Wrapping Up 2
Irene's eyes went wide at the sudden hero's welcome, glancing around in bewilderment, while Han Se-ah started spouting every kind of nonsense as her viewers launched into their second riot — and in that moment, I was looking at something else entirely.
What is this place? …A battlefield?
The instant I stepped into the temple under the weight of those overbearing salutes from the temple knights, my vision blurred. Just as it had when I met the Goddess, my sight twisted and my senses reeled. What appeared before me was not a pristine white temple, but a dim plain where the sun had set and no moon hung in the sky.
Across that vast, darkened plain, something writhed in the shadows. A prickling bloodlust needled my skin, and an ominous air flowed through the dark. I reinforced my eyes against the stifling gloom and looked — two armies stood locked in a standoff within the darkness.
No — three armies, to be precise. The forces to the left and right were human, but when I turned, I could sense a monster army crouched in the dark behind me as well. Was this a story from before I had been possessed into this world?
Soldiers who knew nothing of the monsters' presence leveled their swords at one another, bracing for a field battle under crushing tension. I didn't know the full circumstances, but anyone could see that if things continued like this, a great many people would die. A situation balanced on a knife's edge.
"Though I set foot in unholy places, I fear not, for the Goddess walks with me; her mercy comforts me as a mother's love."
At the far edge of the dark plain, a tiny flame bloomed in the distance.
At the sudden change, soldiers nocked arrows to their bowstrings, and the monsters hidden in the dark even smothered their yellow eyes in the brush and held their breath. The bloodlust flooding the grassland had grown so raw that even the dullest among them felt fear.
But the tiny flame paid it no mind, cutting straight across the plain.
Is that Ambrose? …This must be the past. He looks a lot younger.
A middle-aged man in a brown monastic robe sat astride a scrawny, shabby horse, crossing the grassland with neither weapon nor armor — just a single torch in his hand. Every time his parched lips moved, verses from the Goddess's scripture spilled forth.
Toward that man, an arrow loosed by a green recruit who could no longer bear the tension came flying. With a sharp whistle it tore a long gash across Ambrose's cheek and vanished into the dark.
At that sharp sound, strength flooded into the forearms of soldiers on both sides, and the beasts lurking in the darkness let out a low growl at the first drop of blood to fall upon the plain, tipping into a frenzy. Surging bloodlust was about to carve up the grassland like a blade —
"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell forever in the paradise of life."
Beneath the torch, a flash of pure white light flickered for an instant. While everyone else was going mad with tension and bloodlust, Ambrose — standing in the most dangerous place of all — simply and calmly spoke the Goddess's words. The wound on his cheek, which had been streaming blood, closed under holy power as if nothing had happened, and he spurred his horse onward once more.
A single torch lit the dark grassland.
Knights from both camps rode out, staring in confusion and astonishment at a priest in a worn, shabby monastic robe — and still he remained calm. Drawn bowstrings went slack again, and eyes that had glittered with bloodlust regained their composure as they murmured the Goddess's words.
A single torch crossed what had nearly become a battlefield and headed for the edge of the plain.
Wolf-type monsters that had been stalking the humans from the dark howled long and fled at the sight of the torch. Clever enough to have been aiming for mutual destruction between the two armies, they realized that attacking a priest in this situation would only bring both forces down upon them in a hunt.
A terrible tragedy that had nearly begun from a tiny misunderstanding. One torch, through faith, had saved thousands of soldiers and driven off hundreds of monsters.
And so Ambrose became, in the Goddess's name, the Saint Who Holds the Torch.
Awakenings up through 4-star proceed through each individual's personal story. But becoming 5-star, and then 6-star, is not a matter of personal level — it requires an achievement worthy of being called a great feat. That was what Floor 40's reward was telling me: the ways gacha characters grow stronger.
Grace had saved the children of her hometown village to become 4-star. And now, to become 5-star, she would need to be the protagonist of a heroic tale that bards would sing — not just some tiny slash-and-burn farming village, but something that transcended cities.
It wasn't Grace's story alone. Katie was the same. For her to go beyond 4-star "Sword Princess" and receive a 5-star title, she would need to accomplish some great feat of her own.
"Whoa, the Floor 40 rewards are pretty stacked, huh? Though it's a little worrying — how brutal is Floor 41 going to be if the minimum requirement is set at 5-star…?"
For example: subduing some evil dark mage and becoming a member of the Hero's party.
As if Han Se-ah's already grating trajectory weren't enough, two more stars had been piled on. Viewers who had already been seething over her getting the Hero title now started rioting over her gobbling up stars on top of it. So this was the third riot following the second, I supposed.
Han Se-ah's party was now three 5-stars and one 6-star.
The fact that if the viewers cleared Floor 40 themselves they'd all be matching 5-stars didn't matter to them in the slightest. Neither did the fact that games like this always end with every character reaching full 6-star max awakenings regardless of their origins once the story progresses. What mattered right now was harassing Han Se-ah.
There were plenty of people so committed to bullying her that they were paying money just to curse her out. No wonder elementary schoolers had been swarming to become individual streamers instead of celebrities.
Han Se-ah — ranked third among jobs elementary schoolers grow up wanting, individual streamer and content creator — was currently getting her brains scrambled by ten-thousand-won donation punches. She'd set the minimum donation to five thousand won instead of one thousand to block lewd donations, and now the ten-thousand-won punches were flying in for the kill.
"Stop, stop! Anyway, we need to pick skills for Noona and Jammin! Roland… I taught him one reflection skill back then and he just pulled out a holy sword on his own. Is this what a natural-born 6-star is like?"
And so Grace, whose detection passive was her main kit and whose damage had been lacking, received an armor-penetration skill that ignored an additional 80% of the target's defense and resistance on critical hits. Katie, who relied on swordsmanship and was at a disadvantage against monsters, received an elemental passive that added ice-attribute damage to her mana.
I turned my gaze from the noisy, clamoring chat window back to my companions. We had come outside the Tower to visit the city's great temple rather than the miniature one on Floor 35. Thanks to that, we could leave the temple, claim the open lot behind the Adventurer's Guild, and test out the newly acquired skills.
"Hah… so this is what it feels like to pack mana into an arrowhead?"
"…Roland, the log isn't enough. Can you spar with me?"
The two of them, believing their new skills to be the Goddess's grace, loosed arrows and swung swords at scarecrows crudely fashioned from logs.
A blunt practice arrowhead — not even an alchemical tip — punched clean through a log and scored the stone wall behind it. When a beautiful sword aura the color of pale sky danced, it reduced a log to a pile of firewood left outdoors all winter.
The realm of 5-star. In Adventurer's Guild terms, these two were now proper Upper-grade adventurers. There was no gauging their power with mere logs.
"Alright then, who wants to go first?"
"I want to test my arrow power, so I'll go first."
"That works. I'll take longer anyway."
And so I found myself volunteering as a living scarecrow. Since these were arrows that punched through logs and gouged guild walls, I needed my shield if they were going to fire freely and get a feel for it. Now that they'd reached the 5-star Upper-grade realm, they could split even an orc's thighbone like soft tofu — so of course.
Of course, the two of them had climbed to this realm without any particular training or exploits, so getting used to it would inevitably take time. Just as Han Se-ah had received the Hero title after doing nothing but film, these two had leveled up with a poof without any life-or-death struggle or deep enlightenment.
Still, the mana packed into those arrows was the real deal.
Thud — an arrow flew in silently, without so much as a whistle of wind. The blunt practice shaft struck the shield I'd planted in front of my body with a heavy impact that made my palm tingle. It was clearly a practice arrow, and yet I could feel it through the shield and gauntlet all the way into my hand.
"Were you aiming for the heart?"
"It'd be easier for you to block that way. This is practice — I can't exactly aim for your eyes."
Grace fired freely at the shield held before my chest, gauging the power. She couldn't see Han Se-ah's system windows, so she couldn't read her own passive — but just as I browsed fragments of memory, it seemed to have been naturally etched into her body.
She could feel the difference in power between arrows aimed at the heart and those that weren't, purely by instinct.
After emptying an entire quiver of practice arrows, Grace flexed her hands open and closed, trying to pin down the sensation. Into the space she vacated stepped Katie, pale blue light streaming from her in rivulets, her face lit up like a child who'd just been given a new toy.
…With my reflection damage passive, if I block with the shield her aura will snuff out pretty fast. It's a passive that even orc warriors can tank once, so Katie won't drop dead mid-spar — but looking at how happy she is, I should deflect as much as I can and make the spar last.