The Gold of the Kunie Read online

William hadn’t seen the other bosses, but he could guess their names. They were probably Mezalaclau of the Second Garden, Ibra Habra of the Third Garden, and Tartaulga of the Fourth Garden. The bosses who guarded this zone had the same names and forms as the nightmare superintendents of the Nine Great Gaols of Halos. Of course, they weren’t exactly the same. In the Gaols of Halos—raid content that had been provided with the Sacred Heart expansion pack—they had been called Vandemie of the First Prison and Elreida of the Fifth Prison. They were raid bosses in the shape of a winged serpent and a forgotten white horse. These had reappeared, with their names and shapes slightly changed. Naturally, they were powerful, and their past capture methods had been consigned to oblivion.

  In games, reusing character data wasn’t unusual. This zone was just one of many examples. There must be some kind of background there…assuming this world was a game.

  He didn’t know whether Shiroe was hiding something, or whether he was unable to say it.

  In any case, he was in no position to criticize other people.

  That was William’s honest feeling on the matter.

  He didn’t think they were wrong. Not about having left Akiba, and not about having gone on all those raids in the North. He didn’t think they were wrong, but Silver Sword had put too much distance between itself and a variety of voices. People couldn’t move forward by correctness alone. William hadn’t wanted to know that. He’d wanted to think that simply screaming “We’re the strongest” would be enough. He’d thought that if his friends got cold feet, all he’d have to do to rid them of their unease was raise his voice.

  However, he’d realized that in some cases, it wasn’t enough.

  In the end, maybe William had been wrong, and he just didn’t want to admit it.

  …Wrong to turn down Shiroe’s invitation and reject the Round Table Council outright that day.

  William wanted to talk about this with Shiroe.

  However, right now Shiroe seemed to be harboring some big secret—although William had no idea what it might be—and looked like he was suffering. William wasn’t mature enough to go down on his knees and ask for the answer to his own doubt when Shiroe was like this, and he had no desire to become that sort of adult.

  He felt like making fun of himself for his childish pride. He also felt like turning defiant about it: What’s wrong with that? It’s fine the way it is!

  The conditions of their stores were gradually growing worse, and they were fighting a raid deep underground, where there was nowhere to run. What could he say to his companions from Silver Sword, who were following him through these deteriorating circumstances? He was a game junkie, and the only thing in his entire life that he’d ever put serious effort into was Elder Tales. What could he possibly offer them?

  William thought he was nothing. All he had was empty bravado.

  A child, swinging around that bravado—his one and only weapon—and putting on a bold front. That was him. However, if he had just one weapon, it was only natural for him to use it. As a gamer, William understood that.

  “What do you think, Shiroe?”

  “About what?”

  At that question, William scratched his head roughly.

  He couldn’t answer a question like that.

  In other words, William needed a chance, too: Either to challenge, or to surrender.

  To prove who he was, and who he wanted to be. Was there any difference between Demiquas, who lost his way and picked fights with everything he saw, and Silver Sword?

  And that chance was right in front of him, in the midst of the battle. William had decided this himself.

  For that reason, even if it hurt, the only thing to do was keep going.

  1

  “This ain’t good,” Naotsugu muttered.

  He was wiping the grime off Armor of Silver Oath and Guard of Lionheart with a rag he’d taken out of his pack. All the equipment had been rinsed off with a shower from an Undine that a Summoner had brought to life a minute ago. Some monsters’ body fluids damaged equipment; after a battle, it was vital to wash it well.

  “What ‘ain’t good,’ Naotsugu?”

  Tetora was right next to him, stooping low to wash her fancy baton.

  They were both members of the Second party, and lately they often acted as a team. Demiquas was temperamental and always on his own, while Voinen and Federico were members of Silver Sword; they often sent messages to and worked with other teams. Shiroe had settled into the position of adviser or counselor for this full raid, and he was always being called out by William.

  That meant that, by necessity, Naotsugu often ended up with Tetora.

  “Could it be that the bloodstains won’t come out no matter how much you wash them? Is it a curse?”

  “Y’know, for someone who calls herself an idol, you say some pretty graphic stuff.”

  “Charismatic individuals like me are very popular just as we are. Because we’re cute.”

  “Is-that-right city.”

  The day’s exploration wasn’t over yet. It was past noon, so they’d taken a break and were getting ready to eat. They were cleaning their equipment, in part because it needed cleaning, but at least half because they were bored.

  “I wasn’t talking about the equipment.”

  “I see. Was I on your mind, perhaps?”

  “That’d be a no.”

  Naotsugu denied it bluntly.

  If he had to say whether he liked her or hated her, Naotsugu thought that Tetora would have to go in the “like” category.

  Talking to her was just plain easy, and it never made him tired. He thought she was one of the good guys, especially when they were having stupid conversations like this one. Conversations when they just horsed around and didn’t use their brains at all were, in a way, pure refreshment. Naotsugu thought that dumb stuff had great healing properties. It wasn’t because of his interests that he tried to get a laugh by saying “panties” all the time.

  “You don’t look very cheerful. Want to see my panties?”

  “Nope.”

  “I wonder if I should have gone with a miniskirt instead of hot pants.”

  “You get away from there, you hear?”

  “No, if anything, I’m going to tease you tenaciously.”

  Keh-heh-heh-heh. Tetora cuddled up to Naotsugu with her usual triumphant smile, a smile that made it look as if she were plotting something. Naotsugu promptly tore her away with a “Gah, get off, yech.” Despite what he’d just said, having her play with him like this was a problem. Tetora was small, and with her agility and flexibility, she leapt right in close to him before he knew it. He couldn’t strike back with force, so he was constantly losing the initiative.

  Tetora was aware of Naotsugu’s hesitation when she came to tease him. In other words, it was harassment. It was spiteful. The fact that she knew she was cute made it vicious.

  “That’s generally how it is, you know. Seeing panties would make you happy, wouldn’t it?”

  “Uh…huh?”

  She’d said the words so naturally that Naotsugu wasn’t able to find a good retort.

  “You’d think, ‘Ah man! Today’s my lucky day,’ and things like that, wouldn’t you? When they belong to a girl as cute as I am, I think it would probably put you in the mood to work hard all day, or to high-five the gods.”

  Tetora’s tone wasn’t especially teasing. She was speaking genuinely, and surface aside, Naotsugu was forced to agree with her. He thought she’d probably nailed it. Although, of course, he didn’t let it show.

  “Yeah, but seriously, kid—”

  “I understand those feelings better than anyone! I really must be a natural-born idol! Go ahead and let your heart flutter!”

  As Naotsugu watched Tetora say this, snorting and looking proud of herself, he thought, This one’s a big shot. Setting all the other little details aside, this healer with the triumphant face had a really fantastic smile.

  That was a big virtue. Naotsugu firmly believed that
smiling was one of the best presents a girl could give to the people around her.

  But when Tetora messed with him this way, he remembered Marielle.

  The smile was what did it.

  And it was frequent. However, even when Tetora wasn’t there, he recalled Marielle quite a bit.

  It definitely wasn’t because he wanted that soft, squishy, oppressive feeling that showed up when he did so, but he did think that was a problem all on its own.

  If this had been the old Earth, things would have been easier. Naotsugu had landed a steady job, and his life had just settled down. He’d even been without a girlfriend for quite a long time, so there wouldn’t have been any obstacles. Life as an Adventurer was fun and seemed worthwhile, but it also felt too unstable to think about “that sort of thing.” Adventuring was a situation that was constantly out of his control. And yet, Marielle’s feelings were important, too.

  They say it isn’t good to take too much time, either, Naotsugu thought, and scratched his cheek.

  * * *

  “Waaaaaaugh! That’s not it!”

  “Agh?! Why d’you yell all of a sudden?!”

  Tetora, who’d been creeping up on Naotsugu again, was startled, and she banged her small rump on the ruin’s cold stone floor. Naotsugu waved his hands to gloss things over: “That’s not it, it’s not like that. I’m sorry, though.” He lent her a hand and helped her up.

  As if to hide what he’d been thinking, Naotsugu muttered, “Some lives are just like that, eh?”

  “Naotsugu, you look like a grade-school kid who told his gorgeous teacher he liked her on his test, then got busted when his classmates saw it.”

  “What’s with that weirdly specific comment?!”

  “Dweh-heh-heh-heh. And? Something got you down?”

  Tetora’s expression seemed to say, I’m not letting you get away, but as far as Naotsugu was concerned, having her pursue that topic was a huge help. As a result, he went along with her misunderstanding.

  “Yeah, actually, it’s about Shiro.” He pulled a particularly sour expression.

  Tetora’s triumphant face shone even brighter. It probably meant, That’s just like me! I asked a critical question! I’m so smart! As Tetora puffed out her chest for absolutely no reason, she looked incredibly dumb.

  …Well. Naotsugu couldn’t just let Tetora soothe him like this.

  It was true that something was on his mind, but he wasn’t sure how to talk about it.

  “Hey. Food.”

  Federico had approached just then, and he held boxlike dishes out to them. They were filled with generous helpings of brown stew and asparagus. Since Naotsugu had been thinking, he was a bit late in noticing, but Tetora immediately accepted hers with a beaming smile and a “Thank you, Federico!”

  As befitted someone who called herself an idol, Tetora was popular. The raid members had accepted her in no time and made a pet of her. She even seemed to have a few actual fans.

  As proof, a smile appeared on Federico’s bearded face as well, and he said, “Nah, it’s fine.” From the way he’d handed them their portions and gone away, he seemed as if he might be a lot easier to get along with than his appearance suggested. He was probably going to deliver Demiquas’s and Voinen’s portions as well. The pair from Silver Sword willingly took on odd jobs like this. You really can’t trust advance reviews, Naotsugu thought.

  “Let’s hurry and eat, Naotsugu. Then you’re going to tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “Yeah.”

  Answering vaguely, Naotsugu looked around for a good place to sit.

  They were in one of the countless small rooms in the Abyssal Shaft zone. The room was “small” only in comparison to the scale of the dungeon; it was actually about fifteen meters square, a space roughly the size of a smallish gymnasium, cut into a rectangle. There were carvings on the enormous pillars, although they weren’t ornate, and it had the atmosphere of some kind of palace or religious building. Its high, barrel-shaped ceiling gave off a faint light.

  There had been tons of rooms that looked like this space in the surrounding area. In the hours since they’d begun their exploration that day, they’d made an exhaustive search of those compartments, and had continued to exterminate any monsters that appeared.

  The pair sat down, using a granite pillar that had crumbled just the right way as a bench.

  “Thanks for the food.”

  “Thanks for the foooood!”

  Astonishingly large chunks of meat peeked out of the stew they’d been given. As he stuffed his face with it, Naotsugu brooded. This was pretty hard to explain. It was a fact that Shiroe was at the heart of the problem, but the bit about things being “bothersome” was just a feeling.

  If he extracted the issue simply, it was that Shiroe seemed to be suffering somehow.

  However, the guy known as Shiroe was a natural worrier, and he tended to take on a lot of things and be hard-pressed to keep up with his work. Possibly because of that, to people besides Naotsugu, apparently Shiroe always looked slightly troubled and pained.

  Naotsugu didn’t think that was true, however.

  Even if his expression looked pinched, Shiroe was entertained by all sorts of things, and he often cut corners and slacked off. He even sulked and went to sleep at his desk fairly frequently.

  Still, to the multitudes that weren’t close to him, Shiroe always seemed to be dealing with a tough problem, and his weakness was that even when he really was having trouble, no one understood. Shiroe was always hemming and groaning to himself, but even so, in the end, he generally solved the problem, and so it was hard to register his limits, the things he really couldn’t do anything about all by himself. It was even harder to explain this to other people.

  After all, even Naotsugu couldn’t explain how to tell what sort of stern expression was only a pose, and what sort of expression meant he was actually in trouble. Naotsugu knew…but only vaguely.

  Right now, Shiroe was probably suffering a lot more than he appeared to be.

  However, even that was only a hazy feeling.

  He couldn’t explain it.

  “See, Shiro’s…” Slowly, Naotsugu began to speak. “He sort of looks like he’s maybe in trouble.”

  “‘Maybe’?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then let’s go save him. Okay?”

  Tetora, who’d skewered a piece of asparagus with her fork, made a snap decision.

  Don’t say it like it’s easy ’cos it ain’t, Naotsugu huffed.

  “People call that four-eyes ‘Machiavelli’ and other stuff, but he’s not crafty so much as he’s a show-off. He’s thinking, ‘Is it all right for me to call for help? Is it okay for me to do a job like this?’ Stuff like that.”

  “I see. At heart, he’s a hermit.”

  “Yeah, he’s a hermit. There’s no denying that.”

  “He needs an idol!”

  “I’m pretty sure he’s okay there.”

  “Then why did he come all the way out to this hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere?”

  Naotsugu almost answered, Because he needs money, duh, but then he realized that that wouldn’t be an answer at all. Shiroe wasn’t the type who found happiness in accumulating money so he could stare at it. Money was a tool to use for some other purpose. It had been that way during the Crescent Moon incident, too. That prompted the question, In that case, what’s he going to use it on this time? but come to think of it, Naotsugu didn’t know the answer to that.

  During the Round Table Council affair, it had been used to buy up the zone that housed the bank. However, obtaining the bank hadn’t been Shiroe’s objective, either. He’d only needed a weapon, in order to get the Adventurers of Akiba to the negotiating table.

  What would he use the money for when he got it? What did he intend to do by using it that way? Now that he thought about it, Naotsugu hadn’t heard about any of that from Shiroe. Shiroe was a close friend, and he could trust him even without knowing. However, when he had
to explain it to a third party—Tetora—it was a problem.

  Reason, reason…hm…

  Naotsugu racked his brains, and then the words came to him, like a divine revelation.

  “I’m just guessing, but I think it’s to protect his house.”

  “His house?”

  “I’m not talking about an actual, physical building. I mean the place he lives.”

  “In other words, his guild?”

  “I don’t think it’s just the guild. I don’t really know, but…”

  Chewing on a piece of bread he’d soaked in his stew, Naotsugu kept talking, saying things as they came to him.

  “If we’re going to live, we need food and a roof over our heads, stuff like that. Then we need people. No matter what, we need a place where we can be with the people we’re close to. In the old world, that was probably family, and in this world, it’s the people in our groups and our guilds.”

  Over the past six months, Naotsugu had watched Marielle and the Crescent Moon League.

  A place where everyone could feel at ease. A place where they woke up, did their jobs, had dinner, made a racket together, and told each other We made it through another day. Good night!

  The importance of it, and its warmth, and the kind smiles that supported it.

  “But see, even things like that need a place to belong.”

  “Huh?”

  Tetora didn’t get it, and Naotsugu kept talking, as if he was trying to persuade her. He was pulling things even he didn’t know from some place deep inside himself.

  “It’s like a house for our houses. In other words, it’s Akiba. You can’t just have your own guild, all by itself, in an empty world. Because, see, it’s linked to all sorts of other stuff. Even guilds need a place to belong. Duties, and companion guilds… It’s connected to other places like those, and I don’t really know how to put it, but we’ve got to take care of things like that.”

  That was probably the case.

  It was also likely the reason that Shiroe had spoken so desperately during the establishment of the Round Table Council.