Knight Order Assembly 4
The uppermost floors of the tower, which should have been silent, were thronging with people—and it left me with a peculiar feeling.
Under ordinary circumstances, only a vanishingly small number of adventurers ever explored the top floors. Most people preferred to earn their coin steadily and safely rather than stake their lives on the gamble of overnight riches. After all, it was far more comforting to live the safe adventurer life—picking off sluggish undead beside the priests—than to get chased around by a ten-meter-tall berserk ogre that could appear out of nowhere.
But that was the adventurers' situation. The apprentice commanders who'd been forcibly shoved into the grassland floors by order of the Empire's august Empress—with their future performance evaluations held hostage—were in a rather different position.
In military terms, it was like a freshly transferred second lieutenant receiving direct work orders from the corps commander himself. Slack off because it was annoying or hard, and not just you but your entire family could end up on the Empress's bad side.
"So. How is the order I issued progressing?"
"Most of the commanders are accumulating combat experience, however the second son of House Artois and several others have been…"
"Hmph. Artois? I shall be sure to remember that."
If things flowed in that direction, a little corner-cutting could get not just your own life but your entire family thoroughly wrecked—that was the class society of a medieval fantasy for you. On top of that, conquering the tower and dealing with monster waves was a mission the Goddess herself had bestowed upon humanity. At that point the Empress wasn't merely a corps commander—she was presidential-tier. Rather than quibbling over ranks, you had to worry that one bout of slacking could brand you a traitor to humanity, a race-betrayer, that sort of thing.
And so the tower, which should have been deserted, was crawling with people like a hunting ground during a burning event.
"There are people fighting to the northwest. Not adventurers—looks like more of the Empire's people fighting alongside mercenaries again."
"But Grace, how do you even tell whether they're mercenaries or adventurers?"
"The biggest tell is probably how the sound of multiple bowstrings being drawn stays so uniform? It doesn't feel like shooting left to individual skill—more like they're loosing on a commander's order. And if they were adventurers, there's no way they'd have more than ten guide-archers."
Whenever a monster showed up, roughly one fight in three was already underway with other people—that said it all. If we ran into them any more often, it wouldn't be half water and half fish; it'd be half human and half monster.
At that point even the great Han Se-ah seemed a little fed up, muttering more and more to herself. Of course those monologues weren't aimed at our party—they were tossed out just out of NPC earshot to bait the viewers. She had to show them something, and every other moment the Imperial forces were out there hunting hard to pad their own achievements, so she at least had to talk if she wanted the chat to react.
Which was why the topic of conversation this time was Grace's guide-sense. Apparently it was fascinating that she could go beyond simply pointing out which clock-direction the enemy was in and divine, with uncanny precision, exactly what kind of enemy and how many.
"By the way, Hanna."
"Hm?"
"Are you interested in Roland?"
"Ghk— What?!"
But once you started gossiping, there were consequences you had to face. Grace's sharp question came stabbing in without warning, and Han Se-ah startled so hard that every gaze in the party snapped to her in an instant. Katie and Irene, who already had relationships with me, were one thing—but why were the Ice Cross Knights staring like that? Probably Oleg and Alissa had gotten them interested in this sort of thing.
More than twenty pairs of eyes fixed on her with keen curiosity, and behind the camera tens of thousands more people were ready to tear into whatever she said.
"I asked if Hanna was interested in Roland too. The reason is… well, it just kind of seemed that way?"
"Of course I'm interested. Everyone gets along so well with Roland that I end up watching without even meaning to."
"Heeh…"
But Han Se-ah was a body that had been through the wringer of the streaming scene. She casually deflected the verbal arrow aimed at her vital point and steered the subject elsewhere.
The viewers, already sharp with curiosity like piranhas that had caught the scent of blood, weren't about to back off cleanly—so she was openly offering up my romantic affairs instead. Naturally not her own story, but the relationships between me, Grace, Katie, and Irene.
Grace, knowing nothing of the tens of thousands of ravenous lunatics waiting hungrily behind the camera, just nodded lightly along.
"Hm? Why's that so interesting, you ask? If you were in their shoes, with a guy like Roland building a harem in real time, you wouldn't feel any interest? There's a fantasy harem party straight out of some otaku manga right in front of you, and you're telling people to just walk past that?"
The moment the topic flipped from "Hanna's suspicious gaze" to "Roland's fantasy harem party," it proved even more stimulating—everyone laughed and chattered and spammed the chat while Han Se-ah, off-camera, let out a quiet sigh of relief.
Kid's got a sharp head on her shoulders, I'll give her that. She makes excuses well.
The day after Han Se-ah had smoothly brushed Grace off with a vague "well, I'm the hero, so…" excuse in the face of her keen interest in our relationship—
The orcs were being massacred by Imperial commanders with eyes bloodshot for merit, outposts were reduced to scorched earth, and the Empire's people pushed so hard it was hard to tell whether this was the Demon King's invasion or humanity's punitive expedition. Thanks to them, the path to the 60th Floor was finally forced open.
The Demon King's army's scheme of blocking our advance gate by gate had long since been broken so thoroughly that nobody even thought about it anymore. Whatever the Kingdom's Magic Tower and the Empire's Magic Tower had done, the gates were wide open and people were being funneled up toward the 60th Floor in a steady stream.
"I thought they'd only just broken through to the 59th, but it barely took a few days to reach the 60th. People really have been pouring up in numbers."
"Probably because everyone's hiring mercenaries and combing the grasslands. The orc numbers are a bit much for an adventurer party to handle, but for a mercenary company they're easy prey."
Our party was no different. Han Se-ah's rotten gut instinct had confirmed there was no gate to the north, but just because we hadn't found one ourselves was no reason not to climb to the 60th Floor.
Thanks to the Ice Cross Knights and the merchant caravan handling our food-supply contract, we'd heard the news of the 60th Floor gate's discovery without delay—a relief. Thinking that, we crossed through the gate and found mercenary companies scattering in every direction.
"Still, everyone's splitting up every which way. Is there even a point to picking a direction?"
"They're scattering so thoroughly that north-south-east-west barely means anything. Which way should we go?"
People hurried past with hard faces, not so much as a polite nod of recognition like a village bus driver you vaguely knew. Apparently whoever among the Empire's apprentice commanders had discovered the gate from the 59th to the 60th Floor had left the rest twisted with jealousy and anxiety.
A stark contrast to the mercenaries, who were grinning ear to ear because even just killing orcs poured gold coins into their pockets. Just what kind of order had the Empress given those apprentice commanders that they'd put up with being used as suckers and still rush around like this?
I was looking around with that thought when Han Se-ah tapped my elbow and called my name.
"Roland, which way should we head this time? I was wrong on the 59th Floor, so I want to leave it to your gut this time."
"Then let's go north. Reason? Well—none in particular."
Apparently, after our one-night fling and her failed attempt to hit reset, she'd been so frantic to divert the viewers' attention that she'd spouted every kind of nonsense and ended up drawing aggro over her butterfingers and rotten gut instinct.
How to put it—I'd subtly blocked the reset to make the point that I was a human being, not an NPC… but Han Se-ah, whether from the pleasure of that night or something else, seemed completely oblivious that I'd stopped her hand from reaching the reset button.
I mean—did she not record herself enjoying that? If she'd just rewatched it, she might have noticed I'd stopped her from pressing a game-system button.
"North is this way, then. The good news is, it doesn't look like the merit for taking down a boss monster will be easy to snatch."
"Why do you think that?"
"Because it's the 60th Floor, the enemies look a little more numerous. Right now—they're coming from the east."
Thinking that, we set off toward the north, where at least the people seemed fewer—and it wasn't long before the ambush began. Even with Imperial apprentice commanders flooding up in droves, today was the first day, so monsters had apparently respawned even near the gate.
The now-familiar-to-the-point-of-tedium sound of hoofbeats rose, and in the distance centaurs came thundering across the grassland, trampling everything underfoot.
With strangely shaped monsters riding on their backs.
…What the hell is that?