Log Horizon, Vol. 1 (light novel)

by Mamare Touno

  In all likelihood, after Shiroe set the trap on Demiquas, Nyanta had waited fourteen seconds.

  He’d parried Demiquas’s attacks, holding out for those fourteen seconds. During that time, he’d gotten in close and secured a positional advantage, waiting until the time was right. Then, at the appointed instant, he’d leapt into the air and paid out a series of five attacks with his left rapier. The attacks had pierced the brambles as if drawn directly to them, triggering the additional damage. In that instant, the recast time had ended, and Shiroe had hit Demiquas with another Sewn-Bind Hostage. Nyanta, still airborne, had executed a half-turn and paid out another five attacks with his right rapier.

  A series of ten attacks from both sides. Two linked Sewn-Bind Hostage spells cast with a pitch-perfect grasp of the recast time. Each of the ten attacks had acted as a trigger, detonating all ten briers.

  That was the truth of what Akatsuki had “seen.”

  However, she’d only managed to see it because she was familiar with the characteristics of that spell from working with Shiroe. There had been no interruption in the airborne Swashbuckler’s attacks. Executing ten thrusts in a mere two seconds had to be a special technique peculiar to Swashbucklers.

  Ten attacks in two seconds. In simple terms, each attack had taken a fifth of a second. Setting a new Sewn-Bind Hostage in the practically nonexistent pause between the fifth and sixth attacks seemed humanly impossible. The move had been brilliant.

  True, with an attack like that one, it would be possible to completely drain a Warrior’s HP in an instant, but would it be easy to execute? The answer was an emphatic “no.” Akatsuki came very near to biting her lip; she hastily composed her expression. The battle wasn’t over yet.

  She could feel what she’d seen colliding with what she knew to be common sense.

  She’d trained with Shiroe for more than ten days, and she didn’t think even she’d be able to copy that maneuver. Those two had pulled off that intricate team play even though they hadn’t spoken in ages and didn’t seem to have planned it in detail.

  From the Briganteers’ faces, the shock Akatsuki felt had hit them with a dozen times more force.

  Who were these men?

  Where had they gotten enough attack power to bury Demiquas?

  Could they possibly have leveled up past level 90?

  Were they actually a cleanup squad from another district?

  That attack, which even Akatsuki hadn’t been able to understand without the help of several deductions, would have been impossible to evade by sight. Not only could they not evade it, they couldn’t even understand it.

  “When did they… That can’t be…”

  Demiquas had held his guild together with fighting ability that verged on brutality, and although the two hadn’t gotten along, Rondarg had supported the Briganteers with his resourcefulness. With both their leaders gone, even though the bandits still had most of their strength left, their will to fight had been completely broken.

  “We came through the Depths of Palm,”

  Shiroe stepped toward Rondarg, approaching Akatsuki and the captive magic user.

  “The distance between Susukino and Akiba isn’t so great it can’t be crossed. We have the method and the map, and we’ve called in the information. This party is over.”

  The facts weren’t really so optimistic.

  Akatsuki and the others had come this far with the aid of their griffins. Not all players would be able to travel so quickly. The journey up to the Ezzo Empire was still a very long and massive undertaking.

  However, Shiroe had probably phrased it categorically on purpose to fan a sense of defeat in the Briganteers. Akatsuki let the short sword she held against Rondarg’s neck slip a little, using the cold blade to drive home Shiroe’s point.

  “We win this battle. We’ll be taking your other leader’s head with us.”

  Shiroe quickly took a dagger from his inner pocket and used it to sever Demiquas’s head. Akatsuki saw Shiroe’s expression cloud slightly at the wet sound of splitting flesh that the dagger made as he brought it down.

  …Well, of course. Even if it wouldn’t actually kill the player, beheading someone wasn’t something any of them wanted to do. However, Shiroe managed to keep his tone callous. There was no telling how much meaning there was in taking someone’s head in a world where death didn’t exist, but Akatsuki thought it was a price the men should pay. They’d bet themselves in this fight, and they’d lost.

  Faced with Shiroe’s cold attitude and piercing stare, the Briganteers edged back.

  The frozen silence was broken by a griffin’s sharp cry. Three griffins appeared from the western sky, flying in a V-shaped formation, and landed rather roughly in front of Shiroe’s group.

  “Serara, over here!”

  Nyanta had sheathed his rapiers, and holding out a hand to Serara, he pulled her in, picked her up bodily, and leapt onto the nearest griffin. Naotsugu, who’d mounted his griffin even more quickly, took a step forward as if to shield Akatsuki. Akatsuki swung her short sword, shaking off the blood. Shiroe stood just beyond her, watching her with the usual look in his eyes: a bit sullen, yet somehow worried.

  “Akatsuki, let’s go!”

  Akatsuki nodded as she’d done many times before. The gesture was filled with the gratitude and respect she couldn’t express aloud.

  “Let’s move! Heading out! Escape city!”

  Naotsugu yelled, as if he were declaring a cavalry charge, and his griffin leapt for the sky. Nyanta’s sand-colored griffin launched itself after it.

  Akatsuki leapt up behind Shiroe, barely touching the fingers of the hand he held out for her. With her reinforced Adventurer’s abilities, she could have mounted the griffin without Shiroe’s help. However, it was his griffin. Jumping up without a word would have seemed rude, but asking for permission would have felt awkward and artificially distant, so Akatsuki always let Shiroe’s hand guide her to her seat.

  Shiroe had kept his gaze on the Briganteers right up until the end, but he finally sighed, as if giving up, and spoke to Akatsuki.

  “Let’s go.”

  Akatsuki gave a small nod. At the pressure from Shiroe’s bootheels, the griffin soared up the slope of the wind, over the dazed, upturned faces of the Briganteers and the heads of the Adventurers who’d come out from Susukino. The three enormous creatures flew away, leaving the echoes of savage, magnificent wingbeats behind them.

  Up here, racing through the wind on the back of a griffin, she felt the faint ache from Shiroe and Nyanta’s teamwork and the irritation she’d experienced in Susukino scatter into the clear blue sky.

  They’d successfully rescued Serara of the Crescent Moon League. They had another week of travel ahead of them before they reached Akiba, but their mission was complete. They’d done it.

  The cold wind buffeted Akatsuki, but it couldn’t shake her sense of peace. She held tight to Shiroe’s back, feeling a quiet satisfaction at having accomplished their mission.

  “My liege.”

  “What, Akatsuki?”

  “…Never mind.”

  “Mm… Let’s go home. Back to Akiba.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  The wind snatched the words away the moment she spoke them, and the blue air streamed around her and away.

  Like larks released from their cages, the three griffins flew, bound for southern skies.

 

  AFTERWORD

  To my first-time readers, it’s great to meet you!

  To those of you who know me from the Internet, it’s great to see you again!

  This is Mamare Touno.

  Thank you very much for buying Log Horizon, Vol. 1: The Beginning of Another World. This book is an edited and revised version of an online serial I started writing in April 2010. When the story was turned into a book, I changed the setting a bit and revised the text to improve the quality of the writing and its readability. I’ll be thrilled if you
add it to your personal collections.

  …Enough of the boring preamble. I think I’ll talk about Little Sister Touno. Yes, the rumors are true: I have a little sister, and she has a distressingly weak constitution. I’m a fairly dim bulb myself, but Sister Touno is a very silly creature indeed.

  A long time ago, when we were little, I told her that all the eggs in komochi-shishamo (Japanese smelt with intact roe) were injected in through the fishes’ butts with a syringe, and she believed me. Even now, I remember her nodding earnestly as I told her, “Workers in Sakhalin toil away with their syringes in a huge, freezing cold factory.”

  The other day, she’d completely forgotten I was the one who’d introduced her to the Shishamo Injector Theory, and she let it drop in conversation as trivia.

  Well, yes, it’s trivia, but it’s fake trivia.

  Of course, I didn’t call her on it. I just looked very serious and acted impressed, but apparently she finally found out the truth from somebody else, and she got really mad at me.

  So, Sister Touno is another few steps up the stairway to adulthood. Still, since the stairway she’s climbing is a lot like the down escalator, it’s hard to tell whether she’s actually going up or whether the scenery’s just scrolling backward.

  Later, when I ran an Internet search on the Shishamo Injector Theory, I discovered that it’s actually a rumor with a bit more truth behind it than your average urban legend. Real life trumps my ability to fib on demand.

  When I told Sister Touno, “Apparently they do sometimes inject eggs into male shishamo and sell them,” she pulled the futon over her head and refused to talk to me. I don’t think she’s going to believe anything I tell her about this anymore. It takes a long time to build up trust and only an instant to lose it. —Although, in this case, I still think she’s a dim bulb for letting me fool her for almost a decade.

  That said, my memory has never been the greatest, and neither has Sister Touno’s. After a while, I’m pretty sure her head will fill up with thoughts about dinner, and she’ll completely forget.

  As you can see, Sister Touno and I are as chummy as England and Ireland, so I told her, “Hey, remember that story I told you? You know, Log Horizon. —Get this: It’s going to be in bookstores,” but she didn’t believe me at all. She said, “Quit lying, stupid big brother,” or something like that.

  That’s only to be expected. Even I still don’t quite believe the publishing thing. Sister Touno may think everything I say is a lie, but letting her think that is fun, too, so I haven’t tried to make her understand.

  …So that’s what Log Horizon went through before ending up in your hands. The characters kick up more of a ruckus than they did in the online version, and I think they’ll drive the story. The character status screens at the beginning of each chapter symbolize this. As a matter of fact, the items listed on each of these screens were submitted by readers via Twitter in January 2011. There were close to three hundred items submitted, and the items I used came from IGM_masamune, LAN, akinon29, ebius1, gontan_, izumino, kane_yon, oddmake, roki_a, sawame_ja, and vaiso. Thank you so much!! I can’t give your names here, but I’m grateful to everyone who submitted suggestions. Shiroe and the other characters are psyched, too.

  Log Horizon began online, and I’d like to keep running projects like this one from Volume 2 onward. For details and the latest news, check out http://mamare.net. The site has all sorts of other non–Log Horizon Mamare Touno information, too.

  Finally, I’d like to thank Shoji Masuda, who produced this book; Kazuhiro Hara, who drew supremely cool illustrations for it; Tsubakiya Design, the agency who designed it; Oha, who proofread it; and Fta of the Enterbrain editorial department! Thank you very much!

  If you read this book and enjoy Shiroe and the other characters’ journey, then the book will truly be complete. Bon appétit.

  Mamare “I love shishamo” 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.

  WEBSITE: HTTP://WWW.NINEFIVE95.COM/IG/

  Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Yen On.

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