The New Star

A new star.

Many humans form societies and claim dominance in most situations.

Whether handling paperwork or fighting with their lives on the line, a hundred beats one every time.

An MMA champion turns helpless before ten handguns, and a single tank can overpower ten thousand infantry. These are simply unavoidable facts.

Well, it’s only natural.

The saying “there’s no business in the face of a mob” didn’t come from nowhere.

Even an MMA champion who can dodge bullets would struggle to avoid one flying in from behind.

All of it had become blood and flesh—hard-won experience.

This proverb, carved in blood, was a truth that applied to nearly every case.

Of course, exceptions exist everywhere.

When the minority in question wasn’t some half-baked amateur but a tiny handful of beings capable of making the entire world tremble in terror, they could ignore the constraints of mere numbers.

While countless people make up the world, it is always a minuscule few who change it.

Politics, society, science, literature—whatever the field, exceptional talent and chosen individuals led and ruled. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

It’s an extreme comparison, but ten thousand liberal arts students in a lab could never match a single Einstein.

Any sane person wouldn’t bother asking whether a special forces operative could defeat a strategic nuclear weapon.

Yes. A handful of nukes makes the world’s countless people shudder.

If that was true on Earth, the Dimensional Tower held beings whose power surpassed even nuclear weapons.

Depending on their paths, they could obtain overwhelming strength and wisdom. It was a world where standing above every single person was genuinely possible.

There even existed authorities that could collapse a clear sky with one gesture.

Therefore, even an absolute ruler had to stay wary of terrifying newcomers rising through the ranks.

After all, they never knew when a blade might find its way under their chin.

Yet the greatest explorer of the western continent—already positioned far too high—Red Dragon Kargo stared at the woman before him with a distinctly sour expression.

“……So you’re saying this newcomer will surpass me?”

Seina Adsilin, herself an absolute power, answered with a bright, sunny smile.

“Yes! An explorer so incredible that everyone will be shocked and tremble in fear is on the way.”

“……You were talking about a rookie who hasn’t even reached the middle floors yet?”

“Haha! Ignore a little gnome and you’ll regret it.”

“Is this friend a gnome?”

“No? I was just saying it for fun.”

“……Sigh.”

Kargo, revered as a great explorer in the middle-layer world, pressed a hand to his forehead in utter misery.

He was furious and frustrated by her words and attitude, yet the fact that he could do nothing about it only fueled his anger further.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

What irritated him most was that he couldn’t simply laugh off such absurd claims.

……The great mage who had formed her own star could even deliver oracles.

So long as it wasn’t her own specific cause of death, she could glimpse the tower’s fate.

The current statement could be taken as one such prophecy.

Fwoosh—!

As heat began to ride Kargo’s exhaled breath, Seina Adsilin’s lips curved upward in a faint smile.

“Kargo, hold onto the storm. She isn’t exactly a gnome, but she is most certainly a talent that should not be ignored.”

“……Will she kill me?”

“No. Unless you become hostile, I doubt she will. Instead, she’ll sweep away everything you’ve built.”

“I see.”

It was a horrifying statement ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that would have earned a street fortune teller an immediate death.

If the mage before him wasn’t mocking him, this was a prophecy that would absolutely come true.

Kargo clicked his tongue, drew a deep breath, and asked.

“So what floor is this friend on right now?”

Even as he spoke, he thought to himself that no matter how well-connected she might be, if the news had reached a busy great mage’s ears the newcomer must be nearing the middle floors.

Yet the owner of the Blue Mage Tower, the great mage Adsilin, declared with proud confidence.

“Eighteenth floor.”

“Only that?”

The answer was so far from his expectations that the great explorer Kargo frowned deeply.

And the next words made him frown even harder.

Seina Adsilin kept her gentle smile as she gazed at the red star burning in the distant sky and murmured.

“A result achieved in just one month.”

In the eyes of the great mage, the clear precursors of the coming storm were already visible.

Rumble—Boom—Bang!

Concrete buildings collapsed one after another beneath the raging blood storm, and the zombies filling the streets were ripped apart.

Occasionally a lion’s head would burst from the blood storm that had drunk the blood of thousands of zombies.

Why lions? Because there were already plenty of blood dragons, and a lion head looked far cooler than a rabbit head popping out…!

Well, it was obvious.

When it came to style, no creature in existence could beat a rabbit in cuteness, but in sheer cool factor a rabbit had no chance.

‘Now that I think about it, it was surprising that the rabbit made from the black knight’s blood lost to the lion made from the chancellor’s blood.’

It had been a close fight, but the lion’s victory was undeniable.

Yes. Lions are stronger than rabbits.

That became a guiding principle every time I created a new blood seed afterward.

Make it as cool, strong, and flashy as possible.

Unless it was meant to be a pet, it was better to make them overwhelmingly powerful.

The blood storm currently sweeping through the zombies was the product of exactly that mindset.

‘No matter how much grinding is required, there should still be limits.’

I had no idea if any specially strengthened zombies remained since the storm tore through everything, but the quota was a full million.

At first I had sliced them up while treating it as sword training and managed ten thousand, but the thought of repeating this tedious process a hundred times left me feeling bleak.

These things were corpses—their bodies soft and their zombie staggering made them worse targets than stationary dummies.

‘Still, with blood on the scale of ten thousand people, the blood seeds I could create were correspondingly huge.’

Perhaps it really deserved to be called an apocalypse.

At least in terms of scale, this was the largest mission I had encountered since reaching the eighteenth floor.

I had visited a futuristic city with space monsters and even fallen onto pirate ships during the great pirate era, but none of those had a body count on the scale of ten thousand.

I pondered for a while what to create, but for efficiency I made a blood storm that would absorb the zombies the moment they were shredded and immediately join the fray.

Rumble—Boom—Bang!

Yes. The completion of true infinite power.

I wondered if I was relying too heavily on blood seeds, but there was no point fighting convenience.

Still, I took comfort in the new technique I had developed after gaining inspiration while fighting the evolving space monsters.

After all, my base class is swordsman.

Developing my abilities along that line was clearly the best choice. With that thought, I turned to the survivors I had secured earlier and gave them a bright smile.

“Just wait a little longer. I’ll be finished soon.”

“Y-yes! Of course!”

Amazingly, even with tens of thousands of zombies swarming the city, some people had survived.

They hadn’t been hiding together; I had swept through an apartment complex, found the lone survivor there, and brought them along.

After gathering more and more, I ended up with dozens. Every single one of them stared at me with trembling eyes that looked as if they were gazing at a monster.

Well, I was used to that look by now.

On the fifteenth floor I had gone to a kingdom of small folk. They hadn’t treated me like an apostle—they treated me like Cthulhu.

Probably because of the side effects: red glow in my eyes and the ability to control blood. It made sense.

‘……Hm. I won’t be treated like a demon king even after reaching the middle floors, right?’

Surely not. We’re all explorers. They wouldn’t discriminate against me just because my build took a different path.

I am an extremely righteous explorer who has never killed an innocent person.

Well, on the twelfth floor I had cleaned up human scum and trash, so that didn’t count as innocent.

Anyway, after driving the red blood storm around and grinding zombies for a while, a pleasant safe zone was born.

I continued escorting the survivors, having them gather supplies from nearby buildings. After looking after them for several days, they reached a level where they could survive without me.

‘They should be able to survive on their own now.’

Just as I was thinking that, another system message rose before my eyes.

Accept?

[ Y/N ]

There were no rewards.

But simply completing the additional quest would earn a decent amount of shop points.

Wasn’t that profit enough?

I gazed quietly at the group of survivors I had grown somewhat attached to over the past few days.

They must have grown more comfortable with me; when they heard I was leaving, they made sad faces or looked regretful and waved.

“Liz! Thank you for everything!”

“If we meet again, I’ll let you eat all the canned corn you want!”

“You take care too!”

From what I had seen over the past few days, they were ordinary people with no abilities whatsoever.

I could kill them easily.

The act itself would feel good, and I would obtain materials for blood seeds.

No matter how I thought about it, there was only profit.

I was about to accept the quest when I suddenly froze and smacked myself on the head.

……The moment my head cleared, I objectively judged what I had been about to do.

Wait, what the hell was I trying to do?

A righteous citizen like me was about to murder helpless apocalypse survivors?

—More than the morality of it, the shock came from the fact that I had almost chosen an unnecessary, inefficient option.

‘Well, if it helps me survive, I can kill any number of people.’

I frowned and glanced at the system message.

It seemed it was time to drink holy water.