Log Horizon - Volume 8 - Chapter 4.4

4 
One individual had sensed the wyvern stampede. 
Nyanta had touched down once—lightly, on tiptoe—on the angular train, and he used Unicorn Jump to leap again without killing the momentum of his plunge from the griffin. Taking a trajectory that would have been possible only in fantasies in the old world, he slipped between the trunks of the trees using Quick Step, while using Lightning Step in the direction of his fall. 
Putting his body’s superhuman abilities to work, Nyanta sped up among the rustling green of the forest. 
He felt burning sadness and anger deep in his gut. 
With all his might, he slashed at the black spirit monsters that were invading the forest below him. Heavy bodily fluids clung to the tips of his swords, and he wasn’t able to finish the creatures off in one attack. Even adding a special skill that sent the damage of his range attacks through the roof—a Swashbuckler specialty—wasn’t enough to kill them instantly. Still, that didn’t mean he couldn’t win. Nyanta was level 90, and the Nightshade Servants in front of him were just a bit over level 40. Silently, Nyanta swung his rapiers twice, cutting down shadows that had been trying to slip past him on either side. 
Nyanta was aware of the general situation, or at least of its visible aspects. 
As a representative of Log Horizon, he’d been sent to provide support for Minori’s group, and he’d come this far by griffin, keeping an eye on them as he went. A black cloud of wyverns had appeared in the town of Saphir, about twenty kilometers from him as the crow flew. In the process of trying to discover where those wyverns had come from, he’d realized that they’d been driven from their home in the Redstone Mountains as the result of a siege, nearly a mountain hunt, by Nightshade Servants. He also knew that the battle between the two forces was escalating, threatening to engulf Saphir. 
When he’d expanded his reconnaissance upstream, he’d discovered this train and had learned that the struggle was the result of an intentional plot. 
That was why he was angry. 
His heart was screaming that it was a completely unbelievable, impossibly stupid move—until his eyes found a lone magician on horseback. 
“Rondarg.” 
“Oh-ho… To think we’d meet here.” 
There was a distance of about ten meters between them. 
The forest had been warped by magic, and the dismal-looking Sorcerer who answered Nyanta was in an odd sort of clearing. 
Neither of them was a stranger to the other. Where Nyanta was concerned, they’d seen each other several times from a distance in the player town of Susukino, and they’d come into conflict during Serara’s rescue. Rondarg seemed to have remembered that as well: The look he turned on Nyanta was somewhere between irritation and hostility. 
However, Nyanta didn’t have the leeway to go along with Rondarg’s hurt feelings. 
On the surface, Nyanta’s usual calm was intact, but his anger underneath was so strong it was nearly unmanageable. It was bad enough that, if possible, he would have liked to slash apart all the Nightshades in the area with his rapiers. 
“What are mew doing here, Rondarg? What is that train? What are those black shadows, and what do mew intend to do with Saphir?! What’s going on, Rondarg?!” 
More demanding than asking, Nyanta confronted the other man with crossed swords. 
“Rondarg!” 
“Bwah-ha-ha.” 
He responded to Nyanta’s reprimand with a terribly superficial laugh. 
One of his cheeks warped sardonically. He seemed like a completely different person from the man he’d been in Susukino. The atmosphere he wore was degenerate: terribly shallow, irresponsible, and disheveled. His cracked laugh really didn’t seem like an expression of relaxed confidence. 
“What am I doing here? I’m here for work I was hired to do: guarding and guiding the train. As you can see, the train’s a magic vehicle. The black shadows are summoned creatures, Nightshade Servants. We don’t intend to do a thing with Saphir, or at least, I don’t. What’s going on? —That’s no concern of mine.” 
Rondarg didn’t seem inclined to hide anything. 
To Nyanta, it looked as if he didn’t see enough value in anything to try to cover it up. 
Even so, that answer hadn’t held a single one of the things Nyanta wanted to know. Rondarg’s reply hadn’t shown him anything beyond what he knew already—in other words, what he could see by looking. 
“Don’t glower like that. I don’t plan to fight you. It’s the same for you, no? I’m not doing anything. I took a job request and I’m on guard duty, that’s all. That business in Susukino… Okay, sure, I regret that. Threatening People of the Earth just might be a bad thing. Is that good enough? Out of the way, Swashbuckler.” 
Up on horseback, lazily dangling the staff he’d taken from the holder at his waist, Rondarg gave a little smile and sighed, speaking to Nyanta as if he were tired. He seemed casual, disinterested, and as if he just didn’t care. 
“Do mew know what mew’re doing, Rondarg?” 
Sensing something suspicious about the man, Nyanta took a step closer. 
“I know. I’m getting paid and doing my job.” 
“I mean the consequences of that, Rondarg!” 
The man responded with a tense smile. 
“That bit wasn’t in the manual—but I didn’t get one, mind you, so that’s only natural.” 
He couldn’t have sounded less concerned, and that pierced something very deep inside Nyanta. 
It wasn’t because Rondarg’s words and the future they indicated had caught him by surprise. On the contrary: He’d been afraid someone would say those words to him at some point. But they were something Nyanta had hoped he wouldn’t have to hear. 
When the Round Table Council was established, Krusty, the leader of D.D.D., had asked Shiroe whether there was a possibility of war with the People of the Earth. Shiroe’s answer had been, “I understand that that’s something for the Round Table Council to consider, not for me to think about now.” 
How many of the people in that meeting had accurately caught the meaning of that response? It was something Nyanta thought about, now and then. Krusty seemed to have gotten the message. In his own warped way, he’d tried to help Shiroe. However, Nyanta didn’t know how well the other youngsters had understood. 
Shiroe’s words had been both a prediction and a warning. 
That response hadn’t admitted the possibility of war, nor had it denied it. 
It wasn’t a question of whether or not there would be war. It was at an earlier stage than that: It pointed out the fact that they were in a world where war could occur, and it was advice to the effect that each individual who lived there needed to come up with a way to confront the possibility of war. 
Shiroe had tried, more earnestly than anyone else, to face the question he’d detected. Nyanta knew that Shiroe harbored secret pain. In this one matter, he thought that he might be closer to Shiroe than Naotsugu, who was young and optimistic, or Akatsuki, who admired Shiroe. 
Nyanta respected his too-serious friend, who was less than half his age, and he himself had also faced the fact that Shiroe had pointed out. 
Shiroe and Nyanta thought that the possibility of a war between the Adventurers who lived in Yamato had fallen low enough to ignore early on. Fundamentally, Japanese people had a strong aversion to war. Especially if it was a war with other Japanese, emotional inhibitions would come into play. There might be violent incidents and desperate, stress-fueled crimes, but the possibility of all-out war had always been small. That was true even now, when Yamato’s Adventurers were divided between the Round Table Council and Plant Hwyaden. 

The possibility of war between the Adventurers and the People of the Earth was higher. In particular, if there were a lot of Adventurers who didn’t acknowledge the People of the Earth as human, the issue would probably develop into a big problem. However, although the possibility was high compared to war among the Adventurers, they hadn’t thought it was large enough to worry about. Their combat abilities were too different. Domination and conquest were far more likely than war. 
In this warped world, Adventurers and People of the Earth complemented one another. It was structured so that they supported each other in production, in consumption, and on every other front. Nyanta thought that the Round Table Council’s achievement in making that fact common knowledge at such an early stage was great beyond measure. 
The remaining combination was war among the People of the Earth, and neither Nyanta nor Shiroe had been able to give an answer with regard to that one. 
After all, neither of them were People of the Earth. They’d been brought up to believe that war was bad, and they had a strong desire to reject it, even if it was between People of the Earth. However, if the People of the Earth resolved to go to war, did they have the right to stop them? They weren’t sure. In theory, it was true that the other party had sovereign authority as well. 
On top of that, considering the technological development that had followed the Catastrophe, there was a fear that if the People of the Earth went to war, even if the Adventurers didn’t actively contribute, they would end up playing a part in expanding the scale of the conflict. He hadn’t spoken with Shiroe about this, but it was likely that it was a fragment of the future Shiroe had his eye on. 
“Rondarg, do mew intend to seed war across this world?!” 
“I intend no such thing. The ones who might be thinking that are the People of the Earth who issued this quest for me.” 
Those words touched off the clash between Nyanta and Rondarg. Nyanta performed repeated thrusts, loading them with accusation, closing the distance between himself and his foe. 
“Mew’re aiding them!” 
“So what?” 
Rondarg waved a hand, and five spheres of light appeared. Impatience Bolt cut between the caster and Nyanta, emitting tiny arcs of lightning. It was a defensive Sorcerer spell that would automatically retaliate against any close-range attack. Sorcerers were almost never on the front lines, so this wasn’t an important spell for them, but its force was comparably large, and it could serve as the starting point for player-versus-player tactics. 
Nyanta’s left arm was smacked away and went numb. 
He should have been able to avoid that attack, but an impulse he hadn’t been able to control had driven him forward. 
“Many People of the Earth will be lost!” 
“It’s what they want. They’re fighting because they want to.” 
“Mew could head it off before it starts.” 
“Haven’t seen a quest like that around here, Swashbuckler!” 
Nyanta struck down Rondarg’s Frost Spear and Burned Stake the moment they were unleashed. Nyanta, who fought with twin rapiers, was among the fastest of the Swashbucklers at sensing activations and interrupting the chants; he was particularly good it. However, at the same time, his own biggest skills had been sealed. Rondarg was trying to shut down Nyanta’s mobility with Astral Bind, which meant he couldn’t use any finishing skills that would leave him wide open. 
Even so, ordinarily, Nyanta would have been able to use calm, clever countertechniques to make the match go his way, and he sensed a bitter immaturity in the fact that he couldn’t do it now. His rising emotions were disturbing his control more than he’d anticipated. 
“So mew can’t do it without a quest, Rondarg?!” 
“Silence, hypocrite. I—I— This world didn’t invite me.” 
A cry of bitter grief rang out. 
Rondarg, who still wore that shallow, apathetic smile, was crying. 
“Look. This world didn’t send me an invite. I’m not needed. Did you get asked, ‘Do you want to go to another world? Yes/No’? Did you choose? I didn’t. I just got pulled in here; nobody asked me. I didn’t get a choice, and I wasn’t welcomed, either. You people were invited, right? That’s why you can be so laid-back, right?!” 
“No. Not a single one of us was ‘invited.’” 
“I don’t care how it was for you. At the very least, though, I wasn’t asked. I got dragged into this world; it didn’t matter what I wanted. The world didn’t care what I thought; it just tried to use me for its own ends… And so I’m going to use it however I want. Am I wrong, Swashbuckler?!” 
A fireball burst into existence. It split into two, then four, then flew at Nyanta with a groaning howl. Nyanta intercepted the attack spell with a throwing card he’d taken from his coat. The silver scrap of iron punched through the fireballs, blocking three of them, but the remaining one made it to Nyanta’s slim swords and scarred them. 
You’re wrong. 
He wished he could tell him that. Nyanta wielded his rapiers, feeling as if he were being crushed. He slashed through Rondarg’s howling, raging spells and knocked them away, but although this was a fight he should have been able to win hands down, its end was a long ways away. 
Rondarg wasn’t wrong. At least in Rondarg’s world, he wasn’t wrong. Even burning with anger as he was, Nyanta understood that. That was what was tearing him apart. 
Rondarg’s rage and howls were justified. Rondarg was a victim, and that situation should be rectified. The Adventurers who wanted to return to their old world should have their wish granted promptly and should be compensated. 
Of course, it couldn’t possibly be all right for Rondarg to hurt other people or trample on their rights in order to make his own wish come true. Those were the rules of society. However, that society itself hadn’t invited Rondarg. At the very least, he said it hadn’t. 
Rondarg was admitting that he wasn’t a participant in this society. 
Rondarg was an outsider. He was an outsider to everything there was. 
Here, Rondarg was at war with the world. Since he was fighting a war, he thought it didn’t matter what he did to the world, and he wasn’t wrong. It was easy to say that ethics should be observed even in war. However, if asked whether the Catastrophe had acted ethically as far as Rondarg was concerned, the only answer was the bare fact that it hadn’t. In other words, he only wanted fairness: Ethics had been ignored in his case, so he would ignore ethics in return. 
There were many Adventurers in this world who harbored the same pain, and they were the ones the town of Akiba had averted its eyes from. Rondarg’s pain was something Nyanta had felt once, something all Adventurers had experienced. In fact, he couldn’t object to his anger. 
If someone who thought like that had existed on Earth, if an individual there had considered themselves at war with society, society would probably have been able to use physical force to suppress them. It could use its police force to apprehend, restrain, and imprison them. Depending on the situation, the army might be mobilized. After all, their revenge would be the equivalent of terrorism. 
By doing this, society could hand down some sort of punishment. However, the punishment would be “elimination.” It wasn’t the absolute justice of society that made this possible. Society could eliminate individuals with violence only because it had greater numbers; in simple terms, because it was strong, because it could fight. 
This didn’t absolve the world of its sin in forcing injustice on an individual without their consent. 
“…It’s the same for everyone.” 
Nyanta had lowered his swords, and Rondarg’s air disturbance spell Turbulence leapt at him. 
Rondarg was frightened and desperate, and his attack sliced into Nyanta. 
However, Nyanta couldn’t bring himself to block it, or to return the slash. 
It wasn’t that his anger had disappeared. Enough sorrow had enveloped him, surpassing his rage, and all that remained was a crushing pain. 
Nyanta couldn’t solve Rondarg’s problem. It was likely that no one could. 
It would be possible to eliminate Rondarg with violence, but Nyanta couldn’t believe that to be just. 
There had been meaning in rescuing Serara. It was probably lucky that he’d been able to confront the Briganteers in Susukino while he was shielding her. It had meant that Nyanta and his companions had been able to get by without really looking at Rondarg face-to-face. Even now, Nyanta’s Log Horizon comrades were at his back. Because he knew this, he kept desperately searching for words that would reach the man.