Log Horizon - Volume 8 - Chapter 4.8

8 
That world of death was simultaneously unfolding within the sea of trees as well. 
“Kazuhikocchi.” 
“It’s been a long time, Captain.” 
Kazuhiko, a young man who looked like a ronin, wearing an undershirt, a riding hakama, and a sleeveless campaign jacket known as a jinbaori, looked far more mature than Nyanta remembered. The wrinkle between his furrowed eyebrows clearly showed his distress. 
He’d always been a young man with a sense of responsibility. 
Kazuhiko had been the Tea Party’s offensive commander. 
“Out of my way, Kazuhikocchi! There’s something I must set right.” 
“No. I can’t stand down.” 
Nyanta had taken a step forward, and Kazuhiko directed a sharp slash at the ground near his feet, opening a crack in it. 
Nyanta didn’t stop. Glaring, he closed in on Kazuhiko, his former companion, who had changed beyond recognition. Kazuhiko glared back at him with eyes that were just as intense. 
“Are mew involved in this?” 
“My social obligations demand it.” 
Kazuhiko spit the words out. He was the old comrade Nyanta knew, and at the same time, he was a different man. His eyes held a determined will, but they were also dark and dull. He looked like a man who’d charged ahead even though he hadn’t yet sorted things out in his mind, and who carried many scars while he did so. 
Nyanta had heard about Kazuhiko’s current situation from Shiroe, in general terms. 
Shiroe had said he’d taken on the task of making Plant Hwyaden healthy from the inside. However, Kazuhiko’s eyes really weren’t the sort of color anyone could have called “healthy.” They were like a bottomless swamp that had swallowed intense anger and sadness without releasing a single bubble, and yet they radiated a rigid, steely will. 
“You Adventurers are such slugs!” Mizufa interjected with a sneer. “Always so terribly nice. Operation Crimson Night has already succeeded!! This is why you can’t be the heroes in this world. Go on, go sleep! I mean, it’s not like you’ll die, right?!” 
Apparently as far as Mizufa was concerned, Nyanta and Kazuhiko’s chance meeting was just a waste of time. Even as Kazuhiko held her back, she unleashed a slash that used her whole body. 
As he struck Mizufa’s saber away, Nyanta was forcibly separated from Kazuhiko. 
He wanted to interrogate his onetime companion about his real motives, but this female soldier insisted on following him around. 
“You could probably run right through Hades’ Breath and the Nine Great Gaols of Halos, couldn’t you?” 
“I did run through them.” 
The good old Debauchery Tea Party days—those were memories like a bygone summer afternoon. In his memory, they sparkled and shone with exquisite brightness. However, what had been days of adventuring for Nyanta and the others meant something else to Mizufa. She laughed, her beautiful red lips twisting with humiliation and indignation. 
“Ah, yes, I bet. Your sword, your boots, and even your gloves are just dripping with magic. I can feel it! That and the strength of the spirit that fills you from head to toe! People like me don’t have that stuff.” 
Nyanta didn’t understand what her smile meant. 
Nyanta was a resident of Akiba, and when it came to the vicious malice the People of the Earth held, he was as innocent as a child. In the next instant, that fact would be brought home to him. 
It was a scintillating sword dance: 
On one side, Mizufa, a warrior far above the People of the Earth; on the other, Nyanta, a Swashbuckler who wielded twin rapiers and was famed for being the fastest of the Adventurers. 
The battle went on for three rounds, then four. Both sustained shallow cuts, but neither made a fatal mistake. Depending on how you looked at it, they almost seemed like a perfectly synchronized team. 
However, the end came suddenly. 

Mizufa had exposed her white throat to the tips of Nyanta’s blades. 
Nyanta’s swords didn’t stop. The high-speed battle had stolen that leeway from him. Joy had appeared in the woman’s eyes. There was no way he could kill her, and even if she did die, she’d be able to kill Nyanta with her death. She had a strange, malicious confidence that if she died, she’d be able to drag not Nyanta’s body but his spirit along with her. 
In the moment he understood this, fear ran up Nyanta’s back. 
This world was filled with death. 
There were creatures that lived by breathing death. That terror trapped him. 
Just before Nyanta skewered Mizufa’s throat, Kazuhiko, the ally who’d charged through so many raids with him, grabbed his sword. 
“Mizufa. It’s over.” 
The woman had stepped forward in an overly familiar way, and Kazuhiko put out his left hand, stopping her. 
His lips were tense, and only his eyes were turned toward Nyanta. He seemed to be making some sort of appeal. 
“What do you think you’re playing at?! You’re just a guard, Kazuhiko! Did you forget the code of the Ten-Seats?!” 
“Orders from Nureha. Plant Hwyaden just got orders from the very top. We’re retreating. The maneuver’s been canceled.” 
“Kazuhikocchi…” 
Nyanta’s former comrade’s voice was like cold mud. 
The tone of that voice alone was enough to make Nyanta not want to forgive the organization called Plant Hwyaden. 
However, one of the people who led that group was Kazuhiko, and another was Indicus. In other words, Nyanta’s old companions. 
What had happened? 
Loathing for the darkness he’d just touched in the Person of the Earth soldier warred with worry for the onetime companion he was on the verge of losing. 
Nyanta brooded over this, ashamed and irritable. “What is Plant Hwyaden thinking? Kazuhikocchi, what are you—” 
“That’s enough hot air out of you.” 
Mizufa nearly took a step forward, but in one motion, Kazuhiko drew his sword and slashed at her, and at Nyanta, too. The impact of the bright white blade went deep enough to crack the earth. It was probably the Assassin attack known as Extermination, but even to Nyanta’s eyes, its force was far from normal. 
It went beyond the realm of the Adventurers. 
“This could have been much worse, you know.” 
“……” 
Sheathing his sword with a heavy, resonant sound, Kazuhiko turned his broad back on the speechless Nyanta. To Nyanta, it felt like the dark clouds that covered this world had come to his former companions in the Debauchery Tea Party as well. 
“You get by without killing a Person of the Earth, Captain. And…” 
“And…” 
Kazuhiko gave a little smile. It was an ordinary smile, the kind that was heartrending when seen on a battlefield. The wry smile his old friend wore was the same as it had always been. 
It was that smile that stopped Nyanta in his tracks, more than the sword. 
Accepting the smile, like a riddle that had been handed to him with no answer, Nyanta stood stock-still in the forest for a very long time. He looked like a statue, and even after he no longer sensed any humans in the vicinity, he didn’t move. 
Even when the sun set, even when the area sank into darkness, Nyanta couldn’t move an inch, not even to sheath his drawn sword. Even the moon, which rose after a little while, was unable to move him.