HOT NOVEL UPDATES

Log Horizon - Volume 11 - Chapter 2.3




Hint: To Play after pausing the player, use this button


“Inconceivable…” 
Elias was stricken, and the voice that slipped from his throat sounded strangled. 
“Maybe it is, but there’s nothing we can do about it.” 
“I’m terribly sorry. I had no idea it was configured this way, either.” 
They’d finally reached Sirius Grotto, but a huge bronze door inlaid with images of wolves blocked the entrance. Elias was kneeling in front of it. 
Leonardo and Chun Lu both spoke to him, trying to comfort him, but they seemed a bit hesitant about it. Elias couldn’t understand their attitudes, and he pounded the ground with a fist. 
“This is exclusively for parties ranging from four to six individuals with levels between eighty and ninety.” 
“It’s an instance dungeon, huh? The sort that gets generated temporarily.” 
Coppélia had checked a translucent window, and Kanami, who was peeking in from beside her, spoke up in agreement. For somebody who was handing down a sentence, her voice was pretty cheerful. 
Elias understood, too. He was the one who’d tried to run in, before anyone else, after emerging from the precipitous mountains. However, this door, sealed by Adventurer sorcery, had refused him. He’d performed authentication again and again, and he had finally tried to shove it open by brute force, but it hadn’t budged. 
According to the words of the girl priestess, Coppélia, it was a seal that was based on level—in other words, on combat rank. 
“Am I to blame here…?” 
“You know it’s not about blame, guy. C’mon.” 
His sworn friend Leonardo spoke, his hands on his hips, but his words sounded vaguely false. 
The blue sky was high and clear, and the cool wind peculiar to mountain regions was blowing, but Elias’s heart was gloomy. As he was now, even the aid he’d promised the Enchantress, one of his own kind, was out of his reach. 
He’d acquired his level-100 strength to save the world and the People of the Earth. If he was being rejected precisely because of that strength, what was he supposed to do? What meaning had there been in his painful training and the agony he’d felt up until now? It was as if he’d been told there was no value in his existence. 
Unable even to vent this suffering—which he felt certain they wouldn’t understand—on his companions, Elias groaned. 
“I call first!” 
“Coppélia will accompany you.” 
“Huh? Uh? Hey, what are those looks for? I’m going, too?!” 
“Do you mean you’re including me as well?” 
Kanami had taken bouncing steps, pointing at her friends’ chests one by one for confirmation. However, when Elias looked up, feeling as if he was seeking salvation, he was hit with a merciless declaration: “You hold the fort, Eli-Eli! There’s no actual fort, but hold it anyway!” 
“I have a mission to protect Ancients like myself. I must go to Bai Tao Shrine at the peak and defeat the magus, no matter what.” 
“But, uh, you can’t get into the dungeon.” 
Elias had pleaded desperately, but his wish was dealt with bluntly. 
“Leonardo?! Were you not my friend?” 
“This isn’t really about friendship, y’know?” 
Leonardo glanced to the side, looking for agreement, but Kanami was all smiles, and Coppélia was absorbed in inspecting her dungeon equipment. Possibly because he’d understood this, Leonardo promised for them as well: “Hey, it’ll be fine. We’ll go see what’s up first, and if it looks ugly, we’ll be back.” 
“So this is reconnaissance, then?” 
“Yeah, that’s it, reconnaissance! Sightseeing!” 
Kanami shouted cheerfully, and beside her, Coppélia impassively covered for her: “Master, sightseeing refers to tourism.” …Although it wasn’t clear whether that had actually covered anything for her. 
Still, once they’d said that much to him, there was no help for it. 
His heart, which sent mana to him with each beat, ached and smarted, but that didn’t make it all right to shove that pain onto his companions. The pride of an elvish knight wasn’t cheap. 
Elias was a man, and a full-fledged elf. If asked whether he couldn’t resign himself to a single standby mission, the only possible answer was that he would show them by performing it magnificently. For all that, he did give a regretful sigh, but when Kanami—waving her hands wildly—and the others left, he managed to see them off. 
Still, after that, Elias had too much time on his hands. 
It might be a standby mission, but there was nothing he needed to do. The Adventurers routinely carried Magic Bags, and they put all their inventory in them. These bags could fit lots of things, negating weight and bulk, and they were an essential for Adventurers. Elias, an Ancient, also had a Magic Bag with higher-level mana. Naturally, Kanami and the others did as well. 
Since that was the case, the party that had gone into the dungeon hadn’t left any equipment or belongings with Elias because the bag was “too heavy.” Since parting with KR, they hadn’t relied on horses or other mounts, so there was no need to tend to them. If there was no luggage and no beasts of burden, there was no particular need to set up camp. 
In other words, he didn’t need to prepare or defend anything. 
Elias leapt to the top of a boulder that seemed as if it would have a good view, sat down, turned his gaze to the enormous bronze door that served as the entrance to the dungeon, and stretched. His surroundings were filled with a chill that seemed to seep into his core, but the fairy blood in his veins kept it away. 

Time passed slowly in the afternoons in this mountainous country. When the sun finally touched the ridgeline, it would probably go quickly, but at this point, it was only a little past noon. 
“You know, this is…” 
Elias smiled wryly, the corners of his mouth twisting. It was true that he had fairy blood and that he was under a curse. That was why he was strong. He had high cold resistance, and he could withstand even a Jotun’s universal freezing magic, the sort that made a mountain wind like this one feel like lukewarm water. 
However, he’d never thought about what exactly that was, and about what fairies were. He’d been designed not to have to think about it. 
Elias the Ancient thought nothing of the cold of the icy Londinium ocean, but even he hadn’t been able to shut out the chill from that other dimension. It had been self-mockery, nihilism, resignation. Every time he remembered the Words of Death, that alien chill crept up on him. It stole the momentum from his spirit, attempting to lead him toward a state of slow stillness. Everything he sensed grew indistinct, its texture draining away. It was a prison of the soul. 
“No, no. That was close. No, you won’t get me that way.” 
Elias shook his head vigorously, rejecting the thought. 
His blond hair added color to the bleak Tian Mai foothills. 
“Kanami gave me fire, didn’t she? I can’t let the Geniuses’ chill get me so easily. I must gather the few surviving Ancients and protect this world to the end.” 
He filled the pit of his belly with strength, gripped the hilt of his beloved sword, and visualized the faces of his Ancient comrades in arms. They had all been good-natured companions. Ever since they’d disappeared into the Spatial Teleportation Device, he hadn’t been able to contact them, and he had no idea what had happened to them, but he hoped they were happy— Or, no, at least safe. There must be a means to save his companions hidden somewhere on this journey to Yamato, in the Far East. 
“Lord Elias.” 
“Miss Youren!” 
Elias had been deep in thought, and he’d lost all sense of time when, abruptly, a soft woman’s voice spoke to him. The figure, which was dressed in clothes so thin that it would have frozen if it had been a Person of the Earth, belonged to Enchantress Youren. Like a nun, she wore a veil that hid her eyes, and the slim, smooth contours of her red lips were visible below it. A murky, slightly sweet scent reached him on the wind. 
“I’m so glad you’ve come. Now that there are no Fairy Rings, I’m sure it must have been a terribly harsh journey. Traveling on foot through the Tian Mai Mountains, the desolate backbone of Zhongyuan, and the demon-haunted Blackstone Desert… My gratitude is beyond measure.” 
“Ha-ha-ha. No, that’s not true. This is a beautiful place,” Elias responded. 
True, the journey from central Eured through the plains had brought home to him, again and again, just how enormous this world was. Wilderness that ran to the horizon, rocky desert that ran to the horizon, grassy plains with lingering snow that ran to the horizon. Still, there had been a stern beauty in them as well. He’d seen sunrises so brilliant that the contrast made the land itself sink into shadow. It had been a sight like blazing iron, something he’d never seen in the northern oceans. 
“I’m terribly relieved that you are here, Lord Elias. Where are your companions?” 
“Beyond the door… Apparently, this door sorts those who pass through it by their combat ranks. As a result…my fairy blood was rejected.” 
Elias went on, gritting his teeth. 
“My companions undertook the reconnaissance of Bai Tao Shrine, but I’m not sure how it will go.” 
“Without the heroic Lord Elias, the knights who accompany you must seem rather uncertain.” 
At Youren’s worried voice, Elias thought, I wonder about that. 
Kanami used her fists and that bottomless energy to shatter any obstacle. Coppélia followed her wordlessly. His friend Leonardo was kept busy dealing with the aftermath. If the skilled Chun Lu was there as well, he couldn’t imagine they would lose to any old threat. Elias hadn’t been worried about anything of the sort, personally, so the idea caught him off guard. 
“Having lost you, I imagine your companions must also feel quite forlorn.” 
“Do you think so?” 
“Of course I do.” Youren nodded kindly. In that case, Elias thought, there was no need to bother denying it any further. It was true that, even now, he wanted to race to join Kanami and the others, and if they were expecting that much from him, of course he’d be happy about it. 
“…However, in that case, I have an idea.” 
“Is there a way to release the seal?” 
As if he’d been stung, Elias jumped down from the boulder and took the Enchantress’s hands. 
“No, this seal is the core of Sirius Grotto. It isn’t the sort of thing that can be undone easily. Even so, although it is dangerous, there is one way to reach the Bai Tao Shrine.” 
“Tell me, please. If there’s a way to save our fellow Ancients on the peak, I want to know, no matter what… In order to restore the Knights of the Red Branch, and also to wipe this calamity from the world.” 
It wasn’t that he doubted Kanami and the others. 
However, this was the Ancients’ crisis. 
The magus was a mortal enemy who was shaking the world and had plunged his companions into the sleep of death. 
If possible, he wanted to kill that magus. He also wanted to shake off this pathetic, horrible, demonic chill that had possessed his heart. Kanami’s fire might be protecting him, but as long as this cold existed, there would be no sunlit morning for Elias. 
If he defeated the demons—the Geniuses—he could grasp it. Elias felt that, to break free from the fairy curse that made him unable to destroy enemies, it was vital do combat with the Geniuses. 
“Yes, Lord Elias. So it shall be. You, a fairy swordsman of particular brilliance, even among the Thirteen Global Chivalric Orders, should be able to fight that villain who came from the east.” 
“Please.” 
Youren had politely offered to guide Elias, and agreeing, he set off, following her slender back. At some point, a white mist that seemed to have crept up from the foot of the mountain had gathered on the surface of Mount Lang Jun. The Enchantress and Elias walked through mist that reflected the evening sun like the water’s edge. 
They were the very picture of a fairy summoning a sword-bearing hero to an adventure in an enchanted land. 
Deserted, the great door to Sirius Grotto was eventually illuminated by starlight, and only icy cold air blew upon it.
 



Share This :


COMMENTS

No Comments Yet

Post a new comment

Register or Login