1

In the sticky darkness, a man stirred.

Slowly, he pulled his creaking body up out of the mud.

The sound of a trickle of muddy water echoed from somewhere. This might be a sewer, but it wasn’t like the sewers of modern Tokyo on Earth. The area where the man had made his den was no more than an underground labyrinth with rivulets of muddy water thinner than fingers running here and there.

Standing up from his bed, which was just a messy pile of old clothes he’d stolen from the Adventurers, the man slowly ran his fingers over his abdomen. The rough, rust-like matter that clung to his fingers was dried blood. Inside his shredded jet-black coat, the hot wounds had already closed.

Apparently his wounds had healed.

The interior of the iron helmet, which looked a bit like a mask, glowed faintly. It was a magic effect that granted the ability to see in the dark.

Mobile armor was an indestructible magic tool that had existed since ancient times. Even the words magic item and artifact didn’t go far enough: It was phantasmal, a memento from a vision.

Its abilities surpassed the current People of the Earth civilization, the Adventurers’ magic civilization, and even that of the Kunie clan. It was a concentration of lost technology.

In his pale green field of vision, the man inspected his body.

His wounds had healed.

The man’s physical abilities were advanced. Mobile armor dramatically improved his entire body’s motor functions, and its effect on strength in particular was outstanding. In terms of HP, his was probably three times what it had been before he’d equipped the armor. However, on the other hand, it didn’t reinforce his recovery abilities all that much. It had never assumed situations in which the wearer would sustain damage. The defensive abilities of mobile armor could negate most attacks, and if you didn’t take damage, there was no need for recovery abilities. These injuries had exposed an unexpected weakness in the mobile armor. As far as the man was concerned, that had been a significant humiliation.

However, the gear wasn’t his only weapon now.

In the tall man’s hand, Hail Blade Byakumaru looked rather small. It was rattling in its sheath.

This mystical blade was said to have been used by Lugurius, the hero of the ice cliffs, and it granted its owner the qualities of a hero. Apparently, the more blood he let Byakumaru, the White Snow Devil, drink, the further his body adapted to its powers. The muscles in his arms, which had grown to easily twice their size, spoke of this eloquently. The mystical blade rattled in its sheath, hungry for more sacrifices.

Giving a low grunt in the darkness, the man left without a single look back at his den.

In any case, he didn’t really think of this sewer as his headquarters or stronghold. Any place that would hide him and wasn’t noisy was fine. This underground cavern was the space behind a collapsed floor. The air did move, so it was probably connected to something aboveground at some point, but as far as he knew, there were no passages left that were large enough to let people enter. He could use teleportation, so this wasn’t a problem, but if ordinary People of the Earth or Adventurers wanted to break in, it would require a large-scale construction operation.

In his mind, the man visualized the town of Akiba. It was a place he’d guarded for a long time, and he had its layout memorized. Lately, the Adventurers had been reconstructing and expanding the buildings one after another, but the streets were basically unchanged.

He jumped to one of the teleportation destinations he remembered.

Immediately, he was surrounded by empty, windblown air.

The wintry night wind buffeted him, trying to freeze him, but it was blocked by the mobile armor’s cold resistance, and it didn’t affect the man in the least. On the contrary, it was the perfect aperitif, and it brought premonitions of the coming feast.

From a ruin that seemed set to crumble any minute, the man looked down over a deserted huddle of street stalls.

A few lights shone deep in the darkness. At the sight of that fragile, unreliable glow, the man couldn’t keep from smiling. Trembling with joy, he leaned his hunchbacked body out as far as he could, licking his lips.

When the light and noise of the day had gone, the town of Akiba grew still, looking like a young girl lying quietly in the depths of the darkness. During the day, she’d been an extremely stubborn, haughty woman, but in the dark of night, she was no more than a girl, as frightened as a rabbit.

The lean man drew his sword from its sheath.

The freezing winter air swirled around him, losing its edge.

As if his soul was crystallizing, in the midst of pain and delight the man gave a twisted laugh.

He was the winter.

The freezing cold air was the man himself. Just as the raging blizzard felt no cold, the man stripped off his black coat in the darkness and flung it away.

Illuminated by the lights from Akiba far below, the man’s silhouette showed dimly, an unbalanced shape. His lean body was taut, but nothing that really looked like muscle showed on the surface. The man wore leather pants and a black tank top that hugged his torso, and metal armor—gauntlets and body armor—on his lower arms and legs only. The sizes of the components were so different they seemed to belong to someone else. Having cast off his stained coat, which fell toward the street like an ominous black bird, the man was a fiendishly trained weapon.

The enormous metal shells were packed with brownish-gray fibers that stored magic and mitigated shocks. Supplied with magic from the magic circle, the fibers soundlessly began to run. Multiple barriers formed around the man’s arms and legs, and a force field was deployed around his body.

Memories of fighting giants on the frozen plains of the north country rose inside the man.

He was one of Akiba’s People of the Earth, and the memories didn’t belong to him.

They belonged to the hero Lugurius.

Lugurius had fought as an Ancient, and as a Knight of Izumo. For a whole century he’d driven the wicked giants back, to protect the smiles of the people of Susukino. He’d chased the monsters into the Jade Garden, deep in the mountains of Ouu, and had been just a step away from sealing them. That had been the achievement of Lugurius, the hero of Ezzo.

That fierce pride blustered inside the man like a raging blizzard.

If Sutu Inaw, the Maiden of the Japanese Elms, hadn’t betrayed him, if she hadn’t murdered him with a dastardly poison, he would still have been celebrated as the hero of the North and an immortal Ancient. If it hadn’t been for that fragile girl’s treachery…

As if to freeze everything, rampaging wind laced with snowflakes seeped out of the mouth of the sword’s sheath. The mystical blade was responding to the man’s anger; it wanted to work its cursed ice magic.

Lugurius’s grudge screamed that he wanted to gather crowds of people, make them kneel, and make their lives his own.

The man shook his head.

He wasn’t Lugurius.

He was a Person of the Earth, of the Kunie clan. The proud guardians who protected Akiba. However, they weren’t honored. They were scorned as pseudohuman automatons. Although their abilities surpassed even the Adventurers, their status was, at best, security devices, and they were essentially treated as nothing more than accessories for the town. They were a tribe of dogs. Truly a clan of slave-warriors, offered up as sacrifices, just as the characters in the name Kunie implied.

Recalling his own circumstances, the man saw a blazing, pitch-black resentment in them. That resentment twined around rage that was frozen into pure white. That’s how it is. That’s why I was chosen by Lugurius, the man thought.

In order to destroy the human who’d betrayed him, the Maiden of the Japanese Elms.

Showing no hesitation, the man fell from the building, crashing into the ground feetfirst without any particular plan. The barriers around the man’s body didn’t even flicker at a mere six-story drop. On top of that, most of Akiba’s streets weren’t paved. They were soft black dirt, with mossy roots crawling across them. Having landed, shattering twisted branches and tree roots as he did so, the man realized there were barely any signs of life.

There was no prey.

The murderer was suspicious. He also wondered whether they’d all run away.

The man had excellent combat abilities, but he wasn’t omnipotent. There were countless things he wasn’t good at, and one of them was searching for enemies. In the first place, the clan’s guards were ordinarily stationed in the security facilities during their shifts. When the facilities detected a crime in town, guards in mobile armor rushed to the scene and apprehended the criminal.

Detection and searching for enemies were functions of the security facilities, and individual guards didn’t have them. Naturally, as magic equipment from ancient times, the mobile armor didn’t have the ability to strengthen these functions either.

As a result, the man’s senses weren’t good enough to grasp all of Akiba, but even so, the night was far too empty. Going to bed when the sun went down was common sense in this world, but things were different in Akiba. Possibly because of their advanced combat abilities, Adventurers tended to go to bed later than People of the Earth. This was because they were able to defend themselves from nocturnal monsters.

Maybe as a result, even late at night, it was rare for the streets of Akiba to be entirely empty of Adventurers. This was the sort of person the man had sacrificed repeatedly to his mystical sword.

However, right now, he could sense no one.

The man swung Byakumaru in irritation. A spiral blizzard was released, freezing a patch of briars. He kicked them apart, then headed north on the central avenue, searching for sacrifices.

The mobile armor’s teleportation abilities were only compatible with the zone of Akiba.

The armor received its teleportation magic from the ancient magic circle said to have been built under the city. As a result, if Akiba’s Adventurers had evacuated from the city, he couldn’t leave the city to pursue them.

In addition, the teleportation wasn’t able to cross zone boundaries.

Isolated, closed spaces sometimes formed small enclosures known as zones. The rooms at inns were one example. The existence of a door made a small area that could barely hold two beds a separate space, shutting it off from the outside world by magic. It was in the town of Akiba, but it wasn’t considered part of Akiba.

The same was true for the magic facilities known as guild halls that the Adventurers used. Each of the numerous headquarters inside the buildings, seemingly made of obsidian, functioned as separate spaces, or so he’d heard. Most of the buildings the Adventurers had rebuilt were also used as separate zones now.

The man wasn’t able to invade spaces like these with teleportation. Even if he walked to them directly, the zone magic carefully identified the people who were allowed to enter or leave, and would exclude him.

Because of this, hunting prey that had shut themselves up in zones was difficult.

Holding a hand to his throat, the man chuckled.

In other words, this was a siege.

Frightened of the military might of this man, this hero, the Adventurers had finally admitted defeat and shut themselves away. Laughing softly, the man wandered, searching for prey. Peering into alleyways, destroying signs, and swinging the mystic sword was almost unbearably fun. He would probably never have admitted it, but the man was behaving like a murderer drunk on blood.

He didn’t have to wait long.

A small shadow appeared, blocking his path.

The lean man’s mouth twisted into the shape of a crescent moon.

How small. What soft-looking meat.

As the small shadow came toward him, trailing the faint scent of camellia oil, the murderer intercepted it. The blade of ice and snow groaned, demanding a sacrifice. Together, they would smite this town with a hero’s rage and hunger.

2

At the feel of the clash, Akatsuki steeled herself.

Her opponent was a monster. She couldn’t afford the slightest bit of carelessness. Or rather, forget carelessness: What she was most keenly aware of was the probability of her loss.

In any case, she wasn’t a tank, specialized toward drawing enemy attacks. She was an attacker, designed to inflict damage.

During this operation, Akatsuki was third in the priority order for this position. In other words, there were two members who were better suited to direct combat than she was.

Which meant that the fact that Akatsuki was now crossing blades with the murderer was half coincidence. The town of Akiba was two kilometers square. It wasn’t vast, but it certainly wasn’t small. In addition, one unit was too small to build a network to guard against a murderer who could appear anywhere. However, there were circumstances which kept them from deploying a large number of personnel.

For that reason, the strategy Riezé—the raid leader—had chosen took the form of a patrol conducted by squads. Dispersed action by squads of between three and six members created a net that was sparse but still widespread.

One other reason lay in Akatsuki’s subclass and combat experience. Her subclass, Tracker, had several types of special skill that investigated conditions across a wide range, including presence detection and searching for enemies. The range she could monitor alone was equivalent to the area four squads could cover. Her discovery of the murderer had been coincidence, but that hadn’t been all it was.

Wordlessly, Akatsuki unleashed a blade from the left.

Quick Assault released a silver light that seemed to split the night into horizontal halves. Knowing she couldn’t take this guy down with an attack of that level, Akatsuki threw herself forward, using the momentum from her slash. Quick Assault’s special characteristics had increased her leg strength and agility, and she’d spotted a safe area by the murderer’s side.

However, cold air and an impact that was enough to make her shudder burst from the short sword that struck at her back.

Akatsuki had known, but she still gave a bitter groan. She tumbled forward, then picked herself up.

She’d thought she’d leapt into her opponent’s blind spot, but she’d been forcibly chased out of it.

“Akatsu… Eep!”

Struck by a cold, violent gust of wind, Marielle covered her face. Even so, a faintly sparkling recovery effect shimmered on Akatsuki’s back. It was response-activated recovery. Like the Druid Pulse Recovery and the Kannagi Damage Interception, this was a class-specific recovery magic effect, the type that distinguished the three recovery classes from each other.

Feeling the ripples of that recovery like the palm of Marielle’s warm hand, Akatsuki stepped forward. Evading the tip of the blade that bore down on her, dodging right and left with her small body, she pressed forward, forward.

Before her was the demonic murderer, the one she’d been no match for that day.

The core of the incident, the thing she had to defeat.

With a faint smile, the man waited for Akatsuki’s charge. The ominous armor he’d equipped was mobile armor… Or parts of it, anyway. Akatsuki and the others already knew that. Its defensive power was probably equal to that of fantasy-class magic armor. However, she was undaunted.

In the blink of an eye, a blizzard began to rage on Akiba’s wide avenue in the dead of night, freezing the soil.

When Akatsuki looked across the avenue, she saw the ordinary, unchanged walls of the buildings. Even as she fought, Akatsuki’s mind raced. The range of the blizzard was about five meters, ten at most. The katana the murderer brandished was its origin; it was gushing cold air.

As she evaded new attacks she hadn’t been able to take in the previous battle, Akatsuki thought about countermeasures. That had been the first thing Riezé had taught her: Size up your opponent. Watch them and clarify what they can and can’t do. No matter how tough the fight you’re in, you mustn’t give up on that. Akatsuki bit her lip and observed that lesson.

That said, she couldn’t go on the defensive. Right now, Marielle was behind her. Marielle, the leader of the Crescent Moon League, and her bright smile. Her liege’s friend. She couldn’t let her get hurt. Not as a ninja, and not as a gamer.

Marielle was a healer. In order to let healers do their jobs, the vanguard had to draw the enemy. Even if she wasn’t a dedicated tank, right now, Akatsuki was the only one who could fill that role. That meant she had to focus the enemy’s hate on herself.

The feeling of anxiety was strong enough to tear her limbs off.

It made Akatsuki want to cry out, but she bit the urge back and swung her blade.

One. She threw in an Accel Fang. She knew it wouldn’t reach him.

Using the recoil, another Accel Fang. It scraped her opponent’s gauntlet slightly. The grating noise of slashed metal, a scorched smell. Feinting with one more Accel Fang that drew nearly the same trajectory, Akatsuki dropped low, almost as if she was hugging the ground.

The former Akatsuki would probably have leapt up.

She’d been desperate to put power behind her attack, and had wanted to be as far above her opponent as possible. However, this time was different. Her body was already small; if she rolled, ducking, her opponent’s own limbs would act as a blind and he’d lose sight of her. This attack method used her own small size to her advantage, and it wasn’t an advantage she’d had in the past.

Akatsuki had received this strategy from the others.

She unleashed a Death Stinger, as if to pry him open. Unfortunately, the attack she slammed into the back of his knee didn’t add continual damage. However, it had thrown the murderer slightly off-balance, and she struck at his brute-force attack with her Kiln-Turned Tenmoku Sword.

The sound of clashing steel echoed loudly through Akiba’s night.

Unable to hold out against his force, Akatsuki had jumped back about five meters, and she was already sweating. The series of exchanges and its tension had raised her temperature, even in the face of the cold that blasted at her from the murderer. Her arms hurt, too. Although she normally held her short sword with her left hand, she set her right hand on the hilt as well, timing her move to match her opponent’s attack. She’d realized that if she didn’t do it, she wouldn’t make it through.

However, the reality was that, even with both hands in play, she took great damage.

That was only to be expected. According to the Elder Tales specs, if your timing matched exactly, an effect that made the attacks cancel each other out would occur. However, this wasn’t something you could do intentionally as a rule, and even if it did occur, it wasn’t the sort of effect that would reduce the damage to zero. It only meant that you could weaken your opponent’s attack slightly. Powerful attacks surpassed the cancellation and wounded the opponent directly…just as the murderer’s attack, with its extraordinary force, had punched through Akatsuki’s cancellation.

Even so, Akatsuki had a little smile on her lips.

Her arms felt puffy, as though they were inflamed, but a golden, sand-like sparkle had enveloped them and was healing them. Response Activated Recovery was a spell that automatically recovered HP in response to damage inflicted by enemies. This healing power provided support through five or ten attacks. The spell automatically recovered health with each enemy attack, and its effect was enormous. Akatsuki and Marielle were beginners at raids, and the breathing room casting a spell beforehand gave them was a nearly unparalleled merit.

However, it did have weaknesses. Recovery conducted after damage had been taken—recovery after the fact—wouldn’t let you avoid fatal injuries. It couldn’t handle the sort of powerful attacks that severed arms and sent them flying in one blow. Besides, Marielle’s Response Activated Recovery was less experienced than the sort used by, for example, a Cleric affiliated with D.D.D. Even if it actually was recovering, Akatsuki’s HP was far from fully healed.

Even so.

Akatsuki ran.

She charged as if falling: Trick Step. She twisted her right leg by force, turning halfway around. In a mesmerizing movement, she ran past her opponent, inflicting Paralyze Blow as she did so.

Because, after all, Akatsuki wasn’t dead.

“Akatsuki!”

The murderer’s attack grazed her yet again. She could feel her armor being slashed. The attack had been a blast of death that passed over Akatsuki’s heart.

But she was alive.

Her fighting spirit was blazing. A week ago, she hadn’t been able to fight without hiding behind Soujirou. True, the situation was bad. Even with a normal healing spell layered over Response Activated Recovery, her HP was still falling. However, that was only natural. She was up against a murderer, one who was clearly a raid-class enemy. Akatsuki was a hastily trained member of a weak guild, and this monster wasn’t the sort of opponent she could take on. As proof, even Soujirou, leader of the West Wind Brigade, had gone down under his attacks. There was a reason she was able to tackle that opponent, if only for a limited time. The reason gave her courage.

Morning Star Catcher was wrapped around her right arm, the one she’d thrust out. This production-class gauntlet had been made for her by the Lucky Dice sisters. The matte bracer generated a force field, and it had greater defense than its appearance suggested. Even if the blizzard whittled away the defense on her right arm, Ink-Feather Garb gave off a faint glow of magic, forcibly creating a tiny gap in time to allow her to twist her body.

As she used her natural agility to slide through these gaps, Akatsuki was grateful for her new defensive gear. Even though her silhouette had gained attribute defense and increased abilities several times greater than what it previously had, there had been barely any increase in weight. They were all presents from the girls who gathered for those tea parties.

“Could you use something like this?”

“The size is all wrong. Here, I’ll fix it for you.”

“You can eat those strawberries. Those are everyone’s.”

“I’ve got some fan-tas-tic materials. Hee-hee-hee!”

The girls had smiled at her, taking care of Akatsuki almost as if they’d gotten a new little sister. They might have been more than half teasing her, but they’d given her unstinting support.

Most of the equipment that was protecting Akatsuki now had been presents from them.

The durability of her old equipment had deteriorated too far in her fight with the murderer, and it had been clear that it wouldn’t be able to stay with her in her new battle.

She’d known all the women’s faces, but she’d never spoken to any of them for more than half a minute or so. Whether or not they’d heard the explanation about the murderer that Akatsuki had given or the circumstances surrounding Akiba’s crisis, they spoke encouraging words to her and gave her sweets.

It whipped up the old familiar feelings of irritation in Akatsuki’s heart. It was a conditioned reflex: She didn’t want to be treated like a child. Still, on the other hand, there was a comfort in it that she’d never felt before.

Akatsuki had gone down on her knees and begged for their help. That meant that, in a way, she couldn’t get around being treated like a child. Giving up on her repulsion, Akatsuki thought: It’s because I’m not strong enough. Begging everyone for help was admitting defeat.

However, even so, not being strong and losing certainly weren’t meaningless.

She thought there were some things you could only understand by admitting weakness.

One of them was probably the peace she felt in her heart.

When she calmed down and thought about it, Akatsuki understood right away that the many people who’d spoken to her hadn’t had any particular ill will. They were only treating her with kindness, plain and simple.

Most of the people she’d rejected and bared her fangs at hadn’t had the slightest intention of making fun of her.

Of course, it had been a very embarrassing experience, but there was nothing about it that she couldn’t accept.

Strangely, Akatsuki was very focused as she fought.

The HP bar, where she could see her HP edging downward, didn’t bother her.

She struck with another attack, hitting the murderer with the biggest movement reduction effect she could manage. This was an expression of trust in a confirmed tactic, more than it was a way to prolong her own life.

“Ten more… Five!”

At Marielle’s voice, which was almost a scream, Akatsuki gave a small smile.

Come to think of it, Marielle had said this was a first for her, too.

Right now, Akatsuki and the others were fighting their first-ever raid.

3

Having been contacted by telechat, Riezé immediately passed on the content to the other team leaders.

“Target acquired. He’s currently traveling on foot down the central avenue in the direction of Old Ogawamachi. Akatsuki’s unit made first contact. A two-man cell, with one healer. Team D move; all others stand by.”

As she relayed the telechat in a yell, Riezé also broke into a run.

The raid had finally begun.

Riezé sent telechat after telechat. There were currently twenty-four Adventurers in Akiba under her command. According to the standard formulas of party organization, they should have formed four parties of six members each. When those were joined together, they’d have a twenty-four member full raid. However, this time, they hadn’t been able to use that formation: Four parties wouldn’t be able to patrol all of Akiba. They’d had to split up, or in other words, organize into smaller teams. Although she hadn’t announced it, the twenty-three people currently under Riezé’s command were split into irregular parties of two or three members. There were more than ten of these.

Riezé was part of the group as well. Kyouko was trailing along behind her. She was a level-90 Guardian, and had been one of the victims during this incident. Riezé herself was a Sorcerer.

Their formation was far too fragile. Even if Team D, which she’d contacted, joined up with Akatsuki’s team, there would only be four members. They really wouldn’t be able to keep a large-scale class enemy in check.

Riezé and Kyouko had been over by the canal, and they ran under the elevated tracks, hurrying toward the central avenue. Unfortunately, the action was a long ways away. They’d have to cut clear across Akiba on a diagonal. The distance was probably a little less than a kilometer. However, with their sturdy Adventurer bodies, they could probably reach their destination in about two minutes.

They detoured around the decayed skeleton of a billboard, dashing down a path covered by underbrush.

“It’s Akatsuki?”

“Yes. Are you all right, Kyouko?”

“Of course. To be honest, I am scared of that guy. Still, I’d fight him again before I’d put him in front of Master Soujirou. I’m not an athletic type for nothing!”

“That’s the spirit!”

“We’re absolutely going to win this!”

Although Riezé didn’t respond to those words aloud, she nodded firmly as she ran. Akiba’s volunteers had leveled the ground in the plaza in front of the station, to make the outdoors more pleasant; the two of them cut across it with strides that were practically long jumps and ran into the guild center, dashing up the concrete stairs as though they’d sprouted wings.

Riezé bit her lip and reviewed the current strategy.

Most of the mysteries had been solved. It was probably safe to say that she understood most of how it was done as well.

The enemy was the dead warrior Lugurius.

Or rather, something that resembled Lugurius.

He was a raid enemy and quest boss in Decayed Exploit, which had been packaged with Sacred Heart, the tenth expansion pack. Since Decayed Exploit had been fully raid content, it was meant to be played with twenty-four people, but the difficulty level wasn’t all that high. Things had been different at the outset, when they hadn’t had enough information, but after that, she didn’t remember the combat content being difficult at all. In any case, the Decayed Exploit quest had been an introduction that acted as a gateway to a bigger quest, the Nine Great Gaols of Halos. Its difficulty really couldn’t be that high.

Even as an enemy raid boss, the fallen warrior Lugurius, who was said to have died in the Ezzo Empire, had haunted Hokkaido. Riezé had no idea why he was attacking the town of Akiba now. She didn’t worry about it, either. Worrying about reasons wasn’t her style. To Riezé, reasons were meaningful only at the stage when you were examining ways to deal with something, and at this point, handling the situation by force was the only way to turn it in their favor.

Riezé had conducted exhaustive interviews of all the victims who had been attacked by the murderer so far. As a result, she had inferred that the culprit was Lugurius, or someone who had tendencies and powers that resembled Lugurius’s. It had taken time because, at first, the murderer hadn’t been able to exercise his abilities completely, or had been trying to hide them.

It was also because the murderer wasn’t simply the raid monster Lugurius: He also had the combat power of mobile armor. He was a monster who could use two different types of strength, and when the incident had first occurred, these two types had camouflaged each other.

The hint that had decisively revealed the truth had been that the murderer’s weapon was Hail Blade Byakumaru.

Akatsuki, who had fought the murderer last, had declared that it was.

As weapons, short swords were on the small side, and it was hard to tell them apart. Riezé wasn’t confident that she could look at an equipped one and guess its name. However, if a girl who also used short swords had declared it, then Riezé concluded that she must have been certain.

After that, things had moved quickly. The name Hail Blade Byakumaru had reminded Riezé of the tale of the hero Lugurius, who had been fond of that sword and had used it to fight for Ezzo, and of the quest to subjugate the now-fallen warrior.

A cursed weapon.

It seemed ridiculous, but that was what Hail Blade Byakumaru was.

From a report Mikakage had delivered, Riezé knew that flavor text was being eroded. The hero who had died filled with bitterness had written his feelings of rage and resentment into the explanatory text of his beloved sword. That cursed text had taken physical shape and attacked its bearer.

That’s absurd!

For the several hundredth time, Riezé bit her lip in a spasm of irritation. Flavor text had taken shape and attacked someone.

That situation awoke a visceral terror, as though a nightmare had slipped out of the realm of dreams and tried to tear its dreamer apart.

However, in a territory separate from that horror, the brain that was entrusted with D.D.D.’s training unit had set to work on tactics. If the murderer had Lugurius’s abilities, there were roughly three of them.

One was a great increase in HP. Lugurius’s maximum HP changed drastically depending on the number of people in the zone. In Decayed Exploit, a quest in which he’d been faced in a subterranean graveyard, he’d kidnapped more than fifty People of the Earth and had had them in the zone with him. That alone had raised Lugurius’s HP to three times its minimum.

If Akiba had stayed as lively as it was ordinarily, his HP capacity would probably have soared, swelling to more than several hundred times its normal size. No one would be able to take down a monster like that, not even the West Wind Brigade or D.D.D.

And so Riezé had come up with a plan. She’d worked with Henrietta, who wasn’t here right now, to get a ban put in place on going out at night. Just as they’d evacuated the People of the Earth from the zone in the raid quest, they’d make the town of Akiba a battle zone that was empty of everyone but themselves. That was the minimum requirement for fighting Lugurius.

The second was that all his abilities increased in response to the number of people who were nearby. All of Lugurius’s abilities—his attack power, evasive power, defensive power, and hit rate—increased in response to the number of Adventurers within a fifty-meter radius. This had been part of Lugurius’s secret, the one that had defeated even Soujirou. It was also the reason Riezé had divided her raid into the smallest groups possible.

It had been the same in the Decayed Exploit quest. They’d left only the six strongest, while the remaining eighteen had evacuated the People of the Earth, simultaneously routing the vengeful ghosts that had been attracted by Lugurius’s grudge. By doing so, they’d been able to weaken Lugurius to the point where he was an enemy that could be defeated.

The last was the range attack that used ice. The area in front of Lugurius turned into a blizzard, decreasing visibility. No doubt there would be cold-air damage as well. On its own, the ability was a simple one, but precisely because it was simple, equipment with attribute defense was the only way to deal with it.

The more living people there were in the area, the greater his abilities would become. He could freeze all living things. These abilities existed to express the background for Lugurius, who had died swallowing his resentment.

These were exceptional abilities, given to him as a dramatic background because he was a raid quest boss.

These three abilities were Lugurius’s secret, and the factors that made this battle hopelessly difficult. In Akiba, which overflowed with people, a gimmick that had made for a mere warm-up as level-90 raid content became the worst possible ability.

In particular, the combination with the mobile armor’s teleportation ability was lethal.

Lugurius could run at any time, and he could aim for a place and time when there were lots of people in Akiba. So far, the murderer had chosen to attack the town only at night, but that might not last forever. It might be because the combat time in the original quest had been night, or it might be the murderer’s own preference. It could even be coincidence.

Riezé could think of another “worst.”

It was the inability to declare the murderer who had Lugurius’s abilities as an enemy NPC. According to eyewitness testimony, the murderer was a Samurai named Enbart Nelles. In that case, he was cursed, and at the same time, he had a human mind. In other words, he had the ability to learn.

Raid quests were game content. True, they were designed to be hard enough that you’d get wiped out several times, but that was only because the administrators had made them that way, in order to let you enjoy the sense of achievement when you eventually did conquer them. Riezé knew this precisely because she belonged to the biggest raid guild on the Yamato server. There had been an invisible trust relationship, rather like the one shared by good rivals, between players who enjoyed harsh raid content and the administrators.

However, this was no longer the Elder Tales game, and Riezé and the others weren’t game characters. There was a possibility that this raid hadn’t been designed in such a way that they’d be able to conquer it eventually. On the contrary, the possibility that it hadn’t was much greater.

And wouldn’t that possibility continue to grow? Once Riezé and the others fought him once, the murderer would know their strategy. It was possible for him to attack Akiba in ways that were craftier and more lethal. The teleportation ability and Lugurius’s resentment went together far too well. The only thing Riezé could imagine beyond that union was hell.

Of course she’d thought of countermeasures. Riezé had a shot at success.

However, even so, there was no proof.

After the Catastrophe, this world had lost the reliability of a game, and there was no guarantee whatsoever that any plan would succeed. The realization made Riezé shiver. Just having put something obvious into words, inside her mind, made her feel as if an ice-demon had suddenly seized her spine. Riezé shuddered with chills that wouldn’t stop.

Neither the title of operation commander nor the pride of being training unit captain did her any good.

On the contrary: They only made her terror all the greater. With those titles, Riezé could make mistakes that would take others’ lives along with her.

Her knees had gone oddly weak. She scolded them and kept moving.

It was a terrible thing. Riezé finally knew the terror that came with the responsibility of involving other people in her decisions. She thought of the silver-haired princess, wondering if she’d known that terror since she was born. The thought that she’d dashed into the lords’ conference and ridden on a griffin with Krusty when she knew that terror gave Riezé a feeling that was close to awe.

That princess was really something.

…As was Krusty. And Shiroe. And the eleven guild masters. And Akatsuki.

What a terrifying thing it was to try to change matters, even though there was no guarantee of success.

She was ashamed of herself for having made fun of it, calling it a middle schooler’s journal. She’d just looked down on them from a place she’d assumed was safe and spouted her ever-so-valuable opinions.

Riezé was embarrassed by her own ugliness. However, for that very reason, she couldn’t turn back.

There were nine ways the strategy she’d prepared could end. She’d explained this to everyone as “taking the proper steps as the occasion demands,” but not having been able to narrow it down to one way was proof that she was an incompetent strategist.

Still, even so…it was better than losing.

“We’re here!”

The steel door—which Kyouko had opened by practically breaking it down—led to empty, moonlit space. What spread below them were broken concrete beams, evergreen treetops that half-covered their field of vision, and, far below them, Akiba’s station-front plaza.

This place, where the wind roared, was the fifteenth floor of the guild center, the obsidian fortress that was Akiba’s pride. It was the shattered top floor of a former high-rise building that seemed to have been smashed by a blow from a giant.

“Be careful, Riezé.”

The wind, which was freezing cold because it was perfectly clear, billowed Riezé’s mantle, trying to snatch it away. Instantly, Riezé stiffened, but Kyouko grabbed her belt firmly, and the two of them hid themselves in the shadow of a pillar.

Opening their telechat menus again, Riezé and Kyouko plunged into the midst of yet another battle.

4

In that same guild center, in a room somewhere underground, a different sort of battle was approaching its conclusion.

The combination of faded indigo wallpaper and dim, indirect lighting made the room feel like the ocean floor at night. Remembering the labyrinth she’d come through to reach this reception room, Raynesia gulped. This was not polite behavior for a princess, but endless timidity welled up inside her, and she couldn’t help it.

She’d met with all kinds of aristocrats before.

She’d always thought it was a pain in the neck, but she’d never felt this uneasy. For the first time, she realized what it was like to be swallowed up by a mood, rather than by the content of the conversation. It felt as if she was about to be engulfed in an eerie atmosphere completely unlike the awe she felt with her grandfather Sergiad or with Krusty-the-menace.

She concentrated on relaxing the hands that were clutching a handkerchief in her lap.

If she wasn’t careful, it felt as if she might cling to even that thin cloth.

A warm hand gently touched her shoulder. It was Henrietta, one of Akiba’s most accomplished ladies. At the reassuring touch, Raynesia almost turned around involuntarily and thanked her, but through sheer willpower, she forced herself to refrain.

Right now, she had to prioritize her conversation with Kinjo, the man sitting on the sofa opposite hers.

The young leader of the Kunie clan was smiling the faintest possible smile. He seemed so at ease, it was tempting to believe that the meek expression with which he’d apologized to her at Water Maple Manor had been just her imagination.

It wasn’t fearless. It wasn’t taunting, either.

Raynesia was convinced that this was this man’s natural expression. He might have been pretending to be demure during their previous meeting. Elissa was always pointing the same thing out to Raynesia, and Raynesia didn’t feel like calling him on it, but even so, she braced herself again.

“You’re certain you want us to interrupt the magic channels from the magic circle?”

“Yes,” Raynesia answered.

They’d been repeating this exchange ever since she arrived at this subterranean mansion, the Kunie clan’s headquarters in Akiba. Kinjo had already accepted her request and given his agreement. His black-coated Kunie attendants had gone to initiate the interruption.

This question was probably the final confirmation.

“If we stop the supply of magic, the magic circle that serves as the city’s defense will also lose its abilities. It will take decades to bring it back into operation.”

His gaze was questioning. Raynesia nodded firmly.

“Yes. I understand.”

“The guard system that protects Akiba will stop.”

“Yes, it will.”

“The city will be defenseless.”

“Yes.”

Raynesia answered without hesitation.

Was she uncertain? —Absolutely.

Of course she was. Even in this moment, when she was feigning calm, she was very close to bursting into tears from regret and fear.

Why me? she thought.

And also: Why is this happening?

If she could have run, she would have, no matter what apologies she had to make.

That was obvious. Only natural.

But she’d made up her mind. She’d resolved to make this request.

When she thought back now, she understood what Kinjo had done to her that day.

This young man had come to leave the decision in her hands. He’d set the whole burden down at Raynesia’s feet and gone home… Probably wearing this same faint smile. No doubt it had been premeditated.

Coward, Raynesia thought. Don’t toy with me. This failure had been caused by the Kunie clan. Why shouldn’t they make the decision and bear the responsibility? She thought that the Kunie clan, and no one else, should resolve the incident immediately and pay for the damages.

If no such convenient resolution method existed, as the person in charge, Kinjo could at least have stopped the magic circle on his own. Then, if the citizens of Akiba saw it as a problem, they could throw rocks at him… That was what she thought.

However, come to think of it, that was exactly what Raynesia had been thinking of doing.

When Raynesia had learned of this incident, she’d thought of contacting her grandfather, Duke Sergiad. She’d also considered begging Krusty in tears. Wouldn’t that have been forcing all the responsibility for the decision onto them? She couldn’t say she’d never done anything like that. In fact, up until now, that was practically all she’d done.

Kinjo was exactly like Raynesia.

And the girl in black had flown off into the town.

At the time, Raynesia had thought:

Oh, how convenient.

Of course, if notable Adventurers got wind of this incident, there was danger of a serious confrontation between the People of the Earth and the Adventurers. As a daughter of the Cowen family, and as a noble of Yamato, she absolutely had to prevent that. However, on the other hand, when she hung her head in the usual way, the Adventurer girl had leapt into the incident on her own, and an inkling of a solution had conveniently appeared. Not only that, but she’d eavesdropped, and the situation had progressed without Raynesia having to make a decision.

It was true that, for a moment, she’d thought that way.

That was what had made her see it: The responsibility Kinjo had shifted onto Raynesia was the responsibility Raynesia had constantly shifted onto those around her, from the time she was born until now. The irritation she felt regarding the young man in front of her was the exact emotion Raynesia should have turned on herself.

Of course she’d discussed this issue with Riezé and Henrietta. Through them, the matter had been reported to the Round Table Council as well. However, Raynesia was the one who’d made the decision. She couldn’t just pass the responsibility Kinjo had foisted onto her on to the Round Table Council. The fact that she hadn’t liked having it done to her wasn’t the only reason.

No matter how you tried to gloss it over, Kinjo was a Person of the Earth, and so was Raynesia. They couldn’t very well just shift things onto the Adventurers, could they?

Adventurers and People of the Earth were different beings.

In blunt terms, People of the Earth were weaker than Adventurers. However, precisely because that was the case, there was a line they couldn’t yield. If they left everything to others, saying it was because they were weak, it would be admitting that they weren’t simply weaker but inferior as well. In that case, they’d never be able to join hands. They wouldn’t be able to be friends.

Elissa’s words rose again in her ears.

Dropping all pretenses, Raynesia glared at Kinjo.

“This incident wasn’t solely the Kunie clan’s mistake. The fault lies with all People of the Earth. We blundered in being unable to provide sufficient defense. We must admit that, clearly and plainly. As that is the case, I have decided that cutting off the supply of magic is the best policy we can implement at this time.”

“……”

“We must do what we can in order to apologize to the Adventurers. This time, that means stopping the magic circle.”

“It may cause a greater nuisance.”

On having this pointed out to her, Raynesia didn’t know what to say.

Of course. As an individual, she didn’t have the power to bear responsibility for all the consequences that might arise from this incident. Was there anyone or anything that could bear that responsibility? The responsibility for a decision that used a great number of irreplaceable human lives as the wager? Raynesia silently murmured the word gods. It was a cheerless, lonely word.

Still, nobles were people who bore unbearable responsibilities.

Even if it meant their crucifixion, nobles showed courage.

Raynesia had learned this from the grandfather she respected.

Just like faith in the gods, this teaching had no physical form, but inside Raynesia, it was a truth with a solid feel to it. Moving her head as though it needed oiling, Raynesia nodded a few times. It was an unbecoming gesture.

“There’s no need to worry.”

As if to encourage Raynesia, Henrietta spoke from behind her. She wore a cape over the uniform that marked her as a senior envoy of the Round Table Council, and she spoke in a clear voice.

“The Round Table is already aware of this incident. Please assume that you have our consent with regard to stopping the magic circle.”

“You have patrons in the Round Table Council, then.”

“They aren’t a patron. They are simply cooperating in efforts to bring the situation under control, as fellow residents of Akiba. I presume ‘fellow residents’ includes the Kunie clan as well. Am I mistaken?”

“Is that Lord Shiroe’s rhetoric?”

Henrietta’s voice stiffened. “No.”

Raynesia didn’t know what the exchange meant, but she glared at Kinjo the whole time, determined not to yield a single step.

“…Understood. No matter what the cause of this incident was, it’s true that the Kunie clan failed in its defense. We have left a blot on our proud, centuries-old history of defense and the administration of the magic circle. We were distracted by the natural disaster that has come from the continent, and we have consistently underestimated the threat of the West. The blame for these sins lies entirely with me.”

“…Master Kinjo?”

The young man in front of Raynesia spoke with his head bowed, but Raynesia wasn’t able to understand most of what he said. The words were enigmatic, and they gave her a premonition of something, but the greater part of it slipped through her fingers.

This man… The Kunie clan… They’re different from the People of the Earth somehow…

“It’s just as you say. I expect we must also do what it is in our power to do. Not rejection, but a new step. I apologize for testing you earlier. I will place us in your debt with regard to this matter, Lady Raynesia.”

When he raised his head, Kinjo wore a solemn expression. It was something Raynesia had never seen before. However, shifting into that enigmatic smile, he bluffed, “That said, I would like to repay that debt to someone else.”

Apparently Kinjo had tested her.

Raynesia finally came to that realization. That previous meeting had been a test Kinjo had set her. She understood this, although she didn’t know its objective or the results. That was a terribly troublesome thing. Even though she truly wasn’t suited to it, this Kinjo and the mind-reading menace and that white devil with glasses were all scheming to make her shoulder heavy burdens.

“It appears everything is ready.”

A young member of the clan whispered in Kinjo’s ear, and he informed Raynesia as well.

To answer him, for the first time, Raynesia looked up at Henrietta, over her shoulder. Shaking her honey-colored hair, the intelligent woman with glasses wore a distinctive expression, as though she was gazing off into the distance. She murmured a few words in a small voice.

“In ten…five… Understood. In one minute.”

On seeing Henrietta—who’d probably just awakened from a telechat—nod, Raynesia spoke in a firm voice.

“All right. Then consider this my formal request: Please interrupt the magic supply circuits to the magic circle that defends Akiba.”

One minute later, a ripple like a small sigh from a giant spread through the town of Akiba.

The absolutely invincible guard system had shut down.

5

“Ten meters…five meters… Engage!”

A sweet voice echoed over the road.

Akatsuki dodged the gigantic stone figure that abruptly appeared as if she’d known it was coming. The golem, which looked like a locomotive made of gray granite, swung down a stout arm that was roughly the size of a car.

Apparently even the murderer didn’t decide he was able to take that attack: He evaded magnificently. Although the golem’s attack was penetrating and had a wide range, it wasn’t all that fast; dodging it was easy.

However, Akatsuki had included that in her calculations.

As the murderer evaded the golem’s attack, she aimed for his side: Fatal Ambush. This technique, which was crowned with the term “ambush,” had a long activation time, or “charge time.” It was hard to hit a fast opponent with this particular special attack skill. She activated the attack from his blind spot in a combination that used the golem as a screen.

Her reward for having struck home with a difficult attack came in the form of damage to the murderer.

The sword guard howled with rage, and Akatsuki twisted away, evading a blizzard. A slight evasion of a few dozen centimeters. It really wasn’t enough to dodge the blizzard range attack, and what covered for her, as expected, was the golem. Akatsuki lasted through the cold air by ducking into its giant shadow.

However, as the penalty, the golem began to freeze over with a cracking sound.

The golem boasted a huge body, and as its appearance suggested, it had lots of HP. However, it was only “a lot” in terms of the minions Summoners could summon. These minion-class summoned creatures had about a third of the combat strength of an Adventurer at the same level. That meant they also had one-third the HP. Even if the golem was slanted toward defense and toughness, its HP didn’t even equal Akatsuki’s.

However, it was possible for it to last five seconds against the murderer’s attack, and with those five seconds, Akatsuki and the others could shift into their next action.

“Pulse Recovery… There ya go!”

Holding a rod that resembled a broom, Mikakage cast the unique Druid healing spell, Pulse Recovery, on Akatsuki from behind the wrecked hood of a decaying microvan. A vivid green glow began to pulse over Akatsuki’s heart, guarding her. Her HP gradually replenished itself in time with its rhythm.

At Mikakage’s feet, Allie, a little girl whose gestures exactly mimicked Mikakage’s, was also casting a spell. Alraune, plant spirits, were able to help out in combat just like the other summoned minions, but more important, they had a special ability that boosted the effect of their summoner’s recovery spells. Shy Allie squeezed her eyes shut and brandished a tiny ladle. This wasn’t out of fear: She was desperately, heroically trying to help her mistress.

After the Pulse Recovery spell came a ranged recovery spell, then an instant recovery spell. Mikakage cast more healing spells on Akatsuki, one after another. She was using the unique Druid healing work, which combined several recovery spells, in an attempt to heal Akatsuki, who’d been wounded during the fierce battle. This devoted act, which ignored her remaining MP, recovered Akatsuki’s HP to about 80 percent.

Akatsuki didn’t thank her. She didn’t have the time for that.

Her current mission was to draw all the murderer’s attacks to herself, and to sprint down the central avenue. The only way for her to express her gratitude was to carry out that mission perfectly. Her mind was more focused than ever before, and Akatsuki understood this very well.

The range of her senses widened, growing as clear and calm as the surface of water, grasping the state of her surroundings.

Marielle, who was running along behind her, was continuing to chant Response Activated Recovery so that the spell wouldn’t be interrupted. The Monk girl who was acting as a mobile attacker and her Cleric partner were from the West Wind Brigade.

Feeling a sizzling, burning sensation on her skin, Akatsuki leapt in the opposite direction from the Monk girl.

Byakkou, the Summoner who’d created that opening for her by summoning the golem earlier, had summoned Lance Dísir from an enormous magic circle. Clad in pure white dress-style armor, the spirit hurled a shining spear that had seven branches. It was a sub-variant spell of Combat Skill Summoning—Sword Princess. It was the Summoner’s greatest attack spell, and yet it was unable to do lethal damage to the murderer. That was only natural: Raids weren’t so easy that they could be finished up with an attack spell from one person, no matter how strong. However, the continuous attacks were wearing a hole in the rock.

As Mikakage and Byakkou cast attack spells and recovery spells one after another, Akatsuki’s group dashed through the pair’s area. They couldn’t stop. Akatsuki and the others had to lead the murderer to the target location, and besides, if Mikakage and Byakkou kept casting spells at that rate, they’d burn through their MP in less than two minutes.

“You can do it!!”

A bright cheer that wasn’t at all suited to a scene of mortal combat reached her. As the murderer bore down on her with a face like a demon, over his shoulder, she saw Mikakage waving so hard it seemed as if her arms might come off. Akatsuki’s chest grew warm. It wasn’t just due to Pulse Recovery.

“Update! Ten more meters!”

With Marielle’s supporting voice at her back, Akatsuki danced through space as if to cut out the moon. They’d passed through the Mikakage-and-Byakkou area. There were ten meters until the next area. It was like a winter parade that traveled through a variety of attractions. Lugurius’s abilities increased in response to the number of Adventurers who were within fifty meters of him. This meant they could only station a few people within a fifty-meter range.

However, if the combat time dragged on, those few people would burn through their MP and grow exhausted. In addition, with only a few people, they wouldn’t have enough damage output, and combat time would inevitably be drawn out. As a result, they’d wear down much faster. It was a vicious cycle.

In order to break through that, Riezé had come up with this raid tactic. They’d set up several circular areas with fifty-meter radii in several places around Akiba, distributing them so that they didn’t overlap. The squad with Akatsuki at its center would lead the murderer through these areas, using the firepower and recovery abilities of the members stationed in the areas to recharge and attack at the same time.

As Akatsuki ran, she thought of the remaining areas.

She swore she’d keep running until morning if she had to.

She knew that Marielle’s encouragement had been growing less frequent for a while now. Akatsuki was an attack class, so she could watch her remaining MP and be stingy with her special skills as she fought. The damage itself would probably drop, but that only meant the battle would drag on longer. However, Marielle was a recovery class, and things were different for her. If Marielle was stingy with her recovery spells, it would lead directly to Akatsuki’s death.

For that very reason, precisely because she was leaving that heavy responsibility to others, Akatsuki wanted to protect them. She didn’t want to lose. The equipment that hugged Akatsuki’s body, the protective spells that supported her, the various arts that healed her—none of these were hers.

In order to repay the treasures she’d borrowed, Akatsuki charged ahead, rushing onward.

Seeking sharper steps, faster slashes.

Inside Akatsuki, something clicked into place.

Lowering her body into a slight crouch, she stopped breathing for a moment. The image that rose in her mind with that stance acted as a trigger, activating a special skill: the Tracker’s “Hide Shadow.” Ordinarily, the special ability could be activated only from the command menu, but Akatsuki had added conditions to her martial arts and trained until she could activate it.

Almost as if her life force was draining away, the sense of presence evaporated from her black-clad body. Akatsuki was fading.

Even Akatsuki stopped knowing where she was. As the demon sword flew toward her, its attack stood out sharply in her fixed field of vision. Akatsuki was leaving herself open to an attack that would strike home. However, there was another Akatsuki watching the scene from somewhere else. “Hide Shadow” had evolved to “Shadow Lurk,” and the separated life force was traveling straight across the battlefield.

Akatsuki ran through the murderer’s attacks, which whipped up a freezing blizzard.

The shadow that looked like Akatsuki and Akatsuki’s own perspective were in different places.

As proof, her shadow flickered and blinked, blurring as though the blizzard was erasing it, and, like a phantom, it negated every attack.

In the midst of overwhelming acceleration, Akatsuki reached the murderer’s back.

She wasn’t able to hold this state for long periods.

The special skill was active for only a brief time, while Akatsuki stopped breathing and froze her heart. A skill that could take an ability that was ordinarily used for infiltration work or evading monsters’ senses and forcibly activate it during combat: This was the Mystery Akatsuki had acquired.

Pointless.

With the speed of a swallow in flight, Akatsuki swung her short sword.

The attack, which had come at the murderer suddenly from behind, left a shallow cut on his neck. To think that even when she’d launched an attack on a vital spot from that illusion, he’d been able to avoid a fatal wound. The power of the demon sword was limitless. But…

Pointless.

There was no delight at having a wish fulfilled in Akatsuki’s heart.

She held her breath and activated Shadow Lurk again. The shadow double appeared immediately, and she used it as camouflage to leap out of the way of a triple thrust from the demon sword.

Evading the large pellets of ice that accompanied the thrusts, Akatsuki sped up even further, dancing over the murderer’s sword.

The Mystery she’d acquired was the same as that demon sword.

A skill that operated on external logic that went beyond Elder Tales.

The power Akatsuki had wished for was the same as that blizzard-crazed demon. The young innocence that had longed for it seemed terribly embarrassing to her now.

A green pulse dwelled in Akatsuki’s chest, and a cloud of powdery golden scales surrounded her.

There was power in the gauntlets on both her hands, and the black clothes she wore protected her.

More than that, the hands that had been waved so hard they’d seemed in danger of coming off… The words that had been spoken to her. These small affirmations warmed Akatsuki.

Mysteries—or Overskills, as some called them—were a state beyond the changes of the Catastrophe, reached through individual effort after understanding the system in Elder Tales. They were insignificant tricks, and they were also the result of training. In the end, although Riezé had instructed her in the eight Mysteries D.D.D. had grasped, Akatsuki hadn’t been able to learn a single one. Just as, for example, Nyanta’s cooking was a combination of Nyanta’s Chef subclass and his own, real skills, every Mystery required awareness and study on the part of the person in question in order to be complete.

They weren’t something you could learn how to use simply by having someone explain them to you.

They weren’t the sort of thing you could acquire in an instant, the way you could level up if the game system granted permission.

You didn’t try to acquire Mysteries. You simply worried endlessly and trained, and the Mysteries lay beyond that.

“The real lesson is that you can say the Mysteries don’t mean much,” Nazuna had said. Those words had engraved themselves into Akatsuki. These weren’t powers that existed so you could boast about being a high-class Adventurer. They were more important: fragments of the “something” Akatsuki had brushed against that day.

In order to demonstrate this, Akatsuki ran. To vanquish her own naïveté, which had wished for power, she slid her short sword from its sheath. Even if it tore her apart, she had to shatter that demon sword.

The true form of Akatsuki’s Mystery, Shadow Lurk, was her Tracker subclass’s Hide Shadow. It was a special movement method that she shouldn’t have been able to activate during combat, but which she’d forcibly activated in this real, post-Catastrophe world, using it in combination with Road Mirage and Trick Step to create doubles. It was a set of wings Akatsuki had made for herself, wings that were hers alone.

With a sharp report, the swords bit into each other.

Even with all those support spells, even with all this assistance, the murderer’s power still far outstripped Akatsuki’s. Even as she was showered by long breaths crazed with the scent of blood, as their swords locked and pushed at each other, the murderer leaned on Akatsuki, overpowering her.

I have to get some distance and drop out for one attack.

Having reconfirmed the strategy, in order to evade the lean man in front of her, Akatsuki released Stealth Blade in pinpoint mode. She’d shown the murderer this skill many times; he’d dodge with the left half of his body, and she’d use that opportunity to get some distance… Or that was what should have happened. But.

“Like this? Huh, like this?”

The murderer had let her pierce his side without defending, and he smiled with an expression of intolerable delight. The demon had lost HP in order to close the gap, and hellishly cold air was seeping from him. In a mere moment, the blizzard solidified, becoming ice, and the murderer froze his own wound, and Akatsuki’s sword along with it.

Having lost her only weapon, Akatsuki took a hard blow from the arm the man swung at her.

6

“I’m okay.”

Akatsuki got up.

The momentary carelessness had pushed her HP to death’s door. She didn’t even have 5 percent left… But she was still alive.

Marielle had come running up to her, but even her recovery magic had little effect. Her MP was very low.

“I’m sorry. Really… I’m sorry.”

Marielle’s strained voice hurt Akatsuki’s heart. Marielle hadn’t done a single thing wrong. Even though this was her first raid, just because she’d been put on a team with Akatsuki, she’d had the role of main healer pushed onto her; that was all. Akatsuki wanted to comfort Marielle, but she couldn’t think of the right thing to say… And so she repeated herself, putting all the feeling she had into the words:

“I’m okay.”

The words were a bluff, but that wasn’t all they were. They were based in her sincere wish to reassure someone she liked. She wasn’t putting on a bold front; Akatsuki had wanted to express her gratitude to Marielle. There was no way even to confirm whether that short exchange had gotten the message across. As Akatsuki broke into a run, as if to shake free of the exchange, someone flung a short, spinning, sticklike object at her.

“Great timing. Take that with you.”

A twenty-fifth girl, who’d poked her head out of her workshop, pushed her goggles up as she spoke to Akatsuki.

The sheath was still warm when she caught it. In Akatsuki’s hands, which were growing numb with cold in the blizzard, heat surged from the blade, as though it had just been born.

“…Ringing Blade Haganemushi.”

“Nope. Haganemushi—Tatara. Reforged.”

When she looked closer, the length was different. So was the grip. It was designed for Akatsuki. More than that, the flavor text shown in the item appraisal was different.

“I can’t…pay this much—”

“Win.”

Tatara, the Amenoma Swordsmith, spoke over Akatsuki, who looked as if she was about to cry. It wasn’t the merchant’s usual absent, sleepy voice. It had a strong ring to it.

“Defeat that thing with my sword.”

She pointed: Kawara of the West Wind Brigade, who’d been acting as a guerrilla, was fighting.

Even as a mad dance of snow and ice sliced her up, even as she was smeared with bright blood, she yelled bravely, fighting courageously. The murderer’s primary target was Akatsuki. Even now, his eyes were turned toward her. However, in order to protect the fallen Akatsuki from the murderer, the girl was making fine use of her Monk skills.

“Akatsuki. You’re all set, hon.”

Marielle, who’d continued casting recovery spells on Akatsuki, nodded. It was time.

No words were necessary now.

Like an arrow shot from a bow, Akatsuki ran across the earth in a straight line. She sent her Shadow Lurk doubles flying for one attack. She switched her grip on her new short sword and swung it: Accel Fang. The murderer went on the defensive with Hail Blade Byakumaru, and the sword locked with Haganemushi Tatara. Under a storm of iron, in which the blades grated against each other with a tearing sound, Akatsuki blurred and vanished.

Appearing behind the murderer’s back, she launched a Venom Strike at his head. The man deflected the poison-laced strike with the side of his head, then forced his body in and swung his certain-kill blade at Akatsuki, who was still in midair.

That attack could only have inflicted a fatal wound, but Akatsuki evaded it easily, as if she had a foothold. Help had arrived.

“That weak endgame of yours is just like Shiroe’s.”

Nazuna had leapt in like a bullet.

Half-turning her body in a splendid motion that made it impossible to believe she was still wearing tall wooden clogs, she leapt into the air. She curled up, kicked the murderer’s blade up, then got some distance and began running parallel to Akatsuki. Possibly because she’d felt eyes on her glamorous body, her expression twisted, but there was no carelessness in her gaze.

“Okay. If you’re Shiroe’s junior, you’re pretty much my junior, too. I’ll pitch in and help so Soujirou won’t worry.”

Akatsuki nodded.

The demon was chasing them down the central avenue with the force of a tank, and when they turned, they were in a gap between buildings where the bricks on either side seemed to press in on them. The blizzard was compressed by the narrow space. As they scattered it with Nazuna’s barrier spell, Akatsuki and the fox-eared beauty sprinted away.

“What’s the matter?”

At the words, which were so gentle it was hard to believe they were being chased by a monster, Akatsuki looked up at Nazuna. She wore a smile that was mischievous, and also kind. “Well, you’re crying,” she told her, and Akatsuki wiped the outer corners of her eyes. She couldn’t say it was nothing. She was happy.

Even though she’d been so close to death, even though she was still being chased by a terrible enemy, Akatsuki no longer felt the terror of losing something. Right now, surrounded by a crowd of friends, she was fighting her first raid. For the first time in her life, she felt the warmth of comrades she could stand with as equals.

Akiba’s night was a battlefield now.

It was a stage for Akatsuki, Raynesia, and the other Water Maple girls.

It was also stirring enough to renew her longing for Shiroe. Of course Akatsuki had loved the gentle, intelligent young man she’d chosen as her liege before, but she was confident that her feelings for him were even stronger now. Preparing a place for someone else to belong was a noble thing. Making a place where someone could spend their days happily was very difficult. And Akatsuki’s liege, who’d known both the difficulty and the importance of it, was someone worthy of her affections.

“Engage!”

At that scream, Nazuna and Akatsuki leapt up at the same time. From the front of the narrow passage, countless arrows cloaked in electricity pierced the murderer. Coming from an Assassin who specialized in sniping, this Assassinate attack seemed to have inflicted damage on a completely different scale from Akatsuki’s, whose style focused on attacking from the shadows and on the number of attacks.

Pulling away from their pursuer, who was bellowing as if he’d gone mad, Nazuna and Akatsuki ran through the air. Under their feet floated several thin, pale blue slabs fifteen centimeters square. This was Nazuna’s Mystery, Celestial Passage.

It was a skill that set the basic Kannagi spell, Purification Barrier, in open space. The Damage Interception spell barrier was deployed as Nazuna dictated. These paperback-sized force fields, which would have had a difficult time stopping even the smallest attack, were a spell meant for defense and recovery that had been converted for use in movement. They were, literally, “footholds” generated in empty space.

They reached Akiba’s central plaza, practically tumbling into it. It would have been safe to call this place—Akiba Station and its elevated lines, surrounded by elevated walkways and several enormous buildings—the heart of Akiba. Having reached the space, Akatsuki turned around in front of a jet-black building, waiting for the murderer.

The deep breath of frigid winter air she’d drawn in burned her chest. It hurt her lungs, but the cold air cooled Akatsuki’s head and cleared her mind.

Possibly because he’d realized Akatsuki had stopped, the murderer advanced into the plaza slowly, his gleaming metallic armor clanking. Akatsuki’s HP was down to 20 percent. The murderer’s was also close to that HP. The absolute value was about a hundred times greater than Akatsuki’s, but Akatsuki leveled her new favorite sword, preparing to engage the enemy.

She held it pointed at his face, a position she’d repeated several thousand times, or maybe several tens of thousands of times, since the Catastrophe.

“So you’re not running anymore?”

At that question, delivered with a rictal smile, Akatsuki nodded.

“Then go ahead and—” As if to shake off the rest of the sentence—die—the murderer closed in, bringing down Hail Blade Byakumaru, made enormous with ice and the freezing blizzard. When they hung in Amenoma, the two weapons had seemed to be about the same size, but now they looked as different as a twig and a huge tree.

However, as he raised Byakumaru high, a gigantic mass attacked it from far up in the sky, like a waterfall.

In Akatsuki’s mind, she could see her friends, surrounding this plaza. Her enemy detection ability sensed a wide range of people, and it told her about them. If they got within fifty meters of the murderer, they’d instantly reverse all the work they’d done to get here. Fifty meters was wider than the range of all magic attack spells and recovery spells. In other words, her friends outside that range couldn’t take part in the combat.

That had been a blind spot.

More than fifteen stories above the ground, just a little more than fifty meters in altitude…

At the very edge of the range Akatsuki could detect, there was Riezé, using Kyouko’s hold as a lifeline. Freezing Liner was a Sorcerer’s wide-range attack spell designed to sweep enemies away with a stream of ice-studded water. When used in dungeons or fields, the spell’s firing range wasn’t even twenty meters, but it had been sent down in free fall from the top of a huge building to strike the murderer.

The attack devoured the phenomenal cold air the murderer radiated. It used that frigid temperature as fuel, and the instant it showered over the murderer, he began to freeze.

“Wha—!!”

The murderer twisted his body, trying to run. However, his legs from the knees down and the huge gauntlets that held the sword were already being encased in a pillar of ice. The fact that he’d raised his sword to slash through the girl in front of him also worked against him: Byakumaru was pointing straight into the deluge of cold water that fell from the sky.

The damage itself wasn’t all that great. He probably hadn’t even lost 1 percent of his maximum HP. However, when he was trapped by this much ice, it was hard to avoid having his movements restricted. Not liking this, the murderer tried to teleport, then found himself aghast.

There was no way he could know it, but Raynesia, who’d returned from the basement of the guild center, was staring fixedly at the scene.

His remaining HP was irrelevant.

They’d led the murderer this far in order to whittle down his combat abilities, see the cards he held, and make him fall to arrogance.

The curly-haired strategist’s tactics had used the murderer’s abilities against him, rendering him unable to move. With light steps, Akatsuki approached him.

The first attack was a straightforward Deadly Dance. It was launched from a low stance, as if scooping up, and was a special skill meant for close combat. It wasn’t that powerful, but the recast time was incredibly short: just one second. And, if you struck home with it several times in a row, it got stronger and stronger.

The serial attacks struck at Byakumaru, which jutted out of the coffin of ice as though to reshape it.

To begin with, Ringing Blade Haganemushi had been a high-performance transferable raid weapon with a special ability that reduced the durability of any weapon it struck. It was a short sword with advanced capabilities and a weapon destruction ability that displayed its effect in hand-to-hand combat. Haganemushi Tatara was a reforged version of Ringing Blade Haganemushi. Its abilities weren’t fantasy-class, but even so, it was beyond comparison with Akatsuki’s previous weapon. However, what had encouraged her wasn’t the attack power.

Something more ephemeral, something smaller and more important, was protecting Akatsuki.

Tatara, Swordsmith of Amenoma, retempers this just for its taciturn, unsociable bearer. Let that too-serious girl move forward without breaking or warping. Let it repel wicked curses and the miseries of the world. Let the person support the blade, and the blade the person.

The flavor text written in the history, those “meaningless” words, protected and warmed Akatsuki.

The meaning in them, and the feelings; the history, the lineage, the legends:

There wasn’t a single meaningless thing about them.

They were inside the person who read them, important from the start. They were irreplaceable things. And precisely because they were so, a tragedy had happened to the murderer, and Akatsuki had been saved.

The clash of crossed swords echoed powerfully in the ultramarine dawn.

With the single-mindedness of a swallow that had found a place to return to, she dealt out more than twenty intensely focused attacks.

Even in the dawn, before the sun was visible, Akatsuki and her friends no longer doubted their victory.

Mikakage, who came running up. Azukiko, and Henrietta, and Marielle. Riezé, whose nose was red at the tip, possibly because she’d bumped it on something. Raynesia, who was clinging to Kyouko, who carried her. They gathered around the shattered cursed sword, which had been broken in front of them, and the crumpled murderer, catching their breath.

There were no victory cheers. Instead, a relieved murmur spread, and the girls looked at each other, smiling bashful smiles. Everyone had complained and leaned on their friends during this difficult fight. Many girls had made a sorry display of themselves.

Even so, this had been the Water Maple girls’ first real battle.

Their small, modest subjugation unit had completed its mission.

Their victory was the bell that announced the beginning of the Second Catastrophe in Akiba, but more than that, it was a new blessing as they took a step toward the future.

The girls should have been tired, but—in an epilogue only Elissa knew—they occupied Raynesia’s guest rooms and office and partied in their pajamas late into the afternoon.

<Log Horizon, Volume 6: Lost Child of the Dawn—The End>