The familiar-sounding bu-bu-buuu! filled in my inner ear, and I instinctively opened my menu and looked at the ‘Group Functions’ menu. When I clicked on it, a list of four names emerged, with a toggleable button next to each of them saying, ‘Show on map’. All of them, except my own, were set to ‘On’. On the list of names were: ‘FrozenFury’, who had the crown next to his name; ‘Aiko’, i.e., me; ‘Unheard Ismael’; and ‘Verdugo’. All of us were on the same Stage: ‘The Fight for Succession’. Like Sunflower had after parting ways with me, I clicked on the Green button next to Fury’s name. It produced a satisfying bing sound, and he looked up at me and smiled. It seemed he too had been nose-deep in his menus when I sent it.
A sound returned in response to my earlier one, like a ba-ding. I opened up my Friendlist and above Sunflower’s name was a new entry: ‘FrozenFury’.
After closing down the menus, I looked at him again.
“So, I just meet you at the end of the Red Fields near the forest?”
“Yeah. If you leave from here when the sun is at its highest, that’d be perfect timing.”
“You wouldn’t happen to know how to ride a horse, would you?” I asked.
Fury seemed to choke on a laugh, but quickly regained his composure when he realised I was serious. “Did you lose the ability to ride one?”
I held up my wrist to show him the symbol. “Not only did I lose it, I gave it away forever…”
For a moment, it seemed as if he was about to scold me for being dumb enough to use a Watcher Ability, but then he just nodded in understanding.
“That’s a troublesome thing to lose,” he started. “If you don’t mind, I can take you there. I don’t have a horse yet but—”
“I have a horse!” I sputtered out loud.
He stopped, then burst out laughing.
After wiping a tear from the corner of his eye, he continued, “Where am I meeting you then?”
“Do you know Koike Rakuen?”
“The crazy-expensive inn? Yeah, everybody knows it. Don’t tell me you actually live there.”
I shrugged and smiled.
After momentarily parting ways with Fury, I returned to the inn. I’ll admit, the excitement got to me, and I basically ran the entire way back. I suppose that my starvation for company must have reached a critical mass for me to act this out of character, especially considering how lonely I’d felt after Sunflower left me just when we’d started to get to know each other.
The negative part of my mind kept telling me they would find a way to let me down, but I pushed it away and tried to focus on being positive. Fury’s apparent interest with myself and Nova was kind of troubling, as it mirrored the obsession I’d experienced in the Forgotten Village, but he seemed like his heart was in the right place, and he wasn’t all touchy-feely, which was always a plus.
I paid the servant a few coins which made his eyes glow and he eagerly handed me the reins. The matron tracked me as I passed by the open front door, the horse trailing behind me obediently.
“Shall we expect you back by sundown tonight, miss?”
“Probably not. I doubt I’ll be back by then.”
“Very well. We shall await your return.”
Sheesh, it’s quite obvious how money can sway people here, especially when someone like me is being referred to as ‘Miss’, but… I don’t hate it.
As I was walking the reluctant horse with me across the large intersection of the two wide roads, Fury came running from across the way. He was clad in bright-red Samurai armour from head to toe, like the type I’d seen on the Vermilion Samurai Nobushige, though his helmet was a bit different, as it was smaller and had a single horn on the left side of his temple, kind of like a demon’s. Similarly to Nobushige, he didn’t have a mask that covered his face, which would make him easy enough to recognise in battle, well, that and his colourful hair poking out under the helmet.
“You actually weren’t joking,” he commented when he saw me. I quickly passed him the reins before the horse tore it out of my grip. It seemed that not only had I lost the ability to ride a horse, but horses now also hated my guts… Amazing.
“How much is it per night?” he then asked.
“It’s nine Shu for two nights, so… four Shu and one-hundred-and-twenty-five Mon for a single night.”
He shook his head, making his helmet wiggle around comically. “I suppose if you speed through every World, you may as well spend your money on the frivolous.”
Since I was still wearing my kimono, I quickly swapped back into my armour and cape.
Fury took one look at me, then asked, “Don’t you have a helmet?”
“No, should I get one?”
“There’s no time for it now, but for the future, yeah, definitely. A blow or strike to the head can kill you instantly.”
I immediately thought back to how Nobushige had given me a concussion with a blow to the head. I should’ve thought of this… I scolded myself.
After Fury awkwardly helped me onto the back of the horse and then climbed up himself, we immediately set off towards the Red Fields.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Before reaching the Slums, the sun above was nearing its zenith and the red rain was making its debut for the day, as though the clouds above were afraid to miss a single afternoon where they didn’t terrorise the lands below.
Wind rushed through my hair and my cape fluttered behind me like a sail ready to unfurl and catch the wind. Despite the wind, Fury’s tornado swirl seemed immovable, as though a gallon of hairspray had been poured onto it. The horse galloped relentlessly, as though my excitement had spread and infected its mind. And though I was sure that the trip lasted over an hour, time passed in an instant and I soon saw the crimson sea of wheat and rice before me, swaying back and forth like gentle waves.
I was ready for the banner to appear and warn me of another ‘Emergent’ Stage, but it never came, and as I neared the end of the Red Fields, where the ground before the forest remained untouched by farmers, I saw two horses and their riders standing in front.
In front was a tall thirty-something-looking guy with a yellow-tinted light-brown complexion, reminiscent of the people native to Middle and Southern America. His hair was dark, almost coal-black, and his thick eyebrows matched the moustache on his upper lip and the beard that framed his chin dramatically. Based on his grim attire of a darkened breastplate, forearm-guard, and greaves, as well as the dark clothes underneath, I immediately assumed this was Verdugo, which was Spanish for “Executioner”. He was helmless, and I thought his swept-back hair almost made him look like an Italian mobster. For some reason, I knew what a mobster looked like, which surprised me, considering the many things I apparently didn’t know. On his back was a long bronze-tipped spear, and the edges of a round, bronze-faced, hard-leather shield poked out. The spear-and-shield combo was peculiar, as that wasn’t something I’d encountered in either of the two Worlds yet, and seemed more like it belonged to some kind of Greek or Roman inspired World.
Maybe he bought those from another player? I wondered to myself, since I knew there were craft-skills that allowed people to produce armour and weapons.
The other was a young guy, perhaps late teens or early twenties, with a mix of Middle-Eastern and South-Eastern Asian complexion. His face, even though it was sullen and bored, had bright eyes, and his big ears made him seem charming and youthful, especially compared to the brooding dark tower next to him. His armour was medium-weight soldier’s gear originating from the Forlorn Kingdom. It consisted of a blue tabard and chainmail over a thick woollen shirt, with the chainmail extending down in a sort of triangle to cover his waist and upper legs. He wore greaves and metal boots, which reflected the sun like a mirror in their pristine polish. Of the three of them, he was in the middle in terms of armour class, whereas Mister Darkness[1] was light-weight and Fury was heavy, though not as heavy as Kerebor had been in his silvery platemail. The last guy, who I assumed was Ismail, though that was only based on my assumption that the sinister man next to him was Verdugo, had a large Yari spear on his back, and, although there was a clear mix of themes going on, it wasn’t an unknown weapon at least.
When Fury dismounted, it surprised me to see that he was equipped with two swords, in the true Samurai Daishō style of one long and one short Uchigatana. He was truly acting the role of a Samurai, whereas the rest of us were a scattered mix of various origins.
“We’re all finally here,” Fury announced cheerfully. I wondered just how long they’d been looking for a fourth person. After I clumsily got off the horse, who almost brained me with a backwards kick, Fury pointed to the man in black next to him, “This is Verdugo,[2] and that’s Unheard Ismail.”
“How do you do?” I greeted the both of them.
They were both speechless.
“D-d-d-d-d-d,” Ismail stuttered incredulously, “Do you know who that is??”
Verdugo just stared at me with his dark foreboding eyes.
“You can call me Aiko.”
“But everyone knows her as Raven-Black,” Fury said, proudly.
I should’ve dumped the cape…
“I can’t believe the rumours were true,” Ismail finally said, his eyes were glued to my cape as it waved around carelessly in the easy wind.
“You found someone strong,” Verdugo stated. He’d clearly been the one demanding that not just anyone joined their team, which immediately made me assume that he was the overbearing type, you know, the kind of person that holds everyone to very high standard. We’d just have to see whether he held himself to that standard as well.
“Is everyone ready?” Fury asked democratically. He was the leader, so he could just decide that we were, but I was glad to see that he remained amiable and easy-going.
Everyone nodded in agreement and once the two of them had mounted their horses and Fury helped me up on mine, we started our journey into the Nijigahara forest. It was slow going at first, as if the three of us were all trying to match each other’s speed, but then Verdugo pulled ahead and we sort of just fell in behind him.
The trees and plants passed by in a disorienting blur of rainbow hues that quickly swirled together before my eyes and made my head spin. Before I lost my balance and fell off my horse, I fixed my eyes on the back of Fury’s bright-red Dō, which almost seemed to cast a trail behind it while the surroundings melted and deformed in the corners of my eyes, as if I was trapped inside some kind of possessed kaleidoscope and his burning trail led to freedom.
“I hate this forest,” I heard Verdugo grumble from the fore of our small train of horses, while clutching his head.
As I’d experienced before, time inside the forest seemed to pass much quicker than expected, and soon we found ourselves reaching the point where trees gave way to open land, which, as soon as my eyes took in the view, set my heart pounding in an excited flutter. Where the land was divided with the pale tree as its middle-point, Vermilion and Azure camps had been erected on either side, and already now the sounds of fighting in the distance were audible from where we watched. The pale twisted tree on its solitary hill was like a guardian that observed the death all around it, as neither army currently had the upper hand in battle.
For a moment, I panicked when we began veering left towards the eastern Vermillion camp, but then I realised that we were in Fury’s version of this World, where the events I’d witnessed and taken part in were no longer real, and where he’d shaped the story in a completely different way. In his World, the Vermilion had dealt with the Weeping Blade, conquered Kakon-shi, and ended the threat of the White Wolves. Part of me was sad that I wouldn’t be able to join Lord Mitsui and Hayato in battle, and a tiny part of me was afraid of what would happen if I met them face-to-face. Would I hesitate to deal the killing blow?
I was pulled from my reverie by the sound of a thousand arrows taking to the air, and we all witnessed the golden swarm of lights flying from within the Azure camp and raining down on the Vermilion army. For a moment, the battle froze as both Red and Blue fighters waited for what came next, and then, like the clap of thunder, a hundred men fell and the Azure soldiers flooded past the middle-point and pushed the Vermilion footmen back towards their camp.
“Holy shit, what was that??” Ismail and Fury exclaimed almost simultaneously.
“Lady Seiryū,” I responded.
They both twisted in their saddles to look at me[3], and it was clear to me that Ismail had also teamed up with the Vermilion Bird. Verdugo showed no interest, as though it wasn’t anything noteworthy, and he just kept on galloping towards the camp with its black banners and bloodred insignia.
“Now entering Stage ‘The Fight for Succession’.” A melody of drawn-out low-octave horns coupled with some manner of string instrument, perhaps a violin, and the lazy beat of drums in the background, created a tense feeling in my body that made my chest tighten itself into knots and caused adrenaline to rush into my bloodstream.
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[1] Pot calling the kettle black…
[2] Knew it!
[3] This was awkward, because I was gripping Fury’s waist, so, when he turned, I feared I might fall off the horse.