In the Land of Leadale - Volume 3 - Chapter Pr

The Story Thus Far 

Keina Kagami perished while playing the VRMMORPG Leadale after a power outage shut down her life support. The next instant, however, she awoke in an unfamiliar inn and realized she was in the body of her game avatar. Keina was further shocked when Marelle, the inn’s proprietress, informed her that Leadale’s seven nations had been destroyed and since replaced by three new nations currently ruling the continent. 

From this information, Keina concluded that two hundred years had passed since she had last played the game. She decided her best option was to live on as her avatar, Cayna, and she began contributing to the prosperity of the local village and finding her way forward. 

Then in a nearby forest, she discovered her Guardian Tower, where her Guardian informed her that the rest of the towers were currently low on magic and thereby inoperable, prompting Cayna to boldly set out on a journey to gather information on the players who seem to have abandoned their towers. 

After running into the head of a merchant caravan—a kobold named Elineh—and the mercenary leader (Arbiter) assigned to protect him and his group, Cayna accompanied them to the Felskeilo capital, all the while learning basic knowledge about this new world. 

Cayna then registered as an adventurer and accepted a request to capture a runaway prince. In the process, she got to know Prime Minister Agaido and his granddaughter, Lonti. She also reunited with her children—that is, the sub-characters she had submitted to the Foster System during the Game Era: a handsome elf named Skargo, who had inexplicably ascended to the position of High Priest, the third most influential person in the nation; a gorgeous elf named Mai-Mai, the headmistress of the Royal Academy, who is now married; and Kartatz, a sensible dwarf craftsman and the boss of a large shipyard. For Cayna, who has never dated, let alone been married, having three full-grown children is a source of much confusion. 

Soon after, she confirmed that the Ninth Skill Master’s tower was in the royal capital’s Battle Arena and successfully activated it. After many twists and turns, she at last learned from this tower’s Guardian that Leadale’s service had ended. Despondent that she could never hope to meet any other players, Cayna holed herself up in a barrier of her own making and refused to come out. However, with the encouragement of her children, she once again set out for more adventures. 

She then took a job escorting Elineh and his caravan to the northern nation of Helshper. On the way, she stopped by the remote village and solved a mystery surrounding an odd wail coming from a well. The culprit turned out to be a mermaid named Mimily, who had been swept away from the depths of the sea for unknown reasons. Cayna modified the public bathhouse she had previously built so it better suited Mimily and used the money she earned from solving the mystery to pay for the mermaid’s daily necessities. 

Later on, the caravan crossed the Ejidd River thanks to Cayna’s skills and was ambushed along the nation’s border by bandits from the west. With the help of a beast Cayna had summoned earlier for an unrelated purpose, the group overpowered this threat. Cayna’s magic turned the bandit leader into ice flowers and shattered him to bits and pieces. 

Upon arriving in Helshper, Cayna delivered a letter from her daughter to Caerick, the founder of a large company with branches dotted across the continent. There, she learned another shocking truth: Caerick is Mai-Mai and her first husband’s son—in other words, he is Cayna’s grandson. She further discovered that Caerick has a son of his own, making her a great-grandmother despite having done nothing at all. 

A rift formed between grandmother and grandchild over a slight misunderstanding, leading Caerick’s older twin sister, the knight Caerina, to offer her apologies in his stead. This only bewildered Cayna even more. 

However, upon learning there might be a Guardian Tower in the heart of the bandits’ den in the western continent, Cayna accepted Caerick’s help and prepared an attack. She forced her way into enemy territory and even got Caerina involved, and before long, it came to light that the den leader was a player of the demon race. Enraged by his selfish motives and outrageous actions, Cayna challenged him to a battle. 

Unable to compete against a Skill Master who was going all out, the demon player nearly lost his life, but the Helshper knights arrived just in time to apprehend him. Cayna then used her Game Master privileges to reduce the demon player’s power to a tenth of its former strength, and he wailed with fury as the knights took him into custody. 

Upon arriving at the Guardian Tower and reactivating it, Cayna learned it once belonged to her terrible friend and former fellow guild member Opuskettenshultheimer Crosstettbomber, aka Opus. A small fairy appeared from a book Opus’s Guardian gave Cayna and has yet to leave her side. 

Cayna then decided to invest the reward money she received for expelling the bandits along with her share of the profits from the wildly popular Buddha statues Elineh sold into Mimily’s well-being. When she stopped by the remote village later, she found that Mimily had started a laundry business at Lytt’s suggestion. 

Upon returning to Felskeilo, Cayna took on a request from the Adventurers Guild to obtain meat for a fancy restaurant. Incidentally, she soon ran into Lonti and Lonti’s friend Princess Mye in town and ended up agreeing to be their guard while they accompanied her on her quest. 

Meanwhile, also in Felskeilo, Mai-Mai’s husband, Lopus, attempted to re-create one of Cayna’s ancient arts. However, when he tossed his illicit failure into a Collection Point that had been used in times of war during the Game Era, a giant dolphin-like penguin monster appeared from within. This threat was then dealt with by a captain of the knights known as Shining Saber and an adventurer named Cohral, two former guild members who are evenly matched in skill. 

With the help of the players, the knights, and a team of mages, Cayna successfully contained the penguin monster and used her incredible magic to deal the final blow. 

Running into the two players Shining Saber and Cohral gave Cayna some hope that her partner in crime, Opus, is still out there. Happily killing two birds with one stone, she also obtained information about the next tower. 

She soon returned to the remote village and learned that a group from Otaloquess had arrived as well. However, their quest for knowledge was a mere front; an Otaloquess spy within the group solicited Cayna for information. 

It so happens that Otaloquess’s Queen Sahalashade is a Foster Child who was created during the Game Era by Sahana, a fellow high elf and a little-sister figure to Cayna. Suddenly learning she’s an aunt to the queen brings Cayna further consternation, and she complains that it must be some sort of curse that everyone she knows is an influential figure. 

Exhausted, Cayna promised to take Lytt through the skies as soon as her tower search came to a good stopping point. 

Prologue

The continent of Leadale was surrounded by water on three sides. 

The land to the east had a steep mountain range that protected the continent from invasions. No one had ever seen what lay beyond those mountains, and there were no records of anyone having reached there. According to one theory, a region larger than all of Leadale itself was nestled on the other side, and some scholars insisted that Leadale was merely a peninsula extending from this massive, unknown continent. 

Without any solid proof, such theories were mocked and written off as mere delusions. According to records, some attempted to cross the eastern mountains in the past. However, after they all failed to return home, it was only natural that fewer and fewer people were willing to journey to such a murky destination. The monsters that inhabited the mountains were all incredibly powerful, and many people insisted it was best to give up on the missing, since they’d most likely been eaten. 

A lucky few had likely made it through to the other side. It was possible they never returned because either the trip had been too perilous or life past the mountains was too wonderful to go back. Unable to discern the truth, a hopeless fear of the mountains spread among the inhabitants of Leadale. 

The Ejidd River, which flowed down the mountain range and through the continent, supported the livelihood of the people. It was particularly beneficial to the citizens of Felskeilo and Otaloquess, but its vital contribution to the traffic and trade of fishing resources was immeasurable. One of the river’s tributaries connected to a lake that served as a water source for Helshper’s highlands; the tributary itself provided a means of transportation. 

However, development was rather slow in the region when it came to marine resources. The nation of Helshper looked out on an ocean to the north, but most of its coast was made up of steep cliffs that kept the land safe from invasions and were impossible to traverse unless you had a goat. Fearless adventurers would occasionally stop and collect eggs from magic birds for work, but that was about the scope of things. Even then, only half or so managed to accomplish their task safely. 

Unlike Helshper, Otaloquess was surrounded by wide, shallow beaches to the southwest. The nation was so heavily forested that even the shoreline was lined with mangrove-like vegetation. But although mangrove forests in the real world grow in seawater, Leadale’s mangroves thrived in both fresh and salt water. Their roots provided excellent homes and hiding places for small fish, which in turn attracted natural predators. Eventually, the monsters that fed on those predators gathered in the area, rendering it too dangerous for the average person to traverse. 

Although fields were no longer rife with outrageous monsters that appeared the moment you stepped out of town like they had in the game, several areas still posed a real and credible threat to the people of Leadale. 

Because of the rough terrain along the northern and southern nations’ coasts, fishing was restricted to Felskeilo’s entire western shoreline and Helshper’s southern beaches. 

Then a peculiar disaster struck the two nations’ fishing villages. 

First, a fog enveloped just one village. It was early morning. The villagers who had awoken before the crack of dawn couldn’t hide their surprise. Neither their knowledge of the wind, the seasons, and the temperature nor their many years spent by the ocean could explain the strange fog. 

Just as the dubious villagers were gathering together to talk things over, the thin wisps of drifting fog suddenly grew dense. Unable to see even the faces of their friends next to them, the fishermen panicked at this unforeseen turn of events. They shouted and fled into their respective homes. Some pushed their fellows aside and hid in other people’s homes amid the chaos, but one man made it back to his own house. 

His wife and child saw the odd look on his face and greeted him with concerned expressions of their own. As he quickly stumbled in and shut the door and windows with a tense countenance, the rest of the family finally noticed the strange phenomenon occurring in the village. 

The situation came to light several days after the appearance of this thick fog. A peddler traveling between the fishing village and the capital had come to the village to stock up on dried fish. 

As soon as he arrived, he sensed an eeriness to the silence. Every door in the village had been left open, and he could tell something strange had happened. The man very cautiously searched the area but couldn’t find a single villager. 

It was then that he discovered a multitude of footprints leading from each house to the shoreline. But although he followed them to the water’s edge, no trace of anyone could be found. 

It took several more days for the rest of the country to learn of this event, and by the time any adventurers got moving, they learned that the same fate had befallen another fishing village to the south.