Chapter 5: The Pioneers
1
The operation had begun, and Minori’s group was right in the thick of the fighting.
The younger group was acting as attackers. This was due more to their levels not being high enough to let them act as tanks and healers than because they were particularly good at that sort of thing. Since their levels were low, no matter what they did, the damage from their attacks tended to be low as well. However, at least with that, there was a possibility that the issue could be resolved through serial attacks that made use of high-level support and MP supplementation.
Of course, they weren’t able to take on monsters whose levels were in the nineties.
The midlevel group’s role was to pick out the Eternal Moths and Moon Rabbits with levels from 60 to 70 and contribute through range attacks.
“We’re nowhere near done yet, Rudy!”
“Understood! Orb of Lava!!
Following Isuzu’s lead, Rundelhaus cast a fireball spell. Its level had gone up, and the number of small fireballs had increased. Following the blond’s instructions, they punched through Eternal Moths one after another. Even if he couldn’t take them down completely with one attack, if he burned their wings, he could thin out their scales and ground them.
The interior of Fortress of the Call was cramped compared with ordinary dungeons like Forest Ragranda, and it was a maze of intricate corridors—a series of intersections and straight lines in drab, inhospitable colors. This oppressive space was where Minori and the other members of the mixed unit were fighting.
“Touyacchi, let’s go clean up.”
“Roger that!”
Nyanta, Touya, and the wolf Serara had summoned broke into a run. They were going to finish off an enemy group that had lost its HP to a spell bombardment.
“Defense of Doctrine Barrier!!”
“Thanks!”
With Minori’s ample damage interception spell protecting him, Touya swung his katana. Gazing at his back, Minori nodded once. So far, their role-sharing was going well.
There were ten or so semitransparent windows in front of her eyes. In addition to the usual status displays for all her party’s members, she had displays for each leader and the main tank, for a total of about a dozen people. Even though this was only double the amount of information she normally dealt with, Minori felt as if she might drown in its constant fluctuation.
Spells to recover HP naturally consumed MP. The same was true for spells that inflicted damage and for close-combat special skills. If they went out on the front line, there was a possibility they’d get hit with a negative status effect, so they needed special skills that prevented or removed those.
As such, status figures and displays depended on each other. Should someone step out in front or fall back? As the number of people increased, the choices multiplied explosively. Simply doubling the number of display windows had increased the flexibility she had to take into account by a factor of ten. In the midst of what was practically her first raid, Minori continued to struggle desperately with that burden and kaleidoscopic motion.
She held her breath, almost as if she were diving to the bottom of the ocean, and glared at the numbers. The basic rules were the same as they were for a six-member party. HP and MP exchange. The balance between the pace of extermination and defensive abilities. The trade-off between elimination pace and replenishing abilities. However, those basic exchange rates had split into multiple tracks, tangled with each other, and turned into big waves that tossed Minori around.
In a hall that branched off the other side of the main corridor, she saw a figure with light-yellow hair streaming behind it. Focusing as if she were desperately praying, Minori checked on the situation. That hair belonged to Riezé. She was the linchpin of the current operation. Her MP was at 78 percent, and she warned Rundelhaus to be careful to match it.
“We’re starting!”
A familiar voice echoed in the corridor. It was Shiroe.
Rainbow light overflowed, and she saw a fierce fluctuation in MP.
Minori had been thinking, all this time.
She’d thought for a long, long time about what the true nature of the mysterious determination inside her might be and what sort of place it meant to take her to.
Of course she loved Shiroe. He was her favorite person.
That was why, for a time, she’d mistaken the truly stubborn mass inside her for love. However, she’d realized that was a misunderstanding. After all, it showed its face even in matters that had nothing to do with Shiroe, and it gave Minori brief reviews of her own actions: That was bad, this was good, etc. Touya said it had been that way since long before they met Shiroe. He’d informed his sister that she’d been like that for ages.
According to Touya, Minori was a big sister who didn’t listen and tended to run wild. She really didn’t think that described her at all, so she’d been reluctant to accept the evaluation.
However, since coming to Theldesia, she did suspect that, if people said things like that about her, it might be true after all.
There was something resolute inside her that even she couldn’t do anything about, and sometimes it pushed her into action. Shiroe had probably been nourished by it, and it seemed to be growing with every day she spent in Log Horizon. That made Minori happy. She was sure it wasn’t a bad thing.
One night, she had been lying in bed, thoughts wandering.
It wasn’t as if she was the only one with stubbornness inside of her.
Touya had the same thing, and so did Serara. Isuzu had it, and of course Rundelhaus did as well. Ordinarily, it was hidden and couldn’t be seen, but when push came to shove, it emerged and began to sparkle and shine. It was unimaginable wisdom, or kindness, or startlingly intense, desperate courage. Minori had seen it many times in Ragranda and on the journey to Saphir.
It seemed to her as if people had an internal core, like hidden treasure that wasn’t usually visible, and it surfaced at unexpected moments and connected with its surroundings.
Back when she’d lost hope in Hamelin, at the bottom of that constricting night to which morning never came, what she’d felt in the voice on the other end of that quiet telechat had been the treasure inside Shiroe. Even Minori and Touya hadn’t dreamed that the grad student who’d played alongside them a few times would brave danger to come and rescue them when they were imprisoned.
Why had he saved them? Minori had always wondered about that. It was probably true that he’d felt kindly disposed toward them. However, the real reason had been that special quality inside of him. Shiroe didn’t usually talk much, and he was so busy that he didn’t have much time to spend on Minori and the others. Back then, though, his spirit had abruptly begun to shine, and it had saved them.
When Minori thought back, she realized she’d felt the same thing in her father and mother. Her parents had been her parents even when they were exhausted and irritated, but that wasn’t the only side of them there was. The parents who celebrated with her and Touya on their birthday probably weren’t the real ones, either. They were hidden much deeper, like the time when she and Touya had been doing their homework together in the eat-in kitchen, and their mother had bragged to them about her student days while she heated water for apple tea… Minori didn’t understand it all that well, but she thought that feeling, which she’d brushed with her fingertips, had probably been an important treasure.
She’d been told that, after Touya’s accident, she’d become a “good kid.” However, she hadn’t been acting the part of a good kid because she’d been unhappy or because she’d felt sorry for Touya or anything like that.
Minori had wanted to be on a team with her parents. She’d been on Touya’s side since they were small, and she’d simply thought she’d like to have more relationships like that.
She’d wanted people to count on her.
Practically speaking, she had been just a child, and there had been far too little she could do in Japan; she’d only been able to go to school and come home again. She hadn’t been able to earn money, and if she’d put herself in harm’s way, she thought she probably would have worried her parents terribly. For that reason, back when she’d understood even less than she did now, she hadn’t been able to persuade them, and in the end, they hadn’t managed to become a team. She thought they’d been a happy family, but after all, Minori and Touya were their parents’ children.
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