Lost Child of the Dawn

by Mamare Touno

  “Engage!”

  At that scream, Nazuna and Akatsuki leapt up at the same time. From the front of the narrow passage, countless arrows cloaked in electricity pierced the murderer. Coming from an Assassin who specialized in sniping, this Assassinate attack seemed to have inflicted damage on a completely different scale from Akatsuki’s, whose style focused on attacking from the shadows and on the number of attacks.

  Pulling away from their pursuer, who was bellowing as if he’d gone mad, Nazuna and Akatsuki ran through the air. Under their feet floated several thin, pale blue slabs fifteen centimeters square. This was Nazuna’s Mystery, Celestial Passage.

  It was a skill that set the basic Kannagi spell, Purification Barrier, in open space. The Damage Interception spell barrier was deployed as Nazuna dictated. These paperback-sized force fields, which would have had a difficult time stopping even the smallest attack, were a spell meant for defense and recovery that had been converted for use in movement. They were, literally, “footholds” generated in empty space.

  They reached Akiba’s central plaza, practically tumbling into it. It would have been safe to call this place—Akiba Station and its elevated lines, surrounded by elevated walkways and several enormous buildings—the heart of Akiba. Having reached the space, Akatsuki turned around in front of a jet-black building, waiting for the murderer.

  The deep breath of frigid winter air she’d drawn in burned her chest. It hurt her lungs, but the cold air cooled Akatsuki’s head and cleared her mind.

  Possibly because he’d realized Akatsuki had stopped, the murderer advanced into the plaza slowly, his gleaming metallic armor clanking. Akatsuki’s HP was down to 20 percent. The murderer’s was also close to that HP. The absolute value was about a hundred times greater than Akatsuki’s, but Akatsuki leveled her new favorite sword, preparing to engage the enemy.

  She held it pointed at his face, a position she’d repeated several thousand times, or maybe several tens of thousands of times, since the Catastrophe.

  “So you’re not running anymore?”

  At that question, delivered with a rictal smile, Akatsuki nodded.

  “Then go ahead and—” As if to shake off the rest of the sentence—die—the murderer closed in, bringing down Hail Blade Byakumaru, made enormous with ice and the freezing blizzard. When they hung in Amenoma, the two weapons had seemed to be about the same size, but now they looked as different as a twig and a huge tree.

  However, as he raised Byakumaru high, a gigantic mass attacked it from far up in the sky, like a waterfall.

  In Akatsuki’s mind, she could see her friends, surrounding this plaza. Her enemy detection ability sensed a wide range of people, and it told her about them. If they got within fifty meters of the murderer, they’d instantly reverse all the work they’d done to get here. Fifty meters was wider than the range of all magic attack spells and recovery spells. In other words, her friends outside that range couldn’t take part in the combat.

  That had been a blind spot.

  More than fifteen stories above the ground, just a little more than fifty meters in altitude…

  At the very edge of the range Akatsuki could detect, there was Riezé, using Kyouko’s hold as a lifeline. Freezing Liner was a Sorcerer’s wide-range attack spell designed to sweep enemies away with a stream of ice-studded water. When used in dungeons or fields, the spell’s firing range wasn’t even twenty meters, but it had been sent down in free fall from the top of a huge building to strike the murderer.

  The attack devoured the phenomenal cold air the murderer radiated. It used that frigid temperature as fuel, and the instant it showered over the murderer, he began to freeze.

  “Wha—!!”

  The murderer twisted his body, trying to run. However, his legs from the knees down and the huge gauntlets that held the sword were already being encased in a pillar of ice. The fact that he’d raised his sword to slash through the girl in front of him also worked against him: Byakumaru was pointing straight into the deluge of cold water that fell from the sky.

  The damage itself wasn’t all that great. He probably hadn’t even lost 1 percent of his maximum HP. However, when he was trapped by this much ice, it was hard to avoid having his movements restricted. Not liking this, the murderer tried to teleport, then found himself aghast.

  There was no way he could know it, but Raynesia, who’d returned from the basement of the guild center, was staring fixedly at the scene.

  His remaining HP was irrelevant.

  They’d led the murderer this far in order to whittle down his combat abilities, see the cards he held, and make him fall to arrogance.

  The curly-haired strategist’s tactics had used the murderer’s abilities against him, rendering him unable to move. With light steps, Akatsuki approached him.

  The first attack was a straightforward Deadly Dance. It was launched from a low stance, as if scooping up, and was a special skill meant for close combat. It wasn’t that powerful, but the recast time was incredibly short: just one second. And, if you struck home with it several times in a row, it got stronger and stronger.

  The serial attacks struck at Byakumaru, which jutted out of the coffin of ice as though to reshape it.

  To begin with, Ringing Blade Haganemushi had been a high-performance transferable raid weapon with a special ability that reduced the durability of any weapon it struck. It was a short sword with advanced capabilities and a weapon destruction ability that displayed its effect in hand-to-hand combat. Haganemushi Tatara was a reforged version of Ringing Blade Haganemushi. Its abilities weren’t fantasy-class, but even so, it was beyond comparison with Akatsuki’s previous weapon. However, what had encouraged her wasn’t the attack power.

  Something more ephemeral, something smaller and more important, was protecting Akatsuki.

  Tatara, Swordsmith of Amenoma, retempers this just for its taciturn, unsociable bearer. Let that too-serious girl move forward without breaking or warping. Let it repel wicked curses and the miseries of the world. Let the person support the blade, and the blade the person.

  The flavor text written in the history, those “meaningless” words, protected and warmed Akatsuki.

  The meaning in them, and the feelings; the history, the lineage, the legends:

  There wasn’t a single meaningless thing about them.

  They were inside the person who read them, important from the start. They were irreplaceable things. And precisely because they were so, a tragedy had happened to the murderer, and Akatsuki had been saved.

  The clash of crossed swords echoed powerfully in the ultramarine dawn.

  With the single-mindedness of a swallow that had found a place to return to, she dealt out more than twenty intensely focused attacks.

  Even in the dawn, before the sun was visible, Akatsuki and her friends no longer doubted their victory.

  Mikakage, who came running up. Azukiko, and Henrietta, and Marielle. Riezé, whose nose was red at the tip, possibly because she’d bumped it on something. Raynesia, who was clinging to Kyouko, who carried her. They gathered around the shattered cursed sword, which had been broken in front of them, and the crumpled murderer, catching their breath.

  There were no victory cheers. Instead, a relieved murmur spread, and the girls looked at each other, smiling bashful smiles. Everyone had complained and leaned on their friends during this difficult fight. Many girls had made a sorry display of themselves.

  Even so, this had been the Water Maple girls’ first real battle.

  Their small, modest subjugation unit had completed its mission.

  Their victory was the bell that announced the beginning of the Second Catastrophe in Akiba, but more than that, it was a new blessing as they took a step toward the future.

  The girls should have been tired, but—in an epilogue only Elissa knew—they occupied Raynesia’s guest rooms and office and partied in their pajamas late into the afternoon.

 
r />   AFTERWORD

  Hello for the first time in a year and a half. This is Touno Mamare.

  …Wow. I’m really sorry this is so late. I sort of got lost, body and soul. The writer’s the “lost child,” not Akatsuki. Common sense would dictate ritual disembowelment. To all the readers I kept waiting: I’m terribly sorry. I plan to get myself back in gear.

  Thank you very much for buying Log Horizon, Vol. 6: Lost Child of the Dawn. It’s cold every day, but by the time this gets to you, the water will probably have started to warm up a bit. All sorts of things have been happening. They made Maoyuu—Demon King and Hero into an anime. Stuff has been on the radio constantly. I got to meet lots of different people! I’m really grateful.

  All right: The Log Horizon novels have entered their second season, and as previously announced, I’m changing the heroine of the afterword from Sister Touno to my editor, Fta.

  Why the heroine change, you ask? The popularity poll that was held in Log Horizon, Vol. 4 (Thank you for all your votes). In that poll, Sister Touno came in twenty-second, and my editor Fta came in fifteenth. Fifteenth place… That’s Kawarimi Senbei (from the Relaxing Character Popularity Poll). —I couldn’t really feel the awesomeness in that.

  Well, if it had been Lady Yukari Yakumo (Touhou Character Popularity Poll), the awesomeness would have gotten through to me. My sister, in twenty-second place. That’s an overwhelming difference in combat power.

  I’m quick to spot opportunities, and on seeing this, I decided to bet on a winner and switch the heroine. It wasn’t because I messed with Sister Touno a bit too much and have become the target of serious mental attacks. That isn’t it at all, but I’d like to note that, when you’re an adult, it’s important to avoid unnecessary risk.

  Okay, since I bet there are lots of you who won’t know who I’m talking about if I just throw the name “Fta” out there, Fta is the supervising editor of Log Horizon. She’s a talented lady editor with glasses, but she’s really small. About the size of a soft drink bottle. In terms of race, she’s a Fairy of the Koropokkuru variety. Carnivore. During meetings, she usually kneels formally on the tabletop. When things get lively, though, she jumps. She’s a terribly cute, talented editor, but she is a carnivore.

  I don’t mean “carnivore” figuratively. She really is a carnivore.

  One day, after a meeting, we’d decided to go to a family restaurant to eat. I knew my meat-loving editor, so I casually attempted to establish rapport—“They’re holding a hamburger steak fair, you know?”—and she got mad at me: “Ground meat isn’t meat! Hisss!” Whenever I try to order bean sprout namul at a yakiniku restaurant, she says, “I don’t eat grass. Hisss!” According to Fta, all women love meat. Come to think of it, Sister Touno seems a bit like that, too.

  One day, Fta and I were talking:

  “Apparently there’s someone who wants to make a Log Horizon anime.”

  “Oho.”

  “NHK.”

  “Sounds fishy.”

  “It really does, doesn’t it? I thought so, too. They’d never make an anime out of that.”

  “Let’s just ignore them and work on another job.”

  “Sounds good. Want to leave it alone and go eat meat?”

  And so we left it alone for about six months, and then they settled on it formally. That’s called “dry-aging.” They say it’s going to start airing in autumn 2013. That’s half a year away, but the production work is already in full swing. By the time this book comes out, they’ll probably be releasing information about it, little by little. It’s going to be aired nationwide, so please do watch, if you feel like it. If possible, I’d be really happy if you watched it with your brothers and sisters or as a family. We should be launching all sorts of projects, too, so look forward to that.

  The Log Horizon publishing team celebrated at a pub a little bit early. To be honest, I don’t really believe they’re making an anime yet, so I’d like to go out for a meat banquet once things are more settled.

  And, with that report on recent events, this has been Log Horizon 6.

  In the world of television, “All I need is the one” is a line that you hear all the time, but lately I’ve been thinking that “Just the one” is pretty difficult in real life. Maybe you want to get involved with one person, but that person has a pretty big society inside them. Family, comrades, friends. I think you have to get involved with all of it, and then you’ll finally reach the person you wanted to connect with in the first place.

  Akatsuki, who wants to be linked to one person (Shiroe), may have come up against that limit. This story was about how, at times like that, the people around you may be what you have to face. In other words, this story belonged to the girls. There are bonds that are created by doing your very best, and this was that sort of story. Apparently all girls like meat.

  The items listed on the character status screens at the beginning of each chapter in this volume were collected on Twitter in February 2013. I used items from 291to230, carduus06, ebius1, hakuhai, hpsuke, kane_yon, kuroyagi6, luck_29, makotoTRPG, mizu_to, momon_call, ro_ki_, root425, sawame_ja, tepan00, and yamaneeeeee. Thank you very much!! I can’t list all your names here, but I’m grateful to everyone who submitted entries. There were lots of submissions from new readers this time. Once the anime starts, I may get to meet all sorts of new readers!

  For details, and for the latest news, visit http://mamare.net. You’ll find information about Touno Mamare that isn’t Log Horizon–related as well. Look for information on the comicalization projects there, too! Hara, Motoya Matsu, Koyuki, and Kusanaka are making it possible to read fantastic Log Horizons, and I’m really happy.

  Finally, Shoji Masuda, who produced this volume as well; the illustrator, Kazuhiro Hara (Allie was thanks to Tensai Design); Tsubakiya Design, who handled the design work; little Fta of the editorial department! And Oha, I’m in your debt yet again! Thank you very much! I’m really, really sorry to have been so late.

  Now all that’s left is for you to savor this book. Bon appétit!

  Mamare “Looking over the storyboards for Episode 1 of the Log Horizon anime” Touno

  About the Authors

  AUTHOR: MAMARE TOUNO

  A STRANGE LIFE-FORM THAT INHABITS THE TOKYO BOKUTOU SHITAMACHI AREA. IT’S BEEN TOSSING HALF-BAKED TEXT INTO A CORNER OF THE INTERNET SINCE THE YEAR 2000 OR SO. IT’S A FULLY AUTOMATIC, TEXT-LOVING MACRO THAT EATS AND DISCHARGES TEXT. IT DEBUTED AT THE END OF 2010 WITH MAOYUU: MAOU YUUSHA (MAOYUU: DEMON KING AND HERO). LOG HORIZON IS A RESTRUCTURED VERSION OF A NOVEL THAT RAN ON THE WEBSITE SHOUSETSUKA NI NAROU (SO YOU WANT TO BE A NOVELIST).

  WEBSITE: HTTP://WWW.MAMARE.NET

  SUPERVISION: SHOJI MASUDA

  AS A GAME DESIGNER, HE’S WORKED ON RINDA KYUUBU (RINDA CUBE) AND ORE NO SHIKABANE WO KOETE YUKE (STEP OVER MY DEAD BODY), AMONG OTHERS. ALSO ACTIVE AS A NOVELIST, HE’S RELEASED THE ONIGIRI NUEKO (ONI KILLER NUEKO) SERIES, THE HARUKA SERIES, JOHN & MARY: FUTARI HA SHOUKIN KASEGI (JOHN & MARY: BOUNTY HUNTERS), KIZUDARAKE NO BIINA (BEENA, COVERED IN WOUNDS), AND MORE. HIS LATEST EFFORT IS HIS FIRST CHILDREN’S BOOK, TOUMEI NO NEKO TO TOSHI UE NO IMOUTO (THE TRANSPARENT CAT AND THE OLDER LITTLE SISTER). HE HAS ALSO WRITTEN GEEMU DEZAIN NOU MASUDA SHINJI NO HASSOU TO WAZA (GAME DESIGN BRAIN: SHINJI MASUDA’S IDEAS AND TECHNIQUES).

  TWITTER ACCOUNT: SHOJIMASUDA

  ILLUSTRATION: KAZUHIRO HARA

  AN ILLUSTRATOR WHO LIVES IN ZUSHI. ORIGINALLY A HOME GAME DEVELOPER. IN ADDITION TO ILLUSTRATING BOOKS, HE’S ALSO ACTIVE IN MANGA AND DESIGN. LATELY, HE’S BEEN HAVING FUN FLYING A BIOKITE WHEN HE GOES ON WALKS. HE’S ALSO WORKING ON THE LOG HORIZON MANGA ADAPTATION PROJECT, AND LOG HORIZON, VOL. 1 (FAMITSU CLEAR COMICS) IS ON SALE AND REALLY POPULAR. IT’S ALSO RUNNING ON COMIC CLEAR’S WEBSITE, WHERE IT’S POPULAR AS WELL.

  COMIC CLEAR SITE: HTTP://WWW.FAMITSU.COM/COMIC_CLEAR/SE_LOGHORIZON/

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