Chapter 23

“It’s no good… It won’t budge!” shouted Kenk. Kenk had fallen onto his backside after struggling and failing to lift even a single stone that covered the stairway entrance. The stone in question was about forty centimeters long and wide, and about twice as high. Naturally that was too big for a normal elementary school student to move, but Kenk’s character in AM was a pure physical build, with enough strength to easily swing a two-handed sword. If Kenk, with all his strength, couldn’t move the stones, something other than gravity was probably keeping them in place. “These stones are probably non-interactable…,” said Sawa, who was standing behind Kenk. She sounded a little more deflated than usual. Although she was still speaking calmly, as Sawa’s twin, Yuuma could sense the impatience eating at her as keenly as if he were feeling it himself. Yuuma was impatient, too. It was already 6:50 PM. In order to get back to the shelter by 7:00 PM, they would need to log out by 6:55 at the latest. “By ‘non-interactable,’ do you mean they’re just part of the terrain now?” asked Kenk, leaning backward to look up at her. Sawa nodded, almost imperceptibly. “Yep. In fact, it’s possible the dungeon doesn’t even exist anymore.” “You’re kidding…” Kenk flopped down onto his back. Yuuma wished she was kidding, but all his experience in gaming led him to suspect she was right. The sprawling dungeon beneath the castle, and the dragon that resided at its bottom level, had all just been temporary objectives for the playtest. It wasn’t hard to believe they would be scrubbed entirely once the service went live. When the playtest ended at 3:00 PM, Nagi was the only one who hadn’t logged out. Which meant she had likely been transported to somewhere else on the map once the dungeon was erased. Transported and, for some reason, unable to use the button in her menu to log out. But why? Maybe she was just experiencing a bug. Or maybe she was unconscious, or worse… Yuuma forced himself to stop thinking that way. He checked the time once more. “What exactly was Sug’s order again?” he asked Sawa. “Let’s see… He was like, ‘Go find enough food for all the students in the shelter. And don’t come back till you do,’” she said, imitating Sugamo’s tone of voice. Kenk, who was still lying on the floor, clicked his tongue in disgust. “What a piece of work. Who does he think he is anyway?” “Don’t ask me.” Kenk and Sawa glared at each other. Yuuma waved his hand in between them to snap them out of it. “In other words,” he said, “Sug never gave us a deadline.” “That’s true… But everyone’s probably hungry by now. Sug can kick rocks for all I care, but I feel bad for everyone else.” Sawa had a point. Yuuma’s and Sawa’s inventories were filled with the packaged baked goods and onigiri they had acquired—or rather looted—from Althea’s vending machines; Kenk’s contained the heaps of dried fruit and meat they had just bought from the NPC merchant. The students in the shelter hadn’t had a bite to eat since lunch, right before the playtest began. They might not be able to hold out much longer. As much as Yuuma wanted to hurry straight back for their sakes, however— “We should at least try to find some clue that points to Nagi’s location…,” he said, clenching his fists. Just then, Niki rushed over. He had been standing to the side with Tomori, who gave him the rundown on everything that had happened so far. “I think I’m up to speed with what you guys went through… I’m sorry to hear about Miura and Moro,” Niki said, looking glum. He sighed, and his expression grew darker. “Two dead in just four hours. We can’t lose anyone else. We need to find a way out of Althea as soon as possible.” “Y-yeah…” Yuuma nodded, but there were two things they needed to do before escaping. The first, of course, was to find Nagi. The second was to turn Sumika Watamaki back into a human. Tomori knew they’d used magic to capture Sumika, but she didn’t know that the magic they had used was the Monster Tamer class ability, Capture—i.e., that Sumika Watamaki had been turned into a monster-summoning card. Since Tomori didn’t know the truth herself, she probably told Niki that they had shut Sumika inside one of the Caliculus capsules on the second floor, just like they had with Yukihisa Miura’s corpse. Yuuma had also asked her to keep the stuff about Valac a secret. Niki had saved them from their earlier predicament. It felt wrong not telling him the truth, but Yuuma wasn’t sure Niki would even believe them if they told him that Sawa was possessed by a demon, and if he did, there was no way of telling how he might react. As for Sumika, he also wanted to keep that situation under wraps as far as possible until they could find a way to turn her back. There was no way to predict what Sugamo would say if word got back to him that Sumika had actually been transformed into a card. Yuuma turned away. Niki patted him firmly on the back. “Don’t worry,” he told Yuuma. “I’ll do everything I can to help find Sano.” “Th-thank you.” Niki had apparently misread Yuuma’s silence. Yuuma was worried about Nagi; that was true. He decided to take Niki up on his offer. “If Nagi isn’t here…the next most likely possibility is a town called Calcina. But even if we leave now, avoid battles, and sprint all the way there, it’ll still take us thirty minutes…” “About that…,” said Tomori. She hesitated slightly before continuing. “I doubt it’ll actually matter if we make it back to the shelter by tonight.” “But…everyone’s probably hungry.” “I didn’t want to say anything earlier, because I’m not entirely sure…but I think Sugamo is actually hiding food, and a lot of it.” “What?!” shouted Kenk. He was still lying near the buried staircase. He flipped over and jumped to his feet, his eyebrows furrowing angrily. “Sug, you piece of crap! Where do you get off telling us not to come back without food when you’ve been hoarding it all for yourself?!” “I don’t know what you think yelling at Tomo about it is going to do,” said Sawa. “Sorry…,” Kenk said to Tomori, but his glower did not disappear. Yuuma was pissed, too, but he took a deep breath before asking, “Shimizu, what makes you think Sugamo is stealing food?” “It’s just…after we fled into the shopping area and set up that barricade, once things settled down a little, Hokari and Sera suggested looking for food. Everyone split up and searched the stores, but…I mean, the gift shop in an amusement center should have stuff like cookies and pastries, shouldn’t it?” “Yeah.” Yuuma nodded. The same thought had crossed his mind earlier. He could even picture it—the packaging, the flaky pastries, the sweet filling. Even his avatar’s stomach was beginning to rumble. A wistful look crossed Tomori’s face as well, but she quickly regained her serious expression. “The only souvenirs we found, however, were things like stationery and stuffed animals. All the shelves in the eat-in corner were empty. Sugamo said they probably weren’t stocking perishables until the official opening, which everyone thought made sense…but while I was searching the store, I saw some kind of light flashing repeatedly, back in the eat-in corner near where Sugamo was at the time. It was pretty faint. I assumed it was just one of the emergency lights flickering, but…” Tomori pursed her lips for a moment and then continued. “Thinking back, it might have been the same effect that shows up when you put items into your inventory… I feel like Sugamo was taking the food on the shelves and putting it into his inventory.” “Huh…?” Yuuma’s jaw dropped. Even if Tomori’s suspicions were correct, there was still a big hole in that theory that needed to be explained. Yuuma tried arranging events chronologically, on both his and Tomori’s side. It was 3:00 PM when the Actual Magic playtest ended abruptly and the game world encroached into Althea. Most of their classmates, including Tomori, had been logged out at that point and exited their Caliculus capsules, which was when they were attacked by Sumika Watamaki and Yukihisa Miura was killed. The students evacuated the playroom in a panic, but the elevators were already out of order, so they were forced to take the narrow emergency staircase instead. The stairs were too crowded, and almost 40 percent of the students wound up fleeing upstairs instead of down. It was around that time that Yuuma, Sawa, and Kenk woke up. Yuuma wasn’t sure why they had woken up later than the other students, but together the three were able to fend off Sumika’s vicious assault and successfully capture her. By the time they had placed Miura’s body in the empty capsule and made their way down to the first floor, the clock had reached 3:20. By the time they defeated the Conehead Bruiser, explored the entrance and backrooms, and finally joined up with the students in the downstairs shelter, it had probably been around 3:50. Which meant that…Tomori and the others must have been searching for food at some point between 3:20 and 3:50. But Yuuma didn’t meet up with them and explain how to upgrade their classes until after that. It had taken Yuuma only about two seconds to work everything out in his head. He spoke to Tomori again. “Shimizu…are you saying you saw the inventory menu before Sawa, Kenk, and I arrived?” “Yes.” “But people didn’t boot up AM and upgrade their classes until after that. The game menu doesn’t even open until you’ve upgraded… While you were still looking for food, no one should have been able to access their inventories, not even Sugamo.” “Unless he’d already upgraded his character class before that,” said Sawa. Yuuma frowned. So did Niki, even though he didn’t entirely understand the situation. He pushed back the long strands of hair that hung down the left side of his face as he spoke, his voice filled with disgust. “If Sawa’s suspicion is correct, that means Teruki had already figured out how to awaken on his own, but he kept it to himself. Exactly what you’d expect from a guy like him…” “Awaken? Is that what you guys are calling it?” asked Yuuma. Niki grinned. “I guess so. And you call it a class upgrade, right?” “Y-yeah.” Yuuma thought Niki was going to poke fun at him for picking such a childish name, but Niki’s face grew serious instead. “I hate to speak ill of our class president, but ever since Teruki was little, he’s always been the type to look out for number one,” Niki said with a deep sigh. “If he thought he had more to gain by keeping awakening a secret from everyone rather than by sharing it, I wouldn’t put it past him.” Yuuma suddenly remembered something that had happened earlier. His eyes went wide. “What is it, Yu?” Kenk stared at Yuuma questioningly. Yuuma turned toward him and held out his right hand to Kenk. “What? You want me to read your palm or something…?” Kenk asked. “No. Back in the shelter, when we were teaching everyone how to upgrade their classes, I cast Skybird, remember? When I did this at Sug, he flinched even though we were at least five meters away. It was like he already knew I was going to use magic.” “For real…? But when everyone’s QRESTs started changing, Sug and Mibs acted just as surprised as everyone else.” “I think Misono actually was surprised. Thinking back, though, Sug’s reaction seemed a little forced…” Tomori nodded emphatically. “I agree. It’s not like Sugamo to make a big fuss in situations like that. If anything, I would’ve expected him to sulk.” “That’s a good point,” said Sawa, her face serious. The light effect that Tomori had seen, Sugamo’s reaction to Yuuma’s outstretched hand, and his exaggerated shouts of surprise—all of that was circumstantial evidence. Taken together, however, things were starting to look suspicious. “Assuming Sug had already upgraded his class on his own and was keeping it a secret from everyone else, it’s pretty likely that the light that Shimizu saw was him putting something into his inventory. And since he was in the eat-in corner at the time, that something was probably food, just like Shimizu said. Still…” Yuuma trailed off. He pictured Teruki Sugamo’s face, then his boisterous laughter as he ran down the hallway on the last level of the old castle dungeon, followed by the cold, imperious look he had given Yuuma during the mock trial, when he had accused Yuuma of being responsible for Takeshi Moro’s death. During the playtest, Sugamo had been his usual self. A little bratty, maybe, and quick to throw his weight around, but still not someone you could really bring yourself to hate. During the trial, however, he had seemed like a different person, cold and mechanical as he laid out his case against Yuuma. Aria Misono (aka Mibs) was basically Sugamo’s girlfriend…but now that Yuuma thought about it, even she had seemed uneasy about Sugamo back then. It was almost as if she sensed that something wasn’t right. “Still…what?” asked Kenk. Yuuma had trailed off earlier. He began speaking again. “Still, even if Sug can be selfish…I never would’ve thought he was capable of hoarding food at a time like this. I mean, maybe he would, given the way he’s been acting lately, but…” Yuuma glanced at Tomori. “If someone saw him putting the food into his inventory, then he obviously didn’t do a very good job of covering his tracks. And after all the risks he took to get his hands on the food, I doubt he’d cough it up now just because everyone’s hungry… How would he even explain what it was doing in his inventory?” “I’m sure he could find a way,” said Tomori. “For instance, he could empty his inventory out in the back rooms and then pretend he had just found it. However…” Even Tomori’s avatar in AM wore black-rimmed glasses. She adjusted them on the bridge of her nose as she continued. “He very well might wait until the last moment possible to share, when everyone’s starting to get desperate…” “…’Cause that’d make him look like an even bigger hero,” Kenk grumbled with a scowl. He glanced down and to the right. “It’s seven o’clock now… I don’t think we have any choice but to head back.” “……Yeah,” said Yuuma, trying to suppress his own disappointment. Not only had they failed to find Nagi, but they hadn’t even found any clues as to where she might be. It was all very discouraging. But the eighteen students back at the shelter—seventeen, not counting Sugamo—were still hungry. They were probably eagerly awaiting the group’s return any minute now. There was plenty of food in Yuuma and the others’ inventories. It wasn’t right to just abandon their hungry classmates in order to focus on their own goals. “We should return to the shelter,” said Yuuma. “After we distribute the food, we can head back out to—” Niki suddenly took a step forward and interrupted. There was new determination in his voice. “I’ll deliver the food to the first-floor shelter. And I’ll let them know you won’t be back for a while. I know I said I’d help you look for Sano, but this sounds like it takes priority.” “Huh…?” Yuuma wasn’t the only one who was surprised. Sawa, Kenk, and Tomori all seemed shocked by Niki’s offer. “But Niki…aren’t you diving in from one of the upper floors?” asked Sawa. Niki nodded slowly. “Yeah. We found a staff break room on the fourth floor and turned it into a shelter. That’s where I’m diving from: Playroom 03.” “The fourth floor…,” Tomori muttered in faint astonishment as Yuuma and Kenk exchanged glances. If Yuuma and the others had just skipped the third floor to investigate the fourth, they could have already met up with Niki’s group in the real world. But there was no point in speculating about what might have been. They had no reason to skip floor 3 when the whole reason they were there was to look for Nagi. Sawa was probably thinking the same thing, but her face didn’t betray any emotion. “Are the fifteen students who fled upstairs all in the fourth-floor shelter?” she asked Niki. “Of course. A few of us suffered minor injuries, but no one got seriously hurt. Or killed.” “I see. That’s good—you’ve got the student council president with you, after all.” In response, Niki’s crooked smile grew wider, more closely resembling the type of smile you would expect to see on a boy of his age. He nodded. “Yeah, Shin always knows just what to do.” The “Shin” whom Niki was so fondly speaking of was Shin Haizaki. He was Yukihana Elementary’s student council president and was said to be the smartest student the school had ever seen. Even Yuuma, who’d barely interacted with Haizaki, felt his heart grow a little lighter from simply picturing the boy’s intelligent, capable face. If they could just meet up with him, he would know what to do. Haizaki was a rock. The one person they could always rely on. “Was Haizaki the one who told you to dive in?” asked Yuuma. Niki shrugged as if he was used to it. “More like he suggested it. Those of us who fled up to the fourth floor were discussing what to do next, and we mentioned how we wished we could get in contact with everyone on the first floor, but we were worried if we went down the stairs, we might get attacked again by Watamaki or some other monster. That was when Shin came up with the idea of having someone dive back into AM and search for other classmates, and I volunteered.” “…” Yuuma didn’t know what to say. He and his party had decided to dive back into Actual Magic only after Valac, the demon possessing Sawa, told them it was fine. They would have never thought of entering the Caliculus capsules again if it hadn’t been for her. Not only had Haizaki arrived at the idea on his own, but he’d even been able to foresee that someone from the other group might do the same. “…But why did you dive in by yourself?” Yuuma couldn’t help asking Niki, as surprised as he was by Haizaki’s shrewdness. “Wouldn’t it have been safer to come with a party of three or four, like we did?” A cynical smile returned to Niki’s face. “Probably, but I was the only one to raise my hand. Besides, not to act all macho or anything, but I can use the Swift Run spell, which means I travel faster on my own anyway.”