Infinite Dendrogram: Volume 16 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Color Illustrations

  Prologue: Another Started Game

  Chapter One: The Poisonous Oasis

  Chapter Two: Minus

  Chapter Three: The Gaunt Man

  Chapter Four: The Chain

  Chapter Five: The Machine Knight of Ice and Roses

  Chapter Six: The Rebirthing Infestation, De Vermis

  Chapter Seven: Standing and Indomitable

  Prologue: Another First Choice

  Chapter Eight: The Tartarean Possibility

  Prologue: Another Starting Point

  Epilogue: Two Worlds, Two Mes

  Afterword

  Bonus Short Stories

  About J-Novel Club

  Copyright

  Prologue: Another Started Game

  March, 2044, ???

  With my exam season over, I finally got the chance to start playing Infinite Dendrogram.

  The game came out while I was in my third year of high school. All my friends who really wanted to pass, including me, weren’t exactly crazy about the timing.

  To make it worse, all of our friends who’d already given up on exams or were set to inherit their family businesses regardless had picked up the game right away — and they had plenty of fun stories of their time in-game to bother us with.

  Determined to play only after I’d passed, I fought the urge. I focused solely on my studies, finished the exams...and then, I finally got the gear I back-ordered and logged in for the first time today.

  “It really is realistic... The wind is so hot.”

  For my starting point, I chose the country called “Caldina.”

  It was a merchant nation in the desert. The dry winds rolling in from the dunes tickled my skin with such detail that it felt real, even though I’d never been to a desert before.

  The city I appeared in was a “City of Commerce” called “Cortana.”

  The main thoroughfare had many stalls lined up on both sides, all filled with merchants enthusiastically hawking their wares.

  As big and populous as this city was, though, it wasn’t actually the capital of the country.

  The cat that had helped me with character creation told me that new Caldinian players started in Cortana instead of the capital because the strength of the monsters around the capital tended to fluctuate a lot, for various reasons.

  That seemed to make sense. Right now, I was level 0 without a single job. If they dumped me right into an area swarming with powerful monsters, I’d be softlocked.

  Speaking of which, I really needed to choose a job and start leveling up already.

  The “Embryo” I was told about still hadn’t hatched, though, so I decided to leave the job-picking for later and just enjoy the sights for now.

  Cortana had a very Arabian Nights feel to it, reminiscent of various picture books and animated movies I’d watched when I was little.

  The bazaar was as lively as it was colorful, and among the goods on display were many magic items that caught my eye. Unfortunately, the five pieces of silver given to me by the receptionist cat — 5,000 lir, apparently — weren’t nearly enough to buy even a single one of those.

  All I could afford was the food, so I got myself some skewered meat of unknown origin, along with some fried snacks.

  The taste was about as real as it could get, and though I personally would’ve preferred if it was all a bit sweeter, it was perfectly fine for eating while walking.

  Doing this made me feel less like I was playing a game and more like I was actually touring a foreign country.

  ...Honestly, I still had trouble believing that this really was a game — even after being online for a whole hour.

  The environment I perceived with all five of my senses and the merchants who sold me that food all seemed like the real thing.

  When did technology advance this far?

  “...Huh?”

  I suddenly realized that I’d wandered into an empty part of the city as I was lost in thought.

  Desolate and silent, this place was nothing like the lively road I was just strolling down. Looking around, I saw nothing but decrepit buildings cramped together as close as possible.

  It was astounding how different two sections of the same city could be.

  “Hm...?” As I walked around, I caught something out of the corner of my eye.

  In the tight space between two buildings near the entrance, there was a little girl sitting with her back against the wall.

  Just at a glance, I could tell that she was abnormally thin. In fact, even the refugee children I saw on the news some time ago looked healthier than she did.

  There was no one nearby — no family or anyone else.

  She was just sitting with her back against the wall.

  Without a word, without any sound at all, she turned her head slightly to look at me.

  No — not at me, but at the bag of snacks in my hand.

  I’d found those snacks rather bland... But oh, how the mere sight of them seemed to draw her hungry gaze.

  She raised her twiglike arm and reached towards me. But she lacked the strength to even get up, and the way her little hand shook made it clear just how empty that movement was.

  That tiny gesture, her fragile little action, made my heart want to burst out of my chest. It was a tight, emotional kind of pain.

  “I-I’m so sorry! P-Please, take them!” Those words escaped my mouth as I approached her.

  That girl was the most tragic thing I’d ever seen in my life. I tried to think about her, this situation, about what I was doing right now or should’ve been doing — but my thoughts were nowhere, letting my words and body take charge.

  I was unable to ignore her, to leave her like this, so I approached and presented the bag of snacks.

  She reached for it and tried to put her hand inside, but she missed every time she fumbled for it.

  “I’ll feed it to you. Here...” I took a snack and gently brought it close to her face.

  She slowly opened her mouth. She tried to chew. And then, she fell still.

  “...Huh?” The snack fell out from between my fingers and rolled across the ground.

  Sensing that something wasn’t right, I hesitantly reached for her cheek.

  And that was enough for her malnourished body to slowly collapse to the side...and she made no attempt to get up again.

  “...Huh?” She wasn’t moving. Not an inch.

  She’d just fallen asleep, I rationalized. Surely that was it.

  But her eyes were open.

  The light had just gone out of them.

  Grains of sand blew along the ground, but not a single grain near her mouth or nose was moving.

  I stood there and stared in disbelief...and before long, an ant crawled along her face, to no reaction whatsoever.

  “Ah... Ah...?” I touched her withered wrist...and felt no pulse.

  This complete stranger. This innocent little girl... She had starved, faded...and died right before my eyes.

  Chapter One: The Poisonous Oasis

  Armored Pilot, Hugo Lesseps

  Early August, 2045.

  A month of Dendro time had passed since I moved away from my sister and friends in my starting country of Dryfe. Three weeks had passed since Teach — Ace, AR-I-CA — got me involved in her quest to find the Treasurebeast Orbs.

  Since then, I’d done some desert crossing and ruin raiding; since I’d maxed out High Pilot, I had switched jobs to Armored Pilot.

  And now, having retrieved the first Orb in Hermine, we’d moved to the City of Commerce, Cortana, where we would supposedly find the second one.

  The title of this city was we
ll deserved. Full of shops and bazaars, it was quite wealthy even by Caldina’s standards. It was as though Gideon’s fourth district had been spread out to the size of a city.

  “Well, I suppose it wouldn’t be weird for strange objects like the Orbs to end up in a city like this...but imagine what kind of trouble it’d bring.” I vocalized my worries as I gazed at the street outside the café’s terrace.

  Then again, there probably aren’t many places in this world that are free of trouble, I thought.

  “You’re not gonna eat that?” asked Cyco.

  “Oh, I will. I just had something on my mind.”

  Having done some shopping in the morning, we were now taking a lunch break while waiting for Teach.

  Cyco was eating vanilla ice cream...or what was left of it.

  Here in the desert, ice cream melted extremely fast. She’d tried to finish it before it melted completely, but eventually resigned herself to eating its milkshake-like remains as if it were a soup.

  She seemed satisfied, though. I could only guess that the state of the food didn’t bother her as long as it was white.

  “Good thing you found the right parts, huh?” Cyco said with a white stain around her mouth.

  She was referring to the Magingear parts I’d bought at a store before coming here.

  Custom Magingears like my White Rose or Teach’s Blue Opera had two general types of parts.

  First were the new, custom parts that my sister had produced specifically for White Rose. They were costly, but they came with an auto-repair function similar to those found on original Prism Steeds.

  The other type of parts were the standard, ready-made ones. Those were used in Marshall IIs, and they had to be replaced through maintenance every now and then.

  Blue Rose didn’t fully auto-repair, which was probably due to a technical flaw.

  It just highlighted the fact that even if you built mechs using real-life knowledge like The Triangle of Wisdom, you’d never reach the level of Flagman, the Grand Artificer of the pre-ancient civilization.

  Anyway, I had to replace the parts that I’d lost, but being away from Dryfe had made that rather difficult for most people.

  Thankfully, among the grand total of three good things Teach had taught me, one of those had been the means of finding quality Magingear parts in Caldina, so I had no trouble getting what I needed.

  The other two good things, by the way, were some piloting tricks and the location of the ruins with a crystal for the pilot job grouping.

  I still had part of the money I got for assisting the fight against Gouz-Maise, so I could pay for the parts no problem, but...

  “...When Caldina’s stores sell wholesale parts made for the Dryfean army, you know something isn’t right.” Just how did they end up here, I wondered, finding myself a bit awed by Caldina’s distribution channels. That was probably something that bothered every country, not just Dryfe.

  “I gotta say, she’s really late,” said Cyco.

  “...She is.” Teach was the one who’d told us to wait for her here.

  Last evening, she’d said that she was going to search for the Orb and headed straight to the mansion of Cortana’s mayor. And if she didn’t return the same day, we’d agreed to meet up here in the morning or at noon.

  Since she was nowhere to be seen in the morning, we’d gone out and bought the parts we needed, but she wasn’t here even now when we returned. It was now noon.

  “Is Teach just bad at keeping time or did something happen?”

  “Hmm... Both?”

  Yeah, knowing her, that’s probably the correct answer, I thought. She was an ace pilot, but you really couldn’t trust her on many things. It probably isn’t even trouble that’s keeping her. I fully expect her to come back and say that she was busy messing around with some girls.

  “Heyoo! Yu and Cy! Sorry for the wait!”

  “Teach! Oh...”

  She came in right as I was thinking about all of that and, well...

  “The investigation dragged on a bit,” she said. “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “Is that so? By the way, Teach...”

  “Yeess?”

  “Your neck.”

  My words made her flash me an awkward smile and rush to cover a spot on her neck.

  The spot, by the way, was clearly a hickey.

  “I see you had some fun at the mayor’s place,” I said.

  “There was this baby-faced maid with a nice body! I flirted with her a bit and we talked straight until dawn!”

  Yeah — pillow-talked, I thought.

  “I hope you die.”

  “Cy! That’s way too harsh! I actually got the info!” So the little chat with the maid hadn’t distracted her from her job after all.

  “So, guilty or not?” I asked.

  Teach had gone to the mayor’s place to find out where the Orb might be. At first, I’d thought she’d solicit the mayor’s help directly, but while she was away, I’d realized that probably wasn’t the case.

  It had been the same way back at the casino. In situations like these, Teach already knew where the Orb could be, so she’d likely gone to the mayor’s mansion because that was probably the place.

  “Heh heh heh. I see you’re startin’ to catch on. And yeah, he’s obviously hidin’ the Orb somewhere. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t try to assassinate me or get a maid to spike my drink with poison.”

  A slight shock came over me as I asked, “...They tried to poison you?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t drink any and came on to that same maid instead. She was sooo cute and lewd!”

  “Teach, why are you so...?” How could someone be so carefree when they’d almost gotten poisoned...?

  Well, Teach’s Superior Embryo, Cassandra, saw not “the future,” but “danger,” so poison was perhaps the most useless method of assassination to employ against her.

  Then again, everyone could counter poison with an Elixir, so maybe this “attempted assassination” was nothing but a warning from the mayor.

  “I know that he’s hidin’ the Orb,” Teach continued. “If the info I already have on it is true, everyone with wealth and power would want to have it more than anything else!”

  “You already know the Orb’s...um, the UBM’s abilities?”

  “Yep. Some of the leaked Orbs also had their powers leaked too, and this is one of them. They say that it ‘gives the user a healthy life, and then a new life eternal.’”

  A healthy life and a new life eternal.

  Well, it was true that those who already had wealth and power might fear death more than other people. They would be afraid of losing their riches to age or illness, so it was no exaggeration to say that they’d want eternal life more than anything else.

  “And it seems like it actually works. Hell, the mayor is using it himself!”

  “Hm?”

  “This is the mayor’s photo from the documents I brought.” She showed me a picture of an obese, jaundiced man with rough skin and bags under his eyes. If intemperance and bad health was a person, this would be him. “And this is a picture I secretly took of him last night. His age, by the way? Seventy years.”

  “...Huh?!” This photo clearly showed a middle-aged man no older than fifty. He looked vigorous, his skin was smooth, and overall he seemed to be brimming with life.

  I could hardly believe that this was the same person as in the first picture. I’d say he was rejuvenated, but that would feel like an understatement.

  “You can see why he’d act like he doesn’t even know about the Orb,” Teach said. “For all we know, he might change back if he loses it.”

  “...But you’re Sefirot, aren’t you? Can he really lie to you like that?” Sefirot was a clan that had nine Superiors, making it the strongest clan in all of Infinite Dendrogram.

  At the same time, it was the greatest force serving Madam President La Place Phantasma herself.

  Teach had told me that Sefirot could only do quests that might lead to international p
roblems — such as this very Orb-hunt — after the president had given them her explicit approval.

  Although Teach was officially acting on the request made by the head of a certain company, the person behind this quest was the president herself.

  The Orb in Hermine was in the hands of a foreign mafia, so I could understand the lack of cooperation there, but the mayor of Cortana was a member of the congress, so I’d really thought that he’d help us in finishing this quest.

  “Ah ha haa! You still don’t really understand Caldina, do you?” Teach said, showing me a map of the country. “This nation is a union of city-states. Some have elections, some have a hereditary system, but each city is its own country, and the mayor is its king.”

  The city-state union of Caldina was an assembly of small individual nations, run by a congress where the mayor of every city-state held a seat. This made it the only major country with a “proper” government.

  ...Yeah, I didn’t count Tenchi. A land of constant civil war seemed less than “proper” to me.

  “...So, Caldinian laws don’t fully apply to the cities themselves?” I asked.

  “Not exactly,” Teach said. “There are Caldina-wide laws you’d be penalized for breaking, but the mayor of this city thinks he’s above them, and he’s not exactly wrong.”

  “Hm?”

  “Yu, where did you log in when you started in Dryfe?”

  “Well... Vandelheim?” It seemed obvious to me. You picked a country, you appeared in its capital.

  “Yeah. Same here. But in Caldina, the starting city is right here in Cortana.”

  “Huh?”

  “Drag-Nomad, Caldina’s capital and seat of congress, moves from place to place. The level ranges of the monsters around it constantly change, so it’s not a good place for newbies.”

  “The capital...moves?” What did she mean by that?

  “We’ll visit it someday, so I’ll tell you the details then. It’ll be a surprise!”

  “Okay...?”

  “Well, anyway, Cortana is Caldina’s second major city, its heart of commerce, and the starting point for its Masters. It’s extremely important... So much so, in fact, that it’s hard to levy any penalties against it.”

  “...” The president controlled the actual capital, but the mayor of Cortana held the capital city in every sense but its name. Both cities were actually tiny nations, so if you ignored their stated political roles within the union, they were both essentially kings.