Homesteading the Noosphere Read online

  “Huh? Is that what you thought of me…?”

  “Hmph. Come on, Shiroe. Let’s go to Kanako’s!”

  “My liege, the red-bean bun shop is waiting for us.”

  “Waaaah, buy shortcake, too!”

  “They’re seasonal offerings. Get cherry blossom red-bean buns. If we don’t eat them now, when will we ever get to?”

  “I know! Let’s all pull on Shiroe, and whoever lasts the longest without pulling off her bit of him gets her request granted!”

  “Huh?! I’d like his left leg, then.”

  “In that case, his right leg is mine!”

  What sort of torture were they planning to inflict on him?

  Shiroe shrugged, smiling wryly.

  With three different, lively voices in his ears, he looked up at the sky, which was darkening to violet.

  There were a lot of things he needed to think about. This modest happiness made him rather sad. Twilight was catching up with the world. Shiroe was just a graduate student, and yet he’d ended up in a position where he knew this.

  For Adventurers, death wasn’t an end.

  However, they might have a time limit.

  Shiroe ended up reflecting on that premonition.

  1

  In a hall where the air was thick with the aroma of oil and spices, People of the Earth waitresses dashed back and forth. The Knights of the Black Sword kept pelting them with a veritable storm of orders.

  They weren’t used to training People of the Earth, and it might actually be more tiring than training Adventurers. Everyone knew that good food was the best way to soothe fatigue. The appetites of the members of the Knights of the Black Sword were as hearty as the vigor with which they polished off raid enemies.

  The guild master, Isaac, was no exception. Get lots of exercise, then eat lots of good stuff: Even in this world, where physical performance was influenced by level, he thought that was a fundamental part of keeping your strength up.

  Just as Isaac stuck his knife into a thick slab of meat, documents landed on his table with a loud thump, and the beer on the tabletop sloshed.

  “Top of the evening to you, Isaac.”

  “Huh? Uhn. If it ain’t Calasin.”

  “There we go.”

  With no sign of compunction, Calasin, the guild master of the production guild Shopping District 8, sat down across from Isaac.

  The din in the hall suddenly hushed. The Knights of the Black Sword were mostly sports types, and as a group, they tended to value hierarchical relationships. Any member who sat at the guild master’s table without permission would get a severe telling-off from a sharp-eyed senior member.

  On top of that, Calasin was an “outsider.” Even if he was one of the Round Table Eleven, by the Knights of the Black Swords’ standards, he was a wimpy, dandyish man.

  Several of the guild members got up from their seats, but Isaac stopped them with a hand, looking bored.

  Whether or not he’d registered the atmosphere around them, Calasin kept his usual business smile trained on him. Isaac pointed at him with his fork, which had a piece of meat impaled on it.

  “You’ve been acting real familiar lately.”

  “You’re not the type who cares about these things, are you, Isaac?”

  “Well, yeah, but we’re not talking about me. This is about you.”

  “Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha. Even I choose who I do it to.”

  “Tch. You and your dumb grin. I don’t get you at all.”

  Of all the production guilds, Shopping District 8 was putting particular effort into commerce with the People of the Earth. Its guild master, Calasin, was a superficially polished, wily individual who competed on even terms with crafty, experienced People of the Earth merchants.

  Removing his trademark cap, Calasin called to a Person of the Earth who was passing near them. “Ah, get me a cold one, too, and some fried rockfish.”

  The uniformed waitress jotted down the order on her notepad, bowed, then headed for the kitchen. She seemed to be well versed in Adventurer etiquette.

  “That fried rockfish is real tasty.”

  “Isn’t it, though? I’ve been looking forward to it. It’s practically why I came here.”

  “Out doing migrant work again?”

  “Come on, don’t call it that. This is Shopping District 8’s first branch trading house. I just came to check up on it. Besides, I need to look over the books.”

  This dining hall was an annex of the trading house that was Shopping District 8’s branch office in Maihama. There had apparently been all sorts of troublesome negotiations involved in putting a branch office right at the feet of Duke Cowen, the leader of the League of Free Cities, and Calasin had been a central figure in them. Lezarik had told him that that was why there hadn’t been any complaints about Shopping District 8 getting a branch office here, instead of the Marine Organization, the largest player, or the Roderick Trading Company, which had a variety of cutting-edge technologies.

  “Besides, it’s not far from Akiba.”

  Lezarik offered Calasin some water, then sat down beside the two of them.

  Because they worked together to get raid materials ready, Lezarik and Calasin had known each other for a long time. After the Catastrophe in particular, Isaac had heard they’d exchanged all sorts of information on a personal level.

  “Right. Not if I’m by myself anyway. It’s just a jump away by Giant Owl.”

  “What, you ride an owl?”

  “It’s not as if every major guild has griffins, you know. Only raid guilds do that.”

  Compared with griffins, Giant Owls had poorer speed and flying distance, and their recast times were long. Because you could get them outside of raid quests, more people used them than griffins, but to Isaac, they were wussy rides.

  “Yeah, because you people are weak.”

  “That’s right, we’re weak. We’ll charge your group a hundred times more for your food,” Calasin warned him casually. He still had that smile on his face.

  “Damn you…”

  “Nobody really cares about that sort of thing though, huh?”

  Lezarik calmly interjected: “Heeeey…”

  “It doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “No.”

  This guy’s like Lezarik, Isaac decided. The jerk dodged back lightly, right before Isaac blew up, and it was impossible to tell whether he was dense or fiendishly gutsy. Isaac’s opinion of people like that was beginning to improve.

  The waitress set a steaming plate down on the table. The white plate, toast-colored fried rockfish, shredded cabbage, and round heap of tartar sauce looked very appetizing.

  “Whoa. That looks good. Hot!”

  When he stuck his fork into it, the fried coating split with a light crunch. Calasin added a sauce bursting with onions, then dug in with a will.

  Calasin polished off his fried fish in short order, nodding the whole time. Isaac, who’d been watching him, snorted. Lezarik ordered two more plates from the waitress.

  “Seriously, did you come here just to get in my way?”

  “Of course not. This is work, technically. Here.”

  Calasin took a single paper from the document case at his waist. Isaac accepted it and handed it to Lezarik without even glancing at it.

  “The Round Table Council, is it?”

  “Well, eventually.”

  At his adjutant’s words, Isaac sent a question at Calasin, snitching a piece of fried fish from his plate as he did so.

  “Then what is it right now?”

  “For now, I guess you’d say it’s about monsters called Geniuses.”

  As Calasin responded, he speared a piece off the fresh plate of fried rockfish that the waitress brought over.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard the name. What are they?”

  Passing his half-empty dish to Lezarik, Isaac pulled the nearby plate of piping hot fried seafood over to himself. Lezarik sighed, then parceled out a few pieces of fried fish from the half-empty plate to Isaac and Cala
sin.

  “I don’t know, either. On top of that, the People of the Earth are looking rather bellicose.”

  “…You mean those troops mustering in the west?”

  One of the outstanding issues on the Round Table Council was the information that the Adventurers of Minami had joined forces with the Holy Empire of Westlande, the People of the Earth organization that governed Western Yamato, and were building up their military strength.

  “That’s right. I swear, all those people ever do is cause problems. And over here, everything’s welfare and budgets and equality.”

  “That Ains loser is a pain in the ass, isn’t he?”

  “Well, we still have to meet with him and get by somehow.”

  “Huhn.”

  Carrying the last piece of fried rockfish to his mouth, Isaac took another look at Calasin’s face.

  “What, Isaac?”

  This slender, mild-looking man always wore a foolish smile. He had a weakness for women and was constantly going gaga over them; he was chatty, and he got all noisy over superficial relationships. He behaved cleverly, and he waltzed off with all the best parts of everything. A pampered rich kid and a typical flirt: That was what he’d looked like to Isaac at first.

  Back in the old world, Isaac hadn’t liked guys like that, and they’d steered clear of him. They’d belonged to different worlds, and he’d thought that was just how things were.

  Unexpectedly, though, once he’d talked to this guy, he’d realized he had his own logic. If he was shallow, then he wandered here and there, casually, like a shallow person. As a mild person, he slipped in between two parties like cushioning material. In this new world, Calasin was fighting in ways that Isaac didn’t fight. Once he understood that, he’d stopped being able to just knock him down without hearing him out.

  “Nah, I was just thinking—you’re no two-bit player yourself.”

  “Agh! Geez, that’s mean!!”

  “Well, never mind.”

  “You know how it is. I may not look it, but I’m helping to run a self-governing organization. It would be easy to just throw it all away, but making it again would be rough, you know? The Round Table Council, I mean.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s true for you, too, Isaac, so work, all right? C’mon, please.”

  “Aaaaah, shaddup, merchant. Your voice is rattling my skull.”

  “If you slash me in two, I’ll split down the middle and talk at you from both sides in surround sound.”

  Isaac’s eyebrows shot up. Calasin was still smiling. They glared at each other.

  After a short pause, they both burst out laughing, simultaneously.

  “I didn’t know any guys like you before. I thought you’d be more of a nervous type.”

  “I’m a guild leader, too, you know. I can’t just shrink down and act small all the time. Good grief. Besides, even I thought you were eight parts gorilla and two parts human, Isaac.”

  “And in reality, I’m…?”

  “No comment.”

  “In any case, Isaac the Young isn’t a gorilla; he’s nearly a gorilla,” Lezarik added, pouring beer into Isaac’s glass and water into Calasin’s.

  “Damn, Leza, whose side are you on?”

  Lezarik’s solemn lips relaxed just a little. Calasin clapped his hands and guffawed, and like spreading ripples, laughter enveloped the surrounding tables as well.

  Under cover of that storm, Calasin whispered quietly.

  “I think you’re probably vaguely aware of it already, but the atmosphere in Westlande is bad.”

  “Yeah.”

  “They say they’re putting together an army…”

  “I doubt the Round Table Council and Plant Hwyaden will be fighting each other, but whether we’ll be able to stay uninvolved is…”

  “It’s doubtful, yes.”

  Akiba and Plant Hwyaden weren’t openly hostile toward each other. However, if their respective allies—Eastal and the Holy Empire of Westlande—clashed with each other…

  If their friend got hit, would they be able to act like it was none of their concern? That was the question. Even Isaac understood that much, instinctively.

  “Do you think that’s why that guy Shiroe asked us to level up the People of the Earth knights? Because he saw this?”

  “It could very well be. After all, Shiroe is a definite schemer.”

  “I’ll have to ask about that, too.”

  In response to Isaac’s words, Calasin’s lips drew up in a smirk.

  “In that case, attend the Round Table Council. You’re on duty here in Maihama, Isaac, but you do have transportation, no? You are a raid guild, after all.”

  “Yeah. I’ve got a griffin.”

  “No girlfriend, though.”

  Lezarik teased Isaac, who was dangling his summoning pipe. In spite of himself, Isaac couldn’t come up with a comeback.

  “Women are—! That’s fine, who cares about that?! Even if I do ’em a favor and go out with them, they start talking about breaking up right away. They’re just a pain.”

  “Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Shall I plan a mixer for you?”

  “What, for real?!”

  “Yes, of course. I’ve got a lot of experience with that sort of thing.”

  “But you don’t have a girlfriend, either, Calasin.”

  This time, it was Calasin’s turn to be mercilessly cut down by Lezarik’s blade.

  True, people who had partners didn’t end up as seasoned mixer veterans. It had been an open secret on the Round Table Council that Calasin was in L-O-V-E with Marielle of the Crescent Moon League, and it was equally true that his romance had come to nothing.

  …Not that Isaac was in such a fortunate position that he could point at him and laugh. If anyone played around until they were his age, sure, they ended up having had relationships with five or ten members of the opposite sex, but Isaac always got dumped a few nights after starting a relationship. Apparently, once he was feeling good, he started treating his women carelessly.

  He was in no position to make fun of Calasin.

  “Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha! This guy’s a playboy, but he ain’t got no girl!”

  —Nevertheless, without letting that bother him, Isaac roared with laughter.

  “That sort of thing has nothing to do with mixers!” Calasin argued back; his poker face had crumbled, and he looked flustered.

  The sight relieved Isaac, and he chugged the rest of his warm beer without coming up for air. There were lots of things he didn’t like here, but they weren’t bad enough that he couldn’t drink and talk about dumb stuff.

  When Isaac switched over from beer to distilled liquor, Calasin gamely followed suit.

  Even if there were lots of problems, that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy the here and now. Most of life was a pain in the butt. Only an idiot would waste the liquor in front of him.

  That night, the two of them drank until they were lying on the tavern’s stone floor.

  The only thing carved into Isaac’s memory was the fun he’d had roaring with laughter over Calasin’s taste in women.

  2

  Akiba’s guild center was the tallest building in town. It couldn’t begin to compare to skyscrapers on Earth, but in this world, where all high-rise buildings had fallen into ruin, it was rare to see a structure that was over ten stories tall in the first place.

  In Eastal, where there wasn’t much to obstruct the view, the wind blew through the sky over Akiba. The town’s obsidian heart, which stood out in the wind, gravestone-like, was the guild center. This was the headquarters of the Round Table Council.

  In its large conference hall, under the stony gazes of statues of ancient princesses, the guild masters who represented Akiba were assembled. Somewhere along the way, the eleven remaining people who participated in the Round Table Council had begun to be called “the Decrement.” The term meant that there weren’t twelve of them; there was one missing.

  “Black Sword” Isaac, the leader of the Knights of the
Black Sword.

  Master Swordsman Soujirou of the West Wind Brigade.

  “Iron Arm” Michitaka, general manager of the Marine Organization.

  “Fairy Doctor” Roderick of the Roderick Trading Company.

  Calasin, the wide-area merchant who led Shopping District 8.

  Marielle of the Crescent Moon League.

  Akaneya, the shrewd Mechanist of RADIO Market.

  Shiroe, the fiendish strategist of Log Horizon.

  …And Ains, from Honesty.

  Krusty, the guild master of D.D.D. and representative of the Round Table Council, was missing, while Woodstock of Grandale was away on a supply mission for a distant military expedition.

  To Ains, the Round Table Council, with its three empty seats, seemed to be more incomplete than its numbers suggested.

  “The fact that Shiroe’s plan worked is a splendid thing.”

  “Yes, I’m really grateful for that. Now we’ll get by without running out. After all, as far as the accounting books are concerned, the Round Table Council was bankrupt. We were practically holding things together with loans from the big guilds.”

  Akaneya’s words were grave, while, as he agreed with him, Calasin’s tone was light and flippant. However, what he actually said was serious.

  “Still, I’m thinkin’ this means we can relax a bit, right?”

  “The zones around Akiba have already been released. We’re purchasing zones or canceling our rights to them, moving toward the northeast. The number of zones that can’t be owned should continue to increase. After all, in terms of the future, the idea of zones being available for purchase is scary.”

  This had been the Round Table Council’s most serious problem since early autumn of the previous year. Thanks to Shiroe of Log Horizon, the financial pressure of the zone maintenance fees was being resolved. As a result, the mood in the council was slightly relieved.

  Even by the month, the total maintenance fees had come to several million gold coins. This had eaten up the Round Table Council’s budget at a speed that had made the term pressure seem too tame. The largest burden had been their purchase of all the space on Akiba’s roads as zones.