The Gold of the Kunie Read online

  …This is rather, erm…

  Shiroe felt that, frankly, this was a problem.

  To begin with, he’d anticipated that negotiating with the Kunie clan would be difficult.

  At first, all Shiroe had known about this mysterious clan was that they ran the bank. The bank was one of the convenient functions available to Elder Tales players, a service that provided storage for items and cash. Once deposited in the bank, these things could be withdrawn from any bank in Yamato, not just from the specific branch that had accepted them.

  The Kunie clan had a transference technique that was different from the Call of Home spell and the intercity gates the Adventurers used, and banking wasn’t the only service they provided.

  A home delivery service that carried letters and parcels from one individual to another, a bazaar service that made it possible to buy and sell all sorts of items… They handled a wide variety of things. The guard systems established in most towns were also administered by the Kunie clan.

  The Elder Tales players—or, after the Catastrophe, the Adventurers—took the existence of these services for granted. They seemed to be part of the public infrastructure. When, during the establishment of the Round Table Council, Shiroe had said that the Adventurers couldn’t live without the support of the People of the Earth, he’d had this clan in mind.

  Of course, at the time, he hadn’t known that these services were provided by the mysterious Kunie clan.

  After the formation of the Round Table Council, the Council—and mainly Shiroe—had attempted to contact the Kunie clan. They’d managed it rather easily, and that was when he’d made the acquaintance of Kinjo, the person in charge of activities in Akiba. However, they hadn’t been able to advance beyond that point.

  They’d learned that the Kunie clan provided a variety of services in the region of Yamato. They’d also learned that these services were indispensible to the Adventurers. They’d managed to formally greet Kinjo, the Kunie representative in Akiba… But that was as far as they’d gotten.

  Kinjo hadn’t openly ignored them or shown clear animosity, but he’d rejected all of Shiroe’s probes with his serene smile and eloquent tongue.

  In any case, as Shiroe had thought previously, while the Adventurers couldn’t live without the People of the Earth, the People of the Earth would probably manage to get by without the Adventurers. In this world where brutal monsters reigned, they might not be able to prosper they way they would have on Earth proper, but even so, if they used noncombat zones and magic technology, they’d be able to survive. The Kunie clan was a prime example.

  Even if the Adventurers disappeared, the Kunie clan wouldn’t fall. That, more than anything else, meant the cards available for Shiroe to negotiate with were extremely limited.

  Even so, Shiroe had continued to gather information in an attempt to acquire ammunition of some sort, and the person he’d dealt with had been Kinjo, who lived in Akiba. No doubt this young man who gave the impression of a seasoned veteran had picked up on Shiroe’s intent; he’d kept intel on the Kunie clan inaccessible. The clan’s organization and actual abilities, their hidden knowledge, their headquarters, ideas, objectives—any and all information.

  Shiroe had gotten most of the knowledge he currently had regarding the Kunie clan from Li Gan, rather than Kinjo.

  “This is Li Gan. The Sage. Do you know of him?”

  “Yes, of course. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I am Kinjo, and I serve as the contact for the Kunie clan.”

  “Charmed, charmed. To think I’d have the privilege of meeting a member of the Kunie…”

  Li Gan waved a hand in response to Kinjo’s greeting, answering with a smile.

  Kinjo also smiled, thinly.

  “This is quite the unusual day, isn’t it? I’ve managed to encounter both Master Shiroe of Log Horizon, the great mage of the Debauchery Tea Party and representative of the Adventurers, and Master Li Gan, the Sage of Miral Lake. It is an honor to have been invited to participate in this historic occasion, Master Shiroe. There are few in the history of the Kunie who have been privileged to such glory. No doubt even my great predecessors never dreamed such a day would come.”

  Kinjo’s response troubled Shiroe.

  Kinjo certainly wasn’t hostile to Shiroe and the other Adventurers. He wasn’t silent, and it wasn’t that he didn’t understand what they said. He simply refused to disclose information he didn’t wish revealed, and he camouflaged even that refusal with this sort of theatrical verbosity.

  Shiroe felt like sighing over the coming negotiations. He’d personally sent a request to the Kunie clan of Akiba—in other words, through Kinjo—and had asked to speak to a responsible person in the clan, but he’d never imagined that the man himself would come all this way into the mountains of Ouu.

  At that point, a different possibility occurred to Shiroe. However, even during the few moments he spent examining it, the terribly cheerful Li Gan had continued conversing with their guest.

  “Your presence has made this splendid occasion even more miraculous. The Kunie… They are a mysterious clan. A clan that supports the countries of Yamato from the shadows, the organization that preserves wisdom of the ancient civilization that once wielded enormous magical power. And you, Master Kinjo, are their leader. I can’t tell you how that raises my expectations.”

  “Your expectations?”

  “Yes. Master Shiroe here is a veritable jack-in-the-box, you see.”

  “Oho. Is he, then!”

  I wish you wouldn’t give me impossible setups.

  Shiroe glanced at Li Gan, saturating the look with that emotion, but the man’s familiar, gaunt face wore a smile brimming with curiosity.

  It wasn’t that he hadn’t noticed. Even if Shiroe was in trouble, this droll People of the Earth sage simply didn’t intend to save him.

  “Um, ah…”

  “Heh-heh-heh-heh.”

  Glaring at Li Gan, who was chuckling, Shiroe began the negotiations.

  “Kinjo, the request I’d like to make was outlined in my letter.”

  “To arrange for funds, you mean? For a loan?”

  It was trivial.

  He was asking for money.

  “That’s right. I’m glad we’ve managed to understand each other so quickly.”

  “Yes. That’s saved some trouble, hasn’t it?”

  “I’m much obliged.”

  Shiroe would have preferred to hold these negotiations in Akiba. Now, with Krusty and the other major members of the Round Table Council off conquering Seventh Fall, the town of Akiba was quite vulnerable, and Shiroe himself had a premonition of trouble as well. Since Soujirou had stayed there, he thought things would work out somehow, no matter what happened, but even so, he hadn’t wanted to leave.

  He’d come here because Kinjo hadn’t let him make that proposal. It wasn’t that Kinjo had turned him down. It was more accurate to say he’d been evasive, letting any requests get lost in light conversation, and had left the matter unsettled. Shiroe was only a university student, and when it came to the art of negotiation, he couldn’t win against a professional.

  The fact that Kinjo had easily moved on to the main topic this time was unexpected, but it was also welcome.

  “No, no, it isn’t anything to bother yourself about. Saving trouble. That’s very important. To the Kunie clan, it’s very important indeed.”

  “I see…”

  “You came here because you knew of the Kunie village, correct?”

  “That’s right. I heard about it from Li Gan.”

  “Oho. So Miral Lake had a record like that… I seem to have underestimated him slightly.”

  “I thought it would be good form.”

  Shiroe frowned a little as he responded.

  It hadn’t been about good form at all.

  It had been one of the cards he’d played after learning that the Kunie clan headquarters was in this region, information obtained from his research of old documents with Li Gan. The statement t
hat they knew the location of their headquarters was, essentially, intimidation. This made Shiroe uncomfortable. He didn’t reject the method, and he didn’t intend to hesitate, but that didn’t mean he was doing it happily.

  During the Round Table Council affair, he’d been irritated.

  He’d wanted to yell Enough already! at the big guilds, who were just sitting by idly and eying the problem, and so he simply hadn’t worried about whether this way of doing things was a threat or intimidation.

  However, the Kunie clan was only carrying out its duty, just as it had always done.

  “As it is a request from you, Master Shiroe of the Round Table Council, we would dearly love to accommodate it, but I’m afraid we are unable to do so.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because it would violate a contract that has been in effect since the time of our progenitor.”

  At that answer, Shiroe sighed.

  He’d known from the beginning that these negotiations would be difficult. It was why he’d asked Li Gan for assistance, and why he’d looked into a variety of things beforehand. There wasn’t a single recorded instance of the Kunie clan’s bank providing funds to an external party, either through investment or through financing. All they did was pay out money that had been deposited with them. That was it.

  Shiroe remembered the chats he’d had with Kinjo in Akiba. Capital-to-asset ratios, credit limits, trust—to Shiroe and the others, these were common banking terms, but they hadn’t gotten through to Kinjo. Of course, when Shiroe had explained them to him, he’d understood what the words meant, but that was all.

  The facility known as the bank in Akiba wasn’t similar to the institutions they’d had on Earth. That was the conclusion Shiroe and the others had reached. As a facility, it would have been more accurate to call it a depository with a transfer service; the goal of the organization wasn’t finance.

  …In that case, something was odd.

  Say he conceded that there was no bank in this world. It was still unnatural that there was no moneylending. Shiroe wasn’t an expert, so he didn’t know all that much about it, but although banks were one thing, the history of moneylending was a long one. He thought he remembered hearing that they’d had it in Rome, and as a country, Rome had existed since before 1 AD. This world was styled after the Middle Ages. If it didn’t have moneylending, its economic development was too rudimentary.

  When he’d asked Li Gan about this, he’d only looked mystified, and Shiroe hadn’t been able to get a clear answer out of him. According to Elissa, a Person of the Earth, it seemed as though aristocrats sometimes made loans to lower-ranking nobles and citizens of their domains, but it was rare, and no similar lending or borrowing was seen among the common people.

  As a result, merchants didn’t have much influence in this world. Most buying and selling took place between nobles, and merchants were no more than intermediaries and carriers. There were also some People of the Earth who seemed to be half noble and half merchant.

  In addition, royals and the nobility weren’t the source of trust in the currency here.

  In the first place, the rulers—in the form of the royals and aristocrats—didn’t mint the currency. It was “found” when monsters were defeated. The more monsters that were subjugated, the more currency came into circulation in the markets; in other words, the money supply increased. Apparently, the system on Earth in which nations backed trust in currency didn’t apply here.

  In that case, where was the trust?

  In universality.

  There was one single currency in circulation in this world. It had denominations—gold coins, half coins, and quarter coins—but no name. Unlike Earth, where yen, dollars, and euros existed side by side, there was only one currency, and so there was no need to differentiate it with a name. The coins were simply called “money,” “gold,” or “gold coins.” What was more, Shiroe guessed that they were shared not just on the Yamato server but on all servers: In other words, throughout the entire world of Elder Tales.

  In short, the faith that the coins they possessed wouldn’t turn to worthless rubbish one day stemmed not from nations’ might and influence but from the fact that no other currency existed. It might be a more secure value retention system than the one on Earth, where currency could lose its value because one issuing country had fallen. Even if Eastal, the League of Free Cities, or the Ancient Dynasty of Westlande fell, it wouldn’t damage the circulation value of coins acquired in Maihama.

  Of course, there was the fact that the coins themselves had the value of precious metal, but didn’t processing them require the skills of a Blacksmith? To Shiroe, the trust in the currency seemed to stem mainly from their universality.

  Then there was the issue of the Kunie clan’s banks as well. Even if they were essentially no more than depositories, their defensive capabilities were the real thing. Once deposited with them, money was protected by absolute security. Many banks were in independent zones, and they were usually fortified with guards. In addition, banks had technology that could identify unknown individuals, and money deposited at one branch could be instantly withdrawn from another branch. They even had a function that could settle accounts, including market and zone maintenance fees. They provided a very convenient, advanced system, but it was applied only to coins.

  The fact that the system was so very convenient and autonomous seemed to be the reason the rulers didn’t mint their own separate currencies.

  “When you defeat a monster, it’s possible to get coins, isn’t it, Kinjo?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  Shiroe pressed toward the crux of the matter.

  “You can also get several hundred gold coins from treasure chests in dungeons.”

  “A feat due entirely to the valor of the Adventurers.”

  “If it isn’t possible to get financing from the Kunie clan, what about getting coins from whoever distributes them in those places, before they actually distribute them?”

  5

  Li Gan was excited.

  He was here because he’d been invited by Shiroe of Log Horizon, with whom he’d formed a friendship at the Ancient Court of Eternal Ice. The excitement that event had caused Li Gan was the same as if a storm had come and changed the previous weather completely.

  The Sage thought highly of the young man beside him, whose gaze was so intense it obscured both the past and the future. In the library, Li Gan had spoken with feverish enthusiasm of the World Fraction, the fruit of his lifelong research. This man, who’d grasped its background and prospects in a single night, was an unparalleled great magician.

  Li Gan studied Shiroe’s profile so intently it was as if he’d forgotten to breathe.

  This young man, who called himself Shiroe of Log Horizon, was an Adventurer whose profession was magic. Adventurers were strong. Their abilities were overwhelmingly higher than those of the People of the Earth. Adventurers, this other strain of humanity, were geniuses in everything they did: not only as warriors, but as scouts, healers, and magicians.

  However, as far as Li Gan was concerned, that didn’t mean that all high-ranking Adventurers were worthy of being called great magicians. Adventurers had formidable abilities, but for the most part, they were too specialized toward combat. For a magician who used knowledge to peer into the depths of this world, competence with combat magic was really only a digression.

  Shiroe was one of the few magicians among the Adventurers who was different, and a great magician at that.

  Li Gan believed that in this world, there were four paths to ultimate knowledge.

  Each path was independent, and they never touched each other.

  In feudal Yamato, technology and knowledge were things that had to be concealed. Acquired knowledge was transmitted quietly, as secret teachings, and in many cases it never left the group in which it was handed down.

  One path could be found in the People of the Earth academics, to which Li Gan himself belonged.

  In the s
ense of being able to openly devote oneself to study, that meant the magic academy of Tsukuba, and in terms of hiding in the shadows and preserving knowledge, it was Miral Lake. As the Sage of Miral Lake, Li Gan was the guardian of Miral Lake, “the Lake of Forgotten Books.” The latest in a line of scholars that went into battle against the principles of this world.

  The second was probably the Adventurers. Li Gan and the other sages of Miral Lake had always thought that Adventurers had magic and knowledge that was completely different from that of the People of the Earth. Although enormously powerful, the magic they used was the same as that of the People of the Earth. However, for a long time, they had wondered whether their knowledge might not have a different source.

  Did the Adventurers isolate a portion of their own souls in some other world? That had been a suggestion for research, and at this point, Li Gan was certain of it. On top of that, there was the possibility that that other world was connected to the Age of Myth. By now, it was nearly common knowledge for Li Gan and the magicians of Tsukuba that the various miracles and inventions that the Adventurers had presented since the Catastrophe were related to those supertechnologies. They called these “science” or “heritage.”

  The third was the abilities used by the Ancients. Like the Adventurers, they were a tribe of heroes that was beyond the common sense of the People of the Earth. Although they were of the exact same races as the People of the Earth—humans, elves, dwarves, half alvs, felinoids, wolf-fangs, foxtails, and ritians—the Ancients and Adventurers surpassed their upper limits with ease.

  The Ancients had also handed traditions down in secret since time immemorial, and it was said that these existed within secret societies known as knight brigades, which protected regions all over the world.

  The fourth and final path was the Kunie clan.

  Much about them was mysterious, and even Li Gan could only guess at the full picture. They were definitely People of the Earth, but they weren’t affiliated with Yamato’s academic organization in Tsukuba or with Miral Lake. It was said that they handed down techniques from the ancient alv civilization, and that the sphere of their influence stretched not only throughout Yamato but to the continent as well.