The Big One and the Small One 4

Beside the doppelgangers the Temple knights had captured and the three we'd arrested and handed over, a new friend had joined the lineup.

In other words, the citizens who'd been staring at the doppelgangers hanging from the gallows and gasping, They look exactly like humans — and those are monsters? were now gasping, And some upper-grade adventurer went and freely waved his lower half at one of those monsters and got infected?

If the Mage Tower had been even slightly more systematic and less cagey about sharing knowledge, that nameless upper-grade adventurer might have gone down in history as the world's first man to catch an infection from having sex with a doppelganger. And his name would have been permanently embalmed in the Mage Tower's research papers for the rest of time.

"Ahem… Sir Roland, Miss Hanna the mage — are you present?"

"Yes. What is it?"

I was thinking that over while resting on the 35th floor when a priest and a mage came looking for us.

With the plan shifted from a direct push to the 40th floor to thoroughly rooting out the variant-producing trees below it, we'd made the 35th our base of operations — so the two of them crossed the clearing quite naturally and walked right up to our ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠tent.

A full week had passed since we'd handed the infected adventurer over to the Temple, pitched ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠our tents in the 35th-floor clearing, and started grinding exploration from the 31st floor up. The Mage Tower was deep in research, the Temple was helping us hunt for the giant ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠trees, and the viewers had started screaming that they were going to hell.

Well, of course they were. We'd been grinding our asses off for a week.

The reason we'd been grinding was my spectacular 35th-floor clean sweep show, so nobody was genuinely trash-talking Han Se-ah — but, how to put it… on the boards and community sites, her fans had apparently started getting called monkeys.

It wasn't even the classic bait-and-switch. The monkey nickname had stuck because they'd clap when Roland swept everything clean, then screech and howl the moment the aftermath of that sweep meant cleaning up the quest mess. A monkey cult worshipping an 18-mech porno girl — anyone who didn't know the context would probably take them for the living embodiment of a deviant fetish.

"Just as Sir Roland advised, we were able to locate the trees producing monsters in the corners of each floor and pull them up by the roots."

"Absolutely fascinating specimens! Ahem, Sir Roland! Might you have any samples set aside…?"

Once the Temple started thrashing around with near-seizure intensity, the Mage Tower and the Adventurers' Guild had been dragged along into lending a hand. When every power that propped up the city moved as one, finding unusual monsters became almost trivial.

And so we learned the information the Mage Tower's mages should have figured out ages ago if they were going to deal with a tree the size of the 63 Building on the 35th floor.

The 10-meter-class trees on every floor absorbed the swamp's toxins and produced troll bombs.

The 50-meter-class trees on every odd-numbered floor absorbed undead mana and produced doppelgangers.

The 300-meter-class tree on the 35th floor was presumed to absorb holy power and infinitely proliferate the grayish-white vines.

"You don't have any? Ah, what a shame. No, I'm not doubting you, Sir Roland — it's just that some rather interesting research findings have come to light. When we cut open those human-mimicking creatures, their insides turned out to be quite hollow. Our working theory is that the empty space was left for something to crawl inside."

Troll bombs were a gimmick designed to annoy players while also giving them a way to destroy the big trees with nothing but their own strength. Doppelgangers were monsters designed to put a serious dent in a player's wallet while also forcing the Temple to get involved. So what about the grayish-white vines mass-produced by sucking holy power dry?

The truth was, they weren't vines at all — they were parasites. Internal organs. Creatures that burrowed into a doppelganger's body, granted it the ability to absorb holy power, and then used that stolen holy power themselves.

You know the type — the ones that show up constantly in famous zombie games. You go for the head, and from the severed neck stump a grotesque parasite shoots out long and thin for a second transformation. The zombies from the Umbrella Corporation did it, and so did the monsters people fled from while running from space engineers.

Layer the information from the Mage Tower and the Temple with the predictions of the internet's cyber phantoms who made game analysis their profession, and you got a pretty credible summary post. If floors 21 through 30 had been a romance stage built around rideable war machines, floors 31 through 40 were a blatant blasphemy stage.

Undead standing at the opposite pole of living creatures. Doppelgangers mimicking humans — the Goddess's own creations. Fluid-borne infection mimicking the act of intercourse that creates life. Most viewers figured the finale was the game company's warning shot at monster-fuckers, but anyway.

"The good news is that, just like the wicked abomination Sir Roland annihilated on the 35th floor, the wicked trees that spawn those wicked creatures and trolls do not regenerate."

"We're fortunate the Mage Tower brethren who took note of Sir Roland's exploits put in the work. True to those who walk the path of inquiry, they uncovered a remarkable amount in such a short time."

"Haha! Is this not all the Goddess's grace, allowing even fragile mages like ourselves to research freely inside the Tower?"

In front of the party clustered together to listen, the priest and the mage took turns gilding each other's faces. The priest seemed delighted that, after a week, they'd finally rooted out the ones insulting the Goddess, the Saintess, and the Saint. The mage just seemed thrilled to have a proper laboratory set up inside the Tower.

The 35th floor itself was one giant research topic. They'd been handed a fully equipped lab on top of it, research subjects walked themselves right to their door, and on top ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the subjects they got research specimens and generous funding. If you could feel bad about that, you weren't a psychopath — you were just a low-intelligence animal.

"In any case, Sir Roland! Thanks to your efforts, the Temple has restored the Goddess's honor and the Mage Tower has lit a new lamp of knowledge. We are endlessly grateful."

"If you happen to go higher and find those grayish-white vines you mentioned on another floor, please do capture some aliiiive…"

That seemed to be all the information they had to offer — the priest delivered a polite farewell, while the mage clung to his regret until the very end. For him, the early conclusion of the Holy Crusade or the Demon King's forces turning out weaker than expected clearly didn't matter one bit.

At the same time, Han Se-ah's face lit up.

"Quest window just updated! …Reading it, this looks like a quest that was supposed to pop before we smashed the 35th-floor tree. That 'overwhelming power' got substituted — with Roland, basically? At this rate we can jump to the 40th and skip a few mid-quests straight into the boss quest."

The cheer was because a week's worth of stalled quest progress was finally expected to move again.

Whether it was a limit of the technology or a limit of the human body, time in Heroes Chronicle seemed to flow at a one-to-one ratio with reality. That was how Han Se-ah had seized both first place in the clear rankings and first place in viewership among Heroes Chronicle streamers at a frankly absurd pace.

Everyone else needed about two weeks of taking commissions just to scrape together seed capital, but Han Se-ah had jammed a straw straight into Roland's wallet. Monster packs that should have taken half an hour to hunt got cleaned up in five minutes when Roland handled them at a casual pace, and boss monsters got wiped in a single blow — the speed was on a completely different level!

Posts cursing Han Se-ah's luck while still recommending her stream had spread across the game boards, the streamer boards, and even humor posts on other sites. That said it all.

"Hey, come on! Just because progress was stuck for a week doesn't mean you get to attack me like this. Uh-uh, you lot are looking real suspicious right now — anyone who shows up waving that article around to troll gets permanently banned, donation amount be damned."

The problem, if you could call it that, was the low-grade malice that rode in on the coattails of fame. With the doppelganger rape incident, reporters had apparently started ranting about the dangers of virtual reality games.

Somehow, even in a parallel world, trash journalists hadn't changed a bit. Scoop a post from some anonymous community peddling low-quality garbage, dress it up into a sensational article without fact-checking, and then the whole pack self-replicates via uncritical copy-paste. Exactly the same.

Thankfully, between the game itself and being a female fitness streamer whose figure showed on camera, she was used to malice and didn't seem too bothered. I couldn't exactly stop accidents that happened in reality instead of inside the game.

"If all those wicked trees have been pulled up by the roots, does that mean the monsters that mimic people won't appear again?"

"Seems that way. I overheard the Mage Tower mages fretting about it in the market street."

Han Se-ah fended off the toxic viewers while the party discussed the now-uprooted doppelgangers, and we set off toward the passage leading upward.

And I was staring at a quest window that had appeared out of nowhere.

So what's the reward this time — holy power again?