1

Hello.

I wasn’t sure how to begin this, but for the first words, a greeting seems suitable.

Hello, world. Hello, Shiroe.

I’m writing this letter at an inn located in the town of Saphir in central Yamato.

When I’ve finished writing it, I plan to give it to my friend Minori.

I’m told “Shiroe of Log Horizon” will be the one to read it. When I heard that name, it made me feel quite strange. I have your memories inside me, you see.

Just as you Adventurers are beings who have been incarnated into Theldesia from another world, we too, have been incarnated here from yet another world.

My name is Roe2.

We call ourselves Travelers. From your perspective, we are intelligent alien life-forms.

At the same time, I myself am also your little sister.

Your expectations have no doubt been raised, and all I can do is apologize: Neither we Fool-inspectors nor the Genius-collectors, who are also members of the Traveler race, are able to explain anything about the Eclipse—what you term “the Catastrophe”—to you. To be accurate, we could explain it, but the explanation would be our understanding of the Eclipse, not an elucidation of its principles nor a way to resolve it.

Even so, I believe we are very slightly ahead of you and your people, and as such, I intend to carry out my duty. After all, I am your little sister, but as I assured Minori, I am your big sister as well.

On that point, I should begin by explaining two things:

Why I am Roe2, and…

…why I am your little sister.

Like you, we Travelers arrived in Theldesia via the Eclipse. However, our world is far more distant than Theldesia, and our species had no original physical forms or configuration data.

Therefore, when we reached this world, we borrowed bodies we found locally to use as avatars.

If what Minori says is correct, you are an extraordinarily perceptive, intelligent individual.

Now that I’ve explained this much, no doubt you already understand, but my current body is yours—the one that was in storage on the moon. To use the terminology of this world, it had no active “soul connection.”

I would like you to forgive me for borrowing it without permission.

This body holds vivid traces of your thoughts and memories.

I have been able to explain things to you this way by reorganizing your vocabulary data. In large part, it is thanks to you that I am able to speak the words of this world. The repayment of that debt is one of my reasons for writing this letter.

If possible, I would like you to read it with an open mind.

After all, you may tear it up and throw it away at any time.

2

Shiroe looked up at the ceiling and sighed. He’d lost track of how many times he’d done that.

He was holding several sheets of creased stationery.

It was the letter Minori had brought him.

He’d recognized the neat handwriting. When he’d flipped through nearby documents to see whose it was, he’d realized it was his own. So even our handwriting is similar? Shiroe thought, massaging the spot between his eyes as though to ward off a headache.

He was in the Log Horizon guild hall.

By now, this place, a remodeled abandoned building in northern Akiba, was his home. Not because Shiroe had purchased the seven-story brick building by plunking down all the money he had, but because the companions who had welcomed him were constantly here with him.

Nine Adventurers—Shiroe, Naotsugu, Akatsuki, Nyanta, Minori, Touya, Isuzu, Rundelhaus, and the new member, Tetora—lived in this guild home. With an ancient tree growing through the middle of the building, they weren’t able to use the central area of each floor. Even so, since there were about three or four rooms per floor, each of the members had a private room, and it didn’t feel cramped.

This room was Shiroe’s office.

With nine members, their group wasn’t quite tiny, but they were clearly one of the smaller guilds. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have needed anything as ostentatious as an office. A single work desk in his room would have been enough. However, Log Horizon was one of the eleven guilds on the Round Table Council, and Shiroe had a lot of inquiries and petitions to field. There were visitors, too… And so he had an office.

Shiroe spent so much time in this office that the other members could very easily have called him a hermit. Naturally, this was partly because he had a lot of work, but it was also because he tended to become lost in thought, and he guessed it probably worried the other members.

That said, as a rule, most of the members of Log Horizon didn’t fret over what was on Shiroe’s mind…

Shiroe arched his back, stretching against the backrest of his office chair.

His fingers folded the letter that sat on his stomach and returned it to its envelope.

It had been serious.

It had been a letter that threatened to stir up serious issues.

However, behind his glasses, Shiroe closed his eyes and sighed.

“True, this letter is a big problem. By that token, though, the Round Table Council, Minami, the Holy Empire of Westlande, and Krusty, too, are all big problems.”

Listing them aloud made him aware, once again, that none of them was a laughing matter.

Krusty himself aside, his guild, known as D.D.D., had developed administrative problems. Frankly, it was strange that its missing leader hadn’t created more of an issue before. D.D.D.’s administrative staff was outstanding, so the problem hadn’t yet spread to the surrounding area, but there were reports that, internally, fatigue was accumulating.

The Holy Empire of Westlande was a problem, too. According to his investigations, they were drafting soldiers and restructuring their knight brigades, although neither was being done on a large scale.

The Round Table Council had united eastern Yamato with Akiba at its center, while Plant Hwyaden had united Yamato’s western half. The two organizations had different philosophies, but Shiroe didn’t think that was an inherently bad thing. Even with a schism like this one, at heart, the Adventurers were contemporary individuals with roots in modern Japan. Since that was the case, he hadn’t thought they’d go to war. Or rather, he still didn’t think they would, even now.

However, apparently, that sort of common sense didn’t hold true with the People of the Earth.

The Holy Empire of Westlande, which governed the West, looked as if it was planning to go to war with Eastal, the League of Free Cities. If that began, Shiroe thought there was no way he and the other Adventurers would be able to stay uninvolved. They probably couldn’t harden their hearts enough to keep out of it.

For better or for worse, the Adventurers were modern Japanese.

There was no way that Plant Hwyaden hadn’t noticed. When it came to that sort of thing, Shiroe thought Madame Indicus was so perceptive the word sharp didn’t even begin to cover it.

He had a certain amount of information regarding what was happening in Minami. Thinking about it made him feel depressed. It was a road Akiba had nearly gone down, and even now, he couldn’t say the possibility had disappeared entirely.

The Round Table Council.

It felt to Shiroe as though the Council was approaching a new crossroads. If the crisis had been something he could see, monsters or a huge calamity, he probably wouldn’t have been this worried. Krusty might be missing, but Akiba had Isaac, Soujirou, and many other heroic Adventurers. Shiroe was confident that, in combat, they could eliminate most obstacles.

However, this didn’t seem to be that sort of problem.

It felt more like the atmosphere immediately after the Catastrophe. It looked to Shiroe as if the despair they’d thought they’d shaken off with the Crescent Burgers had risen again. Could people’s malaise and resignation actually breed war, which they’d never seen? Shiroe had never experienced that, and he didn’t know what it might bring.

“And actually, thinking about why things are like this is pointless, but I can’t not think it, and the work just keeps coming in, and arrrrgh…”

Shiroe slumped facedown across his desk.

He’d hoped, naïvely, that if he played dead, the trouble might blow over, but it didn’t even budge. Its symbols were the letter he’d tossed aside, and that mountain of documents.

“Shiroecchi.”

Nyanta knocked on the door, then opened it a crack and peeked in. When Shiroe waved for him to enter, his lean shape slipped into the room.

Seeing this, Shiroe shoved the letter into a desk drawer and went over to the reception set. Looking a bit surprised, Nyanta transferred drinks from his silver tray to the table.

“Take a seat, Captain Nyanta.”

“Mew don’t need to work?”

“I’m tired,” Shiroe admitted with a laugh.

In response, Nyanta said, “Mrowr-ha-ha. In that case, I’ll keep mew company,” and sat down.

The two of them began drinking something that resembled hot chocolate. It was warm and incredibly sweet.

Shiroe let his eyes fall to the whirlpool pattern on the surface of his cup. Possibly due to the convection current, it was spinning slowly. The marbling looked like a spiral. Shiroe decided that trivial things like this catching his attention was proof he was tired. The sweetness seemed to soak into him.

“Mew’re working too hard, Shiroecchi.”

“You too, Captain.”

Shiroe smiled a little, and Nyanta looked startled.

Shiroe had noticed that the other man had been brooding a bit lately. It had begun after he’d gone to the West in order to guard Minori and the other younger members. Nyanta had given him a report on what had happened. He was quiet, and he hadn’t said much, but Shiroe could imagine what he’d seen.

The Captain ran into an Adventurer who’d failed to adjust to this world.

That was a problem gradually becoming apparent in Akiba as well.

“It’s been almost a year since the Catastrophe, hasn’t it?”

“Mew’re right. It will be, in another month…”

“Uh-huh.”

That one year has divided people.

If the Catastrophe had been a transitory incident that had been resolved in a short time, this never would have been an issue. The situation had been shattering and unprecedented; it was only natural that people had been shocked, and no wonder they’d been stunned and confused.

“It feels as though it’s been a long time, and simewltaneously not very long at all.”

“Right. I bet there are people who want to go home.”

“True… It’s likely there are people who want it so desperately they’d throw everything away to get it.”

“You’re right.”

Even Shiroe would have been lying if he’d said he didn’t want to go home. However, that was only if going home was possible. After the Catastrophe, most of the residents of Akiba had managed to get used to this world through the Round Table Council’s aid, to the point where they could say, Of course I want to go back. If I can, I mean. The words held the desire to go home, but they also held the readiness to accept that, if it wasn’t possible, then there was no help for it.

The phrase throw everything away was a heavy one.

Shiroe didn’t think there was anyone who could even imagine “everything,” and no one who’d be able to throw it all away.

Didn’t that really mean they wanted to erase themselves? He imagined it might be like deciding nothing mattered anymore and returning to nothingness.

However, the Catastrophe had been an insanity-inducing event, and it wasn’t as though anyone could cope with it. There was no help for that. The previous year had proved those people hadn’t been able to adjust.

They didn’t want to be in this world. Put into words, the feeling would probably have been, I want to go home. Even if it isn’t possible.

“It’s not that I don’t know how they feel…”

“Yes, it’s far mew easy to relate. That’s why I can’t blame them.”

“It’s sad.”

“It hurts.”

The two of them gazed into their mugs, sharing the silence.

The despair inside people was so great they couldn’t even look at the future. That hurt Shiroe more sharply than the most powerful monster.

“Shiroecchi…”

Unusually, Nyanta hesitated. Before that eloquent silence broke on its own, he asked Shiroe gently: “Do mew want to go home?”

The kindness in his voice made Shiroe sad. This world was making Nyanta push himself. He thought the same was true of his own uneasy expression. Still, even if he thought that, he couldn’t find any answers inside himself.

Shiroe sighed a little, then spoke, as if squeezing out the words.

“I think we should go home.”

He had thought for a long time before reaching this entirely natural, obvious conclusion. A sound argument. No matter how he thought about it, there was nothing else.

“As far as this world is concerned, we really are alien. When living here, some people will be warped, and others will choose to change the world. That sort of thing might have happened when we were back in our old world. Or rather, I think it did happen. Still, if it’s an avoidable tragedy, then we should stay clear of it, and we’re—”

Shiroe knew Nyanta was nodding slightly in agreement, but the rest of his words stuck in his chest, and he couldn’t say them. If he believed that nearby letter, then even if he couldn’t declare they could go home, there were probably things they could do instead.

However, even the thirty seconds ahead into which Shiroe was gazing, daybreak was still distant, and the night was deep.

3

“Ahh.”

Riezé heard herself make a noise that sounded suspiciously like a sigh.

When she raised her head and looked out the window, cream-colored light was illuminating the ancient trees. Most of the members were out training or on supply expeditions, and the guild hall was quiet and empty.

There were a dozen or so documents near her.

They weren’t neat documents, drafted according to a format.

They were messy, with margins crammed with memos and notes. Riezé smiled mockingly at how clumsy they were.

Those notes were her footprints. The record of a struggle, something she’d written as a lifeline, in a dark wasteland where she’d be stranded if she didn’t leave them behind.

In many cases, answers were simple things. They might be as trivial as This month, purchase about five hundred substitute weapons for training. But how should she think in order to reach that conclusion? It didn’t have to be private thought. It could be debate, or calculations. At any rate, what should she do in order to find answers? Riezé didn’t know.

This was because the decisions at D.D.D. had been, for the most part, semiautomatic: If people filled out request forms on site and submitted them, they were accumulated and distributed the next month. However, this automatic distribution had been a product of the D.D.D. official site’s member functions, which had been located outside Elder Tales.

After the Catastrophe, they no longer had clerical support from the external site, but this didn’t become a problem immediately. The members were used to the application/supply process, and they drew up the forms on their own. The administrative headquarters organized the forms and continued to supply the necessary materials. That sort of mechanism was still alive and functioning, and it was an important driving force that kept D.D.D., one of the most enormous guilds on the Yamato server, alive.

On the other hand, though, the mechanism was from a time when D.D.D.’s abilities to procure materials had been nearly infinite. When they couldn’t obtain “five hundred substitute weapons for training,” the system didn’t have a function that would adjust for that. In addition, this wasn’t true only for adjustments to preexisting matters and changes: Completely new requests and matters that spanned the duties of whole departments were being generated one after another.

Riezé was a member of Drei Klauen, D.D.D.’s executive organization. She’d prided herself on her understanding of the guild’s administrative system. As a matter of fact, the guild master had entrusted the material arrangements and schedule management on the external site entirely to her.

However, stepping in and managing a system that was already operating—not only that, but one that included some automatic adjustments and clerical support—was completely different from searching for correct solutions for a variety of matters, turning them into procedures, spreading the word, and refining them to the point where they could be run as systems.

I didn’t understand that those were completely different things.

The fact made Riezé smile bitterly.

Drei Klauen was a clownish name. Kushiyatama had seen that, and she had left because of it. At this point, Riezé could be honest with herself about that.

By the time she gave a big stretch, the temporary office was tinted with pale lemon-colored light. The afternoon had grown later. This wasn’t the madder red of evening, but the soft light showed that it was on its way. In March, early spring, the light held no heat; it was tranquil and beautiful.

Standing up to reset her mood, Riezé poured cold tea from a pitcher into a glass.

This temporary office was bleak, and it didn’t have a tea set. This was only natural: She was borrowing a conference room that could hold about twenty people. D.D.D. did have proper offices, of course. They were luxurious, imposing, with atmospheres that made them seem like rooms for distinguished guests, but Riezé felt a little awkward about using them. This was odd because when Crusty had been with them, she’d used those rooms as if it were nothing. Riezé chuckled a little, thinking their guild master must have had a sort of magical ability that had made even the companions around him shameless.

“Whoops. Miss Riezé.”

A young man with cheerful eyes had poked his head in without waiting for a response to his knock. It was Calasin of Shopping District 8. Slipping in casually, Calasin shut the door and set down his bags. He came over fairly frequently, so his being in and out of D.D.D. was routine for both of them.

“Thank you for all your hard work, Calasin.”

“Ah-ha-ha-ha. Seriously… Things are pretty hairy.”

“They don’t look good?”

“Well, it’s busy as hell!”

“Honestly. You always joke around like that.”

Riezé pointed to a chair, encouraging him to sit. After he set down the canvas bags he’d carried, one over each shoulder, Calasin organized the contents of the one paper bag he’d been carrying, continuing their conversation as he worked.

“That’s not… Well, maybe it’s true. You look busy, too, Riezé.”

“I’m simply clumsy, that’s all.”

“Oh, there you go again. And you’re serious; that makes it hard to deal with.”

Riezé indicated the documents with a look.

They were programs for level-75, -77, -81, and -85 raids. Before the Catastrophe, D.D.D. had fought battles on that scale three hundred times a week. The level zones meant the raids had been more like “patrols” than challenges to tackle. At this point, though, everything had changed.

Now that this world was real, battles were considerably more difficult. Before, level-75 raids had been the sort of content attempted by Adventurers between levels 70 and 72. However, at present, it would be difficult to achieve a complete victory on that level. Even if it was possible, they’d have to prepare for the accompanying exhaustion. She had to select the levels of the participating members carefully.

In addition, the increased cost of travel was a big problem. Now that the Fairy Rings couldn’t be used, all expeditions involved mounts, and it was necessary to take food and camping equipment. There were only a handful of dungeons where they could say, This raid’s just to keep ourselves in practice. Let’s go clean it out real quick.

“Raids, huh?”

“Yes, although we’re only selecting suitable ones nearby.”

“Can I see?” Calasin asked, and Riezé nodded. As she watched, he flipped through the programs. There were lots of notes and memos, but there weren’t many pages. The plans were simple.

“You do want fantasy-class materials, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Riezé nodded.

Akiba was undergoing a technological development boom, and in the midst of that activity, all sorts of materials were being bought and sold. This was true both for food and for items such as weapons and defensive gear. The prices of all sorts of things were fluctuating violently, but in the midst of the chaos, there were two things whose prices continued to climb.

One was luxury indulgences, which couldn’t be replicated—for example, delicious food and recreational items sold for extremely high prices. The cost of manga and handmade figures was skyrocketing. This was probably because, even if they’d been shut into this fantasy world, Riezé and the others were modern earthlings, and they needed something to soothe their emotional cravings. Even Riezé couldn’t help loosening her purse strings when newly developed cakes were advertised.

The other was fantasy-class materials.

In this world, material was the general term for items that were used in the creation of other items. In cooking, wheat, tomatoes, Pacific saury, and Hokuri potatoes were all materials. In contrast, items created by processing materials were called “processed items.” It was possible for processed items to be used as materials in the manufacture of other items as well.

These “materials” could be obtained from the world itself. Lumber came from forests. Ores came from mountains. Fish came from the ocean. There were acquisition points for materials from fields and ranches that required human labor, too. In most cases, the people who produced these materials were People of the Earth.

Monster drop items were the ones Adventurers were most familiar with, and these were known as “drop materials” or “monster materials.”

In many cases, materials had levels, even if those levels weren’t explicitly stated. For example, there were low-level and high-level versions of the same Iron Ore item. Low-level versions could be obtained from safe mines where the monsters were weak and scarce, while acquiring high-level versions required equivalent risk.

Fantasy-class materials were the very hardest type to acquire. These were materials dropped by the sort of monsters that had to be subjugated through raids. Fantasy-class materials were precious resources. They were required in order to repair and create fantasy-class weapons and defensive gear. That wasn’t all: In the post-Catastrophe world, demand was soaring, not just from weapons and gear, but from all sorts of invented items and experiments. The anecdote about the Roderick Trading Company using Dragon Scale Bricks to create a superhot furnace was famous.

“Does it look as if the supplies will be all right?”

“Well, of course, we’ve got that nailed down. Both food and materials for repairs.”

“Monster materials are fine, but everything else tends to stagnate.”

“Let’s split that part up, then.”

“All right.”

By nature, D.D.D. was a self-contained guild. At the very least, Riezé understood that that was where Krusty’s interests had lain. The guild had an internal supply function and could continue to operate independently.

However, after the Catastrophe, that function was showing marked flaws as well. In the game, it had been one thing, but now that it had grown this complicated and become part of the Round Table Council, being “self-contained” was a pipe dream. As expeditions grew longer, obtaining supplies from external sources had grown more important, and cooperation with Calasin’s Shopping District 8 had become vital.

“You’re a hard worker, Riezé. Little Minori, too. Akiba’s ladies are all, you know, dazzling.”

After wrapping up a lengthy preliminary meeting about how to transfer the supplies necessary for the expeditions (it would be best if they could be delivered to the actual sites), Calasin spoke to Riezé in a droll way.

“That isn’t true.”

Riezé denied it, and Calasin smiled wryly. “You’re comparing yourself to the wrong person.”

That probably is true, Riezé thought.

Krusty really was exceptional. After coming into contact with this enormous system he’d created—D.D.D.—the better she understood it, the more aware she was of his skills. She was constantly finding signs that all the concerns she could think of had already been anticipated—countermeasures had been taken, too. Furthermore the procedures that made Riezé think, This is unnecessary. We should simplify it, proved to be balancers, or redundancy for dealing with trouble.

For the first time, Riezé had learned that organizations could be creations and works of art. D.D.D. was Krusty’s creation, and he had built it with talent in a class all on its own.

Riezé knew Krusty was exceptional and that she shouldn’t compare herself to him.

However, she had no other teachers to serve as examples, and there were no textbooks in this world.

“Oh. Right, ermm… Listen. I think Machiavelli would be better.”

“Shiroe, you mean?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. Him. Shiroe.”

Riezé faltered, and the reply she got back was delivered in an unexpected and pretty irreverent tone.

“And why is that?”

“Shiroe’s got a few awkward places, too. From what I’ve seen, he’s your type, isn’t he, Riezé?”

Riezé looked dubious, but Calasin responded smoothly. It was as though he’d already had that answer waiting.

“Is that right?”

“About fifty percent, from what I hear. Shiroe is. Really.”

“Fifty percent what?”

“Shiroe’s fifty percent ordinary. I’d say forty percent is brilliance, and ten percent is desperation.”

“Huh?”

Calasin folded his arms and sulked, but he still sounded facetious.

Fifty percent ordinary…

Riezé reflected on what that meant.

Oh, she thought, I see. It felt right.

Fifty percent ordinary, forty percent brilliant. That was priceless. She giggled.

If he had been completely ordinary, he wouldn’t even have known what his position was. Because he knew, to a certain extent, just how little he understood and how ignorant he was, even though he was ordinary, he couldn’t ease up. That was probably what that meant.

It was just like the tiny footprints Riezé had made.

She’d thought and researched desperately for days, and the result had been five A4-sized memos. Put together, they were as tall as Riezé’s body back in Japan. The “intelligence” inside her had ordered her to create those memos. This was because “intelligent Riezé” had known that that was the only way she had left to learn how to do this correctly.

On the other hand, “ordinary Riezé” had been able to create only five of them. That was the extent of Riezé’s current skills. Clumsy, slow on the uptake, incompetent. Still, there was no help for that. At the moment, that was the size of her reality.

True, it was really pathetic, but it was also a relief.

Those five pages were Riezé’s domain. The thoughts she’d written here covered the range to which she’d given sufficient consideration and concern. Of course, outside it, there were lots of things she didn’t really understand. Even her own guild, where she’d spent long years, was riddled with things she didn’t know. All she could do was continue to increase her domain this way, with infuriating slowness. She’d been on the verge of despairing, but Calasin’s words had made her see that she was wrong.

If progress was slow, there was no way around that. That was what being life-sized meant.

On the contrary, she felt as if she’d been shown that there was nothing for it but to increase her domain that way and that, no matter how roundabout it looked, it was the right method.

There was a young man who’d launched the Round Table Council using the same method and had made Krusty smile broadly. That was what Calasin had taught Riezé.

“I think he’d make a better reference than the Mr. Super-Glasses who’s ten percent demon.”

“Yes.”

“Eh-heh-heh-heh. Your eyes finally look settled.”

Calasin had put a hand to his jaw in an affected pose, and he smiled at Riezé. The idea that she might have made this cheerful young guy worry about her embarrassed her. There were lots of people who had helped her. Since the Akiba raid, every single day made her aware of assistance she hadn’t noticed before.

“No, no. Calasin knows; you don’t even have to tell me. How about a dorayaki?”

“Aw, maaan. Picking up girls again, Young Gent?!”

Just as she was about to accept the dorayaki Calasin had taken from his paper bag, a boy in knee-length shorts flung open the door with a bang. It was one of Calasin’s Shopping District 8 companions, someone they’d asked several times to carry messages and show in guests.

“Taro, you’ve got it all wrong.”

“Those are the ones I just bought. Seriously, all you do is loaf around. C’mon, c’mon, let’s go deliver the goods.”

“Ah, then, Miss Riezé? Later! Oh, um. Once you’ve cheered up, let’s go out to eat!”

“Thank you very much for supplying us.”

“Huh, seriously? Taro. That was a good response, wasn’t it?”

“Calasin, c’mon, get moving. Three strikes, you’re out; just give it up.”

“I’m telling you, Taro, that conversation was business lubricant.”

“Yeah, and that’s why she was so smooth when she turned you down.”

As the boy dragged him away, Calasin’s voice grew fainter and fainter, and Riezé chuckled as she watched them go. Misa Takayama would probably be back from getting her prosthetic arm replaced soon. Riezé felt blessed.

The Round Table Council was headed into a difficult time. Even she knew that.

That was why, for now, she wanted to improve her skills, even a little.

It had nothing to do with level, or with this other world. It was a single resolution Riezé had made: her expectations for her future self.

4

Isaac had never been a fan of spring.

All it meant was that the weather got a little nicer and the temperature went up. The air grew dusty and nasty, and it was a glaringly half-assed season; not summer, but not winter, either.

He also didn’t really know why the town had started to get strangely giddy. Well, in terms of accounting periods or school, it was when the new school year began, and he understood why that would make for a restless atmosphere. Still, it wasn’t as if it held any advantages for Isaac; if he’d had to say, it was solidly in the “pain in the butt” category.

When he was a kid, and throughout his school years, spring had been nothing more than an irritation, a season in which he fought unnecessary fights. Once he’d started earning paychecks, it had gotten a little better, but that was because he was now free to distance himself from the giddy people.

In any case, Isaac had never been a fan of spring.

Although, spring here seemed a bit different from what he was used to.

In this world, where it got colder than it did back in Japan, winter had been pretty harsh. Of course, neither the unending snow nor the frozen woods had posed any obstacle for Isaac and the other Adventurers, but this hadn’t been true for the People of the Earth.

In terms of the old Japan, Maihama, where Isaac had been staying on and off since February, was located in Chiba. That meant that, although it hadn’t been buried under heavy snows, it had been covered in a blanket of the stuff for a full two months, and he’d heard there had been over forty centimeters of ice on the ponds.

For people without the Adventurers’ equipment, it had been a season where activity was limited.

Eastal, the League of Free Cities, which covered the eastern part of Yamato, wasn’t a poor organization. In addition, at this point, it was the recipient of various blessings from new Adventurer technology. However, as might be expected, compared with what it was in spring or autumn, the yields of all sorts of things fell in winter. It wasn’t as bad as the snow country, but even in Maihama, meals tended to deteriorate into plain fare built around preserved food. Spring wasn’t just the dusty, half-assed season known as “spring”; it was the season that meant winter was over.

As a Japanese person who’d been able to wander around in a down jacket, then duck into a roadside family restaurant and eat whatever he wanted when he got hungry, Isaac felt a little bad: Sorry, people. Go as nuts as you want.

As Isaac thought about useless things like that, he was leaning against the trunk of a great tree on top of a hill, out in the April wind, taking a break.

This was the suburbs, about thirty minutes’ run from the city of Maihama.

Strictly speaking, this area wasn’t within Maihama city limits, but the villages near the city were so close their borders almost touched, and pastoral fields spread around them.

In response to a request, not from the Round Table Council, but from Shiroe, Isaac, and the Knights of the Black Sword had come here to train the Glass Greaves, the chivalric order attached to the duchy of Maihama.

However, his guild members hadn’t let Isaac participate in actually training the knights—they’d told him it would set a bad example—so he had too much time on his hands. That said, he couldn’t just ditch the whole thing, and so here he was, gazing down at the military drills from the top of the hill and biting back yawns.

The hill was circular, with a radius of one kilometer or so, and there was a mixed forest about the size of a small schoolyard in its slightly elevated center. This forest spread behind Isaac’s back. It wasn’t so thick it obstructed the view, and even if there were animals of some sort in it, they would be only wild dogs or foxes or weasels.

The slope Isaac surveyed was thickly covered with spring grass, its green as bright as if it had been washed, and a company was racing up it. It was a group of Glass Greaves led by three members of Isaac’s Knights of the Black Sword. There were probably about forty of them in all.

Even if this was a military drill, working with large groups was inefficient.

They’d split the knights into five groups, and about three companies were around this hill. As far as he knew, they were running around and around the hill’s base and practicing charging, with a grove of trees as their partner. Isaac hadn’t been born and raised in Theldesia, and he certainly wasn’t a knight, so he had no idea; when they’d told him that this was a knights’ drill, all he’d done was think, Huh. Is that right?

Young spring grass was surprisingly succulent.

As the brigade’s name—the Glass Greaves—indicated, the knights wore metal armor supplied to them by the Cowen dukedom, which meant they were pretty heavy. That lot was running up the green, grassy slope toward him, spurred on by their instructors. Many of them got tripped up by the wet grass under their feet and fell clumsily. By the time they were thirty minutes into the drill, that neatly maintained silver armor had been smeared with grass and mud.

Still, the Glass Greaves jumped back up without complaint, then launched themselves into ferocious sprints, heading back to their places in the ranks.

The three Adventurers running at the head of the pack—Kouboumaru, Efuri, and Lee Jent—were bellowing at them: “C’mon, c’mon! Whaddaya call those wussy arm swings?!” “Let’s hear some noise, scumbags!”

Uptight losers, Isaac thought, but what he didn’t know was that he’d been taken off the training because his hot-blooded, sports-oriented, Spartan coaching had been too much for the People of the Earth to handle, and even his subordinates had been massively turned off by it.

While he sat there in the bright, clear sunlight, watching the scene as if it were somebody else’s problem, all the things he was thinking were fairly rude: Man, those idiots are hardheads. Do they actually have brains in there? Nah, guess not; all our members are dumb. Seriously, there’s just no helping these guys. That said, even as he got disgusted with them, he was smiling a little. Isaac didn’t hate these idiots. He was actually really fond of them. If he’d hated them, there was no way he would have been the leader of a messy guild like this one, even for a second.

“Stop, stop!”

“Thirty-minute break!”

“Go rest, you gutless, empty-headed pansies!”

The instructors were yelling from about a hundred meters away. No matter what they said, it was blindingly obvious they were enjoying themselves. The three of them glanced at Isaac, whispered among themselves for a little, then ducked their heads, nodding to him. Apparently, they had nothing that needed to be reported. They’d been told to conduct the training any way they wanted, so Isaac just waved back at them.

He thought they’d probably do a good job.

Actually, what had surprised him were the People of the Earth.

The dukedom’s chivalric order, the Glass Greaves, were the House of Cowen’s knights’ brigade, and they guarded Maihama. Since the brigade belonged to the House of Cowen, the de facto leader of Eastal, it was made up of People of the Earth elites. That was what Isaac had been told beforehand.

That was by People of the Earth standards, though. The group’s levels were only around 25. He’d thought there was no way they’d be tough. Well, he still thought that: They weren’t strong.

And yet they weren’t as weak as he’d thought they’d be, either.

The Glass Greaves had guts.

Just now, they’d managed a two-hour run in that armor.

Of course, to a level-90 Adventurer, that would have been no more than a morning stroll. Actually, in a world where the concept of “levels” existed, it might not have been anything that praiseworthy. However, even as the group got all sweaty and muddy and was yelled at by Isaac and the others, who were outsiders, and even though the training was harder than anything they’d done before, no one complained. He was forced to admit they were really putting their hearts into it.

Once back at their lodgings, out of the Glass Greaves’ hearing, Isaac’s companions had praised them, too. It probably meant that, in the two months since they’d begun this drill, the Knights of the Black Sword and the Glass Greaves had started to understand each other.

Out of the five groups, one of the remaining two was on leave in the city, and the last one was currently fighting monsters in the Dovature Badlands. They’d broken up into small teams and were hunting high-level monsters under the leadership of the Knights of the Black Sword. This was what was known as “power leveling.”

The growth speed of People of the Earth was far lower than that of Adventurers. According to reports, it was only about one-fifth as fast. Even with that disadvantage, however, if they defeated monsters more than twenty levels above them in rapid succession, their levels would zoom up at a speed that seemed like a joke to People of the Earth common sense.

Of course, if they just left them to their own devices after raising their levels, they wouldn’t know how to use that combat power, and that was bound to cause trouble. Since that was the case, they put them through physically punishing drills like this one after power leveling and made them fight mock battles until they passed out, forcing them to get used to their heightened physical performance. This routine was the level-boosting drill the Knights of the Black Sword had been conducting for the past two months.

Isaac opened his eyes a crack.

Then he closed them again.

He thought he’d heard something. It was probably just his imagination.

However, the reality he’d planned to ignore caught him in the form of a youthful voice: “Master Isaaaaac!”

A boy came running up on incredibly light feet, stopped near the big tree Isaac was leaning against, and caught his breath; his cheeks were flushed. The boy had pale skin and silver hair, and he looked intelligent. His complexion was probably fair to begin with. From the looks of his build, he didn’t seem the least bit tough. That was why, although he’d only run a short distance, his cheeks were rosy and he was breathing hard.

Even though his throat was rasping painfully, he wore a huge smile. “Master Isaac!”

“Just Isaac’s fine. That other way you use it is creepy.”

The boy’s call had almost broken off in the middle so that he could breathe, but at the sound of it, Isaac sat up. A hooded Adventurer and maids came running up after the boy. They set up an enormous parasol to block the sunlight, expanding the shade, then laid down a canvas sheet, which Isaac shifted aside to make room for. The boy looked at Isaac with an expression that seemed to be asking for permission, but the hooded Adventurer—Isaac’s adjutant Lezarik—told him, “Please sit down,” so he did.

“But…”

“Doesn’t hearing a kid say ‘master’ make your skin crawl?”

With his mouth set in a cross line, Isaac spoke to the maids, who were preparing beverages. They only gave disconcerted smiles and spoke vaguely: “Well, sir, we really couldn’t say…” They were probably hesitant to comment on the manners of their employer’s child. And they’ve got good boobs, too. What a waste, Isaac thought, looking even crosser.

“Listen, kid.”

“It’s Iselus.”

“Uh… Iselus.”

When Isaac spoke to him—giving up on his strategy of doing something about it in a roundabout way, through the maids—Iselus always responded cheerfully. Why does he like me so much? Isaac asked himself.

“Can’t you do something about that tone of yours?”

“Father and Mother told me I must mind my manners.”

“Father” and “Mother,” he says. Isaac held his forehead wearily.

“See, here’s the thing: I’m bad with stuff like that.”

“You’re an Adventurer, Master Isaac, and you’re currently training the Knights of Maihama as their instructor, and you also defended Maihama.”

Both in the old world and in Elder Tales, Isaac had avoided this sort of refined, tiresome stuff. These were things for Krusty and Shiroe—the four-eyes demographic—to handle, not Isaac.

Still, this small child seemed to have gotten the wrong idea about something, and he’d apparently taken a liking to Isaac.

He was a kid, and smart, and a weakling. Talk about hard to handle. Isaac frowned and sent the boy a sidelong glare.

Not only that, Iselus was smiling. There was no telling what he’d thought.

“I did all that stuff because I wanted to.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah, that’s right. I’m not a master or a lord or anything big like that. The elite four-eyes who’s good at that crap is off on a journey right now.”

“He’s traveling?”

“Well, I guess it’s nothing to do with you.”

“Yessir, that’s indeed not correct!”

Iselus didn’t know Krusty, so it was only natural, but he nodded, suspecting nothing.

If that Berserker were here, Isaac thought, I wouldn’t have been doing this job in the first place. Deep down, the guy was a lot like Isaac, and yet he was top-notch at hiding his true nature and acting meek. Krusty would have been the perfect person to drill the People of the Earth knights.

Isaac had heard he’d gone missing under mysterious circumstances, but he wasn’t all that worried about Berserker Krusty. He was sure he’d just turn up one day and say, “My apologies for causing you trouble. As a matter of fact, I found a new raid quest.”

It was true, however, that things were starting to seem iffy in Akiba due to him not being there.

It was no exaggeration to say the leader was the team, so a group that had lost theirs became fragile. Isaac had seen several of those cases; for the most part, they ended in ways that weren’t fun to watch. Not that he thought Krusty’s D.D.D. was defenseless… As Isaac was thinking these things, Lezarik called to him in a slightly teasing tone.

“Isaac the Young.”

“Quit with that ‘Isaac the Young’ crap.”

“There, Master Iselus, you see?” asked Lezarik. “You can use ‘young’ as an honorific for him.”

“Really? ‘Isaac the Young’…?”

As a rule, the adjutant got the short end of the stick, and he glanced at Isaac with a suppressed smile that seemed to say he wasn’t about to let the opportunity to bait this guy slip past him.

“People, seriously—”

“It’s rather dashing, don’t you think? ‘Isaac the Young.’”

Iselus and Lezarik spoke in a surround-sound chorus. Although there was no telling what was fun about it, Iselus was nodding vigorously, looking as if it all made sense to him now. As they watched him, even the maids started to giggle.

“Your mouth’s hanging open, Isaac the Young.”

The problem with Lezarik was that he always, always managed to quit just before Isaac blew up. Just as if it were a game of chicken, right before he hit his boiling point, he retracted his words.

“Rrgh! Watch it, or I’m gonna use the Black Sword of Pain!!”

Shrugging in response to Isaac’s yell, Lezarik briskly pulled Iselus by the hand and began saying things like, “Come, let’s go cheer on the knights as they train. That’s a duty for the lord’s whole family.”

Raking his fingers through his hair in irritation, Isaac glanced at the drilling knights.

When he looked, he saw that their rushing feet were beginning to slow. Spurring them on would probably be a good way to burn off his annoyance.

Picking up his trusty sword, Isaac navigated the gentle downward slope.

5

“Camaysar, the Genius of Marriage…?”

Shiroe repeated the name Soujirou had said.

He’d never heard it before. A vast number of enemies had appeared in Elder Tales since the time when it had been a game, and even Shiroe didn’t know all of them.

Still, at the very least, he remembered the names of most of the major enemies who’d appeared on the Japanese server. Setting aside the foreign-sounding name Camaysar, it was hard to believe he would have forgotten a moniker as distinctive as “the Genius of Marriage.”

“Yes, that was what he called himself.”

“That wasn’t ‘marriage’ so much as ‘marriage fraud.’”

Nazuna picked up where Soujirou had left off.

Tatami flooring, paper sliding doors, and an example of beautiful cursive characters hanging in the alcove.

Shiroe and Akatsuki were in the traditional Japanese room in the guild house of the West Wind Brigade, one of Akiba’s leading combat guilds. Soujirou, its guild master, and Nazuna, his right-hand woman, had come out to meet them.

The two of them were Shiroe’s old, familiar companions from the Debauchery Tea Party.

Shiroe’s daily routine was built around tables and chairs, and it was a little hard for him to relax in such a traditional space. Meanwhile, Akatsuki seemed used to rooms like this one, and she’d started on the tea refreshments that had been set out for them. Akatsuki’s room at Log Horizon had been set up traditionally as well, like this one but smaller. Kneeling formally didn’t seem to bother her at all.

“He was a strange enemy, just as you said, Mr. Shiro.”

“I’m surprised you ran into one, Soujirou.”

“Really? I thought you were expecting it.”

“‘Expecting’ isn’t really the word; I did think that, if I talked to everyone, I might get information about encounters with enemies like him, but…”

Shiroe and Akatsuki had visited the West Wind Brigade because Soujirou had wanted to talk to them. When he’d brought up the subject over a telechat, Shiroe had been at a place where he could talk right away, so he’d gone over. When he’d run into Akatsuki in the living room and told her he was going to the West Wind for a bit, she’d ended up going with him.

Shiroe had asked Soujirou about “odd, unfamiliar monsters”: changes in enemies that had appeared after the Catastrophe or the existence of unique enemies. Shiroe had begun gathering information in order to learn about them in detail, and just as he was getting started, he’d hit the jackpot.

The information Soujirou and Nazuna gave him was just as he’d thought it might be—or rather, it was beyond what he’d imagined.

“I hear other people have reported encounters, too. It doesn’t sound like it was the same guy, though.”

“You haven’t changed a bit, Nazuna.”

“Well, yeah. We’ve got a girls’ information network here, after all. We’re pretty awesome with things like that. Keh-heh-heh.”

As a matter of fact, Shiroe already had information about the monsters known as Geniuses.

He’d only just learned that that was what they were called, but reports that new strains of monsters had been discovered on the Yamato Server weren’t actually all that unusual.

Most of them had been rash assumptions on the part of the Adventurers, who’d lost their external strategy sites. Yet, when he’d gone over those reports carefully, there had been some that definitely seemed to be not mistakes or false memories, but actual new strains.

After the Catastrophe, as time passed, these eyewitness reports had continued to increase.

This wasn’t simply a case of information he hadn’t known belatedly coming to light. It was as if the number of cases was growing over time.

He didn’t think all these new monsters were Geniuses, but according to Soujirou and Nazuna, people besides the West Wind Brigade had apparently encountered them as well.

From what the pair said, Camaysar, the Genius of Marriage, had been able to disguise itself as a Person of the Earth and bewitch the opposite sex.

It had taken the form of a young Person of the Earth merchant, infiltrated the town of Akiba, which had lost its urban defense mechanisms, won a variety of female Adventurers over to its side, and temporarily had influence that made it impossible to ignore.

Some of the West Wind Brigade members who belonged to Soujirou’s Personal Guard had gotten suspicious and had subjugated the enemy.

“They’re as reckless as ever, aren’t they?”

“We’re a guild with high morals, see. If anybody messes with our girls, we show ’em no mercy.”

“She’s right, my liege.”

For some reason, Akatsuki nodded in agreement with Nazuna’s words, as if she was proud of them.

“Did you help them, too, Akatsuki?”

“No, this is the first I’ve heard of it.”

In that case, Shiroe didn’t understand why she’d nodded so cheerfully.

Watching Shiroe out of the corner of her eye, Nazuna puffed out her chest, and Akatsuki nodded away, her eyes full of respect. He glanced at Soujirou, sending a distress signal. “What’s this about?”

The response he got back was an amiable one: “Apparently, they’ve become friends. Girls make friends quickly when they eat sweets together.”

Soujirou’s the only one who could say things that totally carefree, Shiroe thought.

Fortunately, his memory was pretty good, and he hadn’t forgotten the tragedy at the Libra Festival… In other words, what had happened to him and his two companions when they’d “eaten sweets together” at the Danceteria cake buffet. In the end, he and Soujirou were men of different calibers.

Shiroe resolved not to delve too deeply into this particular issue.

Letting her eyes fall to the sheaf of papers in her hand, Nazuna continued, “At this point, the ones we’ve heard of are Sislau, the Genius of Pestilence; Zahun, the Genius of Scandal; Baglis, the Genius of Measures; and…”

“And the one we defeated, Camaysar, the Genius of Marriage.”

“That’s about the size of it.”

The sheaf of papers seemed to be a hastily drafted report.

“We’ve put together detailed notes about all this, but…what the heck are these things, Shiro?”

Nazuna lowered her voice.

The words she’d muttered softly had been “Something smells fishy.” That was probably her intuition talking. She looked like she was crude, slipshod, a big drinker, and a slacker, but her instincts were sharp. Those instincts had saved Shiroe during their Tea Party days, and they’d tormented him ten times as often as they’d rescued him.

That said, it was hard to know how to respond.

It would have been easy to explain them away as new monsters that had been added with Homesteading the Noosphere, but he couldn’t believe that was the truth. Even so, Shiroe didn’t currently have any way to corroborate the information he’d learned. He had a hunch it couldn’t be corroborated at all.

“……”

“They’re enemies, right, Mr. Shiro?”

For that reason, he didn’t have a ready answer for Soujirou.

He thought they were enemies. He was almost certain they would block his way and the Adventurers’ future. However, he wasn’t convinced they were “enemies” in the literal sense of the word. No, more than that, he suspected they might not be enemies at all, in the way that a fallen tree that blocked the road was an obstacle, but not an enemy.

“They attack us, so we have to fight them.”

As a result, Shiroe phrased his answer so that it neither affirmed nor denied what Soujirou had said.

Nevertheless, Soujirou seemed to be satisfied with that.

With a big, relieved smile, he murmured, “Oh, good. We already defeated him anyway.”

Oh, I see, Shiroe thought. He hadn’t been demanding an explanation from Shiroe so much as worrying about an opponent they’d already defeated.

Soujirou was a younger player, and for some reason, he seemed to idolize Shiroe. He’d always seemed to like him. In the past, they’d often formed parties together and gone around to different dungeons, in addition to Tea Party activities. Soujirou and Shiroe had often teamed up with Naotsugu and Kazuhiko when they went to have fun, and at the time, Saki and Soujirou’s other fans had been jealous of Shiroe.

Soujirou’s a kind kid.

“They’re different from regular monsters, though, somehow.”

“Maybe the Catastrophe affected them, too? Or was it Homesteading the Noosphere?”

Soujirou and Nazuna continued to shoot questions at Shiroe, who’d gotten lost in his thoughts.

Truly, they were both quick on the uptake. Even if they didn’t know much about the situation, they’d come very close to hitting the nail on the head through intuition alone.

“It’s both.”

“…Huhn.”

Nazuna didn’t probe Shiroe’s answer any further. She had standards for advancing or retreating that he didn’t understand, and there were lines she wouldn’t cross. It was probably because she was older than Shiroe.

“Is there anything we can do, Mr. Shiro?”

In response to Soujirou’s question, Shiroe said, “I’d like a little more information. That, and time.”

“So basically, you want us to defend the town,” Nazuna said, as sharp as ever, and he nodded emphatically.

“Ah. I see. In other words, just keep doing what we’ve been doing, right? You can count on us.”

Soujirou gave an easygoing smile.

His relaxed, good-natured expression made Shiroe feel relieved, but he also thought, I mustn’t lean on him too much.

He remembered the platform of old Akiba Station, with its flitting spark-bugs.

When Shiroe had told him he wanted his help to establish the Round Table Council, Soujirou had agreed without even asking why.

Soujirou was quick to do so, but that didn’t mean the determination and the vow that lay beneath that agreement weren’t serious. It was also true that having Soujirou’s support had enabled him to launch the Round Table Council. When the Crescent Moon League had first released their Crescent Burgers, the West Wind Brigade had been the ones to protect them from criticism and pressure. Shiroe had only learned that afterward. Talk about a strategist with a poor endgame. He’d been saved from start to finish, and the fact brought a stinging warmth to his heart.

“Well, just you leave it to us. We’ve gotten pretty tough, y’know.”

“Yes, let us handle it, Mr. Shiro.”

“Count on us, my liege.”

For some reason, Akatsuki gave him her assurance along with the other team. It was funny, and Shiroe chuckled. Catching it from him, Soujirou cracked up, too.

“Yeesh, Souji. What?”

“It’s nothing… Girls are strong, aren’t they, Mr. Shiro?”

Well, yes, they’re strong. They’re probably too strong, he thought, standing up.

As Shiroe said his good-byes, grimacing at the tingling in his legs, Soujirou murmured something quietly.

“He was a strange enemy, Mr. Shiro.”

He probably meant the Genius.

Soujirou’s eyebrows came together, as if he was retracing his memories. “I don’t know how to put it. He was the most Elder Tales–like thing I’ve seen since coming to this world.”

“Like Elder Tales…?”

“Yes. Of course I’d never seen him before, and his attacks were odd, and he was strong, but…”

“Yeah, exactly. Way more so than the People of the Earth, I guess you’d say.”

“It was like a game. The enemy felt hollow, as if we’d defeated an Elder Tales monster.”

Soujirou’s words were always intuitive. Since he had the ability to reach the right answer in a single leap, he was bad at explaining how he’d gotten there in ways that were easy to understand.

Even so, Shiroe engraved those words in his heart.

There was bound to be something in them that he needed to understand.

6

By the time they left the West Wind guild house, the sky was already madder red.

Even if it wasn’t as busy as their old world, Akiba was lively, even at sunset. Peddlers looking for lodgings. Street stalls that prided themselves on flavor, selling side dishes for the evening meal. Adventurers returning to their bases from outlying fields.

Shiroe and Akatsuki walked side by side through a mixed, milling crowd of Adventurers and People of the Earth.

He gazed absently at the foot traffic. Soujirou’s words—Elder Tales–like—overlapped with the orange-tinted scenery. He’d probably been talking about the time when all they’d done was look at things through a display screen. However, the crowd he was watching now didn’t seem anything like what it had been in the game.

What had made Soujirou choose those particular words? Shiroe hadn’t yet come into contact with a Genius. For that reason, he didn’t understand what the other young man had been trying to say, or what he’d felt.

“My liege.”

They’d probably been walking for about ten minutes.

Shiroe registered the passage of time less as the sensation that time had passed than as a result of their having changed locations.

He’d gotten lost in thought, only to have been pulled back to the present by Akatsuki’s questioning voice and her cutely tugging at his sleeve.

Realizing that, at some point, he’d forgotten she was there, Shiroe came to a halt.

“Hmm? What, Akatsuki?”

She was gazing up into his face. Looking thoughtful, she asked, “Are you tired, my liege?”

“Huh? Why? No, not at all.”

“I see.”

Shiroe answered quickly on reflex, and Akatsuki’s reply was as laconic as ever. Just after the Catastrophe, Shiroe would have worked hard to keep the conversation going, but he didn’t often think that way anymore. Akatsuki probably wasn’t looking for witty conversation. She’d just been genuinely worried about him. Shiroe understood that now.

When he looked up, feeling the same way he’d felt when they walked along that beach, Akiba was beautiful in the sunset.

Possibly because of the rain that had fallen yesterday, the April greenery was particularly glossy, and it gleamed, reflecting the deep-red evening sun. An early pub had lit orange Firefly Lamps and begun to call in customers, and Adventurers filtered through its door in twos and threes.

Because of the ancient trees and abandoned cars, visibility on the central avenue was poor compared with its counterpart in Akihabara on Earth. Nevertheless, street stalls selling grilled skewers and fried foods were lined up on the road’s mossy shoulders, creating a warm atmosphere.

This was evening in Akiba.

Shiroe and Akatsuki stood where they were and gazed at it for a while.

There was a light tug on the hem of his clothes, and Akatsuki whispered, “Something smells very good, my liege.”

It was probably the aroma of fried bean-jam buns.

Akatsuki’s reaction struck Shiroe as funny, and he laughed a little.

“I didn’t say that because I wanted you to buy me some, my liege.”

“I didn’t think you had.”

“Good.”

At that answer, Shiroe remembered the scene at the West Wind Brigade a little while earlier.

Akatsuki, who was taciturn and, if he’d had to say, shy, had seemed pretty friendly with Nazuna back there. She hadn’t been like that before. At the very least, he didn’t think Akatsuki had actively interacted with anyone outside Log Horizon before he’d left Akiba.

“Do you go out and have fun with Nazuna?”

“Yes. She knows lots of good restaurants.”

“I see.”

Akatsuki’s voice seemed mildly animated, and Shiroe nodded.

Apparently, her circle of friends was growing.

“It’s not just Nazuna. Riezé, Mikakage, and the princess go, too.”

“Is that right…?”

Shiroe nodded, but he was pretty startled.

Of course, he knew that if he actually looked startled, Akatsuki would sulk, so he didn’t let it show in his expression. He didn’t, but still, that was a rather revolutionary step forward. The names Akatsuki had given included members of the West Wind Brigade, D.D.D., and—if he remembered right—the Roderick Trading Company. And on top of that, Princess Raynesia.

Before he’d departed for the north to negotiate with the Kunie clan, Shiroe remembered, he’d asked Akatsuki to guard Princess Raynesia.

“Quite a lot happened while you were gone, my liege.”

“I see.”

Just as Shiroe had gained a variety of things in the Abyssal Shaft, Akatsuki had apparently acquired lots of things in Akiba.

Technology, organizations of self-government, and monsters weren’t the only things that had changed after the Catastrophe. Shiroe and the others were changing, too. It wasn’t simply in the sense of levels or mastering Mysteries. It was in places that were difficult to see: ties to other people. Shiroe, who hadn’t thought about things from that perspective before, remembered his expedition to the north.

Naotsugu, the friend who’d gone with him the whole way. Tetora, who’d gotten friendly with them in the blink of an eye and now walked around like the ruler of the guild house. William, the guild master of Silver Sword. Kinjo of the Kunie clan. The magic researcher, Li Gan… And Demiquas.

Good encounters and bad ones resonated together, and before long, they’d connected.

He was sure it wouldn’t be in vain.

When he looked down, Akatsuki responded with an “Uh-huh.” The evening sun was sinking slowly. It was time to return to the guild hall for dinner.

“Shiroeee.”

Just as they were passing in front of the guild center, a girl’s voice rang out. It wasn’t Akatsuki’s.

“Minori.”

Minori came trotting up to the two of them. She was dressed in street clothes, a blouse and necktie, instead of the miko outfit she wore when she was going adventuring.

“Hmph. And it was such a good atmosphere, too…”

“Shiroe, Akatsuki, are you on your way home?”

Minori fell in beside the two of them, walking with light, skipping steps. She looked up at Shiroe from the side opposite Akatsuki, and she was smiling. She seemed to be in a good mood today.

“That’s right. Is your part-time job over, Minori?”

“Yes. They gave me souvenirs today.”

“Today, too, you mean,” Akatsuki corrected glumly.

Both of Minori’s hands held bags that were stuffed with groceries and medicines.

They were probably things she’d been given at the Production Guild Liaison Committee and the Round Table Adventure Agency, where she worked part-time.

Minori boasted a talent for clerical work that was far beyond her years, and they’d heard that both offices treasured her as a first-rate resource. She was good-natured and polite, and she was idolized even at the contact windows.

Some items were on the verge of spilling out of the bag, and Akatsuki swiftly steadied them, asking Minori if she was all right. The two of them were frozen in a pose that made it look like a marriage interview. “Want me to carry that?” Shiroe asked, but apparently, Minori had something she wanted to show him.

“No, it’s fine. Because… Eh-heh.”

At that, Minori dexterously stuck a hand into the overflowing sack that hung from her shoulder, then held out an odd cloth bag with both hands, as if showing it off.

“It’s my Magic Bag.”

“Whoa!”

Minori’s bright smile was contagious; Shiroe and Akatsuki grinned right along with her.

She and the rest of the younger group had finally completed their Magic Bags. It wasn’t just Minori, who used hers every day like this, but Touya, Isuzu, and Rundelhaus as well. Serara of the Crescent Moon League had gotten a Magic Bag, too.

On top of that, their group had done the town of Akiba a significant favor.

The astonishing number of wyvern skins Minori and the others had brought back with them had made Magic Bags common among Akiba’s low-level Adventurers. Ordinarily, only one Magic Bag could be made per person, and you had to undertake a quest to get it, but Calasin had talked the People of the Earth artisans into lowering the levels of the quests they’d accept. Shopping District 8 had even put up the money for production, so now, even the newest beginner in Akiba was able to have a Magic Bag in any design they wanted.

Over many nights, Minori had told Shiroe about the battle with the wyverns, all their encounters, and the sort of conflict they just couldn’t reconcile themselves to.

She and the others had lived through a lot on that journey. Not all of those things had been pleasant; they’d felt pain so fierce they’d nearly burst from it. But even so, they were still smiling.

Shiroe thought, frankly, that that was amazing.

If he’d been on that journey, he didn’t know if he would have been able to be as kind as Minori and Touya. He was pretty sure he couldn’t have spread courage and inspired the People of the Earth the way Isuzu and Rundelhaus had.

“Oho!”

Akatsuki gazed at Minori, who had put on the airs of somebody older and was twirling around.

“Did you design that, Minori?”

Shiroe had heard about it from Calasin, and he knew already, but he asked anyway. He didn’t really understand it, but the Magic Bag Minori had designed was avant-garde, with floppy things that looked like arms and legs sprouting from it. “Yes, I did!” Minori told him, beaming, and Akatsuki chimed in in a friendly way: “That’s amazing, Minori! You’re really good at feminine things!”

Shiroe gazed at the interaction, feeling somehow dazzled.

They really were changing. Watching the two of them made him feel that that was probably a good thing.

“While we’re here, should we pick up some souvenirs?”

“I vote yes!”

“My liege, I want red-bean buns.”

“You do like red-bean buns, don’t you, Akatsuki?!”

Shiroe wasn’t spoiling them, but he’d offered to buy them a souvenir, and their response was immediate. Their teamwork was improving nicely. However, Shiroe wanted to get something to go. If they did that, they’d be able to eat it with Naotsugu and Captain Nyanta. He wouldn’t have to take attacks from the two of them all by himself.

“Yes, they’re the ultimate sweet.”

“Wouldn’t you like to get jellies once in a while?”

“Do you have a problem with red-bean buns, Minori?”

“No, not at all, it’s just…for the sake of variety…”

“Hrmmmm.”

Minori and Akatsuki’s conversation went on lightly. Both seemed to have lost quite a lot of reserve as far as the other was concerned; since they’d started living in the same guild house, they’d opened up to each other. Even in little things like this, there had been changes.

Now if only they’d avoid walking on either side of him and talking across him…

Thinking this, Shiroe smiled in defeat behind his glasses.

He’d had the thought, but he knew that if he said it aloud, they wouldn’t listen. In any case, when women were in a bad mood, they deliberately misinterpreted what you said, and when they were in a good mood, they ignored it. Indicus had been like that.

On the other hand, that other woman had always been in a good mood and had never listened to the conversation at all.

“Why not just get both?”

“Yes, he’s right, Akatsuki!”

“I suppose there’s no help for it.”

“I’d like strawberry shortcake, I truly would. Shiroe, treat me, too! Me too!”

Shiroe had been groping around for a good compromise, but a cute voice had broken into the conversation and spectacularly blocked his way. It was Tetora. As usual, there was a little top hat perched on the coquettish idol’s pink hair.

“Ha-hah!”

Tetora had jumped at Shiroe, tackling him around the waist, and Akatsuki tried to tear the interloper off.

“Don’t cling to my liege, you half-idol.”

“I’m not half; I’m complete! In English, the word is ‘perfect’! In terms of the Milky Way, I’m galactic! Even Shiroe’s happy that I’m clinging to him.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Oh, now you give a decisive response!”

Tetora reeled back, as if shocked by an unbelievable sight. This self-proclaimed idol overreacted to absolutely everything. Even though Tetora hadn’t been a member of the guild long, the idol’s personality was already a familiar part of Log Horizon.

“Huh? Is that what you thought of me…?”

“Hmph. Come on, Shiroe. Let’s go to Kanako’s!”

“My liege, the red-bean bun shop is waiting for us.”

“Waaaah, buy shortcake, too!”

“They’re seasonal offerings. Get cherry blossom red-bean buns. If we don’t eat them now, when will we ever get to?”

“I know! Let’s all pull on Shiroe, and whoever lasts the longest without pulling off her bit of him gets her request granted!”

“Huh?! I’d like his left leg, then.”

“In that case, his right leg is mine!”

What sort of torture were they planning to inflict on him?

Shiroe shrugged, smiling wryly.

With three different, lively voices in his ears, he looked up at the sky, which was darkening to violet.

There were a lot of things he needed to think about. This modest happiness made him rather sad. Twilight was catching up with the world. Shiroe was just a graduate student, and yet he’d ended up in a position where he knew this.

For Adventurers, death wasn’t an end.

However, they might have a time limit.

Shiroe ended up reflecting on that premonition.