by Nikita Thorn
The conversation was interrupted by Yamura. “How do you even know they don’t already have these ‘lost’ pieces?”
“Ah, good question,” said Kazuki with a smile as he finally broke his gaze and turned toward the ryoushi. “I’m really glad you asked. To answer that, do follow me this way.” He gestured to the corridor. “Let me show you what I guess can be called our… permanent collection.” He laughed at what appeared to be a private joke.
With lingering looks at the unique weapons, the group followed their host back into the corridor. “If you want to come back, the exhibition officially starts at six, Shinshioka time, twelve people per tour and for five minutes of viewing, fifty silver for a ticket.” The ninja slid the exhibition room doors close.
“You’re going to make a lot of money from this, aren’t you?” said Yamura. “Fifty silver times… like fifty thousand is a lot of money.”
“We do have to cover our expenses. The security measures didn’t come cheap. We also have other operational expenses to keep everything running for the public good, as you will see on our third floor.”
Ippei grimaced. “I’m starting to feel that this whole thing has been scripted somehow.”
“Curated,” Kazuki turned to say, with an unabashed smile.
At the end of the corridor was a small window, which Seiki took a quick peek out of. It overlooked the clan’s tiny garden as well as the back of the shop houses facing the next alley, and Seiki saw something that looked like a tiny Spirit Shrine, which would perhaps hold no more than two resurrected players at the same time.
To their left hand side were the stairs to the Society’s higher floors. Unlike the creaky narrow stairway to the second floor, this one was much wider, enough for at least four people to walk side by side, and had a handrail of carved, polished wood, simple and perfectly functional.
“The third floor is where we do most of our work,” said Kazuki.
Unlike the previous floor that held only the small exhibition hall, this floor was lined with shoji doors along both sides. There were minimal decorations, and some of the sliding panels slightly mismatched in style, with bottom rails of different heights, as if the clan made do with what they had and never bothered to apply the final touches. Still, it gave the place an organic, lived-in feel, unpretentious, yet neat and orderly.
The room to their left turned out to be a library. If Seiki had thought the Crafters’ Guild’s bookshelves were packed, the Society had about four times as many documents. Labels showed they were organized in different ways, and at the end of the room sat an NPC clan attendant, who probably acted as a librarian.
“Is the library open to the public?” Seiki asked.
The question seemed to greatly please Kazuki. “No. This is for clan members and freelancers we trust. We can’t just let anyone with a flint near so many valuable documents.”
Ippei chuckled, and Seiki only then noticed that the room panels had protective seals throughout: first the Takamichi Wall Seals to protect items from theft and additional Mizuchimegu Seals that prevented fires from being lit. Both were Rank 5.
“Top grade stuff,” said Ippei.
“Knowledge is the most valuable heritage we have as a species.” Kazuki nodded philosophically as he closed the door and led them further down the hall. “So naturally we have to do everything to protect it. And you should be proud to know that your newsletter subscription helps pay for all of it.”
“I read the ones my clan mates leave in the clan hall,” muttered Yamura.
The next room was to their right and was surprisingly crowded. It was filled with orderly rows of low writing desks, four columns across and five rows deep, behind which sat an NPC clan clerk. The window was left wide open, to accept a constant traffic of pigeons.
“Whoa,” said Mairin. “What’s this now?”
“This is how newsletters get produced,” said Kazuki. “I suppose you can call it… automation.”
Seiki had never thought about how the Society managed to send out however many thousand copies of newsletters, but he supposed the mini factory they had here made a lot of sense.
Tilting his head to look at what they were producing, Seiki could briefly make out from the upside-down text an article about how unspent Festival Tokens could be used after the event ended. The clerk was fast and finished the document before he could read any further. She then quickly attached the folded paper to a pigeon and sent it off, her left hand reaching for a blank piece of paper, on which she proceeded to write once again the title ‘Festival Guide II’.
“That one’s another five gold,” said Kazuki when he noticed his guests studying the newsletter being produced. “It gives you more details of what Festival Tokens can be spent on, now that more information is trickling in.”
Ippei observed the room for a moment. “It’s not actually a one-to-one scale is it?”
“Good eye,” said Kazuki. “No, all this work is just… animation. The more NPC staff we recruit, the more newsletters we can produce, and the faster the process is. Right now it takes sixteen hours to send out each mass message, which is still too long, if you ask me.”
He pointed to the edge of the room, where a man dressed slightly differently than the rest of the clerks was sitting. On the man’s table was a stack of wooden cards. Seiki could not see what they said, but they were all labeled Instruction Order. “That guy there keeps a subscribers’ list, which is why you attach three gold to a post pigeon and address it to Niigata of the Shinshioka Scientific Society.”
“That’s him?” cried Mairin. “I thought… Niigata was one of your clan members, not an NPC.”
“Oh, no. I don’t think even Ikumi would be willing to manage a subscribers’ list by hand. Niigata is a special recruit from the Palace,” said Kazuki. “It took us quite a few Favors before we could convince Lord Otokubo to let him come work for us. His skill set is, let’s say, more advanced than what your usual clan attendant can do.”
Ippei’s eyes widened. “You mean you can actually program them?”
Kazuki smiled. “Something like that. Like I said, Favors get you very far in many different areas. Now let’s move along.” He slid the door shut before Ippei could ask anything else.
The next room down the hall was much smaller and occupied by a single middle-aged NPC sitting at a floor desk. Next to him was a large pile of paper. The window here, too, was left open, and a streak of sunlight shone through, directly onto the man’s desk.
The NPC was labeled Bureau of Records Official [Level Unknown]. Unlike the rest of the clan attendants, who were dressed in gray and red, the official wore the normal Shinshioka uniform.
“You have a personal Bureau of Records Official in your clan hall?” said Ippei.
“A lot of Favors will afford you a lot of conveniences,” said Kazuki with a hint of pride. “Now there’s no need to run to the Bureau when you want to check something. Of course, it still takes Favors to look up anything.”
“Look up things like what?” said Yamura.
“Like… loot logs for uniques,” said Seiki. It was quite a simple matter, now that he thought about it.
“Exactly,” said their host. “And that answers your question how we know that the two lost uniques have not been found. If you ask the official, the loot log will come back empty. I’ve also instructed another of our special Inner Palace recruits to let me know if anything on our list pops up.”
“Oh, so you can presumably just keep an eye out for, say, any particular item, like a Sheathed Blade?” Seiki asked.
“Yes. You can ask for loot logs by either player or item name, which comes in very handy when we’re trying to calculate drop rates.”
Seiki could not help wondering if he asked for ‘Shussebora Scale of Protection’ what the results would return, although he would prefer to wait until a more private moment. That said, he was not sure his current 67 Favors would be enough for anything.
Y
amura had already beaten him to it. “Can I try?”
“Go ahead,” said Kazuki.
“All right. Can you search for the loot history of this piece? It’s the Firerat Fur Armguard.” He lifted his arm and pulled up his sleeves to show his gear to the NPC.
“That will cost you ten Favors,” said the official.
“What?” cried the ryoushi. “Ten? No way!”
Kazuki chuckled and gave the Bureau official a little nod, before he glanced into the air as he made an invisible transaction. The official seemed satisfied and proceeded to writing a brief letter, attaching it to a pigeon, and sending it out the window.
“Oh, I see. Technically, he still has to get the records from the Bureau,” Mairin said. “That makes sense.”
Whatever realism it achieved, the search took only a few seconds, and a pigeon returned. Seiki was surprised to see it was the official Shinshioka black pigeon rather than a common one, but he supposed it gave the whole show a sense of credibility. The official read the message, crumpled it, then started scribbling his reply on a piece of paper.
“Can’t he just give us the official paper?” said Yamura.
“No,” said the man without looking up from his work. “It’s an official internal message that cannot be given out to commoners.”
Yamura’s jaw dropped in disbelief. “But isn’t it the exact same message you’re copying?”
“Yes.”
Seiki had to laugh at that. Even Ippei seemed amused.
“Awesome bureaucracy,” said Mairin, looking very impressed.
The official finally finished and handed the piece of paper to Yamura. “Here you are, history of the Firerat Fur Armguard.”
“Okay, awesome,” said Yamura. They all gathered to see what the result showed.
On the paper were only two lines of text:
Firerat Fur Armguard Loot History – 30 days:
[11 days ago]: looted from Hinezumi [Level Unknown] by [unknown]
Yamura frowned. “Hey, who’s this unknown? What about me?”
Kazuki laughed. “That’s you, Yamura.”
Yamura blinked as he looked at the piece of paper again. “But why does it say that—”
Seiki’s eyes widened. “It was you who wiped our loot logs!” he cried as he turned to face Kazuki.
Fumiya had mentioned being unable to find out who had been running the Nezumi Temple. Seiki had thought it was Kentaro who had had the foresight to do so, but after everything that had happened, he had forgotten to check with the houshi to see if it was indeed the case.
Ippei narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
“To be honest,” Kazuki said. “I thought you would appreciate not attracting more attention than you already had.”
The man sounded honest, but Seiki was feeling he was missing something important about what was assumed.
Seiki glanced at his friends. Mairin looked confused, Ippei suspicious, and Yamura simply stared at the ninja and said, “Uh, you did what again?”
“All right. This will explain things.” Kazuki let out a small chuckle, but his expression was much more serious now as he turned toward the Record Official. “Can you give me the loot history for the Firerat Fur Armguard going back a year?”
After the same process of the invisible Favor transaction, and the pigeons and the man writing the findings on a piece of paper, Kazuki handed the result over to Seiki.
It was the same record as the first one, except that there was now an extra line below Yamura’s record:
[8 months 8 days ago]: looted from Hinezumi [Level Unknown] by Reiji of the Shinshioka Scientific Society [Level 25]
Seiki’s head spun as he blinked to make sure he had read it right. “Reiji?”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Seiki had a feeling he should be able to make some important connections, but his mind was drawing nothing but blanks, and for a moment he was tempted to conclude that the events up until this particular discovery had been perfectly choreographed to lead them to this exact point, except that Kazuki appeared utterly taken aback by his reaction.
It did not help that Mairin piped up, perfect straight-faced. “He’s Reiji, don’t you know?”
Even with the confusion, the look on Kazuki’s face was priceless, and it took Seiki’s hasty denial and the kitsune finally bursting into giggles to clear up the matter.
Yamura frowned. “Who’s Reiji again?”
Ippei closely studied their host’s expression. “That… has suddenly become a very important question, hasn’t it?”
Several thoughts seemed to pass through Kazuki’s mind, before he gave up trying to make sense of everything. “Let’s go up to the top floor so we can properly talk.”
As the group followed their host back out of the room, Seiki tried to figure out what it was that he was supposed to understand. Reiji’s name on the loot log must not have been a coincidence, but he could not imagine why it was there and how it was connected to everything else. He exchanged a look with Ippei, but the samurai seemed to have no clue either what to think.
Two flights of stairs later, they found themselves on the fourth floor of the clan hall.
“This is where we receive our guests.” Kazuki gestured at the room. “Feel free to look around. There isn’t much, but the view is quite delightful. You see, right now we keep the space clear for people to borrow for things like dance practice.”
The whole area beyond the landing was on another raised tatami platform, and Seiki noticed wooden rails on the floor and ceiling where removable walls and doors could be added to partition off the space into smaller rooms. No sliding panels had been installed at the moment, however, and the top floor was one single large space with windows left wide open on all sides, allowing the refreshing breeze and the noise of the merry Festival below to freely drift in.
Despite the lack of decoration, the place had a welcoming, comfortable feel to it. Not many buildings were taller than three stories, and the room, with windows along whole lengths of its four walls, offered a panoramic view of the City in a way no other place did. Being so high up and open on all sides, it seemed to catch more of the wind. Seiki could easily imagine someone spending an afternoon here, working on some Trade Skills just to pass the time.
On the floor in the middle of the room were five floor cushions already laid out for them in advance, plus a circular wooden tray with empty tea cups.
Mairin was once again off to explore, running from window to window. “You can see all three city gates from here… plus the Shogun’s Palace. Uh, now that you think of it, where’s the North Gate?”
“Probably in our dear Lord Shogun’s backyard,” said Ippei.
Seiki was not sure if it was a joke. From his understanding of the layout of the City, there was nothing north of the Shogun’s Palace. The Wilderness wrapped around the City at some point, although the spaces did not perfectly connect that way, and if anyone were to go out the East Gate and turn left along the Shinshioka wall in an attempt to go around the City, they would eventually find themselves in endless Wilderness and would never arrive at the West Plains.
“Did you pick this territory because of the view?” said Mairin.
“It’s nice, isn’t it? You have to ask Ikumi. She found this location and arranged to buy it from the clan who owned it at the time.” Kazuki then called out to someone. “The guests are here! Tea, please!”
As they sat down on the floor cushion, Seiki could not help wondering if the Society had purposefully chosen the spot right at the center of the City for a particular reason, as some sort of a statement, although once again he started to feel as if he had been trained to read too much into things.
An NPC attendant came in with roasted rice tea for everyone.
“How many people do you have in your clan anyway?” said Mairin as she took a sip, then blinked in delight at the taste of the hospitality beverage. “I know everyone’s probably out doing Festival stuf
f, but it’s not a very big space.”
The place, indeed, looked empty, and Seiki quickly checked players present with the mental command ‘List’ and found that no one else was there except Kazuki and their group.
“You mean clan members?” Kazuki set down his cup next to his cushion. “Well, not counting Reiji… five.”
“Five!” cried everyone almost at once.
Seiki had expected the number to be somewhere around thirty, although he was not sure if he was more surprised by that or the casual mention of Reiji as a clan member.
“How can you run this thing with five… actually, never mind,” said Ippei. “Of course, with automation and enough funds you can even run the whole thing by yourself.”
Kazuki grinned. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“So… this Reiji guy is one of you,” said Ippei.
“Well, he never left, and we never kicked him out,” said Kazuki with a grim chuckle. “But… I guess it’s best that I start at the beginning.”
Seiki nodded. “Please.”
Kazuki took a deep breath. “We started as hobbyists, really. First it was Ikumi, Reiji, Aku and me. At some point we thought it would be nice to have a clan dedicated to research, so we left our clans and started the Society. Suzuyo and Yutaka joined later. So now we officially have six members. We do have a wide network of freelancers, though, in the hundreds. Suzuyo and Yutaka started as our freelancers, but they were very dedicated, and eventually wanted to be permanent members.”
“Like a tenure track system,” said Ippei.
Kazuki chuckled. “Yes, I suppose. Anyway, so it was about a year ago, when we had this idea to compile all the dungeon guides for our records. We split up all the known dungeons and we ran them over and over until we could write a report on the strategy and whatever other interesting tidbits we could find. Among the ones Reiji was running, there was the Ryuutou dungeon. Do you know that one?”
Seiki and Ippei had done a very limited number of dungeons and so they glanced at the rest of the group. Everyone shook their heads, and Kazuki added. “It’s the one with the balls of light over the lake.”