The Gold of the Kunie Read online

  “Naotsugu, are you okay?”

  “Just fine. Bring it on, slime city!”

  “Woohoo! You’re so cool, Naotsugu!”

  “Hey, you just used me as a shield!”

  “I’ll recover you, so sacrifice yourself for me again!”

  Those two were noisy every time, and Voinen laughed in spite of himself. Shiroe and his two companions hadn’t lost a bit of their toughness. It was really something.

  A strange light shone down from the zone’s high ceiling—probably some sort of magic light or luminescent mushroom. Thanks to that, even though this was a dungeon, the faint glow meant it wasn’t hard to see their surroundings. When they were exploring, they had the assistance of their Bug Lights as well.

  However, even so, they were several hundred meters underground. Now that they’d entered Abyssal Shaft—the raid zone under the very lowest level of the Depths of Palm—even at the smallest estimate, there were several hundred million tons of dirt, sand, and bedrock over their heads. For Adventurers, who were former ordinary students and average adults, this was significant pressure.

  In addition, when they were exploring like this, the complicated structure and the drainage outlets meant they never knew when they’d be ambushed, which added even more stress. The capture situation wasn’t going very well, either.

  It wasn’t that they were slacking. This zone was simply more difficult than Voinen had anticipated.

  They spent from eight to ten hours a day fighting ten-odd monster battles, give or take a few. That was the best they could do. Every battle was a hard one, and it took time for them to prepare themselves again. The range they’d explored wasn’t expanding much, either.

  Even so, the three who’d joined up temporarily didn’t seem the least bit discouraged.

  This, even though the members of Silver Sword, top elites led by William, were feeling quite a lot of tension. Compared to ordinary Adventurers, these three add-ons were displaying activity that went far beyond competent. But it seemed to stem from their personalities, rather than their levels, special skills, or equipment.

  “Here I go. I’m going. If you fall in love with me, I’m really sorry.”

  “Whatever, just do it.”

  “Tee-hee. All right, here it comes! In response to everyone’s requests… Please listen! Aurora Heal!!”

  Rainbow light danced wildly, and the wounds of their companions over a wide range in the surrounding area began to recover. The Orc Jellies’ ranged attacks pulled in not just the targeted tank but all the attackers who were close enough to launch close-range strikes with swords and axes. His comrade Federico’s HP was down to about half. Of course, it was Voinen and the other healers’ job to heal them if they could, but in terms of their role, they really had to prioritize the Warrior who was taking all the monsters’ attacks directly.

  In order to fill the hole Voinen had left when he ran after Demiquas to provide support, Tetora had used a big skill that took a long time to chant.

  “Yessss! Aren’t I smart and cute and just totally perfect?!”

  “Yeah, yeah. Your attitude blows, but thanks for the heal! Hiyah!”

  “Concentrate your attacks! Avoid making close-range attacks!”

  Shiroe sent a support spell at Tetora. At the same time, Federico, who’d been freshly healed, returned to the front line.

  Despite the fact that the voices behind him still sounded like they were enjoying themselves, Voinen was desperately casting recovery spells one after another.

  Apparently, these Orc Jellies were pretty bad opponents for the Weapon Attackers and Warriors. Each time they were hit at close range, spray flew, inflicting damage that was almost like a counterstrike. The abnormal statuses and ranged attacks that resulted from their powerful Acid Smoke were threats as well. Just one of them would have been bad enough, but when four or five of them attacked at once, as they were doing now, it was really hard to cope.

  “Demiquas, get back!”

  “Over mooks like these?!”

  As he shouted, Demiquas retreated with Phantom Step. Pungent white smoke was rising thickly from both his arms. The damage to his weapons had to be enormous as well.

  “Dammit, hurry up and heal me!”

  “You don’t have to holler. I can hear you just fine.”

  Voinen began to chant Heal. Demiquas didn’t have much HP left; if he made another charge like this, he’d be unable to fight in no time flat. He’d probably retreated because he understood that, but Voinen didn’t appreciate his cursing and irritated attitude.

  Demiquas probably hadn’t liked his response. Demiquas glared with ferocious eyes and spat, “If you’re hearing me, then get the lead out!”

  Voinen sighed. Good grief.

  True, Demiquas was a pain in the neck.

  As a member of the same party, he wished someone would do something about him.

  If Voinen charged around all on his own the way Demiquas did, the healing work would utterly break down. And yet, since he rushed ahead without a thought for the ranges of Voinen’s spells, their formation got dragged around, and it set them up for tough spots like these.

  Understandably, the guy had died a lot. Because there were always Recovery classes in the area during raids with lots of people, when someone died in combat, it was possible to resurrect them right away. To Voinen and other raid-guild Adventurers, it was something insignificant, like passing out, but even so, while you were dead, you couldn’t do anything. From the perspective of fighting power, dying meant nothing less than lowering the performance of the entire raid unit.

  Lately, as you’d expect, he’d learned, and he’d retreat like this before he died, but in terms of efficiency, Voinen couldn’t approve of this, either. While he was waiting for recovery, the First party was supporting the vanguard. That First party increased their output to make up for the hole left by Demiquas’s retreat.

  In other words, the man’s selfish charges were being shored up by the goodwill and support of those around him. If that broke off, these grandstand plays could easily pull down the entire unit and destroy it.

  Still… Voinen thought as he ran alongside Demiquas. Voinen had layered on Healing Wind and Heartbeat Healing, and Demiquas was returning to the front line as if he were a beast released from a chain.

  Viewed fairly, Demiquas was still extraordinary.

  Their exploration had lasted three weeks, and they’d been deep underground the whole time. They’d fought harsh battles one after another, day after day. They’d never actually been annihilated, but the individual participants had probably died more than ten times each.

  When ordinary people were put in a situation like this, it was perfectly natural for them to get stressed and take it out on the people around them. It was far stranger for Shiroe and the others from Log Horizon to be able to stay cheerful under these extreme circumstances.

  Voinen thought of himself as an elite, particularly when it came to raids.

  He followed the William. He was aware that he was a veteran of hell.

  It wasn’t just Voinen. All the members of Silver Sword thought this way. They prided themselves on being the toughest on the server.

  However, even Silver Sword—a guild that specialized in raids, a guild that had boasted of being the strongest—had been reduced to about forty people, 20 percent of its pre-Catastrophe core members. There were also some who, although still on the register, had withdrawn from the front lines of raids.

  At present, particularly when the Adventurers were challenging a zone whose level matched their own, raids were simply that hard.

  As proof, D.D.D., who’d bragged about being the top guild on the server, was playing around with the combat level-50 goblin conquest at Seventh Fall.

  Voinen and the others thought this was hilarious. The idea of all those level 90s lining up for a level-50 zone… They should call themselves a large-scale-play guild, not a raid guild.

  However, precisely because he had that pride, he cou
ldn’t completely write Demiquas off. The big Monk was dumb, and he didn’t understand teamwork. Since he never listened, he caused trouble for everyone around him. His attitude couldn’t have been worse. He had almost none of the stuff it took to conduct the joint operations known as raids.

  …But he wasn’t a coward.

  In the thick of a level-90 raid, end content that even D.D.D. had backed away from, in the midst of raging death and violence, this insolent Monk never stopped moving. He didn’t hesitate to make contact with monsters. His eyes never flinched away.

  Voinen knew this had roots in Demiquas’s envy of Shiroe and Silver Sword. Even so, this wasn’t the sort of terror that could be overcome with that alone. How could you possibly confront clumps of slime that were several times taller than you were, and magical beasts who devoured your own limbs before your very eyes, on the strength of your pride alone?

  With no help for it, Voinen cast protective spells on himself and Demiquas.

  The situation was bad.

  Their exploration was making no progress. This was probably the toughest battleground on the server, one that was gradually wearing away even Silver Sword’s stoicism. However, he couldn’t leave this rowdy man to die. For now, he just ran, in order to fulfill the heart’s desire of every healer: to prevent damage.

  6

  William, who had the trust of the Silver Sword members, was suffering.

  They’d finished fighting for the day. In a camp that was too full-scale to call temporary, he tossed away a sheaf of papers detailing the results of their exploration to date, kicked back so far in his sailcloth chair that he nearly fell over, and stretched.

  “This ain’t good.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  Shiroe of Log Horizon was there with him. This bespectacled young man drew maps so beautiful that William’s couldn’t begin to compare. William sat with his legs carelessly apart in a wide-open stance, rocking his chair, and sighed. Even he could tell Shiro’s eyebrows were drawn together.

  “About how many more do you think we’ve got?”

  “Let’s see…”

  Shiroe ran a fingertip across a particularly large, illustrated map.

  “Three. No, four.”

  This was the number of estimated boss enemies for the zone.

  There were many different types of raids, and this zone was a typical “explorable” raid dungeon—one that had a set map that wasn’t randomly redrawn every time you entered it. The content in raid dungeons resembled the content of ordinary dungeons, only expanded and reinforced, made over to suit the larger groups associated with raids.

  The dungeon zone was larger than the ones designed for small parties; it had many passages and small rooms, and sometimes there were traps and riddles. There were impressive great halls and caverns at strategic points in that dungeon, and, to protect those strategic points, powerful raid bosses.

  All raid enemies were targets meant to be subjugated by a raid unit. In terms of this zone, since it had been designed to be attempted with twenty-four people, if they’d tried to challenge it with the manpower of a six-person party, they would simply have gotten kicked to pieces. It was bad enough that, even if they went in as a full raid, there was the possibility that they’d be defeated if they got careless. However, with normal raid monsters, Silver Sword was able to steadily continue their exploration. Even up to this point, they’d kept gradually filling in the zone map.

  The problem was the raid bosses. Defeating them would require different tactics from the ones used for normal monsters.

  In this zone, they’d managed to subjugate Vandemie of the First Garden and Elreida of the Fifth Garden. In addition to being powerful, both had had special abilities, and they’d been compelled to fight complicated battles.

  “That’s rough.”

  “Yes, and the battles with the previous two were pretty acrobatic.”

  Raid boss battles always were.

  If all they did was get powerful players together and challenge them, it was hard to even fight a decent battle, let alone win.

  They hadn’t been quite annihilated in either fight, but that only meant there had been no single moment when everyone was dead. They’d retreated more than twenty times, in the sense that of the twenty-four members, several survivors had taken to their heels and resurrected the others in a safe area. Including the resurrections during combat, the members had been rendered unable to fight a considerable number of times.

  Of course, they’d been rewarded in a few ways. They’d obtained lots of high-ranking materials of the sort that could only be acquired on raids, such as Primordial Mud, Variable Hide and Star-Iron Sheet Metal, from the Orc Jellies, Mutant Griffs, Venom Hydrangeas and Minotaur Marauders that appeared along the way. These were drop items that could be used as material by Adventurers with artisan-type abilities when they made items. As material, they resulted in extremely high-performance items, and they were so valuable there was no telling what sort of prices they’d bring.

  In addition, they’d gotten a total of seven powerful fantasy-class equip items from Vandemie of the First Garden and Elreida of the Fifth Garden.

  This sort of equipment had always served as huge motivation for the major raid guilds that competed to be first on the server. In particular, the items they’d acquired this time were all types they’d never seen before. In terms of performance, they were natural extensions of past fantasy-class items, but to Silver Sword, it was more than enough of a military achievement to broadcast.

  Shiroe poured steaming coffee from a rough, twenty-centimeter kettle.

  As he gazed at it, William calculated the remaining days.

  “Ten days…probably isn’t gonna happen.”

  “…”

  What was worrying William was the issue of supplies.

  Each time they fought, the Adventurers’ equipment wore down a little. When they died, it took more damage than usual, and it couldn’t be restored with a resurrection spell. It took constant repairs to keep equipment in proper shape.

  Naturally, this was common sense in Elder Tales, and William had included it in his calculations. On explorable raids like this one, it was an issue that people had been worrying about since the Elder Tales era. Their raid unit included Blacksmiths, Armorsmiths, Tailors, Woodworkers, and more. All major guilds knew that you were supposed to conduct repairs in the spaces between battles.

  However, in order to do that, you needed materials that could be used to make those repairs. Under the circumstances, without fully equipped workshops, they went through the components used in repairs at a furious rate. On top of that, the materials used to repair the equipment owned by members of a top-class combat guild like Silver Sword—in other words, fantasy-class items—were fantasy-class themselves.

  It wasn’t just repairing damaged equipment. The same went for the Crystal Comets William used. These arrows paid out explosive damage, and they were fine articles made by top artisans using fantasy-class materials. Since they were consumables, it was possible to make approximately five hundred of them from the material item, Divine Rainbow Crystal. However, when it came to a series of battles like this one, even five hundred was a trivial amount. Of the nearly ten thousand Crystal Comets he’d prepared, he’d already used more than two thousand. This could be said for all consumable items, including potions, balms, charms, and scrolls.

  In short, raids formed their own unique cycle.

  In order to maintain the equipment acquired in raids, you needed materials acquired in raids, and through them, you gained the right to challenge more difficult raids. If you succeeded at a more difficult challenge, you got equipment whose performance was even higher. However, in order to maintain it, you had to keep attempting very difficult battles.

  In order to balance this cycle, stable, historic raid guilds would regularly conduct raids in which they could procure good materials, even if the difficulty level wasn’t all that high, to replenish their supplies. However, after the Catas
trophe, with the Fairy Rings not functioning correctly, it was hard to make the circuit of the raid zones that were scattered across the world. Even if that had been possible, Silver Sword was an active combat guild. The decision to compromise and go to a tepid zone for the sake of replenishing supplies was repellent to them.

  William had spent the time since the Catastrophe in a whirlwind of activity.

  He didn’t regret it, but even so, it had led to his disgorging the vast amount of material items and supplies that he’d stored up earlier. As long as they had full-raid-class numbers, William prided himself that they were the strongest combat group on the server. However, the state of their coffers was terrible.

  “I have some material I pulled together in Akiba as well.”

  “About how long do you think it’ll last?”

  “Even if we add that, twenty days.”

  Shiroe’s response was also hard to take. From what he’d heard, Log Horizon was a weak guild with just eight members. The fact that a place that tiny had enough to supply Silver Sword’s unit of top elites for twenty days was astonishing all by itself, but even so, it wasn’t enough to get them through the situation. It had taken them three weeks and a lot of trouble to defeat two bosses. It would be hard to do twice that much and defeat four bosses in twenty days. From past experience, bosses got stronger the farther they went.

  There was one other thing William was worried about.

  The cause lay in the young man in front of him.

  Shiroe, who was looking down silently as if to hide his expression, was keeping a lot of secrets.

  To begin with, this zone was unnatural.

  Vandemie of the First Garden.

  Elreida of the Fifth Garden.