by Mamare Touno
At any rate, whether they came to a conclusion here or failed to reach an agreement, the die had already been cast. At dawn, an army would probably depart from Akiba. It was no longer possible for either Michitaka or Duke Sergiad to stop that army.
Now that Krusty and Shiroe had made their moves, there could be no such thing as an impasse.
It wasn’t possible for those two to rise up and not carry through to the goal.
To Michitaka, that future was already assured.
In that case, the only thing to do was watch events unfold.
“Well, no doubt Master Shiroe will do something about it.”
Henrietta agreed, pouting; she seemed to be sulking a little. Her words seemed to disparage Shiroe, but no matter how you looked at them, her eyes were brimming with trust. Privately, Michitaka felt convinced.
“All right. In that case, let’s have my granddaughter take responsibility for the whole affair.”
With Duke Sergiad’s statement, which sounded somehow entertained, they parted ways.
2
Wait… Did something rustle…? There, in those bushes under the trees… It couldn’t be… It can’t be… Goblins?
Beside Raynesia was a female knight from D.D.D. in an austere military uniform. She wasn’t carrying a weapon at the ready; instead, she kept up a running telechat as she looked at the map of the battlefield and a sheaf of reports she held in one hand.
“Large-scale group at two o’clock. Enemy attack unit at nine o’clock, total number over eighteen. Two large magical beasts.”
As she delivered terse reports, her voice’s demeanor was unlike that of any knight Raynesia knew, and it also didn’t sound as if it belonged on the sort of battlefield she’d heard about in rumors.
When Raynesia’s eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the darkness and she was afraid, the woman had gently applied a salve to Raynesia’s eyelids. After she’d blinked a few times, a rose-colored light had enveloped her surroundings, and it had grown easier to see.
Even so, the sounds in the darkness were frightening.
This area wasn’t all that deep in the mountains, but Raynesia had grown up in a castle, and her tolerance for such things was low. Every time the bushes swayed in the darkness, no matter how she tried to keep them under control, her knees began to quake.
C-calm down. Walk tall… That’s right, relax…
Her spirit was still strong.
She hadn’t yet lost the courage to move forward.
However, her body was more honest, and possibly because it felt that her life was in peril, it would instinctively tense up or begin to shake. Drawing upon all the ladylike training she’d accumulated and polished over long years, she tried to advance boldly and confidently, but she felt her mask was on the point of slipping.
“Princess Raynesia, they say the view opens up if we go a little farther up the ridge. Let’s go that way and rest for a while,” the female knight told her.
The warriors around her seemed to have been expecting that order: They changed formation as smoothly as flowing water. The only ones who stood dazedly in the center were Raynesia and two People of the Earth. Those two were telling the female knight about the local topography in detail, when she asked them. There was a creek small enough to step over, and once they’d crossed it and gone up for a while, the ground would turn rough and rocky, and they’d find a hill from which they could look down into the valley.
And just so, Raynesia and the others advanced, parting the underbrush.
Of course the warriors at the front of the group moved the bigger branches out of the way, but the sharp grasses of this animal track tried to tangle around her mercilessly. However, the Valkyrie Mail Raynesia wore must have been terribly high-performance: It seemed to cast a wall of air around her, and it wouldn’t let them near.
I have no complaints about the performance. …But. Honestly.
The only thing about it that concerned her was the tremendous amount of leg it made her show.
If it had been winter, she could have said something about catching a chill and asked for a mantle, but that wasn’t possible in summer. What Raynesia was actually wearing was a thin cape that barely fell to her waist, an article far too pathetic to call a mantle.
Oh…
She must have covered more distance than she’d thought while her mind had been elsewhere. Once they’d detoured around a spinney of what seemed to be huge beech trees and climbed a slope that was about as tall as she was, the view abruptly opened up. It was a clear, rocky area about six meters square, a ridge that looked down into the valley. From the rocks, she could see the trees below the cliff and the flowing river, stretching away.
Were the hundreds of gleaming lights the torches of the goblin army? They seethed restlessly, reminding her of a march of malicious insects.
“This way.”
The female knight had directed her to a simple folding chair. It had no back or armrests, but she was grateful to be able to sit down and close her legs properly.
Raynesia thanked her politely, accepted the chair, and sat down.
That speech had brought it home to her: Adventurers were fundamentally different from Raynesia and the other People of the Earth. It was probably best to assume that all of them—not only Krusty and the other Round Table Council representatives—had the education and manners of nobles.
That meant it wouldn’t do to be careless about gratitude and politeness.
However, on the other hand, Adventurers also seemed to dislike empty formality. Had her thanks been appropriate? She watched the lady knight, trying to see, but the woman was in the middle of a telechat, and was briskly reading from a map. It had probably been all right.
Around her, the Adventurers were bringing out folding pieces of furniture one after another: a little collapsible three-legged table and several tubes that were probably telescopes.
“It’s starting.”
“Pardon?”
The moment the lady knight’s words made Raynesia turn, a flash of light dropped into the valley. The roar followed a split second later. Eerie tremors shivered through the area. Raynesia was flustered, but the female knight pointed a white finger into the depths of the darkness, at a corner of the valley.
When Raynesia focused her attention on it, she felt her faintly shining vision pull the distant scene toward her. The trees and even the outlines of their leaves leapt into view, as real and vivid as life.
“It’s Fairy Balm for snipers. Even your long-range vision is good, isn’t it? Don’t expand your visual field too far… They’ll be there soon. Watch closely.”
The white light lasted a mere instant.
The thunderbolt seemed to have pierced right through the center of the goblin squad. Unlike an actual thunderbolt, though, the crushing blow that had fallen down from the heavens had enough force behind it to gouge up the earth, exploding the land and scattering the goblins.
In the midst of that flash, quite clearly, Raynesia saw Krusty’s form. A tall shadow, sprinting through the forest, holding a long-handled, double-bladed ax. It had to have been as long as Raynesia was tall, but he carried it as if it weighed nothing.
Krusty ran along the stream that flowed through the forest, with the nearly one hundred members of the strike unit following behind him. It was as if the mantle that streamed down his back had stretched and spread, eroding the forest.
Whenever the unit encountered goblins, they sliced or gouged, inflicting lethal damage, devouring them. The glinting flares of light were probably magic. At this distance, there was no way to make out the details, but she could tell they were overwhelmingly destructive.
However, what struck Raynesia even more than the force of the unit’s overpowering attack was Krusty himself.
Krusty, who ran at the head of the unit he commanded, leading the knights with his back, was exuding a strange aura. The oddness she’d sensed on the deck of the ship had become tangible and was creating mountains of corpses, rivers of blo
od.
Lips curved up like a crescent moon.
Eyes narrowed with joy.
Glasses that reflected the silver light.
Krusty was sprinting across the battlefield, filled with exultation, as if he were a child running to the plaza on a festival day.
Krusty’s hands swung.
The ends of the ax became invisible, as if it were a whirlwind.
Then clear space opened up around him for three meters in every direction.
Or again, when magical beasts leapt at him. An enormous wolf the size of an ox charged toward him, but Krusty thrust out his left hand, stopping it easily, and called to those around him. The wolf’s gigantic body was riddled with dozens of arrows and slashed with magically strengthened swords.
Krusty flung away the wolf’s body, now just a ragged clump of dead meat, as easily as if it had been a sack of wheat. His attention turned to the next goblin unit.
It was ominous.
It was unearthly.
It was so dreadful it provoked revulsion.
However, to Raynesia, more than anything, the sight was somehow terribly sad.
It was probably her own ego that made it look ominous and unearthly. She felt it was rude of her to feel these things about a hero who was protecting her homeland.
Still, the sadness… What was that?
What was making her feel so lonely?
“Fifty ahead, two hill giants. Recovery teams in position to the right and left. Annihilate them, starting with the surrounding squads.”
Faintly, she could hear the lady knight’s telechat.
She’d squeezed her eyes shut involuntarily, and when she opened them, she saw Krusty heading toward two huge giants the size of siege towers.
Raynesia gasped.
A loglike club bore down on him, but Krusty leapt away like a swallow, fielding the blow with his two-handed ax, and stood between the giants. To the princess, the size difference seemed overwhelming, and it looked as if the giants were unleashing attacks that would blot out Krusty’s life. However, Krusty’s smile only widened, and she couldn’t sense a trace of fear from him.
On the contrary, Krusty’s weapon shone red, and every time it struck, the giants began to focus on Krusty obsessively, as if they’d forgotten themselves.
In the faint light of dawn, as the giants were whipped into a frenzy, Krusty continued to field their attacks.
The two giants had probably been that goblin attack unit’s secret weapons, and they were surrounded by a host of goblins with crossbows and spears. However, Krusty’s legion raid began to work freely, as if they’d just been released from all restrictions.
The unit had been roughly split into four, and each of these split into four again, attacking the goblins as scattered squads. These small attack units began to spread an encircling net over the surface of the forest where the goblins were.
Even as Akiba’s forces shifted dizzyingly, they showed no openings, and the goblins’ system of command had been unreliable to begin with. They had no hope of matching them. In the darkness, one after another, they fell to spells and swords.
In Raynesia’s eyes, strengthened by Fairy Balm, they dashed through the forest like flitting shadows.
Krusty was at the center of that dance.
He brought his arms down, like a conductor.
A barrage of fireballs swallowed up the horde of goblins like a fiery avalanche.
Krusty looked as if he was enjoying himself.
He seemed far more free than he had during his time at the Ancient Court.
That, more than anything, made Raynesia sad.
Without knowing why she felt sad, or lonely, Raynesia kept gazing at the chivalric knight.
He swung his ax with all his might, hacking through enemies, blocking attacks; and even though blood streamed from both his arms, his steps were firm, and his commands spurred on his unit. He looked like a god of war.
To Raynesia, Krusty seemed to become more and more transparent, so free that sometimes she thought he might simply dissolve into the moonlight.
That’s…
For some reason, the sorrow bore down on her heart until it was nearly painful.
How could Krusty, who seemed so powerful and invincible both at the Ancient Court and on the battlefield, look ephemeral? Raynesia was sure there must be something wrong with her mind.
Krusty seemed to be having fun, but, abruptly, the suspicion welled up that beyond that fun lay absolutely nothing. There might be no one there at all.
Krusty and the Akiba expeditionary force continued their advance through the forest.
As Raynesia watched them, she sat very tall and straight, continuing to seek out the back of the tall Adventurer with single-minded intent.
3
Marielle and the others had commandeered a fishing gear storehouse located near the mouth of the Great Zantleaf River as a temporary headquarters. They were relaying telechats from patrol units they had sent to the area directly around the town and were putting together a plan for defense.
No goblin sightings had been reported for more than half a day now.
At the very least, the goblins seemed to have completely retreated into the forest-covered mountains. The Adventurers in the area were napping in shifts, at the inn and in their storehouse.
A full day and night had passed since that first night. During that time, Marielle’s group had successfully defended the village of Choushi.
Marielle had been startled by the fact that the most adaptable and enthusiastic players were the ones she’d discounted as newbies.
Maybe that was only to be expected, though, she thought.
Come to think of it, these kids are the type who decided to try playin’ Elder Tales because of the rumors about the expansion pack. They don’t have much gamin’ experience. …Meanin’ they don’t have many biases, either…
Having very little experience in Elder Tales meant that their character levels were inevitably low, and that they weren’t skilled in combat. Because of those disadvantages, the veteran players had seen the new players as weak, and nothing more.
However, not having any preconceptions about the game system or the world could also be considered an advantage.
To Marielle and the other veteran players, Shiroe’s declaration—that the People of the Earth were humans who had the same senses, spirits, desires, and intellects as they did—had come as a great shock.
However, the shock probably hadn’t been all that big for the newbies.
In the first place, since they hadn’t been playing the game for very long, the conditioning that Elder Tales was a game hadn’t sunk in all that deeply. In that sense, to them, the situation was the same as if they’d been abducted to some other world, one that had nothing to do with Elder Tales.
Marielle had been happy when these players had actively called for the protection of the People of the Earth and had sprung into action. The newbies in the summer camp group had taken up the defense of the village of Choushi without Marielle having to persuade them with impassioned speeches.
When they saw the newbies roused to action like this, there was no way the veteran players could go without taking a stand.
The summer camp had begun on what was very nearly a volunteer basis. The veteran players who had signed on for it were people who were good at looking after newbies. They couldn’t possibly disgrace themselves in front of those newbies while they watched them blaze with hope.
Once the support of Marielle’s smile, which Marielle didn’t really notice, was added to the mix, morale would rise no matter what.
When Minori and Nyanta had conspired with each other and headed into the mountains, it had really hurt her, but in the end, the maneuver had proved to be a great success. From what Marielle knew, during that first night, there had been twenty-six defensive encounters in the area around the village. That was an average of four battles per party, which meant they’d had a far easier time than they would have had capturi
ng a dungeon.
Yet when dawn broke, the newbie Adventurers’ expressions had changed.
Battles in this other world had a special difficulty that hadn’t been there in Elder Tales: one that was less the intensity of combat itself than it was the hideous atmosphere of the battlefield.
Their bodies seemed to be based on those of their game characters: They were high-performance, and although their stamina, strength, endurance, and agility did depend on their game class, none of those posed a problem. Recovery spells healed wounds quickly, and even without a spell, if you toughed it out, minor cuts and scrapes would heal naturally in half a day or so.
The terror of battle lay more in its psychological aspects.
Taking a life with your own hands, even if that life belonged to a monster, was a terrible feeling, and some Adventurers were truly traumatized by it. It was a feeling Marielle could understand.
If they wanted to continue fighting in this world, there was no choice but to get used to it, and until they did get used to it, newbie players needed motivation and veteran players who’d stick close to them.
In terms of motivation and opportunity, the defense of Choushi was not only a big challenge, but a chance for the newbies.
It was newbie Adventurers with high morale who first noticed the change from the sea. High morale made itself known in endurance and fighting spirit as well, but the most striking effect was probably increased concentration, like now.
A team of three newbies who had gone on guard duty spotted white waves heading for the coastline and immediately contacted Marielle.
Their memories of being attacked on the white sandy beaches of Zantleaf were probably still with them. This time, that terror had worked in their favor.
When the veteran players ran to the scene, the sahuagins were still far beyond the distant, shallow coastal waters. They’d spotted them very early.
The Great Zantleaf River grew extremely broad in this area. Because the mouth of the river met the ocean, the flow of the tide mingled salt water with freshwater, and several piers jutted out into the river.