The Larks Take Flight Read online

  Lately, it seemed as though Naotsugu, Touya, and Rundelhaus (and sometimes Nyanta) had been doing some sort of male bonding. They called it “special training.” It sounded somewhat juvenile, but Isuzu and Minori were pretending not to notice it. Rundelhaus and Touya went to all sorts of places, following Naotsugu’s orders, and they often came back home grinning and covered in mud. Whenever that happened, Minori and Isuzu smiled wryly and got the bath ready.

  Akatsuki was a quiet, acerbic, enigmatic woman. Maybe she was shy: When they tried to talk to her, her replies were often curt. When Isuzu had first joined the guild, she’d sometimes felt a little uncomfortable around her. Still, deep down, she was a kind person with a hidden sense of humor. Not only did she love laundry and house cleaning, she had a habit of doing it stealthily, on a large scale, without help. If they looked away for a moment, and then all the sheets in the guild were abruptly fluttering on the veranda, it was Akatsuki’s doing.

  After New Year’s, a Cleric named Tetora had joined Log Horizon. Tetora seemed to be an outgoing person, and had hugged Isuzu the first time they met. It wasn’t just Isuzu. Except for Akatsuki, who’d hastily evaded, everybody got a hug. Before anyone knew what was happening, the cheerful, vivacious Cleric had become the life of the party at their guild.

  Meanwhile, the one Isuzu hadn’t really understood for a long time was the guild master, Shiroe.

  During meals, he tended to space out or hand seasonings or small plates around to everyone, and she couldn’t see anything special about him. When he napped on the sofa in the living room, he seemed completely worn out. When they cleaned or went shopping, Naotsugu and Akatsuki tended to be mean to him, telling him, “You’ll be useless, go to your room.”

  When she listened to the rumors in town, she heard that his eyes looked mean, that he was a sinister strategist, a demon who held Akiba’s fate in his hands, the mastermind behind the Round Table Council—in other words, nothing good. Isuzu thought he had mean eyes, too, but even she thought a lot of what she heard about him was questionable.

  If that had been all, it would have been one thing. However, Isuzu’s friend Minori had known Shiroe longer than Isuzu had, and according to her, he was really a nice guy. He was kind, good at looking after others, intelligent, and chivalrous, he could do anything, and she absolutely adored him— She’d really said that.

  It was such a confused portrait that it would have been easy to think there were three different Shiroes who appeared in a daily rotation.

  Isuzu’s internal image of Shiroe was the young man who’d stood at that crossroads in Choushi, his face stern. The fact that he’d seemed like a judge to her (although she’d never seen a real judge) was a bit of a secret. It was undeniably true that he’d saved Rundelhaus, and she thought he was an amazing person for that.

  However, she’d first felt a kind of affection for Shiroe when, one day, Nyanta had told her, “Shiroecchi has ‘oldest-son syndrome.’” Shiroe was an unbelievably hard worker to an extreme degree. In addition, she thought that while there were areas in which he displayed great talent, he could be clumsy about other things.

  After she’d come to understand Shiroe a little, Isuzu was able to genuinely support Minori.

  In this way, Isuzu and Log Horizon had slowly grown closer, and time went on.

  Isuzu thought that “every day” was a bit of a tyrant.

  Even if they did nothing, human bellies grew empty morning, noon, and night.

  When their stomachs were empty, they needed food, and they had to make it. Among its members, Log Horizon had Nyanta, who had a Chef subclass, but that didn’t make it all right to force all the meal prep onto him.

  In the first place, in this other world, preparing meals was hard work. It wasn’t brimming over with convenient cut vegetables and seasonings and instant foodstuffs, the way their old world had been. If they wanted to make something a bit elaborate, the preparations could easily turn into a full day’s work. Even when it came to buying the ingredients, it wasn’t possible to turn to online supermarket delivery services.

  It wouldn’t have been fair to leave all that hard work to Nyanta. At Log Horizon, breakfasts were always made in advance so that they wouldn’t have to cook every morning, and twice a week, they’d set designated “Captain Nyanta’s Rest Days.”

  The fact that meal prep took work was a problem every guild shared, and the most common shops in Akiba were the type that handled food and drink. There were lots of soup and set meal establishments where people could just drop in, eat, and leave. Maybe it was because this was a town of gamers. Many restaurants served stick-to-your-ribs dishes with satisfying quality and portion sizes, and there were also candy stores, portable street stalls, and shops that sold take-out snacks. There were only a handful of super-high-class restaurants and the sort of fashionable places that could be used for dates.

  There had been a lot of shops that sold side dishes since the early days, but Shopping District 8 had taken the lead and created a street stall bazaar, and now that they’d built a shopping street mall under the elevated tracks in the ruins of Akiba Station, it was possible to relax and buy all sorts of flavors.

  On Captain Nyanta’s Rest Days, the guild members bought side dishes at shops like these or they ate out.

  This custom of eating out had changed, very slightly, starting around Snowfell, the winter festival held to celebrate the New Year.

  After Isuzu had given an impromptu performance at Bloom Hall, she’d been scouted, and now, about once a week, she performed small gigs like the one held today.

  Bard abilities didn’t correct or improve performance and singing. However, limits were placed on the abilities of Adventurers who weren’t Bards and didn’t have a similar subclass. No matter how skilled they were at performing, there was a possibility that off-key notes would pop out on their own.

  If they chose a subclass like Songstress, they could improve their singing by practicing, and the ability limits wouldn’t hold them back. Because Bards could lift the restrictions on the people around them as well, when Isuzu took the stage, she often asked Touya, Minori, or Serara to take care of the rhythm or secondary instruments for her. Since the puppy-dog prince unfortunately had no musical aptitude of his own, he mostly handled the cheering.

  “It’s too bad Minori couldn’t come, too.”

  “Mm, yes, mew said it.”

  “No help for that. Minori’s got a part-time job.”

  “…At Calasin’s place, wasn’t it?”

  “Mademoiselle Minori is a career woman, then.”

  “Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

  “She’ll be done soon, though, won’t she?”

  “I bet she’ll come back with Mr. Shiroe.”

  The beat of her heart, which had been turbocharged from soaking in the vortex of sound, was soothed by her talking friends who walked ahead. Yet her heart was slowly returning to normal, accompanied by a lonely feeling, as if a dream were slipping away. Even then, there was not enough happiness to erase that fleeting worry.

  I can’t be a professional like my dad, but playing the lute just for fun once in a while is nice.

  Standing on a stage had made her acutely aware of one thing.

  Apparently, Isuzu liked music far more than she had thought. She stroked the lute she held as if it was precious to her. Its ripe, rounded body was the resonance chamber. Isuzu had played the wood bass, but she thought the lute had a delicacy and an antique atmosphere that the wood bass lacked.

  Dweh-heh-heh…

  The wood bass she used to use had been mass-produced (but even so, she’d thought it was shockingly expensive as a high schooler), but this lute was Marielle’s creation, one of a kind. There were elegant mother-of-pearl inlays made from the opalescent interiors of shells on either side of the strings. Isuzu had modified it here and there after they’d given it to her, but the pattern looked like a dolphin, and she really liked it.

  She firmly believed that any rocker worthy of the name needed a fa
vorite instrument, and this lute, Flying Dolphin, was just that.

  “What’s up, Isuzu-sis?”

  “Uhn?”

  “Mademoiselle Isuzuuu.”

  When Isuzu looked up, everyone had gathered around her.

  “Huh? What?”

  “You were smirking, Isuzu.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “She was smiling.”

  Isuzu put her hands to her cheeks, wondering if she really had been making that sort of face. Her flushed cheeks did seem to be smiling.

  “Mademoiselle Isuzu is still excited, you see.”

  “Rudy, seriously, that’s not it at all!”

  Isuzu raised her voice, leaning in close to him. With a smile that managed to be mildly appalled and yet kindly at the same time, Rundelhaus looked to the people around him for help. At that, Touya responded, “You really were awesome, Isuzu.”

  “No, I wasn’t, all right? That wasn’t anything impressive. There were instruments at my house when I was a kid, so I can play a little, that’s all.”

  “That isn’t true, mew know. Everyone looked happy.”

  Besides Serara, who was smiling and agreeing, even Nyanta complimented Isuzu, and her face went bright red. Then Rundelhaus, who was supposed to be her ally, hit her with an additional blow:

  “Mademoiselle Isuzu is an artiste, a veritable sylph! Her exquisite melodies are a benediction to this town’s nights. If she’s a foot, even the journey on which we embark next week will be filled with cheer… Hm? What’s the matter, Mademoiselle Isuzu?”

  “Rudy. I. Swear. You’re such a— How can you say things like that with a straight face?!”

  Unable to stand the embarrassment, Isuzu proceeded to chase Rundelhaus around.

  She was happy, but she couldn’t look any of them in the face. In the cold night air, the game of chase lasted until they reached the guild house.

  3

  In the six months since the Catastrophe, the most-renovated building in Akiba’s cluster of ruins was the guild center.

  The first floor held the guild reception desk, the bank, and halls. Floors two through six looked like hotel corridors: They were lined with teleportation doors that led to guild halls, which were rented to different outfits. On the fourteenth floor was the Ruquinjé conference hall, which had been used during the establishment of the Round Table Council.

  From the seventh floor on up, the building had once been like a rental space with no tenants. In the game of Elder Tales, the space had had no purpose, but of course, that was immediately after the Catastrophe. After the Round Table Council had been established, this building had become its headquarters, and the empty space—now valuable—was being repurposed for various things.

  During the Libra Festival, the Production Guild Liaison Committee had been created, and many other groups related to the Round Table Council had subsequently set up their offices here. Although the Round Table Council was Akiba’s organization of self-governance, even the most diplomatic person couldn’t have called its ability to govern “strong.” The Council itself held only modest authority, and its capacity for practical business was low as well.

  Even so, the Round Table Council was managing to govern Akiba anyway, for a variety of reasons: The members of the major guilds that participated in it made up a large percentage of Akiba’s population; the Council had the trust of Akiba’s residents; the people who lived in the town were former Net gamers and didn’t have high expectations for government institutions; and the town had an energetic volunteer culture made up of altruistic citizens.

  In the first place, the town of Akiba was bursting with the spirit of freedom. In this world, as long as all you wanted to do was live, life wasn’t that hard in either military or economic terms, and so the residents of Akiba spent their days any way they pleased. Those who wanted to hunt went to the city’s outskirts, residents who wanted to manufacture holed up in their studios, and citizens who wanted to conduct sales and interact ran shops.

  The general view among the Akiba’s residents indicated, as long as the self-governing body didn’t interfere with what individuals wanted to do, that was fine.

  Of course, this was how things appeared to the citizens, but in fact, the Round Table Council had more duties than most imagined. The people might have thought that as long as they could do what they wanted, nothing else mattered, but even when it came to things like priority use regarding a ruin that people wanted for shop supplies, it was common for demands from multiple residents to clash.

  Processing a vast number of incidents, each of which was trivial in and of itself, was the fate of government organizations, and the RTC was no exception.

  “Yo, Machiavelli. I’m done over here.”

  “So am I, Isaac.”

  The two men, who had installed themselves in a corner of a brightly lit cafeteria in the guild center’s first basement, congratulated each other on their strenuous efforts. They were Shiroe, guild master of Log Horizon, and Isaac, guild master of the Knights of the Black Sword.

  They called the place a “basement cafeteria,” but strictly speaking, it was closer to a shared space where people could eat and drink. The light of Firefly Lamps poured down from the high ceiling, and the spick-and-span tables were arranged in a geometric pattern, split into tables for four and tables for two. The space was divided into several areas, and there were individual rooms, including small meeting rooms, farther back.

  Four restaurants that shared two kitchens sold their food here. Buyers carried purchased meals to the tables and ate in peace.

  Shiroe and Isaac’s group was camped at a secluded table for eight.

  Maps, documents, and writing implements were spread over the table, and a variety of tools and measuring instruments spilled out of the bags at their feet. They were clearly monopolizing the table—something that shouldn’t be done at a restaurant—but this wasn’t the first time it had happened, and everyone was used to it.

  “What are you saying? I’m the one who organized most of the Black Sword’s materials.”

  The young man who spoke to Isaac looked mildly appalled, and his shoulders slumped. It was Isaac’s aide, Lezarik. Cracking a macho smile, Isaac dodged the comment, telling him, “Don’t bring up fiddly little details like that.” As you’d expect, Isaac wasn’t wearing his habitual armor today. He was in his Round Table Council uniform, and he’d thrown a gray coat over it like a robe.

  Shiroe thought that he seemed to like the Council uniform quite a bit.

  For his part, Shiroe was wearing a turtleneck, as usual. When one was carrying around documents or doing clerical work, comfortable clothes were best.

  Shiroe had been working with Isaac a lot lately, but Isaac wasn’t an office-jockey type. When he was in his office, he always tried to make a break for it, so whenever Shiroe needed to meet him or draft papers with him, they always ended up in a restaurant or a tent somewhere.

  Since Akiba’s restaurants were trying to do business, camping out in one of them would have prickled their consciences, so in that sense, the shared space in the guild center basement was a boon to Shiroe and the others.

  “Not that I really get it, but is this okay?” Isaac asked.

  “Yes, that’s fine. I’m sorry to ask you to lead like this,” Shiroe answered.

  “Nah, no prob there, but—”

  “Our dear Isaac may not seem like it, but he’s looking forward to it,” Lezarik interjected.

  “Hey, loser. Don’t go saying stuff like that. And don’t call me ‘dear.’”

  Chuckling at the pair’s squabble, Shiroe sorted the unnecessary documents.

  “But, man… To think we’d be drilling knight brigades after the world got like this…”

  “The Black Sword is a knight brigade, too, you know.”

  “Well, yeah, but…” Isaac grumbled, but his face wasn’t that gloomy. He was eyeing the document he’d picked up as if it intrigued him. The paper read, FIRST PEOPLE OF THE EARTH KNIGHTS’ D
RILL GUIDELINES.

  “As I mentioned during the meeting, it’s also to promote friendly relations,” Shiroe continued.

  “Yeah, but we can’t just do it with no goal,” Isaac whined. “They should level up a little.”

  “If we can manage to get them two or three levels higher… Well, I suppose we should take it slow,” Shiroe answered without looking up, straightening the documents.

  He’d asked the Knights of the Black Sword to run a drill in the City of Maihama. Naturally, the drill was intended for People of the Earth knights. It wasn’t limited to the domain of Maihama; there would be participants from other lords’ brigades as well, so it wasn’t specifically for the Maihama troupe. The official reason was to provide training for all People of the Earth in Eastal, the League of Free Cities.

  “For long-term training, those people ain’t asking for much,” Isaac muttered.

  “We’re dealing with People of the Earth. We can’t push them too hard.”

  “Seriously? Hey.”

  When Shiroe responded in the negative, Isaac turned to the aide who stood behind him. “Were you planning on power leveling?” Lezarik asked.

  “Power leveling” was a gaming term that meant boosting one’s level very rapidly, half by force. By providing a high-level leader who took players through an unbroken series of battles against monsters with lots of experience points, low-level members of the party—who followed at a safe distance—gained massive amounts of EXP. Since it was a way to level up efficiently in very little time, it was a routine sight in MMO games.

  “Power leveling would be a problem. They wouldn’t gain any actual skills that way.”

  On the other hand, as Shiroe had pointed out, quite a lot people were opposed to the idea. Power leveling gave you experience points and levels. However, the growth happened fast, and your physical and combat abilities didn’t get intensive training. Even if your attack power, endurance, and other physical abilities increased, you didn’t learn tactics or how to fight, and that was damaging.