Log Horizon - Volume 9 - Chapter 1.2

2 
The vast sky was high. 
Infinitely high. 
And the sunlight within it was obstinately strong, shining white and bright. 
However, as a result, even though it was still full daytime, the color of that sky was a dark blue that was nearer to indigo than the shade generally termed “sky blue.” It was a hue that seemed to hint at what lay beyond the atmosphere. 
At the far edge of this landscape was a range of hazy, perfectly ordinary gray mountains. This was nothing remarkable; these peaks could be seen from anywhere within the surrounding two hundred kilometers. 
The sunlight was intense, but the wind held a knifelike chill. Considering the altitude, that was only to be expected. 
This place was under the jurisdiction of the Chinese server. 
It was the southeastern portion of a vast region known as Kazakhstan in the real world. 
It was an ancient town called Tekeli. 
In the world of Elder Tales, this area was called Aorsoi. That was the name of the region, not of a country. 
This vast inland area was surrounded by deserts, including the Skull Desert and the Desert of Red Sands. Yet even the areas that weren’t desert were nothing but arid, desolate wasteland. There were very few plants that grew thickly enough to provide a place to hide; the greenery that seemed to cling to the ground only covered the gray-brown earth here and there. This was a transitional region between a steppe and a plateau, and although it was impossible to tell just by looking, since the scenery was similar for as far as the eye could see, the altitude was quite high. 
Even in summer, the hottest temperature was only a bit above twenty degrees Celsius. 
Now, four months after the Catastrophe, when night came, temperatures quickly fell below ten degrees. 
There was a reason “Aorsoi” was the name of a region, rather than a country: Very few people were in this immense area. 
China’s economic development might be remarkable, but that only meant the wealthy class had grown—the majority of it in a few of the bay areas—and reality was still harsh elsewhere. In any case, real-world western China, Kazakhstan, and the rest of Central Asia were most definitely not densely populated. 
Elder Tales had been designed with the intention of having players play on the servers of their native lands, and so an area’s player population was directly linked to the number of Adventurers in that region. In other words, the emptiness of the Aorsoi region was linked to Kazakhstan’s dearth of Elder Tales players. 
MMOs were a type of free-market service, and the amount of resources that would be directed toward development reflected the number of users. 
Kanan Internet Corporation, which ran the Chinese server, had naturally concentrated its development resources on the coastal areas at the eastern edge of the continent, where it had the most users. As stages for fantastic adventures, the Great Wall and the areas around Beijing had also received elaborate designs. 
Meanwhile, Aorsoi had few native users (and they weren’t picky), so it was an undeveloped area that still held only sparse, scattered dungeons and quests. 
However, even in a region like this one, the basic terrain was a faithful re-creation of the real world. In the first place, the basic topography in every area of Elder Tales was real-world topography, gathered from laser measurements taken by drones and satellite photos. 
The intent of this idea had been to reduce development personnel expenses, but the realistic topographic data and the ease with which it captured user sympathies had made it one of the distinguishing features that had boosted Elder Tales’ reputation. 
In Aorsoi, the weather emulator and the Half-Gaia Project—in which real-world Earth was reproduced with its distances halved—had re-created the sights of Central Asia, which had remained unchanged since antiquity: arid land, cold wind, and a sky that was far too blue. 
This beautiful scenery signaled an unforgiving natural environment, and in the post-Catastrophe world, its fangs barred Adventurers’ way with a realism that surpassed reality. 
“Jesus,” Leonardo muttered. He was lying limply in the center of the ruined town of Tekeli. 
This town was his prison. 
Leonardo, who had come to this town through a chain of events, had learned that it had a temple. Temples were game-related buildings that functioned as resurrection points, and there was one in every player town. 
Adventurers who died in Elder Tales were revived at the last temple they’d visited. Even in this world, which had gone mad following the Catastrophe, that hadn’t changed. 
Temples were composed of the resurrection point—meaning the temple itself—and a wider “detection area.” In most cases, detection areas were the same size as the town that held the temple. In other words, the moment anyone entered the town, they were treated as if they’d visited the temple and “registered.” Afterward, if that Adventurer died, they were revived at the temple where they’d been registered. 
Raid zones and high-difficulty dungeons were equipped with these mechanisms as well. In other words, those entire zones were detection areas, and if you died in them, you revived at the resurrection point at the dungeon’s entrance. 
The temple in the ruins of Tekeli was no exception, and its detection area was the entire ruined town. 
At first, Leonardo had been psyched that this temple existed. 
After all, due to those certain circumstances, he’d been traveling through Central Asia, and this temple was a welcome save point. Journeys in this region were merciless and harsh. If he’d died, he would have had to restart his journey from a far-distant place. 
He’d even thought of this temple—which stood right smack in the middle of the wilderness, all by itself—as a divine favor. 
However, the reality was quite different. 

“Dammit… I can’t do a blasted thing like this.” 
Moving sluggishly, Leonardo looked toward the outskirts of town. There was something like a heat mirage there, undulating slowly. 
A Daylight Shade. 
It was a level-52 spirit monster. 
When Leonardo had entered the town and climbed the bell tower at its center, he’d accidentally touched a water mirror. That had probably been the trigger: An event had begun. 
At this point, guessing was all he could do, but it had to be a raid event for level-50 players. The ruins had been surrounded by countless Daylight Shades. 
Leonardo was level 90. 
Bragging aside, as an Assassin, he was top-notch. In close combat with two swords, he was near the top of the national rankings. He was a true New Yorker who lived on Avenue ABC, and as an über-geek who enjoyed Shake Shack burgers every week in Madison Square Park, he’d devoted all his enthusiasm to Elder Tales. 
…Put bluntly, he was a hopeless American fanboy, but his enthusiasm was the real thing. Battle after battle. Junk food and more junk food. Of course, that wasn’t all. He also had those constant companions to online games: trivial gossip and squabbles and cheap melodrama, bragging nonsense stories, the limitless competition to acquire rare items, and a few really important connections. 
Since he was that sort of guy, level-52 monsters weren’t enough to scare him. Not if there were only five or six of them, at any rate. Even if there had been thirty of them, at the worst, he probably would’ve been able to charge through them. 
However, the situation surrounding the ruins of Tekeli was different. Even at a low estimate, there were several thousand Daylight Shades encircling this town. Under the circumstances, no one person, not even a level-90 player, could escape. 
He hadn’t known that at the outset, of course. 
Leonardo had gotten the information by firing himself up to get out or die, plotting his escape, then losing, dying, and finally resurrecting. The town was completely sealed on all four sides. 
The situation couldn’t have been worse. 
Ordinarily, no matter how hairy things got, when a player resurrected, they were sent to a temple in a safe location. Moreover, even without dying, they could get back by using Call of Home. 
However, the ruins had apparently been registered as both a resurrection and a return point for Leonardo. 
As things stood, neither dying nor using Call of Home would get him out of here. 
“…I’m hungry. I want sushi…” 
Sushi was one of Leonardo’s favorite foods, and he wanted it so badly he couldn’t stand it. 
He missed Tasuda in Midtown and Ushiwaka in SoHo. He was partial to tuna with a generous dose of wasabi. No, he wouldn’t ask for that much. At this point, he’d even settle for a sketchy East Village California roll. That was how much he missed it. 
In this world, after the Catastrophe, hunger felt like actual, physical pain. Nonetheless, Leonardo was short on information, and he didn’t know whether starving to death was possible here. He hadn’t seen or heard of prolonged hunger lowering anyone’s hit points and leading to death. 
He still had some rations in his magic bag, but it seemed likely he’d get to run a personal experiment on starving to death in the not-so-distant future. 
“If this were the North American server, at least…” 
If this had been the North American server, Leonardo would have had friends and acquaintances here. His (lucky) friends who’d avoided getting caught up in the Catastrophe were probably still sitting pretty back in the real world, but still, Leonardo was a severe online game junkie, and he had a lot of acquaintances who were as unhinged as he was. 
However, the telechat function couldn’t be used across server boundaries. 
His friend list had still worked after the Catastrophe, but now it was just a dark gray block, without a single lit-up name. That was only natural: Most of his friends were on the North American server, and this was the Chinese server. 
“Holy shit… I can’t deal with this, man.” 
Things had been complete chaos on the North American server, as if somebody had thrown open the gates of hell. Fleeing the panic, thinking he’d find a place to lie low for a while, he’d jumped into a Fairy Ring…and now, Leonardo thought, he was paying for it. 
He had more than five years of Elder Tales experience, and no matter how little he wanted to, he knew: With the amount of combat power he had personally, he couldn’t get through the surrounding Daylight Shades. That said, he had no way of calling for help, and he didn’t have a prayer of getting out of the situation by leveling up or getting an item. 
He’d long ago abandoned the hope that somebody would pass by. 
In the first place, he’d found these ruins by accident. They’d been all on their own, unmarked, in the middle of an immense wasteland, as if they were a prank somebody had pulled. 
Now that he thought about it, he probably should have suspected at that point that there was some sort of quest or event. 
This was checkmate. 
His luck had run out. 
In the center of Aorsoi’s—Kazakhstan’s—blue, blue wilderness, Leonardo had stumbled into a situation where his only hope of salvation was calling the game master. 
Of course, in this world, the GM gods didn’t exist.