Log Horizon - Volume 8 - Chapter 4.5

5 
“Rondarg… It’s the same for everyone.” 
In a fight, he could win. He could send Rondarg to the temple, and he could wipe out ten or twenty black spirits. However, that would be a kind of defeat. That awareness was slowly stealing into Nyanta, awakening a pain so great he wondered where his desiccated heart had been hiding it. 
And so he frantically searched for words that could reach him. 
He thought of Touya. He thought of Minori. He thought of Isuzu and Rundelhaus. 
His thoughts went to the children of the Crescent Moon League. 
Serara’s bashful expression rose in his mind… 
Nyanta remembered all of his young companions. 
“It happens to all children, Rondarg. As far as they’re concerned, people, or at least children, are all brought into life unfairly.” 
Thin lightning bound Nyanta’s arms like briars. His HP bar was falling. 
He didn’t have much time left, and there were only a few words he could get out. 
Nyanta knew that those few words probably wouldn’t reach Rondarg. It would take a miracle to get a message like that through to someone in pain, and unfortunately, Nyanta was only a powerless commoner who was unable to work miracles. 
“There are parents who will tell them, ‘Mew were born because we loved mew.’ Those are very mewtiful words. However, they’re nothing more than self-satisfaction on the part of the parents. They can’t overturn the fact that the children weren’t asked for their consent before being dropped into the world. Some children are saved by them, but others are not… All people receive life that way. In this world, and in our old world, and in every world!” 
So tough it out. 
He couldn’t say that. 
Even if it was suffering that everyone experienced, each separate instance of that suffering was an original, something felt only by that particular person. If someone had said that to Nyanta when he was drowning in pain, he would have responded with his fist, just as Rondarg was doing now. In addition, Rondarg wasn’t the only one raising a fist. 
In that sense, this world was filled with sorrow. 
Rondarg couldn’t be judged by the laws of the People of the Earth. The laws of the Adventurers couldn’t do it, either. Rondarg hadn’t agreed to participate in either group. 
To Rondarg, his own injury and destruction were outside his sphere of interest. Nyanta felt as if he understood that pain. When people lose someone important to them, they lose the world. Nyanta had managed to regain it, but it had taken a long time. He’d also been lucky. 
“Kill me, Swashbuckler! It doesn’t matter if you do it. Death doesn’t exist here. I’ll never end, and even if you can preach at me, you can’t conveniently exile me. Am I wrong?!” 
He wasn’t wrong. 
That was certainly one possible ending. 
There was an abyss in front of Nyanta, a divide. Rondarg’s irresponsible, careless attitude was directed at the whole world. He’d decided he wasn’t a resident of the place any longer. As a result, he didn’t care what happened to himself or it. Of course, to keep his body alive, and to kill time, Rondarg had to do something, and he called those things quests. He’d decided the world was “that sort of place.” For that reason, Nyanta’s words probably wouldn’t reach him. 
However, even if this was the truth as far as Rondarg was concerned, the world held other things. All worlds did. 
Nyanta finally realized the true identity of this twisting pain. 
Rondarg’s suffering and curse were things all Adventurers could experience. Even Nyanta and Shiroe weren’t exceptions. Not even Minori and Touya, Rundelhaus and Isuzu, or Serara, a girl like a place in the sun. 
Nyanta had been searching for words to say to Rondarg, but that hadn’t been all. The root of Nyanta’s pain lay in wondering what he would be able to do for his precious young friends if they were possessed by a similar curse. It was a real possibility. Any Adventurer could become a Rondarg. That was why Nyanta wanted to save him. He wanted him to be saved. 
He remembered Minori. That solemn little girl had resolved to follow in Shiroe’s footsteps. Touya’s resolution was to protect his sister, and Rundelhaus’s was to become an Adventurer. 
Young people were reborn. 
Children who’d been brought into this world unfairly, by force, became young people and resolved to be born again voluntarily. 
They carved their identities on their hearts, were born a second time of their own accord, and began to walk into their own lives as infants. It was a sacred contract, and it had been made by a succession of people. It had linked people together, all the way to the present. 
In order to protect that, Nyanta thought, he wouldn’t mind turning himself into ashes. He would have done absolutely anything for Rondarg, if doing so meant the man would understand that. 
After all, even Shiroe, someone Nyanta liked very much, had concluded that sort of contract and ended up with his own guild. 
However, his wish was in vain. The staff Rondarg brandished emitted a flood of unlimited mana, and half-crazed magic that had abandoned both aggro and control swelled and grew. 
Then, just before it engulfed Nyanta, it vanished. 
“‘Screech, screech, screech.’ Talk about noisy.” 
The military saber that had impaled Rondarg’s neck from the back slid out of it again, and a red-haired woman appeared from behind him. Her eyes were narrowed in a smile. Her expression was cruel and bewitching, filled with joy, yet simultaneously like steel. 
Rondarg’s bloodshot eyes rolled in their sockets. As his body collapsed, he looked up at the woman and seemed to mutter something, but the words came out as a welter of bloody foam. 
The woman looked just a little surprised. As if to prove that the surprise was artificial, her face crumpled, and she spoke downward at Rondarg. “My, my. A message?” There was a viscous, bubbling sound. “Ah, that’s a shame,” she told him. “That’s not a language I know.” Kicking him out of her way, she gazed steadily at Nyanta. 

The way she giggled softly, even though there was no telling what was funny here, seemed to warn of deep abnormality. 
“Aren’t Adventurers great? You can kill and be killed all you want.” 
“Why—?” 
“Huhn? …Oh. I just shut him up for a bit. It’s nothing—just like sending him into the next room. Isn’t that right? For you Adventurers, anyway.” 
“No!” 
Nyanta had shouted it, but he couldn’t prove it. 
Rondarg, whom he’d failed to persuade. The People of the Earth woman who’d killed him. 
In this world, where death did not separate everything, what “wasn’t right”? 
“Whoops, beg pardon. I’m Mizufa Trude, ‘the General Who Dominated the East.’ I’m the field commander here.” 
She was gorgeous, bursting with vitality. 
Her tall, toned body was wrapped in a military uniform, and the saber she held was wet with blood. He was forced to admit that there was a certain beauty about her, although it wasn’t the sort you’d find in a painting. She had looks that might have earned her the envy of the lovely princesses of Eastal, but she warped them with a coarse smile and blocked Nyanta’s way, her attitude suggestive. 
“So mew are Rondarg’s client. Is this how the People of the Earth do things?” 
Nyanta felt as if his body was enveloped in white flames. He couldn’t hold back his hostility. 
In all likelihood, it would have been impossible to persuade Rondarg. Even so, it felt as though the woman in front of him had stripped him of that chance. His irritation was a bit like self-reproach, and it was merciless. 
“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Still talking in your sleep this late in the game… People of the Earth? Adventurers? It doesn’t matter.” 
Nyanta was gritting his teeth, and Mizufa smiled at him, her voice beguiling. 
“Everyone that’s born into this world uses the cards they’re dealt to kill each other. The strong use their strength as a weapon. The weak use their weakness.” 
With that smile still on her face, almost as if this were routine for her, Mizufa slashed at him. As Nyanta parried the saber, his expression twisted in surprise. It was heavy. From the force behind it, it was hard to believe this was a Person of the Earth’s sword. 
“You’re questioning domination and military rule? You don’t even die.” 
“Why do mew want war?!” 
He thought of Shiroe. Of that clumsy young man’s dream. 
Nyanta’s guild master’s oblique goodwill had probably predicted this fight. Shiroe’s insight was correct. Too correct. So much so that even their very best attempts hadn’t been enough to prevent it. 
“I’ll burn my own life with the alcohol of war. Dance, undead Adventurer!” 
“Viper Slash!!” 
He’d intuitively understood the meaning of the word. 
Undead. 
Since they didn’t die, the People of the Earth didn’t even consider them living creatures. 
The name was ominous, but Nyanta couldn’t deny it. 
He couldn’t tell her she was wrong, either. 
However, that had no bearing on the battle. Like a poisonous snake hunting its prey, the Swashbuckler’s sword techniques slipped through Mizufa’s guard, slashing the top of her shoulder open. Nyanta was a veteran swordsman. He was also burning with fury. He had no intention of forgiving this soldier, female or not. 
But Mizufa paid no heed to the blood that dripped from her wound like rose petals. She held her saber at waist level, thrusting and swinging, pressing Nyanta hard. 
“Odysseia’s in that town! That band of suicidal cretins. Spoiled little brats who’ve gone crazy from homesickness. Don’t you worry, they’ll spread death around for you!” 
“Why?!” 
“No need to ask for reasons. If people get stabbed, they die. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! This is amazing! Fantastic! I just might fall for that keen sword of yours. There’s no intent to kill in your blade, though!” 
“Are mew proud of that? Of having the intent to kill?!” 
Lightning sketched a lacy pattern in midair. 
Striking the line of the blade up again and again, burning with white rage, Nyanta aimed for the base of Mizufa’s throat. Early Thrust, launched as a follow-up attack, had already knocked the woman off balance. 
When the world had gone still for the decisive blow, the clash was halted by the hilt of a sword, still in its plain wooden sheath. 
With a deeply troubled expression, the long-haired man who’d come between Nyanta and Mizufa sent both of them flying.