~oOo~

Log Horizon © Mamare Touno

This work provided under section 107 of the copyright act of 1978

Chapter 6

~oOo~

An adventurer's HP bar didn't literally represent their level of healthiness. At one hit point, they didn't perform any worse than at ten thousand hit points.

The exact mechanics were poorly studied, but instead seemed as if HP represented a type of magical energy that automatically healed an adventurer's wounds- it replenished over time, and could be restored by healers, but should it fall to zero, that adventurer would cease to be sustained.

This was, incidentally, why classes and races with high MP had low HP, and vica versa- a simple tradeoff in energy.

Shiroe had told her it was his belief that an adventurer could theoretically fight on after they hit zero hit points, but that whatever governed the respawn system chose to avoid the possibility of permanent harm and quickly despawned them.

As such, the knife buried hilt-deep into her stomach didn't significantly hinder Minori's ability to act.

That didn't stop it from hurting like a bitch.

But even as a rear-echelon support class, Minori wasn't unused to pain.

So when she sunk to her knees, it was a calculated act.

He mother was screaming, and the man was ranting about something called "thetans" and how he'd "prove the non-believers wrong" and some unfamiliar western religion. Bystanders panicked.

She discreetly pulled her staff from her bag, stood up, and walloped him on the head.

She wasn't one of the combat classes and her staff had significantly sub-par damage output.

That didn't stop her from trouncing her would-be assailant in a single blow. She was level 74, and he was level… 4?

Anyways, the point was that it wasn't even a contest.

He collapsed, slumping to the ground.

She didn't take out all of his HP, softening the blow. But when he tried to get up, she pointed her staff menacingly at his face.

"What was that for?"

Minori was uncomfortably aware of how many people were staring at her. This was not a good impression to make.

And of course, her ice cream had fallen to the ground, making her rapidly worsening mood even blacker.

So of course, as the man restarted his incoherent rambling, the crowds of Tokyo were suddenly replaced by the inside of the guild building and the face of her guildmaster.

Wait, what?

Hadn't she had a little over forty-five minutes left?

Shiroe immediately started briefing her, giving her no time to gape.

"Eins, guild leader of Honestly, has betrayed us. Because Plant Hwyaden promised to move his guild members back home faster than we could by leveraging their massive player count, he had one of our portal talismans removed from the guild building and handed over to them. That's not the problem. The problem is that, in the process of Plant Hwyaden trying to preempt us acting and send an agent over, a Genius type monster pushed their chosen ambassador out of the way and went through themselves."

A cold pit formed in Minori's stomach, overriding the residual pain from her assault. Most of the Geniuses to endanger Akihabara had been handled by other parties. But she had been on the Shibuya raid, where they'd narrowly defeated, with twenty four people, a single Genius that had nearly taken down all of Yamato.

"I'm not asking you to fight them alone, of course. We'd already decided on sending Krusty, and Shoryu, Kanami, and BologneseMaster are able to go as well."

"...and who? And don't we only have two portal talismans available?"

"BologneseMaster is from Silver Sword; he's the shortest Adventurer I know, so we can fit him in alongside Shoryu. Now," Shiroe pushed his glasses up, "our plan is as follows. They'll be arriving in Japan at the same place you did, but we can't afford the time it would take for you to meet up. Instead, everyone will immediately mount griffons and fly south, with the hopes that you can find the Genius before they cause too much damage."

It was a surprisingly simple plan, considering Shiroe had made it.

"I don't have a gryphon whistle to summon one with, though."

"That's not a problem. Here." Shiroe handed his own whistle to Minori. "Keep it safe."

"I," Minori gripped the talisman tightly. "I will."

The return to Akihabara was less disorienting, now that she was expecting it.

It had been about three minutes, by her estimate.

"Minori, what-"

Minori interrupted her mother by blowing the whistle. "I'm sorry, but this isn't important right now."

Minori knew she was being excessively curt, but she couldn't afford to waste time.

She could be brought back and forth with the talisman, but only had a limited amount of time on earth each day- much like she could only get four hours of use out of the gryphon.

The crowd startled at the gryphon's piercing call.

Minori scrolled down her friends list. She'd never had a reason to friend Krusty or Kanami, but she'd been in Crescent Moon with Shoryu until she'd asked Shiroe for entrance into Log Horizon.

His name was dark, like everyone else's.

She fed the gryphon some apples from her magic bag, as she adjusted its tack. The bag wasn't an inexhaustible storage space, of course, but she'd found it was useful to have something to keep gryphons pacified when Log Horizon's senior members brought theirs out.

Shoryu's name started glowing, and she immediately activated voice chat, slipping on the gryphon's back as she did so.

"Shoryu, where are you?"

"Crowded shopping district, no clue where."

"Is there a shop called "Kotobukiya" nearby?"

He paused, likely to check his surroundings, then gave an affirmative.

Minori stopped her end of the telepathic call to apologize to her mother, then ordered the gryphon to fly.

In a few powerful and obviously magic-assisted wingbeats, the gryphon broke roof level. She didn't have a clear idea of exactly where she was going, but her friends list let her see Shoryu's general location, and gryphons weren't exactly difficult to spot.

She made her way barely above the top of the mid-rise districts, prioritising speed over height.

The sheer speed at which the gryphon traversed Tokyo's massive urban sprawl surprised her. Streetlights seemed to blur, and she noticed traffic slowing down whenever she passed a busy street.

She idly wondered if this was what it felt like to be a superhero.

Getting the exact location of Shoryu coincided with finally hearing an answering shriek to her gryphon's call. Krusty was on his own gryphon. Her wolf-eared former guildmate Shoryu was, to her surprise, sitting behind an impressively short felinoid rather than on his own gryphon. Minori supposed it made sense- Crescent Moon didn't undertake their own raids, but Silver Sword was one of the two most elite combat guilds on the Yamato server.

Two friend requests and a party invite popped up, and she accepted them.

Krusty spoke through party chat. "Plant Hwyaden opened their portal about two hours south and west from the guild hall by horse. Geniuses tend to head towards population centers, so we'll be able to intercept the monster in about fifteen minutes. I want your gryphons to fly above me in a stack; if we get attacked, I'll take the least damage from an emergency discount."

Minori and BologneseMaster assented, and maneuvered their mounts into position. Shoryu hung on for dear life, looking rather green.

Krusty didn't distract them from their search with idle chatter; Minori knew his leadership experience matched or surpassed even Shiroe's, and she had no doubt he had already memorized the capabilities of each class.

But despite their efforts, they couldn't find the Genius.

Instead, it found them.

~oOo~

Krusty dropped onto the street intersection like a meteor, cracking pavement and sending water spewing from a ruptured fire main.

It would have been an impressive landing, if it hadn't been the result of his gryphon unceremoniously dumping him as soon as an attack so much as rustled its feathers.

He got up, his massive red war axe in position to guard against attacks.

The upside was that there weren't any cars around; he'd evidently found himself in a closed off shopping district.

The downside was that he was in a closed off shopping district, and the place was absolutely packed with easily damaged and decidedly not immortal bystanders.

From ground level he couldn't spot the monster, and the glimpse he caught of it earlier suggested it was approximately man sized.

But neither of those things posed a problem to a tank.

He let loose an earthshaking bellow, giving everything he had to using the ability War Cry.

Against players, abilities that purely drew aggro were nearly useless- no matter how much hate he would theoretically have, players attacked whomever they wanted. But Geniuses, while eerily intelligent, were still non-sapient monsters.

Knocking bystanders out of the way, the Genius sprung towards him.

Its original disguise had been of an unassuming japanese woman, with short hair and a bright yellow summer dress. But its eyes were rolled into the back of its head, and it moved with a bizarre, uncoordinated gait.

That wasn't to say it wasn't fast.

But it wouldn't be fast enough to evade Krusty's axe.

He swung.

"STOP!"

He halted mid-swing, and the monster ran into him, dealing… negligible damage?

"Notice of Exorcism!"

A bolt of white light smashed into the monster, and she collapsed.

Krusty checked her readout.

Wait, level one? This couldn't be the Genius. But that meant…

Minori spoke through their telepathic link. "The Genius is converting people into monsters. It started running as soon as we got close."

His party members ran towards him.

At his feet, the woman had opened her eyes, looking at him in a mixture of fear and awe.

"I see." He paused to survey the crowd. "How many people has it converted?"

"In total? I don't know. But all the ones in the area ran towards you when you used War Cry."

"Did anyone see where it went?"

Shoryu spoke, saying "I saw a disturbance heading towards the highway, about three blocks and a half from here. It wasn't moving particularly fast."

"I see." Krusty paused to think. "BologneseMaster, scout for the Genius. Minori, summon your gryphon again; stay in the air and Notice of Exorcism anything that needs it. Shoryu, back her up."

Shoryu looked dismayed, but all three complied. As Minori called her gryphon, BologneseMaster rapidly scaled a building, and Krusty ran towards the direction Shoryu had indicated.

His feet thudded against the ground. With his Adventurer speed and enormous blue-gold armor, he moved less like a human and more like a locomotive. The crowd parted before him, giving him a clear path to where he wanted to go.

"Target spotted, boss. Take a left two blocks from now."

Krusty grunted in acknowledgement.

He slowed down to take the corner, bleeding off some of his momentum, but was rapidly back up to speed.

"Where is it?"

"Hold on." A pause. "Here!"

Krusty saw the felinoid leap from the top of one building, striking downwards at a cloaked figure.

A withered hand smacked him away, and the felinoid smashed through a shop window on the other side of the street.

The figure turned towards him, dropping a young man onto the ground as it did so.

For a moment, Krusty saw an elderly, caring grandmother. Then, its skin turned translucent, revealing the creature's bones and internal organs. The sclera of its eyes became black, and the monster's pupils became an incandescent yellow.

"Sᴜʙᴍɪᴛ. I ᴡɪʟʟ ɢʀᴀɴᴛ ʏᴏᴜ ᴊᴏʏ ᴀɴᴅ ᴇɴʟɪɢʜᴛᴍᴇɴᴛ."

Its voice hit Krusty like a physical force. It wasn't loud, but while the monster spoke, all other sounds were muted, and he found his focus inexorably drawn to the Genius and its revolting anatomy.

His charge was prematurely aborted, and it took all of his willpower to even remain standing.

Krusty threw up.

~oOo~

A/N: many thanks to Mizu25, my new beta!