1

Determined to defeat the magus, Elias was glaring up at the mountain peak from the foothills, but up on that peak, in fairyland, time was flowing slowly.

Krusty stuck his hand, which was encased in a cotton-padded mitt, into a brick oven. The iron sheet was a thick one, forty-five centimeters square, and holding it in one hand would have resulted in disaster back on Earth. But in Theldesia, weight like this was nothing. He easily drew it out.

A shallow pot sat on top of the iron sheet.

The kitchen at Bai Tao Shrine was spacious, about the size of a large convenience store. It was fitted out with a full range of cooking implements, but compared with Earth, there wasn’t much of a variety. Even so, in terms of copper and iron pots alone, there were at least fifty shapes and sizes, both shallow and deep.

The object Krusty had taken out of the oven was one of these: a bright, lustrous copper pot. That said, at the moment, it was serving as a dessert mold rather than a pot.

All that was visible from the top was a golden-brown crust. It had been made by adding cold water to a mixture of wheat flour and some sort of butter. The key had probably been to fold it over and over while keeping it cold so that it formed multiple layers. Underneath it lay caramelized stewed fruit, sweetened with sugar.

In other words, it was a childish trick of a dessert: He’d boiled and sweetened peaches and loquats, covered them with a piecrust, put them in the oven, and baked them for a while.

Krusty had no culinary talent, but he could at least cook.

This was because it was work.

Recipes were manuals, and manuals were written so that, as long as they did things in the proper order, even people with no talent could get results. Since cooking was work, the bottom line was that, provided they had a recipe, anyone could do it. It was simple logic.

Because “talent” spoke louder on Theldesia than on Earth, the mere act of cooking required things like a Chef subclass or items such as a New Wife’s Apron. In a world like that, there wasn’t much value in manuals. This was only natural: Even if things were advertised as “possible for people with no talent,” without a subclass (aka “talent”), you couldn’t even attempt them.

In this world, where you could see whether actions were possible or impossible from the get-go, getting somewhere by learning techniques wasn’t an option. Like most people, he’d lost interest in everything outside his field of expertise. And because of that, from what Krusty’s investigations had shown him, technical books were almost nonexistent in Theldesia.

As such, an Adventurer from Earth could startle people by doing something as simple as making dessert.

Technically, he should have let it cool for a while in the refrigerator, but that struck him as a nuisance, so he inverted the pot onto a Cold Air Platter. When he did so, the piecrust that had been on the top ended up on the bottom. Freed from its pot mold, the dessert now looked like a cake topped with stewed fruit.

Krusty thought for a moment, then arranged fresh peach slices and peach blossoms on the plates. His dish looked drab by itself, so he’d have to make do with decorating it a little. He’d really rather have served it with vanilla ice cream, but there wasn’t any here at the moment, and making it would be time-consuming.

In terms of common knowledge on Earth, by the time peaches were ripe, it wasn’t possible to get peach blossoms, but this was an enchanted land of peaches, and both flowers and fruit were abundantly available all year round.

“Does Master Immortal seem to be in a good mood?”

“I can’t tell.”

“Dunno.”

“Does it look as if he’ll give us sweets?”

“Dunno.”

“…I bet he’s thinnnking of something spiiiteful.”

The martenfolk were whispering. Most of their shapes were vague and blurred, like steam, so he couldn’t really see them.

They called themselves heavenly officials, which apparently meant they were spirits of some sort. Yet, even when they turned solid, they were merely otters with fine pelts, and so Hua Diao, who could take a clear human shape, was an elite.

After giving it a little thought, Krusty moved the platter to the table.

Turning his back so that the plate was hidden from the steady gazes that peeked in at it from the door, he clattered away with a spoon and fork for a bit. Then, at just the right moment, he stuck the whole thing—platter and all—into his magic bag, then exposed the now-empty table to his audience.

Inarticulate shrieks rang out.

“The dessert is gone!”

“He ate it!”

“It got eaten!”

“The plate, too?!”

“Well, he is Master Immortal, after all.”

“Whyyy? Whyyy?”

The fact that the sweets they’d thought they’d be getting had vanished must have given them a shock; he heard heartrending cries. Shadows whose physical shapes were as nebulous as smoke hemmed and hawed at the base of the doorway.

They’re far too easy to read.

Is it because they’re animal spirits?

They say they’re heavenly officials.

This is another world, after all.

That means it’s careless to decide they’re simple just because they’re animals.

Some humans are this simple.

Ex 1) Like Koen.

Ex 2) And Isaac.

In other words, deciding it’s because they’re animal spirits is unreasonable.

It’s possible they just happen to be incredibly hungry right now.

Negative: They’re always like this.

Cinchy. (Slang.)

Couldn’t I rephrase that as “charming”?

I’d prefer something that was more gratifying to pick on.

Does this mean I want them to tough it out just a little longer?

That hobby is questionable.

Objects of amusement need to be durable.

Boredom is poison.

At any rate, it was a dessert he’d baked for them, so tossing it into his bag and leaving it there would cause problems for him as well. He’d teased them on reflex, and he certainly hadn’t meant it seriously.

“It’s all right; it’s here.”

Krusty turned around, producing the platter.

They responded with delighted gasps. “Bring saucers and gather in the dining room,” he instructed.

At Krusty’s suggestion, the invisible shadows ran off at full speed. The only one to stay behind was Hua Diao, a slight young girl who was only about a meter tall.

He carried the platter to the dining room and was carving the fruit pie with the help of an apologetic-looking Hua Diao when, out of nowhere, translucent, hazy shapes formed a line, holding plates. He began transferring small slices onto the plates, but Hua Diao volunteered to take over partway through, so he let her and sat down in a plain chair.

Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet.

He heard the quiet, staccato call of a songbird.

Golden light slanted in through the round window with its wooden cross-shaped frame, illuminating Krusty’s calm, pale profile.

In this fairyland of everlasting spring, even a corner of the kitchen seemed like a paradise where sweet fragrances hung in the air. It was a serene time, as peaceful as an afternoon nap.

The martenfolk spirits were rather noisy, and as a result, as Krusty poured tea, he looked a little morose. He didn’t want to admit it, but he was practically Snow White, doing the seven dwarves’ chores for them. would definitely laugh at him: You’re just like a preschool teacher, aren’t you?

Apparently, there really are holes in my memories.

Should I do something about it?

According to general common sense, forgetting memories is a routine occurrence.

Although, personally, I don’t have much experience with it…

Forgetting is a novel experience.

Would it be better if I took a good vacation and relaxed?

I’m enjoying one already.

Is it inconvenient in any way? (Utilitarian decision.)

Not at present.

Wouldn’t that depend on the reason?

Said reason is currently unclear.

Isn’t the bad status the reason?

That merely cycles to the fact that the cause of the bad status is unclear.

Take the necessity of looking for the reason under consideration.

“It looks as though I really will have to go down to the human settlements.”

“Hweh?”

Hua Diao made a funny noise; she was gazing at Krusty as if startled. From the tea-colored syrup around her inverted triangle of a mouth, she’d apparently helped herself to the dessert after she’d finished serving the others.

“Is something the matter?”

“Master Immortal. It isn’t possible to descend Mount Lang Jun. There are various routes through Sirius Grotto, but rank and the number of people are limited. In Adventurer terms, a party of between four and six people may pass through, so long as their levels are between eighty and ninety. I am told that there are other routes up from the foothills, but from the peak, the only choice is to go through the longest cavern.”

Well, well.

Krusty gave the content a cursory examination.

He had some idea of what Hua Diao was talking about. Unbeknownst to them, he had gone down into Sirius Grotto and had seen that the path ended at an enormous bronze door. That door must be one that screened based on levels; the zone beyond it was probably a level-restricted dungeon area. While there were comparatively few in Yamato, it was a characteristic that appeared in raid zones and instance dungeons.

It was likely that “Sirius Grotto” was an aggregate of multiple dungeons with the same name. Most of the interior details would be the same, and monsters that differed by level demographic were probably stationed inside. Designing a dungeon that only a small percentage of users could enjoy would be a waste of development resources. On that thought, they’d created zones like this one, which could serve multiple levels.

He understood the design concept, but as far as Krusty was concerned, it was inconvenient, too.

“I see. In that case, there’s no going down the mountain, is there?”

“No. But you are an immortal mountain wizard, Master Immortal, so I expect that won’t be a problem for you.”

“It won’t?”

“After all, immortal mountain wizards become what they are by climbing mountains, don’t they? Since it’s you, Master Immortal, I think you’ll be fine staying at Bai Tao Shrine… And besides, um, this is delicious.”

She’d flushed red when she murmured that last bit, but that aside, she’d said something pretty unreasonable. If he attempted to supplement it, would it be something like Immortal mountain wizards become immortal by climbing mountains, so because you are a mountain wizard, it’s okay for you to live on the mountain?

Apparently, some of the settings on the Zhongyuan server had been influenced by Taoist myths. In that case, the idea that an immortal was someone who lived on a mountain was something he could agree with. He seemed to recall a scene in The Investiture of the Gods where being ordered to descend the mountain had nuances of being excommunicated. In that case, he could understand the sentiment that he should stay on the mountain.

…Except for the basic fact that he wasn’t an immortal mountain wizard.

In the first place, it was likely that Krusty had been mistaken for an Immortal—probably an Ancient—because his status display was abnormal. Hua Diao and the others probably hadn’t picked up on it, but it was another effect of the level-150 bad status they’d named the Soul Darkening Curse. Even in the chaotic, post-Catastrophe world, level 150 was outrageously powerful. The maximum level that Adventurers could do anything about was 90—or, in Yamato, 100.

On top of that, there were no Adventurers over level 90 on the Zhongyuan server. It was no wonder that, at level 94, Krusty seemed to be one of the Ancients, a special NPC.

He didn’t have the slightest intention of blaming them for that error, but explaining and clearing up the misunderstanding seemed like too much trouble.

In the process of explaining the situation, he’d probably be on the receiving end of a lot of questions, and there were quite a few of them that even he wouldn’t be able to answer. Besides, it didn’t feel as though clearing up the mistake would result in a situation that was much different from what it was now.

In the clear sunlight, Krusty gazed at Hua Diao, who was absorbed in plying her wooden spoon, and thought for just a little while.

“You know, that tart is really supposed to be served with vanilla ice cream.”

“Va…nilla?”

“It’s a cold, sweet, creamy, frozen dessert. You aren’t familiar with it?”

“No, I’m not.”

The young girl shook her head, and Krusty nodded sagely. “If I go down to the human settlements, I may be able to find the ingredients for it.”

“Understood, sir! As a heavenly official, I will help you descend Mount Lang Jun.”

Determined, Hua Diao nodded several times, and mildly appalled, Krusty thought:

Too easy.

2

They’d been told that the mountain’s name was Mount Lang Jun, “Wolf Lord Mountain.”

I see, Leonardo thought, but it wasn’t as if he had any particular knowledge about it. He only “saw,” and that was all.

However, the same was probably true for Kanami and Coppélia. After all, the land around here was too dry and desolate. All they’d seen in the past hour were cracked rocks and cliffs and the bean-sized shadow of a bird, flying at an astonishing height.

When he heard they were headed for this Mount Lang Jun, he’d thought, I see, but he had no idea whether this was it or not, or where the mountain was, or whether they’d already been on it for ages.

For quite a while now, they’d been walking over steep, high-altitude terrain, and in the space of an hour, they’d encountered multiple differences in level that he’d had to use all the muscles in his body to climb over.

All that screamed mountain, right?

To Leonardo, a New Yorker, this was a mountain with a capital M. The depths of the mountains.

He couldn’t bring himself to buy that they were “headed to” a mountain from where they were.

Couldn’t this place right here count as a mountain?

“You sure we’re not already there?” Leonardo huffed.

“It isn’t far now,” Chun Lu replied, with a response that was as regular as clockwork.

This exchange was the fourth or fifth time since this morning.

Enough already, let’s just say this is it, Leonardo groaned inwardly. Settle it democratically, all right?

“Do you suppose this place is Mount Lang Jun?”

In the end, Elias asked the question in Leonardo’s place.

Nice one! Leonardo glanced at his companion, loading the look with feeling.

He really would have liked to flash him a thumbs-up, but the mountain path was leeching his energy, and he couldn’t manage it. Adventurer bodies were toughness incarnate, but rock-littered terrain that featured sharp rises and dips wore down their strength of will.

Leonardo was a city kid. The only experience he had with traveling on inclined slopes was on the treadmill at the gym.

Spider-Man shot sticky webs from his hands and zipped around high-rise buildings, but Leonardo was more the type to travel on level ground, through the sewers.

Chun Lu was smiling in a troubled sort of way. “We’ve been on Mount Lang Jun since last night. Everything on this side of that peak”—she pointed at a mountaintop far in the west, then slowly swept her finger around, past her feet, to point behind them—“can be said to be Mount Lang Jun, in general terms.”

I see, Leonardo thought.

…But he still wasn’t quite satisfied. If they were headed for Mount Lang Jun, and this was in fact Mount Lang Jun, then couldn’t they say they’d already reached their destination? Or rather, this should be their destination…?

He knew he was grasping at straws. This was just childish willfulness on his part.

In a word, Leonardo was fed up with this mountain track, plain and simple.

Kanami, who was walking in the lead, was in ridiculously high spirits.

She went on and on, humming in tones that were slightly off-key. Sometimes she’d seem to just vanish, and it was because she’d crouched down by the side of the road with agility so good it was sickening and was gazing at a nameless flower.

After her came Coppélia. She was carrying the bulkiest luggage of the group: a trunk-shaped magic bag. The thing was a meter square and very thick, and the fact that she was carrying it without much effort was due to sheer physical strength. Clerics were the one non-Warrior class that could equip heavy armor, and during combat she wore Victorian Armor, a maid outfit made out of steel plate. As befitted that background, her strength was set high. Even though they were the same level, her power surpassed Leonardo’s.

Well, in numerical terms, even Leonardo was about thirty times stronger than a regular Person of the Earth, or in other words, than himself in his New York days. As he thought this, he jumped lightly down from a big boulder that was taller than he was, supporting his weight on one hand.

It wasn’t that the mountain road was tough and his body was screaming about it.

It was more that he wasn’t used to the environment and it had worn him out, or that he was bored.

Chun Lu seemed to have picked up on this. She explained, in a tone that seemed to hold a wry smile, “Once you enter the mountains, it’s a series of steep slopes one after another, and you go up and down in complicated ways. It isn’t like looking up from a distant plain, where you can see a clear, triangular peak. The peak is probably to the southeast; we just aren’t able to see it from here.”

When he looked in the direction she’d mentioned, he saw a rock wall so big he had to look up, and a twisted alpine forest that protruded from the cliff face.

“The five of us are Warrior classes, Weapon Attack classes, and a Recovery class, after all. If we could use Fly, I expect it would be a little different. I’m sorry I can’t be a better guide for you.”

Chun Lu bowed her head lightly, looking apologetic.

She was dealing with him a lot more politely than his initial impression of her had suggested.

“You don’t need to be so humble. I’m just not used to mountain climbing, that’s all.”

“Is that right…?”

As he spoke, Leonardo waved a hand.

True, he wasn’t good with all this nature. He hadn’t done anything like this since he was a kid and had been practically kidnapped and forced into participating in a Boy Scouts event. While he was lying in a tent that bugs kept crawling into, choking back screams, dawn had broken. The memory made him tired.

That didn’t make it okay to take it out on a woman, though. He’d be a failure as a hero if he did that.

Leonardo knew they were what had caused the change in her.

It was only natural. They’d headed to a valley where they’d been told there were several hundred gnolls, just the five of them: His party was crazy. On top of that, after they’d met up again, they’d talked about how it had actually ended up being several thousand gnolls instead of several hundred, and how they’d fought an aerial battle with a Raid-rank Black Dragon, and how they’d had a knockdown, drag-out fight with some weird new monsters. If she thought they were nuts, there was no help for it.

And actually, anybody would think that. Even I think that. It’s like, what, are we on drugs or something?

You wouldn’t want to get friendly with people like them, and if it happened anyway, you’d do your best not to make them mad. In other words, you stayed humble. Remembering the tactics he’d learned from a Japanese person, Leonardo scratched his head. His group was overwhelmingly to blame here.

“When traveling to Mount Lang Jun from Shimanaikui, there’s a slightly better mountain road, and visibility is higher. However, unfortunately, we entered the mountain from the southeast.”

That was probably why they had to travel by practically crawling through trackless ravines. Leonardo waved his hand again and told her, “We’re not worried about it.”

“Sirius Grotto was halfway up Mount Lang Jun, wasn’t it?” Elias murmured from behind them.

His voice was hard and determined.

The prickly urgency had faded, but as if to compensate, it now held a resolute intensity. When Leonardo heard that voice, he felt a little troubled.

Yesterday morning, wearing a similar expression, Elias had abruptly said, “I would like to go to a place known as Bai Tao Shrine.” Apparently, a fellow Ancient and the local residents were being tormented by some sort of monster.

Huh. Really? Leonardo had thought, but he hadn’t been particularly suspicious. It had simply caught his attention.

However, that had probably been true for Kanami and Coppélia as well. After all, this world’s monsters were based on enemy characters in the game—attacking and killing people was standard behavior for them. This had been a combat game, so that was only natural. Since the word tormented had been used, he assumed it was probably damaging them while they were alive, but he questioned whether it would really do something that roundabout.

Still, there was the case of the Geniuses they’d encountered the other day. It was also true that, after what KR had called “the Catastrophe,” monster behavior had been changing before their very eyes. For that reason, his only reaction on hearing the term tormenting was Huh. Really? I guess that sort of thing could happen, too.

That probably meant it was a Genius.

Hey, whoa, hold it, no, hang on. Hold the phone. We’re fighting a creepy thing like those again?! No way. Gimme a break.

“Her name was Enchantress Youren, you said? The one who requested aid.”

“Yes. It sounds as if there’s an enchanted land known as the Bai Tao Shrine on the peak of Mount Lang Jun. She said it had been seized by a magus.”

“What’s this ‘enchanted land’ business?”

As Leonardo asked his question, he was at his wits’ end.

“I expect it’s similar to a fairy village.”

The answer had come from Elias, and possibly because he’d registered Chun Lu’s and Leonardo’s gazes, he gave a few dry coughs and continued, “In the country where I was born, fairy villages are a type of legendary land. They’re special regions located deep in the forest or in the mountains and administered by Ancients. Fairies live in them, and they’re filled with old, powerful mana. Strange things happen there, and they’re treasure troves of rare magic items.”

In other words, it’s probably that kind of special zone. Leonardo had visited places like that on adventures as well, back in the Elder Tales era. Even if it was a fantasy game, Elder Tales had been built using the Half-Gaia Project. Since the geographical features resembled Earth, the design had limits. As a result, there were special zones all over the place. In the broad sense of the term, dungeons counted, too.

Apparently, out of these zones, Ancients lived in fairy villages and enchanted lands.

“And there’s a magus…? Uh, I don’t really get it, but they’re under attack from some weird monster?”

“Do you suppose it’s a Genius?”

Chun Lu, who’d heard about that from Leonardo and the others, asked her question with a grave expression.

The answer was probably “Yes.” It was a lot less likely that somebody who’d do an incomprehensible thing like this was a normal monster.

To guess otherwise would be too optimistic.

“Never mind that, the puppy dogs. It’s a mountain with puppy dogs, isn’t it?!”

“They’re wolves, not dogs, but…”

Chun Lu responded to Kanami, who’d spun around so vigorously that she ended up twirling twice on momentum. She’d been standing at the top of the slope, and she was dancing a little jig of delight, her expression deliriously euphoric: “Fluffy and shaggy! Tons and tons of scritches!” She was hopeless. Even Coppélia stood expressionless, holding her trunk. Leonardo’s shoulders slumped.

“Hey. Kanami. You’re not curious about this? You heard what Elias said, right?”

“Yep, I was listening, Croakanardo. You mean the one about how the hidden village on puppy-dog mountain got taken over by some vague-ass person and is having a really lousy time, right?”

“Magus,” not “vague-ass,” but whatever.

She had it mostly right…didn’t she? Leonardo checked himself: She was probably basically right. Expecting accuracy from Kanami was a lost cause. The woman was as broad and fuzzy as a Texan.

“Are you not worried, Master?”

“I guess I’m not really sure yet.”

Kanami put a finger to her temple, tilting her head. Considering how reckless she was, this was unusual. Whether or not she knew what Leonardo had just thought, Kanami scaled a boulder in two or three bounds, as lightly as if gravity didn’t exist, then turned around again.

“Besides, thinking about it is lots of work, isn’t it? I mean, Eli-Eli wants to go, and I want to see the doggies. Let’s just think about it after we’re there!”

That was exactly how a Texan would think.

Leonardo pinched the bridge of his nose, between his eyes. The type who said We’ll think about it later was the type who wouldn’t think about it then, either.

She wasn’t thinking at all.

“Yes, Master. Coppélia will accompany you.”

“And you! Don’t unconsciously egg her on!”

In response to Coppélia’s bland agreement, Leonardo put in a perfunctory retort, but even so, he followed the slight shadow—in other words, he went after Kanami—across the mountainside.

3

“Inconceivable…”

Elias was stricken, and the voice that slipped from his throat sounded strangled.

“Maybe it is, but there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“I’m terribly sorry. I had no idea it was configured this way, either.”

They’d finally reached Sirius Grotto, but a huge bronze door inlaid with images of wolves blocked the entrance. Elias was kneeling in front of it.

Leonardo and Chun Lu both spoke to him, trying to comfort him, but they seemed a bit hesitant about it. Elias couldn’t understand their attitudes, and he pounded the ground with a fist.

“This is exclusively for parties ranging from four to six individuals with levels between eighty and ninety.”

“It’s an instance dungeon, huh? The sort that gets generated temporarily.”

Coppélia had checked a translucent window, and Kanami, who was peeking in from beside her, spoke up in agreement. For somebody who was handing down a sentence, her voice was pretty cheerful.

Elias understood, too. He was the one who’d tried to run in, before anyone else, after emerging from the precipitous mountains. However, this door, sealed by Adventurer sorcery, had refused him. He’d performed authentication again and again, and he had finally tried to shove it open by brute force, but it hadn’t budged.

According to the words of the girl priestess, Coppélia, it was a seal that was based on level—in other words, on combat rank.

“Am I to blame here…?”

“You know it’s not about blame, guy. C’mon.”

His sworn friend Leonardo spoke, his hands on his hips, but his words sounded vaguely false.

The blue sky was high and clear, and the cool wind peculiar to mountain regions was blowing, but Elias’s heart was gloomy. As he was now, even the aid he’d promised the Enchantress, one of his own kind, was out of his reach.

He’d acquired his level-100 strength to save the world and the People of the Earth. If he was being rejected precisely because of that strength, what was he supposed to do? What meaning had there been in his painful training and the agony he’d felt up until now? It was as if he’d been told there was no value in his existence.

Unable even to vent this suffering—which he felt certain they wouldn’t understand—on his companions, Elias groaned.

“I call first!”

“Coppélia will accompany you.”

“Huh? Uh? Hey, what are those looks for? I’m going, too?!”

“Do you mean you’re including me as well?”

Kanami had taken bouncing steps, pointing at her friends’ chests one by one for confirmation. However, when Elias looked up, feeling as if he was seeking salvation, he was hit with a merciless declaration: “You hold the fort, Eli-Eli! There’s no actual fort, but hold it anyway!”

“I have a mission to protect Ancients like myself. I must go to Bai Tao Shrine at the peak and defeat the magus, no matter what.”

“But, uh, you can’t get into the dungeon.”

Elias had pleaded desperately, but his wish was dealt with bluntly.

“Leonardo?! Were you not my friend?”

“This isn’t really about friendship, y’know?”

Leonardo glanced to the side, looking for agreement, but Kanami was all smiles, and Coppélia was absorbed in inspecting her dungeon equipment. Possibly because he’d understood this, Leonardo promised for them as well: “Hey, it’ll be fine. We’ll go see what’s up first, and if it looks ugly, we’ll be back.”

“So this is reconnaissance, then?”

“Yeah, that’s it, reconnaissance! Sightseeing!”

Kanami shouted cheerfully, and beside her, Coppélia impassively covered for her: “Master, sightseeing refers to tourism.” …Although it wasn’t clear whether that had actually covered anything for her.

Still, once they’d said that much to him, there was no help for it.

His heart, which sent mana to him with each beat, ached and smarted, but that didn’t make it all right to shove that pain onto his companions. The pride of an elvish knight wasn’t cheap.

Elias was a man, and a full-fledged elf. If asked whether he couldn’t resign himself to a single standby mission, the only possible answer was that he would show them by performing it magnificently. For all that, he did give a regretful sigh, but when Kanami—waving her hands wildly—and the others left, he managed to see them off.

Still, after that, Elias had too much time on his hands.

It might be a standby mission, but there was nothing he needed to do. The Adventurers routinely carried Magic Bags, and they put all their inventory in them. These bags could fit lots of things, negating weight and bulk, and they were an essential for Adventurers. Elias, an Ancient, also had a Magic Bag with higher-level mana. Naturally, Kanami and the others did as well.

Since that was the case, the party that had gone into the dungeon hadn’t left any equipment or belongings with Elias because the bag was “too heavy.” Since parting with KR, they hadn’t relied on horses or other mounts, so there was no need to tend to them. If there was no luggage and no beasts of burden, there was no particular need to set up camp.

In other words, he didn’t need to prepare or defend anything.

Elias leapt to the top of a boulder that seemed as if it would have a good view, sat down, turned his gaze to the enormous bronze door that served as the entrance to the dungeon, and stretched. His surroundings were filled with a chill that seemed to seep into his core, but the fairy blood in his veins kept it away.

Time passed slowly in the afternoons in this mountainous country. When the sun finally touched the ridgeline, it would probably go quickly, but at this point, it was only a little past noon.

“You know, this is…”

Elias smiled wryly, the corners of his mouth twisting. It was true that he had fairy blood and that he was under a curse. That was why he was strong. He had high cold resistance, and he could withstand even a Jotun’s universal freezing magic, the sort that made a mountain wind like this one feel like lukewarm water.

However, he’d never thought about what exactly that was, and about what fairies were. He’d been designed not to have to think about it.

Elias the Ancient thought nothing of the cold of the icy Londinium ocean, but even he hadn’t been able to shut out the chill from that other dimension. It had been self-mockery, nihilism, resignation. Every time he remembered the Words of Death, that alien chill crept up on him. It stole the momentum from his spirit, attempting to lead him toward a state of slow stillness. Everything he sensed grew indistinct, its texture draining away. It was a prison of the soul.

“No, no. That was close. No, you won’t get me that way.”

Elias shook his head vigorously, rejecting the thought.

His blond hair added color to the bleak Tian Mai foothills.

“Kanami gave me fire, didn’t she? I can’t let the Geniuses’ chill get me so easily. I must gather the few surviving Ancients and protect this world to the end.”

He filled the pit of his belly with strength, gripped the hilt of his beloved sword, and visualized the faces of his Ancient comrades in arms. They had all been good-natured companions. Ever since they’d disappeared into the Spatial Teleportation Device, he hadn’t been able to contact them, and he had no idea what had happened to them, but he hoped they were happy— Or, no, at least safe. There must be a means to save his companions hidden somewhere on this journey to Yamato, in the Far East.

“Lord Elias.”

“Miss Youren!”

Elias had been deep in thought, and he’d lost all sense of time when, abruptly, a soft woman’s voice spoke to him. The figure, which was dressed in clothes so thin that it would have frozen if it had been a Person of the Earth, belonged to Enchantress Youren. Like a nun, she wore a veil that hid her eyes, and the slim, smooth contours of her red lips were visible below it. A murky, slightly sweet scent reached him on the wind.

“I’m so glad you’ve come. Now that there are no Fairy Rings, I’m sure it must have been a terribly harsh journey. Traveling on foot through the Tian Mai Mountains, the desolate backbone of Zhongyuan, and the demon-haunted Blackstone Desert… My gratitude is beyond measure.”

“Ha-ha-ha. No, that’s not true. This is a beautiful place,” Elias responded.

True, the journey from central Eured through the plains had brought home to him, again and again, just how enormous this world was. Wilderness that ran to the horizon, rocky desert that ran to the horizon, grassy plains with lingering snow that ran to the horizon. Still, there had been a stern beauty in them as well. He’d seen sunrises so brilliant that the contrast made the land itself sink into shadow. It had been a sight like blazing iron, something he’d never seen in the northern oceans.

“I’m terribly relieved that you are here, Lord Elias. Where are your companions?”

“Beyond the door… Apparently, this door sorts those who pass through it by their combat ranks. As a result…my fairy blood was rejected.”

Elias went on, gritting his teeth.

“My companions undertook the reconnaissance of Bai Tao Shrine, but I’m not sure how it will go.”

“Without the heroic Lord Elias, the knights who accompany you must seem rather uncertain.”

At Youren’s worried voice, Elias thought, I wonder about that.

Kanami used her fists and that bottomless energy to shatter any obstacle. Coppélia followed her wordlessly. His friend Leonardo was kept busy dealing with the aftermath. If the skilled Chun Lu was there as well, he couldn’t imagine they would lose to any old threat. Elias hadn’t been worried about anything of the sort, personally, so the idea caught him off guard.

“Having lost you, I imagine your companions must also feel quite forlorn.”

“Do you think so?”

“Of course I do.” Youren nodded kindly. In that case, Elias thought, there was no need to bother denying it any further. It was true that, even now, he wanted to race to join Kanami and the others, and if they were expecting that much from him, of course he’d be happy about it.

“…However, in that case, I have an idea.”

“Is there a way to release the seal?”

As if he’d been stung, Elias jumped down from the boulder and took the Enchantress’s hands.

“No, this seal is the core of Sirius Grotto. It isn’t the sort of thing that can be undone easily. Even so, although it is dangerous, there is one way to reach the Bai Tao Shrine.”

“Tell me, please. If there’s a way to save our fellow Ancients on the peak, I want to know, no matter what… In order to restore the Knights of the Red Branch, and also to wipe this calamity from the world.”

It wasn’t that he doubted Kanami and the others.

However, this was the Ancients’ crisis.

The magus was a mortal enemy who was shaking the world and had plunged his companions into the sleep of death.

If possible, he wanted to kill that magus. He also wanted to shake off this pathetic, horrible, demonic chill that had possessed his heart. Kanami’s fire might be protecting him, but as long as this cold existed, there would be no sunlit morning for Elias.

If he defeated the demons—the Geniuses—he could grasp it. Elias felt that, to break free from the fairy curse that made him unable to destroy enemies, it was vital do combat with the Geniuses.

“Yes, Lord Elias. So it shall be. You, a fairy swordsman of particular brilliance, even among the Thirteen Global Chivalric Orders, should be able to fight that villain who came from the east.”

“Please.”

Youren had politely offered to guide Elias, and agreeing, he set off, following her slender back. At some point, a white mist that seemed to have crept up from the foot of the mountain had gathered on the surface of Mount Lang Jun. The Enchantress and Elias walked through mist that reflected the evening sun like the water’s edge.

They were the very picture of a fairy summoning a sword-bearing hero to an adventure in an enchanted land.

Deserted, the great door to Sirius Grotto was eventually illuminated by starlight, and only icy cold air blew upon it.

4

Following Enchantress Youren, who skimmed up the rock face as lightly as a feather riding the wind, Elias ran up the same cliff. He was using a fairy martial art technique that used the air as footholds. It wasn’t on the level of a flight spell, but with Elias’s skill, it was easy to keep his balance in midair.

The scenery that spread above him was breathtaking.

The enormous gray rock face was as perpendicular and sheer as a standing screen. Dense green shrubs grew here and there, like ornaments, and trees with slim branches stretched out of them, as though seeking the air. Elias didn’t know it, but the odd landscape bore a strong resemblance to a shan shui brush-and-ink painting.

It looked as if they still had quite a ways to go, but Youren turned back, tilting her head, and Elias called to her.

“I never imagined that a route like this existed.”

“It isn’t grand enough to call a ‘route,’ but…”

The two of them were currently scaling the side of Mount Lang Jun. This was the way Enchantress Youren had spoken of, the only way to reach the peak without going through Sirius Grotto.

It seemed like the sort of thing that would have occurred to them easily if they’d given it a little thought, but neither Elias nor Leonardo, Kanami, or any of the others had thought of it, simply because of the “understanding” peculiar to Theldesia: Dungeons were routes, so there was probably no other way.

In fact, once they’d started, climbing the mountain this way wasn’t impossible.

The journey was extremely difficult, of course. At first, the two of them had traveled through a forest with precipitous slopes, but by the time the moon was beginning its trip down the sky, they were through that area and were looking at a hard, stony mountain, studded with sheer rock cliffs.

Now, in the stillness before dawn, they were gradually working their way up that rock face. Unless you were an Ancient or an Adventurer, and a very high-level one at that, it probably wouldn’t have been possible to choose this route.

The two of them strained their ears for a little while, listening to an owl’s distant cry, but once they were sure they couldn’t sense any monsters that would pose a threat, they tackled the rock face again.

Elias could run through midair, but he couldn’t float, and he couldn’t fly. Enchantress Youren seemed to be using a spell that canceled out her weight, or a unique ability that immobilized space.

Neither of them could stay in midair for long periods of time, so they ended up moving over the cliff face, from foothold to foothold. Of course, their speed and freedom of movement far surpassed that of the People of the Earth, but if they chose a fragile foothold, they wouldn’t be able to avoid losing their purchase and falling. They were managing without much trouble, even with the disadvantage of working by moonlight, simply because their skills were outstanding.

With a sudden, piercing shriek, a monstrous two-headed bird flew at them. Elias repelled it with his sword, and the weight of the feedback told him eloquently that the monster had been strong. However, Crystal Stream had been born from fairy magic, and its effect on flying enemies was enormous. A jet of water pursued the bird, slashing at it and hampering its movements.

Youren, who’d been holding her breath, gave a sigh of relief. “That was a Rui,” she explained. “They are magical, flame-attribute beasts that attack their prey with four legs.”

Elias nodded in understanding. That was why the monster had fled in a panic: Water with ice mixed into it must have been pretty rough on its flame-attribute wings.

“You are truly a warrior without equal under heaven, Lord Elias.”

“No, that’s not true.”

Elias, who’d returned his great sword to the sheath on his back, smiled with a bitterness it would have been impossible to imagine from his normal expression. The attack he’d just launched at the bird had worked because his weapon’s attribute and the monster’s weakness had matched up. He had too much experience in combat to assume that it had been a product of his skill.

More than anything, that had been a nearly perfect opponent in terms of attribute, and even then, chasing it away had been all he could do.

Even now, the fairy curse trammeled Elias. That was why he wanted to fight the Geniuses. When he’d defeated Papus, the Genius of Healing, while he’d felt the usual impatience of not being able to end things, he actually had blown the thing’s slimy body away.

Just maybe…

Elias bit his lip.

A new strength might be waiting for him on the other side of this fight with the Geniuses. No, it had to be there. When faced with enemies from another world who’d stolen the lives of his comrades, even the fairy king—who hated fighting—would surely loosen his bonds.

“Lord Elias, where is your party bound, and for what do you travel?”

The voice spoke to Elias after they’d watched the monstrous bird go. He stood absorbed in his thoughts; he blinked two or three times before responding to the Enchantress.

“Now that you mention it, I suppose I hadn’t told you. Kanami invited us to Yamato, an island nation far in the east, and that’s where we’re headed.”

“Yamato…? Why?”

“It sounds as if the land is flooded with a magic power known as ‘Homesteading the Noosphere.’ It’s an ability that allows Adventurers to break through the upper limits of their combat rank. Not only that, but new spells, skills, and enemies await us there. An anomaly on that scale is occurring in that region. It may also hold a hint regarding a solution to this disaster.”

He was echoing the reasons Kanami had given him, verbatim, just after they’d met.

As a matter of fact, you could have called them a flight from a situation in which he was likely to despair, the straw that he’d clung to. However, through their adventures in Thekkek and at Ruined Colonnade Tonnesgrave, Elias had felt it clearly.

A great disaster, unparalleled in history, was about to occur in this world. It was a storm that seemed likely to rewrite the principles of the world he’d believed to be unchangeable.

Elias was convinced that what KR and the others called “the Catastrophe” was no more than the beginning. After all, the defensive operation that Elias and his companions had attempted to execute that night had failed, and terrible beings had invaded the world.

“Yamato has all these new powers. They say many Adventurers there have raised their combat ranks as well.”

“Is that so…? I must relay that tale to the Queen Mother of the West,” the Enchantress murmured.

The night at her back, she then turned and asked Elias, “What are your thoughts on this disturbance, Lord Elias?”

“The Geniuses are the cause,” Elias spit.

Belatedly, Elias realized that that hadn’t been the sort of tone one should use when speaking to women. He was a knight, after all, if an imperfect one. Elias bowed his head. “My apologies. I was irritated.”

However, the Enchantress smiled thinly in the light of the moon, which was now low in the sky. “No, it doesn’t bother me,” she responded generously.

In the midst of an awkward atmosphere, the two resumed their journey through the rocks.

He hadn’t paid any attention to it when he was at the foot of the mountain, but a strong, irregular wind had begun to blow.

Under weather conditions like this, even an Ancient couldn’t afford to leap up carelessly. Both when jumping down and leaping up, he restricted his jumps to his own height.

Dyed with shadow in the cold moonlight, Elias asked, “The Ancients of Zhongyuan… Erm, what happened to them?”

“I wonder. Some fell; some were wounded; some fell asleep.”

The Enchantress’s response was brusquer than he’d expected.

The words had seemed to push him away, and Elias was rather embarrassed, but he thought they might be the woman’s way of setting her feelings in order. She’d probably lost most of her companions.

“I expect we shall meet someday, at the end of an unchanging mission.”

“I see…”

At the word mission, he had no way to respond.

For the Ancients, mission meant a job where they were tasked with orders to use up their lives. These were duties that must be carried out, and they had been engraved on their souls at birth. In a broad sense, all Ancients existed to protect this world and the People of the Earth. Their methods and ways of being differed, but ultimately, that was their objective.

The Ancients occasionally came into conflict with one another, but those situations broke out because their positions and approaches to problem resolution were different, and they were never so bad that they couldn’t talk it out. It allowed Elias to respect and sympathize with Enchantress Youren, who belonged to a chivalric order in a different region.

“~~~~!!”

A few meters above them, they heard a hoarse scream. It seemed to belong to a girl; the dawn wind nearly shredded it, but it echoed clearly in Elias’s ears.

Reflexively, he glanced at Youren. He couldn’t read her expression, shrouded as it was by her veil, but she nodded once, tensely.

“It may be the magus. Take care.”

“Of course!”

Reluctant to spare even the time it would take to respond, Elias sprang into motion like an arrow shot from a bow. Using the branches of a pine as footholds, he mobilized all his muscles, tearing gravity away. Up until a moment ago, he’d been moving at an efficient pace that was considerate toward his partner, but now he threw that consideration to the winds.

There were no subsequent screams, but he knew which way to go.

Behind him, he could sense that the Enchantress was moving as well, and that her speed was several notches higher than it had been before. Apparently, she really couldn’t keep up with Elias’s top speed.

Until just a short while ago, the world had been lit only by stars, but at some point, the darkness had begun separating into jet-black and a subdued indigo. The towering shapes of the mountains were deep-black silhouettes, and the space above them was no longer perfectly dark but instead was shifting into a hue that had a sense of transparency about it.

Here on the Eured continent, the sunlight was golden. It was one thing when it was in the noon sky, but at this hour, as dawn approached, the ridgeline was colored with gold inlay. It was a sight that was utterly different from the sunrise in the mist-covered land of the Ulster Knights Sword Alliance. The plateaus of central Eured may have been desolate, but precisely because of their desolation, they had a bleak beauty.

Elias slashed through that thin, sharp dawn light and leapt over an area where a giant boulder formed a peak. The lone figure of a knight flew into the sight of his strengthened Fairy Eyes.

He looked aristocratic, and he was wearing dark-blue armor.

Even though he stood casually, his incomparable might was palpable.

The magus’s spectacles gleamed in an abnormal way, and he shook the young girl who hung suspended from his hand. Faced with the steely strength of his arm, the petite person’s scream rang out with abject helplessness. The idea that he might be one of the Ancient companions the Enchantress had mentioned vanished from Elias’s mind in an instant.

A magus threatening a girl.

“—D-don’t eaaaaaat meeeeee!”

The moment he heard that scream, Elias ran through space toward the wicked Genius. In response to the excess of mana, his beloved Crystal Stream began to vibrate, resonating, and he gripped it tightly, swinging it down on the evil.

Elias was thinking only of smiting his friends’ enemy, and freeing them.

5

A little while earlier, before dawn, when all signs of morning were still far from the sky:

Krusty was also on Mount Lang Jun, at its peak, walking through the palace garden.

Hua Diao was trotting in front of him. She was short, so when she tried to walk in front of Krusty, whose height was in the 190-centimeter range, she invariably ended up dancing around him. Even so, yesterday’s “vanilla” seemed to have been effective: She spoke to him merrily, with a melting smile.

“They say it smells sweet!”

“They’re right,” Krusty answered. Even as a kid, he hadn’t been all that into desserts, so he couldn’t really relate to the martenfolks’ delirious dances for joy. (Although if someone had asked him, Well, what could you relate to? he would have been at a loss.)

There were no signs of dawn’s approach yet.

They were planning to descend Mount Lang Jun and go shopping in Shimanaikui today. He hadn’t been able to tell how far it was from what Hua Diao had told him, so he’d decided to leave before daybreak. It was also true that the excited martenfolk had been racing around the table, and he’d been steamrolled by their enthusiasm.

Since they were planning to pass through a dungeon overflowing with monsters, Krusty was wearing his Einherjar’s Armor. The full-body, phantasmal armor, which was made of ebony steel, was practically his trademark. Its big, dark-blue silhouette appeared in raid capture videos, and it had always stirred up the emotions of players on the Elder Tales Yamato server. He wasn’t holding a weapon, but aside from that, he’d put on all his partial armor and supplementary protective gear, and he was basically fully equipped. A cloth shopping bag he’d brought from the shrine hung from his shoulder.

Relying on the lamplight from the Bai Tao Shrine behind them and the even fainter starlight, Hua Diao—who was in high spirits—went on, walking straight past the entrance to the cavern, heading toward the edge of the garden.

This fairyland was at the peak of Mount Lang Jun.

Similar to Mount Huangshan, the World Heritage site in China’s Anhui Province, the landscape consisted of sheer cliffs, terraced stone ledges, and twisted pines so dark they looked like shadows. Naturally, this miraculously cleared mountaintop garden ended as abruptly as if it had been cut off.

In short, all that lay beyond it was sky: It was a cliff.

“Master Immortal.”

“Hmm.”

“Shimanaikui is that way. In the mornings and evenings, they say they hold a market on their main street. I hear there’s an even bigger market on Sundays. I’m sure they sell sweet things there, too.”

“I bet they do.”

“Thank you in advance.”

With a sunny smile, Hua Diao ducked her head in a bow.

Apparently, this was as far as she meant to take him, and he was expected to jump off the cliff and go shopping. Putting a finger to the tip of his slim jaw, Krusty lowered his cool, scholarly eyes and thought for a moment.

Then he grabbed the collar of the heavenly official—who’d been smiling cheerfully, planning to see him off—lifted her casually, and jumped over the edge.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Trailing a scream she herself wasn’t entirely aware of, Hua Diao plummeted down a cliff face illuminated by the dawn morning star.

Her transformation had come undone from sheer shock, and she kicked and struggled in Krusty’s hand, stunned. Her smooth-furred body was wrapped in a baggy bundle of cloth, and only the obi was cinched tight.

Krusty, who hadn’t even dreamed that she’d change her shape, stuffed the cloth-swaddled otter into his bag. Personally, he didn’t sense any real danger, but if Hua Diao struggled and managed to jump away into empty space, things might get complicated.

Trapped by the bag, Hua Diao flinched and fell silent, as if she’d been startled. But soon she poked her head out, looking around.

Her mouth fell open, and it seemed as if she was about to scream again.

However, to change the trajectory of their fall, Krusty smashed the cliff with his gauntlet, and as if the impact had triggered it, she let out another feline—or possibly avian—shriek.

Even if Krusty was level 93, he couldn’t jump straight off a sheer cliff like this and emerge unscathed. He wasn’t a Monk who’d acquired Feather Fall, or a Magic Attack class who knew Fly.

Krusty’s class was Guardian, and his abilities were built around provocation that drew enemy attacks to him, and heavy-armored defense.

Not only that, but the Soul Darkening Curse, that irreversible bad status, was currently eating away at him. Considering that two of its effects were NATURAL HP RECOVERY IS SUSPENDED and HP MAY NOT BE RECOVERED THROUGH RECOVERY SPELLS, OR THROUGH FACILITIES OR ITEMS, HP recovery was bound to be extremely difficult, if not impossible. In this condition, he should probably avoid taking damage. As a matter of fact, Krusty’s current HP was only half of its maximum.

To that end, Krusty stuck his fist into the cliff wall, using it as an impromptu brake.

With his mass, it wouldn’t be enough to stop him, but his momentum decreased dramatically. His high-level physical abilities gave him astounding kinetic vision as well.

Using the trunk of a twisted pine that grew from a split in the rock as a springboard and shifting to a sideways vector, Krusty aimed something like a flying kick at the rock shelf opposite them, thrusting his armored foot into it.

“Mashter Immortal?”

“What is it?”

Krusty responded to the otter, who was pale with terror and kept opening and shutting her mouth.

“Cloud…?!”

“Cloud.”

Hua Diao’s question had been fragmented into a single word, and Krusty thought about it for a few moments, frowning. Then he realized she probably meant the clouds Immortals rode on when they flew. If he recalled correctly, that was an immortal wizard skill. He thought he’d seen a short story by Pu Songling about it. The martenfolk were under the impression that Krusty was an immortal wizard, so she’d probably thought he’d be able to do something like that as a matter of course.

Now that he thought about it, when Hua Diao had showed him to the cliff’s edge and smiled, she might have meant Take a short trip by cloud from here, go shopping, and come back. The spot had only looked like the edge of the garden to Krusty, but it might have been a dedicated flight platform for Immortals.

Of course Krusty wasn’t an immortal wizard, and he couldn’t use skills like that one.

However, in visual terms, riding a griffin and riding a cloud didn’t look that different. Come to think of it, there had been Immortals who rode large birds, too.

If using auspicious animals such as dragons, tortoises, and cranes as mounts counted as an Immortal skill, then Adventurers were probably qualified to be immortal wizards.

“The cloud is on vacation.”

“Huh?!”

“My cloud works on a three-days-on, four-days-off schedule.”

“What?!”

As she compared that with her own work environment, Hua Diao’s eyes darted around in bewilderment. After making that declaration, Krusty left the cliff, which had partly crumbled into rubble, and jumped lightly down the last five meters.

He’d thought he’d made an extremely careful landing, but his massive full armor clanged heavily. The impression it gave was as violent as a collision, if not as bad as a fall.

“Mashter Immortaaaaaaaal?!”

The otter seemed to be shrieking at every opportunity. Stuffing her back into the bag, Krusty surveyed their surroundings.

The rocky area, which was illuminated by the dawn light, wasn’t the sheer cliff from a moment before.

There were still terraces that were taller than he was here and there, but red-brown dirt peeked through, and he seemed to have reached something that resembled a mountain track. A series of enormous, towering rocks soared into the air like the fairylands, making for the peak of Mount Lang Jun.

“Traveling on foot may be very difficult.”

“I think you’re right,” Krusty murmured. He wasn’t even worried about the return journey.

He’d jumped because it had seemed like less work, but he could have crouched and gone down a cliff like this one as well. That meant he’d also be able to climb back up. If it looked as though it just wasn’t going to work out, he’d just summon his griffin. Since they were on different servers, he wasn’t positive it would come, but he did have the summoning whistle in his Magic Bag.

“We haven’t brought a lunch, you know…”

Hua Diao asked her question timidly, in a voice as if she were looking for instructions. “We’ll eat out somewhere when we get there,” Krusty responded.

“We may find some sort of wonderful food!”

As usual, the otter’s mood had brightened promptly. Holding the bag with her inside it, Krusty began his descent, sometimes leaping over the gaps between rocks, sometimes detouring around them. It was the first time he’d tried it, and he thought this bag maneuver wasn’t bad. He didn’t know what Hua Diao’s physical abilities were like, but if she could stay in the bag like this, carrying her was a lot less work.

Hua Diao had begun asking what they’d find in town and saying that if there was sausage she wanted to have that. She was so cheerful it was hard to believe she’d been screaming just a little while ago.

“It really is all about food with you people, isn’t it? Are you sure you’re heavenly officials?” Krusty asked, secretly a little disgusted. Weren’t they just marten officials, rather than heavenly officials?

“I told you, we’re heavenly officials,” she replied. “If a person gives up their desires, they can become an immortal wizard. Since you are already an immortal wizard, Master Immortal, you aren’t interested in beautiful women like Enchantress Youren or beautiful girls like me, and even when you eat delicious food, it doesn’t make you smile. It’s amazing, but to be honest, I’m not jealous.”

“Ah.” Krusty gave a noncommittal response.

He didn’t really know whether Enchantress Youren was beautiful or not. It wasn’t because she hid her eyes behind that thin silk; he could tell that her appearance was generally attractive, but she didn’t have that decisive feeling that would have marked her as beautiful. Her presence was suspicious. Krusty’s opinion of the woman was that she was like part of the scenery.

Of course, she probably had goals or plans of some sort, but they all felt “borrowed,” somehow. There didn’t seem to be anything she could do on her own; she had no decisive will. Or was it possible that she didn’t even have any strong desires? If she was like that, she wouldn’t be able to make anything happen regardless of who for and, in Krusty’s opinion, might as well have been dead to begin with.

As for Hua Diao being a beautiful girl, when he thought about it in earnest, he didn’t have much reason to deny it. She was shaped like a girl, so there was no problem with calling her one, and Krusty didn’t have the sort of life experience that would have allowed him to tell a beautiful otter from an ugly one. If she claimed to be a beautiful girl, his only thought was Hmm. Is that so?

However, in her case, her motives were almost entirely focused on delicious food (particularly sweets). Even if she was a beautiful girl, there was no point to it. Her abilities weren’t connected to the world.

Of course, that didn’t mean they were bad people.

Only a minority of humans were connected to the world—those individuals who tried to accomplish something based on their wills or goals, subsequently worked to acquire abilities, and consequently managed to influence their surroundings. Shiroe, the inveterate worrier who’d established the Round Table Council, was a good example. The rewards of making that choice were slight; the demands from those around him only grew, and as a result, he was forced to shoulder even more trouble. Ordinary people understood this, so they didn’t choose lives in which they’d have to make big decisions.

Krusty almost began to wonder where he fell on the spectrum, but he immediately abandoned the idea.

There was nothing to be gained from analyzing himself. Personalities were no more than reflexive reactions to circumstance. The mirror was warped, and there was a little individuality in the way it twisted—that was all.

Honestly, it was probably more profitable to pursue fun situations.

“That said, I haven’t exactly given up my desires, you know.”

“Is that right? That tart was delicious; did it not suit your preferences?”

After thinking for a second, Krusty spoke to the self-proclaimed beautiful girl, who’d stuck her snout out of the mouth of the bag. Hua Diao’s voice had been filled with sympathy, as if she pitied him from the bottom of her heart, and he continued the conversation in a calm, perfectly natural voice.

“It’s just that I like something different, that’s all.”

“What sort of foods do you like, Master Immortal?”

“Well…”

“Well?” Hua Diao prompted, brimming over with curiosity. They looked at each other. Her innocent eyes were like black pearls, and Krusty responded solemnly, “…Greedy little otters, grilled whole and served with fig sauce, perhaps?”

“Huh? Dweeeeeeeh?! D-Do—”

After a moment of stunned silence, a hysterical scream echoed off the rocks, where dawn was beginning to break. His prank had succeeded.

…Possibly too well.

“I don’t taste good, Master Immortal. D-don’t eaaaaaaat meeeeee!”

Hua Diao struggled, trying to jump out of the bag, and at the same time, with a big puff of smoke, she reverted to her girl form. On this slope of sharp rocks, where there wasn’t even a mountain trail, that seemed far too unsafe. Reflexively, Krusty caught her by the scruff of her neck, rescuing her, just as a transparent blade swung down on him.

6

He immediately raised his Fresh Blood Demon Ax, and it and the great crystal sword locked blades with a dissonant metallic clang. The two-handed sword had been moving fast enough as it fell, but the blond youth who wielded it was in light armor—it might not have had quite enough weight behind it to cut him down. Either that, or Krusty’s thick, full-body armor had absorbed the momentum as if it had put down roots.

In midair, their eyes met for a moment. Then the two shadows flew apart, getting some distance from each other. The attack had numbed Krusty’s right hand, and as if to check its condition, he rotated his enormous bardiche once, gazing at his enemy.

He was strong.

The attack he’d just taken had been quite enough to show him that.

He was probably outranked, too. The level on his status display was 100.

Elias Hackblade: the strongest character in Elder Tales. He was an Ancient hero who based his activity out of the Western European server. His own HP had already been at the halfway mark, and that one attack had taken it down even further. Guardians had excellent defense and durability, but even though it had only been a few percentage points, the damage was shocking. His opponent’s damage output was on the level of a raid boss’s normal attack.

“Finally. That’s more like it.”

Krusty smiled.

“Don’t waste your breath!”

The youth spit his words out sharply, then closed the distance between them in the space of a breath. Krusty evaded the blue-and-gold swordsman’s attack, but the man swung that transparent broadsword as they passed each other, and it tracked him. A stream of water flowed from its tip, closing in on Krusty, who’d twisted away, until it was right on top of him. Apparently, the range of that magic sword wasn’t what it appeared to be.

Krusty slammed the shaft of his two-handed ax into the stream, scattering it. Iron Bounce was a special support skill that reduced the force of an enemy attack. The damage he hadn’t been able to negate completely burst on the surface of his Einherjar’s Armor and dispersed.

Even so, the spray that got through left a shallow split in Krusty’s cheek, like a razor blade.

The blood trickled down his face, and when it reached the corner of his mouth, he tested it with the tip of his tongue. Instantly, a restless heat spread through him.

“Elias Hackblade.”

“I have no name to give to one such as you!”

This time he seemed to have used some sort of ability. Something that looked like wings made of water appeared from Elias’s shoulders. Naturally, they probably weren’t just for show. They had to have some sort of offensive ability.

I am being attacked by Elias Hackblade (present continuous tense).

He’s the Ancients’ greatest hero.

According to Elder Tales lore, he’s one of the good guys.

Why is he fighting an ordinary Adventurer?

Someone may be controlling him.

He might have had a violent personality to begin with.

He may have misinterpreted the facts.

I may actually be a force of evil.

No particular grounds for denying this.

What are his combat abilities?

Far greater than those of a level-90 Adventurer.

He doesn’t have the durability or speed of a raid boss.

His normal attacks have force equal to a raid boss.

Magical and physical attacks with a focus on water and cold air.

Is midrange his preferred fighting distance?

Check into this.

Find some way to deal with him—

A torrent powerful enough to gouge holes in rock pierced the spot where Krusty had been standing a moment ago. He’d read the attack and dodged it, but he was overflowing with an elation that made him feel as if his blood were boiling.

He didn’t know why an Ancient hero had attacked him.

There was a decent possibility that it was some sort of mistake, and that if he talked to him, they could avoid fighting.

However, before he knew it, rather than thinking of a way to avoid combat, he was sizing up his opponent’s combat abilities.

Where was the sense in avoiding combat anyway?

Hadn’t he left fairyland because he was bored?

In that case, this encounter, and this bout, were the best opportunity he could have asked for.

He didn’t have anything against the hero Elias, but crossing blades with that princely young man and crushing him seemed like a pretty interesting way to entertain himself.

If his life ran out on him in the process, that would be interesting, too.

“Master Immortaaal!”

“You hide for a little while, delicious otter. I’ll deal with you later.”

Knowing in a corner of his mind that what he was saying and doing was likely to be misconstrued, Krusty spoke to Hua Diao, who was poking her head out from the shadow of a boulder. He was aware that the corners of his lips were curving up. Apparently, he was smiling.

Clearly angry, Elias closed in again.

He was fast. He also launched a lot of blows. The watery wings that grew from his shoulders thrust out their ends like spear tips, targeting Krusty.

Guardians were characterized by their defensive abilities, not their evasive ones. Since the Catastrophe, it had been confirmed that active evasion efforts increased the possibility of successfully evading. However, with this armor covering him from head to toe, he wasn’t suited to acrobatic evasions. To acquire this steel defense, he’d traded away his potential for dodging.

Although that’s precisely what makes it fun.

Krusty swung his ax violently, then leapt backward, leaving himself behind.

He spread his mind out, thinly.

He’d activated Hyperion Eye, his Mystery.

From his subjective perspective, just now, Krusty had split into two people.

They were Berserker Krusty, who was crossing blades with Elias Hackblade’s ferocious attacks, repelling them, and actively slashing at him while wearing a ghastly smile; and Commander Krusty, who had no material body and was looking down at his other self from midair, making tactical decisions. The effect of the Hyperion Eye Mystery let you look down at yourself and your companions from midair.

Back when Elder Tales had been an MMO game, the screen had been the sort that gave you a view from above, the way this Mystery did. One of the reasons combat had become more difficult after the Catastrophe was that your perspective was anchored inside your own head, and grasping information had gotten harder. This Mystery could conquer that inconvenience.

Although it was convenient, it was drab compared to all the Mysteries other D.D.D. members had that Krusty knew of, and it had no decisive power. It made it easier to get a handle on the surrounding situation when he was commanding raids, but it didn’t increase damage, and it didn’t enhance defensive abilities. It also hadn’t put him within reach of a miracle he’d never imagined before.

It was an inconsequential Mystery.

“Wha—?!”

However, Krusty dodged the blade coming at him from his blind spot by twisting half a step. Elias’s aquatic support had attacked him soundlessly, but he’d evaded completely without so much as glancing at it.

He kept moving, changing the motion into an attack. The thick bardiche, as long as he was tall, writhed, wrapping around Krusty’s twisted body like a whip before slamming into Elias.

Krusty had activated one of the seven trajectories for Merciless Strike without going through its command, then linked it to Aggro Charge, intending to pry open the vulnerability he’d discovered by observing Elias from behind his back.

He had absolutely no leeway.

Viewed objectively, Krusty’s HP had been down to the halfway mark to begin with, and every single attack was as much of a gamble as Russian roulette. Even in this moment, although he’d avoided a direct hit, a trailing barrage of aquatic daggers was continuing to inflict small wounds on him. None of the attacks caused significant damage by themselves, but Krusty couldn’t hope for recovery, and he couldn’t afford to ignore them.

However, what welled up inside him was savage joy.

“You’re certainly strong, hero Elias!”

“That isn’t the sort of thing I want to hear from a stranger like you!”

The swordsman was incensed, and his attacks grew more severe.

However, Krusty was familiar with the hearts of blade-storms like this one; they were home to him, and he found them relaxing.

He didn’t hate slow-moving routines, but even so, fear ate away at him, rusting him little by little. This state of focus, in which he was gradually being driven into a corner and couldn’t afford to drop his guard for a moment, had ripped his gloom away like a scab.

His refreshed, sharpened senses drew him even further into his accelerating sense of time.

Krusty, who was neither truly good or truly evil, spun the roulette wheel of combat on the only compensation he could offer, using his own life as chips.

“Conquer! Crystal Stream!! Spirits of clear water, transform yourselves into a thousand blades and shine! Aqua Thousand Rain!!”

Elias had taken a step back and charged up. His energy swelled.

As he’d announced, thousands upon thousands of high-speed water missiles flew wildly, and Krusty slammed Onslaught into them. His bardiche, which shone bright crimson, was a phantasmal weapon. It was magic battle gear of the highest rarity—only a handful had been found on the Yamato server—and as such, it was equipped with powerful offensive capabilities and an HP absorption ability. At present, when Krusty was plagued by this curse, the absorption ability might as well have been sealed, but as though to dispel that gloom, the weapon scattered shock waves around. In this head-on collision between two huge techniques, the surrounding rocks crumbled and were washed away.

However, it wasn’t enough.

Krusty’s HP was falling. He didn’t have even 30 percent left.

In contrast, Elias still had over 70.

Even with Hyperion Eye, he couldn’t completely evade all range attacks. If Elias had been a close-range physical-attack type, he would have been able to fight with a slight advantage, but unfortunately, the Ancient was a midrange fighter, and he seemed to be a combined physical- and magical-attack class. Not only that, but he even had support magic and simplified recovery spells. If the fight went on this way, he wouldn’t be able to avoid defeat.

In a corner of his mind, he thought he heard a small, dark murmur say, That wouldn’t be so bad, but he also felt as if it would be irritating to go along with it.

Krusty genuinely thought he wouldn’t mind losing, but that wasn’t the same as being okay with not winning.

I can’t win.

Find a way to break out of the situation.

My combat abilities aren’t enough.

Then boost them.

More than half unconsciously, Krusty released a part of himself. As he visualized pale, sparkling, iridescent light, he felt a connection form, passing through an extremely tiny gate that had opened inside of him. Drifting in the sea that lay beyond it were countless delicate treasures, gleaming with all the colors of the rainbow: someone’s recollections in liquid form.

Krusty’s lips curved into a smile.

There were plenty of memories he could offer. Right now, more than that, he needed enough energy to fight the man in front of him.

It was a kind of sacrament. Recollections were memories, and at the same time, they were the yang component of the spirit energy that people were made of. In other words, they were the MP that supported Adventurer combat abilities, and the Empathiom that formed all of creation. A primordial energy that carried thoughts, transmitting them through the vacuum.

The radiance that flooded Krusty rapidly recovered his MP, and once the vessel was filled with the primitive violence it had had before being reduced to a spell, it accelerated his Recast Time.

“That power… Where did you—?!” Elias shouted, his eyes wide with astonishment. But Krusty didn’t hesitate.

With the yell of War Cry, he closed the distance between them in a rush. He was converting a charging weight of more than a hundred kilograms into the destructive power of Scarlet Thrust.

MP brimmed over, dripping from his ax.

The red light of magic eroded the area, as if he’d scattered fresh blood around.

In the distance, he felt as if he could hear the sound of the surf, very faintly.

In the midst of the countless indescribable images he’d seen in the moment he was flung from the Mountains of Ouu to the Zhongyuan server, Krusty had definitely come to understand something. At this point, he’d lost it, but not all of it. Krusty knew with certainty that this technique, the Mystery that pulled rainbow light out of the void, was a clue from the opposite direction as his lost memories.

The clear realization, like gears meshing, roused delight in his mind.

It felt as if the peaceful days since he’d come to this land, during which everything had been stagnant, were being ripped apart, and he’d finally found his own path to walk.

Krusty’s attack closed the gap between them, slicing through two—no, three—streams of water as tough as steel before finally locking blades with Elias’s fairy sword. Both weapons had been reinforced with mana, and they bit into each other, trying to tear each other apart with a harsh metallic screech.

Even if his level was lower than Elias the Blademancer, a magic swordsman, Krusty was a Guardian, a pure physical vanguard class. That might have meant that his arm strength was greater: Little by little, as they locked sword hilts, pushing at each other, Krusty was winning the contest.

He wasn’t aware of it, but the corners of his mouth had turned up, and he was wearing a fiendish smile. It was the smile of a hunting dog that had spotted its goal. In the midst of this fight with Elias, Krusty had found the enemy’s tail.

However, their contest of strength came to an abrupt end.

Both parties had an overabundance of mana, and the ground itself couldn’t take it.

There was a momentary floating sensation, as if the ground had vanished, and then Krusty and Elias found themselves in the center of a collapsed basin in the mountainside. They tried to jump out, but the ground they needed to use as footholds was beginning to crumble. There was something they’d both forgotten: This mountain held Sirius Grotto, a large-scale complex of countless limestone caves.