Log Horizon - Volume 9 - Chapter 2.3

3 
Thekkek was a small village that had been built in the wilderness. 
Naturally, its main street wasn’t even two kilometers long. Elias and Leonardo, who had Adventurer leg strength on their side, reached the site of the dust cloud in the blink of an eye. 
“Hold it, time out!!” 
Kanami had been blown in Leonardo’s direction. For a moment he considered ducking, but no matter how mouthy she was, Kanami was a girl, so he thought better of it and caught her. However, she was moving as though she’d been hit by a dump truck, and after catching her under his arm, Leonardo immediately tossed her aside. 
“What do you think you’re doing, Croakanardo?!” 
“You’re fine. I killed your momentum, so it’s not like you got hurt.” 
Raising his blades, Leonardo glared at the building up ahead, which was something between a shed and a stable. He couldn’t provide a more specific guess than that because the building was already broken so badly that it was practically a ruin. 
Some enormously strong being had gone on a rampage, snapping pillars, bursting through walls, and sending Kanami flying. 
Next to him, Leonardo saw Elias level his transparent two-handed sword. His expression was tense, too. 
“Lady Kanami, what’s over there?” he demanded. 
“It looked like a little boy, maybe?” 
“What?” 
“It looked like a little boy.” 
That was as far as the answer went. 
With a roar, the shed collapsed in front of them. Something came flying out of the cloud of dust and crashed right into Elias. The People of the Earth, who’d dashed out of their houses to see what all the noise was about and were hanging back at a distance, screamed. 
The thing that Elias had blocked with his sword was a lone boy. 
His clothes and height were unremarkable, no different from the other children in this village. However, his expression was warped with insanity. With his teeth and hands, he’d stopped Elias’s sword as he crouched in a beast-like stance. 
Elias had frozen up in astonishment. Taking advantage of the opening, the boy intentionally lost his balance, then flew into the swordsman’s chest with the speed of a black gale. 
Their brief crossing opened a big tear in the pure white coat Elias wore. 
Elias belonged to the renowned Knights of the Red Branch, and the lustrous garment was practically his trademark. At first glance, the cloth looked smooth, but it had outstanding resistance to blades, and its defense was higher than mediocre metal armor. 
However, the boy had ripped that coat easily. He licked his long, overgrown nails. 
Through the slit cloth on Elias’s chest, a faint wound was visible. 
“Eli-Eli, you okay?” 
“I’m fine, Lady Kanami. More importantly, that boy is—” 
Without giving them time to talk, the boy leapt at Elias again. He moved with the speed of a wild animal, bending low. It wasn’t the stance of a bipedal being; it belonged to a quadrupedal beast. The black shadow shifted through mesmerizing changes in course, as if he were gripping the ruined ground with his feet, and launched himself at Elias from an unexpected direction. 
“No!!” 
At Kanami’s cry, Elias flipped his blade over. 
The transparent two-handed sword interrupted its trajectory partway through, then swung down like a giant club. The boy leapt backward, away from the swing, but it hadn’t been the sort of attack that would wound him, so he seemed unfazed. 
“Croakanardo…” 
“I know.” 
Ignoring the fact that she’d called him by that rude nickname, Leonardo picked up on what Kanami was trying to tell him: 
The boy’s status. 
His name was Sejin. His level was 34. 
…And his main class was Gnoll. 
It was impossible. 
Gnolls were a type of malicious monster. They were a vicious race with doglike heads and small, round ears. They behaved like hyenas, hunting in packs. 
They were highly intelligent, and they used leather armor and one-handed weapons. They were a type of monster known as demihumans, and they walked upright as a rule, but when fighting or traveling for long distances, they ran on all fours. 
There were many similar monsters in the world of Elder Tales. Goblins, orcs, and lizardmen were the famous examples, but bugbears and kobolds existed as well. All of them were formidable enemies who built communities and menaced Adventurers in groups. Gnolls were one of the obstacles encountered by midlevel Adventurers. 
Naturally, Leonardo had fought them before and was well acquainted with them. But gnolls did not look like this. They had thick hair all over their bodies, were dappled with sinister spots that were a color somewhere between gray and brown, and had shining yellow eyes, as if the moon had been set in their eye sockets. 
They certainly didn’t look like People of the Earth, and they couldn’t mimic their shapes. 
The deciding factor was that the boy’s—Sejin’s—status column was blinking. The “Gnoll” main class blinked repeatedly, switching with “Settler,” and the level flowed back and forth between 34 and 2. 
“What’s happening here, Sir Leonardo?!” 
“Don’t take him down!” 
Leonardo yelled back, responding to Elias’s question. 
However, he didn’t know what they should do, either. 
Level 34 wasn’t very strong. 

Elias had taken those two attacks simply because he’d been caught off guard and surprised. If he decided to take the boy down, it wouldn’t be hard to destroy him. 
Elias’s quirk might not let him finish the boy off, but he would probably still be able to drive him into immobility. 
Leonardo was sure he’d be able to kill him with a few attacks. Now that the dust had cleared, those rapid movements weren’t so fast as to be untrackable. 
That wasn’t the problem. 
“What the heck is this kid?” 
“You don’t know, Croakanardo?” 
“No, I don’t. Wait, do you know, Kanami?” 
“If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking! Geez!!” 
Leaving the useless Kanami, Leonardo ran toward the boy. Possibly out of feral caution, the boy didn’t want Leonardo getting anywhere near him; he leapt back five meters. However, Leonardo’s physical abilities had already completely locked onto his movements. 
Easily matching his trajectory, Leonardo drew his twin swords in midleap. 
“Don’t! Leonardo—!” 
“Don’t be an idiot. He’s an enemy. If this keeps up, we’ll have victims over here!” 
Using the motion of his bending body, Leonardo slashed at the boy’s torso with the sword in his left hand. He’d gone for the biggest target, and it had been a straightforward attack. No matter how the boy dodged, it would hit home. The attack wouldn’t be lethal, but it had sharp fighting spirit behind it, and it was bound to inflict great damage on Sejin. 
“Gishaaaaa!!” 
The boy gave a bestial scream. He hadn’t avoided Leonardo’s sword. On the contrary: He’d slammed his right palm vertically into its path. Leonardo had no time to brake the motion; the sword bit into the boy’s palm, splitting it in two, then cut its way through his arm, his elbow, and even his forearm. 
The sword stopped when it reached his shoulder, but the boy was no longer a two-armed creature. He was an animal with two useless cords hanging from his right shoulder like ragged rubber tubes. 
“Gishaa-shaa-shaa-shaa!” 
Bloody spittle bubbled and dripped from his mouth, and his breathing was harsh. It wasn’t possible to call him a Person of the Earth anymore. 
The throng of villagers gave heartrending screams and averted their eyes. 
At this point in time, there was no way to tell whether the boy was from this particular village or an intruder from elsewhere. That was probably all for the best. The sight was so horrible that, if the boy’s mother had been here and had recognized him as her son, her heart would have been irreparably wounded. 
Make him stop moving… 
Leonardo steeled himself. 
He hadn’t been holding back with that last attack, but he hadn’t attacked in earnest, either. With his next attack, he’d overload the boy’s motor nerves. It was Paralyze Blow, a paralysis attack. If that didn’t stop him, he wouldn’t hesitate to use Sweeper. 
Having made up his mind, Leonardo wasn’t startled by Sejin’s surprise attack. He calmly stepped back, then slammed a front kick into his stomach, shoving him away. He even had the leeway to call to Elias, who’d circled around in front of the boy, who had been about to attempt an escape. 
“Elias! Toss ’im over here!” 
“Understood! Haaaaaah! Arm of the fairy of black night! Night Splash!!” 
The boy had been flung into the air like a soccer ball, but using his feral sense of smell, he sniffed out his prey. When he slammed into the earth, he used the rebound and ran, staying very close to the ground. He sprinted, becoming a gust of black wind. 
He was heading for Coppélia, who’d finally appeared, pushing her way through the shapes that had gathered at a distance. 
When he saw the black shadow making for the unexpressive Coppélia’s small, kind figure, Leonardo abandoned all attempt at control. With a speed that must have looked like teleportation to the bystanders, he closed in on the boy’s neck. 
In the midst of a moment so slow that even sound grew viscous, Leonardo saw a shining blue dead point on that neck. It was the marker for Sweeper, an instant-kill attack. If Sejin’s level had been 70, things might have been different, but at 34, it would be unavoidable, a grim reaper’s scythe. 
“Hah!” 
However, without giving an exaggerated yell or calling out the name of the lethal move, Leonardo selected Paralyze Blow. He knew this adversary was an NPC. He also knew he was averting imminent danger here. Even so, when Leonardo thought about lopping that head off, about forcing Coppélia and his traveling companions to see something like that, he felt a terribly visceral, unpleasant sensation that made his face twist. 
Fortunately, the boy fell as if he’d been glued to the ground. 
His motor nerves had been paralyzed, but he seemed to be trying to force himself to move anyway. His body spasmed over and over, like an insect, and Leonardo swiftly held him down. A muffled groan came from the boy’s throat. 
Now that he’d restrained him, the boy was pitifully small, just a kid with a dark Aorsoi tan and the thin, sharply planed face unique to the People of the Earth who lived in this region. There was something ominous and gruesome about the fact that a boy like that was lying as paralyzed as a broken machine, a ferocious expression on his face. 
“Coppélia…” 
“It is all right. Coppélia is aware of the situation.” 
Kneeling beside the boy, Coppélia chanted a recovery spell. 
It wasn’t clear what she meant to do by recovering him, but the moment she approached, the boy seemed to change. As if afraid, or maybe agitated, his spasms grew more intense, and although he couldn’t speak, his faint, failing breath escaped his throat in gasping wheezes. 
“Seven bells, white wings deserving of praise, use pealing fortune to do the will of the Lord—Sacred Cure.” 
In a quiet, murmuring voice, she healed the boy’s paralysis. 
The boy’s insanity couldn’t have been a regular status abnormality; it hadn’t been a familiar effect like paralysis. It had to have been something more terrible and mysterious. Yet even so, Leonardo’s misgivings aside, the ferocity drained from the boy’s face. 
As Coppélia observed him calmly, one hand on his forehead, the boy’s breathing gradually quieted, growing regular. The bestial aura that had been there a moment before was gone. 
“Did you…save him?” 
Kanami asked what was on everyone’s mind. 
Coppélia responded to those words with a nod, then swept a hand through empty space. 
Leonardo thought he glimpsed a jet-black shadow that Coppélia’s fingers whisked away, but a moment later, all that remained was the cold, clear Aorsoi wind. It was as though nothing had happened at all.