Log Horizon - Volume 10 - Chapter 5.2

2 
Meanwhile, the second party was sprinting through a completely different route, heading upstairs. 
“Uh-huh, yeah… Understood. Don’t you push yourself, Old Man Whiskers.” 
Nazuna, who was running beside Soujirou, took her hand away from her ear. Telechats were hard to manage during combat, but there was no sign of monsters near the party. All the enemies were probably stampeding into the trap, drawn by the rainbow-colored MP Shiroe was releasing. 
Soujirou understood that it was a reckless strategy, although he didn’t know exactly how reckless it was. A spellcaster, with his characteristically low defense and HP, was attracting enemies for an entire raid. If something went wrong, the battle lines would crumble in a heartbeat, and the maneuver would end in failure. 
Soujirou wasn’t all that worried, though. 
“We just got a follow-up report, Souji.” 
“How does it look?” 
“Exactly like we want it to. He’s using the rooftop broadcasting tower to summon Taliktan, the Genius of Summoning. A Raid-rank level eighty-six.” 
“Is that right.” 
Soujirou laughed. It looked as if they’d be able to fulfill their role. 
“Cannonball” Woodstock, the guild master of Grandale, was a skilled flying dragon rider. He was conducting aerial reconnaissance from above Fortress of the Call and had relayed the results to Nazuna. Apparently, the enemy leader’s name was Taliktan. They’d confirmed its shape in a reconnaissance run at daybreak, and it had been good news. 
There was a reason Soujirou and the rest of Party Two had left Shiroe and the other three groups and were acting separately. 
Shiroe’s tactics—to leak MP in a mock taunt and round up all the monsters in the zone—had one flaw. If the raid monster that was the enemy leader happened to be within that range, it would turn into a complete melee. The tactic of annihilating the monsters’ reinforcements in a narrow corridor would fall apart the moment the boss monster got pulled in. For this tactic to work, they couldn’t let the boss monster go to Shiroe. The key to the strategy was dividing and ultimately conquering them. 
“You look kinda happy, Souji.” 
“I am!” he told Nazuna. 
His body was light. It felt as if his legs had grown wings. This sharper-than-normal body was probably a reflection of his lack of hesitation. It reminded him of his Debauchery Tea Party days. Back then, Soujirou had been a newbie. 
He’d played Elder Tales with his buddy, picked up the basics, stuck his nose into a variety of typical MMO events, gotten separated, made friends, and then found the Tea Party. The Tea Party had been the first community he’d ever encountered in online gaming, and it was a place he’d wanted to protect. 
At the time, the Tea Party had been brand-new. Players who wanted to try their hand at raids had begun to gather around Kanami, but those members weren’t fixed, and more than half of them were recruited on the spot whenever they executed a capture. After Soujirou had participated a few times, they sounded him out about participating in earnest, and he’d agreed readily. He’d wanted to attempt high-level high-end content more seriously, too, but what he’d really wanted was companions. There were lots of ladies who were kind to him, but he couldn’t call them comrades-in-arms. Soujirou had wanted hard-hitting combat. 
Back then, the senior members—Kanami, Shiroe, KR, Indicus, Naotsugu, Nyanta, Suikazura, Stallbourne, Nurukan, and Nazuna—had already joined up. Touri, Saki, ?Kurama?, Yomi, and others joined around the same time as Soujirou, and the Tea Party continued to take shape. Soujirou’s memories were nostalgic and bright. 
“Because this is Mr. Shiro’s maneuver.” 
“Ah, I see.” 
There was a smile somewhere in Nazuna’s voice, and she sounded happy. That accelerated Soujirou forward, farther and faster. 
“Gaaaah. Souji, I swear, you like Shiroe too much!! Are you gay?! You’re gay, aren’t you?!” 
Smiling even at Kurinon’s nastiness, Soujirou raced up the narrow staircase, taking the steps three at a time. As he used his high-level Adventurer physical abilities to speed up, he looked like a rocket blasting off its launch pad. 
The key to this operation was dividing the enemy. 
In particular, the most important task was isolating the boss. 
That was the mission entrusted to Party Two, the one he led. Having finished re-forming, the party ran, kicking up a wind. They didn’t have to worry about reinforcements. When Soujirou played his part, it wasn’t even possible Shiroe would fail at his own post. After all, he was one of the three players Soujirou idolized. 
“Now that Mr. Shiro’s made up his mind, there’s just one role for me.” 
Soujirou slashed with Sacred Blade Kogarasumaru, slicing open the high-steel door that led to the roof. Dashing out into the wash of sunset light, he immediately leapt. 
“Lone Dash!” 
It was a clear, open space. In the world of Theldesia, the People of the Earth didn’t often make tall structures. As demonstrated by Maihama’s Castle Cinderella, it wasn’t that they didn’t have the technology, but the costs were probably overwhelming. Fortress of the Call was a ruin from the Age of Myth, and as a result, there were no nearby buildings that compared to it in height. In Theldesia, a structure with ten aboveground floors was the equivalent of a skyscraper. 
In the middle of the rooftop square, which seemed to have been flung out carelessly, an enormous iron tower jutted even higher into the air above those ten stories. This was probably the magical device that made it possible to communicate with the moon: the broadcasting tower. 
At its base was a wrinkled, elderly individual with swarthy skin. 

The level-86 Raid-rank monster, Taliktan, the Genius of Summoning. 
“One enemy visually confirmed! Now, there’s a feast. Go get ’im, Souji!” 
Nazuna raised an arm over her head, and countless small footholds materialized beyond her fingertips. 
Mystery: Celestial Passage. This was an ability Nazuna had acquired that surpassed the parameters of Elder Tales. It was based on the damage interception spell Purification Barrier, but instead of being cast on companions, it was split up and distributed across empty space to create footholds. Its ability to intercept damage nearly disappeared, but the shining, translucent platforms that appeared in space made it possible to travel through the air. 
In Buddhism, “Celestial Passage” was said to be one of the six supernatural powers gained upon attaining enlightenment. It was one of the so-called divine powers. Of course, what Nazuna was using was her own unique ability, acquired by refining skills she’d had in the game, and it had nothing to do with Buddhism. However, the abilities conferred by Celestial Passage—namely, “being able to leap over castle walls and mountains” and “the ability to run freely through the air, keeping pace with the birds”—had seemed to make it the perfect name for this Mystery. The name of Souji’s Mystery, Clairvoyance, had come from the same system. 
Using Nazuna’s Mystery as footholds, Soujirou leapt into the air. 
Up on the half-eroded concrete platform, Taliktan looked like a heretical priest. Swarthy skin; white hair worn tied back; a loose white-and-purple robe; and a long, twisted staff. When Souji saw Taliktan, the name “the Genius of Summoning” made sense to him. Taliktan had been using that supernatural ability to summon limitless monsters. The rainbow-colored pillar that linked the broadcasting tower to the sky was made of bubbles of MP. The thought that this enemy had put People of the Earth and Adventurers into comas lit a fighting spirit in him, burning blue. 
“Floating Boat: Helm Splitter!” 
He shifted directly from a martial-arts style of movement that made use of the footholds to an attack from above. It was a head-on cleaving attack that would ordinarily have worked best with a two-handed sword. Since Soujirou was one of the few Samurai twin sword–style builds, which emphasized counterattacking, he’d equipped a katana to each hand. As a result, instead of the usual slashing attack, he had to spin to launch the technique. 
The attack bit into the cap of Taliktan’s shoulder. 
He felt a good, solid response. 
Of course, his opponent was a raid monster: a tough enemy in high-end content that had anywhere from several thousand to several tens of thousands of times the HP of solo monsters. Soujirou’s single attack hadn’t decreased its HP enough for the loss to show on the display. However, the attack hadn’t been deflected by a barrier, and it had gone through without being blocked by armor. In any case, his opponent’s level was 86. There was no way they couldn’t beat that… Assuming that this world was the same as Elder Tales, and there were a full twenty-four members in Soujirou’s group. 
“Nazuna, Isami. Cover me.” 
“Leave it to me, Boss!” 
“Yeah, yeah. On it.” 
When dealing with a spellcaster-type monster, using Rania’s Capture was a standard move, but it failed. However, no sooner had it done so than Isami linked it directly to Whirlwind Cutter, and he didn’t see any of the fear she’d felt right after the Catastrophe. Using Nazuna’s cover, Secret Rite of Celestial Tread, she closed the distance between them at high speed, continuing to create vulnerabilities for Soujirou to exploit. 
In response, Soujirou shifted from Helm Splitter straight into Fire-Wheel Sword. The sound of the blade splitting the atmosphere seemed to point his heart toward its destination. 
Once, Soujirou had spent a long time being afraid. 
…About the fact that he’d created the West Wind Brigade. 
No one had ever done so, but someday, somebody might ask him, Didn’t you put that guild together as a replacement for the Tea Party? 
On the day Shiroe had turned down his invitation to join the West Wind Brigade, that fear had taken root in his heart. He’d felt a hidden uncertainty. Was he forcing crowds of people to live in ways they didn’t want to live, without being aware of it? 
His time with the Tea Party had been a whole lot of fun; was it possible he was just trying to reclaim those days? If someone asked him about it, what could he tell them? Soujirou wasn’t good at thinking about things, so he hadn’t managed to come up with anything like a conclusion. However, the questions truthfully triggered a dull pain inside him. 
Both when he’d just started playing Elder Tales and had been all excited, and when the Tea Party had disbanded, Soujirou had humbly asked his friends to stay with him, but they’d gone their own ways. He’d thought he hadn’t had any luck with friends. 
And so Soujirou had been happy. 
The great sword he was swinging came down, carrying delight and satisfaction with it. 
Once Shiroe’s command had recovered, it had been just the way it had been during their Tea Party days. Or rather, it was clearer than it had been in the past, and it permeated each member of the raid team. As he bounded through the air and twisted his body, as he ran his gaze over the icons and switched stances, he felt his companions’ breathing. He couldn’t actually see them, but they seemed indescribably close to him. He knew what they were thinking, what they were trying to do, and their self-restraint as if those things were his own. 
People would probably say that liking combat for reasons like that meant he was a little crazy, but he could tell his lips had curved into a smile. It wasn’t that he wanted to kill enemies. In the midst of the sensation that he was diffusing, then forming connections, he began to understand things he normally didn’t know. It wasn’t that he couldn’t feel those things during ordinary battles, but with Shiroe in command, they came home to him with incomparable intensity. 
In short, Soujirou had been worried for nothing. 
Isami, Nazuna, Olive, and Kurinon. 
They all genuinely considered Soujirou their friend. Of course, all sorts of things were probably mixed into that emotion, and they didn’t all feel quite the same way, but the bonds he’d forged between himself and his companions weren’t a one-way thing. 
Soujirou laughed at himself, thinking that, if it took a raid to make him understand something that simple, he really was dumb. 
He also felt an odd sort of destiny in the fact that Shiroe—someone he thought had left him—had helped him to see it. 
“And so, Taliktan.” 
Sword guard clinking, Soujirou turned Sacred Blade Kogarasumaru on the raid boss in front of him. A translucent divine messenger in a fox mask stood behind him, spreading its arms like something from a Noh play. The fantasy-class blade exuded a pressure that made the air shiver, its spiritual power building. 
“Dance with me for a while. I can’t let you go down there.”