Log Horizon, Vol. 1 (light novel)

by Mamare Touno

  “—Adventures are all about firsts, you know. It’s feeling like a psyched-up hamster, going eek-brr-whizzz, like that… Huh? What was that? ‘Don’t wet your pants?’ Hey, why not, it’s fun! …It’s not fun? It is too! I mean, look at this fantabulous thing we got to see! Talk about making out like bandits! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”

  She’d said that. She’d been randomly brimming over with confidence, filled with conviction even though she had zero proof, a girl made up entirely of whims and exaggerations and energy… And even then, she’d always known the right answer. If she’d been here, she’d have worn this view with pride, like a medal of honor.

  That was why Shiroe spoke to the other two, saying exactly what he felt.

  “We’re the first. We’re the very first Adventurers in this other world to see this view.”

  It was the first time Shiroe had consciously declared that this was another world.

  The breathtaking natural beauty that spread out below them said it more plainly than any logical quibble ever could. No game could hold a view like this. The dawn wind, the cool air, the faint noises that came to them across the treetops, the early morning scenery that changed by the millisecond—none of it would be possible for a jumped-up VR environment.

  When he’d come to this world, and when everyone around him was panicking, and when some of the players had lost their purpose in life and public order had begun to deteriorate, a part of Shiroe had stayed calm. True, he’d thought, Not good, not good. This is a definite problem, but he’d still gone into town every day, explored the zones, tried out spells as he battled, and meticulously determined what he could and could not do here.

  …It could be that I’m better at adapting than I thought. It could be because Naotsugu was here, joking around and making me forget about the pain. It could be because we met up with Akatsuki, and things got livelier, and it helped.

  Those elements had definitely been there, but now Shiroe understood that they hadn’t been the whole reason. The beauty he’d felt in Akiba’s ruins, buried by ancient trees, when he’d first come to this world. As if he’d felt another world there.

  This is another world, and I am an Adventurer.

  For a moment, Akatsuki gazed at him with a puzzled expression. Then she nodded firmly, as if she’d satisfied herself of something. Naotsugu gave a mischievous, macho smile and drew in a lungful of air.

  “Right. We got here first. I’ve never seen a view this awesome, even in Elder Tales.”

  “It’s our first trophy.”

  The two of them looked at the scenery as if it were something to be treasured. Then they nodded to Shiroe.

  As if in response, Shiroe took out his griffin’s pipe and sent a loud note toward the eastern sky.

  1

  Serara was hiding in one of the many simple insulated houses in Susukino. About the size of a normal two-bedroom apartment, it had been built inside an abandoned building. The enormous structures that were scattered across this world were remnants of the culture of the old era, which had been lost when the world collapsed. Of course, as a player, Serara knew the world design had been based on contemporary Japan. Susukino’s model was the Sapporo neighborhood of the same name, and the player town held traces of the real city.

  In the real world, Susukino was a red-light district, and the city held lots of mixed-use buildings. In Elder Tales, the city’s design had been modified to consist mostly of fortresslike buildings reinforced with rough blue steel. The design motif for Hokkaido—or, in Elder Tales terms, the Ezzo Empire—had a boxy, retro machine empire feel to it. Its buildings, their steel frames reinforced with screws and enormous nuts and bolts, stood up well to the wind and snow, but they did nothing to keep out the bitter cold of winter. To cope, the people of Susukino had taken to building new houses of insulated materials inside the fortresslike mixed-use buildings. These smaller houses were created with an emphasis on warmth and livability. In terms of area per resident, it was terribly inefficient, and it wouldn’t have been practical in the real-world Japan, but it was perfectly possible in the Elder Tales game world.

  Serara had been using one of these insulated houses as a hideaway (her roommate, the person who had rescued her, had rented it for the two of them), and all day long, she cleaned the house’s two connecting common rooms.

  It wasn’t that she particularly liked cleaning, and the house certainly wasn’t that cluttered or dirty. There just wasn’t anything else to do. TV and the Internet didn’t exist in this world, which meant that killing time was no easy task. Besides, Serara was a Housekeeper. That particular subclass granted players special skills for cleaning zones, taking care of small articles, and maintaining all sorts of supplies and furnishings.

  …Why on earth did I choose such a minor, useless subclass?

  Serara sighed—she’d sighed so often that by now she’d completely lost track of how often—and even then, she kept right on cleaning.

  In Elder Tales, main classes were selected when players created their characters, and they couldn’t be changed later. However, if a player could stand to see their subclass experience points reset to zero, they could change subclasses with relative ease.

  Serara’s main class was Druid, one of the recovery classes. Serara had started playing this game, which other people said was deep and complex, because she’d thought it would be fun to play merchant.

  There were lots of players who played this way. There was a unique pleasure in interacting with other players and saving up money, and it was just one of the many play styles in Elder Tales.

  Of course, players who were playing as merchants generally chose the Merchant or Accountant subclasses, since these subclasses granted bonuses with regard to business deals and let players get slight discounts when trading with non-player characters. A production-related subclass would have been another sound option. Playing as a merchant while making a variety of items was one of the major ways to play Elder Tales. However, Serara had checked an introductory site when she started playing the game, and it had told her that in order to become a Merchant or an Accountant, one’s ability score needed to be above a certain level and a quest had to be completed. It also said that it was hard to advance in the production subclasses if a player didn’t have at least a little capital to use to buy materials.

  In that case, the best plan was for her to save up some money while she leveled up in her main class, Druid, then switch to another subclass once she’d gained a bit of leeway. Whether she ended up buying in wares or just making purchases somewhere, she’d have assets and her main class level, and it wasn’t as though they’d get in the way… And so she’d picked the easiest-looking subclass, just to fill in the category, and that subclass had been Housekeeper.

  In other words, Serara had become a Housekeeper nearly by chance, simply because it was the only option that hadn’t been eliminated.

  Arrrrgh… If I’d known this was going to happen, I would have picked a production subclass even if I couldn’t level up for a while. Artificer would have been nice, or Tailor…

  As her thoughts ran in circles, Serara wiped down the table with a dry cloth.

  The interior of the simple house looked rustic. More accurately, it was rustic: It was built of wood, beautiful wood grain patterns were visible in the floorboards, there was a wooden inset ceiling, and the walls looked like they belonged to a log cabin. The Ezzo Empire was a treasure trove of natural resources, and it was known as one of the most prominent mining and forestry areas on the Japanese server. Both the floorboards and the deep amber table were practically Ezzo Empire specialty products, and a careful polishing was all it took to give them a lustrous shine.

  Serara, a plain girl in a loose flannel shirt and jeans with her hair pulled back in a ponytail, worked her way carefully around the log house. She wore no makeup, and although she wasn’t a rare beauty, she had a fresh, neat air about her. She could easily have been mistaken for a young wife.

  I’m so bored that I keep accide
ntally leveling up, too…

  Serara sighed and opened her menu. She’d gotten more Housekeeper experience points today. Subclass levels and experience points were completely independent from the main class, and the system was very simple: Every time you accumulated ten experience points, you leveled up. The level maximum was probably 90 or 100. She’d been leveling up at an astounding pace lately, gaining three levels nearly every day. Yesterday, her Housekeeper level had been 42, and today it was already 44. If she kept this up, she’d complete the Housekeeper subclass while she was lying low in Susukino.

  Please don’t let me max out my skills while I’m living like a hermit… That would just be sad.

  Anybody who cleaned and did laundry and chores all day, every day, was bound to level up. Even Serara thought this was really more like being a housewife than a housekeeper. To a girl of her age, the word had quite a pleasant ring to it, but the embarrassment was stronger.

  Look at you, you lucky thing! A young lady tidying the house for her new cat husband… Kidding! I’m kidding!

  Having managed to embarrass herself, Serara began busily polishing dishes. As far as ways to kill time went, it wasn’t the sort of thing that would disturb other people, and a casual observer would have called the scene peaceful.

  “Serara, are mew there? I’m home.”

  The door opened—the house was an independent zone, which they were renting by the month, so only registered players could enter—and a very odd man came in. He was a Felinoid. Felinoids were demihumans with catlike characteristics, and one of the eight playable races in Elder Tales. His slender build and green corduroy jacket made him look like a medieval musketeer from a children’s picture book. His long, thin arms and legs made him seem incredibly slim. His round head topped by two triangular ears could easily have been the head of a mischievous cat from a fairy tale, and the whiskers that stuck out on either side were simultaneously gallant and cute.

  His name was Nyanta.

  “Welcome back, Nyanta.”

  Serara ducked her head in a little bow.

  “How was the town?”

  Nyanta tilted his head a bit to one side and gave an ambiguous smile. His eyes were always slightly narrowed, as if he were smiling; it gave him a reassuring air, but it made it hard for Serara to read the nuances of his expression.

  “The same as mewsual. Not too good, not too bad.”

  At his words, Serara’s face clouded. Nyanta might have said “not too bad,” but if things hadn’t gotten better, it meant they were still pretty bad.

  Public order in Susukino was steadily deteriorating. Since the population was small, its self-purification function wasn’t functioning. Right now, the only law in Susukino was the law of the jungle. A large part of the problem was one guild known as the Briganteers. The guild was made up of notorious players who’d been run out of Akiba and Minami, and even when Elder Tales was a game, it hadn’t had a good reputation. The Briganteers had always put profit above everything else and run roughshod over other players, and when the Catastrophe hit, they’d become something next door to a real gang of bandits practically overnight. Player kills were an everyday thing for them. Sometimes they weren’t satisfied with the items they got from player killing—only half of whatever the player had been carrying—and used intimidation or persistent harassment to extort money and goods from other players. Their abuse even extended to non-player characters.

  As a general rule, there was no reason for non-player characters to be targeted for ill treatment. For example, the guards who protected noncombat zones had high levels and strong combat abilities, so they could easily beat back any attack from a normal player. The non-player characters in field zones—such as traveling merchants, farm folk, and town residents who gave hints about quests—had very low combat abilities and were unable to defend themselves, but they didn’t have the sort of property a player would have. On top of that, since some non-player characters did provide hints about quests, most players would never consider attacking them.

  However, the Briganteers didn’t care. Not only that, but they’d begun to do something that rendered even the non-player characters’ lack of property meaningless: They’d turned the non-player characters themselves into property. In other words, they’d become slave traders.

  In Elder Tales, as in other games, it was possible for players to employ non-player characters. There were all sorts of reasons for doing this, but the most common one was to hire someone to take care of your house. In Elder Tales, where players could buy houses, there was steady demand for people to clean and manage personal residences. Whether you were buying or renting, if you didn’t regularly clean the zone where you lived, the maintenance fees went up. Non-player characters with certain types of special abilities could be very useful in guild activities, although they couldn’t be taken into battle. It wasn’t at all unusual to employ non-player characters this way.

  One of the reasons Serara’s Housekeeper subclass was such a minor one was that non-player characters could do the job just as well. If you employed a Maid non-player character, for example, for about eight hundred gold coins a month, any dwelling up to the size of a small manor would be kept neat and tidy at all times. No wonder fewer players were seeking to level up their Housekeeper skills.

  Of course, even if it was exquisitely designed, Elder Tales was only an online RPG. Maids, Harvesters, Assistants, and a few other exceptional non-player characters would use their special abilities to help players, but they were the minority. Ordinary non-player characters couldn’t be hired. Although their models were the same as the ones used for player characters, their communication abilities were limited to elementary AI, and they couldn’t do anything except give preset keyword information or fill in their side of a multiple-choice-directed conversation. In other words, they shouldn’t have been worth attacking.

  However, the Catastrophe had destroyed several things that had once been common knowledge. The game had turned real, and daily routine had become a nightmare. Since the Catastrophe, it would have been just as easy to count the stars as it would have been to count the major changes that had occurred, but the changes in the non-player characters had been particularly mind-boggling. In this world, they were real, flesh-and-blood beings, and they could move and converse almost as well as regular players. Of course, unless their settings specified otherwise, their combat abilities and specialized skills were far inferior to players’ skills, but these days it was often hard to tell whether you were talking to a player or a non-player character without checking the menu screen.

  Another important point was that the non-player character population had exploded.

  The non-player characters were incredibly close to human, and there were a lot more of them. When these two facts had been dangled in front of the crafty Briganteers like ripe fruit, the result had been the invention of “slave trading for fun.”

  Of course, since Susukino’s population was just two thousand, there wasn’t a huge market. It was an ugly caricature of economic activity, not something done for profit.

  Appallingly, even hunting non-player characters had become a way to kill time. And, as with all stupidity, it had escalated, and the abuse and extortion that had been focused on non-player characters had been turned on Serara, a real female player.

  As she remembered, Serara felt the blood drain from her face. A dark veil seemed to fall across her vision, and she could feel her temperature dropping. If Nyanta hadn’t saved her, she knew something terrible would have happened.

  “Come now, Serara, it’s all right. Don’t brood like that. If you think too hard, mew’ll be old before mew know it.”

  Nyanta waved a hand in front of Serara’s eyes.

  “At times like this, it’s better to eat some fruit and not think very hard at all… Here.”

  As Serara nodded very slightly, he handed her an apple. It was bright red, and its sweet, carrying fragrance was somehow reassuring.

  “The house is mewt
iful again today. Mew’ll make some lucky fellow a fine wife someday, Serara.”

  Nyanta spoke in a leisurely voice, pulling a chair out from the kitchen table and sitting down.

  At his words, Serara felt her chilled body grow warm again.

  “Oh no, that’s not true. Not at all.”

  Nyanta referred to himself as an old man. From his voice, he was certainly much older than Serara. She was a high school junior, and she thought he could easily be more than twice her age. No matter what he said, though, he didn’t seem at all elderly. When she’d told him so once, he’d said, “That’s just the game graphics,” but Serara didn’t think so at all.

  Nyanta must be a…a dashing middle-aged man. I’m sure of it. He’s stylish and handsome and mature and eloquent…

  Yes, it was a game, and yes, the graphics were designed to be beautiful, but as far as Serara was concerned, once you started playing alongside someone, appearance didn’t matter at all. In the post-Catastrophe world, that went double. Since she’d been living with Nyanta (even though it was only because it was an emergency), she’d gotten to know him very well.

  Nyanta seemed like a reliable, mature man. Although there was nothing rough about him at all, being around him was oddly reassuring, as if she knew she’d be protected. His bushy, marvelous silver ears could have belonged to a purebred cat, and his slim build was quite smart.

  The only trouble is, since Nyanta’s so stylish, I look chunky when we’re together… I am a bit pudgy, I guess…

  Most people would have said that Serara simply had a womanly figure, but Nyanta seemed to give her a bit of a complex. On the other hand, although Nyanta did have a considerable amount of muscle on him, at first glance he seemed to have been put together from pencils.

  “Any mews from the rescue party?”

  Nyanta asked this as he unpacked his shopping bag at the table. Both Serara and Nyanta knew that the Crescent Moon League, Serara’s guild, was sending a rescue squad of three players from Akiba to Susukino, and it had been a common topic of discussion lately. The squad was traveling so rapidly that even Nyanta was impressed. Although Serara couldn’t contact them directly, Marielle, the Crescent Moon League guild master, called her several times a day with updates, so Serara knew roughly where they were.