1

“Dweaaah?! Whoa, hey, slow down, Fluffers!”

As she chased after Gumon the enormous wolf, Kanami lost her balance and swung her arms around as if she were swimming. Due to its canals, which were like the type in terraced fields, this huge, deep subterranean cavern was awash in enough water to get the soles of their shoes wet.

Without turning to look at her companions, Gumon casually scaled the terraces with the grace unique to creatures that traveled on four legs.

Apparently, this was a regular cavern.

According to what he’d heard from Hua Diao, there were several hundred small-scale limestone caves in this mountain, a few dozen of which could be traversed by humans. It wasn’t a large-scale dungeon; Krusty suspected that countless instance-type dungeons might have been fixed in place this way by the Catastrophe.

The floating Magic Light was something Kanami had summoned from a Lamplight Scroll. It was technically a noncombat spell for Magic Attack classes, but convenient, low-level spells were often provided as consumable magic items anyone could use. They didn’t cost much, so seasoned Adventurers invariably slipped them into their belongings.

Even though it was illuminated now, the damp cave still held darkness, but Kanami didn’t seem to care one bit. She was a Monk, her body encased in skimpy light armor, and she moved through the gloomy cave lightly. She peeked into the shadows and branch tunnels here and there like a restless child. Phrased diplomatically, she was confirming their route; considered normally, she was satisfying her curiosity.

Krusty watched her without comment.

It wasn’t as if there was any particular advantage or disadvantage for him, and if she cleared the way for him, that was just fine.

His thought on the situation was It looks as though trouble just got started. In Krusty’s life, this was a familiar premonition.

When he was small, he’d thought of himself as a small boat, floating on a stormy ocean.

To Haruaki Kounoike, the outside world was something unreasonable he couldn’t fight.

When he was old enough to go to school, he’d learned the phrase haran banjou, “the vicissitudes of life.” The ran in haran meant “big waves.” Banjou meant being incredibly high, or very deep. The whole phrase meant big waves that came over and over, and—with what was in a way a very boyish, reckless obstinacy—it secured a special place for itself in his heart. When he bluffed inwardly, Hey, this is perfect for a surfer, the world of stormy waves became a problem he needed to ride.

By the time he entered middle school, he was able to dance skillfully on top of the great waves, and by high school, he even felt that most quarrels weren’t stimulating enough.

Bohemian. Debauched.

That was what his relatives had begun to call him.

Of course, as far as he could tell, this wasn’t a fact. He’d never burned through the family’s assets with wasteful spending, and he didn’t feel as if he’d shirked his duties and done just as he pleased.

On the contrary, he thought he’d always been considerate of his relatives. As the son of a mistress, he was someone who was easy to view coldly, and the Kounoikes were a distinguished family with relations all over Japan. There was nothing harder to deal with than a rich, prestigious family who lived in rural areas. Not only that, but when their main business was moneylending, the difficulty boggled the imagination. Haruaki Kounoike had been a clever young man, so he’d been more than willing to live without causing them trouble or getting in their way.

That said, that was with regard to himself, and the trouble was a different matter. Those vicissitudes of life—in other words, the various commotions that surged his way—were inevitable. He didn’t cause them.

For that very reason, he loved them.

Well, I won’t say I never actively got involved in any of them, though.

His duel with Elias had been that way. He wasn’t crazy enough to take the first swing himself, but if someone started slashing at him, he’d cheerfully play along. He even thought that, since someone had taken a slash at him, he was missing out if he didn’t make sure they entertained him.

To Krusty, the current ruckus was another of the world’s performances. Of course, if he was going to put it that way, all the commotions that had followed the Catastrophe had been the same way. He didn’t intend to actively participate in them, but he did plan to savor every battle that came his way.

As Krusty thought these things, he saw Kanami scale a cliff up ahead.

Clinging to wet rocks wasn’t really his thing, so he walked down the sloping tunnel that continued to the right. At that, with a flustered shout, Kanami came running after him, passed him, and began walking in front of him again.

“You like being in the lead, then?”

“Yeah!”

“Were you the leader of the Tea Party because you like walking in front of everyone?”

The question popped into Krusty’s mind, and the response he got was “Yep, you got it!” Considered in the ordinary way, that reason seemed impossible. Becoming the leader of a community for no other reason than the fact that you wanted to be in the lead walking spot… He’d never heard of such a thing in any guild.

However, the response made sense to him, too. She was lacking in common sense, so naturally, she wouldn’t be sensible internally.

Kanami, who was humming as she walked ahead of him, turned around cheerfully, asking, “What are things like over there?” She’d probably gotten bored.

“What are they like?”

“Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. How’ve you been, these past two years?! And what’s it like on the Yamato server?”

“Don’t you already know?” Krusty responded in a low voice.

It wasn’t that he wanted to keep it a secret or that he didn’t want to talk to her, but he was planning to avoid repeating things she’d heard before.

“Nah… That’s not how it is. I didn’t make contact, and I did other stuff, and I got stopped! I didn’t hear much from KR, either. He wouldn’t give me straight answers.”

“Could you have brought that on yourself, perhaps?”

KR had been a Debauchery Tea Party member. He’d been one of the three counselors in that meteoric group (to which Krusty had felt a sense of affinity simply because of the sound of the word debauchery, for some reason.)

“You’re cold, Krus-Krus. If you walk along silently in a place like this, your glasses will start glinting too much.”

“…”

Krusty shrugged. He’d had no intention of ducking her questions; if she wanted him to talk, he wasn’t against doing that. “Okay, so go on: report, report, rhubarb,” Kanami was shouting. He probably should fill her in on the doings of the people of Akiba.

“The past two years, you said? As far as raid captures are concerned, D.D.D., Howling, and the Knights of the Black Sword competed. Honesty was up and down. Two new guilds, the West Wind Brigade and Silver Sword, improved and rapidly caught up to the top groups.”

He began by relating news about a harmless topic that wasn’t likely to cause offense: the raid rankings over the past couple of years.

The real-world rankings hadn’t been prepared by the Elder Tales official site; raids weren’t evaluated that way. Instead, the communities on each server provided them in the form of anonymous bulletin-board rumors and similar things.

When an expansion pack was released, it included several items of high-end content. The majority of these were full raid chain stories. In other words, extra content. In most cases, one expansion pack included between four and seven dungeons, and one dungeon had anywhere from three to ten raid bosses. In other words, one expansion pack had about thirty “targets.”

There was a tacit order of precedence regarding these powerful enemies. In many cases, dungeons were set up so that you could capture them in any order you liked, but in practice, unless you defeated the raid enemies in lower-ranking dungeons and filled out your equipment, even if you went up against higher-ranking bosses, you weren’t likely to win.

The raid rankings were an aggregate of information regarding which guild had defeated its way up to which objective in these expansion packs.

It took several weeks to defeat a single boss. They needed that much time to analyze an enemy about which they had absolutely no information, get their equipment in order, and train as a team. In other words, every time an expansion pack went on sale, this rankings race—“D.D.D. has defeated the eighth boss.” “It sounds like the Knights of the Black Sword are up to the seventh one now.”—went on for twenty months. That was the Elder Tales raid rankings.

The rankings also gave a portrait of the power struggles on the server, and to simplistic watchers, they were the guild hierarchy as well.

“That sounds surprisingly stable.”

“Expansion pack levels didn’t vary much, either,” Krusty answered.

On the Yamato server, D.D.D., Howling, and the Knights of the Black Sword were powerful raid guilds with substantial histories. They’d been competing with each other since the days when the Debauchery Tea Party was active. It was also true that the expansion packs that had been released had tended to simply add dungeons, rather than new elements that would upset the preexisting power balance.

The upshot was that, in the two years since the Debauchery Tea Party had disbanded, the cutthroat race had continued; however, the competition was still going strong, and there had been no unexpected twists.

“Uh-huh, uh-huh. Umm, what about since the Catastrophe?”

“That’s…not possible to sum up in a word. Akiba established an organization known as the Round Table Council.”

“Yeah, I heard a little about that.”

“Shiroe is the central figure.”

Krusty mentioned this because he’d begun to feel mischievous. Being complimented made Shiroe uncomfortable. He was an unbalanced, interesting friend. Krusty’s impression of Shiroe was that he was a foolhardy idealist, a specialist in hand-to-hand fighting with an ultra-long-distance firing range.

To reach an objective, he’d extend his range as far as he had to. Even in situations where he only had to bag the prey right in front of him, he tried to pull in everything, all the way out to the distant horizon, in order to resolve the whole matter and carry through. And even so, he didn’t snipe; he used a drawn katana for all of it. Conditions that would let him attack unilaterally were in place, and yet, the guy himself wanted to get hurt, too.

It struck him as a strange picture.

had been like that, too.

At that conference, she’d surprised Krusty. It had been a small defeat. The victor had the right to claim the spoils of their victory.

Why would she offer up her own body and soul? Why would she try to get involved?

Isaac and Michitaka and all the guild masters who’d gathered for the Round Table Council were a little mysterious. A whimsical component that no one could call efficient had become the sort of nobility that could be termed “leeway” and was helping the organization operate… Although Krusty was probably not an exception there.

“Shiro, huh? Mm-fu-fu-fu-fu. I knew it. I figured Shiro would turn into a cool guy like that.”

“Did you?”

“Yep, yep. Off-road, of course.”

When he saw her expression—a smile that could only be called delighted—Krusty smiled wryly.

Apparently, this woman enjoyed what Shiroe was doing.

He didn’t know which sense of enjoyed was accurate here, but now that he thought about it, this woman could be called the pinnacle of whimsy and waste.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t spoken with Shiroe and this woman back in the days of the game, but apparently, his understanding had been shallow then. He hadn’t thought they were people with this much depth.

“In Yamato, by and large, both Akiba and Minami are peaceful. Of course it’s likely there are a variety of things under the surface, but that’s true of anywhere people live. The town of Akiba has acquired the combined team of the Round Table Council; they’ve solved the issues of plunder and hostile acts and blocked the first wave of damage to the People of the Earth, and by now, I expect they’re approaching the end of the regular raid events.”

Well, he wasn’t lying. The outstanding problems on the Yamato server had been taken care of, in a general sense.

That said, to Krusty, it actually looked as though the situation was growing more chaotic.

It was a problem that preceded both optimism and pessimism: This situation, which resembled the discovery of a new continent, couldn’t possibly end peacefully.

The Round Table Council’s trouble with training those who were midlevel and below, which it had withdrawn from partway through, probably wouldn’t develop into much of an issue even if Krusty wasn’t there. However, the time they’d bought from the Lords’ Council under the cover of that program would naturally hit its time limit. With the threat of the goblins removed, the relationship between Adventurers and People of the Earth would inevitably progress toward the next stage. That in itself wasn’t a bad thing, but steering their mutual relationship after the hostile entity that had confronted them was gone would be extremely difficult. He would have liked the goblins to remain their enemy until a certain level of exchange had been established as common.

In the first place, Adventurers and People of the Earth were too far removed from each other. With a difference that great, you couldn’t expect anything from compromises.

Shiroe, whose heart burned much hotter than his appearance suggested, had journeyed north to strike a balance, but there as well, he must have been counting on chances of victory that were practically a pipe dream. He didn’t think he’d fail, but even if he succeeded, he’d never settle all the problems.

Or, no, if he succeeded, precisely because he’d done so, Ains would probably go off half-cocked.

When you looked at the big picture, the circumstances were beyond the scope of individual efforts.

Of course, it would probably be possible to block small, individual misfortunes. However, to put the situation in order, far more blood was bound to be spilled.

And it isn’t as though my being there would have changed anything. Krusty shrugged in response to his own thoughts.

“Why are you all the way out here, Krus-Krus?”

“I got involved in an accident, I think. It’s what saddled me with this bad status.”

Krusty answered as smoothly as if he’d prepared for that question in advance.

He hadn’t come here voluntarily, but he couldn’t say he’d actively fought it, either.

He was merely a little quick-witted, and if he took a comprehensive standpoint, no matter where he was, he couldn’t influence crowds. This was only natural, as he wasn’t trying to influence them. As a result, whether he was flung off somewhere or stayed where he was, he didn’t really care either way.

As long as he could find something relatively fun in any given situation, he was content.

“By whom?”

“Whom…?”

Kanami’s question caught Krusty off guard.

Who had involved him? Who had cursed him?

Who had defeated him?

Carelessly, those questions hadn’t even occurred to him.

As that train of thought flashed into his mind, Krusty looked down. Somewhere along the way, a pale golden light had begun to illuminate him. A cold wind swirled, making his mantle flap.

The long, winding limestone cavern had led the two Adventurers to the mountainside of Mount Lang Jun.

2

Covered in dust and thoroughly dirty, Hua Diao was in the greatest distress of her life. In the moment of the collapse, Krusty had flipped her away, sending her flying, and so she’d escaped unharmed, but she’d gotten stuck on a pine branch and had spent a short while unconscious. When she woke up, the topography of Mount Lang Jun had changed drastically, and it had taken her easily half a day to crawl up the rocky mountainside.

Pathetically, she was leaking big tears, and her nose was terribly snuffly.

Her plain yet dignified heavenly retainer’s clothes were worn through and ragged. For that matter, Hua Diao herself was ragged as well.

“What an awful thing to happen.”

Despondent, she came to a stop, but then she gritted her teeth and got over another boulder.

She was short, and to her, the sort of level difference Krusty could cross in a single stride was a cliff.

“I wonder if Master Immortal is all right. And all our companions, too…”

The martenfolk were heavenly officials who administered fairyland. That wasn’t a lie. In which case, what was a heavenly official? Frankly, Hua Diao didn’t know the answer.

What, on the other hand, was a government official? Hua Diao didn’t know the exact meaning of that term or job, either.

She was conscious that it was a respected civil service position. She had self-esteem that told her it must be something important. However, if asked why it was important, the only answer she could give was a vague Because you’re a heavenly official, maybe? She understood so little about the specific duties that, if asked what they were, she would have averted her eyes.

According to her hazy memories of the term civil servant, you had a boss who gave you orders and duties to carry out, but Hua Diao had no direct boss. She’d never met one, not in all the time since she was born, and she hadn’t taken any orders.

If she’d had to say, all the Ancients and Immortals should have counted as her boss, but until the Enchantress Youren had visited, no Immortals had come to the fairyland where Hua Diao lived.

In addition, Hua Diao didn’t really know what heaven was, either.

She knew it was somewhere up above them, and that the Immortals lived there, but she’d never been, not once.

From the time they were born, Hua Diao and the other martenfolk had been in the enchanted land on Mount Lang Jun, and they’d lived as its caretakers. Well, they might have been more like freeloaders than government officials…

After a certain point in time, fairyland had grown large, the number of rooms in the shrine had increased, and her sisters had increased in number as well before she was aware of it, but Hua Diao and the others had lived modestly. They swept the shrine, sprinkled water on the long, perilous stone staircase, and greeted Zhu Huan and the other worshippers who stopped by on occasion. Most of their meals consisted of hard tree nuts. The peaches belonged to the Immortals, and it was a grave crime for a government official to help herself to one.

For that reason, when Krusty had appeared, she’d been really happy.

She’d heard he was there to convalesce from an illness, so she’d nursed him with everything she’d had, but it didn’t seem to have been all that serious. In the end, he’d spent his time speaking to Hua Diao and the others about all sorts of things.

She didn’t understand his personality very well, and he had a spiteful streak, but he was intelligent and elegant, and she thought he was a kind boss.

As Hua Diao and her sisters gazed up at the peaches that swayed in the soft breezes of fairyland, he’d picked large fruits without so much as hesitating and given them to them. He’d teased them as he’d done it—“When your limbs are short, you can’t really climb trees, can you?”—but that was misdirection, and just so like him, Hua Diao thought. After all, the martenfolk were all accomplished tree climbers.

The peaches had been meltingly sweet, but the dishes Master Immortal made were even more splendid. He wouldn’t always make them, but they were far, far more flavorful than the things the martenfolk made. The martenfolk should have been able to get by without eating, but they’d even take human shape or turn into spirits in order to line up for the food Master Immortal made.

Wasn’t his “stewed cubed-pork and boiled egg set meal” far more delicious than the court cuisine said to be served in the heavenly palace, which they knew of in theory? This was a secret, but as the leader, and therefore the one who was treated to it every time, Hua Diao would roll right over for it.

As a result, right now, Hua Diao’s nose was bright red from crying.

Krusty had been swallowed up by that pitch-black hole, and just the thought that he might have been smashed flat by a huge boulder made her chest feel as if it were being crushed.

She wanted him to serve her that peach tarte tatin he made—sweet and mellow, with a hint of bitterness, as if it had been slightly scorched—one more time. She wanted him to display the brilliant skill with which he cut it into twelve equal pieces, smiling meanly as he did so.

Wiping her nose, Hua Diao looked up abruptly, then froze. Glittering rainbow light was climbing into the blue of the early-morning sky. The light was really pretty, but it seemed very sad somehow, and her heart ached.

It was the first time Hua Diao had ever seen that light.

Mount Lang Jun was the enormous rocky mountain whose peak housed the Bai Tao Shrine. However, in this new situation, it had become clear that the mountain’s interior was a veritable anthill of countless limestone caverns.

The bedrock was more than hard enough, and the caves had probably been created through erosion over tens of thousands of years. However, at this point, those limestone caverns were caving in everywhere, and either passage was impossible, or new connecting routes had appeared. Even as Hua Diao crawled across the mountain’s surface like this, here and there the scenery was different from what she remembered.

She descended the rubble-littered slope of a mortar-shaped depression where the rock—which ordinarily had a small path running across it—had collapsed. The footing was too unstable for her to walk upright, and sometimes she crawled down, facing backward. Even then, the rocks collapsed with a clatter, making her uneasy.

The scenery that spread before Hua Diao was a familiar underground cavern, but as she went down several differences in level, it changed. The natural rock, as black as if it was wet, became a floor with straight, geometric lines in a bright gray. The corridor Hua Diao was traveling down was shaped like a tube that would have been an octagon if you cut it into slices.

It was grimy and covered in dust, but it seemed as if it had probably been clean once. This was clear from the way the corridor stretched on and on, with no distortions in its angle or size. Fissures ran through the corridor in places, and through them, she could see metal pipes and structures with strange, threadlike things buried in them. This place might be an underground fortress or a ruin.

As was usual for fairylands, Mount Lang Jun had a mission to guard Mount Kunlun, and Hua Diao wondered if this was what that facility was for. That said, she had no knowledge of or interest in it, so she only thought, That could be it.

She sniffed the air, but she couldn’t find Master Immortal’s scent. Possibly because of that large-scale collapse, all she picked up was murky water, dust, and a smell like sparks. After she crossed a metal plate with TELEVISION STATION written on it, the corridor grew wider, and she emerged in an area where metal rails, those thread things from earlier, and a variety of metal magic items she’d never seen before had been discarded.

“Was this corridor the wrong way?”

When Hua Diao had gone far enough that she muttered those words, the corridor was abruptly ruptured by an enormous natural rock. She poked her head through a gap, looked around at the darkness, then crept into the big hall that lay beyond. As she did so, the scorched smell from earlier grew stronger.

“What could it be…?”

Hua Diao felt, dimly, that there might be danger here, and she murmured those words precisely because she was frightened. She looked around actively, but it was only because she was afraid of the darkness, not because she was on her guard.

“There’s nothing here, is there? I mean, it’s so far underground—”

Hua Diao was speaking quickly, trying to distract herself so that she wouldn’t cringe back, when she discovered sunlight. It shone in, slashing through the darkness, as white as if it had been bleached.

It was afternoon, and already the light wasn’t radiant enough to be vivid.

However, even so, it was sunlight. When she looked up, she saw that part of the high ceiling had collapsed, leaving a hole. From the fact that she could see blue sky far in the distance, it looked as though it would be possible to get out through there… Provided you could fly, of course.

Her eyes had been dazzled by the light, which made the shadows look even darker.

As a result, it was no wonder Hua Diao was a little late in noticing it.

Crouched on the other side of the veil of light, which streamed in like a waterfall, was an enormous beast. It was a leonine monster, with fur so smooth it looked wet. Its entire body was covered with a tough-looking pelt, and although that pelt was different colors, its face was covered in grotesque red flesh, as if the fur in that area had been plucked.

“Heegh!”

She’d covered her mouth hastily, so her scream came out sounding awkward, like a hiccup. However, naturally, Hua Diao didn’t have the leeway to regret that. She didn’t think, I’ll be careful not to let it notice me or I’ll turn back without making a sound. Not even the tiniest bit.

Because she and the enormous beast were already looking each other in the eyes.

The beast had clearly noticed Hua Diao, and it was gazing at her as if licking her from head to toe with its eyes. The strength went out of Hua Diao’s legs, leaving them soft and uncertain, so that she didn’t even know whether she was standing up or lying down.

I’ll die. I’m going to die.

In the hall, with its shafts of light, the beast shambled forward. It looked even bigger.

It wasn’t an animal. It was a magical beast.

Not only that, it was a type she’d never seen on Mount Lang Jun, an evil beast that scattered miasma around.

When she smelled its breath, which had a wild stink to it, Hua Diao realized something.

That scorched smell hadn’t been because something was burning. The pale electricity that cloaked the beast’s four limbs and breath was burning the air itself.

There was a series of sharp snaps, as if the air had split. The difference in voltage made her skin prickle and tingle, and Hua Diao squeezed her eyes shut. She was finished. She was going to die here. She didn’t know the reason, but this magic beast, which had come from the outside, was definitely going to eat her.

Unlike Master Immortal, this creepy monster probably wouldn’t even give her a side of peach sauce. Hua Diao had given up all hope, and a raging torrent of electricity leapt at her.

She’d been flung into the air, and the floating sensation made her giddy. Then she realized she was clinging to solid shoulder armor made of blue steel.

“Fancy meeting you here.”

Krusty smiled, the corners of his lips curving slightly, and Hua Diao’s eyes widened until they were perfect circles. “Master Immortal!” she shouted, but even as she did so, Krusty was lightly evading, dodging left and right. Somewhere in there, the magical beast had gotten right up close to them, and he shoved his double-bladed bardiche into its gaping jaws, stopping them.

“It’s a Nue.”

“That’s a Nue, all right! Wow, that takes me back.”

Krusty’s frame was massive, but a female martial artist leapt lightly over his head, aiming for the beast, and slammed a fist into it with a metallic roar.

“At this size, it’s probably a half-raid-rank. It’s likely to be the same type as the one in the Sky Tower, or a similar strain. It’s weak against physical blows and has a tolerance for electricity.”

“This really is a big ol’ ruckus, isn’t it?! That’s Eured for you! Continent of adventure!

With that cheerful response from the new girl, a ferocious battle began.

3

A fierce exchange played out between Krusty’s group and the Nue, a beast that controlled electricity.

At first, Krusty held Hua Diao, but when she spotted her chance, she got down and fled into the shadow of the rocks. She hadn’t abandoned the Immortal; she’d done it so that she wouldn’t get in his way as he fought.

Master Immortal never let the pain show in his expression, but there was a wound in his side that never stopped bleeding.

No matter how often they changed his bandages, the red seeped through. He said the wound was probably cursed. Master Immortal had smiled coldly, and come to think of it, his face had always looked pale and transparent. Hua Diao was afraid to be a burden to him.

Of course, if Krusty was defeated, she was prepared to lose her own life as well.

After all, there was really no way for her to oppose that monster with her own combat strength. With her short limbs, she didn’t even think she’d be able to run away.

She’d always thought he was strong, but the Immortal’s fight was overwhelming.

Every swing of his thick ax whipped up a tsunami of rubble, dirt, and sand that assailed the beast with the force of an angry roar. However, the Nue, a magical beast that was the color of darkness, was powerful, and even Krusty’s ferocious attacks didn’t seem to be doing much damage to it.

The black-haired woman who’d appeared along with the Immortal launched fearsome attacks as well. While Krusty seemed to sink his roots solidly into the earth, swinging both arms around, attacking and defending with a mass of iron, her movements had a feline agility about them. She flew in, paid out several jabs or unleashed kicks, then drew an arc in midair. The way she moved was a little too rough to call a dance, but it was very beautiful.

One more supporting member had joined the fight.

It was Gumon, the wolf dog who’d always waited at Krusty’s feet.

Certainly, the wolf had a splendid physique, and Hua Diao had thought that it would be terrible to get chewed on by her, but now that she saw her fighting this way, her strength was overwhelming. Her large frame didn’t even compare unfavorably to Krusty’s, and she slammed it against the enemy, moving as if she was creeping across the ground in that way unique to quadrupeds. She looked brutal, and even so, she was elegant, too. The fur on her back—a back Hua Diao had ridden on occasion—reflected the light, shining wetly; it looked like flowing mercury.

“It went bwonnng! It seriously did! Bwonnng!”

“Did it really, Miss Kanami? That’s a good noise.”

Her punch seemed to have brought some kickback with it; the woman was shaking her hand and looking upset.

“You’re kinda casually mean, aren’t you, Krus-Krus?! Are you discriminating against me because I’m me?”

“You’re wearing gauntlets, so you should be fine.”

“You just tacked that on like you thought it was a pain!”

To her, it looked as though the two of them and the wolf dog were working together perfectly. Apparently, the woman was an old acquaintance, and from what the Immortal said, her name seemed to be Kanami. Unlike him, she wore an extremely thin ethnic costume, and she danced up to the magical beast like a whirlwind, then attacked.

Could she be another Immortal? Hua Diao wondered. She felt an odd emotion, something between loss and disappointment. Since she was fighting alongside Krusty, there was a good possibility the woman was another Ancient. One of the few comrades who’d survived in this broken world.

If she was, she would be someone Hua Diao was meant to serve, like Krusty. That struck her as a bit unfortunate. Although, if the woman was like Master Immortal, she might be good at making sweets—

The thought made Hua Diao wonder if she was really that much of a glutton, and her cheeks flushed.

“Tiger Echo Fist!!”

Contrary to the sound of the attack’s name, Kanami unleashed a contact attack that was almost like a shoulder-centered body blow. As if it had taken damage from it, the beast—which must have weighed several hundred kilos—rose into the air for a moment and was knocked away, staggering.

Gumon the wolf dog was waiting for it. Crouching low, she aimed for its vulnerable back legs, sinking her sharp fangs into its iron pelt. The Nue lost its balance entirely, and she dragged it another half step to inflict more pain, then adjusted her angle, correcting her attitude.

Then, scattering the crimson light of mana around, Krusty attacked its defenseless neck. The bardiche, whose blade was more than fifty centimeters wide, fell like the blade of a guillotine. At that attack, even the beast set up a groaning wail.

Master Immortal is so strong!

Hua Diao did a little dance.

However, she couldn’t state categorically that the fight would be a sweeping victory for them.

True, from what she was seeing, it seemed to be trending in their favor. However, the Nue was no common beast. There was no telling where it had been hiding it, but with a flood of energy, it turned the tables in a rush, and several spheres of electricity surfaced, releasing a scorched stench into their surroundings.

The two Adventurers shifted to evading, and no sooner had their attacks begun to have trouble connecting than its thick front paws, which had claws like forked spears, switched from jabbing to sweeping. The female martial artist was forced to dodge dramatically to avoid its sharp hooked claws.

And more than anything, its neck—which had taken that unequaled attack from Master Immortal—was a problem.

If it had taken an attack like that, even a big boulder would probably have been pulverized. There was no need to even think about what would have happened if Hua Diao had been its target (even if there had been a hundred of her, they would all have been laid out), but on the neck that had actually been the target, the fur around the wound was very lightly bloodied, and that was all.

Hua Diao had no idea what sort of abilities this monster had, but even so, it was clear that one of its weapons was its absurd physical strength. And if that was the case, wouldn’t the Immortals’ group run through their strength soon and collapse? There were only three of them. The unease made Hua Diao quake.

As it turned out, her guess wasn’t that far off the mark.

To Hua Diao, the two Adventurers had looked as if they were fighting their battle with composure, but they didn’t actually have as much leeway as it seemed.

After all, their opponent was a half-raid-rank monster.

That meant that, properly speaking, twelve Adventurers with appropriate levels would have gathered and fought it together. The beast’s level was 84. The two of them had levels around 90, so it was slightly below their rank.

Adventurers who had the help of phantasmals could fight monsters that were on their level, or a maximum of seven levels higher. For that reason, if Krusty’s subjugation team had been a regular group with twelve members, a level of 84 should have been fairly easy. It was precisely because of this level difference that Krusty’s group had been able to evade the monster’s attacks, parry them, and hold out this long.

However, on the other hand, the fact that they only had a quarter of that regular number was critical.

No matter how many combatants there were, defensive and evasive strengths didn’t change very much. However, attack power and endurance varied greatly depending on the number of people. Attacks were proportionate to the number of strikes, and endurance—in other words, MP—was proportionate to the number of team members. The result would be a future where Krusty and the others ran out of strength before they could finish off the Nue. Even if they kept successfully avoiding lethal attacks, fatigue and drained MP would cut down on the ways they could respond, and they’d be crushed like grains of wheat in a mortar.

“I think I just remembered something, sort of!”

“You’re late.”

“Sorry for living on vague memories.”

Even so, Kanami smiled merrily as she fought, and while Krusty grumbled, he left no openings. It wasn’t possible to sense that sort of despair from either of them. Hua Diao only watched them, fretting.

“I guess all countries reuse raid bosses, huh?”

“—I wonder about that. According to Hua Diao, this was a wolf-type dungeon set.”

“So it’s not the boss for this place?”

“I really couldn’t say. Well, it wouldn’t be odd.”

Their laidback conversation was interrupted by a wide-range attack from the beast.

The range of the flood of electricity had a radius of several dozen meters. The female Monk, operating on unfathomable logic, dodged that aggressive torrent, parrying it. It was Phantom Step, one of the Monk class’s abilities, but Hua Diao didn’t know that.

Krusty—who had shrewdly slipped into the opening Kanami had created by disrupting the current, then negated the damage—whipped up dirt and sand with his bardiche, creating an impromptu defensive mound of soil. Gumon the wolf dog made use of it.

Hua Diao wasn’t able to join their conversation, but she wanted to tell them, No, no, this is wrong; I don’t know anything about a monster like this. From what Hua Diao knew, Mount Lang Jun was connected to Mount Kunlun, a sacred place; it was a fairyland that existed to spread distant voices. It was said to be protected by an enormous wolf (just like Gumon) called Lang Jun, the wolf lord, not by this hideous monster with its raw red face.

“I don’t know anything about this one.”

When she shouted the words, Krusty, who’d heard, responded without turning around, raising his ax over his head as he did so: “Is that right?” She never could tell what Master Immortal was thinking, but he’d accepted that remark very easily.

“Then where do you suppose it came from?”

“There’s no way I could know— Eeeeeeeeep?!”

The irritated Nue brought its front leg down hard, and rubble flew, scattering.

The attacks were trivial, probably no more than the Nue venting its annoyance, and they couldn’t even scratch Krusty’s blue steel armor. However, this wasn’t true for Hua Diao, who’d leaned out from the shadow of the boulders to protest. A rock the size of her head came flying toward her at high speed.

When she jumped back, startled, her excess momentum sent her rolling over and over.

The topography was probably to blame, too: The soil that had fallen from the shadows of the rocks where she’d been hiding had piled up, forming a slope, and there was nothing to stop her. In a dizzying series of motions, Hua Diao rolled a good five meters out.

To the martenfolk, that was quite a distance.

She would have liked to sprint back into the cover of the rocks, but she was so frightened that she couldn’t even stand, and all she could do was crawl on all fours, panicking. Her fingertips found the edge of some silken fabric, but her knees were quaking too badly to let her cling to it and get to her feet.

“It came from the sky.”

A clear voice spoke to the dizzy otter. When she looked up, she saw that the hem she was clinging to belonged to a woman’s robe. She couldn’t see her face, but the voice and the murky sweet fragrance told her who it was that had spoken.

“An overview of the summoning technique was sent to Mount Kunlun. This made it possible to send military forces to each area, corresponding to the resources.”

The voice belonged to Enchantress Youren.

A faint smile hovered at the edges of her lips. With the tenderness of a mother watching children at play, the Enchantress continued to speak words Hua Diao didn’t understand.

“Our witch-ruler on Mount Kunlun, the Queen Mother of the West, is hastening the hands of the clock. She says this land holds no one who is qualified.”

What was the Enchantress saying?

Hua Diao, the heavenly official, didn’t know, either.

Even though she’d been someone kind who had visited to nurse Master Immortal, too…

No, even now, her face looked kind and fulfilled, and yet, for some reason, Hua Diao couldn’t think of it that way. The little smile on her soft lips looked like a roar of laughter that split her face all the way to her ears. It couldn’t really be like that, but she couldn’t stop shivering.

“Our sovereign, who drifts in slumber on the shore of shattered rainbows, dreams of returning home. She says to send the time-release beasts, released one after another by Coropatiron, down like shooting stars.”

Her lilting words froze in the face of an abrupt, overwhelming chill.

“Elias, my new comrade. Obey the request of the Queen Mother of the West and put an end to your obsession.”

She swept her arm outward, and as if guided by the gesture, a blue-and-gold knight appeared. Transparent sword dangling loosely, he stepped onto the battlefield.

4

The battle became a melee.

Calling it a three-on-three fight would have been an accurate description of the circumstances.

The defenders consisted of the Monk Kanami, the wolf dog Gumon, and the Guardian Krusty.

The attackers were, first and foremost, the Nue, a magical beast that wielded lightning, followed by the ultra-high level Blademancer Elias Hackblade, and the enigmatic Ancient Enchantress Youren.

If you thought of it as a contest of strength, they were at a ridiculous disadvantage… Meaning Krusty’s side, of course.

The Nue, a magical beast, was a half-raid-rank monster. Elias was a level-100 Ancient. Then there was Enchantress Youren as well. Ordinarily, they would have needed a unit of twenty or so people to fight them.

However, Krusty wasn’t anxious or afraid. Pushed into action by the tingling heat of the battle and, more than that, by his curiosity, he swung his bardiche. The fun was about to begin.

Armed combat was an intriguing thing.

He didn’t know whether the situation was peculiar to this world, which had its roots in the Elder Tales game, or whether it was like that in general, but there were a variety of subtleties in it.

When Krusty had fought Elias, the trend of that one-on-one battle had been dictated by the individuals’ combat abilities and mental strategies. The self-possession to curb mental confusion and the perceptiveness to spot vulnerabilities were particularly important. Krusty, whose true strength had been inferior, had managed to get through that battle without losing his life because, at the time, he’d been superior to Elias mentally.

He’d been helped along by his Hyperion Eye. This Mystery, which widened his field of vision, showed its true value when its user’s mind was serene.

Meanwhile, what was important in group combat was the division of roles, communication, and the physical manifestation of those things—teamwork. It wasn’t that individuals’ combat abilities and coolheadedness weren’t necessary, but they were no longer the most important thing, and your ordinary training and how you dealt with others acquired more meaning. In battles of that size, the most important things were having flexible tactics that responded to the state of combat, and whether you were able to communicate well enough that you could fight as one entity.

In contrast, the three-on-three battle that was currently under way was terribly primitive, dizzying, and treacherous.

“Gwarrgh!”

The Nue, which had been belted behind the ear with a high-speed kick from adamantine toes, accidentally spit a sphere of compressed electricity at Elias. Kanami had set that up on purpose. Bloodshot eyes swamped with resentment, Elias deflected the sphere of electricity with his crystal sword, but the affinity was bad. The purple lightning wrapped around the stream of water, enveloping Elias. Possibly because he was wearing high-resistance magic armor, he didn’t take much damage, but for a moment, his movements were dulled.

Gumon charged into that vulnerability like a bullet, bounded up from below, and slammed her whole body into him.

With a sound like a car crash, Elias went flying.

“Wh-wh-wh-what’ll I do?! I accidentally hit Eli-Eli!”

“Didn’t you do that on purpose?”

Kanami was upset, but Krusty responded without even looking at her.

Three-on-three battles were disorienting. It was like a game of pinball.

In a one-on-one battle, you only had to think about your opponent, but when it was three-on-three, each of you had two companions. Team plays tended to happen. However, that sort of teamwork hadn’t been calculated and trained for like a raid. There was a strong element of improvisation to it, as if it was the product of on-the-spot flashes of inspiration.

In a battle between small teams, the most necessary element was a feel for combat.

Its difficulty rivaled or surpassed that of raids, whose precision was improved by training.

Apparently, Kanami had a natural talent for that sort of combat. For the past little while, the Nue had seemed to be having trouble fighting. By continuing to evade its attacks, Kanami had been building up aggro, and at the same time, she continuously took up positions where the enemy couldn’t avoid involving its allies in its large-scale attacks, locking down the middle range. The act seemed as if it would have required a long combat record, but apparently, she was doing it all on instinct.

“Eli-Eli’s turned into Dark Eli-Eli.”

“…”

“A minute ago he told me, ‘If you don’t get out of my way, I’ll cut you’ and took a slash at me, you know?!”

“…”

That said, since it was on instinct, what she was saying was pathetic. He didn’t even feel like smiling and nodding to help move the conversation along.

He shrugged, then took the opportunity to attack the Nue.

Enchantress Youren seemed to be plotting some sort of support action, but the Nue’s body was as big as a minivan. If he used it as an obstacle to block her line of sight, she wouldn’t be able to attack easily. Using the rotation of his knees, he struck it with close-range skills like Taunting Blow and Armor Crush, neatly crushing the origin points of the monster’s attacks without showing it any vulnerabilities.

Elias and Kanami were still fighting as if they were dancing, neither managing to land any telling blows on the other.

Kanami’s haphazard explanation had made it hard to understand, but apparently, the two of them were companions who had met on the way here. In that case, leaving him to her was probably the right thing to do.

He’d experienced Elias’s sword technique for himself, but it wasn’t as much fun this time around. Sure enough, easy lunacy didn’t add to your combat power.

That said, it probably wasn’t anything to be disappointed about. This buffet still had more dishes left on it than he could eat his way through. With that level-headed thought, Krusty set his sights on the ringleader, on the other side of the Nue.

Like the Nue, Enchantress Youren, who was keeping her cards hidden and not making any attacks of her own, had the air of a seasoned veteran about her.

Or is she afraid?

That was the impression he got when, in response to his gaze, the Enchantress turned sideways, wary of firing lines. It was the gesture of a child who had touched a stove and learned what burns were.

Krusty’s thoughts ran through an examination several hundred lines long.

He was considering the things Enchantress Youren had said.

The magical beast was sent from the sky.

It’s now possible to send military forces to each area.

This is because they shared the summoning technique technology and pulled together the resources.

The orders come from the Queen Mother of the West.

It was nothing important.

When he put everything in order, it was simply the sort of self-conscious reveal that movie villains tended to indulge in: the declaration that they were the ones who had orchestrated this affair.

In other words, they were the enemy.

She’d declared an invasion.

Krusty grinned.

He swung his bardiche, feeling so cheerful he didn’t even care that his remaining HP was now below 20 percent. The bracing invigoration curved the corners of his lips up, and he wasn’t able to keep from showing his clenched teeth.

Splendid.

He hadn’t been interested in the woman who’d attempted to curry favor with a condescending air of having “saved” him, but if it was all right to take her down, it was a completely different matter. If he could exterminate her, then he had no reason to refuse. If she was declaring them to be enemies, what a terrific birthday present that was.

Deep inside Krusty, a mysterious vibration let him know:

This Enchantress Youren was also his “real” enemy.

She wasn’t the sort of enemy Elias had been, when Krusty had faced off against him. She wasn’t an “opponent”; she was an enemy in the sense of being a usurper. A resonance in his soul, like the wind blowing through the caverns of his stolen memories, made him sure of it.

The Enchantress and her companions had robbed Krusty of his memories, his personal property.

His smile widened.

What she had done was an unmistakable declaration of hostility, an act, and an overture, of a fight for their existence.

So Krusty would take everything from this Enchantress, too.

In a corner of his vision, Elias, who was radiating a clouded aura, was launching brute-force attacks at Kanami. The Monk looked perplexed, and she was evading them easily, but the attacks that didn’t hit her seemed to be wounding her opponent deeply. With an inarticulate, animalistic roar, he shifted into a ruthless attack.

Kanami managed to get through the hurricane of a serial attack by crouching down, or flipping, or making them slip past with her gauntlets. True, Elias was the one who was pressing his opponent hard, but his attacks didn’t have their earlier edge. His muddied mind was clouding his technique.

Having succinctly come to a conclusion, Krusty’s interest waned.

It wasn’t that he was repulsed by mental manipulation; people were beings that were influenced at every turn. Brainwashing was a type of education that knew where the limits were and emphasized utility; even living an active life was a kind of brainwashing mantra, the result of self-suggestion.

Since that was the case, although Enchantress Youren had done it and Elias had been tricked by it, he had no intention of accusing her for it, or blaming him for being weak. It was a very common sight, and it had merely happened on a battlefield this time, that was all.

However, on the other hand, he did feel something like irritation and scorn.

Loading those feelings onto his blade and releasing them, Krusty knocked the Nue flying and simultaneously attacked Enchantress Youren.

“So you’re the one who made Elias weak.”

Beneath the veil, her eyes widened, and as they exchanged looks, Krusty was sure of it: Getting weaker was a clear evil.

Even if brainwashing and mental manipulation weren’t evil on their own, if they caused degradation, he could conclude that they were. That was Krusty for you.

The aversion he felt for the Enchantress changed to delight. After all, he was about to engage in mortal combat with this being who had engineered that clear evil.

Several wet sounds echoed, as if someone were hacking away at a soggy futon.

Apparently, Enchantress Youren really did have advanced combat abilities. A wall of mud appeared from the ground, blocking Krusty’s attack. It seemed to have properties that diverted the force of lightning attacks away, into the ground, and it served as an impregnable defense against the Nue’s attacks as well.

Sensing this, the Nue switched to long-charging electrical breath attacks that affected a wide range, although their force decreased. Since the force of each attack was down, they wouldn’t prove lethal immediately, but practically speaking, they were impossible to avoid. The thunder beast was launching attacks that pulled in Enchantress Youren, who was making use of that mud wall. To Krusty, who had lost the ability to recover HP, it was a troublesome attack.

“Even if he is weakened, the great hero is attempting to harvest your lives.”

Krusty slammed a gauntlet into the lady’s mocking voice like a blunt instrument, interrupting it.

“I learned from defeat: to hunt, not gather. True, you may not be rank three but you are strong. You will die by your own swords.”

Was that why she’d sent Elias at them, then?

The more irritated he got, the wider his smile grew.

This woman probably didn’t understand a thing.

In the end, Krusty thought, life existed so that you could make attempts.

What could you do? What couldn’t you do? It was an experiment. Life existed to be used in those experiments.

The world held a massive amount of problems. Could they be resolved, or not? People ran through it to learn the answer. They burned through their brief lives, searching for answers they hadn’t yet seen.

Of course, malicious experiments that shouldn’t be performed probably existed as well. However, tackling challenges was the essence of humanity. No one could deny that. Taking a bird who was trying to fly and shutting it up in a cage was usurpation.

Going insane was also fine. However, as a result, Elias was no longer able to do things he’d been capable of. He’d lost the techniques he’d gained through a long period of devoted training. As he was now, he seemed desolate and pitiful.

Krusty’s annoyance gave strength to the Fresh Blood Demon Ax he swung.

“You and the rest will perish here.”

“We won’t know until we try.” Glaring at her with glittering eyes, Krusty whispered hoarsely.

The meaning of human life lay in testing to see whether things were possible.

Life was a tool for that purpose.

To Krusty, that was the greatest possible joy.

In the cage of his childhood, where he’d been forbidden even to test himself, it was all he’d dreamed of.

Krusty absolutely loved pulling off something difficult in front of people who blustered that it “couldn’t be done,” then seeing their arrogant, condescending expressions twist with humiliation.

Right now, the world had entrusted the question of whether the test was possible or impossible to Krusty.

The Berserker began to burn through what little life he had left.

5

Battles had abruptly begun breaking out all along the mountain ridge. There was no telling where they’d sprung from, but monsters like Eternal Moths and Moon Rabbits appeared from rainbow light and began to invade. Most of their opponents were monsters; it had turned into a fight between them and the Wise Wolves that made their home on Mount Lang Jun.

At the foot of the mountain, a group of Adventurers was also clashing with monsters cloaked in rainbow light. If Chun Lu had been there, they might have known that it was the guard guild she belonged to, the Lelang Wolf Cavalry, but Leonardo had only looked down from the pass, and he hadn’t been able to make out that much.

All he knew was that the mountain range had abruptly gotten noisy and dangerous.

Ironically, the uproar showed Leonardo and Coppélia which road they should take. After all, the center, where the commotion was greatest, probably held some sort of clue about this incident, and it was likely that Kanami was there as well.

Coppélia and Leonardo advanced across the mountain’s surface, following the uproar.

Leonardo had managed to keep from saying, Kanami’s screwed up again. Let’s hurry up and get over there, which he felt showed that he’d developed some self-control. That said, it was doubtful whether he’d needed to be that considerate with Coppélia: She’d responded to the remark he actually uttered with “Coppélia agrees that Master’s chances of survival are good.”

At any rate, the two of them headed farther and farther up the rocky mountain, where landslides had broken out here and there, avoiding battle as they went and driving back enemies when they absolutely had to.

They found the open space because fireworks just like the ones on the East River were going up from it. These fireworks, which were a familiar sight for locals, were a regular Independence Day feature hosted by Macy’s (which Leonardo had never frequented due to his desire for candy bars). Although, to Leonardo—who thought proper engineers went up to the roof of the office (of course they wouldn’t be working!) to drink beer and barbecue as they watched the parade stream by without a break—Independence Day was no more than this regular event.

Well, what had actually gone up had been spheres of electricity, not fireworks, and the flashy racket hadn’t come from a parade of high school cheerleaders, but from Kanami.

Guided by the sound of combat, Leonardo and Coppélia jumped down into the open space through the hole left by the collapse, then froze as they saw how bad the situation really was.

Leonardo had just been thinking about idle summer afternoons on Independence Day, and the shock was twice as great for him as it would have been for a normal person, but he admitted he’d brought it on himself and gave up. It was fine to shoot off a series of large-scale annihilation attacks in lieu of fireworks, right? You could probably say they were filling in for celebratory cannon salutes and laugh it off. Fighting an enormous magical beast instead of having a parade was pretty much like a NY Mets game. Leonardo was a fan of the team, and when he could get a ticket, he’d often spent Independence Day at the ballpark.

When you were traveling with Kanami, he thought noise on this level was one of those things that could happen. It was a nasty thing to think, but, well, it could probably happen.

However, even so, this was supposed to be a raid-class monster? What was up with that? Kanami and a wolf monster were fighting it alone.

Apparently, she was getting her hooks into animal familiars now, too. On top of that, Kanami and Elias were lashing out at each other with swords and fists, and he didn’t know what it meant. He felt like he was in a dream.

“What the hell are you doing?!”

“Ah! Croakanardo! Perfect timing, are you okay?”

“We’re fine. I dunno what ‘perfect timing’ is supposed to mean. Explain all this. Go ahead and pass out documents if you want.”

“I’m busy right now.”

“Yeah, I can see that, but Elias is—”

They weren’t allowed to have a leisurely question-and-answer session. Elias, whose eyes were cloudy, had charged, holding his great sword like a spear. Kanami and Leonardo split up to avoid him, dodging left and right. Elias ran between them, crashing into the wall of the limestone cave, sending up a cloud of mist and scattering rubble around.

Of course, this didn’t render him unable to fight. He appeared from the standing mist of scattered water droplets, stoop-shouldered and dragging his crystal sword so that it scraped along the stone.

“What’s going on?!”

“I don’t know, either. It was probably some kind of wacky evil beam—”

Are you a kid?!

But he didn’t manage to make the retort.

Elias had leapt in as suddenly as if he were spring-loaded and had slammed countless daggerlike lumps of ice into Leonardo.

The Ancient probably thought he wouldn’t be able to completely capture his opponent, an Assassin who fought with twin katanas, by swinging around his enormous two-handed sword. He’d chosen the right attack. Leonardo wasn’t about to let himself get taken out for free, though. He shoved his two fire-attribute katanas, the fantasy-class Ninja Twin Flames, into the ice storm, attempting to cancel it out with the force of the flames and hot air.

“Your pulse and coloring are abnormal, Lord Elias. Do you wish to be heal—?”

However, even in that moment, Coppélia was Coppélia.

Tilting her head in an attentive gesture, she approached Elias fearlessly. The elf probably had some sort of status abnormality, and she was attempting to heal it.

Stepping out of the field Leonardo’s weapons created, Coppélia took a direct hit from the shockwave the two combatants’ clash had generated. Hastily, Leonardo swung his weapons sideways, but they didn’t reach far enough to protect the slight girl.

That said, although Coppélia appeared to be wearing a maid outfit, she was equipped with plate armor, and her defensive abilities were far beyond Leonardo’s, who’d sunk most of his points into agility. The fragments of ice and stone missiles just bounced off her with light metallic clangs.

The hand she’d extended was knocked away.

With a ferocious growl and eyes that seemed to be pained by something, Elias had refused it.

Coppélia persisted, reaching out to save him again, and Leonardo pulled her into his arms and leapt sideways.

An enormous guillotine of ice bore down behind them. It was an unreserved certain-kill attack that ignored things like efficiency and hit rate. With a savage scream, Elias unleashed the sort of huge attack he normally wouldn’t even have selected.

Holding the petite girl in his arms, Leonardo looked into her eyes.

He saw Elias there, being torn apart by pain.

As the elf brandished his weapon, his warped eyes blazing red, he certainly looked ferocious, but he reminded Leonardo of a colleague who’d grown desperate and reckless and had left his job. The Elias he’d glimpsed during that collapse really hadn’t been an illusion.

“This—curse—I’ll—”

There probably hadn’t been any clear intent behind the words he’d spoken.

They’d been a murmur, half-lost in a growl.

However, Leonardo had heard them, and somehow they made sense to him.

This just ain’t gonna work, he thought flatly.

He sensed this, not as a native New York–dwelling geek with a bundle of flow charts and spec sheets under his arm, but as a man who’d spent his youth during the Vital Fall.

Coppélia and Kanami wouldn’t be able to get Elias to retake himself by fighting him.

It was up to him.

Leonardo made up his mind so easily that even he thought it was strange.

“Fall back. If you can, get away!”

Shoving the girl in his arms toward Kanami, Leonardo used the kickback from the move and cartwheeled. Once, twice. Adding a twist in midair, he spun like a drill, kicked the ashy indigo beast away, and landed in front of Elias again.

“Hiyaaaaaaaaaaah!”

It wasn’t a skill.

He just spread his arms, tackled Elias with brute force, and dived like an NFL player scoring a touchdown.

They slid across the limestone together—something that probably would have left them thoroughly bloodied all by itself if they’d been in their real bodies on Earth—exchanged two or three well-angled punches, twisted around, and stood up.

“There are some things you just can’t complain about to women, huh?” Leonardo said.

Yeah, that’s right. Internally, he was nodding vigorously in agreement.

This was what he could do for Elias.

“I dunno what you’re feeling, but I know there are times like that. Plus, I’ve also—”

Which of them had closed in? The distance shrank as if they’d pulled each other in by threads, and the great crystal sword and the twin katanas that spouted flames locked with each other.

“Hup!”

Concluding that he wouldn’t be able to hold out, Leonardo kicked Elias’s side, then deflected his strength diagonally. Catching him on their crossed blades was the position that had the best defense, but even then, Crystal Stream was two meters long, and he wasn’t strong enough to stop it completely.

As a Weapon Attack class, Leonardo’s physical strength was superhuman, but he’d chosen to grow it with a bias toward speed and explosive power. In contrast, Elias was an all-around warrior who’d methodically trained both his muscles and his endurance. On top of that, there was a ten-level difference between them.

In Elder Tales, level differences mattered quite a lot.

They weren’t the sort of thing you could never reverse, no matter the situation, but they had a big influence on all conflicts. They affected not only attack hit rates and evasion rates, but the possibility of resisting poison and paralysis, and they even affected the actual damage inflicted, too.

A raid capture unit equipped with phantasmal items fought monsters that were between three and seven levels higher than they were, but those were attempts made on a foundation of careful planning and applied strategy. A ten-level difference in a player-versus-player conflict was such a big deal that, generally speaking, it wouldn’t even be a fight.

However, Leonardo ignored that inconvenience and attacked boldly, over and over.

There was a series of dull sounds, like steel scraping together or slamming into itself.

Ninja Twin Flames’ process-activated ability wasn’t able to inflict effective flame damage. Similarly, Elias’s weapon was clad in a stream of water and blocked it.

“You’re tough.”

As Leonardo spoke, his shoulders were heaving.

The speed of exhaustion in solo combat was in a whole different league from team combat. Particularly with attack classes with poor fuel efficiency like Sorcerer and Assassin, if they paid out large damage attacks in earnest, their MP would hit bottom in the space of a few minutes.

Leonardo had attacked without considering the consequences, and he didn’t even have half of his left.

He’d had to go that far to actually fight the Ancient. Feeling happy about the fact that the difference in combat power was so great, Leonardo kept on glaring at his opponent.

“You really are best when you’re tough, Elias.”

It wasn’t clear whether those words had gotten through.

However, Elias muttered, “What would you know?” in a voice so hoarse it was hard to make out. His eyes were red and clouded. Then his crystal sword flashed in the last of the sunlight, preparing to strike off Leonardo’s head.

6

Well, no, I don’t know.

While he was deep in thought, Leonardo was unleashing a storm of fierce sword slashes.

He wasn’t saying he couldn’t imagine it. However, it was a fact that Elias’s pain belonged to Elias alone.

Leonardo had traveled with him, and he thought he knew the guy’s cheerfulness, the way he was honest to the point of stupidity, and the sorrow he’d hidden. He’d also known that he grieved the loss of his comrades and was tormented by the guilt thinking that the loss had been caused by his own lack of strength.

Leonardo only knew about these things, though. He couldn’t say he understood them.

He couldn’t say so, and he probably shouldn’t anyway.

Traveling companions were only slightly closer than strangers, after all.

A burning pain ran through his side.

The disaster was practically a car accident, and his green suit ripped. This defensive gear had focused on stealth performance to begin with, and it had almost no resistance to cold air.

There was a noise like a bell ringing, very faintly.

A sharp blade was thrust out in exchange, and Elias evaded by simply tilting his head. Apparently, it was all he could do just to graze the collar of his white surcoat.

It was the difference in their combat power made visible.

He’d used quite a large percentage of his HP as bait, and yet, grazing the nape of Elias’s neck was all he’d had been able to manage.

True, Elias had taken quite a lot of damage by now as well, but that was because he’d been worn down before starting this battle with Leonardo.

Still, that difference in combat power felt good.

If Elias had been weak, he probably would have felt a lot sadder.

“That’s what makes you Elias Hackblade after all!”

As if the words Leonardo had said had been an actual electric attack spell, Elias’s clouded eyes widened slightly. As if what the Adventurer had pointed out had touched an old wound that wouldn’t heal, Elias gave a wounded scream and swung his sword.

He really couldn’t afford to take that attack.

The mere aftereffects of the impact that was headed this way would be able to pierce clean through armor. A direct hit from that blade might even cost him all his limbs. Pulling back at the last second, Leonardo swung his twin katanas as well. If he couldn’t win through attack size, then he’d attack faster.

“I mean, you’re their friend, right?!”

Even though he thought the words would never get through, Leonardo yelled.

Of course he did. This was a world Elias didn’t know.

And this was something only somebody like Leonardo could tell him:

Elias Hackblade was a shining hero.

Captain America and the invincible Thor, Tony (who was bursting with the engineer spirit), the high-minded Hal Jordan, and Doctor Strange. The world’s ultimate heroes, who shone like a veritable galaxy.

A hero who never lost hope even when he came up against difficulties or despair, who nobly and selflessly protected others—one of those individuals with absolutely indomitable wills who gathered in the hall of fame.

He was one of the people Leonardo idolized.

“I knew about you…even before I met you at the Tekeli Ruins. I’ve known for ages. Elias Hackblade! The world’s one and only Blademancer. An elf hero who belongs to the Knights of the Red Branch, one of the Thirteen Global Chivalric Orders. A blueblood raised by the fairy tribe. The knight who accepted the two-handed sword Crystal Stream, along with the feelings of three Anemoi.”

Elder Tales wasn’t something enjoyed exclusively inside the game itself.

It really wouldn’t have been possible for a single player to discover the countless quests that were scattered across the wide world, and so players shared information. Game information was communicated in all sorts of ways, through strategy sites and bulletin boards, or by word of mouth, and through messengers.

In particular, as was common with MMORPGs, newly introduced events and quests were discussed by lots of users. Since the sort of events Elias appeared in tended to be tied to the main stories of expansion packs, this was especially true of them.

Elias Hackblade was a typical handsome-hero character, as if he’d been packed with the dreams of the game developers. Long, streaming blond hair and sapphire eyes. A white coat and a huge magic sword. He’d appeared in over a hundred quests.

He was one of the most famous characters in the Elder Tales game.

Leonardo didn’t know whether it was like that on the other servers, but at least on the North American and European servers, Elias was practically the icon for Elder Tales.

He’d met a hero like that in the Tekeli Ruins and had traveled with him.

It had been an encounter the likes of which might never happen again, and a journey straight out of a fantasy.

“Even among the Adventurers, you were famous, Elias Hackblade. The guardian of the People of the Earth. The hero who dashed around, crossing borders; the pride of the Thirteen Global Chivalric Orders. A whole lot of Adventurers have fought beside you. We swapped rumors about you, too.”

“Silence!”

Along with that howl, a storm of ice assailed him.

Elias’s mana was out of control, and winglike shields of ice had grown from his back.

Pushed to action by his rising emotions and sense of duty, Leonardo took another half step toward death.

The ice barrier spell missiles that showered down on him were closer to the size of spears than daggers, and they hit home. Leonardo’s HP was falling sporadically, but as rapidly as a glass of spilled wine.

“No, I’m not gonna shut up. In the Fortress of Darkness, you defended the elves as leader of the Lightbringers, and in the Dragon’s Lair, you confronted the evil dragon Zahat alongside the Adventurers. You used the matchless sword technique Fairy Arts, and sometimes you opposed the Adventurers, but it was always to protect the People of the Earth. You were the guardian of this world, absolutely.”

The word guardian seemed to have poleaxed Elias.

He gazed at Leonardo with eyes that looked as if they’d been frozen by eternal grief, and he seemed to be shedding wordless tears.

Leonardo was building a bridge.

He was going to deliver the goodwill of the hundreds and thousands of geeks who’d supported Elias to the last man. As a Delivery Person subclass, that was his mission. He had to teach this dumb, wounded, discouraged hero what he was really worth.

“We knew. That time when you got tricked by the red-nosed Princess Rubience and locked up: In the quest, it said you’d been flattered into drinking a sleeping drug, but the truth is that you felt sorry for that pathetic princess, and so you drank the drug so she’d have someone to talk to, right? During the hunt for the golden boar, weren’t you the one who forgot Tonelico’s Spear at the inn? I know. I… We…”

Naturally, there had been people who hated him, too.

Games were things for players to enjoy. The mere fact that he was stronger than the players, was something like a main character and could adventure, was enough to earn him hate from haters. The fact that Elias’s Blademancer class was an exclusive one that couldn’t be selected by the players soured his reputation as well.

However, he’d been liked more than that. When he’d first appeared, he’d been depicted as arrogant, but as time passed, his personality had acquired warmth and a sense of humanity. His curse meant he always had to rely on the Adventurers for the most important things, which was both appreciated and considered comical. They’d called him—affectionately (and a little mockingly)—“Mr. Elias” online.

Naturally, when people talked about him, they teased, sympathized with, and laughed at him. He was a slightly unfortunate hero who desperately argued for peace on their screens but sometimes spoke of tragedies, saying, “My curse sows unhappiness…”

But he had been loved.

He was the character who represented Elder Tales, their beloved game. How could he not have been loved?

Particularly by Leonardo, who aspired to be a hero in this world.

What sort of person is he, or she, to you?

He remembered Coppélia’s quiet, thoughtful question.

What sort of person was Elias to Leonardo?

He’d had the answer to that one for ages.

“I spent Sacred Heart and the Tower of the Oracle with you. At this point, I dunno how it is, but during that invasion maneuver, I was there with you. I went up that long twilight staircase with you. We sent up that victory cheer together, too. I bet you don’t remember. If you think about it that way, the Catastrophe really was genuinely shitty, huh? You were a hero to us, to the Adventurers, too.”

As a pretty decent engineer who stood in front of clients wearing a necktie, he’d just been too embarrassed to say it, but—

—he was a cartoon hero.

Don’t make me say totally obvious stuff.

“What hero?! Due to this curse, I can’t even save the people who call for me. I watched my comrades die! Even the Words of Death—their echo binds me. All the Ancients are bound by their spell. If it’s to tear these chains apart…”

Yes, if it’s to tear these chains apart, I believe I would do anything.

Elias’s expression was tight and warped. He’d probably drained his MP dry by using all those big techniques. He drew several wheezing breaths, and since his face was dripping wet, it was impossible to tell whether he was crying. That was how much regret he held inside.

His pain got through to Leonardo.

Elias Hackblade, a legendary hero who was this powerful, renowned, and proud. After fighting this great man—who, if he’d been able to fight properly, would never have had anything but easy victories—Leonardo’s HP was down to a mere 25 percent.

But it didn’t fall below 25 percent.

It wouldn’t.

This Ancient hero, who was at level 100, couldn’t even beat a single Assassin. This was why Kanami hadn’t fought Elias seriously and in fact hadn’t been able to. She’d avoided shoving this result in his face, and their match had turned into a repetitious draw.

“In order to tear these chains apart, I would undertake any hardship. To keep from having anything stolen, to protect the world, I, Elias Hackblade, would discard even the blood of the fairies!”

“That’s fine! Go on and try it, Elias! I’ll be the villain for you. —A wannabe, as wussy as a frog. C’mon and throttle me to death!”

Strangely enough, both Elias’s and Leonardo’s remaining HP was around 25 percent. Putting all of that on the line, the two of them clashed. The technique Elias chose was Aqua Thousand Rain, which intermittently released countless ice daggers. Leonardo went with Deadly Dance, which he’d improved over and over again.

The shards of ice were harder than shoddy metal, and Leonardo brandished actual steel, shattering them. The pulverized ice reflected the light in the limestone cavern like diamond dust, turning their surroundings into a world of silver.

Leonardo commended his friend, who’d been born from ink and paper, from modeling tools and code.

He’d idolized the one he’d entrusted his dreams to and had fantasized about one day becoming someone to whom others entrusted theirs.

If he’d said that, as a student, he hadn’t dreamed of being a game programmer just a little bit, he would have been lying.

It might have been coercion, and he might have been forcing a role onto him.

However, even so, it was true he wouldn’t be able to connect if he didn’t step forward.

Traveling companions were only a little closer than strangers.

…But who’d decided that that distance was further than friends?

He’d been invited to a Toon Town party. Leonardo had resolved to become Elias’s friend. As far as he was concerned, that wasn’t something that would be given to him; it was something to win.

Countless attacks traced complicated tracks of cold and flame in midair.

Their exchange was a symphony of shrill echoes and iridescent light.

It was the melody of a new world that Elias and Leonardo needed to learn, and it shaved away just a little of their HP.