by Mamare Touno
“—We just got back. Yes, thanks. Yeah… We’re fine.”
Suddenly, a pure white light lanced through Touya’s gray-hazed field of vision.
It hadn’t even been a month yet, but the voice was already nostalgic. It was a voice he’d nearly forgotten: Shiroe’s pensive, slightly troubled speech.
His head came up as abruptly as if he’d been stung; he scanned the plaza.
The market? No.
The stalls? No.
The smithy? No.
The weapons shop, the guard shop, the tavern, the inn… He looked and looked for the face he knew must be there… He was very close to despair. Touya didn’t know the face that belonged to that voice.
He’d only ever heard the voice over voice chat. Touya didn’t know what Shiroe would look like now, after the Catastrophe. When that thought occurred to him, he felt as if his chest was being crushed.
Still, when a group of a dozen or so noisy travelers entered through the arched gate that linked the plaza with the main street, Touya’s eyes were drawn to them. Several town-dwelling guild members had surrounded a small group that had obviously just returned from a long journey. A young man stood at the center of the group, but he didn’t seem at all excited and in fact looked a little troubled.
It was Shiroe.
“Don’t you worry! Once our Chefs heard what you told us, you’d never believe it. We’ve been taste testin’ like it was goin’ out of style every day. What would that be in English, ‘a taste-testin’ storm’? When we heard you were comin’ back, they started skippin’ around and gettin’ ready for a party.”
“Whoa, a feast?! Can’t-wait-for-that city!”
“That’s wonderful mews.”
“Mari, you really didn’t have to do all that. Not over this.”
Feeling frantic, as though he couldn’t move quickly enough, Touya opened his mental menu. He aligned his cursor with the player in front of him and called up the name and guild display. Guild: Unaffiliated. Name: Shiroe. Class: Enchanter.
It was the expert player who’d spent a little while with Touya and Minori before the Catastrophe struck, teaching them the basics of the game. Even now, Touya and his sister talked about the young man as if he were their big brother.
“Mist—”
Touya began to raise his voice, but then he froze, as if he’d been cut off.
He’d thought Shiroe had looked his way.
It might have been an illusion, but when Shiroe looked at him, Touya had sensed something inside him, something that had grown far stronger than before.
Shiroe was also living here, in the world after the Catastrophe.
The moment he sensed that, the shock had frozen Touya’s tongue.
The world had changed.
The Catastrophe had done something final and irreversible to it. They’d been pulled into another world, something all young dreamers fantasized about at least once or twice. Not only that, but the game world had turned real. It was like something out of a heroic legend.
However, a good look at the situation revealed a gray prison.
“A guild to aid beginners.” Touya and Minori might have been wrong to fall for words like that. Still, Touya thought. Even without that, this was a world where the “haves” were powerful people.
Money, items, experience points: All resources benefited the people who collected them. Those who had money gained more of it; those who had items got more of them. Those who had lots of experience points—in other words, the high-level players—fought stronger monsters and leveled up. In this world, where the law of the jungle prevailed, that was the Truth.
The “haves” got even more power, and the “have-nots,” eternal latecomers, could only stare at the backs of the “haves.” That was part of the true shape of the Elder Tales world, the world of the online game. Now that the game had become real, that harsh truth showed even more clearly, and on top of that, since it was no longer a game, they weren’t allowed to quit.
Touya’s thought patterns were still young, and he couldn’t put that truth into words and explain it clearly. Even so, because he was young, he was sensitive to its real shape.
The fact that they were the same.
It was a fundamental natural law, in every place, in every world. If “survival of the fittest” was allowed, then it was only proper that some people were strong and others were weak. The world wasn’t rough on the weak because this was a game. The real world had been the same way. True, open exploitation and discrimination had been forbidden, but that hadn’t meant those things hadn’t existed.
Touya knew.
He’d had legs that wouldn’t move. They’d taught him the truth well enough.
Both Touya and Minori were novice players. Novices had low battle strength and didn’t know much about the world, and on top of that, they didn’t have property. That meant they were powerless.
Touya thought there probably wasn’t anyone as well versed in being powerless, or in being a child, as he was. He bit his lip as he thought and tasted iron.
The weak didn’t have the power to protect themselves, and there was no miracle in any world that would save them for free.
What were the words Touya had swallowed? Help me? Save me? Now that he’d cut them off, even he didn’t know.
In Touya’s mind, Shiroe was an expert at the game. He’d seemed to know more about Elder Tales than anyone. Maybe Touya had thought Shiroe would rescue them from any hardship.
…But how could he say that?
Did he have any right to ask a mere acquaintance—someone who’d played with them for a week or so before the Catastrophe, when Elder Tales had been just a game—for help?
Take someone bankrupt, for example, or someone deep in debt. A person like that could never just ask a stranger, someone who wasn’t even family, for help. This was reality, and that was what that meant. Even Touya knew that much.
In order to survive in this world, even Shiroe had to be paying some sort of price.
There was no way he could impose on him like that.
As Touya thought this, he lowered the fist he’d clenched.
At some point, a fine rain had begun to fall in the plaza.
1
Guilds—communities of any size created by Adventurers—were a system that played a central role in player interaction within Elder Tales. They were a continuous relationship contract created when two or more unaffiliated players joined up, establishing the guild. Adventurers affiliated with the same guild received various privileges, such as common safe-deposit boxes and the use of a dedicated communication function.
Guildhalls, one such privilege, were zones that guilds could own or rent.
For example, the guildhalls in Akiba’s guild center were roughly divided into four ranks: halls with three, seven, fifteen, or thirty-one rooms. Having a guildhall of a size that corresponded to that of one’s guild was plain common sense. The halls could be used to store various items that wouldn’t fit in members’ individual bank safe-deposit boxes, as well as to house equipment used in item production.
The biggest guilds sometimes used an entire external building to do this, instead of the guild center.
There was a theory that the world of Elder Tales was the future shape of the real world and the town of Akiba (the Half-Gaia Project reproduction of Akihabara) held many ruined buildings. Many of these ruins were uninhabited, and although they cost quite a sum, it was possible for guilds and individuals to buy or rent them.
By making changes on the Settings screen, anyone who purchased one of these zones could customize it by leaving items there, permitting combat, or setting entry and exit permissions for individual users. Enormous guilds, in turn, would purchase one of these buildings and transform it into their headquarters.
In guild center terms, the guildhall of the Crescent Moon League was a B-rank hall, one with seven rooms.
While it certainly wasn’t vast, it held sufficient facilities for a guild of their size: Wit
h four rooms, one workroom, one storeroom, and a midsized conference room, it was, in Marielle’s words, “handy.”
However, the conference room would be crowded with even fifteen occupants, and it certainly wasn’t large enough to hold a banquet for a group of more than thirty, including Shiroe and his companions.
For that reason, Marielle and the other guild members had decorated all the rooms in the guildhall, with the exception of the storeroom, for the party to celebrate Serara’s return.
The rooms were decorated here and there with modest fresh flowers, and a clean cloth had been laid over a table that was normally used as a manufacturing surface for small articles. The guildhall had been swept sparkling clean from corner to corner, and some rooms had been equipped with low wisteria-cane tables and lots of cushions so that guests would be able to sit in circles and chat. A temporary row of wisteria-cane chairs had even been set up in the corridor.
These weren’t expensive items: The Crescent Moon League’s craftsmen had manufactured the very best things they could make and brought them to the guildhall.
Marielle and the others had gone to the outskirts of town to meet Shiroe’s group, and as soon as they returned to Akiba after rescuing Serara, the travelers were jubilantly invited back to the guildhall. Since they’d been in touch via telechat nearly every day, the Crescent Moon League members had known full well for several days that Shiroe and the others were returning.
Having heard the secret of “real cooking” from Nyanta—also via telechat—the Crescent Moon League Chefs had spent those few days combining lots of ingredients and making food for the party.
According to Marielle, in order to get used to the new way of cooking they’d learned—in which Chefs cooked directly, without using the item creation menu—the Crescent Moon League Chefs had made scores of dishes over and over, barely even taking time to sleep.
Even the samples had been wildly popular with the Crescent Moon League members, who had been given only depressingly monotonous food up till now, and it had become another cause for celebration alongside Serara’s return.
Of course, it wasn’t as if there were no problems with this new cooking technique.
First, with the new method, one had to take the time to actually prepare the food. In the previous method, when cooking was performed from the item creation menu, even stews and pickles were done in ten seconds, but with the new method, one had to give stews time to stew and fermented foods time to ferment.
In addition, when making dishes from the item creation menu, the required ingredients were limited to five at most. Subtle seasonings, oil, and secondary ingredients had probably been left out of the game for convenience’s sake. However, with the new method, naturally, ingredients one didn’t have on hand wouldn’t be included in the finished dish: Curry made with only meat, potatoes, onions, and spices wouldn’t have carrots in it.
They’d also discovered that their cooking skills seemed to be reviewed when they attempted to prepare dishes that were over a certain difficulty level. If a Chef’s cooking skills weren’t at the required level, no matter what ingredients were used, the attempt would fail and the dish would turn into a weird blackened object or a slimy, sticky glob. The general trend seemed to be that using special cooking techniques such as frying, roasting, and steaming required more advanced cooking skills, but they didn’t completely understand the particulars yet.
There was an even more basic issue as well.
Up until now, if players used the same ingredients and selected the same target item from the item creation menu, a food item would come out exactly the same no matter who made it. It would look the same, of course, and the flavor would be the same as well (although it would be the characteristic soggy rice crackers flavor).
However, with the new method, since the item creation menu wasn’t used, the quality of the finished dishes varied widely, even if the Chefs who made them had the same levels and skill values. Even if a player’s cooking skills were advanced, it was the actual player who was doing the cooking. Cooking skills became a number that showed the difficulty of the dishes a player was allowed to make and no longer showed what sort of dishes the player could make.
The new method did have many limitations, but that didn’t mean it was worthless. On the contrary, the discovery had tremendous value. Viewed from the perspective of common cooking sense at home on Earth, the fact that it took time, the fact that it required a variety of ingredients, and the fact that flavors changed depending on who was cooking were only natural.
More than anything, the Crescent Moon League guild members were as sick and tired of the flavorless, factory-made, energy bar–like food items as Shiroe and the others had been.
“I tell ya, we let the food items break us, and we completely lost sight of the fact that livestock feed isn’t food! This stuff we’re eating right now? This is food!”
As the young Crescent Moon League magic user said during the banquet, until they’d chanced upon genuinely delicious food, they had failed to realize how terrible the food they’d been living on actually was.
The flurried dinner preparations and decorating had ended, and the guildhall to which Shiroe and the others were invited as the guests of honor was steeped in a festive atmosphere.
Shiroe and his group were shown to the great table that had been set up in the conference room and given aperitifs, along with the reassurance that “All the food will be completely ready in another hour!” Having changed out of their traveling clothes, Shiroe and his friends were each welcomed warmly.
Although Shiroe and the others enjoyed being entertained, the Crescent Moon League members who were entertaining them also enjoyed the banquet. It was the first boisterous gathering filled with food this splendid, luxurious, and—best of all—delicious to be held since the Catastrophe.
“We’re partyin’ today! Eat, drink, and be merry!”
To the players, who’d been discouraged by their life since the Catastrophe, Marielle’s cheery proclamation was the best possible encouragement.
For a while, the conference room was filled with words of gratitude. But then, suddenly saying, “I’ll just go take a look,” Nyanta stood. Serara hastily followed him. From the sounds that came after, the heartwarming pair had gone to the temporary kitchen that was currently taking up the entire workroom, where they had joined the Chefs of the Crescent Moon League and threw themselves into the party preparations like battle-scarred veterans.
When using the new cooking method, the list of food items registered on the item creation menu was useless. Each Chef could only use the dishes and cooking methods they personally knew, and this was greatly affected by the sort of cooking experience they’d had in the real world.
To that end, Nyanta and the Crescent Moon League Chefs compared their culinary knowledge, shared the recipes they knew, and created a festive banquet with even more flair.
The Crescent Moon League members who hadn’t been able to fit into the conference room found places in the other rooms, drinking and carousing wherever they liked.
Dish after dish was brought out.
Fried chicken, omelets bursting with tomatoes, a salad of corn and lettuce, seafood paella with saffron, an unleavened bread a little like naan, and spicy mutton soup. Roast venison flavored with rock salt and herbs. Fruits of all colors piled high on a platter, and delicate biscuits topped with lots of custardy cream.
Serara walked from room to room with platters of food, waiting on the guests. In every room, players told Serara, “This is a banquet to celebrate your safe return. Sit down and enjoy it!” However, Serara only laughed and told them, “You were the ones who saved me. Let me thank you,” and continued diligently serving.
This behavior was so touching that Serara’s fan base at the Crescent Moon League grew remarkably, and in every room, she was pressed into taking part in a toast—“Have this, at least”—until she grew quite drunk.
Shiroe and his friends were also in great demand.
Naotsugu was surrounded by younger players and was discussing battles with them.
The Crescent Moon League was still a young guild. Only a few members, Marielle included, were level 90. Even Marielle and the others were only level 90 and hadn’t seen what lay beyond.
“What I’m saying is, as long as you and your companions’ levels are similar, that’s enough. It’s what’s beyond the level that’s important, not the level itself.”
“Beyond the level… You mean the mysteries?!”
Shouryuu, a Swashbuckler whose red face might have been the product of intoxication, quizzed Naotsugu, who was wolfing down a skewer of sweet and spicy chicken. Shouryuu was a young player who was in charge of organizing battles and hunts at the Crescent Moon League, and he’d gone on several excursions with Naotsugu. To him, Naotsugu probably seemed like a hero.
“Mm. I mean—panties!!”
At Naotsugu’s forceful declaration, everyone in the room was taken aback for a moment and the atmosphere seemed to curdle. Even Shouryuu’s expression said, “What is this guy talking about?”
Possibly the atmosphere struck Naotsugu as dicey, too. He cleared his throat several times, then continued, as if trying to smooth things over.
“…Uh… Kidding. That was a trendy little joke. Now that I’ve got your attention… Let’s see… So, as long as you depend on level when you fight, whenever an enemy beats you, it’ll be because your level wasn’t high enough, right? So what happens if you play like that until you hit the highest level? If you’ve maxed out your level and there’s an enemy you can’t beat, you’ll never beat it, because you can’t boost your level any higher. See? If that happens, you’re through. There’s no way you’ll ever win. Despair city.
“To keep that from happening, you need to work with your friends and get a bit tricky. If you don’t do those two things, you’ll always lose somewhere in the end. It’s too late to figure that out once your level’s as high as it’ll go. A guy who’s never worked with his friends won’t be able to turn into a team player right off the bat just because he’s come up against an enemy he can’t beat. On the other hand, you can cooperate and use your head no matter how low your level is. Do that, and you’ll go straight to the top. It’s important to keep asking yourself, ‘Is there anything else I can do?’ Our man Shiroe’s an expert at that. I mean, he’s Machiavelli-with-glasses, y’know? The guy’ll use any cheap trick to win!”