by Mamare Touno
Minori coughed, over and over.
It felt as if those poisonous insects had gotten inside her through her mouth, and the disgust made her retch. In reality, the insects had been a magic-generated effect and had only existed temporarily. Now that they were out of sight of the spellcaster, the insects ceased to exist, but the memory of the vivid physical sensation kept her from believing that.
“You okay, Minori?”
Touya was rubbing her back; he sounded worried. Since she was kneeling on the floor, Minori couldn’t see Touya’s whole body, but she did see the red stain that was spreading across the floor in front of her.
“You’re the one who’s… Hang on, Touya, I’ll cast Small Recovery…”
“Nah, I’m fine. …Only…”
Feeling Touya look up, she looked that way, too. Standing there were a young swordsman in blue leather armor, equipped with two Chinese-style straight swords, and a girl dressed all in black.
“What are your names, guys? Are there any others on their way out?”
Although he was a “young” swordsman, the player who spoke to Minori was probably still older than she and Touya were. He had black hair and looked as if he might be in high school.
Are we…safe…?
She didn’t understand why the Hamelin members weren’t leaping into the guild center corridor, but they certainly did seem to have been saved. Minori felt relief drain the strength from her knees.
Minori took the hand the young man held out to her and stood.
Touya had made it to his feet before she did, and he answered the question posed to them a moment earlier.
“I’m Touya. This is my big sis Minori. We should be the last two newbies.”
“You are? That’s great.” The swordsman smiled as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “I’m Shouryuu. Pleased to meet you. …Okay, let’s get you to the entrance first; your friends are already waiting there. We’ll get you patched up, do a head count, and then ask you a bit about the situation for future reference…”
“Hey, Minori~. Quit doing that wet noodle impression. It’s lame.”
“Oh, honestly! Touya, you’re such a meanie!”
Even as he teased, contrary to his words, Touya’s voice was gentle with relief. Now all they had to do was follow this Shouryuu swordsman, and they’d see Shiroe. Just as Minori thought this…
!
Something was wrong behind her. The feeling made her sick. She didn’t even have to turn to look; she could feel that someone was in the process of materializing there. She was about to glance back, but even as she moved, deep down, she knew: Now wasn’t the time. She should be flinging herself toward the stairs instead. Even so, her body had already begun to turn, and it wouldn’t stop.
Just as she registered that a man’s palm had filled her field of vision and was about to grab her roughly, Minori felt something ram into her. It was Touya.
The man’s hand had been grabbing for Minori’s collar, but when she was sent flying, it missed its mark and reached for Touya instead. Even though the arm wasn’t thick, it squeezed Touya’s wrist with such monstrous strength that Minori turned pale. The steel framework of Touya’s gauntlet creaked ominously.
The Summoner—that Summoner—had moved between zones.
“You little…!”
His face was brick red with rage. True, the Summoner was a magic user. However, with enough of a level difference, his physical strength could surpass even that of a Warrior like Touya. In this gamelike world, physical strength was not proportionate to appearance. From the way Touya gritted his teeth, it was clear how much destructive power those thin arms held.
“What did you do?! What are you?!”
“Shut up! Shut—yer—trap!!”
But Touya’s voice was strained.
As if to push aside their levels, that insurmountable difference in strength, through sheer willpower, Touya shoved the man with all his might. The Summoner didn’t take any damage from the attack, but Touya had drawn his second blade, his katana, and was barring the way, posed as if to protect Minori.
“Don’t try to act tough, brat! As if there’s anywhere you could go!”
Those words awakened deep pain in Touya and Minori.
They were burdens, and even now, in this instant, it was hard for them to stand against the man’s violence.
Even so, Minori screwed up her courage and was about to retort when, in that instant, a jet-black shadow swooped in like a swallow from the opposite direction.
The shadow sent the big man flying with a kick that had all her weight behind it, then stood between the twins and the Hamelin Summoner who’d come through the door.
Oh my… That lady’s incredibly pretty.
The girl, who was as beautiful as Minori’s admiration indicated, cut the man’s knees out from under him in a motion so smooth she seemed to have practiced it thousands of times. It was so fluid, it looked more like a kind of dance than an attack.
However, the words that fell from her pale pink lips were sharp.
“I thought so. What a weak-looking face,” the girl muttered. The expression she turned on the Summoner was filled with deep disdain.
“Who’re you?! Akatsuki?—Log Horizon? Never heard of ’em.”
The magic user, who’d frozen momentarily, seemed to have checked his mental menu. When he read the girl’s—Akatsuki’s—guild tag, he looked at her with clear contempt.
However, his words didn’t seem to affect the girl in the least. She tilted her head slightly, with her usual too-serious expression, then responded.
“Really? I would imagine you’d be more embarrassed, with a tag from a third-rate guild like Hamelin. When you walk around town, don’t you ever get snickered at and want to run back to your guildhall…?”
Her words infuriated the man; he seized her by her shirtfront. Combat was forbidden in the guild center, but from experience, the members of Hamelin were well aware of what constituted “combat.”
Attacking with a drawn weapon or casting a hostile spell would immediately (and mercilessly) be recognized as fighting. However, unless it was accompanied by severe pain, contact with bare hands wasn’t considered “combat.”
Just as real-world yakuza had near-perfect knowledge of how far they could go before an act became illegal, these players knew just how much they could do before their actions were deemed “combat” by the system and the guards punished them.
“What did you say, girl? You know about Hamelin and you’re still spouting crap like that? Little runt!”
It was bone-chilling intimidation, but even then, Akatsuki didn’t flinch. The man, who was sturdy for a magic user, had lifted her lightweight-class body by the collar, and even her toes weren’t touching the ground. From that position, Akatsuki murmured.
“…Ah, my liege? I’m sorry. There’s one we hadn’t registered yet. His name is Shreida. He’s a big man who looks like he’d have smelly breath, and as you’d guess from his name, his face looks like it’s been run through a shredder. …Yes.”
“What was that?! Let’s you and me go back to my guildhall, and then you’ll get what’s—”
The man’s voice cut off.
As a matter of fact, it wasn’t just his voice. He’d ceased to exist.
As Akatsuki dropped to the floor with a light noise, there was no man in front of her.
“Thank you for registering that one, my liege. Elimination complete. It looks as if when players who are in a zone are added to the ‘no entry’ list, they’re ejected from that zone. I couldn’t say whether he’s in Akiba or whether he’s returned to his guildhall.—Yes. That’s right. Understood. We’ve just secured a girl named Minori and a boy named Touya. They say they’re the last ones. I’ll continue to watch the Hamelin guildhall door.”
The transparently lovely girl turned, her face still far too serious, and went over to Minori and Touya, who had slumped to the corridor floor as though their legs would no longer hold them.
Minori was so relieved that this time she did start to cry.
3
“I have two basic policies I’d like to propose. Revitalization of the area and improvement of public order are as I explained earlier. As far as specific policies are concerned, let me begin with an outline of the revitalization. I’ve already run this by several of the parties concerned. …Mari?”
At Shiroe’s words, Marielle steeled herself and stood.
“I’m sure some of y’all already know, but Crescent Moon started runnin’ a shop called Snack Shop Crescent Moon a little while back. We’re gettin’ lots of customers, and business is real good.”
Behind Marielle, who had her hands on the conference desk and was leaning forward as she talked, Shiroe noticed Henrietta silently cheering her on.
“Snack Shop Crescent Moon is a take-out place whose main product is real, good-tastin’ hamburgers, like nothin’ we’ve ever had here. We’re well aware that all sorts of rumors are croppin’ up all over the place. Such as, for example, the secret’s a completely new recipe, level ninety-one or higher, from some unknown zone. …It isn’t.”
Aside from the production guilds, who already knew this, the news caused another significant stir in the conference room.
“I’m gonna disclose that secret here. This is how it works. You get your ingredients ready the usual way, and then you cook just the way you’d do it in the real world. Only the person doin’ the cookin’ has to be a Chef. That, and if their cookin’ skills are judged to be too low, they’ll fail. That’s all it is. I guess the fact that there aren’t any tricks or strings is the trick.”
As the listeners gradually registered the meaning of those words, the murmur grew louder.
The preconceived notion that cooking was something made from a creation menu had had everyone fooled. Once spelled out, it was very simple, but it was also revolutionary.
As the room buzzed, Marielle sat down. Shiroe jumped in before another debate could start.
“The one who discovered that cooking method is Nyanta, the Chef standing behind me. With his permission, I taught it to the Crescent Moon League, and we launched Snack Shop Crescent Moon.”
“I see. That’s why the Marine Organization backed them…”
“But doesn’t that mean they were tricked?”
As the hum of conjectures continued unabated, Shiroe ignored the comments and kept speaking.
“To my mind…it’s a discovery that holds quite a number of suggestions. The discovery itself was made by Captain Nyanta here, but without it, I doubt I could have set up this conference, and I wouldn’t even have considered doing so. Michitaka. Did you get results?”
“We did,” Michitaka replied in a deep voice. At first glance, the leader of the gigantic guild seemed calm, but his expression was suffused with profound astonishment.
The reason the three production guild leaders had kept their silence ever since the conference began lay in the words Shiroe had just spoken.
“Our guild… Well, us and the Roderick Trading Company and Shopping District Eight, working together… We’ve just successfully developed a steam engine.”
This announcement was also met with surprise, but the surprise didn’t cause a stir the way the others had. On the contrary: The participants who’d heard the words doubted their ears, and they kept their attention riveted on Shiroe and Michitaka’s conversation, so as not to miss the rest of what Michitaka said.
“To be completely accurate, it’s a prototype. There are lots of issues, but the theory’s been verified.”
“That didn’t even take half a day. That’s fantastic.”
“Basic components can be created from the creation menu. So can tools. The idea of diverting components was a masterstroke.”
Michitaka and Shiroe were nodding in agreement.
“Hey… I mean, a steam engine, that’s real impressive. Bottom line, though: What’s going on?”
“Black Sword” Isaac sounded completely staggered.
“Don’t you see, Isaac? It means this: That discovery isn’t limited to cooking skills and Chefs. It’s been demonstrated that if players who’ve acquired production-related skills actually work with their hands, without using the creation menu, they can make items that don’t appear on the menu. Not one item related to steam engines exists in the original Elder Tales specs. There was no new food item recipe; however, the fact that it doesn’t exist brought us a whole new dimension instead of a single, superficial new recipe. Things have gone far beyond the realm of fine food.”
It was Roderick of the Roderick Trading Company who answered Isaac’s question. His answer was so logical that it might have come from a scholar, instead of a merchant.
“From now on, it’s going to be possible to make items that aren’t on the creation menu. There’s going to be an inventing boom for a while. We should be able to recreate a few of the things we had in the real world. Such as, let’s see… Televisions might be out of reach, but it’s quite possible that we’ll be able to make radios.”
Calasin of Shopping District 8 picked up where Roderick had left off.
His words drew a nod both from the intellectual-looking Roderick and from Michitaka, who was smiling heartily. Their guilds had witnessed the success of the steam engine experiment.
“More new inventions should arouse new demand. Naturally, methods of earning money will increase, as will the need to earn it. In other words: revitalization. I think we’ll need a few safeguards here; it’s possible that the economy may get out of control. Still, that’s a chaos we should be able to master. It isn’t stagnation drifting toward depression, is it? In this world, basic medieval items and handheld tools can be made from the creation menu. Since we have tools and models, I predict that progress will be rapid.”
Michitaka carried on following Shiroe’s prediction.
“Our three production guilds have confirmed those things, and we’ve got our eyes on both the earnings they may bring in and the new enthusiasm that will well up. …To the point where I wouldn’t mind supporting Shiroe over just this one thing.”
“Then the production guilds are…”
“Yeah. We support the establishment of the Round Table Council.”
As a matter of fact, even the small-scale Snack Shop Crescent Moon had achieved sales of fifty thousand gold coins per day. The arrival of competition would probably bring the price of the new food down as well. The average cost per customer might fall from the thirty gold coins it was at Crescent Moon until it was only a few gold coins. Still, even then, the potential customer demographic—in other words, the number of players—was more than ten times the number Crescent Moon had served.
It wasn’t difficult to imagine generating an incalculable economic effect.
The combat guild members could only sit there gasping.
If the three major production guilds could declare it that categorically, the others seemed to be left with no choice but to believe them about the revitalization.
“The lack of energy is at least partially due to feelings of despair and apathy, but we think a large part of it is the fact that there isn’t anything to do. It takes very little money to live in this world, to the point where it’s a problem. It’s healthier to use a certain amount of money, and to earn it so you can then use it. I think, from here on, we should see a wider variety of jobs begin to appear. For example, in the case of Snack Shop Crescent Moon, you wanted salesclerks badly enough that you would have paid for them, correct?”
“That’s right. Since things were the way they were, we kept the work in the family, but it would’ve been nice to hire clerks.”
Marielle shook her head several times as she answered Calasin, and no doubt she meant what she sai
d.
“There should be more jobs for the members of the combat guilds as well. This goes for material discovery and acquisition, as well as guard duty, but once the council is established, don’t you think we should set aside a budget and commission a complete investigation of the Fairy Rings? Once that investigation is complete, there’s accumulation of zone information, followed eventually by compilation of historical records, and then publication of newspapers and other media… As long as we find the budget for it, there are lots of things we should do.”
They knew that the Fairy Rings—teleportation devices that linked zones—were functioning. However, the Fairy Rings were influenced by the movement of the moon, and their destinations changed. The odds that a Fairy Ring was connected to the place one wanted to go were slim, and now, when it was impossible to check solutions sites, there was no telling where a player might be sent. As a result, players steered clear of them.
Investigating them was certainly possible, but it would take massive amounts of time and effort. In addition to the twenty-eight-day lunar cycle, destinations changed every hour. The fact that one Fairy Ring’s destination information was completely different from that of a Fairy Ring somewhere else was also a big factor. Even if they limited themselves to the time when the moon was out, the connections between the Fairy Rings in all the zones were bound to yield an enormous number of combinations.
It wasn’t as if no one had wanted to investigate them, but it was far too ambitious a task for any single guild to undertake.
However, if they could establish a backup system like the one Shiroe had spoken of, it certainly wouldn’t be impossible. It would also send big missions to the combat guilds.
“Next is the issue of public order. Some people will probably feel that the establishment of law cramps their style. Still, I don’t think there’s any sense in making it all that strict. This other world feels like the Middle Ages, and I believe it has the sort of culture that will do well even if it isn’t bound tightly by laws. People have monopolized hunting grounds, true, and there are turf wars. However, if we think of those acts as being a type of competition, they aren’t anything we should unilaterally deny.”