16.4 Fallout
daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
16.4 Fallout
"Okay, I've got it here." Kibaou said, as he strode into the room and unrolled a map onto the table.
They were in the conference room attached to Diabel's office, on the top floor of the Paladin's Guild Headquarters. Diabel had it decorated in a wealthy-but-understated style; darkwood paneling, gilded ceiling, big leather chairs, that sort of thing. The room was dominated by the rectangular heavy table in
the middle of the room, which was wooden with a glass-like polished finish.
Diabel glanced at the people in the room with him.
Thinker was slouched in his chair, leaning back with his arms crossed over his chest. Despite his disengaged body-language, his jaw was tense and his eyes
would lock on whoever was speaking.
Next to him, Yulier was in her full-blown [Bishop Regalia], a strange cross between a simple nun's habit, with a lavishly embroidered stole hanging from her shoulders. Her hands were clasped together in front of her, like she was praying. Maybe she even was; whatever magecraft the Church used operated on different logic than other systems.
Kobatz from the Cavaliers, and his own Godfree, were standing stiffly behind him. Rather than acting as bodyguards, they were more like secretaries; Kobatz was taking notes of what everyone said, and Godfree was managing PM conversations with the deployed squads even while they were brainstorming.
It was Sasha that bothered Diabel the most. She had a dark, brooding look, and it had been hard to convince her that she would be better off here, at the nerve center of the rescue operations, rather than out scouring the town herself.
"Right." Kibaou muttered to himself, as he smoothed the corners.
It was a map of the City, with fine gridlines appended over the top. Along the side was a block of information divided into cells in a rectangular sidebar.
It showed information like the date that Kibaou had drawn the map, the dates he had updated it with a short description of what changed, a [Paladins] logo, and a stamp from where Diabel had [Approved] the drawing. Kibaou had been strangely neurotic about getting that right.
"What were the kids' names again?" He asked, as he fished out some blank stones. They were like misshapen dice, with unequally shaped sides, lopsided and awkward. Each face was blank.
"Their names are [Berserker], [Huntar], and [Emily]." Sasha said, in a clipped voice.
Kibaou muttered under his breath, spelling each name in turn, tapping the side of a die with each letter. Shortly, he had a set of three dice, each with one of the children's names on it.
"Okay, here we go." He said, sweeping them up and cupping them in his palms. He closed his eyes, raising his arms and shaking his hands, before he threw them apart, letting the dice scatter on the table.
Each letter, each Rune used to spell their names glowed, and the dice bounced in strange, unnatural ways, like the red line on the drawing indicating the boundary of the Safe Zone was an actual wall they could bounce against.
But as they slowed, they converged suddenly, abruptly turning and, together, they rolled past the west edge of the city wall and slowed to a stop as they went past the map and nearly went off the edge of table.
There was a moment of silence. "Well, that tears it." Kibaou finally said, voice heavy. "They're not in the city; they left through the west gate."
"Are you sure?" Sasha said, voice demanding.
Kibaou glanced at him, and Diabel gave him a look, urging him to be patient.
"Yes, ma'am, I'm sure." Kibaou said, looking down at the map on the table with a sigh. "It's not just the map. In every building that me and my people draw, there's a little plaque with the name of the drafter, the date, and the customer we drew it for." He reached out and tapped the table. "Every single [Elven Dorm], every shop we modded off one of my designs, I can connect all of them to this map through those plaques." He sighed again, sitting back. "There's nobody with a stronger magical connection to this city than me. And I say, those kids aren't in town. They walked out the gate."
"But why?" Sasha demanded, sounding like she was ready to break down.
"We can figure that out later." Diabel said, keeping his voice firm, but also kind. "For now, what's important is that we have a lead." He turned. "Godfree, tell the Fuumanin to head west and fan out. See if they can track them down. After that, ask for Cuvie to coordinate our Gatherers. It's been a while since they've been on this Floor, but moving fast and rolling over any mobs they encounter is more important than letting the Floor Specialist MidLiners take the lead."
"Sure thing, boss." Godfree easily replied, voice a little distracted as his fingers danced across the keyboard only he could see.
"Speaking of." Diabel said. "Kobatz."
"Yes, sir!" Kobatz replied, snapping to attention, heels clicking together.
"Organize your people. There are at least a couple parties in the Cavaliers that focus on night-fighting, right?" It was a trade-off; the visibility and weather were often worse, but in exchange, the mobs were usually a little stronger, and there was less competition for them. For Mid-Liners that were serious about joining the Front, night operations weren't a bad idea.
"Yes, sir." Kobatz replied, even though it had been a rhetorical question. Well, that was the way Kobatz was.
"Get them coordinated with the Fuumanin." Diabel ordered. "Get them fanned out. Their objective is to make contact."
Diabel considered, and then turned. "Thinker."
"Yeah." Thinker quietly replied.
"Please have your people review which Safe Zones are closest to the West, and check if you have any resources from the Rear Line in any of them currently. If these kids made it to safety, then it would be good to know." Diabel ordered, and then paused.
"Yulier," he said, turning to face the leader of the [Church Aid Society], "do the same thing with your priests. See if you have anyone in the area, and direct them to prepare."
Diabel frowned, thoughts racing.
"Am I missing anything?" He asked aloud.
"I want to go." Sasha said, voice low. "I need to go myself and chase after them."
"You can't." Diabel replied automatically, and then he caught the look on her face. He wanted to grimace, but kept it off his expression. Since everyone else here answered to him, he had fallen into acting like the boss, but he couldn't really treat her the same way.
"I don't recall needing your permission." Sasha tartly replied. "After all, it's because of your Side-Liner foolishness that this even happened in the first place."
There were about three things he could say to that, but Diabel didn't think saying any of them would be productive.
In the first place, that Bel kid had developed the spell on his own, talked about it on his own, and caught the eye of the [White Witch] on his own. It didn't have anything to do with the official [Side Liner] program.
In the second place, Hexadecimal had confirmed that the kid had left the meeting, held inside the Safe Zone of this very city, so it wasn't like the meeting had anything to do with it.
Well, Diabel suspected that it did, actually, have something to do with it, but that was something to figure out later. Diabel really would prefer to have the boy here so he could get more details on that, but Hexi was a sensitive kid, and putting him in front of Sasha's recriminating anger wouldn't accomplish anything. Better to just have him out like any other Paladin, instead of forcing him to defend Ilya to Sasha.
Which lead to the third thing that Diabel didn't say. Why the hell had she allowed the boy to go to a meeting with [The White Witch] alone, unescorted? Had the kid not told her? Was Sasha really that ignorant of Front Liner gossip? It was true that the Titled Players were held up on pedestals by everyone, but the pedestals were different; while [The Sixth Ranger] was held in genuine awe, by comparison, [The White Witch] was more feared. As capricious and uncaringly cruel as a witch. And Sasha hadn't known about that?
But none of that would help. It wouldn't get the kids back, and it wouldn't make Sasha listen to him now. So Diabel swallowed his thoughts and turned back to the scenario at hand.
"Sasha." He said, smiling softly. "I know it's hard to stand on the sidelines, but your job isn't to be out looking for them. We have plenty of people for that. Your job is to wait, and as soon as they are found, go to them." He changed his smile from warm to friendly and rueful. "It's hard to wait while other people do the work, but right now, it's the right thing to do." There, something like that.
"I just." Sasha shook her head. "If I hadn't... if you..." She shook her head again, and exhaled. "I know. I know, but I don't want to agree." She sighed.
"Okay. I'll go along with it for now." And she scowled, her worry and fear congealing on her face. "But don't you think for one minute that we won't be having words about this after we're done." She threatened.
Diabel was pretty sure that he would win that argument by throwing her ignorance of Front Liner politics in her face and scolding her about letting her kids visit Ilya unescorted, but he wasn't really looking forward to winning that argument, and he didn't expect he'd feel good about it, so he just modified his smile again, looking chagrined. "I can accept that." He said. "For now, let's just believe in our people and hope for the best."
That was that for damage control. He turned and checked over his people again. Kobatz had stepped out of the room to do his own administration. Thinker and Yulier were both busily tapping away in their invisible-to-him menus, presumably dealing with PMs. Godfree caught his eye and gave him a curt nod, but he was similarly buried in his messages.
Kibaou was looking pretty antsy, his jaw clenched and his shoulders tight as he stared down at his map. It had been a shot in the dark, but it was at least helpful to confirm that the children weren't in the town. Rather than running through the streets, canvassing door-to-door, they could focus their efforts out in the field.
But it wasn't something that Diabel could call a good thing. If they were lost or even trapped somewhere in town, then at least they would still have the nigh-absolute protection of the [Safe Zone]. If they were out in the field, then....
Well, Diabel wasn't quite ready to ask Yulier if there was someone stationed at the [Monument of Life] that could check it for the names of the children.
Not quite yet. But if they hit the 12 hour mark, then at least the certainty would be useful in its own way, rather than allowing Sasha to place her hopes in the unknown.
And Kibaou was probably thinking in the same direction. But he probably wouldn't say anything. Diabel had been working on him, bringing him around to understanding the need for circumspection.
Ah, and he was distracting himself by thinking about that.
Diabel refocused his mind, and frowned down at the dice. Perhaps he could have Kibaou modify them as a dowsing spell? Something that, rather than giving the position, just indicated the direction? That would be a huge benefit, and would mean they could find the children as fast as Kibaou could move. But what if the kids had split up? Was there a range limit? Could Kibaou use [Inheritance] to give the spell to someone faster, like the Fuumanin? Ugh, was it even a possibility in the first place? Diabel frowned internally, as he quickly tried to formulate and plan out the different ways that discussion could go, and prevent it from getting derailed by Sasha.
Ah, his menu flashed. He had a PM from Kirito.
He crushed the flicker of hope, opened the PM, and then felt his mind sag in relief.
"Everyone," He announced, letting the relief show as a genuine smile, "the children have been found, and are safe."
"Thank god." Yulier whispered, as she turned, grabbing onto Thinker's shoulder, who patted her back, even as he breathed out with his eyes closed.
Godfree cheered, and Kibaou had a savage grin, and Sasha stumbled, catching herself on the side of the table, before her gaze snapped to Diabel and she pushed herself back up.
"I'm not sure where, but we'll figure it out." Diabel promised her. "I'll still need to trade a few PMs, but for now, let's head West and go meet them."
I I I
"And, done." Kirito announced, as he hit the [Send] button on his message screen. His finger lingered in the air, before he let it drop. He had a feeling his inbox was about to blow up, so he swept his gaze around the area quickly one more time.
Sacchi smiled at him. She was standing next to her [Pack Mules], and holding the hands of two children, a boy and a girl, that were sitting on the backs of two of them. Kirito gathered that the boy was named [Bel] and the girl was [Emily], but he still didn't understand what the heck kids that were like, Level Three, were doing out in the field.
Sasamaru and Tetsuo were standing guard, on opposite sides of the Mules, their weapons up and their eyes scanning around the area.
Ducker had actually gone and climbed a tree in the last thirty seconds, and was frowning as his head swiveled back and forth. He had a hand cupped over his eyes like he was shading them from sun-glare, but since his eyes were also faintly glowing, whatever vision-enhancement spell he was using might actually need the protection. Well, straight-up [Reinforced Optic Sensitivity] was a little simplistic. Kirito had gotten some tips when Rosalia did a lecture on vision-spells for the BSM (Ilya had forced her into it, somehow), and Kirito had crashed it.
Kirito reminded himself it was unfair to hold the Black Cats to the same standards as Front Liners.
Keita was standing off to his side, a little bit, where the third kid (who was named [Hunter] or something, he pronounced it with a strange emphasis Kirito thought) was looking up, star-struck, at Shirou.
Well, the two kids on the [Mules] were sneaking glances as well, but they didn't quite have the starry-eyed look that the third boy did. Kirito glanced back down at his menu, humming as he saw that Diabel had PM'd him back. Kirito opened it, scanned through, and popped back quick answers to the list of questions that Diabel had spammed him with, asking for their map coordinates and who exactly was there and stuff like that. Right before hitting send, he stopped, considering, and then added his own question. Sure they could just sit tight, but it wasn't like there was anything to worry about, so maybe they should move towards a rendezvous point?
Then he looked up, scanned the area again, and walked over to see what the kid was talking to Keita and Shirou about.
"Can you really shoot swords with your mind?" The kid asked.
Shirou looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Well, not exactly." He replied.
"Yes." Kirito said, interrupting as he walked up to them. "It is one of the [108 Skills of the Sixth Ranger], in the same category as [Ranger Rapid Fire], [Aimbot Ranger], and [Ranger Rocket Tag]." Kirito struck the one-finger-in-the-air pose that Shirou sometimes unconsciously took when he was lecturing about magecraft. "It's the 80s-series." By the way, Kirito had just made that up. It was a little hilarious that other people were taking his little gag seriously.
"Anyway," he said as he clapped his hands, interrupting Shirou's incoming overly-technical lore-dump, "I let Diabel know where we are." He ignored Shirou's dirty look, glanced at the complex expression on Keita's face, and then looked down at the kid. "I think it's become kind of a big deal."
The kid looked ashamed, and the expression on Keita's face started to look a little sour, while Shirou instead looked bashful, like he was beating himself up for not realizing that already.
Well, Kirito had only suspected a little himself. After a long day of doing math homework, of all things, (Ellis Bell wouldn't teach him more spells until he passed a literal trigonometry test), Kirito had wanted to get out and move, but not concentrate too much, which meant that power-leveling or exploring the Front Line were both out. So he'd dragged Shirou out so they could mess around with Lightsabers some more. The current prototype was just a clump of Ether that Kirito had realized and stabilized enough that Shirou could hammer the dang thing into the shape of a sword. It couldn't turn off, and they couldn't change the color it glowed, and it didn't hum at all, and it was slowly evaporating, which was characterized as a constant rate of durability loss.
But it actually worked as a sword without exploding, so it was progress of at least a sort.
So they'd been messing around with those prototypes when Kirito had gotten the PM from Keita asking for help, apparently escorting some lost kids through the Field. If it was just a Quest, then Kirito might have actually blown them off to hang with Shirou, but those kids were Players, not NPCs. That had really changed things. Kirito had raced off with Shirou in tow, and there they were.
"Woah." The kid replied. "Can you teach ME to shoot swords with my mind?"
"You'd be better off sticking with a bow." Shirou replied, looking like he was on slightly firmer ground. "It's much more reliable and prana-efficient. It's not as flashy, but simple is usually best."
Kirito decided to turn and talk to Keita instead. "So, you want to head back to town?"
Keita nodded, glancing at the kid before he trudged off to go tell the rest of the guild.
Kirito scanned the area, humming to himself. He really wanted to ask what the kids were doing out here. No, that wasn't accurate. He wanted to know the answer, but he didn't actually want to ask the question. He didn't really level his Talk skill enough, and if the kids had run away from home or something like that, he didn't know how to deal with that.
He caught Shirou's eye. His friend squinted, frowning with his eyes. Ugh, so he was thinking about that kind of thing too.
But Keita was waving to them, so they turned and walked over to the rest of the group.
Hunter, no, [Huntar]! With an "A" in it, that was the kid's name. Anyway, Huntar was sneaking looks at Shirou out of the side of his eye.
Huntar was cheerful, but his cheerfulness seemed a little... brittle? It was off. There was something about it that bothered Kirito. But figuring it out was intimidating. He didn't know what was wrong, and he wasn't comfortable asking.
The other two kids were doing the same. To be precise, the three of them weren't just sneaking looks at Shirou directly, but also at the blue-and-gold icon floating over his head, marking him as a [Titled Player].
And it wasn't like the other two kids were much better. The girl was still sniffling, and her eyes were red from crying. The way that the system handled [Crying] was a little weird. Runny noses and even tears hadn't been included in the Release Version of the game. They were left out like all other body fluids. Kirito had never actually cried in-game during the Beta, and had never talked to anyone that had, or at least, that had admitted to it. Looking back, it was something he hadn't even thought about. It was genuinely a gap in his knowledge on how the Beta had handled things.
In the name of [Increased Realism], the game had added in blood, sweat, and tears.
But the puffiness, the red eyes, the sniffling, all that ended as soon as people were "done crying." It wasn't something that Kirito had wanted to know, but sometimes you couldn't avoid it on the Front Line. Seeing people cry. Or crying yourself. It wasn't something he would ever, ever admit to, but Kirito had messed up spells badly enough that tears had leaked out.
So as long as someone still felt like crying, they kept looking like they had just finished crying.
The girl, [Emily], still looked like that.
Compared to that, [Berserker], who insisted on being called [Bel], he'd just looked straight-up haunted. (And wow about that name; Kirito couldn't even imagine how Ilya would deal, learning that the handle she'd wanted had been taken by some Rear Liner).
So Huntar was being deliberately cheerful, Emily looked ready to cry, and Bel looked like he'd just gone three rounds with Kuradeel.
Kirito felt out of his depth. He glanced around, scanning the area, instead of looking at the kids.
He met Keita's gaze, and the other boy nodded his head, an indecipherable look on his face, as he walked back to where Kirito was standing with Shirou and Huntar.
"I've let the rest know." Keita said, nodding as he got close enough to speak without shouting. "We're ready to head out whenever the both of you are."
"Sure." Kirito easily replied, while Shirou just nodded.
"OK!" Huntar said, smiling brightly.
"Huntar, right?" Keita asked.
"Yes?" The boy replied.
"Why don't you go sit with Bel and Emily on the Mules? I'm sure Sacchi had saved you a seat." Keita said, smiling.
"But..." Huntar said, glancing shyly at Shirou.
"I'll catch up in a minute." Shirou replied. Ha, he still looked ridiculously uncomfortable with the blatant Hero Worship. Not that Kirito would say anything, because his instincts as a Gamer told him not to raise a [Flag] like that.
"Alright then!" Huntar chirped, before he turned and ran over to join his friends.
There was an awkward pause. Kirito debated saying something.
"I, um, I think we're in over our heads." Keita admitted, after a moment.
"Yeah?" Kirito asked.
"Yes." Keita nodded, licking his lips before speaking again. "Um, Kirito, you said you PM'd Diabel-sama, right?" Kirito wasn't sure if Keita wanted confirmation on that or what, but Kirito nodded back just to be sure.
"Right. Well." Keita said. "He's PM'd me, uh, three times, and I've gotten messages from Hanzou-san, and from Kibaou-san, and somebody named Sasha, and Argo, and Lind-san." He swallowed. "I think this is a really big deal?"
Kirito nodded, making an encouraging motion with his hands. That probably explained why Kirito's inbox hadn't blown up; Keita's had, instead.
"And, um, I just feel like we didn't really do anything special." Keita admitted, all in a rush.
Objectively speaking, the Black Cats weren't special. But...
"It's not a matter of what you thought you were capable of." Shirou interjected. "It wasn't a matter of whether you thought you could. There was somebody that needed saving, so you saved them. Because you were the only ones that could do it."
Kirito wasn't really a specialist at Social Traits, and Shirou was pretty stoic, but he felt like his friend was maybe blaming himself for that one.
Keita laughed, a little nervous. "Well, that's true, but that wasn't what was going through our heads. What happened was... we only felt safe trying because of all you've done for us."
Keita smiled again, and stood formally, before bowing formally. "Thank you both. Without your defensive spells, Kirito, we would have lost. And without your weapons, Sixth Ranger-sama, we wouldn't have been able to win." He stood, and awkwardly laughed it off. "It was only because of what you'd given us that we could save them."
"Yeah, no problem." Kirito replied, smiling back. It felt a little queasy on his face. It wasn't that big of a deal, it felt uncomfortable. All he did was kill time with them.
He glanced out of the corner of his eye, about to say something else as he opened his mouth, but then let it die, slowly closing his mouth again.
Shirou had his eyes closed, and his head down a little bit, and his expression was... it was soft. Relaxed.
Keita looked like he was about to say something, and Kirito shook his head back. Kirito had just thought that Shirou was pretty stoic, but at the same time, even though he didn't express it much, he got really emotional about saving people, and Keita had just sorta pushed those buttons.
Honestly, it was a little embarrassing to see from the side, but he also wanted Shirou to have this moment.
"Right." Shirou said, sighing as he opened his eyes, re-centering himself in the present. "You said we needed to head back?"
"Yes." Keita nodded. "There's a rendezvous point, um, that Diabel-sama asked us to head towards."
I I I
Tonight had been exhausting. Diabel slumped back in his chair in his private office, indulging in poor posture.
He'd personally escorted Sasha out to meet up with her lost kids, and he'd even managed to mostly figure out what had happened, around the edges of Sasha's relieved-but-angry-mom routine. It had taken too long, and it had been annoying to step lightly around the situation, but he'd made it work.
Broadly speaking, the first half of the night had gone about as Diabel had already expected.
Ilya had found out about Bel-kun's new Eye Spell through the grapevine. It hadn't been anything particularly useful, but at the very least the Fuumanin had been interested in it, as an alternate way to perceive their surroundings in total darkness. Hanzou in particular had been interested in the possible synergy between [Seeing Soundwaves] and his own Air spellcraft. Diabel had looked forward to that. An easy win, good publicity. A Rear-Liner helping out a famous Front Line guild. His biggest fear was that the Fuumanin would accidently contaminate a bunch of impressionable kids with their weirdness.
But Ilya hadn't known about any of that, and hadn't bothered to think it through. So she'd decided to try and get one up on Diabel, and then had been carelessly unimpressed by the boy's spell. And now that he was thinking about it, Diabel remembered that she'd been [Berserker] in the Beta as well, and now Bel-kun had the name instead. Of course she would cause trouble over that, too, just as an added benefit.
So the boy had left the meeting, gone off to sulk, and although it was exasperating, he was exasperated at Ilya, not at Bel. Diabel couldn't really have expected the boy to act any different.
Diabel made a mental note to talk to Shirou about it. It worried him to do that. If Shirou really was an artificial AI person, then it was genuinely possible he existed for Ilya's sake. He might be literally incapable of holding her in check. In that case, his disappointment and judgement was a bluff, and Diabel had to manage the situation enough that Ilya could be contained without actually calling that bluff.
No, regarding their relationship it didn't actually matter whether Shirou was a [Real Boy] or not. Diabel's instincts were telling him that Shirou couldn't really control Ilya, and that was true whether Shirou was a de novo AI, or a brainscanned dead person, or an Alpha Tester, or just plain talented at the game. Their relationship was off, somehow. It wasn't just that they were individually strange, although that was still true; there was also something strange about the bond between them. Diabel could sense that.
So Diabel suspected that there were a limited number of times he could ask Shirou to intercede, and he didn't actually know what exactly the limit-number was. The probable outcome of going over the limit was a collapse of the [Brotherhood of Saint Mark]. Frankly speaking, as long as Shirou kept Clearing, then Diabel didn't really mind that outcome. But the worst case scenarios were pretty bad, and Diabel didn't really want to test them. Ultimately, Diabel's goal regarding the BSM was just to keep the [Guild Drama] minimized.
So Ilya had been a problem, but that wasn't a surprise. She had just continued to be the same problem she'd been all along. Diabel didn't like it, but he could still plan around it to some degree. He was even comfortable using it in certain ways; regarding the Clearing Guild Leaders, she made it very, very easy for him to be the [Rational One].
Diabel sighed, closing his eyes. If he complained to himself about it, if he rehashed his thinking about it, he'd be wasting time. There were other, new problems to eat at his stomach tonight. So Diabel made himself set down the [Ilya Issue].
After getting harassed by Ilya, Bel had gone off to sulk. His friends, worried when he didn't come back, had snuck off to find him. And apparently [Huntar] had his own [Unique Spell] that worked off the literal [Power of Friendship] that had let him find Bel. That also bore looking in to. But later.
So Bel had gone off to sulk, and his friends had gone after him.
This was the second half of the night. It had not gone at all as Diabel had expected. It had been a surprise, and a horrible one.
Because Bel had never left the [Safe Zone].
Yes, he'd gone off to sulk, but he'd been at least responsible enough that he stayed inside Elvengrad. He hadn't secretly gone out into the field and gotten in over his head.
He'd been placed under some kind of compulsion. The lore called it [Mental Interference].
And he'd been ensorcelled inside the [Safe Zone], by a mob outside the [Safe Zone]. By a monster that used a musical instrument to lure children outside of the city at night. An obvious allusion to the old European fable, the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
[Good job recruiting [Retired Players] into the Game.]
It looked like their grace period had ran out.
There were still many Players in the Rear Line who hadn't done [Circuit Activation]. There was no way to hide this incident, not when he'd mobilized so many Players. He didn't regret that, but it also meant he couldn't sweep this under the rug. It wasn't like he could actively force Players to activate their Circuits, either. He was hesitant to make it a condition for receiving the stipend payments from the [Church Aid Society], because that would make the contrarians not do it just to get back at him. No, the best thing would be to lay out what happened, and just let it be obvious. If that still didn't motivate people, then....
Then the best thing to do was to just write them off.
But even that wasn't enough.
Because the kids that had been kidnapped, they'd had their Circuits opened already. And they'd still been taken by spells. It had been an attack at night.
It wasn't like their defenses would be any better while they were sleeping.
Would they have to put up protective [Bounded Fields] around every single [Elven Dorm] in the whole city? Was it realistic to put up a [Bounded Field] big enough to affect the whole city? What about layering and nesting defenses? It didn't seem like there was a better way than that. And it would have to be fast, too; if another attack happened in the interim, that would drastically undermine his authority. So Diabel would have to peel off human resources from other projects to put up the defenses. But first they'd have to go through some brainstorm-and-design. It wasn't enough to just react to this specific attack, Diabel needed to be more proactive, to anticipate other attacks.
No, Diabel corrected himself, it didn't have to be him. He needed to put his people on it. Probably put Kibaou on it. Inside the [Paladins], Kibaou was the best at area-based magecraft, and he was more intimately connected to Elvengrad than anyone. That had been on display earlier tonight.
Diabel groaned.
And he had to worry about the fluff.
The setting of the Boss Fight had been reclaiming the Floor from [Orcs]. It wouldn't be strange if there was an [Event] where a new [Orcish Horde] gathered to besiege the city or something like that. If certain rumors were believable, there was even a precedent for that.
What was the worst case?
A war that consumed the whole city. Spells that circumvented the spirit of the [Safe Zones]. No, if it was worst case, then maybe he shouldn't be relying on [Safe Zones] at all any more.
Oh.
Oh no. If it was possible for the [Safe Zone] feature to be removed, then....
[Increased Realism] was a problem, too. It was one that had bothered Diabel since the very first patch. Pain and blood and all that, that had worried Diabel because it was frankly sadistic. Being trapped at the mercy of a madman was bad enough, but knowing he was a sadistic madman was tangibly worse.
But then the [Item Tab] had been removed from the inventory, also in the name of [Increased Realism].
Since patches didn't allow just for features to be added, but also taken away, then... was the [Menu] reliable? It wasn't just a matter of losing the Dimensional Stowing of the [Inventory]. Since it was already possible to add and remove [Equipment] by putting it on the old-fashioned way. Frankly speaking, considering the amount of computational power needed just to interact with pants as soft fabric that he had to step into one leg at a time, Kayaba had to be expecting a payoff for that one. So [Equipping] would still be possible. It would just take longer, and they would lose the [Inventory]. That was not ideal, but they'd manage.
[Private Messages]. [Auto-Map]. The [HUD] displaying HP and MP bars. [Quests]. Maybe even [Shops] and [Trade Windows].
[Guilds].
If they lost the [Menu], then there would be social collapse. Diabel's entire command-and-control infrastructure was built on top of the [Menu]. There were no contingencies. He would have to rebuild everything from scratch.
Diabel groaned, lowering his face into his palms.
He sat, leaning back in his chair, allowing himself a moment just to feel sorry for himself.
And then he grunted, pulling his hands down his face as he sat up again, opening his menu to compose a [PM] to Argo.
First things first. He needed to get ahead of the rumors, to control the narrative. First, prepare a statement that could be put in a [Special Edition] of
the [Argo Guide]. Then, he would need to start recruiting a think-tank for creating [Bounded Field] protections. That would have to be fast and highly visible. Being seen "doing something" would help his authority a lot, aside from that it actually did need doing.
And after that... he would need to convene another think-tank, for the counter-measures to and replacements for losing the [Menu]. Diabel wasn't even sure whether he wanted to keep that one secret or not.
He was simply too busy to be going back to bed and getting any sleep tonight.
Well, that was fine.
He was too worried to be getting any sleep anyways.
Chapter 16 End
I I I
1) As you might be aware, this chapter has gone through a few different revisions, versions, outlines. I've actually cut it down to this much, but it's still like 6k words.
2) The only scene that I cut that I wasn't sure about cutting was the actual "Sasha getting reunited with the kids". I cut it solely for length, thinking that it wouldn't add anything that you couldn't zip through in your imagination just by references to it.
3) Kayaba blinked, tilting his head to the side, as [Virtual Assistant #4] summarized what had happened over night. "Huh." He said to himself. "That was unexpected, but ganbarre Diabel-kun. I guess."
4) Next up is just the omake, and then the dang chapter will finally be done.
"Okay, I've got it here." Kibaou said, as he strode into the room and unrolled a map onto the table.
They were in the conference room attached to Diabel's office, on the top floor of the Paladin's Guild Headquarters. Diabel had it decorated in a wealthy-but-understated style; darkwood paneling, gilded ceiling, big leather chairs, that sort of thing. The room was dominated by the rectangular heavy table in
the middle of the room, which was wooden with a glass-like polished finish.
Diabel glanced at the people in the room with him.
Thinker was slouched in his chair, leaning back with his arms crossed over his chest. Despite his disengaged body-language, his jaw was tense and his eyes
would lock on whoever was speaking.
Next to him, Yulier was in her full-blown [Bishop Regalia], a strange cross between a simple nun's habit, with a lavishly embroidered stole hanging from her shoulders. Her hands were clasped together in front of her, like she was praying. Maybe she even was; whatever magecraft the Church used operated on different logic than other systems.
Kobatz from the Cavaliers, and his own Godfree, were standing stiffly behind him. Rather than acting as bodyguards, they were more like secretaries; Kobatz was taking notes of what everyone said, and Godfree was managing PM conversations with the deployed squads even while they were brainstorming.
It was Sasha that bothered Diabel the most. She had a dark, brooding look, and it had been hard to convince her that she would be better off here, at the nerve center of the rescue operations, rather than out scouring the town herself.
"Right." Kibaou muttered to himself, as he smoothed the corners.
It was a map of the City, with fine gridlines appended over the top. Along the side was a block of information divided into cells in a rectangular sidebar.
It showed information like the date that Kibaou had drawn the map, the dates he had updated it with a short description of what changed, a [Paladins] logo, and a stamp from where Diabel had [Approved] the drawing. Kibaou had been strangely neurotic about getting that right.
"What were the kids' names again?" He asked, as he fished out some blank stones. They were like misshapen dice, with unequally shaped sides, lopsided and awkward. Each face was blank.
"Their names are [Berserker], [Huntar], and [Emily]." Sasha said, in a clipped voice.
Kibaou muttered under his breath, spelling each name in turn, tapping the side of a die with each letter. Shortly, he had a set of three dice, each with one of the children's names on it.
"Okay, here we go." He said, sweeping them up and cupping them in his palms. He closed his eyes, raising his arms and shaking his hands, before he threw them apart, letting the dice scatter on the table.
Each letter, each Rune used to spell their names glowed, and the dice bounced in strange, unnatural ways, like the red line on the drawing indicating the boundary of the Safe Zone was an actual wall they could bounce against.
But as they slowed, they converged suddenly, abruptly turning and, together, they rolled past the west edge of the city wall and slowed to a stop as they went past the map and nearly went off the edge of table.
There was a moment of silence. "Well, that tears it." Kibaou finally said, voice heavy. "They're not in the city; they left through the west gate."
"Are you sure?" Sasha said, voice demanding.
Kibaou glanced at him, and Diabel gave him a look, urging him to be patient.
"Yes, ma'am, I'm sure." Kibaou said, looking down at the map on the table with a sigh. "It's not just the map. In every building that me and my people draw, there's a little plaque with the name of the drafter, the date, and the customer we drew it for." He reached out and tapped the table. "Every single [Elven Dorm], every shop we modded off one of my designs, I can connect all of them to this map through those plaques." He sighed again, sitting back. "There's nobody with a stronger magical connection to this city than me. And I say, those kids aren't in town. They walked out the gate."
"But why?" Sasha demanded, sounding like she was ready to break down.
"We can figure that out later." Diabel said, keeping his voice firm, but also kind. "For now, what's important is that we have a lead." He turned. "Godfree, tell the Fuumanin to head west and fan out. See if they can track them down. After that, ask for Cuvie to coordinate our Gatherers. It's been a while since they've been on this Floor, but moving fast and rolling over any mobs they encounter is more important than letting the Floor Specialist MidLiners take the lead."
"Sure thing, boss." Godfree easily replied, voice a little distracted as his fingers danced across the keyboard only he could see.
"Speaking of." Diabel said. "Kobatz."
"Yes, sir!" Kobatz replied, snapping to attention, heels clicking together.
"Organize your people. There are at least a couple parties in the Cavaliers that focus on night-fighting, right?" It was a trade-off; the visibility and weather were often worse, but in exchange, the mobs were usually a little stronger, and there was less competition for them. For Mid-Liners that were serious about joining the Front, night operations weren't a bad idea.
"Yes, sir." Kobatz replied, even though it had been a rhetorical question. Well, that was the way Kobatz was.
"Get them coordinated with the Fuumanin." Diabel ordered. "Get them fanned out. Their objective is to make contact."
Diabel considered, and then turned. "Thinker."
"Yeah." Thinker quietly replied.
"Please have your people review which Safe Zones are closest to the West, and check if you have any resources from the Rear Line in any of them currently. If these kids made it to safety, then it would be good to know." Diabel ordered, and then paused.
"Yulier," he said, turning to face the leader of the [Church Aid Society], "do the same thing with your priests. See if you have anyone in the area, and direct them to prepare."
Diabel frowned, thoughts racing.
"Am I missing anything?" He asked aloud.
"I want to go." Sasha said, voice low. "I need to go myself and chase after them."
"You can't." Diabel replied automatically, and then he caught the look on her face. He wanted to grimace, but kept it off his expression. Since everyone else here answered to him, he had fallen into acting like the boss, but he couldn't really treat her the same way.
"I don't recall needing your permission." Sasha tartly replied. "After all, it's because of your Side-Liner foolishness that this even happened in the first place."
There were about three things he could say to that, but Diabel didn't think saying any of them would be productive.
In the first place, that Bel kid had developed the spell on his own, talked about it on his own, and caught the eye of the [White Witch] on his own. It didn't have anything to do with the official [Side Liner] program.
In the second place, Hexadecimal had confirmed that the kid had left the meeting, held inside the Safe Zone of this very city, so it wasn't like the meeting had anything to do with it.
Well, Diabel suspected that it did, actually, have something to do with it, but that was something to figure out later. Diabel really would prefer to have the boy here so he could get more details on that, but Hexi was a sensitive kid, and putting him in front of Sasha's recriminating anger wouldn't accomplish anything. Better to just have him out like any other Paladin, instead of forcing him to defend Ilya to Sasha.
Which lead to the third thing that Diabel didn't say. Why the hell had she allowed the boy to go to a meeting with [The White Witch] alone, unescorted? Had the kid not told her? Was Sasha really that ignorant of Front Liner gossip? It was true that the Titled Players were held up on pedestals by everyone, but the pedestals were different; while [The Sixth Ranger] was held in genuine awe, by comparison, [The White Witch] was more feared. As capricious and uncaringly cruel as a witch. And Sasha hadn't known about that?
But none of that would help. It wouldn't get the kids back, and it wouldn't make Sasha listen to him now. So Diabel swallowed his thoughts and turned back to the scenario at hand.
"Sasha." He said, smiling softly. "I know it's hard to stand on the sidelines, but your job isn't to be out looking for them. We have plenty of people for that. Your job is to wait, and as soon as they are found, go to them." He changed his smile from warm to friendly and rueful. "It's hard to wait while other people do the work, but right now, it's the right thing to do." There, something like that.
"I just." Sasha shook her head. "If I hadn't... if you..." She shook her head again, and exhaled. "I know. I know, but I don't want to agree." She sighed.
"Okay. I'll go along with it for now." And she scowled, her worry and fear congealing on her face. "But don't you think for one minute that we won't be having words about this after we're done." She threatened.
Diabel was pretty sure that he would win that argument by throwing her ignorance of Front Liner politics in her face and scolding her about letting her kids visit Ilya unescorted, but he wasn't really looking forward to winning that argument, and he didn't expect he'd feel good about it, so he just modified his smile again, looking chagrined. "I can accept that." He said. "For now, let's just believe in our people and hope for the best."
That was that for damage control. He turned and checked over his people again. Kobatz had stepped out of the room to do his own administration. Thinker and Yulier were both busily tapping away in their invisible-to-him menus, presumably dealing with PMs. Godfree caught his eye and gave him a curt nod, but he was similarly buried in his messages.
Kibaou was looking pretty antsy, his jaw clenched and his shoulders tight as he stared down at his map. It had been a shot in the dark, but it was at least helpful to confirm that the children weren't in the town. Rather than running through the streets, canvassing door-to-door, they could focus their efforts out in the field.
But it wasn't something that Diabel could call a good thing. If they were lost or even trapped somewhere in town, then at least they would still have the nigh-absolute protection of the [Safe Zone]. If they were out in the field, then....
Well, Diabel wasn't quite ready to ask Yulier if there was someone stationed at the [Monument of Life] that could check it for the names of the children.
Not quite yet. But if they hit the 12 hour mark, then at least the certainty would be useful in its own way, rather than allowing Sasha to place her hopes in the unknown.
And Kibaou was probably thinking in the same direction. But he probably wouldn't say anything. Diabel had been working on him, bringing him around to understanding the need for circumspection.
Ah, and he was distracting himself by thinking about that.
Diabel refocused his mind, and frowned down at the dice. Perhaps he could have Kibaou modify them as a dowsing spell? Something that, rather than giving the position, just indicated the direction? That would be a huge benefit, and would mean they could find the children as fast as Kibaou could move. But what if the kids had split up? Was there a range limit? Could Kibaou use [Inheritance] to give the spell to someone faster, like the Fuumanin? Ugh, was it even a possibility in the first place? Diabel frowned internally, as he quickly tried to formulate and plan out the different ways that discussion could go, and prevent it from getting derailed by Sasha.
Ah, his menu flashed. He had a PM from Kirito.
He crushed the flicker of hope, opened the PM, and then felt his mind sag in relief.
"Everyone," He announced, letting the relief show as a genuine smile, "the children have been found, and are safe."
"Thank god." Yulier whispered, as she turned, grabbing onto Thinker's shoulder, who patted her back, even as he breathed out with his eyes closed.
Godfree cheered, and Kibaou had a savage grin, and Sasha stumbled, catching herself on the side of the table, before her gaze snapped to Diabel and she pushed herself back up.
"I'm not sure where, but we'll figure it out." Diabel promised her. "I'll still need to trade a few PMs, but for now, let's head West and go meet them."
I I I
"And, done." Kirito announced, as he hit the [Send] button on his message screen. His finger lingered in the air, before he let it drop. He had a feeling his inbox was about to blow up, so he swept his gaze around the area quickly one more time.
Sacchi smiled at him. She was standing next to her [Pack Mules], and holding the hands of two children, a boy and a girl, that were sitting on the backs of two of them. Kirito gathered that the boy was named [Bel] and the girl was [Emily], but he still didn't understand what the heck kids that were like, Level Three, were doing out in the field.
Sasamaru and Tetsuo were standing guard, on opposite sides of the Mules, their weapons up and their eyes scanning around the area.
Ducker had actually gone and climbed a tree in the last thirty seconds, and was frowning as his head swiveled back and forth. He had a hand cupped over his eyes like he was shading them from sun-glare, but since his eyes were also faintly glowing, whatever vision-enhancement spell he was using might actually need the protection. Well, straight-up [Reinforced Optic Sensitivity] was a little simplistic. Kirito had gotten some tips when Rosalia did a lecture on vision-spells for the BSM (Ilya had forced her into it, somehow), and Kirito had crashed it.
Kirito reminded himself it was unfair to hold the Black Cats to the same standards as Front Liners.
Keita was standing off to his side, a little bit, where the third kid (who was named [Hunter] or something, he pronounced it with a strange emphasis Kirito thought) was looking up, star-struck, at Shirou.
Well, the two kids on the [Mules] were sneaking glances as well, but they didn't quite have the starry-eyed look that the third boy did. Kirito glanced back down at his menu, humming as he saw that Diabel had PM'd him back. Kirito opened it, scanned through, and popped back quick answers to the list of questions that Diabel had spammed him with, asking for their map coordinates and who exactly was there and stuff like that. Right before hitting send, he stopped, considering, and then added his own question. Sure they could just sit tight, but it wasn't like there was anything to worry about, so maybe they should move towards a rendezvous point?
Then he looked up, scanned the area again, and walked over to see what the kid was talking to Keita and Shirou about.
"Can you really shoot swords with your mind?" The kid asked.
Shirou looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Well, not exactly." He replied.
"Yes." Kirito said, interrupting as he walked up to them. "It is one of the [108 Skills of the Sixth Ranger], in the same category as [Ranger Rapid Fire], [Aimbot Ranger], and [Ranger Rocket Tag]." Kirito struck the one-finger-in-the-air pose that Shirou sometimes unconsciously took when he was lecturing about magecraft. "It's the 80s-series." By the way, Kirito had just made that up. It was a little hilarious that other people were taking his little gag seriously.
"Anyway," he said as he clapped his hands, interrupting Shirou's incoming overly-technical lore-dump, "I let Diabel know where we are." He ignored Shirou's dirty look, glanced at the complex expression on Keita's face, and then looked down at the kid. "I think it's become kind of a big deal."
The kid looked ashamed, and the expression on Keita's face started to look a little sour, while Shirou instead looked bashful, like he was beating himself up for not realizing that already.
Well, Kirito had only suspected a little himself. After a long day of doing math homework, of all things, (Ellis Bell wouldn't teach him more spells until he passed a literal trigonometry test), Kirito had wanted to get out and move, but not concentrate too much, which meant that power-leveling or exploring the Front Line were both out. So he'd dragged Shirou out so they could mess around with Lightsabers some more. The current prototype was just a clump of Ether that Kirito had realized and stabilized enough that Shirou could hammer the dang thing into the shape of a sword. It couldn't turn off, and they couldn't change the color it glowed, and it didn't hum at all, and it was slowly evaporating, which was characterized as a constant rate of durability loss.
But it actually worked as a sword without exploding, so it was progress of at least a sort.
So they'd been messing around with those prototypes when Kirito had gotten the PM from Keita asking for help, apparently escorting some lost kids through the Field. If it was just a Quest, then Kirito might have actually blown them off to hang with Shirou, but those kids were Players, not NPCs. That had really changed things. Kirito had raced off with Shirou in tow, and there they were.
"Woah." The kid replied. "Can you teach ME to shoot swords with my mind?"
"You'd be better off sticking with a bow." Shirou replied, looking like he was on slightly firmer ground. "It's much more reliable and prana-efficient. It's not as flashy, but simple is usually best."
Kirito decided to turn and talk to Keita instead. "So, you want to head back to town?"
Keita nodded, glancing at the kid before he trudged off to go tell the rest of the guild.
Kirito scanned the area, humming to himself. He really wanted to ask what the kids were doing out here. No, that wasn't accurate. He wanted to know the answer, but he didn't actually want to ask the question. He didn't really level his Talk skill enough, and if the kids had run away from home or something like that, he didn't know how to deal with that.
He caught Shirou's eye. His friend squinted, frowning with his eyes. Ugh, so he was thinking about that kind of thing too.
But Keita was waving to them, so they turned and walked over to the rest of the group.
Hunter, no, [Huntar]! With an "A" in it, that was the kid's name. Anyway, Huntar was sneaking looks at Shirou out of the side of his eye.
Huntar was cheerful, but his cheerfulness seemed a little... brittle? It was off. There was something about it that bothered Kirito. But figuring it out was intimidating. He didn't know what was wrong, and he wasn't comfortable asking.
The other two kids were doing the same. To be precise, the three of them weren't just sneaking looks at Shirou directly, but also at the blue-and-gold icon floating over his head, marking him as a [Titled Player].
And it wasn't like the other two kids were much better. The girl was still sniffling, and her eyes were red from crying. The way that the system handled [Crying] was a little weird. Runny noses and even tears hadn't been included in the Release Version of the game. They were left out like all other body fluids. Kirito had never actually cried in-game during the Beta, and had never talked to anyone that had, or at least, that had admitted to it. Looking back, it was something he hadn't even thought about. It was genuinely a gap in his knowledge on how the Beta had handled things.
In the name of [Increased Realism], the game had added in blood, sweat, and tears.
But the puffiness, the red eyes, the sniffling, all that ended as soon as people were "done crying." It wasn't something that Kirito had wanted to know, but sometimes you couldn't avoid it on the Front Line. Seeing people cry. Or crying yourself. It wasn't something he would ever, ever admit to, but Kirito had messed up spells badly enough that tears had leaked out.
So as long as someone still felt like crying, they kept looking like they had just finished crying.
The girl, [Emily], still looked like that.
Compared to that, [Berserker], who insisted on being called [Bel], he'd just looked straight-up haunted. (And wow about that name; Kirito couldn't even imagine how Ilya would deal, learning that the handle she'd wanted had been taken by some Rear Liner).
So Huntar was being deliberately cheerful, Emily looked ready to cry, and Bel looked like he'd just gone three rounds with Kuradeel.
Kirito felt out of his depth. He glanced around, scanning the area, instead of looking at the kids.
He met Keita's gaze, and the other boy nodded his head, an indecipherable look on his face, as he walked back to where Kirito was standing with Shirou and Huntar.
"I've let the rest know." Keita said, nodding as he got close enough to speak without shouting. "We're ready to head out whenever the both of you are."
"Sure." Kirito easily replied, while Shirou just nodded.
"OK!" Huntar said, smiling brightly.
"Huntar, right?" Keita asked.
"Yes?" The boy replied.
"Why don't you go sit with Bel and Emily on the Mules? I'm sure Sacchi had saved you a seat." Keita said, smiling.
"But..." Huntar said, glancing shyly at Shirou.
"I'll catch up in a minute." Shirou replied. Ha, he still looked ridiculously uncomfortable with the blatant Hero Worship. Not that Kirito would say anything, because his instincts as a Gamer told him not to raise a [Flag] like that.
"Alright then!" Huntar chirped, before he turned and ran over to join his friends.
There was an awkward pause. Kirito debated saying something.
"I, um, I think we're in over our heads." Keita admitted, after a moment.
"Yeah?" Kirito asked.
"Yes." Keita nodded, licking his lips before speaking again. "Um, Kirito, you said you PM'd Diabel-sama, right?" Kirito wasn't sure if Keita wanted confirmation on that or what, but Kirito nodded back just to be sure.
"Right. Well." Keita said. "He's PM'd me, uh, three times, and I've gotten messages from Hanzou-san, and from Kibaou-san, and somebody named Sasha, and Argo, and Lind-san." He swallowed. "I think this is a really big deal?"
Kirito nodded, making an encouraging motion with his hands. That probably explained why Kirito's inbox hadn't blown up; Keita's had, instead.
"And, um, I just feel like we didn't really do anything special." Keita admitted, all in a rush.
Objectively speaking, the Black Cats weren't special. But...
"It's not a matter of what you thought you were capable of." Shirou interjected. "It wasn't a matter of whether you thought you could. There was somebody that needed saving, so you saved them. Because you were the only ones that could do it."
Kirito wasn't really a specialist at Social Traits, and Shirou was pretty stoic, but he felt like his friend was maybe blaming himself for that one.
Keita laughed, a little nervous. "Well, that's true, but that wasn't what was going through our heads. What happened was... we only felt safe trying because of all you've done for us."
Keita smiled again, and stood formally, before bowing formally. "Thank you both. Without your defensive spells, Kirito, we would have lost. And without your weapons, Sixth Ranger-sama, we wouldn't have been able to win." He stood, and awkwardly laughed it off. "It was only because of what you'd given us that we could save them."
"Yeah, no problem." Kirito replied, smiling back. It felt a little queasy on his face. It wasn't that big of a deal, it felt uncomfortable. All he did was kill time with them.
He glanced out of the corner of his eye, about to say something else as he opened his mouth, but then let it die, slowly closing his mouth again.
Shirou had his eyes closed, and his head down a little bit, and his expression was... it was soft. Relaxed.
Keita looked like he was about to say something, and Kirito shook his head back. Kirito had just thought that Shirou was pretty stoic, but at the same time, even though he didn't express it much, he got really emotional about saving people, and Keita had just sorta pushed those buttons.
Honestly, it was a little embarrassing to see from the side, but he also wanted Shirou to have this moment.
"Right." Shirou said, sighing as he opened his eyes, re-centering himself in the present. "You said we needed to head back?"
"Yes." Keita nodded. "There's a rendezvous point, um, that Diabel-sama asked us to head towards."
I I I
Tonight had been exhausting. Diabel slumped back in his chair in his private office, indulging in poor posture.
He'd personally escorted Sasha out to meet up with her lost kids, and he'd even managed to mostly figure out what had happened, around the edges of Sasha's relieved-but-angry-mom routine. It had taken too long, and it had been annoying to step lightly around the situation, but he'd made it work.
Broadly speaking, the first half of the night had gone about as Diabel had already expected.
Ilya had found out about Bel-kun's new Eye Spell through the grapevine. It hadn't been anything particularly useful, but at the very least the Fuumanin had been interested in it, as an alternate way to perceive their surroundings in total darkness. Hanzou in particular had been interested in the possible synergy between [Seeing Soundwaves] and his own Air spellcraft. Diabel had looked forward to that. An easy win, good publicity. A Rear-Liner helping out a famous Front Line guild. His biggest fear was that the Fuumanin would accidently contaminate a bunch of impressionable kids with their weirdness.
But Ilya hadn't known about any of that, and hadn't bothered to think it through. So she'd decided to try and get one up on Diabel, and then had been carelessly unimpressed by the boy's spell. And now that he was thinking about it, Diabel remembered that she'd been [Berserker] in the Beta as well, and now Bel-kun had the name instead. Of course she would cause trouble over that, too, just as an added benefit.
So the boy had left the meeting, gone off to sulk, and although it was exasperating, he was exasperated at Ilya, not at Bel. Diabel couldn't really have expected the boy to act any different.
Diabel made a mental note to talk to Shirou about it. It worried him to do that. If Shirou really was an artificial AI person, then it was genuinely possible he existed for Ilya's sake. He might be literally incapable of holding her in check. In that case, his disappointment and judgement was a bluff, and Diabel had to manage the situation enough that Ilya could be contained without actually calling that bluff.
No, regarding their relationship it didn't actually matter whether Shirou was a [Real Boy] or not. Diabel's instincts were telling him that Shirou couldn't really control Ilya, and that was true whether Shirou was a de novo AI, or a brainscanned dead person, or an Alpha Tester, or just plain talented at the game. Their relationship was off, somehow. It wasn't just that they were individually strange, although that was still true; there was also something strange about the bond between them. Diabel could sense that.
So Diabel suspected that there were a limited number of times he could ask Shirou to intercede, and he didn't actually know what exactly the limit-number was. The probable outcome of going over the limit was a collapse of the [Brotherhood of Saint Mark]. Frankly speaking, as long as Shirou kept Clearing, then Diabel didn't really mind that outcome. But the worst case scenarios were pretty bad, and Diabel didn't really want to test them. Ultimately, Diabel's goal regarding the BSM was just to keep the [Guild Drama] minimized.
So Ilya had been a problem, but that wasn't a surprise. She had just continued to be the same problem she'd been all along. Diabel didn't like it, but he could still plan around it to some degree. He was even comfortable using it in certain ways; regarding the Clearing Guild Leaders, she made it very, very easy for him to be the [Rational One].
Diabel sighed, closing his eyes. If he complained to himself about it, if he rehashed his thinking about it, he'd be wasting time. There were other, new problems to eat at his stomach tonight. So Diabel made himself set down the [Ilya Issue].
After getting harassed by Ilya, Bel had gone off to sulk. His friends, worried when he didn't come back, had snuck off to find him. And apparently [Huntar] had his own [Unique Spell] that worked off the literal [Power of Friendship] that had let him find Bel. That also bore looking in to. But later.
So Bel had gone off to sulk, and his friends had gone after him.
This was the second half of the night. It had not gone at all as Diabel had expected. It had been a surprise, and a horrible one.
Because Bel had never left the [Safe Zone].
Yes, he'd gone off to sulk, but he'd been at least responsible enough that he stayed inside Elvengrad. He hadn't secretly gone out into the field and gotten in over his head.
He'd been placed under some kind of compulsion. The lore called it [Mental Interference].
And he'd been ensorcelled inside the [Safe Zone], by a mob outside the [Safe Zone]. By a monster that used a musical instrument to lure children outside of the city at night. An obvious allusion to the old European fable, the Pied Piper of Hamelin.
[Good job recruiting [Retired Players] into the Game.]
It looked like their grace period had ran out.
There were still many Players in the Rear Line who hadn't done [Circuit Activation]. There was no way to hide this incident, not when he'd mobilized so many Players. He didn't regret that, but it also meant he couldn't sweep this under the rug. It wasn't like he could actively force Players to activate their Circuits, either. He was hesitant to make it a condition for receiving the stipend payments from the [Church Aid Society], because that would make the contrarians not do it just to get back at him. No, the best thing would be to lay out what happened, and just let it be obvious. If that still didn't motivate people, then....
Then the best thing to do was to just write them off.
But even that wasn't enough.
Because the kids that had been kidnapped, they'd had their Circuits opened already. And they'd still been taken by spells. It had been an attack at night.
It wasn't like their defenses would be any better while they were sleeping.
Would they have to put up protective [Bounded Fields] around every single [Elven Dorm] in the whole city? Was it realistic to put up a [Bounded Field] big enough to affect the whole city? What about layering and nesting defenses? It didn't seem like there was a better way than that. And it would have to be fast, too; if another attack happened in the interim, that would drastically undermine his authority. So Diabel would have to peel off human resources from other projects to put up the defenses. But first they'd have to go through some brainstorm-and-design. It wasn't enough to just react to this specific attack, Diabel needed to be more proactive, to anticipate other attacks.
No, Diabel corrected himself, it didn't have to be him. He needed to put his people on it. Probably put Kibaou on it. Inside the [Paladins], Kibaou was the best at area-based magecraft, and he was more intimately connected to Elvengrad than anyone. That had been on display earlier tonight.
Diabel groaned.
And he had to worry about the fluff.
The setting of the Boss Fight had been reclaiming the Floor from [Orcs]. It wouldn't be strange if there was an [Event] where a new [Orcish Horde] gathered to besiege the city or something like that. If certain rumors were believable, there was even a precedent for that.
What was the worst case?
A war that consumed the whole city. Spells that circumvented the spirit of the [Safe Zones]. No, if it was worst case, then maybe he shouldn't be relying on [Safe Zones] at all any more.
Oh.
Oh no. If it was possible for the [Safe Zone] feature to be removed, then....
[Increased Realism] was a problem, too. It was one that had bothered Diabel since the very first patch. Pain and blood and all that, that had worried Diabel because it was frankly sadistic. Being trapped at the mercy of a madman was bad enough, but knowing he was a sadistic madman was tangibly worse.
But then the [Item Tab] had been removed from the inventory, also in the name of [Increased Realism].
Since patches didn't allow just for features to be added, but also taken away, then... was the [Menu] reliable? It wasn't just a matter of losing the Dimensional Stowing of the [Inventory]. Since it was already possible to add and remove [Equipment] by putting it on the old-fashioned way. Frankly speaking, considering the amount of computational power needed just to interact with pants as soft fabric that he had to step into one leg at a time, Kayaba had to be expecting a payoff for that one. So [Equipping] would still be possible. It would just take longer, and they would lose the [Inventory]. That was not ideal, but they'd manage.
[Private Messages]. [Auto-Map]. The [HUD] displaying HP and MP bars. [Quests]. Maybe even [Shops] and [Trade Windows].
[Guilds].
If they lost the [Menu], then there would be social collapse. Diabel's entire command-and-control infrastructure was built on top of the [Menu]. There were no contingencies. He would have to rebuild everything from scratch.
Diabel groaned, lowering his face into his palms.
He sat, leaning back in his chair, allowing himself a moment just to feel sorry for himself.
And then he grunted, pulling his hands down his face as he sat up again, opening his menu to compose a [PM] to Argo.
First things first. He needed to get ahead of the rumors, to control the narrative. First, prepare a statement that could be put in a [Special Edition] of
the [Argo Guide]. Then, he would need to start recruiting a think-tank for creating [Bounded Field] protections. That would have to be fast and highly visible. Being seen "doing something" would help his authority a lot, aside from that it actually did need doing.
And after that... he would need to convene another think-tank, for the counter-measures to and replacements for losing the [Menu]. Diabel wasn't even sure whether he wanted to keep that one secret or not.
He was simply too busy to be going back to bed and getting any sleep tonight.
Well, that was fine.
He was too worried to be getting any sleep anyways.
Chapter 16 End
I I I
1) As you might be aware, this chapter has gone through a few different revisions, versions, outlines. I've actually cut it down to this much, but it's still like 6k words.
2) The only scene that I cut that I wasn't sure about cutting was the actual "Sasha getting reunited with the kids". I cut it solely for length, thinking that it wouldn't add anything that you couldn't zip through in your imagination just by references to it.
3) Kayaba blinked, tilting his head to the side, as [Virtual Assistant #4] summarized what had happened over night. "Huh." He said to himself. "That was unexpected, but ganbarre Diabel-kun. I guess."
4) Next up is just the omake, and then the dang chapter will finally be done.
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