The Gold of the Kunie

by Mamare Touno

  The beginning of the strategy was simple.

  During that hellish annihilation, Ibra Habra of the Third Garden and Tartaulga of the Fourth Garden had opened the lattice gates and appeared.

  Their sizes wouldn’t allow them to pass through a gap in the bars. In addition, those gates, which were like enormous cages, could only be opened from inside the passages.

  If this had been ordinary raid content, both gates would probably have been unlocked after they’d defeated Ruseato of the Seventh Garden, but the current situation was different.

  This strategy took advantage of the dungeon’s construction.

  In short, the point of the strategy was to isolate and imprison Ruseato in the coliseum. With the gates down, Ruseato couldn’t get into the passages from the coliseum. It couldn’t chase the party that had run into the western passage. Of course they couldn’t state positively that it wouldn’t break the gate down and get in that way, so they’d lured it into White Knight mode, where its offensive abilities were low. They’d taken into account the fact that when in White Knight mode, Ruseato couldn’t move unless all the shadow warriors were destroyed.

  They’d already scouted the conditions beyond this point, using a stealthy summon beast to sneak in through the gap in the gate. They’d been filled in on the strategy, with explanations tailored for several different situations. In the very luckiest situation, things would go like this:

  Practically speaking, since Ruseato couldn’t get through the gate or destroy it, it had been rendered powerless. Tartaulga, the frost giant at the end of the eastern passage, might be able to open the east gate and get into the coliseum, but for the same reason as Ruseato, it wouldn’t be able to open the west gate. For all intents and purposes, they weren’t part of the active forces. Demiquas’s group would defeat the fiery serpent Ibra Habra, advance past it to reach the very deepest part of this zone, and conquer the dungeon.

  However, none of the raid members thought they’d be able to win that easily.

  Even if they defeated Ibra Habra, there was no guarantee that there wouldn’t be another raid boss beyond it. According to Shiroe, the dungeon was built in such a way that if you took enough of a detour, it would be possible to get this far from the eastern passage without going through the gates. If the battle got difficult for Ibra Habra, there was no doubt that Tartaulga of the Fourth Garden would come running immediately.

  In the first place, the idea that neither Ruseato nor Tartaulga could destroy the iron gates was no more than wishful thinking. They would probably slow them down, but they had to consider the possibility that they’d break through. And, once they had broken through, the gates would have been destroyed, and they wouldn’t be able to use this strategy again.

  That was right: Demiquas and the other Adventurers might be able to resurrect, but the situation was changing constantly. They’d never get the same opportunity twice. The members of Silver Sword knew this, and as they ran down the passage, there was great tension in the air.

  Dammit!

  However, that was only natural.

  There was no such thing as a stable, perfectly predictable future. That was how the world worked, and even grade school kids knew it. There were unstable elements in every plan, and the danger that someone else would intervene was always there. Wake up on Sunday morning and eat breakfast while watching TV: How many times did even simple things like that go the way you’d planned? As long as you were alive, plans would fall apart; that was just how it went.

  Here in Elder Tales, they’d forgotten about that entirely. They’d gotten it into their heads that this was a game, and they’d assumed everything would go the way they wanted. Since they could do anything, they’d gotten the illusion that it was okay to do anything.

  And then Shiroe had flattened them.

  Demiquas had learned his lesson: This place, where things didn’t always go according to plan, was reality, beyond a doubt. However, even after he’d learned that, he’d fallen for the illusion over and over again. He’d been deceived by the world’s humble, gamelike surface. That had been the case this time as well. He’d steeled himself over and over, warning himself never to let his guard down, and yet, as if it were a leaky faucet, his caution had drained away, and he’d underestimated things.

  In other words, I got careless and lost. I lost because I sold them short… I lost because I treated them lightly.

  He remembered a skinny girl looking at him, her hands on her hips.

  Her expression was sour. She probably despised Demiquas. That was only natural. Demiquas had done terrible things to the People of the Earth. He hadn’t actually killed any of them, but he’d gotten violent and sold them and forced them to work. There was no way they’d like him. The difference in their health was the only reason they never tried to punch him.

  She was a girl like chicken bones, not sexy at all. She’d fixed intense, glaring eyes on him, and had smiled sardonically. If all you’re going to do is talk as if you’re my master, hurry up and kill me. She’d said that all the time. If you’re not going to kill me, then get out of my way. I can’t clean with you there. She’d told him that, too.

  That time, Demiquas had lost completely.

  When People of the Earth died, they died. This was the only life she had, and she knew it, but she risked it anyway. She was betting her entire paltry existence in order to get her own way. Demiquas’s cheap life really couldn’t hope to equal that.

  He’d underestimated this other world.

  He’d thought it was just a game and gotten conceited, and that was why he’d lost to Shiroe.

  Before he’d managed to straighten out that mistaken impression, he’d lost to this Person of the Earth, who should have been powerless.

  He’d lost to Silver Sword, too. They’d rolled him the first time he’d run into them in the tavern, and had made him lick the floor many more times after that. And then the Briganteers had been wiped out.

  Then he’d lost to the raid bosses, too, and if that had been all, there might still have been hope, but he’d even lost to William as a guild master. Even after being annihilated like that, that gaming addict still had twenty friends who’d follow him.

  Demiquas had been left with nothing.

  The passage, which had been pieced together from white stone, abruptly came to an end.

  The ceiling, which had been high to begin with, rose to the height of a six-story building: They’d leapt out into a large, round, natural space. It was a huge cavern with a thirty-meter radius, shaped like an upright egg.

  The area was made of ochre rock with vivid orange spots. A sloping road several meters wide had been built into the rock wall, making it possible to walk down it in a spiral. There were blue puddles of water in places. The colors in the cave were startlingly bright, and it was illuminated by white light.

  “That smell…”

  “Yeah, hot-springs city.”

  Naotsugu answered Shiroe, who was behind them, and Demiquas understand what he meant. It was the smell of sulfur. If these vivid rocks had been colored with sulfur and chemicals, it made sense.

  The group ran down the spiral outer gallery. Ibra Habra was lying on the floor of the great cavern; it seemed to be asleep.

  That was probably how this raid boss looked when it was on standby.

  As they’d discussed in previous meetings, Naotsugu leapt down the last section of slope, heading for the great serpent.

  He didn’t have much support, but they didn’t have enough extra time to make careful preparations, and were acting accordingly.

  With Tetora’s Reactive Heal and Voinen’s Heartbeat Healing at his back, he charged. Even to Demiquas, it was a brilliant rush that betrayed no hesitation.

  As if to shake free of the self that seemed liable to cringe back, Demiquas also leapt into the air. The members of Silver Sword followed suit, jumping down one after another and joining the fray.

  Immediately, it turned into a melee.

  The cave-lik
e road that sloped downhill from a corner of this great cavern was probably what they were after. At its end was the deepest part of this zone, the goal. However, there was no convenient gate at the cave’s entrance, and they couldn’t split their group up any further. They had to dispose of Ibra Habra here, and they had to do it before Tartaulga showed up as reinforcement.

  The long-range attack party loosed ice spells in rapid succession, as if they were impatient.

  Demiquas swore, but Naotsugu seemed to have managed to hold the boss.

  It was like a firestorm headed straight for him, a scene more like some sort of disaster or accident site than a monster. In the midst of this, the “city” fiend in his metal armor belted out an Anchor Howl, desperately wielding his sword to whip up aggro. Even Demiquas had learned that right now, when the battle had just begun, the aggro the monster directed at the tank was unstable. The attackers wanted to inflict damage as quickly as possible, and he could understand that, but if they got hasty, the target might get switched and they’d have an accident on their hands.

  “Fortress Stance! Lemme see what my new shield and armor can do!”

  Naotsugu lowered his hips solidly, standing as if he were shouldering a wall. The technique, which made a blue aura erupt from beneath his feet, was a defensive attitude of the sort Guardians—aka “armored scarecrows”—were particularly good at. While he held up his massive shield to restrain the enemy, he paid out attacks from behind it with a longsword. In exchange for taking his mobility, this technique improved his defense, which wasn’t something martial artists like Demiquas had.

  However, Demiquas also had an ability Naotsugu lacked: the wings known as maneuverability.

  “Uoooooooooh! Aura Saber!”

  From midair, Demiquas brought down a kick armed with golden light.

  The attack drew a large arc like an ax, stabbing into the flaming serpent’s blazing outer hide. There was no way it wasn’t working. The characteristics of the Aura Saber special skill made it possible to inflict damage that wasn’t really affected by defensive power. Besides, thanks to the Druid’s Energy Protection, the damage from the flames was considerably reduced. At the very least, he wouldn’t end up near death every time he attacked.

  Demiquas used Wyvern Step to dodge the compact-bus-sized tail Ibra Habra of the Third Garden swung around at him. He leapt into the air, then unleashed Wyvern Kick, as if trailing an afterimage behind him.

  Wyvern Kick.

  And another Wyvern Kick.

  Heavy impacts that seemed to pierce through his brain traveled up from the soles of his Sturm Assaulter Sabaton Boots, which seemed to have been carved out of lumps of metal. If he’d done this serial strike attack in Susukino, he could have reduced a ruined building to a genuine mountain of rubble. And it wasn’t just him. Beside Demiquas, who was punching through with green light, Federico swung his flamberge over and over, and the other close-range attackers from the raid team were holding fast to Ibra Habra. From the monster’s perspective, it must have looked like midgets swarming a giant.

  Suddenly, Demiquas’s feet began to shine silver.

  It was Shiroe’s reinforcement spell, Keen Edge.

  Damn bastard!

  Demiquas clicked his tongue in irritation. He would have liked to spit, but the heat from the fiery serpent had left his mouth bone-dry. Instead, since Ibra Habra had come around in front of him, Demiquas slammed his elbow into the underside of its enormous jaw. Tiger Echo Fist. Its hit rate was bad, but when he was up against a huge raid boss, it was possible to use even this technique any way he wanted.

  A reptilian eye, white and cloudy as moonstone, looked down at Demiquas, turning inorganic murderous intent on him.

  “Wide range, get back!!”

  At William’s order, the front line backed away all at once, but Demiquas stood tall and crossed his arms in front of his eyes. He was planning to block the flame attack with those arms.

  This wasn’t out of contempt or carelessness. It was Demiquas’s way of showing his resolve.

  As he was engulfed by the storm of flames Ibra Habra spat out, Demiquas never even blinked.

  3

  In front of Naotsugu, flames roiled. Unlike when viewed on a game screen, the venomous crimson seemed sticky, and it swallowed Naotsugu up like a raging beast.

  However, even in the midst of that purgatory, Naotsugu narrowed his eyes and maintained his stance, leaning slightly forward.

  True, his entire body was hot. Of course it was: He was being burned by flames. However, on the other hand, that heat was only about what he would have felt if he’d gotten naked on asphalt under a blazing midsummer sky. There was a sizzling sensation on his skin, but it was nothing he couldn’t get through.

  There were currents and waves in the flames, and Naotsugu observed them calmly. When he spotted a gap, he sucked in a huge lungful of air. He’d been holding his breath, as if he were swimming underwater. He’d done it out of caution, to keep his lungs from burning, but if it was like this, he probably wouldn’t be lethally injured even if he did breathe some in.

  Besides, that big-headed Monk’s pretty awesome.

  Tetora’s Reactive Heal, Voinen’s Pulse Recovery, and Touko’s Damage Interception barrier were all currently active on Naotsugu. These pseudorecovery spells were called “class heals.” That last range burning attack, Merciless Banquet of Purgatory, had been powerful. The Kannagi’s Damage Interception barrier had negated about six thousand of its damage, and he’d regained about nine hundred with the Cleric’s Reactive Heal, but even so, with damage on this scale, they weren’t enough. It wouldn’t have been at all odd for that last attack to put Naotsugu at death’s door.

  Demiquas had been the one to shoulder that damage for him.

  It had probably been Covering, a special technique that took over damage for group members who were a short distance away. Demiquas, a Monk, had more resistance to attribute attacks than Naotsugu did, and the sheer amount of his HP was high. If the damage was spread out like it was now, Naotsugu could stay on the front line. Naotsugu’s opinion of Demiquas went up, just a little.

  “Awright, one more! Taunting Blow!”

  In order to earn more aggro, Naotsugu hit Ibra Habra with a special attack.

  This huge, fiery serpent was definitely scary. When its enormous head came at you, it was like facing down a charging dump truck, and its dark red, gaping mouth had the aggressive impact of construction equipment. Since all this came your way at the speed of a train wreck, your legs went weak, and your vision narrowed.

  However, as if to shake off that force, Naotsugu drew his lips into the shape of a smile.

  It was just bravado. He didn’t really have the leeway to smile.

  That said, leeway was always vague. If you thought you didn’t have it, you didn’t; and if you thought you had it, you did. Even when you had all sorts of time on a three-day weekend, you’d never have the leeway to clean and polish the kitchen, and when book-balancing hell meant you had to sleep at the office, you had enough leeway to search convenience stores for their new, private-brand pudding. It was like that.

  And so, if he managed to smile, he’d have leeway. Even if he didn’t have it, he’d generate it.

  Believing this, Naotsugu swung his sword again.

  He shouted a taunt, raised his shield, took a defensive stance, and didn’t give an inch.

  He was smiling fearlessly. To Naotsugu, that was what the first defender in a raid did.

  “Okay!”

  Naotsugu’s short yell must have told William everything. He issued an order from the rear ranks: “Circle around to the left and inflict damage!”

  Naotsugu’s smile deepened. Just as he’d thought, William understood.

  Well, it had been more than three weeks since they’d first invaded Abyssal Shaft. That time had made it possible for them to understand each other. By now, Naotsugu could tell what William was thinking. William must be able to tell what Naotsugu wanted as well.

&nb
sp; Recovery spells washed over Naotsugu one after another, and his HP began to rise.

  In spite of Demiquas’s quick-witted move, his total HP had fallen to 30 percent or so. Unlike Demiquas, who’d stepped in to shield him temporarily, Naotsugu had been targeted by powerful normal attacks without a break. Scales that stood on end like spikes were fired at him over and over. Recovering Naotsugu’s HP to reduce the damage from that, and to get him ready for the big next attack, was necessary for the safety of the entire team. Consequently, Naotsugu didn’t stand on ceremony, either.

  In the midst of the astoundingly fierce battle, Naotsugu was remembering the past.

  Of course, compared to this other world, it might have been just a game, but Naotsugu had been the Debauchery Tea Party’s main tank. It wasn’t that he had no raid experience. On the contrary: The Tea Party had gone on a shocking number of raids. In the first place, when it came to raids, Kanami had tended to disregard even victory and defeat. The woman had considered raid battles to be on the same level as removing obstacles to sightseeing. She’d even meddled in raid captures on an overseas server just “to see new vistas,” so there was really nothing to do but laugh.

  “Hoh! Hup!”

  His new equipment, Armor of Silver Oath, had been reliable. The connections all over his body were smooth, so it felt stable. There were no parts that flapped and bounced up. Guard of Lionheart was brilliant, too. Compared to what they’d been before, the shocks transmitted to his arm had softened remarkably. If things were like this, he thought he could probably keep this fierce battle up for hours. If he guided the points of light that sparkled in his vision to the center of the shield, he could repel even Ibra Habra’s tail without backing up. He could feel that his defense had risen considerably.

  “I’m nowhere near done yet! Bring-it-on city!” he yelled roughly.

  “Yowzers! Naotsugu, you’re really into this!”