In the Land of Leadale Vol. 4 Read online

  Copyright

  In the Land of Leadale 4

  Ceez

  Translation by Jessica Lange

  Cover art by Tenmaso

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  RIADEIRU NO DAICHI NITE Vol. 4

  © Ceez 2020

  First published in Japan in 2020 by KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo.

  English translation rights arranged with KADOKAWA CORPORATION, Tokyo through TUTTLE-MORI AGENCY, INC., Tokyo.

  English translation © 2021 by Yen Press, LLC

  Yen Press, LLC supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ceez, author. | Tenmaso, illustrator. | Lange, Jessica (Translator), translator.

  Title: In the land of Leadale / Ceez ; illustration by Tenmaso ; translation by Jessica Lange

  Other titles: Riadeiru no daichi nite. English

  Description: First Yen On edition. | New York, NY : Yen On, 2020.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020032160 | ISBN 9781975308681 (v. 1 ; trade paperback) | ISBN 9781975308704 (v. 2 ; trade paperback) | ISBN 9781975322168 (v. 3 ; trade paperback) | ISBN 9781975322182 (v. 4 ; trade paperback)

  Subjects: CYAC: Fantasy. | Virtual reality—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.C4646 In 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020032160

  ISBNs: 978-1-9753-2218-2 (paperback)

  978-1-9753-2219-9 (ebook)

  E3-20211105-JV-NF-ORI

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Insert

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Story Thus Far

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Daily Life in the Village, Restocking, a Journey, and a Disquieting Shadow

  Chapter 2

  A Scheme, an Inquiry, Dealing with Sweet Talkers, and Two Daughters

  Chapter 3

  A Demon, a Summons, a Tower, and a Project

  Chapter 4

  Preparations, a Thank-You Banquet, a Festival, and an Idiot

  Chapter 5

  Retaliation, Fishing, the Road Home, and Secret Talks

  Epilogue

  Bonus Short Story

  A Princess’s Firsthand Experience

  Character Data

  Afterword

  Yen Newsletter

  The Story Thus Far

  A terrible accident had rendered Keina Kagami hospitalized and bedridden; one day while playing the VRMMORPG Leadale a power surge caused her life support to malfunction and she perished. The next thing she remembered was waking up in an unfamiliar inn and realizing she was in the body of her game avatar. Much to Keina’s shock, the inn’s proprietress, Marelle, informed her that Leadale was now made up of just three nations instead of the original seven from two hundred years prior. Keina thereby deduced that this modern era was far beyond when the game took place, and she had no idea whether other players she had known still existed. She then decided to live on not as Keina Kagami but as her avatar, Cayna.

  Cayna, a Skill Master, visited her Guardian Tower, where her Guardian informed her that the rest of the towers were currently inoperable, prompting Cayna to journey across the continent in the hopes of learning about the other players who had abandoned their Guardian Towers.

  As thanks for taking her under their wing, Cayna provided the people of the remote village with a bathhouse and mechanism to draw water from their well. Then she met Elineh, the head of a merchant caravan, and Arbiter, the leader of a group of mercenaries, and accompanied them to Felskeilo, a nation in the middle of the continent.

  After registering as an adventurer, Cayna met Prime Minister Agaido and his granddaughter, Lonti, who asked for Cayna’s help finding a runaway prince. She successfully captured the young prince, but not before dumbfounding everyone involved with her powers. Cayna also reunited with her children—or more precisely, the sub-characters she had submitted to the Foster System during the Game Era: her eldest son, Skargo; her daughter, Mai-Mai; and her youngest son, Kartatz, all of whom absolutely adore their mother.

  Cayna then accepted a request from the Adventurers Guild and discovered that the Ninth Skill Master’s Guardian Tower was in the Battle Arena. She activated the tower, and after many twists and turns, learned from the tower’s Guardian that Leadale the game no no longer existed. The news sent her into a brief depression, but it also strengthened her bond with her children and made her realize this was hardly the time to be discouraged.

  During an expedition escorting Elineh and his caravan to the northern nation of Helshper, Cayna stopped by the remote village and rescued a mermaid named Mimily, who had gotten lost in an underground water vein. Not long after this, Cayna and Arbiter’s mercenaries defeated a number of bandits at the Helshper border who were part of a larger group blocking off the western trade routes.

  Upon arriving in the Helshper royal capital, Cayna delivered a letter from her daughter to the continent’s most preeminent merchant company, Sakaiya. There she met the founder, Caerick, and nearly fainted when he revealed that he is Mai-Mai’s son—and therefore Cayna’s grandson. A rift formed between grandmother and grandchild following a slight misunderstanding, and shortly thereafter Cayna encountered Caerick’s older twin sister, the knight Caerina, which only added to Cayna’s consternation.

  However, Cayna soon got word of a Guardian Tower within Helshper and realized that in order to reach it, she would have to pass through the bandits’ expansive territory to the west. Thus, with Caerick’s help, she devised a plan to raid their turf.

  Cayna came face-to-face with the bandit leader upon reaching the mansion-like Guardian Tower and learned he was also a player. She gave him a merciless beatdown in the hopes that he might finally realize this world isn’t a game, but the moment before she could deal the final blow, Caerina and her fellow knights intervened, and Cayna let them take the leader into custody.

  She then proceeded to reactivate the Thirteenth Skill Master’s Guardian Tower and was shocked to learn it once belonged to her partner in crime and former fellow guild member Opus. The Guardian also gave her a book with a fairy inside. Certain this gift was definitive proof that Opus was still out there, Cayna took the fairy with her and decided to look for him.

  On the way back to Felskeilo with Elineh’s caravan, she ran into Kartatz attempting to build a bridge that would connect the eastern trade routes. With Cayna’s assistance, the bridge was successfully completed in no time.

  Once back in Felskeilo, Cayna took on an Adventurers Guild request to hunt down a horned bear, and Lonti and her friend Mye ended up accompanying her out of the blue. It soon came to light that Mye was in fact Myleene, crown princess of Felskeilo. The princess inadvertently let it slip that she had a crush on Skargo and then received Cayna’s tentative blessing to court him.

  Meanwhile, Lopus, Mai-Mai’s husband and an alchemy professor at the Academy, became obsessed with Cayna’s “ancient arts” and conducted several experiments to re-create them. However, his handmade potion ended in failure, and he tossed it into the Academy landfill. Unfortunately, the landfill was also a leftover Collection Point from a Game Era turf war, and for reasons unknown, Lopus’s potion caused a giant penguin chimera monster to appear. The monster subsequently threw the entire city into mass chaos.

  Shining Saber, the captain of the knights sent to look for the princess, came across the adventurer Cohral in the Adventurers Guild. After discovering that they had been members of the same guild during the Game Era, the two players teamed up to fight the penguin monster just like they used to all those years ago.

  The High Priest Skargo and a team of mages combined their strength to help in the fight as well, but it took everything they had just to keep the monster at bay. Kartatz was able to alert his mother to the danger in Felskeilo, and the penguin monster was subsequently destroyed thanks to Cayna’s incredible magic. Cayna then obtained information on a new Guardian Tower following her chance encounter with Shining Saber and Cohral there.

  She briefly returned to the remote village to further look into the possibility of relocating there. However, she ran into a group from the southern nation of Otaloquess and consequently earned the ire of a female member named Clofia. Their resulting duel saw Cayna soundly defeat Clofia, whose
older brother, Cloffe, revealed the group were Otaloquess spies.

  Additionally, it just so happened that Cayna’s own niece had been Otaloquess’s sovereign since the country’s founding: Queen Sahalashade—Foster Child of a Game Era high elf, Sahana—who was like a little sister to Cayna. The fact that she kept inadvertently meeting national leaders at every turn left Cayna feeling unsettled.

  Once she recovered from this shocking news, Cayna began searching for the Palace of the Dragon King. She followed Shining Saber and his knights halfway through their campaign, and her camaraderie with him sparked rumors that she was his fiancée.

  The fishing village said to be near the Palace of the Dragon King was shrouded in an eerie mist. Here, Cayna encountered a female adventurer named Quolkeh and a dragoid named Exis, both of whom came to the village to investigate the local distribution of goods. The two of them happened to be players, and it was revealed that Exis was once Tartarus, a member of Cayna’s guild.

  The only person left in the fishing village was a little girl named Luka, and Cayna summoned her butler, Roxilius, to keep the girl company while she, Quolkeh, and Exis dealt with the bizarre situation at hand. After Exis defeated the Terror Skeleton and Ghost Ship, event enemies from the game, Cayna reactivated the Sixth Skill Master’s Guardian Tower and then decided to adopt Luka and raise her in the remote village.

  En route back to the village, Roxilius pointed out that they would need more help around the house, so Cayna summoned a maid named Roxine, who was a bitter rival to Roxilius. With Luka and this catty pair in tow, Cayna built a house in the remote village and started her new life.

  Later, Cayna fulfilled her promise to take Lytt, the inn proprietress’s daughter, on a sightseeing flight along with Luka and Latem, the son of Lux Contracting’s owner. As the group marveled at the dazzling sights, they eventually came across Elineh’s caravan under siege by a group of monsters. Cayna proceeded to crush the horde, save Arbiter and the caravan, and then return home to the village.

  After discovering that quest enemies were ambushing the village outskirts, Cayna set off with Arbiter and his mercenaries to eliminate them. Meanwhile, Lytt, Latem, and Luka snuck out of the village to go make flower crowns only to be attacked by monsters. Just when all hope seemed lost, a White Dragon appeared from within a pendant Cayna had given to Luka and protected the children. The ensuing cacophony caught Cayna’s attention, and she rushed back to the village. When she found Luka there safe, she then proceeded to break down in tears of relief.

  Later, while in Helshper to buy goats and chickens, Cayna ran into Cohral and his party, who had accepted a request from Sakaiya at the Adventurers Guild. Cayna took the opportunity to introduce them to her great-grandson, Idzik.

  After receiving word from Caerick that there was going to be a conference at the national border, Cayna returned home to find her son, the High Priest Skargo, already there.

  The man paused, and he examined every nook and cranny of what he’d been polishing. Even though he’d repeated this routine countless times before, he was wholly dedicated to inspecting every last corner to check if he’d missed a spot. The brown, orange, and black marbling created a lovely contrast; he never tired of looking at the object from every angle. Knowing that its perfectly smooth texture was thanks to years of polishing made the exhaustion in his arms all the more satisfying.

  After placing the object back on its special pedestal that he set atop the desk in his room, he thought about how unique this object was.

  It was one meter long with three strange fingerlike projections—a branch he’d obtained in childhood after the gardener had pruned it from a tree. It felt so far removed from the rest of the world as he, a young boy, knew it. In his limited knowledge, the boy had been overcome with repulsion and envy; he’d begged and nagged the elderly gardener for the branch until it was, at last, his own.

  After reading some books and gaining further knowledge, he carefully removed the unnecessary parts of the branch, filed it down, and polished it repeatedly. It took him five years to bring the branch to its current form. He devoted himself to polishing it each day until its surface became as brilliant and glossy as ivory. By covering this branch in a special aromatic balm before polishing it again, he gradually created a marble pattern. What had started out as a mere tree branch was now the product of his years of dedication.

  In order to save face, he chose not to reveal that this was only a tree branch but instead sometimes displayed it as some sort of rare objet d’art when he entertained guests. Its peculiarity only further piqued outsiders’ interests. However, a part of him felt guilty knowing that this “rare object” was originally just a tree branch.

  Perhaps in an effort to further the delusion, he’d collected every rare item he could get his hands on. He followed leads to antique shops catering to nobility, visited the Merchants Guild when he learned they had excavated relics from ruins, and resorted to underhanded means if commoners refused to part with the keepsakes of their deceased loved ones. So great was his tenacity that it seemed he’d lost his humanity somewhere along the way. As a result, rumors and deep-seated resentment of his relic obsession spread among high society.

  His collection was extensive: It contained books and and weapons and armor along with various odds and ends. He built a secondary residence on the grounds of his mansion in the capital, where he displayed the items and opened an art museum of sorts.

  He was warier than most when it came to potential theft, and he employed magic, as well as private guards, for protection.

  A GRIMOIRE MADE FROM MANY FELLED BY A MAGE OF OLD

  This book’s every page was made of human skin, starting with the cover itself. After being consecrated and then tightly bound with a leather strap, it was placed inside a silver case filled with holy water. Some claimed an eyeball would occasionally rise to the surface and place a deadly curse on whoever met its gaze, though this was yet unconfirmed.

  He had a number of items that he was quite proud of, but this one was top among the tomes. He couldn’t confirm the rumors, but he was sure the book would unleash a stream of insults if he asked it to show him its contents.

  A HELMET BELONGING TO THE KNIGHT CAPTAIN OF A RUINED NATION

  Handling this item carelessly was said to inflict a grudge that would never abate until the victim tracked down and exterminated the descendants of a nation victorious in war. However, since it was uncertain whether the seven nations of the past had definite monarchies, the existence of the “ruined nation” in question was dubious.

  This helmet sat atop a suit of armor that decorated his room. Visitors often warned him not to put such a thing in a place where anyone could so easily touch it.

  A DRAGON SKULL STAINED WITH A LINE OF DUSKY BLOOD

  Dragons were the stuff of legend these days, although apparently there had been confirmed sightings throughout the seven nations in years past. Any written accounts of dragons had long since disappeared, thus contributing to the general consensus that dragons no longer existed.

  This particular dragon skull was on the floor in a corner of his room. Its mouth looked large enough to swallow a child whole, but according to archaeologists, it likely belonged to an adolescent specimen.

  The items in the man’s collection were clear proof of his extraordinary dedication, no matter what others might think of him otherwise.

  His next target was a worn-out covered wagon.

  The wagon itself wasn’t a relic or anything of the sort. It had no checkered past that piqued his interest. What grabbed his attention was a single line from a book in his personal library:

  “A wheeled mansion or castle traveled nations without the aid of a horse.”

  And that was precisely why he did not take lightly a rumor he’d heard from a merchant in his employ—that a commoner mother and child had been seen riding a horseless wagon.

  His response was swift: He researched where the wagon was headed and what companies it purchased goods from, then devised a plan to procure the vehicle for himself.

  His greatest downfall, however, was his failure to pay attention to the source of the rumor. If he had only investigated further, he would have learned this “commoner mother” was an adventurer with connections to the High Priest and on friendly terms with the founder of Sakaiya. His obsession with this wagon’s rarity had blinded him; he was like a fool reaching for a dragon’s treasure.