by Mamare Touno
Most of the Adventurers of Yamato, including Shiroe, were Japanese in the real world.
Although this wasn’t the sort of thing one could brag about, to Japanese people, trust in governing organizations wasn’t valuable enough to be worth damaging. Of course, Japan’s actual administrative and police organizations provided some of the highest-level services in the world. If these organizations stopped working, there would clearly be trouble that very day. However, didn’t most people feel as if those administrative end services had no connection to the governing organizations? To the Japanese, government incompetence was already taken for granted. The idea of attacking confidence in a governing organization was itself un-Japanese, and in Yamato, it wasn’t at all like the Adventurers.
In addition, the crudeness of the attack told him something else.
At the very least, the hostile People of the Earth didn’t think this attack could inflict a devastating blow on the town of Akiba and the Adventurers themselves. Of course not: The Adventurers wouldn’t be weakened immediately just because the festival failed, law and order in the town grew a bit worse, and the Round Table Council was criticized as incompetent.
Since this attack wasn’t by nature the sort of attack that would settle things on its own, what seemed to be their current goal—damaging confidence in the Round Table Council—should be considered no more than a foundation for their actual goal.
In that case, what was their true goal in this situation? What would benefit the attackers?
It was likely that it lay in being able to negotiate with Akiba under advantageous conditions.
That was probably the goal of the merchant traders from the West who had been mentioned in his telechat with Minori. Since the Round Table Council had concluded a treaty with Eastal, the western People of the Earth would need to sign a treaty with the town of Akiba as well, to keep the others from monopolizing the profit. In order to improve the conditions of that treaty, they were interfering as a sort of preemptive strike.
Since they’d been able to mobilize merchants on a scale like this one, a wealthy merchant or noble with sufficient capital was probably in command.
When he’d checked with Isaac, he’d received information that one group of important figures who fit the description had arrived that morning with the intent of staying in town.
He could understand it.
Depending on the situation, it would be possible for the strategy to produce a certain effect.
However, Shiroe thought, for precisely that reason, it was crude and completely lacking in aesthetics.
In mobilizing this many people, then attempting to make the negotiations go their way through threats, intimidation, and groundless rumors, they’d given away their origin.
“From the West…?”
“Don’t mention it to anyone just yet.”
In the back of the Crescent Moon League booth, having finished his explanation, Shiroe made a request of Henrietta.
“I won’t, but what are you going to do next, Master Shiroe?”
“Well…”
Shiroe tried to continue, but faltered.
Shiroe was one of the eleven guild masters who made up the Round Table Council. However, the Round Table Council was an organization of self-government, and it had only the trust of the town of Akiba. Would it be proper for him to conduct defensive activities at his own discretion, or not? Shiroe thought about it for a little while, but stopped partway through.
He’d reached the conclusion that the answer to that question wouldn’t present itself easily, and he had given up.
Besides, we should get by without seeing blood this time. …They came to stir things up using aggressive methods, so they’ve probably considered the possibility of being repaid in kind.
…This slightly irresponsible thought was also present.
If you get hit, hit back. That was only natural. This world was far stricter than Earth when it came to handing out retribution. Either way, they’d need to use defensive tactics this time around. Self-defense was a natural, self-evident right.
“Fight. Of course.”
The sense of wrongness Shiroe had felt. The feeling of roughness that had continued since yesterday. The inquiries to the Production Guild Liaison Committee had made it clear: The number of incidents that needed to be dealt with was increasing rapidly.
It wasn’t limited to disputes in town. On the contrary: Cases stemming from direct quarrels were only the tip of the iceberg. For example, applications that required only one form had been split across two forms and submitted. Town entry procedures were being used to monopolize personnel. Taxes were being fudged slightly. They were attempting to pass bribes. Each individual thing was simply a troublesome triviality, not worth bothering about, but an intent to maximize these things was assailing Akiba.
Since it was so roundabout, and it was difficult to pinpoint malicious intent, even the Adventurers who noticed it had been unable to decide whether it was truly a premeditated attack or not. However, this sort of trivial contact had piled up and was attempting to bind the PGLC—and, by extension, the Round Table Council.
Since they weren’t able to identify it as an attack, they couldn’t defend. The enemy was making the greatest possible use of that vulnerability.
So where was the point on which the enemy was concentrating their effort?
Right now, it was any point where the Liaison Committee was fielding paperwork of some sort. Intentionally false reports and multiple reports were being turned in with regard to duties such as the town gates, the storehouse facilities, and the flea market patrols, whittling down its processing capacity.
It was probably best to consider that points where Adventurers and People of the Earth interacted were being attacked as well. They were attempting to sour the festival and the town’s atmosphere by disrupting areas where communication would take place.
With either, the only countermeasure was to increase the number of staff on-site. On top of that, efficiency and flexible organization would be key.
All of Akiba’s self-governing organizations, beginning with the Round Table Council, were composed of volunteers. Considering that, they displayed extraordinary problem-solving abilities, but this was only when those organizations had sufficient people and morale. Being short staffed made the fatigue on-site more serious, and a lack of morale reduced their very energy to work. In addition, without proper placement and an awareness of the goal, they probably wouldn’t even be sure which way they were supposed to go.
Which meant they’d need to set up a system of command and inject personnel.
Then, too, it wouldn’t be possible to stop the next attack with that alone. Of course, the enemy might not play that hand, but Shiroe thought that if it had been him, he’d have another attack waiting as insurance. A move that would disparage the Round Table Council’s practical abilities.
Dispassionately, Shiroe flipped through the cards in his mind.
The theater of war is vast. Each individual piece of this infiltration is negligible, just minor trouble. …However, the battlefield is all of Akiba. The range is too wide; I can’t handle it on my own. Even if I asked everyone in Log Horizon, we wouldn’t be enough. That said, having the Round Table Council take action would be a bad move in and of itself. It’s likely that that’s exactly what the enemy wants: A situation in which the Round Table Council panics over trivial business issues at stalls.
Of course he’d probably need to contact the appropriate parties and ask for their cooperation, but he couldn’t let the rank and file of the Round Table Council realize they were in a state of emergency. Simply raising the level of alert would eat up some of their processing capacity. Since this was a saturation attack on the processing abilities of the Round Table Council and the PGLC, carelessly raising the security level would play right into the enemy’s hands.
Ideally, we’d get rid of the incident itself. Right…
That was the ideal outcome.
B
ut how? In his mind, he positioned the forces he had, then ran simulations. Plans that failed were scrapped, the conditions changed, and another simulation run. When he stopped breathing, the noise around him grew distant, and he was enveloped in a world of silence. In the midst of the accelerating mock battles, Shiroe groped for the balance point he knew had to exist somewhere.
Even Akatsuki, who was peeking up at him as if she were worried, had disappeared for Shiroe now.
The repeated examination of conditions was erasing the light and sound from his world.
…But nothing worked.
The enemy’s attacks were too incompatible with Shiroe.
The enemy was barely thinking at all. Of course, their commander probably had a vague overall objective, but each individual attack was executed nearly on impulse, in all sorts of places. These weren’t pinpoint breakthrough attacks based on a detailed strategy. They were ad-lib attacks executed at random.
Not only that, but they’d managed to deduce the true state of the attacks only after the enemy had completed their battle formation and hit them with a preemptive strike. Shiroe the Strategist used advance adjustments as a weapon, and his affinity with this style was the highest it could possibly be.
Agh… I hate enemies like this.
He’d declared to Akatsuki and the others that they would fight, but the situation was worse than he’d thought. The fact that the enemy was acting haphazardly, or in other words, at random, was built into the strategy. He couldn’t make predictions. If the enemy had been planning to attempt to break through at a certain point, he could have deduced what that point was and concentrated his defenses there. That was precisely what made it possible for recruited soldiers to stop a vast, hostile army. However, this enemy was an epidemic of simultaneous terrorist acts. Not only that, but it was terrorism with no malice at its extremities. Shiroe didn’t have the ability to figure out what each individual enemy just happened to be planning.
At times like this, I guess there’s nothing for it but to give up, at least temporarily.
Shiroe mentally switched gears.
He gave up on dealing with everything.
What couldn’t be done couldn’t be done. With that as his premise, he’d do what he could.
There was no time, either. It was already past noon. If they didn’t take steps within the next hour, the situation would probably grow bad enough that even the residents of Akiba would sense the abnormality.
If he was going to find something to counter this enemy with, under these conditions…
“Hm? Well, if it isn’t Mister Shiro. You’ve been at the Crescent Moon League booth? That’s right, of course.”
When Shiroe turned, there was Soujirou, his old friend and leader of the West Wind Brigade, standing with the crowd at his back. Today—possibly as townwear—Soujirou was wearing traditional Japanese clothes: a kasuri-patterned kimono and navy blue hakama trousers. His hair, which was tied back in more of a ponytail than a traditional topknot, swung behind him, and of course, he was carrying his long and short uchigatana swords.
“It’s been quite some time, sir.” “Hello!” “Pleased to meet you.” “Who’s he?” “You know. From Log Horizon…” “Oh!”
The high-pitched voices behind him came from the girl groupies who were always with Soujirou.
“We went to the cake shop you told us about, Mister Shiro. Talk about fantastic bonuses! They gave us sixteen whole cakes. We couldn’t quite get through them all, so we called our guild mates and told them to come have some free cake, but the more members showed up, the more cakes they brought out. They were a really nice guild! …Um, huh?”
Shiroe felt the strength go out of his knees; he almost sank to the floor.
Those weren’t bonuses. They were just adding to your challenge menu, to suit the number of people. The comeback had made it as far as his throat, but Soujirou didn’t seem to have noticed a thing.
“About the time they’d brought out thirty whole cakes, they ran out of stock, I think. We all ate them together, and they were delicious. I liked the orange mousse. That one was really good, wasn’t it? It had something like the lingering scent of summer to it.”
Oh, geez. Soujirou is such a…
Even as he felt himself going limp, Shiroe set a hand on Soujirou’s shoulder as he delivered his report.
“What is it, Mister Shiro?”
“Nothing. You came at a good time, Soujirou. I have an issue that’s perfect for you.”
The enemy was developing a haphazard saturation maneuver that incorporated randomness.
In which case, it would be fitting to go beyond randomness and apply unconsciousness to that line of defense.
The ideal talent for the job was right before Shiroe’s eyes.
4
Ending the telechat, Minori clenched her fists tightly.
Her fear had been right on the mark.
Akiba—Minori and the others—was under attack.
“So it’s true?”
As Calasin asked the question, his voice sounded as if he’d had a shock. Minori nodded.
“Shiroe thinks so, too.”
Calasin bit a fingernail, glanced at the mountain of documents with a stern expression, then began to think again.
It had already been eight hours since Minori had entered the office. They’d worked straight through from early morning nearly without breaks, and as a result, the greater part of the towers of documents had disappeared. At this point, they were condensed and packed into the document crates in the corner of the room.
However, for that very reason, their situation had become clear.
They hadn’t noticed it because the reports had been scattered and were arriving separately, but merchants from the West made up more than 15 percent of the total number of attendees.
Although large, the number itself wasn’t a problem. The problem was the fact that that 15 percent of the incoming population had caused more than 60 percent of the trouble.
This room was the department responsible for the Libra Festival. In other words, it was the control room.
Before the fact or after it, information gathered here in the form of reports.
This “report” format had been the source of their error. Processing the wide variety of reports was putting them under pressure.
Of course documents were important.
“Leave a record” was an ironclad rule of clerical work, and in this world, using paper was the only way to do it.
However, the Production Guild Liaison Committee had been overwhelmingly short on processing capacity. The organization hadn’t been built to be capable of leaving a record as precise as the one they’d initially planned for, and the system hadn’t been applied skillfully enough. More than anything, they’d been crushingly short on the necessary personnel.
This weakness had been exploited.
For example, the simple oral survey of cargo when entering the town. The license issuing procedure for those participating in the flea market. The procedure to report items being sold. The procedure to use the publicly run storehouses managed by the Round Table Council. Issuing cargo exchange receipts on-site. All of these locations were understaffed.
The delay triggered stress, and stress invited trouble.
They’d thought this confusion had been caused inevitably—in other words, unintentionally—by the unexpected increase in People of the Earth merchants. That is to say, the Liaison Committee had been blaming themselves for having been unable to anticipate this crowd.
However, as they sorted out the documents, they saw that the same western merchants had intentionally requested multistep or redundant paperwork.
Someone, or possibly several someones, was trying to put stress on the system.
When Calasin had checked, the guilds who were on town patrol—D.D.D. and the Knights of the Black Sword—said they’d also been rendered unable to move by dealing with a sudden increase in fights and disputes. At the same time, all through the
town, they’d heard baseless rumors blaming the Round Table Council for incompetence.
At this point, with Calasin’s permission, Minori had contacted Shiroe. She’d been worried that not sharing the information would do harm.
Then, on having received that information, Shiroe had determined that someone was attacking them, and, unfortunately, he’d given his support to Minori’s guess.
“You’ll be going back to join Shiroe, won’t you, Minori?”
Calasin’s question was just what she’d anticipated, and so Minori also took the attitude she’d planned on and shook her head.
“I won’t go back to Shiroe.”
“Huh?”
“I’m staying here,” Minori repeated.
The astonishment in Calasin’s expression was only to be expected.
When attacked, groups returned to their leader. It was a defensive response dating back to the time when humans were animals. Guilds were no exception.
Under the circumstances, the commonsense response was for all members to return to their guild leader and follow his instructions as a group. This was less a type of group discipline than a textbook move. They were on the receiving end of a mysterious social infiltration invasion. In fact, Calasin had just issued an order to summon all guild members whose hands were free to the area around the guild center.
On top of that, Minori was still young. Even she understood that Calasin had thought it was only natural for her to return to the wings of her “guardian,” Shiroe.
However, she had made up her mind to stay here.
Minori’s ability to organize documents was already equal to that of a full-fledged clerical worker. Of course, she’d had help from a few of Shopping District 8’s younger members, but it was true that Minori had cleared the flood of documents that had beset the office. Calasin had no reason to refuse her.