Infinite Dendrogram_Volume 2 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Color Illustrations

  Prologue: The Emotions of the Dead

  Chapter One: A Morning in Gideon

  Chapter Two: Back-Alley Cliché

  Chapter Three: A Maiden’s Master

  Chapter Four: The Two Leaders

  Chapter Five: Revenant Ox-Horse

  Chapter Six: Beyond the Radix Point

  Epilogue: A Morning of Smiles

  Conjunction Episode: The Night Before

  Afterword

  About J-Novel Club

  Copyright

  Prologue: The Emotions of the Dead

  Kingdom of Altar, Cruella Mountain Belt

  To the east of Gideon — the second largest city in the Kingdom of Altar — there was a mountainous area known as the Cruella Mountain Belt. It was the kingdom’s border with Caldina — a country of expansive, desertlike wastelands.

  For years, this border area had been a popular place for bandit gangs and their hideouts. Even if some group on a quest from the Adventurers’ Guild eliminated one of them, they would soon be replaced by others.

  There were two reasons for that.

  The first was that the kingdom couldn’t do any widescale and thorough bandit hunts due to the possibility of the neighboring country of Caldina seeing it as an act of war and thus provoking them.

  The second was that the belt was on the primary trade route between Gideon, one of the kingdom’s largest cities, and Caldina — a nation known for its mercantilism. A bandit couldn’t ask for an area more plentiful with prey. Thus, the bandit problem in the belt was neverending.

  However, it actually wasn’t a bad thing for the Adventurers’ Guild.

  The new bandit gangs were always made up of people who went broke and got reduced to brigandry. Their jobs were low-rank and their levels weren’t even maxed. Most active adventurers could eliminate them without much effort, and since it was a net positive for the adventurer economy, the guild wasn’t averse to the idea of the problem’s continued existence. The only real victims were the peddlers unfortunate enough to be marked by the brigands.

  However, at one point, this bandit problem — already reeking of bloody money — took a turn for the worse.

  One of the bandit gangs started kidnapping children from Gideon and the nearby villages.

  They demanded ransom money for every child, and those with unpaid ransoms were simply never returned. Some relatives didn’t get their children back even after paying, while others only received shredded pieces of their corpses. It all seemed like a sick joke.

  Naturally, the parents of the children requested to have the Adventurers’ Guild eliminate those bandits, and, of course, the guild accepted it.

  The officials of the Adventurers’ Guild believed that the kidnappers had someone particularly powerful among them. Thus, they gathered and dispatched a party made up of several excellent tian adventurers. It was a group that could even fell a Pure Dragon.

  Everyone believed that — regardless of whether the kidnappers had capable people among them — the party would eliminate the bandit gang and bring back any children that were still alive. The party members themselves were certain of that, as well.

  The party’s leader — famous for his dashing looks — set out on the quest while waving goodbye to the people seeing him off. The intrepid smile on his face made everyone — the guild’s officials, other adventurers, and, of course, the inhabitants of Gideon — all the more certain that they would return successful.

  The following day, the leader’s half-eaten face was placed outside the steps of the guild hall. It was accompanied by a paper saying “Seconds, please,” along with a number of small fingers, one finger for every kidnapped child.

  Though perplexed by this unexpected turn of events, the Adventurers’ Guild quickly made their next move. Their plan was to gather several adventurer parties and annihilate the bandit gang through human-wave tactics. Among the adventurers — numbering nearly a hundred — there were even some Masters. The guild’s Masters were absolutely certain that they would emerge victorious.

  Three days later, a resurrected Master came back to report what happened. “They killed us all. It just can’t be done,” he said.

  According to him, most of the enemies were absolute weaklings, but two of them were ridiculously strong.

  One was a horse-man undead, while the other was a large, ox-headed man. Their power was far beyond that of normal tians, and it was fair to say that they were what had killed most of the adventurers.

  With that report, the guild’s master realized that this wasn’t a job for adventurers. He contacted the knights responsible for the area around Gideon, but the army couldn’t act due to the area being close to the border with Caldina.

  Even Gideon’s local champion — Super Gladiator Figaro — rejected the request, despite being able to take care of the matter all by himself.

  The Adventurers’ Guild had exhausted all their options, leaving them unable to do anything. Every now and then, some stronger sorts would accept the request and head out to eliminate the bandits, but they would always end up as corpses and were sent back to the guild along with fingers of the children.

  This tragedy continued for a year, and the Adventurers’ Guild eventually stopped making the request appear in their catalogs.

  Thus, the bandits in question — the Gouz-Maise Gang — were still active in the Cruella Mountain Belt.

  ◆

  It was happening in the gloomy cellar of an abandoned fortress.

  “Third this month. Payment received. No relevant materials. To be returned.” The man mumbled something while looking at an old desk in a piercingly-cold room thick with suffocating moisture.

  “Fourth this month. Payment not received. Relevant materials found. Turned to materials.”

  He looked through the documents, spoke those words, and wrote something down on the ledger in his hand. It was much like a ledger one would use in a business, and the one under his hand wasn’t the only one on the table.

  Gloomy as the idea might’ve been, it seemed as though he had only placed them there just for the sake of having them around, and the man wouldn’t deny that idea.

  “Fifth this month. Payment received. Relevant materials found. Head to be returned after turning to materials.” With those words, the man stood up and walked to a neighboring room.

  The way he walked was curious. His upper half was that of a human, but the bottom half was that of a horse. The man was a humanoid creature known only as “horse-man.”

  Just as there were human-horse mix monsters known as centaurs, so there were human-horse mix humans known as horse-men. An average monster would have its name pop up above its head, but that didn’t apply to the man.

  Therefore, this horse-man was, in fact, humanoid...

  ...regardless of just how inhuman his appearance and mental workings were.

  “This is the one,” he said.

  The room had cages in it, and inside there were a number of small animals. They were the man’s commodities. The small animals were all asleep and thus completely oblivious to the man’s presence.

  The horse-man removed the small animal from the fifth cage and placed it on the stony floor of his own room. On the floor, there was a magic circle the man had drawn. The man fixed the shackles, which were chained to the floor, on the small animal’s limbs. He took out a black crystal.

  “______”

  As he whispered something, the magic circle began to shine, and it released small amounts of purple lightning.

  At the very same moment, the small animal woke up.

  “GYAAAAHHHHH!”

  The shriek t
hat escaped its mouth was thick with anguish.

  It tried to raise its body up, but the manacles binding it were not so accommodating. As the metal on its limbs tore through its skin, the small animal’s body spasmed and hit its back to the stony floor in a futile attempt to break out.

  This continued for a long five minutes...

  “Mo...mmy...”

  ...and at the end, the small animal — the miserable little human child — breathed its last.

  “This is less than I expected,” the horse-man said, looking at the crystal in his hand.

  Then he cut off the corpse’s head with a large blade he had prepared, stuffed it into a bag, and threw it into a basket that said “To be returned.” The rest of the body was carefully put into a container saying “Materials.”

  Then — as if what had just happened was nothing special — the man returned to the table and continued filling in the ledger.

  No one who knew the ledger’s contents would ever compare it to those used in business. At this point, it was nothing but a cursed book containing the fates of countless children.

  “Sixth this month. Payment not received. No relevant materials. Dispose. Gouz!”

  In response to the man’s call, something within the darkness began to move. “Ahh...”

  The creature referred to as “Gouz” — a large man with an ox’s head and demonic fangs — reached into one of the cages and grabbed a little girl by her arm. She was sleeping and continued to do so even as he dragged her across the floor.

  Many would say that she would’ve been better off if she continued sleeping. However, Gouz didn’t allow that. Gently — like a parent or a close friend — he tapped on her cheek.

  The little girl stirred and woke up...

  “They taste better when they’re scared, y’know,” he grinned.

  ...and her flesh was rendered from bone. Eaten alive.

  By the time Gouz was done with his snack, the horse-man was done filling in the ledger.

  “Gouz, don’t make such a mess,” he said.

  “Gahahah!” the ox-head laughed. “Maise, this place is basically painted with the brats’ blood and other fluids! I couldn’t make it worse if I wanted to!”

  “I’m talking about your saliva. It reeks.”

  “That so? Well, I’ll try to be careful, then.”

  The horse-man — Maise — sighed at Gouz’s half-hearted and unreliable response and changed the subject.

  “That’s today’s set done,” he said. “Gouz, after we go through tomorrow’s set, we’re leaving this place.”

  “Huh? We are?” asked the ox-head.

  “Yes,” answered the horse-man. “That event is starting in Gideon in just two days. Some of those who will gather for it might try to eliminate us. It would be far too troublesome.”

  “Masters, huh?” sighed Gouz. “Why not just kick their non-serious asses?”

  “Because we can’t,” curtly replied Maise. “We could handle those with high-rank jobs, but Superiors and their Superior jobs would be far too challenging. Also...”

  He momentarily stopped talking, merely to emphasize the words that followed.

  “...they stand where we are aiming for.”

  Maise’s words — which had some sort of certainty to them — made Gouz laugh out loud. “Gehahahaha! You’re not wrong there.”

  “Ah, it just hit me,” added the ox-head. “You said we’re leaving, but what about our underlings? There are, like, a hundred of ‘em, and they’re still working hard getting the brats and whatnot.”

  Gouz’s question made Maise’s eyes — empty sockets where a wisp-like fire popped up and disappeared — light.

  “We’re taking them with us, of course,” said the horse-man.

  “Gahahah! Hope they all fit!”

  Gouz was a man-eating ox-head demon with a high-rank job from the gladiator grouping: Strong Gladiator.

  Maise: a grudge-wielding undead horse-man with a high-rank job from the necromancer grouping — Lich.

  They were the Gouz-Maise Gang.

  They were Gideon’s most feared band of kidnappers and murderers.

  Chapter One: A Morning in Gideon

  Paladin Ray Starling

  Most large cities in the Kingdom of Altar — the royal capital included — were encircled by a large wall. Not only was it a necessary structure that protected against monsters and attacks from other countries, it also separated the worlds inside and out.

  Duel City Gideon, where we had just arrived, was no different.

  “Whoa...” I couldn’t help but voice my amazement. Beyond the walls — which were similar to the ones in the capital — waited a radically different scenery.

  It made me remember how I’d felt when I had first entered Altea. The atmosphere of a hyper-realistic fantasy town was moving, to say the least, and Gideon was making me experience it all over again.

  The air here was thick with people’s enthusiasm. I had a feeling that most of it came from the very middle of the metropolis — the Great Central Arena of the duel city, towering right before my eyes. Ancient Rome’s Colosseum was 200 meters in diameter and 50 meters in height, yet Gideon’s pride and joy seemed to be more than twice the size of that.

  According to a sign hanging near the gates to Gideon, there were twelve smaller arenas evenly spaced out around the city, and every single one of them was active daily. The sign also said that the Great Central Arena was often used for various events.

  With all the liveliness here in Gideon, I found it hard to believe that this city was part of a kingdom that had recently experienced a crippling blow in a war and was forced to the verge of defeat.

  I looked around and saw a number of humanoid races I didn’t encounter much back in the capital. Some had beast-like ears, others had dragon-like horns... There were even some fairies, so petite they only went up to my knees. They seemed to be this world’s Demi-Humans — a staple for every fantasy work.

  As I watched them, I noticed that there were both tourists and those who actually lived and worked here. Figaro hadn’t been lying when he’d said this place was lively.

  “What an energetic city,” said Rook.

  “It’s only natural, since this area isn’t close to the kingdom’s border with Dryfe, which is in the north,” Marie said. She began explaining why. “The countries close to Gideon are Caldina and Legendaria. The latter signed a treaty of commerce with Altar, while the former is a full ally, so this city gets many tourists from both.”

  She showed us a map to illustrate what she’d explained. In the center of the map was Gideon; to the east, a mountain belt, followed by Caldina; and to the south, there was Legendaria. To the west, there was a small patch of land followed by the open sea, while to the north, there was the capital.

  “Not only is Gideon positioned in a safe spot — you can also count all the gladiators fighting in the arenas as its soldiers,” Marie continued. “It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Gideon is the strongest city in the kingdom.”

  I see, I thought. That makes it the safest city in the Kingdom of Altar.

  I could only assume that many people who’d escaped from the capital had chosen this as their destination. After all, in the catalog of the capital’s guild, there had been many escort requests from people searching for a safe refuge.

  However, there were still merchants like Alejandro, who would go out of their way to stock up in the capital. We and that merchant had gone our separate ways at the entrance to Gideon, but since he’d wished to thank us properly, he’d invited us to visit his shop whenever we had the time.

  “Now, let’s go to the Adventurers’ Guild,” said Marie. “We have to finish the quest and report that Gardranda was eliminated.”

  Rook and I were quick to agree, and we all made our way to Gideon’s Adventurers’ Guild.

  The ceiling inside it was higher than it was in the capital’s guild. The entrance was larger, too. The designers were probably being considerate of t
he larger races inhabiting and visiting this city.

  Anyway, we completed the delivery quest without any problems. The reward was 30,000 lir. We split it evenly and got 10,000 lir each. It was a nice amount, no doubt about it. However, we ran into some problems when claiming the reward we were supposed to get for taking care of Gardranda.

  Proving that we’d done it wasn’t difficult at all. We simply had to go to a special counter and show them the MVP special reward: The Miasmaflame Bracers, Gardranda.

  Items of this type were always named after the defeated UBM, had qualities that fit the MVP, and couldn’t be transferred in any way. Thus, the fact that I possessed the item with Gardranda’s name on it could only mean that I had been the most valuable player in Great Miasmic Demon, Gardranda’s elimination.

  Of course, it was also possible to prove such things by going through a thorough inquiry. It was only natural, considering that not every bounty was a UBM.

  And so, though we got the reward money without any trouble, we found the amount to be quite problematic.

  It amounted to a total of 1,000,000 lir. That was the equivalent of 10,000,000 yen, which was quite a fortune. It got us to sit around a table in the guild and intensely argue about how we would split it.

  “Oh, come on, now!” I raised my voice. “Let’s just all take a third and be done with it!”

  “No!” said Marie. “I already took the money for the potions I used, so there’s no reason for me to have any more! I didn’t participate in the battle at all! You two should just split it in half!”

  “I didn’t fight Gardranda, either!” cried Rook. “I could never accept the same amount as Ray! He should just take it all, honestly!”

  The three of us were fiercely arguing in favor of reducing the amounts we would get.

  First, Marie had been given approximately 100,000 lir of the reward to make up for the Elixir she’d thrown at me and other medicines she’d used on the people in the carriages. She’d been apprehensive about accepting it, saying that she’d chosen to use those items on her own volition, but I’d insisted, and she’d soon caved. With that settled, we’d had 900,000 lir left, and that was when things had gotten fiery.