by Mamare Touno
That said, that was with regard to himself, and the trouble was a different matter. Those vicissitudes of life—in other words, the various commotions that surged his way—were inevitable. He didn’t cause them.
For that very reason, he loved them.
Well, I won’t say I never actively got involved in any of them, though.
His duel with Elias had been that way. He wasn’t crazy enough to take the first swing himself, but if someone started slashing at him, he’d cheerfully play along. He even thought that, since someone had taken a slash at him, he was missing out if he didn’t make sure they entertained him.
To Krusty, the current ruckus was another of the world’s performances. Of course, if he was going to put it that way, all the commotions that had followed the Catastrophe had been the same way. He didn’t intend to actively participate in them, but he did plan to savor every battle that came his way.
As Krusty thought these things, he saw Kanami scale a cliff up ahead.
Clinging to wet rocks wasn’t really his thing, so he walked down the sloping tunnel that continued to the right. At that, with a flustered shout, Kanami came running after him, passed him, and began walking in front of him again.
“You like being in the lead, then?”
“Yeah!”
Why?
That’s a trite question.
Is it possible there’s no reason for liking things?
There could be one.
However, I’m not really interested enough to ask.
Has she always liked it?
That’s probably the case.
She was the first to appear at the hunting grounds conference with D.D.D., too.
However, she fell asleep in the middle of the practical business talks (conjecture).
A woman who snores during a voice chat.
Responsibility as the leader of the Tea Party.
Could it actually be the opposite?
“Were you the leader of the Tea Party because you like walking in front of everyone?”
The question popped into Krusty’s mind, and the response he got was “Yep, you got it!” Considered in the ordinary way, that reason seemed impossible. Becoming the leader of a community for no other reason than the fact that you wanted to be in the lead walking spot… He’d never heard of such a thing in any guild.
However, the response made sense to him, too. She was lacking in common sense, so naturally, she wouldn’t be sensible internally.
Kanami, who was humming as she walked ahead of him, turned around cheerfully, asking, “What are things like over there?” She’d probably gotten bored.
“What are they like?”
“Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. How’ve you been, these past two years?! And what’s it like on the Yamato server?”
“Don’t you already know?” Krusty responded in a low voice.
It wasn’t that he wanted to keep it a secret or that he didn’t want to talk to her, but he was planning to avoid repeating things she’d heard before.
“Nah… That’s not how it is. I didn’t make contact, and I did other stuff, and I got stopped! I didn’t hear much from KR, either. He wouldn’t give me straight answers.”
“Could you have brought that on yourself, perhaps?”
KR had been a Debauchery Tea Party member. He’d been one of the three counselors in that meteoric group (to which Krusty had felt a sense of affinity simply because of the sound of the word debauchery, for some reason.)
“You’re cold, Krus-Krus. If you walk along silently in a place like this, your glasses will start glinting too much.”
“…”
Krusty shrugged. He’d had no intention of ducking her questions; if she wanted him to talk, he wasn’t against doing that. “Okay, so go on: report, report, rhubarb,” Kanami was shouting. He probably should fill her in on the doings of the people of Akiba.
“The past two years, you said? As far as raid captures are concerned, D.D.D., Howling, and the Knights of the Black Sword competed. Honesty was up and down. Two new guilds, the West Wind Brigade and Silver Sword, improved and rapidly caught up to the top groups.”
He began by relating news about a harmless topic that wasn’t likely to cause offense: the raid rankings over the past couple of years.
The real-world rankings hadn’t been prepared by the Elder Tales official site; raids weren’t evaluated that way. Instead, the communities on each server provided them in the form of anonymous bulletin-board rumors and similar things.
When an expansion pack was released, it included several items of high-end content. The majority of these were full raid chain stories. In other words, extra content. In most cases, one expansion pack included between four and seven dungeons, and one dungeon had anywhere from three to ten raid bosses. In other words, one expansion pack had about thirty “targets.”
There was a tacit order of precedence regarding these powerful enemies. In many cases, dungeons were set up so that you could capture them in any order you liked, but in practice, unless you defeated the raid enemies in lower-ranking dungeons and filled out your equipment, even if you went up against higher-ranking bosses, you weren’t likely to win.
The raid rankings were an aggregate of information regarding which guild had defeated its way up to which objective in these expansion packs.
It took several weeks to defeat a single boss. They needed that much time to analyze an enemy about which they had absolutely no information, get their equipment in order, and train as a team. In other words, every time an expansion pack went on sale, this rankings race—“D.D.D. has defeated the eighth boss.” “It sounds like the Knights of the Black Sword are up to the seventh one now.”—went on for twenty months. That was the Elder Tales raid rankings.
The rankings also gave a portrait of the power struggles on the server, and to simplistic watchers, they were the guild hierarchy as well.
“That sounds surprisingly stable.”
“Expansion pack levels didn’t vary much, either,” Krusty answered.
On the Yamato server, D.D.D., Howling, and the Knights of the Black Sword were powerful raid guilds with substantial histories. They’d been competing with each other since the days when the Debauchery Tea Party was active. It was also true that the expansion packs that had been released had tended to simply add dungeons, rather than new elements that would upset the preexisting power balance.
The upshot was that, in the two years since the Debauchery Tea Party had disbanded, the cutthroat race had continued; however, the competition was still going strong, and there had been no unexpected twists.
“Uh-huh, uh-huh. Umm, what about since the Catastrophe?”
“That’s…not possible to sum up in a word. Akiba established an organization known as the Round Table Council.”
“Yeah, I heard a little about that.”
“Shiroe is the central figure.”
Krusty mentioned this because he’d begun to feel mischievous. Being complimented made Shiroe uncomfortable. He was an unbalanced, interesting friend. Krusty’s impression of Shiroe was that he was a foolhardy idealist, a specialist in hand-to-hand fighting with an ultra-long-distance firing range.
To reach an objective, he’d extend his range as far as he had to. Even in situations where he only had to bag the prey right in front of him, he tried to pull in everything, all the way out to the distant horizon, in order to resolve the whole matter and carry through. And even so, he didn’t snipe; he used a drawn katana for all of it. Conditions that would let him attack unilaterally were in place, and yet, the guy himself wanted to get hurt, too.
It struck him as a strange picture.
had been like that, too.
At that conference, she’d surprised Krusty. It had been a small defeat. The victor had the right to claim the spoils of their victory.
Why would she offer up her own body and soul? Why would she try to get involved?
Isaac and Michitaka and all the guild masters who’d gathered for the Round
Table Council were a little mysterious. A whimsical component that no one could call efficient had become the sort of nobility that could be termed “leeway” and was helping the organization operate… Although Krusty was probably not an exception there.
“Shiro, huh? Mm-fu-fu-fu-fu. I knew it. I figured Shiro would turn into a cool guy like that.”
“Did you?”
“Yep, yep. Off-road, of course.”
When he saw her expression—a smile that could only be called delighted—Krusty smiled wryly.
Apparently, this woman enjoyed what Shiroe was doing.
He didn’t know which sense of enjoyed was accurate here, but now that he thought about it, this woman could be called the pinnacle of whimsy and waste.
It wasn’t as if he hadn’t spoken with Shiroe and this woman back in the days of the game, but apparently, his understanding had been shallow then. He hadn’t thought they were people with this much depth.
“In Yamato, by and large, both Akiba and Minami are peaceful. Of course it’s likely there are a variety of things under the surface, but that’s true of anywhere people live. The town of Akiba has acquired the combined team of the Round Table Council; they’ve solved the issues of plunder and hostile acts and blocked the first wave of damage to the People of the Earth, and by now, I expect they’re approaching the end of the regular raid events.”
Well, he wasn’t lying. The outstanding problems on the Yamato server had been taken care of, in a general sense.
That said, to Krusty, it actually looked as though the situation was growing more chaotic.
It was a problem that preceded both optimism and pessimism: This situation, which resembled the discovery of a new continent, couldn’t possibly end peacefully.
The Round Table Council’s trouble with training those who were midlevel and below, which it had withdrawn from partway through, probably wouldn’t develop into much of an issue even if Krusty wasn’t there. However, the time they’d bought from the Lords’ Council under the cover of that program would naturally hit its time limit. With the threat of the goblins removed, the relationship between Adventurers and People of the Earth would inevitably progress toward the next stage. That in itself wasn’t a bad thing, but steering their mutual relationship after the hostile entity that had confronted them was gone would be extremely difficult. He would have liked the goblins to remain their enemy until a certain level of exchange had been established as common.
In the first place, Adventurers and People of the Earth were too far removed from each other. With a difference that great, you couldn’t expect anything from compromises.
Shiroe, whose heart burned much hotter than his appearance suggested, had journeyed north to strike a balance, but there as well, he must have been counting on chances of victory that were practically a pipe dream. He didn’t think he’d fail, but even if he succeeded, he’d never settle all the problems.
Or, no, if he succeeded, precisely because he’d done so, Ains would probably go off half-cocked.
When you looked at the big picture, the circumstances were beyond the scope of individual efforts.
Of course, it would probably be possible to block small, individual misfortunes. However, to put the situation in order, far more blood was bound to be spilled.
And it isn’t as though my being there would have changed anything. Krusty shrugged in response to his own thoughts.
“Why are you all the way out here, Krus-Krus?”
“I got involved in an accident, I think. It’s what saddled me with this bad status.”
Krusty answered as smoothly as if he’d prepared for that question in advance.
He hadn’t come here voluntarily, but he couldn’t say he’d actively fought it, either.
He was merely a little quick-witted, and if he took a comprehensive standpoint, no matter where he was, he couldn’t influence crowds. This was only natural, as he wasn’t trying to influence them. As a result, whether he was flung off somewhere or stayed where he was, he didn’t really care either way.
As long as he could find something relatively fun in any given situation, he was content.
“By whom?”
“Whom…?”
Kanami’s question caught Krusty off guard.
Who had involved him? Who had cursed him?
Who had defeated him?
Carelessly, those questions hadn’t even occurred to him.
As that train of thought flashed into his mind, Krusty looked down. Somewhere along the way, a pale golden light had begun to illuminate him. A cold wind swirled, making his mantle flap.
The long, winding limestone cavern had led the two Adventurers to the mountainside of Mount Lang Jun.
2
Covered in dust and thoroughly dirty, Hua Diao was in the greatest distress of her life. In the moment of the collapse, Krusty had flipped her away, sending her flying, and so she’d escaped unharmed, but she’d gotten stuck on a pine branch and had spent a short while unconscious. When she woke up, the topography of Mount Lang Jun had changed drastically, and it had taken her easily half a day to crawl up the rocky mountainside.
Pathetically, she was leaking big tears, and her nose was terribly snuffly.
Her plain yet dignified heavenly retainer’s clothes were worn through and ragged. For that matter, Hua Diao herself was ragged as well.
“What an awful thing to happen.”
Despondent, she came to a stop, but then she gritted her teeth and got over another boulder.
She was short, and to her, the sort of level difference Krusty could cross in a single stride was a cliff.
“I wonder if Master Immortal is all right. And all our companions, too…”
The martenfolk were heavenly officials who administered fairyland. That wasn’t a lie. In which case, what was a heavenly official? Frankly, Hua Diao didn’t know the answer.
What, on the other hand, was a government official? Hua Diao didn’t know the exact meaning of that term or job, either.
She was conscious that it was a respected civil service position. She had self-esteem that told her it must be something important. However, if asked why it was important, the only answer she could give was a vague Because you’re a heavenly official, maybe? She understood so little about the specific duties that, if asked what they were, she would have averted her eyes.
According to her hazy memories of the term civil servant, you had a boss who gave you orders and duties to carry out, but Hua Diao had no direct boss. She’d never met one, not in all the time since she was born, and she hadn’t taken any orders.
If she’d had to say, all the Ancients and Immortals should have counted as her boss, but until the Enchantress Youren had visited, no Immortals had come to the fairyland where Hua Diao lived.
In addition, Hua Diao didn’t really know what heaven was, either.
She knew it was somewhere up above them, and that the Immortals lived there, but she’d never been, not once.
From the time they were born, Hua Diao and the other martenfolk had been in the enchanted land on Mount Lang Jun, and they’d lived as its caretakers. Well, they might have been more like freeloaders than government officials…
After a certain point in time, fairyland had grown large, the number of rooms in the shrine had increased, and her sisters had increased in number as well before she was aware of it, but Hua Diao and the others had lived modestly. They swept the shrine, sprinkled water on the long, perilous stone staircase, and greeted Zhu Huan and the other worshippers who stopped by on occasion. Most of their meals consisted of hard tree nuts. The peaches belonged to the Immortals, and it was a grave crime for a government official to help herself to one.
For that reason, when Krusty had appeared, she’d been really happy.
She’d heard he was there to convalesce from an illness, so she’d nursed him with everything she’d had, but it didn’t seem to have been all that serious. In the end, he’d spent his time speaking to Hua Diao and the others about
all sorts of things.
She didn’t understand his personality very well, and he had a spiteful streak, but he was intelligent and elegant, and she thought he was a kind boss.
As Hua Diao and her sisters gazed up at the peaches that swayed in the soft breezes of fairyland, he’d picked large fruits without so much as hesitating and given them to them. He’d teased them as he’d done it—“When your limbs are short, you can’t really climb trees, can you?”—but that was misdirection, and just so like him, Hua Diao thought. After all, the martenfolk were all accomplished tree climbers.
The peaches had been meltingly sweet, but the dishes Master Immortal made were even more splendid. He wouldn’t always make them, but they were far, far more flavorful than the things the martenfolk made. The martenfolk should have been able to get by without eating, but they’d even take human shape or turn into spirits in order to line up for the food Master Immortal made.
Wasn’t his “stewed cubed-pork and boiled egg set meal” far more delicious than the court cuisine said to be served in the heavenly palace, which they knew of in theory? This was a secret, but as the leader, and therefore the one who was treated to it every time, Hua Diao would roll right over for it.
As a result, right now, Hua Diao’s nose was bright red from crying.
Krusty had been swallowed up by that pitch-black hole, and just the thought that he might have been smashed flat by a huge boulder made her chest feel as if it were being crushed.
She wanted him to serve her that peach tarte tatin he made—sweet and mellow, with a hint of bitterness, as if it had been slightly scorched—one more time. She wanted him to display the brilliant skill with which he cut it into twelve equal pieces, smiling meanly as he did so.