Well hello there, readers! And yes, I can now safely say "readers." Thank you to the noble souls to took the time to review these past few chapters, and liked it enough to follow and favorite for the upcoming ones. I could never have managed to get this far without you! So, about three months later than promised (but is it not expected from a fanfic writer?) is Chapter 4 of Elder Tale.

Mamare Touno is the sole author and creator of Log Horizon, and, alongside his merry band of associates, is the only one who can rightfully claim ownership. Whatever technicalities I am excluding from this disclaimer, are only excluded due to my lack of scholarship on Mamare Touno's personal affairs. Which are, well, his personal affairs. Were I to be digging around his personal affairs, we'd have an entirely different set of legal problems to deal with.

...Without further ado, Lv. 4: Player Map Oriented!

Wander dropped exhaustedly into the disintegrating wood of the chapel bench, taking in his victory, his status, and the fantastic mess he'd somehow gotten himself into. The vaulted stone of the fort was silent, save for gentle birdsong from the forest beyond the fort. The other goblins, it seemed, had either destroyed themselves, or scattered with the death of their chieftain. Reassured that no stragglers would sneak up from behind and plant a knife in his ribs, the weary adventurer allowed himself a moment's rest.

After getting transported to a video game world, and losing the company of his party members, Wander had soloed a raid boss, delved into some massive ruins, and willfully reset his character profile, forsaking any advantage he'd had in this new realm.

In other words, this whole mess was his own damn fault.

He glowered at the sword which had ever-so conveniently decided to show up after 5 levels of sneaking around and delivering letters for feeble old women. Where did it get off, anyway, only showing up in time to save his neck, and not the preceding hours of pain? Wander disdainfully tossed the sword against the far wall, where it disappeared in a twinkle of blue light. To no avail-in a heartbeat, it had re-materialized in his outstretched hand again.

"That's cute. Can you do any other tricks? Talk, or something stupid like that?" His weapon remained thankfully silent, and the adventurer felt both relief and a peculiar disappointment. At the very least, talking swords usually came with instructions. Not to mention handy tutorials...

"There's no way they'd have written this all down in a menu somewhere, right?..." Wait, no. There it was, under the profile tab of the main menu.

"Elder Tales-2, Me-0. This sucks."

Pushing himself back to a standing position, Wander searched through the pile of loot his foe had left behind; Shoulder pads, 350 gold, and an ornate feather headdress, no doubt to serve as proof of his victory.

The adventurer gathered his loot and opened his class info. He would be doing a lot of reading on the way back.

Wander had been planning on pestering the bear-like shopkeep, Elias, for some real food upon his return to Pattonville. Unfortunately, it seemed that three Lv. 10 knuckleheads with poor taste in armor had beaten him to it-and were getting absolutely nowhere.

"Whaddya mean, you've only got apples? We ain't here for no apples!" A monk, wearing a cloak three sizes too big and shorts three sizes too small, was shouting over the stall of all-too familiar apples at the merchant behind them.

"I mean I don't have anything for sale but apples! How many times do I have to repeat it to get it through your thick skulls? What part of 'Goblin Attacks' are you not understanding here?" Elias, equally frustrated, looked just about ready to strangle someone with his beard alone.

"Hey, boss-these apples are delicious!" cut in the monk's bright-orange sorcerer friend, dropping a few coppers onto the counter.

"Can it, ya moron! We ain't here for no damn apples!"

"Hmm..."

"You stop that! Speak or don't speak, just make up your damn mind!"

"Hmm..." An apparently taciturn druid stood nearby, and would have seemed mysterious were it not for his unfathomable choice to dress like the lovechild of a peacock and Johnny Travolta.

"GAH!" The monk rapped his companions over the head before turning back to glower at Elias once more. "Listen, Mr. Merchant. I don't care if your entire village starves, I'm gonna have you sell me a proper meal. Elsewise, my friend here will have no choice but to burn your whole stand, apples and all. Ain't that right?" He turned to the sorcerer, evidently expecting some fiery display of force, but the mage was already handing over coin for another dozen apples, and had cheerfully bitten into his second scarlet fruit.

"Look, if you punks are just going to stand around and be useless, why don't you be useless over by the Goblin fort? Maybe you'll annoy them to death, and then we could ALL get some real food!"

"Don't bother," said Wander, brushing through the Lv. 10's and tossing the Goblin Chief's headdress on the counter. "They're already dead."

Silence ruled over the stall. Wander took a moment to soak in the disbelieving stares of the knucklehead Lv. 10's, and savoring the slack-jawed incredulity of Elias in particular.

"You literally walked out of here with a sack of apple cores."

"I figured out a couple of tricks along the way," he confided, and with a flick of his wrist brandished the crystal sword, which materialized with a shimmer at his beckoning.

The bearded merchant was utterly perplexed, whipping his head back and forth between the sword on his wall and the sword in Wander's hand. At last, after a few more seconds of confused wordlessness, he chuckled and began to write something on a formal sheet of parchment.

"I'll take it you'll not be after wanting that sword on my wall any longer. I wish I could get you some real food, but even with the goblins gone, the next caravan won't arrive for another day or two," he said distractedly, still pointedly ignoring the three goons frozen on the other side of his counter. Wander groaned, crushed that yet another decent meal had evaded him.

Elias continued: "Since I can only assume you're as sick of apples as I am, your best bet will be to head down the road towards the nearest city with other adventurers, which would be Manhattan." Signing with a flourish, he handed the paper to Wander, who began to try and decipher the merchant's scrawl. "Take this paper to Bram in the Golden Spire, and he'll fix you up with some proper armor, real quests, and a meal fit for a king."

"Wait, what-" With a sudden, startling intensity, Elias grabbed Wander's shoulder from across the counter and stared him dead in the eye. "I've been doing this a long time, kid, and I've met one hell of a lot of adventurers. Some of them are the decent sort, and some of them are idiots like those three." The three in question flinched, unfrozen by this barb. "You're neither of those. You're one of those magnificent bastards to who runs headlong into the world and blows it to pieces, without even realize you're doing it. So go. Wreck this country-and don't even think about repaying me until you've picked up all the pieces."

The merchant held eye-contact for a heartbeat longer, then pushed Wander away with a smile. "And if you even get a hankering for some locally-grown apples, you know where to find me!" Sparing one last disdainful look at the Lv. 10's, Elias grinned, and the bearded merchant slammed the shutter down on his stall.

Wander had joined the Lv. 10's in their petrification. He'd seen the fearsome shopkeeper enraged, uproarious, and even downright irritable, but this... What was he to make of this?

Perhaps there truly was no point thinking into it. Wander would keep on doing what he'd always done-"run headlong into the world." Sighing, Wander nodded to the other adventurers and turned towards the road, ready to move on from the town that had been his prison and his home.

What he didn't see were the sly glances that passed between the three adventurers he'd left behind. They certainly weren't ready to move on from him.

Having toured across the East Coast on countless occasions, Wander found his way towards the main thoroughfare with relative ease. True, some of the forest trails had been remapped-regrown?-but their overall layout had remained the same. In fact, he'd almost been thinking the going was too easy when the Lv. 10's stepped out from between the trees, druid cutting off the trail behind, and wizard cutting off the trail ahead. Clearly, they thought him surrounded, and while he could have just run into the trees, Wander wanted to see what these goons had in store.

The ill-dressed monk stepped forward first.

"Well, if it ain't mistah 'run into the world' and 'free ticket to the capital' himself."

"What do you want, Mr..." Wander opened the monk's profile. "xXDestroyer. xXDestroyer?"

"Yeah, xXDestroyer. Da druid behind ya is Sperhero, and dis wizah'd is DavesAppliances. What we want-" Wander cut him off.

"First of all, those are really unfortunate names all around. Sperhero, that's just a dumb spelling."

"Hmm..." the druid replied... Sort of.

"And what were you, DavesAppliances, one of those sponsored bot players?"

"Shut up," the mage muttered uncomfortably. "It's my dad's business, and he pays the subscription fee."

Wander considered this. "Fair, actually."

xXDestroyer interjected: "And what we want is-"

"And you! xXDestroyer! What does that even mean?"

"What we want-"

"Like, why is only the second x capitalized? In Destroyer, you capitalized the D..."

"SHADDAP! What we want..." Anticipating the need to shout once more, the monk waited for any further interruptions. This time, however, he was rewarded with a patient silence.

"Well, then. What want is-"

"OH!" Wander exclaimed. "xX like SEX! The first one is little because you're supposed to say it out loud with the big one! Your name is SEX Destroyer!"

The thug glowered as his erstwhile victim chuckled contentedly, and was just about to repeat himself when said victim abruptly ceased his merriment and asked, in all seriousness, "What does that mean?"

"Wha?"

"Sex Destroyer." Wander began pacing back and forth across the road, musing aloud for the benefit of the other adventurers. "The hell does it even mean? Like, do you go around cock-blocking young couples on weekends?"

"Nah, it means-"

"Dress up as people's mothers and call random motel numbers?"

"Nah, I-"

"Or is it more literal? Do you run some kind of reproductive organ surgery clinic? Represent Androgynous International?"

"I-"

"Good LORD!" he screamed, and scrambled back a full yard. "Is it literal? Did you actually destroy your own-"

"SHADDAP!" xXDestroyer rammed his fist into the side of a hickory tree off the trail, ripping through bark and shattering its trunk. "Shaddap, shaddap, SHADDAP!" As the now-baseless hardwood began its creaking descent to the forest floor, the infuriated monk took a single step forward.

"Ya know, punk, all we was going ta take was that little note dat shopkeep gave ya. Just dat one little thing, to make us an easy life. Now..." The monk looked back on the broken tree stump. "Well, a funny thing happened a day or two ago. See, there was dis wiseass punk, a lot like you, and we mighta roughed him up a little too hard, if you know what I mean. Crazy bit is, he wakes up right away-like in the Cathedral, not a scratch on 'im. Now, what does that tell us silly blokes?"

xXDestroyer cracked his knuckles against the side of his head.

"Andrew, Esper." DavesAppliances and Sperhero grinned and began firing up spells.

"Wreck 'im."

In an mmo, it's common knowledge that unless the healer is taken down first, the battle will get absolutely nowhere-and while the sound of Healing Wind activating behind him was certainly cause for alarm, Wander was primarily distracted by the enraged monk bearing down upon him. Dodging the initial strike, he threw a backhanded slash that only managed to nick his foe's tunic. Swinging around, the adventurer just barely managed to catch Destroyer's follow-up kick on the flat of his blade, wincing as his already not-terribly-high hp was knocked down a few digits. He retorted with a more proper swing, grasping the hilt of his sword with both hands and bringing its cerulean edge down upon the monk's unguarded shoulder. Before he could celebrate, however, the smell of ozone and a crackle appeared from behind, and something heavy crashed into Wander's back, knocking him to his face and leaving the vague smell of singed clothing.

"Thunder Spear," DavesAppliances called helpfully.

"Thanks," groaned Wander, rolling onto his back.

"Nothing personal, I hope you understand. We're just trying to look after ourselves, what with all monsters and Landers and such."

"Of course," Wander replied, still not quite ready to stand up. "Perfectly understandable."

"ANDREW! QUIT FRATERNIZING WITH THE ENEMY!" Destroyer was upon him once more, and Wander just barely managed to roll to his feet and swing wildly, holding the monk at bay for a few seconds more. To his dismay, the damage done by his single successful attack had already been undone by Sperhero, apparently doing annoyingly well at his job. Not expecting any true results, he flung his sword at the druid, only to be rewarded by the buzz of crystal against barrier. Sperhero had apparently erected it just before the battle-as long as it was up, he would need a far more concentrated offensive to break through. With Destroyer taking his full attention, that was not something he could easily provide.

Wander was out-numbered, out-leveled, and entirely out-gunned. Clearly, a change of tactics was needed.

His opponents were a monk, a druid, and a sorcerer. The druid kept up continuous healing on the monk, allowing him to act as both tank and melee damage-dealer, while the sorcerer kept up the serious ranged attacks. His advantages-they were all pretty much in a line. If he could somehow redirect the mage's lightning attack toward the monk...

Wander leapt at Destroyer, who, being completely unprepared for an offensive move, struggled to throw up his guard in time. While pounding away at the monk's defense, the adventurer listened carefully for the electric crackle that signaled an electric attack. Destroyer was beginning to rally, now, and almost had a major attack charged.

"Now!" Wander thought as a whiff of ozone came to him, and he dropped flat to the ground, just in time for another Thunder Spear to crash full-on into his melee foe

"Gaaah. Andrew, what have ya done?...PSYCH!" Brushing off the residual sparks like lint, Destroyer pointed to an amber pendant hanging around his neck. "Grants immunity ta thundah attacks. Ya thought we'd be firin' dese things off without some kinda defense? Now, quit jumpin' around and lemme smash yer face in!"

Wander threw another jab, and silently groaned when, once again, his foe's health crept back to full. Perhaps this truly was hopeless...

A desperate plan came to mind. There was no way he was going to win this encounter-not with things being as they were currently. If he could just take down one of them, then die, he could trail that one all the way from the cathedral to the rest of the group, then launch an ambush of his own. Perfect. Defeatist, but perfect.

Wander lobbed his sword at Destroyer and dashed straight towards DavesAppliances, recalling his sword only within a couple strides of the startled mage. Just when it seemed that there stood nothing left between the cutting crystal edge of his blade and an unnecessarily complicated revenge, though, a foot appeared at the top of his vision. The monk had jumped above him, too fast to be taken in. That foot was going to plant itself in his face before he would even have a chance to blink.

A twitch in the adventurer's fingers.

He'd done this for hours IRL, sometimes days. Before meeting up with Ironsides and Lovespotions, Wander had been a competitive player, too busy fighting high schoolers and undergrads the world over to appreciate the hidden dungeons and panoramic views. Even in the height of his tour days, he still had to deal with some of the fiercest PKers around, aiming for his often underleveled clients. To fight against the best, he had to be the best-and by the announcement of Novasphere Pioneers, Wander had developed one of the highest twitch speeds to be found across the whole of his server.

It was exactly three seconds after using Phantom Step to materialize behind Destroyer and smash him headlong into an aspen with Aura Saber that Wander realized he'd counterattacked at all. It was his most-often used combo... As a monk.

DavesAppliances and Sperhero stood motionless, dropping their spells mid-incantation to stare at the strange Lv. 8 swordsman who blew away his foes with the techniques of a high-level monk.

They would gather their wits any second now. If Wander could really use fragments of his old skillset, though, there was something he could try. Grasping the crystal sword with both hands once more, every muscle in the adventurer's body stood taut as he shouted the absurd technique he'd created on a dragon's back.

"Tiger Echo Wing!" The sword rocketed towards Sperhero with all the fierce accuracy of a falcon's dive, cloaking itself in golden light and leaving a contrail of gold in its wake. When it smashed into the druid's barrier, it flashed like sunlight before completely ripping the druid's defenses apart in the resultant shockwave.

While the barrier was down, Wander rushed his defenseless foe, calling back his sword as he breezed by the still-startled mage. If this battle was going to reach an end, he had to remove the healer, and fast.

As final, desperate countermeasure, Sperhero launched a cloud of Willow Spirits in Wander's direction. Weak individually, spirits in these numbers could very well immobilize the adventurer, and give the party a chance to regroup. The druid's emergency tactic could very well work, too, if Wander didn't have a fire attack in his arsenal.

At the very thought of fire, Wander's sword ignited, and with a single slash carbonized the willow spirits. Not taking pause to think about this new turn of events, the adventurer dashed straight to the druid and clove him in twain with his now-crimson weapon. Sperhero fell without a sound, collapsing into a cloud of exp and a pile of items.

Ozone permeated the air once more, and Wander knew he didn't have time to dodge another Thunder Spear. Yet, any more damage, and he was likely to collapse on the spot! Desperate for another miracle, Wander spun around to block the impending lightning.

Shifting instantly from one element to the next, the adventurer's sword cloaked itself in the inky black of night. Rather than impacting it, the Thunder Spear seemed to disappear inside it, swallowed within the stygian abyss that had become his sword. Now reflexively, Wander slung that same sword at the mage, and DavesAppliances exploded the same way as Sperhero had. When Destroyer came charging out of the trees, Wander caught his outstretched fist and flung him into the trees on the other side of the trail.

Wander, taking a moment to breath, felt a hollow chill lance through his stomach. Checking his status, it was easy to see why-he'd been forced into critical health, and those fantastic techniques had drained all of his limited mana. Still, it wasn't time to rest quite yet. Calling his sword once more, Wander turned to face his likely-concussed foe.

...It was that damnable merchant's fault, xXDestroyer concluded, wheezing on the forest floor and barely mustering the strength and coordination to roll off of his stomach. He stared into the dappled green canopy, painfully and utterly lost.

He'd never meant to kill that brat in Manhattan, honestly. One moment, he'd been logging in to his favorite game in the comfort of his own room, the next he was dumped in that very same post-apocalyptic wreck of a city he'd only just begun exploring. So when that damn brat kept blabbering on about how cool the whole thing was, he'd just wanted to get him to shut up. How was he to know that a Lv. 1 can't even take a single hit from a Lv. 10? Before he knew it, the kid had died and woken back up in a cathedral, with Destroyer's own hide following suit at the hands of the Royal Guard, and the whole city going to hell. He'd tracked down a couple friends and hightailed it out to the wilderness, intent upon camping until the chaos died down.

Then, the moment he stops at a town for some food, this punk-ass merchant npc has the gall to yell at him, demanding he take a stupid quest in the middle of the biggest crisis of his life. Could he not understand that, after days of cardboard rations, he wanted some real food for once? Where did he get off-the bastard wasn't even a real person! That uppity Lv. 8 just another, breezing his way past the merchant and back toward the city with all the glory in hand.

And to top it all off, that Lv. 8 had just defeated him and his entire party with some hardcore Lv. 90 shit. It defied all common sense-like he'd really just smashed into the world and had the entire thing break in front of him. The bastard.

The lone swordsman was walking towards him now, crazy OP crystal blade glimmering irritatingly in his hand. The guy was haggard and nearly dead. He'd have fallen with just one more solid hit-but Destroyer could no longer find the energy to lift a finger.

"Well. This is your victory, damn you. I hope you're proud of yourself."

Wander's eyes widened questioningly. "Where the hell'd your accent go?"

Destroyer smirked. "What, you've never seen a role-player before?"

The adventurer looked stunned, before scratching the back of his neck and chuckling. "None quite as convincing as you, I have to admit." He raised his sword. "Just for that, I'll give you all your stuff back when I see you next."

"Do that, and I'll write an entry about you between Bigfoot and Chupacabra." xXDestroyer sighed and let his eyelids drift together. "See you in Manhattan, you crazy sunuvabitch."

"Manhattan," Wander agreed. "But next time you're choosing a name, make it... Well..." He thought for a moment, before coming upon the right word. "Better."

The blue blade rushed downwards.

Wander ambled leisurely down the ruined highway from Pattonville to New York, staring at the two crystals, red and black, that twinkled in one hand, and the mysterious sword that glimmered cerulean in the other. The loot from his three foes-gold, accessories, and miscellaneous items-was bundled away safely in a corner of his bag, alongside Elias' note and what limited gold he had earned from quests around Pattonville.

His blade had called fire and darkness in that battle. Is that what the profile meant when it said abilities were tied to these crystals? He could already make helmets into weapons, and apple cores into trip hazards-what more could possibly be done with the kind of power he'd seen with this weapon set? How was it that he, a Lv. 8, could call upon the techniques of his previous profile, ingrained into a muscle memory he'd never properly had? Did this mean he could also acquire techniques from other classes, provided he spent enough time practicing? The possibilities were endless, provided he could finish this "Complete the Arcana" quest his profile kept going on about. Only problem was, if the first two crystals were dropped by an honest-to-goodness raid boss, what hellish lengths would he have to go through for the others?

Wander pocketed the crystals and dismissed the sword-the Arcana, as it was properly called. He had a feeling, something like dread and expectation combined, that he would find answers in Manhattan.

It seemed he had one more Big Apple left to chew.

...Did you think that was a clever ending? Because I thought that was a clever ending. Honestly, the stuff that pops into your head at three in the morning...

Anyway, you may now notice that some of the previous chapters have been slightly altered. As I explained on each chapter this is because, rather unlike before, I now have some degree of intuition as to what Elder Tale is going to be about. As opposed to the semi-purposeful flailing I was doing before-I mean, the creative process I was engaging in.

I've also gotten a few writing tools-like notes, and action scene blocking. Seriously, it's amazing how much easier it is to write an action scene when you've got all the action planned out in advance, as opposed to narrating, then revising and re-narrating, then changing the whole thing back. I'm only expecting them to get better and better, as well as my plot to get more and more coherent!

At the time of this writing, Log Horizon has reached episode 24. A long ways away from where it was when I began! Luckily, though 25 will be the last of season 1, Touno-Sensei has indicated that he is in negotiations for season 2 ( .me/wiki/Mamare_Touno_Q%26A_2013-12-07), and at the current point in the anime, it certainly seems like it will continue with more of the light novel material. Which will be absolutely fantastic, even with the painful gap between seasons. Hey, at least it's not Sherlock, right?

Anyway, I don't know if I'll have anything new for you soon. Last time, I had a rough idea of what was going to happen, even if it changed a lot-I'm going to have to do some thinking for this next round. As always, every review helps, and every favorite/follower tells me I'm at least doing SOMETHING right. Again, thank you all so much!

Until next time,

~Forkive out.