The Gold of the Kunie Page 6

  That was why these negotiations, in which both parties had hidden too many of their cards, had been bound to fail.

  Not only that, but their hand had been hidden from Naotsugu as well.

  Naotsugu didn’t know what Shiroe wanted to do with this money once he got it.

  He didn’t know why he was in such a hurry, either.

  He thought that was really cold.

  “What are you thinking now, Shiro?”

  “……”

  “It’s not over yet, so c’mon, tell me what’s eating you. Spit it out.”

  What’s eating me, what’s eating me. Shiroe thought it as if it were some sort of spell. Then he flopped down onto his back and went on, groaning.

  “Naotsugu, listen…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Kinjo said, ‘In order to reach it, no doubt you’ll need many brave warriors,’ didn’t he?”

  “Yeah.”

  Naotsugu gave a noncommittal answer, wondering what in the world Shiroe was talking about. They already knew where they were going to get the money, so the problem had to be improving their relationship with the Kunie clan. Hadn’t that been what this was about? As Naotsugu racked his brains, Shiroe continued:

  “No matter how you look at it, he was announcing a raid, wasn’t he? I mean, it really can’t be anything else. I’m in pretty deep trouble.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t have the people.”

  “Huh?”

  He had no idea what Shiroe was getting at, since Naotsugu himself had anticipated a raid. In the first place, in Elder Tales, when a dungeon meant to be captured by an ordinary party had a mysterious door in its depths, there was a good possibility that it was a raid zone. However, even if that was the case, they should stand a good chance of beating it. Adventurers were immortal, and the Round Table Council (Shiroe) had sufficient manpower. It might take time, but that was all.

  “Almost all the guilds on the Round Table Council are being monitored. The current situation is so fluid that a little push is all it would take, and it isn’t possible to get rid of those monitors. I want to keep Minami from noticing us for just a little longer.”

  Shiroe’s answer left Naotsugu dumbfounded.

  He didn’t want to use the Round Table Council’s manpower. He didn’t want Minami to notice what he was doing. He wouldn’t reveal his ultimate goal. Just how many restrictions did he plan to play under? Naotsugu’s mouth hung open, and he couldn’t close it. On top of that, there was probably a time limit, too. Well, if he didn’t want Minami to know, he couldn’t afford to take too long. That must have been why he’d stolen quietly out of Akiba, Naotsugu realized. After all, everyone except for the Log Horizon members probably thought Shiroe was at the guild hall, doing his job. The idea of getting things done before they were discovered was already a time limit in and of itself.

  “Are you a total masochist, Shiro?”

  Shiroe, still lying down, denied Naotsugu’s mutter. “Not at all,” he said. “Every day, I think about how I’d love to take it as easy as possible.”

  Naotsugu was thoroughly appalled, but those words probably hadn’t been a lie. He knew that.

  Shiroe really did think that way. He’d been like that when he was in the Debauchery Tea Party, too. In order to reach their goals, he’d always tried to point out the shortest method with the best chances. When that method looked troublesome and roundabout, it was because the problem itself was serpentine and difficult.

  The path that looked winding and troublesome and roundabout was the shortest course. The strategies Shiroe came up with always felt like that.

  Once Naotsugu’s friend settled on an objective, he never compromised it.

  …Even when he loaded himself down with this much trouble as a result.

  About half that trouble isn’t even necessary. I bet Shiro’s worrying too much, and if he’d just let it all hang out, there’d be lots of people who’d help him.

  “Well, I guess there’s no help for it, then.”

  Naotsugu gave a response that was completely different from what he was thinking.

  In the end, Shiroe was a guy who understood a lot of things. He also wasn’t the type to lose sight of what was important. Besides, even if he did end up doing that, Naotsugu would just whack him upside the head.

  Shiroe seemed to be in some kind of hurry, but even so, in the midst of that impatience, in order to convince himself, he needed time to roll around. Naotsugu thought all guys were like that, not just Shiroe. He had enough memories of working too hard on his own and causing trouble for the people around him that just remembering made him go beet red. Still, Shiroe thought that sort of thing was necessary.

  It was necessary for everybody, and it was even more necessary for Shiroe.

  The people around him seemed to have decided to think of him as a schemer and a resourceful guy, but Naotsugu thought Shiroe was actually a pretty clumsy type. Clumsy Shiroe needed a lot of time for hard battles.

  During those times, he just had to be there with him.

  He didn’t have to worry: Shiroe would probably put out unstinting effort he could feel satisfied with. That was the type of guy Naotsugu’s friend was. No matter what he was doing, he was incapable of cutting corners.

  “There’s no help for it. Let’s pull together enough members for a raid. No worries. It’ll work out.”

  “Will it…?” Shiroe responded.

  “Sure it will,” Naotsugu told him cheerfully, kicking him hard. There’s no development we can’t recover from, Naotsugu thought, but he just grinned at him, without putting it into words.

  Besides, he was sure Shiroe would find that dawn.

  On Tea Party adventures, that had been the condition for victory. Naotsugu decided to look forward to seeing that view.

  In the course of his long friendship with Shiroe, this wasn’t an unusual night.

  1

  Raids were cooperative battles, fought by a number of Adventurers that exceeded the normal party limit of six. They were end content that players had energetically participated in since the days when Elder Tales had been a game, and of the many quests in the game, a majority of the greatest ones were raids.

  Although they were lumped together under the single term raid, there were several different kinds. They were primarily classified by the number of people they required, with the largest—composed of ninety-six members—known as a legion raid. Though, even when you totaled all the level brackets in all areas of the Yamato server, there weren’t many quests that required legion raids.

  The most common, and the type said to condense the real pleasure of raids, were full raids, which combined four six-member parties. This type of raid, which required a total of twenty-four participants, was the main way to gain fame and glory on the server. Back when Elder Tales had still been a game, they had been a hot in-game news item every weekend, in combination with predictions and announcements regarding which major guilds would produce what sort of results.

  The Debauchery Tea Party, to which Shiroe had belonged in the past, had been a group that actively sought out full raids. Even if they had no hope of matching the major guilds in legion raids—which required more than a hundred participants if you included reserve personnel—full raids were definitely gala occasions where they could win attention and popularity on the server.

  Although this was generally misunderstood, what was necessary on raids wasn’t powerful equipment.

  If it had been necessary to have equipment and special-skill ranks of the sort one could only acquire on raids to participate in a raid for the first time, no players could ever have played end content. No matter how hard the quest, it had been designed to be an accessible game. If there were no users who could play it, no one would know why the operating company had bothered to provide that content.

  Because they were something players aspired to, they had to be difficult, but they couldn’t be impossible to clear. Designing raid content required a sort of
fine-tuned sense and experience to find that balance.

  What made for good raid content?

  Back when Elder Tales had been a game, a message from the game creators known as the Designers’ Letter had included the following words:

  Content that lets you and your friends grow together.

  Shiroe thought it meant exactly that.

  Raids were difficult content that a group with certain equipment and strength at a certain time could conquer by training repeatedly. In this case, training could mean analyzing the mechanism of the raid content, or investigating the enemies’ special characteristics, or even proposing appropriate strategies, and then, in the end, mastering the teamwork needed to implement that strategy.

  Of course, game character performance was important. If you had that, you could force your way through raid content. However, if you did, sooner or later, raid content that required high performance would trip you up. At times like that, what you needed was connections between humans that went beyond equipment and special skill ranks: you needed members who were on the same page.

  In other words, if you were going to make a serious attempt at high-difficulty raid content, you needed companions you could call true allies. Mastering teamwork took time. If you plunged into a tough battle with a motley collection of Adventurers, everything from human relations to the level of difficulty required could deteriorate. When that happened, communities like guilds could collapse in the blink of an eye.

  That made this all the more painful for Shiroe.

  During the operation to recapture Zantleaf, he’d picked up all sorts of acquaintances. The Catastrophe and the Round Table Council had brought even a veteran Elder Tales player like Shiroe a wider range of acquaintances than ever before. However, he couldn’t use his telechat contact network now. Recruiting D.D.D., the Knights of the Black Sword, or the West Wind Brigade—major guilds that specialized in breaking through raid content—would probably have given him the best shot at success, but it was best to assume that all of Akiba’s major forces were under surveillance by Plant Hwyaden and one other group… Or rather, Shiroe had confirmed that they were. It wouldn’t be possible to mobilize those forces.

  Of course, there were individual Adventurers who were skilled as well. However, since raids were content designed for groups, it was vital to become skilled as a group. An organization cobbled together on the spot would magnify the risk. If this had been the sort of situation where they could gradually solidify their relationships, that would have been all right, but he wanted to finish up this mission quickly. When he thought about it that way, he was hesitant to set up a new organization.

  If the Debauchery Tea Party had been around, Shiroe thought, he wouldn’t have had a problem. That group of daredevils would have eagerly signed on for any raid at all. He could practically see Nurukan or Tuli whooping and breaking into a run. This would have been the perfect mission for Kanami’s friends, who saw every sort of hardship as nothing more than a chance to stand out… And yet.

  “Understood. Sure.”

  For that reason, at that unexpectedly easy response, Shiroe heaved a sigh of relief.

  The silver-haired man in front of him had accepted his request immediately.

  This was Susukino, one of just five player towns in Yamato. The town was located where Sapporo, Hokkaido, would have been in the real world. A large tavern in the heart of Susukino was currently serving as the Silver Sword guild hall.

  The high-ceilinged building felt open and airy, and the damp air one expected on hearing the word tavern wasn’t there. On a long, wooden seat that was more of a bench than a sofa, “Mithril Eyes” William Massachusetts, an elf who wore his hair tied back, turned sharp eyes on Shiroe.

  “Thank you very much. —Are you sure you don’t need to hear the details, though?”

  “You’ll tell me even if I don’t ask.”

  Facing the guild master of Silver Sword, Shiroe mentally organized the things he needed to say. At any rate, for the moment, he had accepted. Now he had to give him a detailed explanation and ensure that cooperation.

  When he remembered the gathering held in order to organize the Round Table Council, it was clear that William was very short-tempered. Explaining the situation at length was probably not a good idea. In order to divide the work, he’d split up with Naotsugu and come to the Silver Sword headquarters. He wanted to bring back good results.

  “The target is a new raid zone connected to the deepest part of the Depths of Palm. We’ve gone in and investigated. It’s restricted to a full raid. Enemy levels start at 89. We’re the ones who discovered it. We’ve released the seal through a quest. We believe the difficulty will be extremely high.”

  “Hmm.”

  After the conversation with Kinjo, Shiroe’s group had gone down to the deepest part of the Depths of Palm again and explored beyond the seal. The seal itself was still in effect, but they’d overwritten it so that any people with permission from Li Gan could go beyond the great door, then they had investigated. As a result, and as expected, they’d confirmed that a raid zone lay inside.

  The interior was a high-ceilinged ancient ruin. In other words, the image of the Depths of Palm continued in this area, farther underground. The subterranean space, lit by luminescent crystals, was a mysterious facility composed of vertical shafts, arches, and countless temples, all linked together.

  The enemies they’d spotted at a distance had been jellylike monsters the color of yellow ocher. This sort of amorphous monster was found in underground facilities that had been sealed. Their level was 89. In terms of level alone, Shiroe’s group would have been more than capable of defeating them, but the monsters’ rank was full raid; in other words, it had been assumed that twenty-four level-89 Adventurers would fight them together. Shiroe and the others had retreated without fighting a single battle.

  In addition, as Shiroe had predicted, the zone seemed to have entry restrictions. Only groups of up to twenty-four Adventurers would be able to enter. This meant it wouldn’t be possible to conquer it through numbers and sheer force alone.

  William seemed to be considering Shiroe’s brief report; the corners of his lips were warped. He was probably pulling lots of information from Shiroe’s nearly minimal words. Any veteran Adventurer who was used to raids would do that much.

  “What types of enemies are there? Estimates are fine.”

  “The ones we saw were slime-type monsters. They were five meters or more in diameter. From this point on, I’m inferring, but from the shape of the facility and from tradition, I think there might be giants and mystical beasts. Large monsters.”

  “Giants, huh?”

  A huge variety of monsters made appearances in Elder Tales. It was probably safe to say that there was every kind the production company could imagine. However, these monsters fell into several categories. Some examples were the sahuagins and goblins Shiroe and the others had fought on the Zantleaf Peninsula. Other famous ones were the Skeletons and, the ultimate mystical beasts, dragons. One of these categories was “Giant.” As you’d expect from the name, these were enormous, humanoid monsters. They were relatively popular on the Arc-Shaped Archipelago Yamato, and they lived mainly to the north of the Kanto region. There were various kinds, such as Cyclops and Frost Giants, but they all boasted high HP and attack power, while their agility was low. Contrary to the common concept of giants, high-level Giants used powerful magic attacks. Compared to Dire Beasts and Treants, they could be considered tough enemies.

  “Handy. We’re based in Susukino, so we’re used to those,” William said.

  Shiroe nodded in agreement. This was actually one of the reasons he’d decided to scout Silver Sword. The Ezzo Empire—Hokkaido in the real world—was on the front line of the People of the Earth’s war with the Giants. After leaving Akiba, Silver Sword had relocated its headquarters to Susukino, which had abundant Giant subjugation raid content. Shiroe had come to call on Silver Sword because he’d known they were one of the few or
ganizations that would be able to carry out this mission.

  “That doesn’t mean there’s no problem, though.”

  William went on, wearing the same obstinate expression.

  “Silver Sword is currently open, but we’re not doing business. We’re short on people.”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean that we have members who couldn’t keep up with the raids. There are guys who don’t want to fight in raids anymore, although they’re still with the guild, and there are others who’ve settled down in Susukino.”

  William’s answer was a harsh one.

  “In other words, they’re retired. They could probably handle a lukewarm raid, but they can’t manage the hottest raids anymore. This one is going to be the toughest there is. We boosted our levels to 95, but I doubt that’ll make it an easy win. I’ll be lucky if I manage to bring twenty people.”

  “Is it…because of the memories?”

  At Shiroe’s question, about the terror of losing memories, William shook his head.

  “The stuff about losing memories is all just hot air. We don’t believe stories like that. And they’re not scared. Not of the monsters, anyway.”

  “Then why?”

  Shiroe didn’t get it.

  He could understand being afraid. Resurrection from death might be a fact, but the idea of your own death brought a visceral terror with it. The pain itself was diluted. When you’d lost most of your HP, the discomfort was still no worse than sore muscles. Even at the very instant of death, it probably wasn’t anything you couldn’t tolerate. However, seeing an actual steel sword sprouting from your own chest shattered an Adventurer’s self-control. The sight of being torn apart by the claws of magical beasts and having your entrails devoured was no joke. Death had a unique terror all its own.