by Mamare Touno
They had no words.
It was an outrageous speech.
From the fact that Marielle—not to mention Henrietta and Shouryuu—was frozen, she certainly hadn’t seen this coming.
Rescuing friends they could understand. However, crushing a whole guild to do it was already over the top. When, above and beyond that, the talk turned to changing the current trends and situation, it sailed past “over the top” and left the realm of sanity entirely.
However, when they heard what he had to say, what shook them more than the substance of his words was Shiroe’s voice. It was a calm voice, with no tension or excitement about it, but it held hidden steel. There was a sharpness to it that would cut on contact.
Cautiously, Henrietta let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
She’d misjudged him, this young man called Shiroe. She’d thought he was strong and kind, but introspective and shy. …She’d been wrong. The essential part of this youth was terribly pure. He was single-minded regarding goals, and both his thoughts and methods were straightforward. He was efficient, and there was no mercy in him.
Fight and take it. This young man was faithful to that simple principle. He might hesitate for a long time before he made up his mind. The blade might be dulled. But when he decided to do something, he would do it.
“Miss…Mari?”
At Shouryuu’s query, Marielle bit her lip. Even the act of crushing one guild would place a huge burden on the Crescent Moon League, and the risk would be great. By that reckoning, she wouldn’t be able to agree to Shiroe’s proposal.
…But Shiroe had said he planned to change the whole town. That meant if they won this particular battle, the return would skyrocket.
That was the reason for Marielle’s hesitation. In this case, the return would be a rise in status for the smaller guilds. However, that wasn’t all.
It was also a problem of the soul.
“We’re…”
“Please help me.”
For the first time, Shiroe bowed his head.
“Master Shiroe? Where have your friends gone?”
Henrietta spoke up in an attempt to rescue Marielle, who was searching for the right words. By all rights, Naotsugu and Akatsuki could have been here as well.
“They’re investigating and making preparations. I apologize for the late introduction: I’ve formed a guild, with myself as guild master. Its name is Log Horizon, meaning the horizon of all we’ve documented. Its members are Naotsugu, Akatsuki, Nyanta, and myself, and this mission will be its first operation.”
“You…made yourself a guild.”
“Yes. I’m sorry; after you invited us to yours…”
“No, no…”
Marielle shook her head. The gesture was almost childlike.
“No, that’s nothin’ to apologize for. …Well, well. Kiddo… Congratulations. You made yourself a guild. You did, kiddo. You made a home for yourself.”
Marielle smiled. There were tiny teardrops at the corners of her eyes.
Shiroe, who’d always avoided joining a guild, had created a place for himself to belong. Henrietta couldn’t accurately gauge the implications, but she understood what Marielle’s tears meant. Henrietta’s friend, with her simple, genuine tendencies, was wishing Shiroe the best from the bottom of her heart.
“Guild master. …Would it be okay if we at least heard him out? I’m interested. We do a lot around town, and I’ve felt the bad atmosphere Mr. Shiroe mentioned. I was worried Akiba might stay this way forever. It’s been bothering me for a long time.”
Shouryuu voiced his opinion briefly.
As the Crescent Moon League’s combat team leader, he understood the circumstances, too. He knew he might make trouble for Marielle if he stuck his oar in unnecessarily. Still, in that sense, it spoke to how obviously torn Marielle herself was between wanting to help and wanting to protect the guild.
Henrietta put in a few words of her own.
“Yes, whether we can help or not will depend on the method. You know we couldn’t commit ourselves to a plan with no real prospects, Master Shiroe.”
Beaten to the punch by her two subordinates, Marielle—who must have felt that she should be the one to take the brunt of any unpleasantness—seemed a bit embarrassed. Almost immediately, though, she added her own encouragement. “Go on, kiddo. Talk.”
At those words, Shiroe seemed to take half a moment to put his thoughts in order. Then, abruptly, he cut to the chase.
“We need capital. Five million gold coins, to start.”
“That’s an impossible sum!” Henrietta shrieked. As the person in charge of the Crescent Moon League’s vault, she had a pretty accurate grasp of the guild’s assets.
The funds in the Crescent Moon League’s guild account came to about sixty thousand gold coins. If they sold off most of their stored items, they could probably pull together as much as 100,000 coins. If the individual property of each and every guild member was sold, they might be able to reach 500,000.
…But that was the limit. Even if they poured in all their members’ assets, they couldn’t scrape together more than 500,000 coins. Henrietta, a level-90 player, had about twenty thousand to her name. Considering the fact that an individual with fifty thousand was quite wealthy, five million gold coins was an astronomical amount.
“How’re we supposed to pull together a fortune like that?! I know I shouldn’t be sayin’ stuff like this myself, but we’re… We’re a tiny guild, y’know?”
“M-m-money?!”
As expected, Marielle and Shouryuu groaned in despair.
If it was a question of combat power or labor, they could have given it their best effort. However, supplying funds probably struck them as an impossible demand from the start.
“What do you think, Miss Henrietta?”
“Me?”
“In the old world, you’re an accountant with a master’s in Management Studies, correct? I think it’s possible. Everyone’s still underestimating things in this world, you see. It isn’t that big a deal. All we have to do is pull it in. Money is just the first step. It’s nowhere near the biggest obstacle.”
“……Pull it in…?”
Henrietta’s consciousness expanded.
Ripples spread out from Shiroe’s words.
We’re not taking this other world seriously. We’re underestimating it.
Why would Shiroe say a thing like that? What did he think they were underestimating? This was the world of Elder Tales. Yes, it was another world, but there was also no world they knew better.
“You don’t need to think too deeply about what sort of capital it is or who it might belong to. The other guys have no intention of following the rules, either. Am I wrong? …This is a place with no rules. There’s no need to voluntarily straitjacket ourselves.”
In a way, it was absurd.
However, for that reason alone, Henrietta understood. She was probably the only one who did. Right now, she and Shiroe were the only ones in the room. I’m the only one who’s really hearing Shiroe. Henrietta was inexplicably sure of it. As that was the case, she needed to weigh decisions within that territory in Marielle’s place.
What Shiroe was saying was:
“Make rules that will attract money”…
Henrietta felt dizzy. Shiroe had practically said they’d strike down all who opposed them. In other words, he was telling them to take it.
The word take wasn’t limited to violence. Not only that, there was no need to act illegally or use atrocious methods. Even when the world was operating in perfect legality, this “taking” happened on a daily basis. Hadn’t Henrietta felt the world was that sort of place when she watched her father?
On the contrary, she knew instinctively that it would be foolish to invite ill will. Illegal methods and methods that left mental discord in their wake were a card to be played only as a last resort, when there were no other options. Preferably, their “rules” would have people cheerfully handing them th
eir money.
“…I think we…can.”
Henrietta nodded.
“We can collect that capital.”
“Huh?”
“What?!”
Henrietta answered Marielle and Shouryuu’s startled cries with thoughts that were still a bit vague. She was currently making fine mental corrections to the plot she’d hit upon, fleshing it out.
“Pulling together five million coins won’t be the end, will it? What do you plan to do after that?”
If Henrietta’s instincts were correct, the young man in front of her had something truly stupendous in mind.
The feeling she was picking up from him was that of someone who’d burn down a house to get rid of the rats or buy up a garment manufacturer because he wanted a T-shirt.
No matter how preposterous a road it was, if that was the only road that led to his goal, Shiroe would take it.
“Collecting five million is the first step. The hardest part comes after that. It’s…everyone’s good will and hope. If many of the guilds that live here in Akiba don’t care what the town turns into, then we’ll lose. However, if that happens, there was no help for it. If that proves to be the case, I’ll feel no regret over losing that sort of town. That said, I believe it won’t. There must be more players who like Akiba than players who hate it. It’s a bit late for me to say this now, but I have no intention of demanding your cooperation as payment for Serara’s rescue. I came to you, the Crescent Moon League, because I need your help. I came because there are things I want you—Mari, and Miss Henrietta, and Shouryuu—to do. I’ll ask again: Please help me.”
Shiroe bowed his head deeply.
Shouryuu gave a small nod. On seeing it, Marielle examined Henrietta’s expression.
Shiroe was serious. He seriously thought this could be done, and he seriously intended to try. That was what had made Shouryuu want to hear the rest of his idea and what had made Marielle hesitate to make a decision.
This young man was capable of risking himself for somebody else. However, wasn’t it harder for him to say, “Please help me,” than it was to put himself on the line?
Henrietta thought that will was noble.
If Shiroe was serious, then even if his opponent was all of Akiba, and even if the strategy was outrageous, he might be able to find a way to win.
Henrietta’s severe financial executive’s instincts were telling her so in a whisper.
“Yes, Mari. Do as you please.”
“I, uh… The Crescent Moon League…”
Marielle squeezed her hands into fists, answering Shiroe with the expression of a guild master.
“The Crescent Moon League will cooperate with your plan, kiddo. …We’d like this town to shape up, too. It feels like, if this keeps up, we’ll end up losing somethin’ critical. B-but listen… We aren’t a real prosperous outfit, so… Don’t go pullin’ a midnight disappearin’ act on us, all right? Even then, though, I guess we’d have to help. If we just keep on pretendin’ we don’t see, we’ll rot away inside; that’s a problem of the soul, after all. So, we’ll take that risk, too. …C’mon, kiddo. Tell us how. If there was somethin’ we could do and we didn’t, I think we’d regret it forever.”
1
Starting the next day, they spent four days in planning, then began to implement the strategy.
Calling the schedule “tight” would have been a massive understatement. Still, miraculously, in spite of the sort of bustle that made heads spin and the fact that things proceeded at a reckless pace that pushed everyone to their limit and beyond, everything was completed on schedule.
The three who were behind the murderous schedule pinned its achievements and responsibility on each other.
Marielle—Kansai dialect–speaking big-sister type, Crescent Moon League guild master, and universally beloved busybody—puffed out her ample chest with pride. “Our accountant’s a real hustler. I leave all the numbers to her, and she doesn’t misread one in ten thousand. If Henrietta went and threatened ’em with a ledger, demon in hell or trumpet-wieldin’ angel, they’d wet themselves right where they sat and apologize.”
Shaking her abundant, wavy, honey-colored hair, Henrietta—the accountant in question—said, “My managerial abilities can only do so much. The really outrageous, earth-shattering thing is the craftiness of Master Shiroe’s merciless, remorseless plan. Why does he even have a ‘shiro’ in his name? ‘White’? Is that a joke? He really should call himself ‘Pitch-black Kuroe.’ If darling Akatsuki weren’t around, I’d have to go ask to be held.” With an evaluation like that, it was hard to tell whether she was praising or vilifying him.
As for Shiroe, who’d been so roundly disparaged, he adjusted his glasses as they were about to slip off and said, “Inasmuch as I’m aware I’m blackhearted, that’s kid stuff. It’s nothing compared to Mari’s natural charm. When she cheers them on with that smile of hers, exhausted guild members decide to work a little longer. I think even a zombie might come back to life and go into service to win praise from Mari.” He spoke with a straight face and seemed quite serious.
At any rate, according to the schedule those three had set up, Akatsuki, Naotsugu, Nyanta, and all the members of the Crescent Moon League were worked until they were dead on their feet. For League members who didn’t yet have much experience, this was a life-or-death crisis. Spurred on by fierce encouragement from each other, the project participants were revived again and again, zombie-like, until they finished all the preparations and greeted the morning of the project’s launch.
That morning.
In the streets of Akiba—where, at the beginning of summer, the sun steadily rose earlier and the temperature was inching up—temporary shops appeared in three locations. Although showy, they seemed a bit cheap.
The support pillar was made of bamboo, cut to a good size, and lashed together with lumber. Colorful valances swung from a big pavilion made from a sailcloth awning, so that it looked like an attraction or bazaar venue. There was a central platform that seemed to be a converted two-horse carriage and a wooden counter, which was the only truly splendid part of the whole outfit.
The shapes of the venues varied slightly from location to location, but the banners that fluttered in the wind all said the exact same thing in vivid letters: SNACK SHOP CRESCENT MOON.
In Akiba these days, it was rare to find any shop as lonely as a snack shop or dining hall.
All food tasted the same, after all.
As the settings in the Elder Tales game had dictated, there were pubs and taverns run by NPCs, and many inns would provide meals. However, all the food provided by these establishments tasted exactly the same. From cheap bean porridge to ultra-premium roast chicken, everything tasted like flavorless soggy rice crackers. There was no fatty richness to the food, and although it was damp, the sullen flavor made it oddly difficult to swallow. The more one ate, the more discouraged they got.
It was the same with beverages. No matter what one ordered, although the colors were different, the smell and taste were just like plain well water. The one exception was alcoholic drinks, and even these tasted exactly like the others. They didn’t even have alcohol’s unique burn to them. One would just abruptly get drunk.
Under the circumstances, no one frequented taverns or dining halls.
Of course, there were a few people who’d visit in search of a place to sit down or take a break. There was potential demand for places with chairs lined up in the shade, as an alternative to standing and talking in the plaza. However, even those people didn’t visit for the food.
They ordered the very cheapest food, and it was intended mainly as payment for the seat.
In the current Akiba, most players purchased food items from NPCs or the market.
Because all food items tasted the same, and apparently it was possible to get nutrients from them, cost had become the only basis of selection.
Since high-level food items had the effect of temporarily raising player stats, the combat guild
s sometimes requested them. However, that demand was very slight, probably less than 1 percent of the whole.
To the overwhelming majority of players, food items were considered “universally disappointing livestock feed,” and they only ate them because if they didn’t their stomachs felt painfully empty. In that case, it was only natural that they’d go for the cheap stuff.
As a result, a fierce price-cutting war broke out.
The production of food items in this world was extremely fast. No matter how high-class the food item, all one had to do was select it from the menu and it would be done in ten seconds.
Provided one had enough material, it was possible to make three hundred meals in an hour. Chef wasn’t a popular subclass, but even so, an explosion of cheap food items came into circulation on the market.
For their part, the producers didn’t have to go out of their way to prepare high-level food items whose ingredients were hard to come by. In the current sluggish economy, it was possible to fill demand with low-level food items, and all they had to do was provide them at low cost.
That sort of market logic brought prices down. Even though “eating” was consumption related to one of the three primitive desires and therefore something everybody had to do, and even though there was a regular volume of food item transactions, prices were at rock bottom.
Why would anyone start a snack shop in a frigid business climate like that? The question was on the mind of every player in Akiba who happened to see the banners.
These days, even Chefs tended to put their items directly on the market. It was less work that way, and more to the point, over-the-counter sales brought unbearable stress. That was only to be expected: To the people who purchased them, the food items they’d made were nothing but cattle feed. No craftsman wanted to sell food to the general public that even they thought was bad. What the creators really wanted was to have customers delighted by their wares’ delicious flavors, but no one saw that sort of smile anymore. At this point, there were no Chefs among the production classes who sold items from stalls.