Log Horizon - Shiroe's sister

Chapter 57

"Conversation~"

Thinking thoughts

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Currently, the chilly autumn air gave the sky a cool and refreshing feeling. Akiba's night sky was filled with twinkling stars as far as the eye could see.

The stars were brighter and more numerous in the world of Elder Tales than in the original world.

Whether it was due to the clean air here or the game's aesthetic design, the nightscape of this alternate world was aglow with stars.

On the night of the Libra Festival, Akiba was still buzzing with activity late into the evening.

As Akiba was the primary city of Adventurers, its functions were extremely specialized. Said functions encompassed the portal system, banks, guild halls, cathedral, and the marketplace. When Elder Tales was still a game, Adventurers only needed these five facilities to survive. In other words, Akiba had no functions beyond these five. That was what it meant to be 'specialized. '

Before the Apocalypse, Akiba had lacked proper living quarters. While places such as taverns and inns could be found within the city, they were mostly included for decorative purposes, to give players the feeling of being in an alternate fantasy world — they were like stage props that were not truly usable.

But after the Apocalypse, Adventurers had set out to make the city truly livable. For this to be accomplished, many facilities were required just so they could remain within the city. The thriving restaurants were some of the earliest changes. After them, all sorts of stores, private shops, and services had opened as well.

While some of these enterprises were run by Adventurers, most were either jointly run by Adventurers and People of the Land or had been established by the People of the Land themselves.

There were several reasons for this, the biggest being the income gap. Compared to People of the Land, Adventurers were capable of earning more money in a shorter period of time. Just by grinding mobs, even a mid-level Adventurer could earn more in one day than a Person of the Land farmer could earn in a month.

Although the disparity in production ability was not as drastic as combat ability, it was still significant. In the eyes of Adventurers, even a Person of the Land hailed as a master of their craft would only be as skilled as an Adventurer with a level sixty subclass.

Of course, regardless of whether you were a Chef or a Tailor, as long as you reached level twenty, the product would be good enough for normal consumption. A Chef of this level was capable of making fresh-baked loaves of bread, delicious soups, crispy fries, as well as chicken fried to a perfect golden brown. A Tailor of this level could make comfortable shirts, loose-fitting pants, coats dyed with bright colours, or leather vests.

People of the Land could also create these kinds of 'generic products'. As a result, it was only natural that Adventurers would focus on tasks that only Adventurers were capable of doing, leaving the more generic and mundane tasks to the People of the Land.

After these changes, Akiba was incomparable to its limited 'in-game version,' and now hosted a great multitude of shops and facilities. Naturally, the population of the People of the Land also multiplied, increasing geometrically. This resulted in shops that were run exclusively by People of the Land opening up one after another.

There was another reason for the growth of the city's People of the Land population.

From the viewpoint of the Adventurers, this player city was just a stronghold for them. Nearly all the Adventurers simply viewed this place as a convenient staging ground, a point of departure. But this place held a different meaning to the People of the Land.