Infinite Dendrogram - Volume 6 - Chapter 9

Chapter Nine: To the Windy Village 
Paladin, Ray Starling 
After the folks from K&R left, we resumed our journey towards Torne. 
The sun had already set, and Silver was now pulling the carriage over a dark road lit up by magic lights installed into the vehicle. 
There was traffic here and there. Groups of Masters who’d survived the hunt and tians who hadn’t been targeted to begin with were heading in the same direction as us. 
Apparently, the party behind us had lost two of their people, and I couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty about that. 
But then again, the only ones at fault here were K&R, or just Rosa, to be specific. 
The chaos had left Louie all drained, and he was now fast asleep inside the carriage. Hell, even if this whole thing hadn’t happened, Louie was a child who’d woken up early in the morning to travel to the capital and back, so it was only natural for him to be exhausted. 
Honestly, I was pretty tired, as well. 
Well, I haven’t gotten a proper breather on this side ever since the kidnapping, I reminded myself. 
“I hope we get to Torne soon,” Nemesis said aloud. She was sitting to my right on the coachman’s seat. “We might finally get some rest there.” 
I couldn’t help but agree with her. 
“Though, I must say,” she continued, switching to telepathy, “B3 is strangely silent.” 
I threw a glance over to B3, who was sitting to my left. 
“...” 
Continued silence. She hadn’t said a single word ever since our exchange with K&R. It was probably because of Rosa’s words as she left. Specifically, “Let’s go PKing again.” 
I’d heard Kashimiya tell her off for saying that, but that didn’t undo the very fact that she’d said it, effectively revealing two truths about B3. 
First was the fact that B3 was acquainted with K&R, and that they weren’t necessarily enemies, while the second was that B3, too, was a PKer. 
The fact that she’d been hiding this could only mean that she hadn’t wanted me to find out. Well, the curtain had fallen and now I knew. And as for what that made me think... 
“...It bothers you, doesn’t it?” B3 asked, suddenly breaking her long silence. “You’re probably aware of this by now, but I’m a PKer. In fact, I’m about as infamous as K&R.” 
I listened, not saying a word. 
“I haven’t been active lately, but before I stopped, I gave the death penalty to at least a thousand players.” 
“That is quite awe-inspiring,” Nemesis commented. 
As a first-hand witness of B3’s battle against K&R, I couldn’t help but believe her. She was extremely adept at analyzing her opponents. 
“I probably should’ve told you right at the start, but I chose to hide it because I thought you might avoid me,” she admitted. “I didn’t want to lose a new junior friend like that... Sorry.” 
B3 looked into my eyes and bowed her head repentantly. 
It was clear as day that she was earnestly apologizing for keeping secrets from me, but honestly... 
“Umm... I really don’t think much of it, though,” I said. The fact that she was a PKer didn’t bother me in the slightest. 
“...Eh?” She looked up with a confused look on her face. 
“I wouldn’t avoid you just because you’re a PKer,” I repeated myself. “Sure, I’d be pretty annoyed if you came at me like K&R did just now, but that’s about it.” 
As long as someone didn’t act like a certain bastard in a lab coat and go around doing acts of terror that endangered tians, I really didn’t care if they were a PKer or not. Hell, a certain PKer hitman who was responsible for my only death penalty was now a member of my party. PKer or not — it barely mattered to me at this point. 
B3 silently stared at me, as if to assess whether I was telling the truth or not, then sighed in relief before forming a faint smile. “I can’t tell whether you’re just excessively tolerant, softhearted... or just naïve.” 
“Ha ha,” I chuckled. “Well, I can’t really deny any of those. But even so, I feel that you’re someone I can trust.” 
There were Masters who didn’t hesitate to commit genocide upon tians. The King of Plagues that Marie had defeated, the King of Crimes that Shu had told me about, and Franklin — who I’d faced myself — were all among them. 
However, I could easily tell that B3 was nothing like those three. 
My strongest argument for this was the fact that she’d sacrificed her shields to protect Louie from Rosa, but even if I hadn’t seen that, I already knew that she was kind and considerate at heart. 
“Hell, I wouldn’t have cared about you being a PKer even if you’d revealed it to me right at the start,” I continued. “Like when we were talking at the college café.” 
“...No,” B3 said as she looked away from me. “I definitely couldn’t have told you then.” 
“Why not?” 
“...If I’d told you that I was the infamous PKer X, you would have researched me on the Internet before going online, right?” 
“No, I wouldn’t ha— Well, maybe?” I couldn’t entirely rule out the possibility. 
“That would have been... well... embarrassing.” 
“Hm? Embarrassing? How?” 
“When I’m PKing, I become an entirely different person... and it’s definitely not someone I’d like my real life acquaintances to see...” Her cheeks turned rosy, and she covered them with her hands. 
The gap between her current expression and her usual, calm and collected self made her seem a bit... cute. 
“Ah! I just felt a violent, inexplicable surge of danger!” Nemesis exclaimed. 
Nemesis? What’s wrong? I asked. 
“Oh, uh... but B3,” she said, ignoring my question. “You didn’t seem to change all that much in our battle against K&R. That was PKing, wasn’t it?” 
“Back then... I wasn’t turned on in that way.” 
“‘Turned on’?” Our voices as one, Nemesis and I repeated the term. 
Did she have some sort of switch at the back of her head or something? Did it make her turn into a PKer when on? Was it like a literal “kill-switch?” I considered asking more about this... 
“Hh... Nnh, hm...?” 
...but that was when I heard sounds coming from the carriage. Louie had woken up. 
“You’re awake?” I asked. “We should be there soon.” 
“Yeah,” he replied. “I can hear it.” 
“‘Hear?’” I strained my ears and opened my mind. Upon doing so, I could hear lots of faint sounds coming from the other side of the hill before us. 
Before long, Silver went up and brought us high enough to see beyond it. 
“It’s beautiful,” said Nemesis, clearly overwhelmed by the sight. 
The road to Torne now had guardrail-like fences on its sides, and both of them had been turned into an attraction. 
The tops of the fences were decorated by countless pinwheel toys, spinning in the nightly wind. The paint on those toys had to contain something, because they were emitting a faint, yet vivid, shine. Brightening the dark like guiding lights, they spun and turned as though inviting us over to the village. 
The sight was truly wondrous, and it made me understand why this festival attracted so many people. 
“It starts tomorrow, but they already put up the windstars,” said Louie. 
“‘Windstars’?” I raised an eyebrow. Not pinwheels, not windmills, but “windstars?” 
Upon closer inspection, I noticed they all had a total of five blades, and when looking from the front, they did indeed have the likeness of a generic star symbol. 
“They’re based on an old story from here,” Louie explained. “Long ago, a star that fell from the sky when the wind was very strong sealed the evil monster ‘Blacksky’ deep in the earth.” 
Was that the local belief or something? 
Thinking of “beliefs” made my mind trail off towards the aberration, but I couldn’t let myself forget that there were faiths other than hers. 
“Ah! You can’t take the windstars off the fences!” Louie shouted, and I instantly turned to see Nemesis frozen solid while reaching towards the fence on her side. 

“...Nemesis,” I said. 
“I-I just... I watched them spin, and I just couldn’t help it...” 
What are you, a cat? What kind of reason is that? 
“If you want a windstar, you can have this one,” said Louie as he reached into his inventory, took out a windstar, and handed it over to Nemesis. 
“Are you sure?” she asked. 
“Yeah! I brought it with me for good luck, but we have more back at the village!” 
“I see... Thank you.” Nemesis held the windstar in hand, looking at it with a gleeful smile on her face. 
“This is the first time I’ve seen you make an expression that fits your appearance,” I said. “If I don’t count the times when you eat sweets, anyway.” 
“Mrgh! How rude! I’m a lady, so I have to use my indulgent expressions sparingly!” 
Is that really a lady-like thing? I pondered. It sounds warrior-like, to be honest. And hey, you already sound like a warrior sometimes... Oh, well. 
Anyway, despite the minor hindrance along the way, we’d made it to the outskirts of Torne. 
We’d take Louie home, and then, come tomorrow, we’d start our search for information which could lead us to Shijima’s real-life self. 
That would be the real start of this quest. 
 
K&R’s Headquarters 
In the leader’s room deep inside K&R’s HQ, Kashimiya sat on a floor cushion while examining a pile of documents held together by a string. 
It had been created by a member using skills from the shoshi job grouping — a set of scrivener-like jobs from Tenchi. That gave it the format of an old Japanese picture book. 
Kashimiya flipped through the pages until one part of it made him furrow his brow. 
“What’re you reading, darling?” asked Rosa, standing at his side with water buckets in both her hands and on her head. 
True to his word, Kashimiya had given her the punishment he’d said he would. The bucket on her head was an extra, added because Rosa had revealed that B3 was a PKer. 
At first, Rosa had been taking her punishment in the hallway, but since she always cheated without him around, Kashimiya had made her do it in his room. Then again, Rosa could’ve intended this. 
“This is the report for today’s pseudo-hunt,” Kashimiya answered. 
“Ghuh,” she flinched. 
Indeed, Kashimiya was reading the report describing Rosa’s hunt, which had been sparked by a misunderstanding and fueled by a personal grudge. 
Besides the Masters who participated in the hunts, K&R also had members who recorded the situation and presented reports to Kashimiya and Rosa. 
Kashimiya had to pay reparations to the newbies and process two months worth of information, but he first wanted to take care of the most immediate problem. 
“Look, I’m sorry, okay?” Rosa said meekly. “Can you let it go?” 
“This time, we lost a few group fighters and an entire set of squad fighters,” Kashimiya said, completely ignoring her words. 
“...What?” 
The death penalties among the group fighters had obviously been caused by B3’s Flying Shield. The group fighters were full of low-level members, so it wasn’t strange for them to have been utterly crushed by someone in B3’s tier, but the same couldn’t be said about the squad fighters. They were parties of level 500 high-ranks, meaning that they could easily stand their ground against other parties of such caliber and likely defeat them, as well. 
Though this had been primarily a personal assault on Ray and B3, it had also been a K&R hunt, so, while the group fighters and Rosa had focused on the two, the four sets of squad fighters had been hunting as normal. 
The fact that one of them had been completely annihilated before Kashimiya had told them to withdraw — within only a few minutes after the hunt began — was somewhat strange. 
“The search didn’t show any Superior Jobs, though,” said Rosa. 
Circle of Detect Life was a skill that checked levels, so they would’ve instantly known if there had been anyone above level 500. With the exception of Rosa, the highest level in that hunting ground had been 500. 
“Yes, the report says the same thing.” Kashimiya nodded. 
“Then...” 
“Apparently, they were outnumbered. Not every battle’s outcome is decided by the power of one, after all.” 
Rose was speechless. Are you sure you, of all people, can say that, darling? 
Kashimiya was the very embodiment of the power of one he’d just mentioned. He was literally a match for a thousand. Unleash a regiment on him, and all their heads would fall. 
“Anyway, the enemies were acting strange,” he said as he examined the document again. The fighters who’d been wiped out had attacked a party with particularly high levels among those caught in the search. 
At first, both parties had been equal and it had seemed like either side’s game, but then, about a minute after the battle had begun, a few nearby parties had gathered at the location. They had all begun cooperating flawlessly, and the K&R squad fighter set had been quickly destroyed. According to the report, they’d killed two of the enemies before the last of them fell. 
“They got there too fast, and they cooperated too well for it to be improvised,” said Kashimiya. “This can only mean that...” 
“...a single group split into parties and moved separately for some reason, right?” asked Rosa. 
“Yes. I think so,” he said, approving of her theory. 
Though Rosa was a tactless, dumb dog with no forethought to speak of, her extensive experience as a leader of PK groups made her more knowledgeable on some fronts than Kashimiya. 
Battle tactics was one of those fronts, and because of this, Kashimiya and Rosa had clean-cut roles in the clan — him as the general manager, and her as the hunt strategist. 
In fact, the clan’s group fighters had been her idea. She’d figured that the inexperienced members would be most effective when they banded up and unleashed focused waves of long-range attacks. She definitely deserved credit for that strategy. 
“Isn’t that strange, though?” asked Kashimiya. “If they’re heading to Torne at this time, they must be Windstar Festival tourists, right? It would be normal for them to go all together, so why did they split up?” 
“I don’t think they’re tourists,” Rosa said. “They’re fellow PKers.” 
“How can you tell?” 
“They’re using the same plays as I did back in Tenchi and B3 did before her clan split up. A load of people in one group really stands out, and it’s easy to tell when they’re about to do something, so you split up into parties, surround your prey, and take care of them before they can even realize what happened.” 
Rosa then laughed, adding, “This move is sometimes used when hunting actual animals.” 
Her laugh made her lose her balance, causing the bucket on her head to flip and spill its contents all over her. 
“Ugh, I’m all wet now...” she complained. “Anyway, they were probably following some target of theirs. We got anything else on them, darling?” 
“The party they first attacked had a person with this mark on them,” he said, showing it to her. 
It was a symbol best described as a red circle and black circle stacked together, and from certain perspectives, it appeared to represent a solar eclipse. 
Rosa was familiar with that mark. “It’s Sol Crisis,” she said. 
“‘Sol Crisis’?” 
“Oh yeah, you don’t know about them. It’s a PK clan that blew up after the newbie hunt we did. They’re basically trying to fill the hole left by Mad Castle and GS, and their playstyle is closer to GS’s.” 
Basically, this meant that one of K&R’s squads had lost against a rising PK group. Rosa wanted to go on a revenge match against them, but she wasn’t certain what Kashimiya would say to that. PKers were probably fair game to him, but the recent events might be too fresh in his mind for him to allow it. 
“I see,” the boy sighed with a somewhat gloomy expression on his face. “Things sure have changed over the last two months...” 
It had been a turbulent time, indeed. Full of various happenings, twists, shifts, and turns. The fact that he hadn’t been able to participate in any of it had made Kashimiya feel a bit lonely, as if everyone had moved on without him while he was offline. 
His gloomy expression had a strong effect on Rosa, but she was somehow able to hide it. 
“B-By the way,” she said, changing the subject to help her calm down. “There’s a weird rumor about Sol Crisis!” 
“Oh?” 
“They say there’s one PKer among them that stands out... though it’s more about the gear he wears than the actual person.” 
“What gear?” 
“It’s a set of armor, used by a certain PKer...” she said before momentarily falling silent and picturing a certain person. “People say they saw someone in Sol Crisis wear Barbaroy Bad Burn’s Legendary full armor MVP reward, Gunhammer Plate, Magnum Colossus.”