4
The Log Horizon guild house was on a back road, one street away from Akiba’s central avenue. It was slightly removed from the city’s heart, but that meant its terrace had a wide, clear view of Akiba’s town center.
The scenery wasn’t bad during the day, but the view Shiroe liked was the one that lasted from evening until night.
In this other world, the nights were dark. This had been brought home to him on his journeys to the rural Choushi and Susukino. Theldesia was rich in natural beauty, but that was linked directly to the small size of its civilized areas. Unlike Earth, it had no megacities or maintained roads. At night, the world was ruled by darkness.
Because that was the case, manmade lights seemed like terribly precious things. In lively Akiba, in the hours from evening to night, the light of flames and magic lamps shone.
Of course, they were so sparse they couldn’t begin to compare to Tokyo nights. That building glowed orange—so did this inn—and in the central area, there were several Firefly Lamps: That was what it was like. In this other world, even that was enough to make this a huge city that radiated dazzling brightness.
Tonight, as Shiroe gazed out over that view from the wide terrace, his expression was gloomy.
He understood what Ains had said, and he’d anticipated this would happen. However, he thought to himself, even so…
He did think that what Ains was getting at was right, but they couldn’t implement it. If they forced it through, the clash of opinions for and against would heat up to the point of no return. The Round Table Council was an organization of self-government, but it wasn’t an actual government.
Maybe that’s an evasion, too.
There was no reason it had to be an organization of self-government…
It would be possible for Akiba to declare that an appropriate area was its territory and become independent as a governing organization. At the very least, in terms of the common sense of this world, they were more than capable of defending themselves, and they had quite enough economic power to run a territory. If Akiba was said to be unfit to govern on either of those two points, then there was no territory or noble in Eastal that could run a governing organization.
The reasons Shiroe and the other guild masters of Akiba hadn’t made the Round Table Council a governing organization were minor ones: “Government? Us? We couldn’t…” “That sounds like too much responsibility.” “I don’t think we should extend our reach that far…”
However, even if they were minor, they had been common-sense decisions, and it was a fact that the idea of venturing into government now was an unappealing one. Shiroe and the others were modern Japanese, and for them, these were natural feelings. In the first place, the Round Table Council was an organization of self-government and had been established with the cooperation of Akiba’s citizens. Considering its history, if it reinvented itself as a “government” with the power to enforce things now, Shiroe guessed that there would be a good amount of opposition.
This was the point that made him wonder whether Ains’s prediction might be off: Akiba did have a will of its own. It was what could be called the “mood” of the majority of Adventurers in Akiba, and it wasn’t the sort of thing you could do anything about by issuing orders from the top, even if you were a guild master on the Round Table Council.
Even if he had managed to borrow the gold of the Kunie, it was earmarked for returning Yamato’s zones to Yamato. Appropriating that capital and using it to reform Akiba in some respect would be a bad move, in several ways. Shiroe didn’t think it was reasonable, and even he was afraid some unforeseen situation might occur. He was uneasy about it; that was precisely why he’d split up those three cards and taken security measures.
However, it was possible that that had been self-deception meant to help himself evade responsibility, too. This was a doubt Shiroe wasn’t able to shake.
It was an endless worry, and it was also his usual self-reproach.
If he took action, he worried that it might be conceited; if he avoided acting, he thought it might be rigid noninterference. No matter what he did or didn’t do, it was hard to believe he’d managed to make everything turn out for the best. He’d been told he was brooding, but that was his basic personality. There was no help for it.
Plant Hwyaden had built a powerful system of government by one unified guild. Of course, in one sense, this was autocratic, an act that forced the will of a certain group onto fellow Adventurers. Yet, it was an undeniable fact that its system, in which a single guild held plenary power, made efficient government possible. It had brought stability to Western Yamato and great stability to the lives of the Adventurers.
He had to acknowledge the skills of the Adventurers who were said to have established that system: Indicus and Kazuhiko; Nakalnad, the former guild master of Howling; and Zeldus, who had been an unknown.
At present, which of them had fewer unfortunate Adventurers? When that question came up, Shiroe had no way to criticize Plant Hwyaden.
The system was built on a strong relationship with the Holy Empire of Westlande. Compared with Eastal, the League of Free Cities, the Holy Empire of Westlande was a system of centralized authority. Because centralized systems could allocate their budgets more actively, they were able to invest that money in the Adventurers. They then introduced technology from those Adventurers and promoted measures for national prosperity and defense. That sort of thing wasn’t possible for a council system like Eastal, which was made up of many lords and had no clear hierarchical relationships.
I guess they’re probably using that technology to prepare for war.
Remembering the report he’d gotten from Captain Nyanta, Shiroe sighed.
The iron train. Suspicious summoned creatures. The clandestine maneuvers of the People of the Earth.
As long as Shiroe and the other Adventurers were active in this world, no matter what the speed might be, they wouldn’t be able to avoid disseminating technology. It wasn’t as if Plant Hwyaden was the only one disseminating it. The Adventurers of Akiba were spreading a variety of inane technologies across Yamato. There was no such thing as a peaceful technology, unsuited to war. Even technologies that improved the lives of the People of the Earth ended up fanning the ambitions of the now-wealthy feudal lords. In extreme terms, even agricultural and medical technology could become triggers for war.
The problems Ains had pointed out: the disparities in Akiba and the desolation people felt.
The military tensions among the People of the Earth in both East and West Yamato.
Shiroe felt a stomachache coming on.
And that wasn’t all.
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