elias and Kanami charged ahead without thinking about what would come afterward.

Not far from them, Coppélia was sporadically forcing her way forward.

Coppélia was a Cleric. Since she was a Recovery class, her attack capabilities were low. However, Clerics were able to use heavy armor, and in terms of equipment, among the twelve main classes, their defense was second only to that of Guardians.

Coppélia was currently wearing plate armor that was also reminiscent of a maid outfit. It was heavier than what she usually wore, and its “skirt” was reinforced with a series of iron plates. Even the puffed sleeves were made of magic-tempered metal, and they were distinguished by being lined with lace.

Today, unusually, Coppélia had equipped a large kite-shaped shield to each hand. This combat build, which was known as Double Shield Style, boasted the mightiest defense among Clerics.

Her move speed wasn’t anything impressive, but she used the weight of the gear she’d equipped to mow down the gnolls.

Using the shields almost like walls, she protected herself, simultaneously pushing the dog-headed monsters together as if they were bread dough. The fate that waited for the compressed creatures was Elias’s range attacks and Kanami’s serial attacks.

Their three-person combination was efficient, and the gnolls’ numbers fell before their very eyes. Coppélia’s presence on the front line likely contributed to the trio’s success.

Elias couldn’t see it clearly, but when Coppélia closed in on a gnoll and touched it, an obviously savage energy dissipated. Of course, on its own, that wasn’t enough to defeat the enemy. Thanks to Coppélia’s participation, though, they were managing to keep this within the bounds of a normal battle.

However, on the other hand, this also meant requiring Coppélia to continuously participate in close combat even though she was only a Recovery class. She was using plate armor and two shields, but that didn’t mean her basic abilities and special skills were suited to hand-to-hand combat. Even if they managed to recover damage, when their MP ran out, there was a risk that the battle line would collapse.

Little by little, Elias was growing more anxious about the circumstances.

True, the combat situation wasn’t bad at all. On the contrary, things were going their way, and they hadn’t taken much damage.

However, it was built on a balance in which all three of them were giving everything they had. As proof, when his spirit, which was like a taut thread, disturbed that balance just a little, a gnoll raced past Elias and leapt at Coppélia, who’d had her back turned.

Responding quickly, Kanami punched right through that gnoll with Wyvern Kick, but they ended up expending quite a lot of MP to repair the ragged battle line.

“Vanish! Vanish! Disappear!! Aqua Stream Hurricane!!”

The day his Ancient companions had vanished…

A day his comrades, the thirteen global chivalric orders, had fallen. Howling Moon had lasted only a moment, but it had brought a long sleep with it.

Half of his companions had departed, and the other half would probably never wake from their slumber. The Words of Death had destroyed the Ancients.

Kanami had been the one who’d saved him from the deep sleep of loss. Her brightness had warmed him, her light had illuminated his footsteps, and her fingers had pointed out his path.

However, he was still Elias, as he’d always been.

Elias Hackblade. Guardian of the world. The strongest Ancient.

In order to save this world…

In order to protect the souls of all People of the Earth and Ancients…

Elias used everything he had to carve his way into the throng of gnolls.

3

In the midst of a wind that seemed liable to tear his ears off, Leonardo shouted. There was a hardness in the passing air, and he couldn’t talk to KR without yelling.

“Hey!”

“What, Leonardo?”

“Where are we going?! The ravine’s right over there!”

“I thought we might as well go scout out those ruins or whatever they are.”

The back of the red dragon wasn’t all that big.

It was probably over fifteen meters in length, but its long, elegant neck and slender tail took up two-thirds of that. Besides, although KR was securely straddling it in what seemed to be his usual place, Leonardo was clinging to its neck.

However, this was Leonardo’s first time flying, and he was completely fascinated by the wide land of Aorsoi as it streamed below them at high speed. The wasteland, the wind, the light: Everything raced past him, and the speed captivated him.

The membrane of air held a violent pressure, and there was a primal joy in blasting through it.

In just ten minutes, black spires came into view on the horizon.

Leonardo and KR knew in an instant that they were the ruins in question: the Ruined Colonnade Tonnesgrave.

For one thing, they were bizarre structures sticking up out of empty wasteland with nothing else around them. The other reason was that a jet-black dragon launched itself from the base, snapping off the structures with one sweep of its powerful tail.

“Hold the phone!! Hey!”

“Wow, that’s really something. Is that a raid enemy?”

“Why are you being so laid-back about this?!”

“You think it’s a full-raid monster for twenty-four players, or a double-raid rank for forty-eight?”

It looked as though the visual scale had been skewed.

When KR had summoned the dragon, Leonardo had thought, Now we’ll be able to win this! but the mere sight of the destruction on the distant horizon made it clear to him that he’d only been dazzled by how cool the crimson dragon looked.

Even though both were dragons, there was an overwhelming difference between the Black Dragon on the horizon and the red dragon the two of them rode. To begin with, their sizes didn’t match. Because of the distance, they couldn’t compare the two properly, but that dragon was easily twice as big as the crimson dragon.

“What’re we gonna do about that thing?!”

“We’ll use, you know…that thing you wanted to show off. The hero’s new power.”

“Don’t be an idiot! That’s a Raid-rank monster!! How are we supposed to take it down with just the two of us?! Or, what, is this dragon small but high-performance, like a Honda?!”

“Gar-gar’s a Minion rank.”

“So?”

“That means she’s cute.”

This was hopeless. Leonardo squeezed his eyes shut.

In Elder Tales, there were two axes that showed monster strength. One was level. Each monster had its own individual level value, as Adventurers did.

The other was rank, and it showed a monster’s strength by stating how many people it was best to fight it with.

The rank for ordinary monsters was Normal.

At that rank, Adventurers on the same level as the monster could fight it one-on-one. For example, it was optimal for Leonardo, who was level 90, to fight a Normal rank monster on the same level.

Of course, even among Adventurers at level 90, strength varied depending on equipment and how well they’d mastered their special skills. Normal rank monsters of a certain level were designed so that an average Adventurer on that level could beat them without trouble. For an experienced Adventurer like Leonardo, hunting Normal monsters that were a few levels above him wasn’t all that difficult.

The next most common rank was Party. These were divided into subcategories such as “x 2” and “x 4,” and the maximum was “x 6.” “Party x 3” meant that three Adventurers on the same level could fight it on equal terms. These enemies were mainly fought in dungeons and similar places by Adventurers who’d formed a party. They were characterized by having HP and attack power that differed from Normal rank monsters, even if their levels were the same.

Above these was Raid rank. In order to subjugate Raid rank monsters, you needed a large-scale unit on the same level as the monster, so “x 1” meant a full raid, or twenty-four people, and “x 4,” the highest rank, required a legion raid of ninety-six members.

Since monsters of these ranks tended to show up on high-difficulty quests or be found lurking in the depths of megadungeons, even encountering them was hard to do.

On the other hand, there was a rank that was weaker than Normal.

This was the rank known as Minion, and it was seen mainly among the monsters Summoners could call with servant summonings. If a Summoner had been able to summon a Normal rank monster on their own level, it would have given them twice the combat strength of other Adventurers on that level. As far as the game balance was concerned, that wouldn’t be a good idea.

That was why the Minion rank had been created. Minion rank monsters were one-third as strong as Normal rank monsters. Since Summoners had only two-thirds of the abilities of other classes on the same level, they weren’t balanced until they’d summoned a servant—or that had been intentional design of the Elder Tales game, at least.

The red dragon the two of them were riding was apparently a Minion rank.

“You mean it’s weak!”

“Did you hear what he just said about you, Gar-gar?”

“Why are you talking like this is somebody else’s problem?! You’re such a— Aaaaaaaah!”

While the two of them squabbled pointlessly, the dragon they rode had sketched an arc across the Aorsoi sky, drawing closer and closer to the Ruined Colonnade. Naturally, the Black Dragon and the two figures on its back had spotted them. With a great flap of its wings, the jet-black dragon spat several gnolls it had had in its mouth onto the ground. The wind from its wings sent the gnolls nearby scurrying this way and that, but it didn’t even glance at them. In the space of a single breath, it closed in on Leonardo’s group.

“Whoa!”

“You’re going to bite your tongue.”

Heaven and earth flipped for Leonardo.

The crimson dragon they rode folded its shining, garnet-colored wings tightly so that its body was dagger-shaped and dove rapidly, spinning as it went. It was traveling faster than a fall, heading for the ground like a bullet shot from a gun.

As it turned out, that speed saved them.

A thunderclap boomed.

Pitch-black smoke charged with lightning blew through the space where Leonardo and the others had been just a moment before. It was Dragon Breath, a legendary attack belonging to the tremendously powerful monsters classified as dragons.

As an experienced player, Leonardo had seen that attack many times, but it had been nothing more than well-rendered computer graphics on a wide, liquid-crystal monitor.

Children often draw pictures of cars and airplanes with crayons, but it’s not like they comprehend the terror of a crashing airplane or of having a car plow into them just from looking at those pictures. Now, Leonardo felt the impact from the depths of his soul.

Electricity and black smoke streaked through the air not three meters away, and he felt a trembling as though the air had spasmed. His nose caught the burned stench of ions. Those past game experiences were a total lie, Leonardo thought. Hey now, hey, hey, hey. The air just got broken down. He’d known that was where the rumble of thunder came from, but he hadn’t thought it possible to sense these things with his nose.

Okay. He’d admit it—

This might be a game world, but he’d temporarily retract that knowledge.

If they got hit by that lightning, it seemed as though that philosophical doubt would evaporate, too.

There are tons of things city geeks don’t know! Oh my God!

Still carrying them on its back, the crimson dragon fell in a tailspin, but when they got close to the ground, it opened its wings wide and beat at the wind. It glided to maximize aerodynamic lift, then used the layers of air generated by the slope of the hill to shoot up into the sky again as if launched from a catapult.

“What is that?!”

“Judging by its appearance, probably a Black Dragon, right?”

“Not that! Those two on its back!!”

Even in the midst of their tailspin plunge, Leonardo’s excellent eyesight had burned the two figures’ shapes into his eyes. A thin, mage-like figure in a hood and a golden-haired girl as delicate as a bisque doll.

“Considering where they are, they’re probably not allies of justice.”

“Just looking at them, I can tell they’re bad guys.”

“The masterminds behind this incident, I presume?”

Even as Leonardo and KR conversed in shouts, several bolts of lightning skimmed by them. The electrical bolts’ trajectories were straight lines, but they reached a long way, and although the black, smoky gas that clung to them only went partway, it spread out and was hard to avoid.

The red dragon was smaller than the black one, but it was agile, and at this point, it was managing to evade through dramatic trajectory changes that didn’t give a thought to its riders. That said, the red dragon was a Minion rank at level 90.

Even though the Black Dragon was level 85, and therefore lower in the hierarchy, it was a Raid-rank monster. One solid attack from it would probably be fatal.

The red dragon probably knew this as well. Either that, or KR had given it instructions in a way Leonardo hadn’t been able to see. As it evaded several bolts of deadly light, the red dragon circled around behind and above the Black Dragon, capturing its back.

Dragon Breath was a range attack and a powerful threat, but it had a weakness as well:

Since it was emitted from the dragon’s mouth, the directions in which attacks could be made were naturally limited. On top of that, the Black Dragon was currently airborne. If it bent that long neck carelessly, it would end up turning. If it had been braced on the ground like a gun battery, things might have been different, but its build made it incapable of attacking behind itself.

“Great, good position!”

“It looks like we’re better at accelerating.”

“We’ve got its back. Attack with Breath!”

“We don’t have Breath.”

“Huh?!”

“Gar-gar doesn’t have Dragon Breath. I told you, she’s a Minion.”

“What, seriously?! Talk about useless!”

As if protesting Leonardo’s abuse, the red dragon gave a deafening roar. The only way Leonardo could handle the sudden howl was by clinging to its neck and riding it out.

“If you’re going to go that far, why don’t you attack?”

“Don’t be an idiot. We’re in midair!”

“Where there’s a will, there’s a way. ‘Yes, we can.’”

“That’s old. Whoa!”

Leonardo ducked, avoiding a tentacle that stank like sewage.

It wasn’t the Black Dragon.

The Black Dragon was flapping and twisting left and right, up and down, trying to chase the red dragon out of its blind spot. However, like a well-made trace macro, the small, elegant red dragon was sticking close to it, right behind and above it.

The attack had come from the hooded figure on the Black Dragon’s back.

Still standing on the dragon’s back, the hooded shape had pointed a hand up at Leonardo. Even if the Black Dragon’s back was broad, that attitude was absurd, and—unusually for him—KR swore. The threads that poured from the man’s finger were clearly tracking Leonardo and the others, and a thoroughly scorched, acidic stench hung about them.

“Cut them down!”

KR hadn’t needed to tell him that.

Having registered that threads wouldn’t work, the tentacles had morphed into something like exposed animal viscera and were stretching out toward the red dragon. The black and red dragons were about ten meters apart. Their objective was clear.

If the villains damaged the red-dragon team with the attack, fine. Even if they didn’t, if Leonardo and company retreated to avoid an attack from the tentacles, their pursuers were probably intending to switch to a Breath attack.

“Don’t screw with me!”

Leonardo drew his Ninja Twin Flames and lopped off the tip of a tentacle. The additional effect activated, drawing tracks of flame, and the tentacle burned down, streaming backward.

To the right, to the left. Straddling the dragon’s neck, Leonardo slashed down the tentacles that stretched up one after another. Fortunately, the tentacles seemed pretty fragile. One slash was enough to shred them and send them flying.

However, they were also pipes that carried acid.

When the red dragon failed to avoid one of the slashed remains and the acid landed upon its scales, there was a sound like meat sizzling on an iron griddle, and white smoke erupted.

The red dragon forced down a low moan, but it managed to stick to its current position, and Leonardo felt a huge respect for it. The structure of dragon wings was similar to bat wings; they were made up of a thin membrane. If acid struck its body or neck, it could probably tough it out to some extent, but if the membranes burned away, its evasive abilities would diminish. In the worst-case scenario, it would go crashing to the ground.

The red dragon knew this, and in order to protect its wings, it had intentionally taken the acid on its neck.

Responding to that spirit, Leonardo stepped up the ferocity of his slashes, trying to deal damage to the owner of the tentacles as well.

Whizzing into a rolling scissors maneuver, the two dragons raced across the Aorsoi sky, sketching complicated trajectories. As he swung his swords from the dragon’s back, Leonardo forgot about the shredded, speeding clouds and the distant earth and became one with the battle in front of him.

Leonardo saw the two figures on the dragon’s back clearly.

The beautiful girl with the derisive smile was Rasfia. She was a level 89 of Normal rank. The hooded being who was tenaciously attacking with the tentacles, over and over, was Papus. He was also a level 89 of Normal rank. Neither of them had a main class or were affiliated with a guild. They had human shapes, but monster displays.

If they’d been on the ground, fighting one-on-one, he wouldn’t have lost to stats like theirs. However, under these circumstances, when they were teamed up with a Raid-rank monster, they couldn’t have been more of a problem.

Inversion.

In the midst of an intersection that switched the positions of heaven and earth, Leonardo cut the pursuing tentacles away again. Even the scattered acid was evaporated by the flame attack he thrust out.

The battlefield had shifted, and before they knew it, the wide earth had been exchanged for a valley like a thin green path. The single great river that crossed this wasteland had carved the ground away, forming a ravine. Dense, vivid green forests grew on either side of the water at the bottom of the canyon.

Attempting to shake off the red dragon, the Black Dragon skimmed just above the treetops.

The trees were flooded with light and gleamed as if they were wet, and small, startled rainbow-colored birds burst from them all at once. The flock of birds filled the sky, and the two dragons shot through it like arrows.

The banks of the river were littered with countless gnoll corpses. When he saw them, Leonardo lowered his gaze. As if being guided by some miracle, his eyes met Coppélia’s, who happened to be looking up at him from the midst of the gnoll horde.

Coppélia’s clear, calm eyes reflected the red dragon, soaring against a background of blue sky.

A sound echoed in Leonardo’s heart, and he cemented his resolve.

“If those two are gone, can you draw that Black Dragon away?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m asking, if that overblown pair gets off the Black Dragon’s back, can you tow the dragon over the horizon?!”

For a moment, Leonardo’s yell seemed to render KR speechless.

“Leonardo.”

“What?!”

“I just got to Aorsoi a little bit ago.”

KR spoke carefully, spacing his words out so that their meaning was sure to get across.

“That means, if I die, my body will resurrect in a temple in Yamato, aka Japan. Whether we win or lose—this is probably good-bye.”

“Bring it on!!”

Leonardo turned back, thumping KR’s chest with a fist that still held a sword. KR coughed, then struck Leonardo’s chest with his slender magic-user’s hand.

It was an exchange of war cries, and encouragement, and friendship. It wasn’t the sort of thing that belonged to a New York geek. It was a promise between heroes.

They went through a series of steep climbs and sharp dives. Irritated by the red dragon, who stayed stuck to its back no matter how it twisted, the black one tumbled through the sky, sometimes scraping its wings against the trees of the forest, sometimes trying to fling itself into the sun.

Before long, spotting a moment’s opening in those movements, Leonardo bent down onto the red dragon’s neck, storing up strength.

“KR!”

“I know!”

There was no time to say more.

Taking advantage of the moment when the Black Dragon’s unfurled wings hid him from the grotesque pair of adversaries, Leonardo leapt into space.

“Cowabungaaaa!!”

Mimicking the legendary hero’s yell…

Leonardo slammed into the two on the Black Dragon’s back, clinging to them, and then, according to plan, as the acid burned him, he plummeted toward the ground.

4

“He did it! He actually went and did it! He’s awesome! That’s the spirit! Right, Gar-gar? This front-row seat is a bargain, isn’t it? Thank you, O great and glorious Lady Kanami!”

Tearing off his scorched robe, KR cackled loudly.

The enemy was a tough customer, too: Even as he got tangled up in Leonardo’s body blow, he’d left a parting gift. He’d intentionally severed ten-odd tentacles, and the fragments acted as midair mines loaded with acid that engulfed KR and his red dragon.

Even as he took significant damage, KR was in high spirits.

To him, being on the scene for the moment when the world began to move was the greatest joy there was. And that was why he’d been Kanami’s defender and devotee: because he’d seen that power in her.

Something changed, and somewhere gears began to turn, moving the story, the world.

Sometimes, things happened that couldn’t be described any other way. The goal of KR’s life was to be there for such moments, witness them, and help those people along. That was just as true in this other world as it had been back on Earth. Or rather, since it was flashier here, he could even say it was better, easier to understand.

There was a scream like several thousand bowstrings snapping.

It belonged to the aggravated, and now masterless, Black Dragon.

Leonardo didn’t seem to have noticed, but its status display was blinking kaleidoscopically. MIASMIC LIGHTNING BLACK DRAGON, GNOLL, MIASMIC LIGHTNING BLACK DRAGON, GNOLL—the speed was so great that the display itself seemed to blur. Those two riders must have been influencing the Black Dragon in some way: The dragon had clearly lost its composure and was acting insanely aggressive.

It was so bad that it had even forgotten to aim, and lightning leaked from its mouth, scorching the tops of the trees.

The wind was blowing out KR’s mantle and making it flap, and as he clung to the red dragon’s neck, he yanked it in, wrapping it tightly around himself. In a mobile fight like this, no matter how excellent Adventurers’ physical capabilities were, he couldn’t afford getting yanked around by it.

Lightning gathered in a black, warped space, then shot from the Black Dragon’s mouth. It was the creature’s Negative Thunder Breath, and the Garnet Dragon avoided it by a hairbreadth. She evaded, veering as if there were a track in the air.

However, that didn’t negate the entire threat. It had been a violent choice, made possible by the fact that, with a dragon’s tough defensive abilities, she could ignore damage to a certain extent. That said, even if he was an Adventurer, KR was only human, and the damage was too great for him to shrug off with an Ah, I see, is that right.

Adventurers and monsters had different approaches to combat abilities. Most monsters were born strong. They had combat abilities that were above a certain level right from the start. Meanwhile, for Adventurers, growing and changing was an adaptive strategy. Leveling up and learning new techniques were part of it, but improving their chances of survival by acquiring equipment made up a percentage that couldn’t be ignored.

Gwaaaaaah. Cold air endurance equipment, air pressure endurance equipment, pressure endurance equipment—I don’t have enough of anything!!

In the midst of the wind that roared and blustered at him, violent wind that was practically a rigid body, KR clung desperately to his dragon’s neck.

The Black Dragon didn’t pursue them.

In a short span of time, the other had climbed savagely to a distant height from which it could look down on KR and his mount.

Aerial battles were sophisticated mental battles in which you had several choices and worked to rob your opponent of theirs. The red dragon’s mobility far outstripped that of the Black Dragon, in fact overwhelming it. She could probably win on speed in a straight line as well. However, that difference wasn’t absolute. It was affected by wind direction and air pressure, and most importantly, a difference in altitude could easily turn the tables.

The speed that could be gained from falling was far greater than what one could gain from flapping wings or magical propulsion. That is, being at a higher altitude than your opponent gave you greater positional energy than they had. In aerial battles, having gravity on your side was an overwhelming advantage.

The red dragon had KR on her back. Dragons could withstand the reduced air pressure and lower temperatures at high altitudes without trouble, but this wasn’t true for KR. In a dogfight, KR’s presence handicapped the red dragon. This was most obvious when it came to taking up positions at high altitude. Relying on its toughness, the Black Dragon had climbed to an altitude with low air pressure, then made up for the difference in speed by diving.

“Gar-gar, up, up!”

Going pale at the sight of the Black Dragon’s power as it sliced through the wind on approach, KR put his ride on the alert. Even though both creatures were the same species, their attributes and personalities were completely different. Compared to the Garnet Dragon, which specialized in aerial battles, the Black Dragon was a heavyweight raid monster. Although not very mobile, it had outstanding range attack capabilities and endurance, and it was excellent at defending strong points and at trampling down and charging.

And now its huge body, which could have been described without exaggeration as an airborne fortress, was plunging toward them with gravity as its ally. Not only that, but as if determined not to let them get away, its jaws gaped and its front legs stretched out, their halberd-like claws fully extended.

With a sharp whistling noise, the two dragons intersected.

“!”

There was a dull thud, and the stink of ions scorched their surroundings.

KR gave a goofy smile. He’d managed to last through the Black Dragon’s dive attack.

When they’d crossed paths, those short front legs had swung at him. As the price for having beaten back that attack, KR’s right arm was burned black and hung limply, dangling. It was a miracle that he was managing to hold on to his Staff of Scorpius.

“Sheesh, Gar-gar. That’s cold,” KR grumbled at his partner, who was making quiet, dissatisfied noises. Seemed she thought she’d been made fun of.

That’s not true. KR laughed.

The Aorsoi sky was high and blue. Against that ultramarine, with the light shining through them, the red dragon’s wings were pretty enough to provoke a sigh. Like the “pomegranate” from the Latin root of her name, they shone transparently. That didn’t mean he’d been protecting her or anything. He just couldn’t let those wings fall prey to dirty talons.

As far as compensation went, this was fair. In the first place, they were up against a raid monster. If you wanted to take its attacks, you’d need a dedicated tank with multiple healers and the support of buffers in order to match it. If KR, a Magic Attack class, had gotten by with losing only an arm, that cost was actually pretty cheap.

“—Let’s go with a Japan-US showdown special.”

Marvel versus Ishimori Production.

With that big statement in mind, KR lured a little animal out of his jacket.

The animal, which looked like a white mouse, was a Crew Rat. It was a level-3 monster and an event creature.

Summoner was an unusual class.

Adventurers earned experience points by fighting and completing quests. When they’d acquired a certain number of experience points, their level went up, and they learned new techniques. In addition to experience points, there were things called mastery points, and it was possible to select special skills and make them even stronger.

However, a certain type of special skill was acquired on quests outside of leveling up, and it was Summoners who had the most of this type of quest.

Summoners’ main special skill was Servant Summoning.

To be accurate, this wasn’t a single skill. It existed as a separate special skill for each summoned subject, like Servant Summoning: Hakutaku and Servant Summoning: Siren. Most of these skills were acquired through quests. This was why even Summoners on the same level used different servants, depending on the quests and the progression of the adventures they’d completed to date.

Quests in Elder Tales were independently designed by each server administration company. As a result, countless distinctive summoned creature acquisition quests were said to exist across the world’s thirteen servers, and it was hard to grasp just how many there really were.

However, as far as the balance with the other main classes was concerned, it wouldn’t be good if individual Summoners were able to acquire dozens of special skills. For that reason, there was a maximum number of special skills that could be acquired on quests, and that maximum was twelve. If a Summoner wanted to conclude a new contract that put them over that number, they had to choose one of their existing contracts and cancel it.

KR muttered a short, simple spell, and along with a shining green magic circle, the Crew Rat in his hand disappeared. The cute little mouse had just concluded a contract with KR, becoming his servant.

A magic system which KR himself knew nothing about had stored it away until he chose to summon it with Servant Summoning: Crew Rat. At the same time, since he’d gone past the limit, one of KR’s contracts was dissolved.

“You fool!”

There was a brief flash of light. In the blink of an eye, the unleashed light particles formed a magic circle centered on KR, who was flying through space. The enormous red magic circle looked a lot like the one used to form contracts, but its properties were reversed, and it signified release.

“So you finally summoned me, did you?! You half-witted elf magus! Bravo! Bravo! To think you’d be my sacrifice again!”

“Gar-gar, are you kinda hyper?”

“I was subjected to an acid shower in a body that couldn’t talk!! That tends to excite the nerves!”

“Now that you mention it, you’re right.”

“What wretchedness! Why must I accept your protection?!”

“Huh? That’s the problem?”

“Don’t give me a trite comeback, dullard!”

“No, you were completely right, Gar-gar, so I just—”

“That blasted red-headed frog. I have no Dragon Breath? How dare he join you in mocking me!”

“Y’know, you might be more popular if you just called him an ignorant human, laughed, and forgave that stuff.”

“You imbecile! I have not forgotten that you made me into a trivial, ignorant, pseudolizard pet!”

KR was on the verge of retorting, Well, it was that kind of contract, wasn’t it? but sensing the forceful change in mobility and the vast amount of heat she was gathering, he shut his mouth.

The red dragon KR was riding had just more than doubled in size. She was twenty-five meters long. Her body, the elegance of which belied its huge size, held energy that seemed equivalent to an active volcano, and she climbed all in a rush.

The speed of her ascent was filled with an overwhelming sense of power. There was an extraordinary amount of mana in her wings. The dragon was a single streak that led to the sky, a line the color of shining blood.

“‘Draw the Black Dragon away’… What a small-minded thing to say.”

“That frog-man is the very essence of ignorance and unenlightenment.”

“That sounds like a new type of demihuman.”

“Do not blame me if you bite your tongue!”

The red dragon, who fired something like a shining, crimson crescent moon from her mouth, had finally shown her true worth.

A level-90 Raid-rank monster.

KR’s partner, the Garnet Dragon, raced across the sky.

Becoming Raid rank hadn’t simply doubled the size of the Garnet Dragon’s body. Her HP was several thousand times greater, and her attack power, defensive power, reaction speed, and spellcasting abilities had all risen prodigiously.

Her speed and mobility were no exception, and as she flew through the sky, she looked like red lightning. The difference between her and the Black Dragon, which had been slight up to a few moments ago, had clearly widened.

“Unless I show ’em something impressive, I don’t get to appear in the final episode, see.”

“What are you talking about?” the Garnet Dragon hissed.

“It’s how supporting characters fight.”

Speaking defiantly, KR raised the staff in his undamaged left hand like a gun turret.

A complicated magic design surfaced in the lantern portion at the tip of the long staff, beginning to draw in tiny light particles from the space around it. It was Hive of Evil Spirits of the Abyss, a phantasmal equip item that had the tears of Elreida of the Fifth Prison closed inside it. Against a beautiful, somber noise of moving mechanisms that was in sharp contrast to its name, KR wove a spell.

The basic performance of Hive of Evil Spirits of the Abyss was high as well, but what set it apart was its ability to temporarily seal a servant. Sealing a servant with recovery abilities in the “Hive” at its tip raised the baseline for the special abilities of other servant summons.

“Gar-gar!! Goooo!”

“Right!”

With that war cry, the man and the dragon unleashed a crimson ray of heat filled to the brim with magic.

5

“It seemed like something out of an incredibly gallant epic poem, but after that, you passed out from the pain and returned to Yamato, did you not?”

“Heeeeey, Gar-gar. We promised we wouldn’t talk about that, remember?!”

“I made no such promise.”

“Ah-ga-ga-gah! Ooooooh. Seriously, ooooh. Ow! That really hurts, I mean it!!”

“Hmph. Gutless.”

When the ribs the girl had lightly jabbed played “do-re-mi” and reached “fa,” KR flung himself away and ran. The girl had already occupied the deck chair.

Unfortunately, what she’d said was accurate: Although KR had won the battle with the Black Dragon, he’d pushed himself too hard and had passed out. He’d fallen, hit the ground, and died, and as a result, death had returned him to his shelter on the Yamato server.

If you said one couldn’t look cool that way, you’d be right, but he had taken on a raid boss as a lone Adventurer. There was probably no helping the outcome. Even if he’d had a raid-boss level ally on his side, he’d been pulled into that fight. Coming out unscathed would have been too much to hope for.

KR and his partner were in a place called Ikoma. Specifically, one of the House of Saimiya’s second residences, located about eight kilometers to the east of the city of Minami. However, its current master was Plant Hwyaden, the enormous guild that controlled Minami. They were using this mansion as their guild headquarters.

Having returned to Arc-Shaped Archipelago Yamato, KR had taken three days to get himself back into shape and had then gone to participate in Plant Hwyaden, the giant guild that governed Western Yamato. This secondary palace in Ikoma was the hub of that guild, and it held the greenhouse where KR and his partner were living.

“Merely asking you a question is an utterly foolish endeavor, but…” The girl, who was swinging her feet, addressed KR: “Why do you belong to such a backwater guild, anyway?”

“Aagh. Ooooh…”

KR was curled up in an odd position, rubbing his side, but when she asked him “Why?” again, he answered slowly. The slowness certainly wasn’t because he didn’t want to answer, or because it was a difficult answer to give. It was simply that his kicked side hurt.

“Well, getting meals ready and cleaning rooms is a pain in the butt, you know?”

“An answer from a direction I never even suspected!”

The girl was so startled by this that her words overlapped the end of KR’s statement.

Still, it wouldn’t do to have people startled over a thing like that. While he might not look it, KR was the type of person the world called “a pampered rich kid.” It wasn’t something he was proud of, but he’d never even touched a vacuum cleaner. On top of that, this was another world, one in which electrical appliances like vacuum cleaners didn’t even exist. Cleaning was a professional’s skill.

“I can’t cook or clean to begin with, see?”

“What incompetence. Have you absolutely no talent?”

Hearing that said directly to my face is kind of a problem.

Communication abilities that let him chat about the latest chocolate offering at the doughnut shop with unfamiliar high school girls probably didn’t count as “talent,” and although he’d technically had a command of four languages in the old world, this world was equipped with an automatic translation system, so that didn’t seem like much of an advantage to KR.

“Taking care of small girls, maybe?”

“I am a girl. Not a small girl!”

She’d evened out the number of (undamaged) ribs on his right and left sides, and KR rolled around again. The ground was close. More specifically, his cheek was pressed against it. So this is what being “down for the count” is, huh? Down for the count because a girl broke your ribs. What sort of game is that? KR desperately hit himself with verbal jabs, trying to distract himself from the pain. Even if you were an Adventurer with recovery abilities, unless you had a specific sort of fetish, painful things hurt.

“So you’re saying you can do that stuff, Gar-gar?”

“I am a dragon. As if I’d ever do anything so petty.”

Holding his sides, KR nodded. I see.

Come to think of it, that made perfect sense. As a Garnet Dragon, in the natural way of things, if she got hungry, she caught prey and devoured their meat, and if she got dirty, she dove into a lake. She was a monster in the shape of a girl, so trying to make her do things the human way was probably egocentric.

Her violent behavior might also be some form of dragon communication.

“I would like stew with shrimp for dinner tonight.”

“You’re letting human society rub off on you, Gar-gar.” Completely disgusted, KR changed the subject. “So, Leonardo—what do you think of him?”

“Why would I think of him?”

KR sat down cross-legged on the floor, which was designed to look like a beach.

He had the elation he’d felt. It was fact. Leonardo was definitely one of the chosen ones. Someone with a protagonist’s destiny, one that was different from KR’s. Someone who’d been born under stars that let them do uncommon things, like Kanami and Soujirou. One of the people KR idolized and wanted to help.

Leonardo was an interesting guy, too. If he gave the sympathy he’d felt during that one moment a name, he’d probably be able to call it “friendship.” That word had gotten harder to say as he’d grown older. Coming to share that feeling with someone else through hero stories was embarrassing, too. However, KR had no intention of ignoring what he’d felt.

“His prospects, that sort of thing.”

“That’s a foolish question.”

The girl stretched hugely, then said, as if it didn’t matter, “He uses the skills of the great ones. I can’t imagine he’ll die easily.” She probably really didn’t care.

The skills of the great ones: That was how the girl had rated Leonardo’s training. The skills of the great ones were training, plus resolution strong enough to warp that training. At the time, KR hadn’t managed to grasp the meaning of that word completely, but now he thought it might mean techniques like Overskill and the Mysteries. It seemed likely that the same phenomena and techniques were called by different names, depending on the region and the community you belonged to.

“Well, that lot are pretty much strangers to ‘safe travels.’”

“That’s just as true of this city.”

She’s not wrong, KR thought.

Plant Hwyaden, the guild he was affiliated with, and Minami were currently enjoying prosperous times.

The People of the Earth ruling class had long traditions, and as a result of those long traditions, it had governed Western Yamato with an ossified bureaucratic system. Their rule had been useful in asserting their legitimacy, but on the other hand, it was true that things had remained unchanged.

Then the Catastrophe had occurred, and many Adventurers had appeared in this world. When you took a broad view of things, the arrival of the Adventurers had brought positive changes to Minami’s governing organizations.

Simply by existing, Plant Hwyaden had improved public order, cut down on damage from monsters, and dramatically developed the economy. In a way, the Catastrophe had triggered a breakthrough for the country.

However, abrupt changes couldn’t help but produce distortions.

Not only that, but Plant Hwyaden was a single enormous guild. It had an internal class system, and the guild’s top-level members, who were known as the steering committee, ran it autocratically.

KR didn’t think autocracy was a bad thing. Even in Japanese society back on Earth, there had been countless examples of dictatorships in the form of “one-man” corporations and similar things. In fact, there were a multitude of cases where, during the development process, it was more efficient for the person in charge to take decisive, authoritative action.

He’d seen cases on the overseas servers where everyone had become equally unhappy because no one had tried to take responsibility, and the misery had spread to the People of the Earth. To him, Plant Hwyaden seemed to be doing incredibly well.

The majority of the Adventurers who’d holed up inside the Japanese server might not understand, but KR had journeyed around the other servers, and he did know: The lack of chaos and orderly recovery on this server were miraculous.

However, even so, there were those who were left without a place in that dictatorship and system of command, and the city’s ordinary People of the Earth were often trampled on. In the first place, Plant Hwyaden’s control had been established when a few capable Adventurers formed an alliance with the People of the Earth nobles. No one had included the perspective of protecting citizens’ rights for People of the Earth. In that guild’s system of self-government, newbies and low-level Adventurers were weak, too.

KR knew that Kazuhiko was tearing around all over the place, unable to just stand by and watch the unfairness that had begun to run rampant in Minami. However, viewed from a high perspective, even that was no more than a drop in the bucket, and it was actually making the situation worse. The harder Kazuhiko worked to save people, the easier it was for Plant Hwyaden to govern unjustly. Precisely because Kazuhiko’s Miburo rescued the people that Plant Hwyaden’s tyranny oppressed, no decisive complaints ever exploded.

There had been no need for the girl to point it out: The situation here was far from “safe.”

Now that they’d solidified their bonds with the Adventurers, most of the Holy Empire of Westlande’s nobles seemed to be openly enjoying their glory days, viewing the situation as unparalleled prosperity and the opportunity for a great leap forward. However, to KR, all this prosperity and advancement seemed to rest on thin ice. He honestly couldn’t fathom how they could be so giddy about it.

Of course, their carelessness was due to Indicus’s manipulation of information and Nureha’s skills, but even so, KR thought it was far too irresponsible and thoughtless. Either that, or it could be due to the deterioration of the Yamato nobility, which had lasted for too many generations.

“That sounds likely,” the girl agreed with KR. “That strange pair we met on the continent… They radiated a curious air of intimidation unlike any enemy I had met before. I don’t believe that I would lose against beings like them, but I can’t declare that I could win, either.”

Those weird monsters, the ones Leonardo had taken along with him on his screaming leap to the ground…

Afterward, with a sure premonition in his heart, KR had continued to search for information about them. This was one of the main reasons he’d decided to participate in an enormous guild like Plant Hwyaden. He’d risen to a position of authority as a Ten-Seat and had used it to gather information. As a result, he’d managed to confirm several things.

“Geniuses.” New monsters by that name had been striding about this world, unnoticed, since the Catastrophe. KR had confirmed that information through one incident in Nakasu and two in Akiba.

Since it was something KR could detect, it was likely that people with a rank similar to his, or those who had a means of gathering information, would notice the incidents soon. In other words, it was about time for the People of the Earth nobles to pick up on them. If they couldn’t do that, they were pretty much asking people to criticize them for being lazy, and in fact, KR thought they were probably in denial about the fact that things weren’t as peaceful as they seemed. Of course, as a modern Japanese citizen, he was in no position to criticize someone else for that, but even so.

KR didn’t know how the battle in Aorsoi had ended.

From the back of the Garnet Dragon, after Leonardo had jumped off, KR seemed to remember catching a brief glimpse of him landing on the ground and fighting. However, it had only been for a moment, and KR and the dragon had had their own job to do. Leonardo’s fight was part of Leonardo’s destiny, and this time, it hadn’t been KR’s role to see it through to the end. This was true for Kanami’s fight as well.

However, KR was confident that they hadn’t lost.

He couldn’t imagine Kanami losing in an all-or-nothing bout like that one. The more decisive and highly anticipated the game, the better she did. Even if she’d lost that moment’s contest, she was sure to resolve the incident itself, and she’d save as many as she possibly could.

Those were the stars that belonged to Kanami and Leonardo. It was what set them apart from supporting players like KR and Kazuhiko. For that very reason, along with a faint pang in his chest, he felt a greater sense of expectation. Someday, Kanami’s group was bound to appear here on the Yamato server. She’d promised to visit this place, so it was practically an established fact already.

It was also likely that war would break out. He didn’t know what that fight would be like.

Would Plant Hwyaden, which had grown grotesquely obese, begin creaking and trigger it? Would the nobles lose their heads and launch a war against the Adventurers, or would their opponent be the East’s Round Table Council in Akiba, which was supported by Shiroe? Would the Geniuses threaten KR and his people again?

He didn’t know, but some sort of fight would probably flare up. This was more than just a vague premonition. There were sparks all over the world. Right now they were hidden, but to KR, it felt as if those sparks were growing bigger by the moment.

In preparation for that time, he had to get stronger on his own.

Even if he was a Summoner who could never be more than second-rate, giving up on that final performance wasn’t an option for him. If Kanami was coming back and if Indicus was going to meet her, then he intended to be there for it, no matter what sort of sacrifice he had to make. To that end as well, KR had to acquire the ability to intervene—even if that meant drinking all the Black Dragon’s blood.

In order to see the storm that was to come and the achingly clear blue sky that would follow it, like the one over Aorsoi… Here, in this secondary residence at Ikoma, KR continued his solitary battle.