In the Land of Leadale - Volume 7 - Chapter Pr

The Story Thus Far

After a terrible accident left her permanently bedridden, VRMMORPG Leadale became Keina Kagami’s only solace. However, she sadly died after a power outage caused her life support to malfunction.

Suddenly, she woke up in an unfamiliar room and was flustered to find she looked just like her high elf avatar from the game. After listening to the young girl Lytt, who had come to wake Keina, and her mother, the inn proprietress Marelle, Keina was shocked to learn that this modern world was Leadale two hundred years in the future. Bolstered by her support AI, Kee, Keina decided to become Cayna and start a new life.

Cayna first awakened her own Guardian Tower then, as per the Guardian’s request, and set off on a journey to awaken the other towers that had fallen dormant. However, her knowledge of this new environment was tenuous at best. And so she learned the ropes from two acquaintances she’d met in the remote village—the caravan kobold merchant Elineh and his guard Arbiter, leader of the Flame Spear mercenaries.

After arriving in the Felskeilo capital and registering with the Adventurers Guild, Cayna ran into a veteran soldier named Agaido and his granddaughter Lonti. They asked her to capture a young boy who was gallivanting around town. The boy and his friends tried to escape by boat, and Cayna drew the citizens’ attention as she chased them across the river on foot. Her main target was a prince who had run away from the castle. Once he was safely in custody, Agaido rewarded her efforts and offered the support of the nobility.

Cayna soon learned that she even had children of her own: the High Priest Skargo, the headmaster of the Royal Academy Mai-Mai, and the master shipbuilder Kartatz. After finally seeing Kartatz, Cayna was glad they could reunite in this world. She told him she was now an adventurer and that he could call on her anytime.

Kartatz used Telepathy to contact Skargo and Mai-Mai and let them know Cayna was in the capital. Although concerned that the eldest son, Skargo, might run wild, Kartatz and Mai-Mai discussed how they could help their mother.

As Cayna grew more familiar with the capital, she met up with Mai-Mai as part of a request from the Adventurers Guild and was shocked to discover her daughter was married.

Afterward, she took on another guild request and set out for the Battle Arena. Her hopeful heart sang when it turned out to be a tower, at least until the smoky Guardian revealed the truth behind its Skill Master’s final words.

Cayna fell into a daze upon discovering she was the last Leadale player in existence, and Skargo rushed to her side with a bevy of skill effects in tow. Nonetheless, his befuddled mother’s fist sent him straight through the ceiling. She locked herself up in an impenetrable barrier, leaving Mai-Mai and Kartatz with no other choice but to collect Skargo and leave.

Afterward, Skargo went ballistic for another reason entirely and enraged Mai-Mai. This sparked a vicious sibling fight and outburst of savage spells. Kartatz, who managed to escape the carnage, tore at his hair and questioned their meaningless suffering when he found Cayna out of her hidey-hole and casually buying food.

After putting Skargo and Mai-Mai’s quarrel to rest with a single knockout drug, Cayna apologized to her children for her absence. Each forgave her with a smile, and everyone vowed to become a family once again.

Cayna then accepted a request from Elineh to guard his caravan, and they set out for the northern nation of Helshper. Mai-Mai, who came to say good-bye, asked Cayna if she could also deliver a letter. Unaware of the chaos this would unleash only days later, the high elf gladly accepted.

On the way, she stopped by a remote village, rescued the mermaid Mimily, who had been lost in the underground waterways, and moved the caravan across a broken bridge with water-walking magic.

Bandits from the west greeted them at the fortress along the national border, but Cayna and the mercenaries defeated them with ease before arriving in Helshper. Cayna then visited a company called Sakaiya to deliver Mai-Mai’s letter. The recipient was its founder and owner Caerick, who was Mai-Mai’s son and, by extension, Cayna’s grandson. A minor clash of opinion caused Cayna to run out of Sakaiya in a huff, and her confusion peaked when she learned that Caerina, a female knight who had been investigating the incident at the border, was also her grandchild.

Cayna stopped by the Adventurers Guild to ask around about the possible Guardian Tower Elineh told her about. It was in a region overrun by bandits, so she sought Caerick’s aid by any means necessary.

She reached the fortress’s front lines, but they were soon attacked by rock golems. Although the Helshper knights’ defeat appeared imminent, Cayna’s intervention saved them in the nick of time. Caerina allowed her to enter the stronghold as a show of gratitude, and when Cayna finally arrived at the tower in question, she fought the bandit leader, who also happened to be a player.

The demon player, adamant that everything was still a game, stood no chance against Cayna. The moment he realized their new world was a reality, he broke down into wailing sobs. She was ready to end him, but Caerina and the Helshper knights vouched for his life at the last second.

In no mood to fight, Cayna handed the demon over to the knights. However, she also placed a collar on him. This item reduced a player’s abilities, and it was here he realized Cayna was a Skill Master.

Inside the tower, the reawakened Guardian threw Cayna for another loop when it informed her that its original Skill Master was Opus. She held tight to the possibility her old guildmate and terrible friend was still alive somewhere in this world.

The Guardian then entrusted a book to her, and a fairy visible only to Cayna soon popped out of it. Opus was growing more enigmatic by the second.

She ran into Kartatz on her way back to Felskeilo. He was in the middle of fixing a broken bridge, so mother and son worked together to finish the job.

After returning to Felskeilo, Cayna accepted a hunting request from the Adventurers Guild and ran into Lonti and her friend Mye. The girls ended up joining the excursion and marveled at Cayna’s many spectacular feats.

Meanwhile, back in Felskeilo, Lopus was desperate to replicate Cayna’s skills and threw one of his failed experiments into a garbage pit. Unfortunately, this was a Collection Point during wartime events in the Game Era. It was also where an enemy known to drop special items spawned. By some bizarre coincidence, the garbage pit reacted to the trash and caused a dolphin-headed penguin monster to appear.

As Felskeilo fell into chaos, two players dashed through the city. Oddly enough, Shining Saber and Cohral were former members of the same guild who had just happened to reunite right before everything went wrong. Cohral shared the knight captain’s sense of duty, and both fought with every skill in their arsenal despite the monster’s obvious advantage. Nevertheless, its powerful counterattack was too great and severely wounded them both. The country’s best mages put up a hard fight as well, but it was no use against such a foe.

Cayna’s Li’l Fairy whispered in her ear and filled her with an ominous premonition. So Cayna dealt with the monster from outside the city. It stood no chance against her unbridled might and instantly vanished in a pillar of fire.

After the incident, Cayna met up with Shining Saber and Cohral. They shared the truth behind Leadale’s fate, and she discovered that the game had actually ended service. Furthermore, Cohral told her there was a sunken Guardian Tower off Felskeilo’s coast. As compensation for the info, she gave them both new skills.

Cayna returned to the village for a bit, and the villagers urged her to live there full-time. She happily agreed and decided to bring it up with the elder. At the same time, she met a group from Otaloquess who were visiting for research purposes.

A pair of adventurer siblings accompanied the group. The younger sister had it in for Cayna, but she took down the werecat with ease. The elder brother, Cloffe, immediately changed his tune upon Clofia’s defeat. He knelt before Cayna as an emissary of Otaloquess and said their queen was her niece. Queen Sahalashade was the Foster Child of Sahana, a former high elf community member whom Cayna saw as a little sister. Refusing Cloffe’s invitation to Otaloquess, she shuddered at the fact everyone she met had deep government ties.

Upon returning to Felskeilo, Cayna decided to join a group of knights heading out to take care of the leftover bandits. Thanks to her overfriendly banter with Shining Saber, however, the knights mistakenly got the idea the two were engaged.

After overcoming an odd incident along the way, Cayna parted with the knights and entered a fishing village enveloped in a mysterious fog. As she walked through the unsettling village that was crawling with zombies, she ran into an adventurer named Quolkeh, who had also come to investigate.

In a small underground cellar, Quolkeh and another familiar face protected a small girl—the village’s only survivor. Cayna had asked the pair for directions in the Helshper guild earlier and realized they were players.

The second figure, a dragoid, was Cayna’s former guildmate back in the game. Exis was his sub-account, but his main identity was a realist named Tartarus. As the two rekindled their old friendship, everyone worked together to protect the young girl. To help them, Cayna summoned a butler named Roxilius as well. The ghost ship and its prisoners were no match against the trio and crumbled away almost instantly.

After releasing the Palace of the Dragon King, that is, the Guardian Tower of the Sixth Skill Master, Cayna decided to take in the young girl who had nowhere else to go. She summoned another assistant, this time a maid named Roxine. Together with Luka and the werecats, Cayna built a new home in her remote village.

As the next chapter of their lives began, Cayna fulfilled her long-awaited promise to Lytt and called upon a summons for a sky tour. Luka and the local engineer’s son, Latem, joined in as well.

As Cayna and the three children took in the scenery around the village, they came across monsters attacking Elineh’s caravan. Cayna mowed these down and pulled the Flame Spears out of a tight spot. She soon realized quest enemies were lurking around the village, thanks to a magical item, and she swiftly destroyed it with the help of Arbiter and the others.

However, the three children ran into trouble when they left the village on their own to make flower crowns. Just as monsters had them surrounded in a flower field, a White Dragon burst from the pendant Cayna gave Luka and came to their rescue. It scattered the enemy as its breath attack carved deep scars across the forest floor. Cayna raced back to the village to confirm that the children were safe.

Later, Cayna headed to Sakaiya for daily necessities and introduced Cohral, who was on a mission for the Adventurers Guild, to her great-grandson Idzik.

Caerick informed her that a meeting would be held on the national border, and Skargo greeted Cayna upon her return to the village. He would be the king’s representative throughout the conference.

Cayna and Roxilius continued bolstering the village’s defenses to the point where even players would suffer instant death.

Cayna brought Lytt and Luka to Felskeilo in hopes of showing them more of the world. Together with Roxine, the girls climbed aboard a golem wagon and joined Elineh’s caravan.

However, the wagon’s uniqueness attracted the attention of troublesome nobles, and Elineh warned Cayna she was being secretly targeted. Amid all this, they arrived in Felskeilo during its annual River Festival.

Unfortunately, the festival couldn’t fully commence, thanks to a large unidentified shadow spotted in the Ejidd River. A blanket of anxiety was cast over the town, and Cayna set out to eliminate the massive shadow on behalf of the Adventurers Guild. After moving into the rental home provided by Elineh’s company, Cayna left the children with Roxine and another summons before investigating the river.

Around the same time, a shadowy organization took on a request from a noble and plotted to abduct Cayna’s loved ones. However, Roxine protected the girls and fended off any who dared threaten them. The thugs scurried back to their hideout only to find terrifying fiends sent from elsewhere waiting for them. The men were then subjected to horrific atrocities and transformed into grisly works of art against their will. Both these grotesque statues and the name of a spine-chilling devil were soon discovered by knights who immediately raised the alarm.

Cayna was then called upon by the Battle Arena Guardian, and when she arrived, she learned the true identity of the unsettling shadow. It was a mobile Guardian Tower that had traveled upstream from the ocean after reacting to her Guardian Ring. Cayna concocted an outlandish plan to keep this white whale tower in Felskeilo and, via her personal connections, sought the aid of the knights and princess.

The ruse was a success, and the white whale tower was enshrined as a divine messenger upstream of the sandbar. With nothing else to fear, Felskeilo’s River Festival finally commenced as the capital was wrapped in an unbeatable energy.

Cayna was enjoying the festival with the children when she stopped by the Royal Academy and got in a tussle with an arrogant young lord. Unfortunately for him, no one stood a chance against a Limit Breaker/Skill Master mage. The man was as helpless as a kitten.

As echoes of the festival rang throughout the night, the noble who had tried to deceive Cayna was attacked by two hell spawn and a demon who decided the man’s fate with a coin toss.

Cayna later visited the workshop on the sandbar to thank Kartatz for the lumber she used to build her home in the village. As the children took in the sights, she found herself with a bit of free time and decided to go fishing. Cayna caught one big haul after another until finally reeling in a chimera-like monster. She defeated this with ease, but the rare ore it dropped told her the creature was an Event Monster from somewhere or other.

Cayna, Roxine, and the girls then ran into Skargo and Cohral on their way back to the village. However, when they returned home, they found Roxilius prostrated in the entranceway, along with a single letter. It had only one command: “Name her.”

Realizing the subject in question was Li’l Fairy, Cayna gave her the name “Kuu,” since she was like a little sister to Kee. When she introduced Kuu to the villagers, she was perplexed to learn that encountering a fairy in this world supposedly brought good luck.

Caerick later called upon Cayna to deal with the rhymestones he sold wholesale. She introduced Kuu to him and Idzik and took on another request that conveniently popped up.

This request was an urgent message from the player Shining Saber. He said monsters were attacking Felskeilo, and she rushed over to help. At the eastern gate, Cayna saved the soldiers being harassed by pteras from the Dinosaur Series. Once these were eliminated, she ordered everyone to evacuate and proceeded to crush the enemy’s main forces.

After mercilessly decimating the invading monsters, Cayna sent Li’l P, the crimson pig, on ahead as a barrier against a flying column that was approaching the western gate.

At the same time, back in the southern nation of Otaloquess, a giant tortoise that served as a popular tourist attraction went haywire and ended up on a collision course headed straight for the castle. Knights and adventurers alike were recruited to deal with the crisis, and the plan was to convince whoever lived on top of its shell to shift the tortoise’s course. Quolkeh and Exis answered this request as well.

While on the job, they incidentally teamed up with an old dwarf named Hidden Ogre, who also happened to be a Skill Master. As soon as they entered the building on the tortoise’s back, the trio was greeted by a TV studio. A delinquent Buddha Guardian then threw them into a quiz game that would test the limits of their sanity.

Although Quolkeh was disqualified, Exis and Hidden Ogre won just in the nick of time and stopped the tortoise from slamming into the Otaloquess castle.

Back in Felskeilo, the city was still under attack, and a unique monster had taken control of the knights. The possessed knights ended up fighting the adventurers, but the latter had long grown sick and tired of their arrogance. With a bit of instigation from Arbiter, the adventurers unleashed their pent-up resentment and incapacitated the knights. Cayna then burst in with Li’l P and annihilated the monster who led the charge.

Skargo had served as a vanguard during the battle, and she later set up a meeting with him.

However, to her surprise, the royal family joined them as well. The king and queen wished to thank Cayna for watching over the prince and princess and defending the capital.

In her hunt for Opus’s whereabouts, Cayna asked Skargo about the Night Sanctuary that Kuu had mentioned, but she was unable to glean any useful information. However, after delving into her own memories, Cayna realized she’d misheard the name and quickly pinpointed the demon’s location. It was a dungeon she had built with Opus in the past to mess with newbie players. The dungeon was currently in Otaloquess, and Cayna was surprised to discover that a village of people eager to dive inside had been built up around it.

After reaching Otaloquess, Cayna ran into Cloffe and Clofia, the werecat siblings she had previously met in the remote village. They accompanied her for various reasons, and together with Kuu, the four entered the dungeon.

Since it had been created with players in mind, the skill-less Clofia was unable to sense danger and was hilariously baptized as she led the way and fell into every conceivable trap. Monsters too powerful for modern-day adventurers began to crop up, and Cayna unleashed her full might.

Clofia was moved by this display of strength, and along the way she learned from her brother that Cayna was the aunt of her beloved queen. Clofia’s attitude did a sudden 180, and her subsequent guilt led her into yet another trap.

To save Clofia, Cayna forced her way through the remaining levels and finally reached the last floor. As she dealt with a midboss demon, a careless comment triggered her trauma. Absolutely livid, Cayna used a multitude of Special Skills to finish him off.

Then, after endless searching, she finally reunited with Opus on the bottommost floor. However, his unbelievably lazy welcome pushed Cayna off the deep end. Together with Kuu, she attacked Opus with the mightiest spell in her arsenal.

Her Special Skills depleted Cayna’s MP and left her in a weakened state. Ironically enough, it was Opus who saved her. They all moved to a hidden house in a corner of the dungeon village, and he left Cayna in the care of his elf maid, Siren, before leaving to take care of personal business.

The person he met in secret was the owner of a tool shop in the dungeon village as well as a former player. The man swore to help Opus someday, and the two parted ways.

Cayna and Opus slowly made their way back to the remote village by wagon, but the demon dropped several shocking revelations along the way.

For instance, there was the fact that the VRMMO Leadale was made specifically for Keina Kagami. Furthermore, soon after Cayna lost her body and came to their current world, she slept in a dungeon for two hundred years before being dropped off at the inn. During this entire period, her soul was being installed into the game system. In addition, Kuu was in charge of the game’s subsystem.

Incidentally, Cayna was suspicious of the familiar relationship between Opus and Kee. Both casually dodged the issue.

Around this same time, Caerina invited the former player and bandit leader who had been sent to work in the Helshper mines to become her soldier.

When Cayna returned to the village, she introduced Opus and Siren to Roxine, Roxilius, and Luka. Siren thoroughly punished the Double Rs for bickering and failing their duties. The elf soon became the head maid of Cayna’s household. The village held a welcome banquet for Opus, and both he and Cayna served as the night’s entertainment.

The next day, Opus told Cayna how the game world had become their current world. Cayna, Luka, and Opus then flew to the demon’s Guardian Tower. Thanks to the benefits of the game system, Cayna confirmed she could add nonplayers like Luka to her party.

When they arrived in Helshper, Cayna and the others received word from Siren that several Helshper knights had come to the village. Cayna reunited with Elineh and Arbiter at the inn and introduced Opus. Cayna set off for the castle, but Opus, Luka, and Kuu went to the Adventurers Guild, where they ran into Quolkeh and Exis. Opus proceeded to torment Exis just like back in the old days.

Cayna arrived at the castle, and Caerina led her to the knights. There, she spoke with the former bandit leader player who said Caerina had offered to make him a soldier. Cayna was summoned to remove his Punishment Collar so he could move freely.

After releasing the collar of the demon player/bandit leader Luvrogue and messing with him out of revenge, Cayna left Helshper with Elineh’s caravan.

She later heard about a tourney and wondered if she could use rhymestones to broadcast the far-off event to the village. She spoke to Opus but was shocked to learn that their guild, which had once stored many useful tools, was destroyed on the game’s very last day of service.