Chapter 124
Chapter 124
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 124
Chapter Title: Guild Master Isn't Enough with Just the Game
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The meeting room of the Lynoxa members—living gods of the Central State and rulers of each region.
Lenox's body jerked.
“!”
Something had happened.
Boom!
In the middle of a meeting with his family, Lenox suddenly slammed the table and shot to his feet, striding quickly out of the room.
Stunned by the sudden turn of events, Serebia hurried after him.
“L-Lenox?”
Serebia was utterly flustered.
The place Lenox had rushed into was none other than the central control room.
Without anyone touching anything, all the lights in the control room flicked on, and the devices embedded in the walls whirred to life, starting to do... something.
Lenox's blue eyes gleamed.
Crackle. Crackle.
The transparent ceiling device—called the "brain" of the central control room, which recorded data in beams of light—flashed frantically, emitting bursts of illumination.
Lenox was reading something from the records in real time.
He paused.
Abruptly stopping his reading, Lenox lowered his head and slowly turned his body.
“Serebia.”
“!”
“Don't you have something to tell me?”
His voice resonated low and dangerously, like the wrath of an enraged god.
Flash.
The central control room's screen expanded to maximum size, displaying the situation.
In footage captured by the android soldiers Lenox had dispatched to the military building, Lea flashed by briefly.
It rewound automatically, froze, and zoomed precisely in on Lea's face.
Then, the access logs for that footage—accessed via unique biometric authorization—showed Serebia's information clear as day.
To think it would be exposed so easily.
“......Why didn't you tell me?”
“Lenox, that's—”
“Were you afraid of getting caught for smuggling out the clan's bodies? Why hide the fact that you created them to fight outsiders? Because the goddess in league with you told you nothing?”
“!!”
While Serebia gaped in shock at how Lenox had seen through everything.
Lenox, who had seemed to be grilling her, turned back around.
His blue eyes lit up, and the massive screen in the central control room flickered through scenes rapidly.
Android soldiers fighting unidentified outsiders appeared.
The screen flipped.
Lenox breathed heavily, desperately searching for something.
But with the past records ending in the total annihilation of the android forces, leaving no current live feed, Lenox clenched his fist tight.
Crackle.
Soon, the screen dissolved into white noise.
“......”
In the heavy silence, Serebia spoke calmly.
“Even if everything you know is true, I swear on my life that I have never done anything to harm our Lynoxa clan or Lea.”
This clan, called gods, worked solely for the family, and as long as it didn't harm the clan, they had the right to act independently without anyone's permission.
A groan like a sigh escaped Lenox.
“......Why didn't you tell me.”
I'm your god, after all.
Serebia flinched, looking at Lenox's turned back.
Of course, that question wasn't about the actions she'd taken on her own—it was about Lea.
Lenox slowly turned, sweeping the hand away from his eyes.
“Why.”
His eyes blazed icy blue.
Lenox already knew the cause of that soul-splitting sensation.
Lea was dead.
The being who had been with him constantly, ever since entering that rare young paired body created within the clan, had finally met its end.
Lenox's mind flooded with the footage he'd just seen.
Lea had probably died at the hands of the android soldiers he'd sent—or been slaughtered by the mysterious outside intruders.
A piercing rage flickered in his blue eyes.
“......”
This was all because of the intruders.
The screen flushed red with warnings, showing the barriers around the Central State's east, west, south, and north.
Rumble.
The barrier dividing the forest from the Central State shifted, deploying cannons in unison as mechanical gates underground yawned open, unleashing hordes of pitch-black androids and laser tanks.
Lenox walked to the control console, remotely manipulating the screen with his fingertips, highlighting a spot on the map.
The evening scene of the expanding city was quaint and beautiful.
A semi-agricultural city.
Serebia trembled violently at the sight of her own territory displayed on the screen.
“W-What are you going to do......”
“Watch closely. This is the price of your foolish judgment.”
Serebia screamed.
“Aaah!! No—!!”
Lenox crushed his raised hand like he was pulverizing an apple, and explosive devices planted throughout the city—Serebia's hometown and territory—detonated simultaneously.
Kaboom!
Kaboom boom—!!
It was the moment when one peaceful city in the Central State was obliterated in an instant.
* * *
To the highly advanced citizens of the Central State, the explosions and incursion of mechanical soldiers were a catastrophe unseen in nearly a century.
As explosions rocked the area, the barriers protecting the Central State from the forest opened.
The explosive devices installed throughout the city had programming: if activated from the center, treat it as an outside invasion and abandon the city.
With blasts continuing everywhere inside the city, some survivors fled beyond the barriers to escape.
And beyond the barriers, they encountered something worse than monsters.
Lenox's mechanical soldiers mercilessly slaughtered the Central State citizens who had fled outside.
Everyone knew that all of the Central State's mechanical army fell under the command of its god and supreme leader, 'Lenox.'
Word spread instantly.
The territory ruled by Serebia, which had been fine just yesterday, had exploded, causing countless deaths, and the military was under attack by Lenox's forces. The news sent the citizens into shock and terror.
It had happened too fast for the sacred clan to intervene beforehand.
Those who had long harbored resentment toward Lenox's dictatorship fanned the flames of public unease, but for some reason, Lenox himself did not step in to quell the rumors.
Late at night.
Amid this unprecedented extreme fear, the citizens buzzed with one shared murmur.
Lenox had gone mad.
Rumors swirled that Lenox's army would soon come to slaughter them, and the silence from Lenox and the sacred clan only fueled it.
* * *
Darkness fell over the forest.
After entrusting Oppen with the test subjects' safety and the dead, I moved out immediately.
The error codes that appeared alongside the androids had swept across the map once, so the flow was roughly readable now.
The unidentified civilization-state at the center had declared war on the outsiders.
Now, survivors from every nation would swarm in to take down the final boss in the Central State and seize the forest territories.
I immediately summoned Spaceking's first unit and Goldbunker's first unit.
“Spaceking takes 3 o'clock direction from the forest center, Goldbunker 9 o'clock. Objective: seize and hold the forest territories. Keep the full map up and move.”
With those two guilds deployed in the forest like this, I planned to launch a full assault on the Central State where Lenox was.
My guild members had already seized almost everything except the 12 o'clock position.
Gilgamesh responded right away.
[“Got it.”]
“Don't get pushed back on the front lines while I'm going for the center—deploy your personnel wisely.”
[“That's why I only brought the first unit for now. I'll adjust based on the situation, but judging by how the Chinese are acting, it looks like the center will be where China and the European Union clash head-on.”]
High chance of that.
The 8 o'clock was China's starting point, and 10 to 11 o'clock seemed to be the European Union's.
“What about you, Dart?”
[“Same here, just the first unit for now. Even after I killed America's rank 1, the other top rankers aren't showing up, so they're probably gathering at the center.”]
“No other countries besides America up north?”
[“......Couldn't reach the far north, but there's definitely one nation fighting fiercely with America from above.”]
Russia, maybe.
I speculated briefly since Russia was the only one left, but naturally, it didn't matter much which country it was.
“From now on, it's a real territory war—don't forget. Come running when I call.”
[“Yeah.”]
The immediate reply came surprisingly from Dart.
This odd thrill.
Giving direct orders to Dart and Gilgamesh like this, a rush hit me—like all of Korea's guilds were under my command.
Then Gilgamesh spoke up.
[“You took out three error codes and who's calling who? If we get wrecked by the European Union, you come support us.”]
Yeah, fair point.
“Got it.”
Snapping out of my brief power trip, I glanced at Goldbunker's group on the map when Dart's dumbfounded voice came through.
[“......What? Three?”]
[“You didn't know till now? I heard it secondhand from guild members since it wasn't from Kaisha. Whew. Kaisha being Kaisha.”]
“Thought I was gonna die for real.”
[“Duh, obviously. Fighting error codes is always life-or-death, but three? Haha. Shocking doesn't even cover it—it's ridiculous. Was gonna ask how you were holding up, but your voice sounded too fine and it threw me off.”]
Gilgamesh taking care of my worries? No wonder the call felt a bit off at first.
He continued.
[“I got one too, but China and Japan had worn it down, so I just scooped up the honey.”]
“Wasn't me soloing three—the Abyss helped make it possible. I heard from my guild how you and Dart landed the killing blows so awesomely.”
[“Figures Fullminak has guild members passing on news too. Heard you guys have a chat for sharing info with close guilds.”]
Dart sounded annoyed at Gilgamesh's words.
[“Isn't that spying?”]
[“What? Man, this guy's something else. We're on the same team now—where's the spy talk? Your guild probably held back knowing you'd freak. Hell, I wouldn't tell either.”]
[“......”]
Honestly, same here......
Gilgamesh mercilessly swung facts like a bat, battering Dart, but the blow was too hard—no comeback.
Gilgamesh feigned concern.
[“Oops, did I say too much? Hey, let's not kill our guild members recklessly.”]
[“I won't.”]
[“Anyway, how do your guild members even survive? A scary bastard like you as guild master—and now their real-life boss too! I genuinely feel bad for them.”]
[“......Can you stop barking?”]
“Pfft.”
Dart, savagely struck by the sharp words and swallowing his rage with gritted curses, made me burst out laughing involuntarily.
Gilgamesh was infamous for riling Dart up, and hearing it live was hilarious.
In Midgard, that would've sparked a war.