The Sweet Scent of Poison
It had been a few days since Reina Cloud received the suspicious pill from her female senior. Although she was tempted to try it, an ominous foreboding kept her from swallowing the medicine. Logically speaking, there was nothing strange about it. Elixirs that boosted one's strength or mana were already sold on the market for exorbitant prices. More than anything, the pill had been given to her by the only senior she trusted in the Church of Tartarus.
Yet, the bad feeling persisted. She found herself pulling the vial out and putting it back several times a day. Then came the day she visited the adventurer guild in the metropolitan city where her temple branch was located, rather than the remote countryside estate where she usually stayed. There, the receptionist informed her that a designated request had been submitted specifically for her.
"Oh, really? Let me have a look."
Reina feigned nonchalance, but inside, she was practically leaping with joy. And for good reason—designated requests were typically reserved for adventurers who had already made a name for themselves. While she might expect one back in her rural province, she had never imagined receiving a designated request in a major city's adventurer guild.
Am I finally starting to get famous? Reina wondered, her heart fluttering as she took the request form from the receptionist. But the moment she scanned the document, her face fell.
The request detailed a mission to subjugate a horde of Orcs marching toward a mountain village and protect the inhabitants. Even if the estimated number of Orcs wasn't massive, an Orc was still an Orc. This was absolutely not a task for a mere B-rank adventurer who had only recently promoted.
If Reina were already a legendary figure, it would be one thing. But for a rising rookie, rejecting a designated request carried a heavy risk. In the worst-case scenario, rumors would spread that she had chickened out and fled. Normally, when a designated request was submitted, the adventurer guild would pre-screen the difficulty before passing it along. Handing her a quest like this was practically telling her to go screw herself. Fuming, Reina marched back to the counter.
"Excuse me, but is there a mistake with this request?"
"Pardon? No, it was definitely addressed to you, Lady Reina."
The receptionist blinked, looking entirely clueless.
Reina couldn't exactly blurt out, 'The difficulty is too high for me to handle!' in the middle of the lobby. Swallowing her frustration, she slammed the paper onto the counter. "No, look closely! Something is clearly wrong here!"
"Oh... is there a problem? But the Church of Tartarus explicitly instructed us to deliver this request to you, Lady Reina..."
"Huh?"
As she stood there dumbfounded, a voice sneered from behind her.
"Well, look at that. You're an incarnation of the Church too? Is there a problem?"
The man who stepped forward was an incarnation she had crossed paths with a few times at her local temple branch—an insufferable senior from the Inner Circle. He had mocked her on numerous occasions, and the last time Reina had lost her temper and talked back, she had received a formal warning from the church. He undoubtedly knew exactly who she was, yet he was playing dumb. Reina's face flushed with anger.
Ignoring her glare, the man snatched the request form from the receptionist's hand. He looked back and forth between the paper and Reina's face, a nasty smirk spreading across his lips. "Ha! Scared of a little request like this? You're dragging our constellation's name through the mud."
As the commotion grew, the other adventurers in the guild hall began to turn their heads toward them.
"Well, I suppose it really is too much for a mere B-rank. Though, if that's the case, you shouldn't have accepted the designated request in the first place, don't you think?"
"No, I didn't accept it—!"
"Save it. I'll handle it for you just this once, as a fellow incarnation serving the same constellation."
Only then did the pieces click together in Reina's mind. This bastard is trying to get back at me for talking back to him last time! She immediately concluded that the church's instruction to hand her this request had been orchestrated by this very man.
A crowd had already gathered, watching the spectacle with keen interest. He had likely planned this entire scene. If she backed down now, she would be branded a coward for the rest of her adventuring career. Naturally, she could kiss any future designated requests goodbye.
Reina grit her teeth so hard they clicked.
"No thank you! I can handle a trivial request like this with ease. I was only hesitating because my schedule has been so packed lately!"
"I wouldn't let your greed get the better of you if I were you."
Snatch! Reina ripped the paper out of his hand.
"Well, do your best then. If it gets too tough, don't fail and embarrass our constellation. Just crawl back and ask me for help."
Though he kept baiting her until the very end, the man backed off surprisingly easily. Reina felt a brief flicker of unease, but she ignored it, storming out of the guild building with heavy, stomping steps.
Once Reina was gone, the man slipped out to the back of the guild building to meet a cloaked woman. When she pulled back her hood, she revealed her face—it was the Female Senior from the church who had given Reina the pill.
The man asked, "If we just left her alone, she would've taken it eventually. Was there really a need to go this far? I mean, personally, I wouldn't mind if that annoying bitch kept refusing to take it and just ended up dead." He tilted his head, looking genuinely puzzled. "Besides, how do you even know she hasn't taken the pill yet? Did you ask her?"
"No. I only gave her a three-day supply, and she hasn't come back to find me yet. Once you experience the effects of that medicine, even just once, it's impossible not to crave more. Fufufu..."
Listening to her chilling chuckle, the man voiced his biggest curiosity. "But why are you obsessing over her so much? She's just a B-rank adventurer. Even with the drug, she'll peak at A-rank. And in the end, she'll just become useless because of the side effects anyway."
"Oh, because her face and personality are exactly my style. Don't you think it'll be absolutely thrilling? Seeing a girl with pride that high groveling at my feet, weeping and begging for just one more pill... Ahhh..."
"You're insane." The man shook his head in disgust.
This was the exact method by which the Church of Tartarus expanded its power. Incarnations who showed true talent were placed into the Inner Circle, receiving direct attention and support from the constellation. Meanwhile, the unsupported dregs were hooked on drugs to artificially boost their strength, used as disposable tools, and discarded once they broke. The man was hardly the type to feel guilty about such things, but even he recognized that the woman standing before him was a lunatic on an entirely different level.
Having fallen right into the trap, Reina had taken on a quest far beyond her capabilities in a fit of rage. Ultimately, she had swallowed the pill. The very next day, she returned to the guild to report the successful completion of her quest. And in less than a month, she was promoted to an A-rank adventurer.
The television flickered in my dark, cramped studio apartment, broadcasting news about the tower. Two years after the first awakening, the tower had finally opened its gates. From within the depths of what people called the Black Tower, a torrent of mana stones and rare items was pouring into the world.
Although the death toll continued to rise, the wealth generated by the tower far outweighed the risks. Outside my window, the entire world was whipped into a frenzy over it.
Me? I didn't have the slightest interest in the tower—at least, not right now. I was already busy enough exploring the constellations' community forums and searching for a new incarnation to sign a contract with.
If my believers multiplied in the other world and my divine faith increased, my physical body on Earth would grow stronger, and I would receive various stat buffs. I could worry about entering the tower after that.
More importantly, I could now receive offerings from the other world. I could even descend to that world myself. To receive offerings and descend, one needed a dedicated temple of a certain scale built according to specific divine laws. In theory, even a lowest-grade constellation could do it, but realistically speaking, who would build a temple for a lowest-grade deity? But now that I had become a supreme-grade constellation, things were entirely different.
My incarnation slots remained completely empty. I had spent days burning through my mana to observe the other world, but I couldn't find anyone who caught my eye.
Of course, if I offered a contract, most mortals would throw themselves to the ground in gratitude. That was the sheer weight of a supreme-grade constellation's prestige in that world.
The only reason I hesitated was the lingering trauma of being betrayed by the first three incarnations I had ever contracted with. Even though I now had a thousand slots and it wouldn't matter if I signed a few random people, I couldn't help but be cautious.
On top of that, I was constantly bombarded with requests from people in the other world begging me to contract with them. Normally, mortals couldn't directly call upon a constellation they hadn't contracted with. They could only wait and pray that a deity might deign to look down upon them.
However, there was exactly one place where they could send their thoughts to a specific constellation of their choosing: the Pantheon. It wasn't free, of course. They had to pay a hefty donation fee to be assigned a prayer room before they could transmit a message to a deity.
And since yesterday morning, a certain prayer had been flooding my inbox like relentless spam. The sheer volume of messages was practically DDOSing my system, making it impossible to check any other notifications. I had no desire to contract with this person since they didn't seem to possess any notable talent or ability, but...
"Huh?"
Through the screen, I saw a disheveled, filthy woman who looked like she hadn't bathed in days. Her eyes, peeking through a tangled mess of shaggy hair, burned with pure, unadulterated madness as she screamed her prayer up to me.