1

However, unlike all the different memories KR was reviewing back in Yamato, Leonardo really was just a force of one, and that fight of his was thoroughly unpolished and clumsy.

“Cowabungaaa!!”

Having leapt from the red dragon with a war cry, Leonardo fell like a stone toward the Black Dragon, then pulled the man in the robe—who was waving his tentacles around, trying to tangle him in them—and the delicate girl along with him. They must have just been sitting astride the dragon, without using any special riding gear: Swept along by Leonardo’s momentum, they were flung out into empty air with startling ease.

Naturally, Leonardo wasn’t able to fly.

He’d only used his excellent Adventurer physical capabilities to leap from the red dragon’s back, and all he did was fall, reflecting on the physical reality of gravitational acceleration as he did so.

“S-s-scaryyyyy…”

“What a strange thing you’ve done.”

“Keh-heh-heh-heh. Embraced by passionate arms, scattering petals like a dahlia…”

The horror of his two nemeses—who were wriggling in a rather self-satisfied way—caused an abrupt premonition of danger that made him thrust out his short sword. There was a biologically repulsive sensation, as if he’d stuck the blade into damp mud, and the robed man melted, running thickly.

Leonardo clamped down a scream in his throat. This seemed to strike the girl he held in his left arm as funny. She gave a light chuckle.

“You amaze me, human. Are you an imbecile? Are you brave? From that height, like a red fruit, flung away. What delight. What joy.”

“Shut up!” Leonardo yelled, feeling a horror that froze his spine for reasons he didn’t understand. He hadn’t been startled by the fact that the girl had spoken. It wasn’t unusual for NPCs to have set lines to say at the end of quests and things. This was true even of monsters.

In addition, Leonardo knew that some monsters, such as lamias and nymphs, looked like beautiful women.

However, this girl was something entirely different from those. He felt a similar horror toward the swarm of worms inside that robe, but the fact that this girl appeared to be delicate and lovely made her abnormality stand out even more.

Compared with her, the People of the Earth seem way more human!

“My, my, whatever’s the matter? Do you finally regret your foolishness, perhaps? How droll. How delightful.”

“Hey, if I hadn’t watched Episode 104, ‘Fly, Froggers!’ I never would’ve done anything this crazy, either!”

The gallant figures of the heroes as they leapt into action to put down an enormous pumpkin monster rose in his mind’s eye. Come to think of it, that pumpkin monster had moved its vines like writhing tentacles. It was just like that robed monster. No, since this monster had a mucky stench and made sickening viscous sounds, it was much worse.

“A hot pulse. The scent of blood. Is this the resonance of factors in sympathy?”

“Save the sleep-talking for when you’re asleep!”

“Ahhh… Heartless sweet nothings. Cold talk. How wretched.”

While Leonardo was distracted by the girl, whose smile was both pretty and cruel, the robed figure slipped out of his grasp. It extended those gray tentacles that had caused him so much grief in all directions, casting several of them into the rapidly approaching treetops.

The green boughs were right in front of them. Leonardo had been planning to dash the robed shape to the ground and use it as a cushion, and as the figure slipped away from him, he groaned.

“Oh my God!”

“Two at once is extravagant. Immoral.”

Drawing her lips into a smile, the golden-haired girl touched Leonardo’s cheek with pale, bloodless fingertips, as if he were someone precious to her.

“My, my.”

“Don’t give me that ‘my, my’ crap!”

In that moment, spurred on by what felt like a ten-degree drop in his body temperature, Leonardo slashed upward with his Ninja Twin Flames.

Although their paleness made one anticipate the feel of porcelain, the girl’s fingertips were desiccated, and the sensation he’d gotten had been one of dead wood or a mummy. Those fingers squirmed like arthropods with an intent to gouge out Leonardo’s eyes, and he shoved the sword into them. In order to do it he let go of the girl, but the ground was already right there, and Leonardo didn’t have the leeway to care.

His drawn swords cut a branch as thick as a child’s torso in two. His speed slowed just slightly. Counting on this, Leonardo began cutting away all the branches within reach.

The great trees were like Japanese cedars, and it took four seconds to reach the ground from their tops.

“The end of our tryst is the ground’s embrace.”

“Go hug yourself, pervert!”

“U-fu-fu-fu-fu. Until death fills the world.”

“Waaaaaaaugh!”

The girl seemed to have finally decided to take action: Emitting horribly cold air from her lips and numbing Leonardo, she latched onto the trunk of one of the big trees in a bizarre, spidery movement.

With a cruel sound that made you want to cover your ears, the girl’s fingernails were ripped off, her fingers bent and broken, and blood rose to the surface of her white skin as if she’d taken a grater to it.

However, Leonardo didn’t have the heart—or the time—to sympathize. Betting on the speed he’d dampened by cutting those branches, he also dashed his curled-up body against a tree trunk, drastically changing his direction.

I’m gonna die! I’m gonna die! Is this dying?!

But Adventurer bodies were sturdier than Leonardo had thought. Either that, or Feather Fall, an Assassin special skill, had had some influence. Leonardo survived. Not only that, but the damage was far less than what he’d steeled himself for.

This seemed to have been true for Leonardo’s enemy as well.

The girl Rasfia, who was facing him on a branch five meters off the ground, dispelled the semitransparent phantasm that surrounded her with a wave of her arm. The illusion thinned and vanished, seeming to melt into thin air. From within its veil, Rasfia’s pretty—and undamaged—body appeared.

“My God…”

Leonardo glared at her sharply, and the girl spread both arms mischievously and smiled. In the tops of the dense conifer forest, where the winds of Aorsoi moaned, Leonardo and Rasfia, the Genius of Necromancy, squared off.

2

“Wha—?!”

Elias looked up, mouth hanging open. He was watching two dragons intersect with each other like leaves dancing in the wind.

The echoing roars were enough to shake the ravine.

A dark mass fell from the two tangling spirals, racing toward him through the sky like a meteor. It approached Elias’s group, crossing the sky over the ravine, then fell, shaking the treetops.

“There is a high probability that those are the enemy leaders.”

Elias had sensed that as well, without being prompted by Coppélia’s words. His eyes had clearly seen Leonardo slam into the robed man and the girl who were riding the Black Dragon, then fall along with them.

“Kanami!”

“I knooow. Wow. Croakanardo, that’s fantastic! So he wanted the best part all to himself, huh? Well, well! If that’s what that was, I wish—he’d said something!”

Even as Kanami spoke, she slammed a fist into the side of a gnoll who’d swung a rusty sword at her. Just before the gnoll whose attack she’d deflected could start to rampage, she jammed a pretty leg into it, exhaling sharply.

The monster flew as if it had been hit by a big dump truck, and Elias ran after it.

There was no way he was going to ignore the gap that had opened in the battlefield. Elias swung his crystal broadsword, which was nearly the size of a surfboard.

Elias’s curse prevented him from defeating them. He couldn’t finish them off. However, his attack power was immense, and the gnolls had lost the majority of their HP to it.

He seemed to be swinging his great sword haphazardly as he ran, but countless currents of water wrapped around its blade, rearing their heads like snakes with their sights set on prey. This was Tributary Blade, one of Elias’s unique special skills. Even the gnolls who’d avoided the broadsword were unable to block the blades of water that attacked them from their blind spots.

Even if they didn’t lose their lives, the beast-men were run through or had their arms and legs slashed apart, and their movements grew sluggish, as if they’d been pinned in place by a ferocious look.

“I’m going!”

“Yep, leave it to me!”

Kanami had also broken into a run, following Elias.

Moving on feet as nimble as a cat’s, she destroyed the enemies to her right and left. As the gnolls’ heads suggested, their behavior was close to that of hyenas or jackals. In other words, they moved in groups and used teamwork to hunt their prey. Now that Elias had slashed his way through their pack, it was in chaos. Under the circumstances, Kanami’s individual kills produced maximum results.

However, Kanami was a Monk, and her class characteristics were different from Elias the Blademancer’s. Having been designed as a true hero, Elias could use both sword techniques and magic, but Monks were lacking in range attacks.

To make up for that shortcoming, Kanami raced around the battlefield at high speed. If Elias was a silver-blue sword that slashed the gnoll pack apart, Kanami was a streak of spring-green lightning.

“I have cast Reactive Heal and Slash Block on you, Master.”

“Roger that, Coppé-cat! That means I wiiiin!”

In order to provide backup to the hyperactive Kanami, Coppélia was advancing as well. Spells had a range; if she let herself get separated from Elias and Kanami, it was possible that her recovery spells wouldn’t reach them.

Even more than that, Coppélia was a Cleric. Since she was a Recovery class, her destructive abilities weren’t high. If she ended up alone on the battlefield, she’d probably wind up in deep trouble. Moving together, the three of them advanced far into the enemy’s ranks.

A disturbing cracking sound was coming from the deep green trees into which Leonardo seemed to have fallen. They didn’t know what was about to come bursting out of there, but they wanted to finish off as many gnolls as possible before that crucial moment arrived.

Elias’s misgivings proved to be correct.

“What is that?!”

Kanami’s astonishment was entirely understandable. The thing that had appeared was bizarre. One might have called it a human set in a wooden frame; it was probably what had broken the trees in the grove. It was a skeletal die, constructed from trees that were about as thick as a human torso. It was about two meters to a side, and inside it was a man in a robe.

“Master. Lord Elias. The object in front of us is—”

“We know!”

—It wasn’t human.

It couldn’t possibly be human.

The robed figure was stooped and limp, as if it was exhausted.

Countless nauseating tentacles of a color somewhere between indigo and brown squirmed from that hollow figure, latching on to the wooden frame that surrounded the shape. Or rather, the wooden frame itself was being held together by those tentacles.

“Level 89, Normal rank. Name: Papus.”

Coppélia murmured the words as if to confirm them.

It seemed out of place, but the sound of the mountain stream reached them very clearly.

The grotesque shape that had emerged from the woods seemed to have overawed the gnolls, as well as Elias’s group.

“So you read my name. That must be the current special ability.”

“!”

With that one comment, Elias knew.

The mass of tentacles in front of him was one of their kind.

“He’s a…”

“—Genius!!”

“You know that name, do you, survivor?”

The calm voice was a feint. Or, no, it might not have been consciously intended as a feint. That was the sort of beings they were. Contact, conversation, and hostility were connected almost seamlessly; they made no distinction between them. A lunacy with a type of life that corroded you if you so much as touched it.

Along with the mild question, tentacles as sharp as spears were thrust out at Elias. It would have been easy to knock them aside, but the Ancient didn’t really want to.

“Aqua Soliton!!”

A thin stream ran over the ground from the great sword that had been stuck into it. Row upon row of wave-shaped spears of water shot up out of that clear stream. The ranks of spears that stuck up from the ground intercepted the tentacles that flew through the air.

They writhed, spewing out filthy liquid that scattered white smoke around the area. The severed tentacles were leaking strong acid. Acrid smoke rose up, stinging their eyes.

As Elias squinted against that haze, he saw Kanami charge into the white smoke, whipping up a wind.

“I call dibs! He’s mine!”

Although there was no telling when she’d gotten over there, Kanami used the tops of the evergreens to perform a triangle jump, then sent a twisting kick into the tentacled apparition.

“Yeeek?!”

“What’s wrong?!”

“Th-this thing! He’s all squishy! That’s disgusting!”

It wasn’t clear whether Kanami’s attack had had any effect, but the monster rotated the wooden frame that surrounded it. She jumped back in a move like a leaping fish in order to avoid getting caught up in the sharp rotation.

“What a curious combination, Ancient. I must not let any of you live. Rank 2. I will prevail.”

No sooner had the monster Papus made that declaration than a flood of tentacles poured down over Elias and Kanami.

Enemy of my friends. Elias’s soul was quaking with emotion, but he bit it back.

This being was an invader who had come to steal the world. Unleashing his anger would have to wait.

Wagering the Ancients’ entire reason for existence, Elias intercepted Papus.

3

Elias.

Kanami.

And Coppélia.

Even though they were fighting Papus, they weren’t able to let themselves be completely absorbed in that battle.

Papus might be a complete mystery, but he was only a Normal rank monster.

Elias and the other two were Adventurers and an Ancient on roughly the same level, and under ordinary circumstances, they should have been able to beat him handily.

After all, unlike Leonardo, Elias had Kanami and Coppélia with him. In terms of numbers alone, they had three times the enemy’s forces, but they also had two close-combat fighters—one of whom was Elias—who could attack and defend on the front line, and Coppélia, who could take charge of recovery in the rear. It was common knowledge that a party with balanced offense and defense had greater combat potential than the sum of its individual members’ abilities. The three of them shouldn’t have had trouble holding their ground against a Normal monster on their level.

“Argh! Again!!”

“Master. Leave the right side to me.”

Coppélia raised the shields she’d been holding at the ready. Her White Magic Steel Shields were heavyweight kite shields, and using them as counterweights to change her direction, she slammed into the gnolls at full force. Kanami tackled the ones that had charged in from the left.

…Exactly. The battle line had become deadlocked because the creatures were attacking in waves.

Single “tails” grew from the backs of the attacking beast-men’s heads like strange pigtails. They wriggled like fish hauled up on land, bit into the gnolls’ brains, and relayed orders from Papus.

The gnolls, which had become hosts for Papus’s tentacles, attacked Elias and the others. Every one of them had eyes that were stained a dull, dirty yellow, and they were drooling profusely. Gnolls that were more savage than usual—that was what was making the battle difficult for Elias’s group.

Coppélia and Kanami, who’d split to the right and left, were blocking the gnolls well, covering for each other. The combat situation certainly wasn’t easy, but the two of them kept on fighting, not caring a bit.

Coppélia fought impassively.

Kanami fought boisterously.

By nature, Monks didn’t have many range attacks, but Kanami seemed to have conquered that flaw: She was distributing the serial attack skills that were her specialty across the monsters around her.

The first attack, a right punch, went to a gnoll who’d leveled its sword. The second, a left palm heel, slammed into a gnoll mage who’d raised its staff and was just about to activate a spell.

In a battle of fists and blades, the angle and timing at which attacks were executed were important elements. For example, in the sport of boxing, all you could do was thrust out either your right fist or your left one. Even so, adjusting angles, timing, and trajectories has created an incredibly artistic system of techniques. This was probably evidence that, in combat, slight variations in attack techniques led to tricking your opponent and increasing hit accuracy and power.

In Kanami’s case, Monks already had an abundant range of serial attacks. By using motions to activate them voluntarily, she explosively expanded their structures, delivery methods, and timing. As Kanami paid out combinations that were dizzying to even imagine, and in a baffling variety tailored to the number and condition of the enemies around her, she looked as if she were dancing her heart out.

Kanami activated chains of serial attacks with complicated structures, parceling them out to the surrounding gnolls. However, she looked far from meditative. Elias thought she was probably executing this complex fight through sheer instinct and muscle memory acquired during training.

As for Elias, he was facing off against Papus, the owner of the tentacles, who was still spinning in front of him.

“Glub-buh-bub! Glup-blub-bloop-blorp!”

With an unpleasant laugh like seething bubbles, Papus attacked Elias.

Papus’s countless tentacles reached out for Elias, but Elias was the owner of the byname “the Strongest,” and the number and speed of those tentacles were nothing he couldn’t gauge. However, this was Papus he was dealing with, and if he avoided the tentacles, he’d sacrifice nearby gnolls. The tentacles took in foreign matter, and they were apparently capable of absorbing monster energy. If he did it, he’d only be giving Papus more underlings. It was a troublesome attack.

In order to prevent that, Elias used his two-handed sword to keep severing the tentacles that bore down on him. He intercepted tentacles he’d missed with the instantly activated Aqua Ripper, then slammed his sword into Papus, who’d closed in on his back.

“Useless.”

“Tch!! Spawn of disaster!! By my fairy blade, I will end you!”

“Fairy blade? Blup-glup. Glorp-wah-ba-ba-ba-bah!”

The rapidly spinning log structure struck Elias and sent him flying.

Even as his abdomen took heavy damage, Elias closed the distance immediately and shifted into a counterattack. Papus’s defense blocked his midrange attack spells, and they wouldn’t reach him.

Having decided that he had a better chance of winning in close combat with sword attacks, Elias charged forward, believing in the protection of the water spirits that dwelled in him.

Papus must have known this, but he let him close in.

A wild dance of tentacles and water currents broke out at close range.

Elias’s two-handed sword, Crystal Stream, bit into Papus’s wooden fortress. The exchange became a contest of strength, and they locked up.

“!”

“I know.”

“You know—what?!”

“How your race met its end.”

Elias’s vision went red.

“Have your companions awakened? Impossible. Why do you not sink? Why do you not freeze? A mere hint of Empathiom. How can you move?”

He’d known.

He’d sensed it with his first glimpse of this tentacled monster.

As he’d suspected, he was a Genius. A rank-and-file member of the army that had destroyed half of the world’s thirteen chivalric orders. Images flew into Elias’s mind: his companions, who had been transported against their will to a battlefield under a foreign sky, and the grotesque army that had assailed them.

His blood burned.

Rage gathered at his throbbing temples.

The monster in front of Elias was one of the faction that had destroyed his comrades. Even though he tried to hold it back, his rage made the water magic boil.

“Enough!!”

“Why do you not stop?”

“Shut your mouth!!”

Elias howled. His arms, wrapped in his blue and silver surcoat, swelled up, and cursed blood raced through the magic circuits that were under fairy protection. Using only his aura, Elias repelled the layers of tentacles that tried to wrap around him. However, Papus spoke to him in a dripping sort of voice that was hard to make out, filling it with malice:

“I know. You Ancients— No, all People of the Earth as well. You are all dolls. Puppets with no will, mere character software.”

A memory burst.

These were the Words of Death that had put half of the Ancients, Elias included, to sleep. A dreamless “sleep,” from which there was no waking. To the Ancients, who had no concept of death, it was another name for “parting” that came very close to it.

You are dolls.

That compulsory awareness had devoured the thirteen chivalric orders like a plague.

The words had driven some insane, made others despair, and caused still others to lose all interest in everything. Some had been unharmed, but they were the ones who had disappeared from this world.

When confronted with those words, even Elias, who was known as the strongest, had fallen into a dreamless sleep. He’d been unable to bear the ridiculousness of his mission, its hollowness, that overwhelming truth, and he’d closed himself off.

“Fall, as a counterfeit. Shutting down is what’s best for your kind. Those who were born from nothing should halt their timelines.”

The Words of Death echoed.

There was no Ancient hero who had learned swordsmanship from the fairies.

After all, there were no fairies.

There were no Ancients.

There were no People of the Earth who must be protected.

There was no world.

The hum of the fairy village, which he could remember if he listened closely, was fake. The sword in his hands, his surcoat, the wind, the wide world—it was all false. Everything Elias knew was counterfeit, and the world was just a hollow vessel.

Even Elias himself was only…

“Like! That’s! Even! True!!”

Suddenly, light was born.

Mowing down trees and breaking through both Papus’s defense and the swarm of tentacles, Kanami howled. She’d shot through with a flying kick like a shooting star, and she didn’t break that stance.

“Don’t be an idiot! Eli-Eli’s here, all right! He’s right here! From now on, we’re going to do tons of fun stuff! Don’t take him away without permission, you—bike-tube guy!”

In the midst of the golden Aorsoi light that streamed through the pierced grove, she roared like a proud queen.

Just as she had on the day she’d resurrected Elias from the abyss of sleep.

“Kanami—”

“We’re taking this guy down, Eli-Eli!”

“Understood!”

Elias nodded.

Strength returned to the hands that gripped his sword.

Mana overflowed. Kanami’s trust was converted into physical warmth, and his exhilaration and sense of mission came back to him.

“Hup!”

“Aaah!”

Sending the mana and fighting spirit within him into Crystal Stream, Elias ran like a white tiger. The aggressive streams of water he unleashed attacked Papus like countless spears. As the tentacles reached up from the earth to intercept them, they looked like opposing ranks of spears, held at the ready. However, as Elias’s water spears fell from the sky, the light passed through them, and they shone, forming a binary of light and darkness with Papus’s mud spears, which intercepted them from the ground.

A single blow opened a vast hole in the conflict.

Giant-Killer Gauntlets groaned. A shift from Mantis Action to Aerial Rave had sent Papus into the air, and Shadowless Kick knocked him even higher, like a circle throw. He was a perfect midair target.

Elias, who had believed and held his two-handed sword at the ready, channeled a flood of emotions into it and brought it down.

“Begone! Back to your den!”

His main body must have been fragile. With nothing more than a sticky noise, a gaping hole that stretched from Papus’s chest all the way through his upper body opened up. Robbed of both his mobility and the defense of his tentacles, Papus really was nothing but a Normal rank monster.

Exhaling roughly, the Ancient glared down at the monster’s corpse and swung his sword to clean it. Elias Hackblade had been reborn, and this had been the attack that would touch off the war with the Geniuses.

4

Meanwhile, about a hundred meters from Elias and Kanami’s fight, Leonardo and the blond girl, Rasfia, were confronting each other.

The forest, which had looked like a green ribbon from up in the sky, seemed to have sought out the water of the mountain stream and grown thickly. In the desolate wasteland of Aorsoi, it was likely that only the moist soil of the river basins could maintain stands of trees large enough to call forests.

The two who had been facing off in the branches of the woods were now racing through the trees, launching attack after attack at each other.

Leonardo was an Assassin.

Assassin, Swashbuckler, and Bard were known as Weapon Attack classes, and they were specially designed to inflict physical damage. They tended to fight in the vanguard, and not only did they have the physical strength necessary to deal massive damage, they acquired high-level agility in order to evade enemy attacks and claim locations that would give their attacks an advantage.

On top of that, Leonardo was a level-90 Adventurer. His physical performance was high, and he’d never let a Normal monster defeat him. This was true even if the opponent was level 89, very nearly his equal.

However, Leonardo hadn’t managed to land a solid blow.

He was having this much trouble, even though he should have been the faster of the two, because of Rasfia’s bizarre martial arts.

The girl’s movements weren’t human.

She’d stick an overarm stroke straight into a tree trunk or hang upside down, using freakish actions to toy with Leonardo.

They might not have been martial arts.

Her approach to movement paid no attention to the principle of getting around on two legs. Her abrupt, creepy motions were just like those of some sort of insect. Using her sharp nails and toes, Rasfia scuttled up tree trunks, facing backward.

“What pleasure. What joy.” She laughed with a bell-like voice.

As she bent her joints in impossible directions and moved like an insect, the fact that she was a lovely girl with a doll-like beauty made her seem like something out of a nightmare to Leonardo.

There was one other thing that cemented that grotesque impression for him.

“Shut up!!”

“Gee-hee!”

Leonardo’s slash had severed Rasfia’s arm.

“Aah! The steel. It bites me, it rends me. So this is pain, or perhaps an ache. More vermilion than sunset, redder than the equinox flower, more scarlet than the false strawberry—aah, aah!!”

Immediately after that coquettish, singsong cry, Rasfia’s severed arm struck back at Leonardo. Its fingernails grew like steel daggers, and cloaked in cold air, they slashed through his leather armor.

Tch!! Again?

Twisting to avoid the subsequent serial attack, Leonardo put some distance between them.

This happened again and again, and it was making Rasfia seem even more horrible.

That severed arm… When he looked, it had reattached.

The same was true for her legs and torso. The girl seemed to have a freakish sort of immortality. Possibly because she knew this, Rasfia brandished her four chilly, cloaked limbs, laughing elegantly as she did so.

Normal-rank monsters were defined as monsters with combat abilities that made them appropriate one-on-one opponents for an Adventurer at their level. However, in adjusting that balance, Adventurer indicated somebody who was at that level, who was equipped with store-bought weapons and equipment appropriate to their level, and who had not yet reinforced their special skills with mastery points.

Put that way, it meant “an Adventurer with minimum skills for their level.”

Leonardo wasn’t a top-level ranker-class Adventurer, but he’d still racked up more than enough experience to count as a veteran. The bulk of his equipment had come from raids, and at the very least, he had production-class items that filled in any gaps. His special skills had been reinforced to their maximums with mastery points.

The idea of Leonardo having trouble with a mere Normal-rank monster was ludicrous. Of course, he hadn’t expected to settle things instantly, but the fight really shouldn’t have dragged on for more than a few minutes.

Leonardo’s and Rasfia’s levels were roughly equal. In addition, Rasfia’s rank was Normal. However, for that very reason, Leonardo—who was an Adventurer with a full set of equipment—should have slightly but decisively surpassed her in combat strength.

Is that the trick—?

That blinking, flickering status display. The name RASFIA was alternating with GNOLL. The blinking was irregular, and there was a mesmerizing rhythm to it.

He didn’t know how it worked, but this Rasfia NPC seemed to be controlling that blinking at will.

Leonardo had picked up on something through their repeated clashes:

This woman was choosing which name took damage.

Would those be “souls,” to borrow Coppélia’s word? Coppélia had called the phenomenon “Parallel One,” but from Rasfia’s behavior, it was clear that “one” was a gross understatement. Leonardo’s instincts told him that this woman had several dozen “souls,” at the very least.

Rasfia was switching her “name” right before Leonardo’s katana hit her, letting a disposable name take the damage for her, then discarding it.

…This is seriously not normal!

Twice, three times.

Rasfia thrust out her delicate hand with the sharpness of a raptor. True, there was something astonishing about that speed, and the execution was clean. However, her physical body was no different from that of a girl in her early teens. Leonardo evaded, using the difference in reach to his advantage.

A split opened up in his cheek.

Rasfia smiled, tilting her pretty face.

The tips of her outstretched fingertips had blurred like an illusion, morphing into a hairy hand. That hand held a roughly made scimitar.

The gnoll hand and the weapon it held flickered, just as they had when they appeared, then abruptly vanished.

Taking advantage of Leonardo’s astonishment, Rasfia closed in.

Her gothic dress flared like a rose blooming in empty space. A lace petticoat peeked out from the generously full skirt. From within it, a pair of jackal’s hind legs, spotted with gray, stretched out toward Leonardo.

If Leonardo hadn’t avoided them at the last second, those toes would have gouged out his eyes. As he watched, they morphed into small pumps decorated with silk ribbons.

“Whatever’s the matter? Have you given up? Have you shriveled up? Like a flower that never sees the sun, like a migrating bird that’s lost its home?”

Rasfia’s mocking smile settled Leonardo’s resolve.

He still didn’t completely understand, but he decided that this was no time to hesitate.

If I stay on the defensive, things are just gonna keep getting worse.

Close the distance. They were already so close that if either leaned in, they’d be able to touch the other. As if abhorring that distance, Leonardo thrust out his left hand. He wasn’t attacking. It was an activation trigger.

With a flash, he unleashed Deadly Dance from that stance. It was a special Assassin attack skill. As a technique, it was a bit different: When used back-to-back, its power gradually rose, but if you messed up in the middle, its attack power would fall.

Leonardo had activated it not from the technique’s icon in his mind but through gesture input.

In the world as it currently was, there were two ways to activate combat skills during battle. As in the days of Elder Tales, you could activate skills by selecting an icon. The other method was voluntary activation, in which you mimicked a motion to activate it, using your own body as an input device.

In an overwhelming majority of cases, icon activation was used.

“Fight” and “attack successfully” were easy to say, but there was a huge variety in both monster builds and battlefield terrain. The Adventurers were ordinary earthlings with no martial arts or combat experience, and no matter how much stronger their physical abilities were, their skills were limited.

As long as they selected an icon, their special attack skills would track the enemy they were facing and make their attack hit home using the most appropriate action. For the classes that fought in close combat, this was a core attack method.

However, instead of doing this, he’d activated the skill voluntarily, using his own body.

This was the secret of Kanami’s “strength,” which he’d noticed that day.

Monks were called “the combo class,” and they had an incredible number of special skills that used one technique to execute multiple attacks.

Aerial Rave was one of the showiest serial special attack skills Monks had. It was a five-stage technique: In addition to using back-to-back left and right punches to knock the enemy into the air, you used a knee kick to toss the airborne enemy higher, then performed a heel drop, segueing into a rear spin kick in one flowing motion. The damage from each individual attack was slightly lower than it would be ordinarily, but when you totaled it up, the five-attack combo inflicted massive damage on monsters.

Then you had Triple Blow, which was a technique that unleashed three powerful punches—a right punch, a left straight, and a right hook—in a row.

Since Leonardo wasn’t a Monk, it had taken him time to fully understand it, but those two special techniques had triggered his line of thinking.

In short, Kanami had used the two final attacks in Triple Blow as the first two punches in Aerial Rave, fulfilling its activation conditions.

While a special skill was activated, Adventurers couldn’t activate another one. In Elder Tales, that had been common sense. As a matter of fact, even now, the mental icon went dark while a special skill was activated, and you weren’t allowed to input anything.

However, when activating a special skill with a physical body, there was no time when input was invalid. Even if it did exist, a person could perform back-to-back input using something that resembled wait-listing.

Aerial Rave was a powerful combo attack, but its damage relied on the kicks in its latter half, the heel drop and the rear spin kick. The earlier punches were there just to get the enemy into the air, and as far as damage was concerned, they were practically nothing. However, when using icon input activation, the sequence flow was set, so starting or stopping it in the middle was impossible.

Even if an attack was unnecessary, it couldn’t be left out.

Kanami had destroyed this common sense. By substituting the powerful Triple Blow for the early, low-damage attacks meant to break down the enemy’s stance, she’d drastically increased the total performance of both special techniques.

Of course, this was easier to say than to do.

Special skills that were activated from the visible icon assisted the Adventurer’s actions by instantly sizing up their own stance and the terrain, the enemy’s body build, and the distance between them.

Voluntarily activated special skills didn’t have that sort of assist function. To begin with, there was a considerable range of voluntary activations. For example, for a basic Deadly Dance, the Adventurer thrust their left hand out, charged up, then executed a rapid strike with the blade in their right hand. That was all there was to the technique, but there were seven different motions that could be used to activate it, and those were only the ones Leonardo had confirmed for himself. There were all sorts of angles and timings at which one could thrust out their left hand, as well as permissible charge time ranges.

Unless Leonardo himself selected one of these diverse variations to match the conditions in front of him, the attack probably wouldn’t be effective in actual combat. Voluntarily activated attacks didn’t have auto-tracking, so without a lot of training, their hit rate was lower than icon-activated attacks. The difficulty was too high, and the system was so complex that nobody felt like practicing them if there was no advantage in doing so.

However, there was an advantage.

Leonardo swung the blade in his right hand. The slash became a drawn line that was absorbed into Rasfia. The icon in his mind went dark and began slowly recovering, like an hourglass. It took one second. If he used Deadly Dance again one second later, the power behind that second attack would increase by 7 percent.

However, Leonardo didn’t waste that second.

He added another attack, scooping upward with his left hand. The special skill was Quick Assault. Then, immediately after, Deadly Dance. Then Stealth Blade, leading into another Deadly Dance. Turning the simple pose of thrusting out his left hand into a method of attacking with the Ninja Twin Flames he held in both hands, Leonardo became a storm of blades.

Assassins didn’t have the variety of combo attacks that Monks had. As a result, Leonardo couldn’t copy Kanami’s fighting style exactly.

Realizing this, he’d racked his brains and put together this fighting method, Parallel Plot. It used “charge” and the gaps between motions to turn a series of special skills that would normally only be processed in sequence into a double-layered attack method.

At this point, he could only use a combination built around Deadly Dance, but all of Leonardo’s nearly thirty skills had to have the flexibility of voluntary activation. By combining them or honing them to perfection, Leonardo would probably be able to deal damage that surpassed the Assassin maximum.

Leonardo confronted his opponent with a fighting style that, while still far from perfect, was all his.

5

“What is this speed—?! That light—”

“Shut up!!”

Two. Three, four!

Rasfia was no longer silent. Countless mesmerizing blades leapt from the arm she drove forward. She was prepared to go down and take him with her.

Leonardo took these attacks, and sprays of blood went up from his chest and forehead.

He evaded with Gust Step, and no sooner had he appeared behind Rasfia’s back than he hit her with his sixth slash. The destructive power in Deadly Dance was already up to 175 percent of the damage in its first attack. As she took nearly double the damage of a normal attack, Rasfia’s limbs crumbled away easily, then immediately regrew.

Leonardo had no leeway, either. He was an Assassin, just a Weapon Attack class; he wasn’t a Warrior class, whose mission was to take damage from enemies on the front line, nor a Recovery class, who could heal their own damage. He had better defense than a magic user, but there was a limit to his HP.

Take them down before they take you out. For the weapon attack classes, that was the principle behind solo combat. However, even as the monstrous girl before him smiled with charm, she slipped through Leonardo’s attacks again and again, jabbing him with thrusts cloaked in cold air.

Ignoring his draining HP, Leonardo paid out more attacks. Either way, as an attack class, there was nothing else he could do.

—Nothing but attack and silence his target.

“What is that power?! You poor little lamb! You foolish, lost child of this transient world!”

“Shut up! I don’t wanna hear that from a lousy raid boss!”

“Raid boss? Heh-heh! Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh! —Aah! How droll, what comedy! Just when I fancied you were an all-knowing god privy to the secrets of the cycle of transmigration, you prattle like a naïve child playing on the beach. How atrociously soft. That sin is worth ten thousand deaths!”

“What…”

…was she saying?

What did it mean?

Leonardo couldn’t finish the question.

Rasfia had abruptly closed in on him, and in the instant his eyes were caught by her glossy lips, sharp pain ran through him. A gnoll head had appeared from a tear in her gothic dress.

The gnoll, which had sunk its fangs into the top of Leonardo’s shoulder, disappeared, leaving only the inside of its red-stained mouth behind, like an illusion.

His shredded shoulder could still move, but his HP was nearly gone.

This is no time for talking!

Mustering his willpower, Leonardo continued his chain of attacks.

The permissible input time for Deadly Dance was a bit under two seconds. Unless he executed the next Deadly Dance within that time limit, the increase in attack power he’d accumulated up to this point would evaporate.

Tearing his mind away from his hot, throbbing shoulder—Quick Assault. Deadly Dance, as if slamming it into Rasfia’s impudent words.

The attack power had increased to 212 percent.

Mental serenity led to skill. Leonardo did his best to keep his eyes focused on what was in front of him. The pain, which was like a ringing in his ears, receded. His own body temperature had been in the way, but it receded as well. The world held nothing but the twenty-odd types of special attack skills Leonardo could use. Combining their cast times, motion binds, and recast times, he raced down the shortest route.

There was no single right answer. The enemy’s defense and evasions, the distance between himself and them, their weight and the positions of their dominant hand and foot. On the contrary, these were an RGB kaleidoscope that shifted with the passage of time with a lowercase t. Seeking the best move within it, avoiding dead ends that would shut down his attacks, Leonardo continued his internal sprint.

In the midst of a sense of time so stretched out that he could feel the delay in his own physical reaction speed, the method—the “code”—he’d assembled in order to attack caught fire.

“What ferocity! But even that is mere child’s play.”

“That’s just fine!”

Leonardo thought this from the bottom of his soul.

“Child’s play” was just fine.

Programs were dense trees and forests.

He could assemble tiny, simple codes, building functions. The accumulation created bigger, more convenient components, and before long, he had an app. He combined them even more dynamically, had them transmit to each other, and created a service.

Leonardo knew that, if you wanted results, you had to do very simple work and keep on doing it. In order to create a work of art that was the equivalent of an enormous structure, you had to put together the fragments that were in front of you right now.

Geeks were the people who understood that distance…

…and the ones who embodied its nobility were hackers.

Leonardo happily continued his detailed operations.

The attack power was currently at 245 percent.

If Rasfia wanted to call it child’s play, she could do that all day. That child’s play was cornering her. Leonardo believed that. He believed in geeks.

“As often as you like.”

Beyond a salvia-like spray of blood that had bloomed in the air, he saw Rasfia’s slender hand.

As Leonardo layered on another Deadly Dance, she aimed an attack at his neck, but he avoided it by simply twisting the trunk of his body, then pursued her. That counterattack had cost him three of the special skills he could have chosen for his next attack. He had four possible options left. From these, he chose the next attack, the move that would lead to the next exchange, and executed another strike.

“Paralyze Blow!”

“Keh-hee-hee!”

No, even those thoughts were in the way.

All that existed were nearly reflexive decisions, backed up by vast amounts of experience. Leonardo believed in the branching skills he’d unearthed. His training up on that big boulder was alive here, in the midst of this fight that would spell the difference between life and death.

“I’ve wearied of this. Die, ignorant lout. Dance, Reckless!”

Possibly she’d grown irritated: Without even avoiding Leonardo’s swords, Rasfia unleashed a large attack.

Her sleeves swelled up like balloons, then released a torrent of gnolls. Claws, fangs, swords, and axes hit him like raging waves. It was Rasfia’s certain-kill attack, one made possible by her ability to negate damage using her “names,” and it was meant to take out both of them at once. The torrent was filled with the grotesque resolution to inflict a lethal wound, no matter which attacks he avoided.

But Leonardo had been waiting for that attack as well.

“‘Reckless’?! Awesome, bring it!”

Activating Trick Step, Leonardo leapt into the attack. In the treetops, twenty meters above the ground, he danced fearlessly between life and death. With a calm heart, looking just like the heroes he admired, he unleashed his attacks.

If this was an attack that was determined not to let Leonardo get away when he fled, then all he had to do was not flee. In a group attack that surrounded you, the eye of the storm held a shot at survival.

“Deadly Dance!!”

Just as the name implied, it was a dance of life and death: Rasfia’s switching advances; Leonardo’s attacks. Victory drifted in the space between them.

“What delight, what joy! However, you’re still—”

Leonardo had slashed Rasfia with the tip of his sword and sent her flying, and he raced after her. Her name blurred. He’d predicted that already, a moment earlier. He’d taken a lot of hits. Leonardo didn’t have any time left.

Still, his heart was quiet.

He could even remember her voice.

Leonardo had hurt her. He’d treated her like a doll.

But there was only one way that heroes apologized.

Just one.

Rasfia’s expression had warped into a smile. He wouldn’t give her time.

Her torso disappeared, like a dim shadow. However, that was merely an omen of regeneration, and her eyes, half-closed in apparent delight, reflected Leonardo’s figure.

One beat. The space of one-fourth of a breath. That was the amount of time Rasfia needed in order to regenerate. He’d gotten a feel for it during their long battle.

Leonardo sought out, then implemented, an attack with enough speed to force its way into that slight space.

“Sorry. I’ve got a previous engagement.”

The fastest, strongest, ultimate secret move, using the residual tension after Deadly Dance as a portion of its activation gesture.

—Assassinate.

It was the Assassin’s pride, a single special attack with astronomical output. It boasted the greatest power of all twelve classes.

“!! ! ”

The sensation of neatly bisecting a crimson world was as dry as if he’d cut a fragile clay vessel in half. Leonardo, who’d mustered all his strength for the pursuit, lost his balance and was left unable to do anything but look at the figure of the lovely girl whom he’d already cut in two.

“Get lost!!”

“Ah… Aah! —The hands of the clock—eleven more—”

The girl’s expression looked taken aback, as if she’d just heard a magnificent joke, but she showed no pain. Leaving behind a delirious murmur, she turned into particles.

Leonardo watched it happen. A moment later, though, he remembered he’d also leapt off the branch into thin air, and he ended up enjoying a cordless bungee jump to the ground.

6

“Dammit. What kind of idiot bungees without a rope?”

Leonardo was lying spread-eagled on the leaf mold.

The trees around him had been mowed down and carried scars from his fight with Rasfia, but the area where he lay was quiet now.

At some point, birdsong had twined its way into the cool sound of the mountain stream.

The sounds that had echoed from far away and nearby up until just a little while ago, noises that had probably come from Elias and the others’ battle, had also disappeared.

Apparently, they’d settled things somehow.

That said, Leonardo couldn’t get up.

His HP was extremely low, in the red zone. Rasfia’s freezing hand strikes seemed to have inflicted cold attribute damage. He hadn’t had the leeway to check during the fight, but he’d racked up more than ten negative statuses. The continuous damage each one inflicted was minuscule, but the total was nothing to sneeze at.

That damage and the automatic recovery that occurred at times of peace were competing with each other on Leonardo’s HP bar.

He didn’t feel like he was going to die right this second, but he couldn’t hope to recover naturally anytime soon. Besides that, his limbs tingled; they might have gotten frostbite.

Still. Hot damn, I did it.

Even so, Leonardo felt good.

He’d done everything he could do.

He wasn’t sure, but at the very least, they’d probably managed to halt the gnoll invasion along this tributary. Leonardo was sure that the pair he’d seen had been the masterminds behind this raid.

Since he’d left the Raid-rank Black Dragon to KR, he didn’t know what had happened to it, but Leonardo had no doubt:

This lowly geek had gotten through the fight. There was no way the easygoing KR would have wiped out. In any case, having lost the beings who’d been controlling it, the Black Dragon showed no sign of returning. That young guy probably didn’t need Leonardo worrying about him.

Still, that didn’t matter anymore.

This world wasn’t the world of Elder Tales.

At this point, Leonardo was able to say that and mean it.

In Elder Tales, raids were game content, and people spoke of their captures in terms of rare-item acquisitions and whether they’d subdued their targets or not.

But this wasn’t Elder Tales. Even if they’d failed to subjugate the Black Dragon, even if they hadn’t gotten any rare items, even if KR and Leonardo had collapsed in the middle of it— As long as they’d managed to halt the monster invasion, the heroes had won.

Now that village won’t take any damage… Right?

That was how Leonardo summed up his thoughts, which the blood loss had left weirdly clear.

He didn’t think the people of that village would ever know about this fight. Not only that, it was doubtful whether Leonardo’s group would ever visit the village again.

Still, that’s fine, isn’t it? he thought.

That was what heroes were like.

Those four, the ones Leonardo idolized, fought without bothering themselves about that stuff. If there was somebody they wanted to save, and they saved them and took down injustice, then it was all good.

Even so…

Leonardo thought about the golden-haired girl he’d fought in mortal combat. Her existence had been much too graphic. She’d oozed an outsized lunacy.

Even among the Puerto Rican pushers that hung out in the ghettos, there was nobody that crazy. He remembered Rasfia’s superficially calm and pretty speech and her feverish gaze.

It was true that New York didn’t have the world’s best public order. As he walked its streets, he’d heard gunshots more than a couple of times. There were a ton of crazies living there, too.

Still, to him, those people and that girl seemed different.

All-knowing… Privy to the secrets of the cycle of transmigration.

Considered in the ordinary way, Rasfia’s words were probably some sort of quest-related hint, but Leonardo just couldn’t think of them like that. He sensed trouble much nastier than that in them.

The idea of his having grasped the secrets of destiny was ridiculous. Only a god could do that sort of thing. Gods just sat up there in heaven and smiled. That was all.

That crazy-eyed woman, and Coppélia…

According to Leonardo’s understanding of everything up to this point, neither of those two was human.

Rasfia was a monster, and Coppélia was a bot.

Still, in this world, that was probably wrong. Even if it was a logically accurate conclusion, his hero’s soul insisted that something was off. In that case, Leonardo believed in his soul. Skill might be what reviewed code, but the desire to review it came from the soul. His soul was what made Leonardo himself.

“Heeeey, Croooakanaaardooooo!”

At the sound of the carefree hailing, he sat up. His three companions were approaching from downstream, with Kanami in the lead. Apparently, they’d managed to drive the gnolls away.

Kanami was waving at him energetically, and at the sight of her expression, the tension rapidly drained out of Leonardo’s mood. He sensed that trouble was on its way, but at the moment, from the bottom of his heart, he truly didn’t care.

At any rate, in this world, there wasn’t much besides trouble to begin with. Heroes’ lives consisted of detecting incoming trouble, dealing with trouble, and cleaning up after trouble. Peace was just an intermission, an interlude.

Leonardo smiled a little. I’ll have to get a lot tougher. For a guy, toughness was a condition of survival. That was true both in good old Big Apple and here in Aorsoi.

He didn’t see KR, but they’d already said their good-byes.

They’d probably meet again. Leonardo no longer had any doubt that he’d reach the Japanese server. He wouldn’t forget that sarcastic Summoner, the guy who’d saved him from danger. He swore that, if KR got himself into a tight corner someday, he’d be the one to rescue him.

Noisy Kanami seemed to be arguing about something with the Ancient. The words “not grateful enough” and “I am grateful” reached Leonardo’s ears. Then, before more than a few words had been said, there was a big splash. Elias had been kicked into the river, and Kanami was laughing merrily. They really couldn’t have been louder.

A shadow fell over Leonardo, and Coppélia peeked in at him. Behind her, the sun was beginning to travel down the western sky. As always, the girl’s inorganic, beautiful face looked indifferent. She tilted her head slightly and spoke to Leonardo:

“Coppélia would like to point out that your HP has been greatly reduced. Do you wish to be healed?”

“Coppélia.”

“Yes?”

Lying stretched out on the ground, Leonardo looked deep into the young woman’s eyes for the first time. In those eyes, he felt as if he’d found what he was searching for, and his heart grew warm. There was something he needed to say.

“I’m sorry.”

“Coppélia failed to detect the context for that apology.”

“That’s fine.”

Leonardo searched for just the right words for the perplexed young woman.

“I’m Leonardo.”

“Yes. Sir Leonardo.”

“And yeah, I want to be healed.”

“Understood.”

She said his name for the first time, and he had asked for healing for the first time. The healing light was white with a faint crimson mixed into it, a color that reminded him of innocence. Coppélia’s recovery spell enfolded Leonardo like a warm cocoon, taking away the pain and fatigue.

Wordlessly, the young woman examined Leonardo’s wounds closely. Her face was terribly serious. That expression was so careful that Leonardo finally managed to find the right words.

“Coppélia.”

“Yes?”

“You do have a soul.”

“?”

“You’ve got one, all right. I can see it. The color of your soul is—”

The healing pale pink that flowed from her slim fingertips.

Leonardo said it with conviction.

<Log Horizon 9—Go East, Kanami! The End>