The Transcendent's Battle (1)
In the forty days I hadn't been here, I'd racked up a mountain of points.
What I'd gathered in total had blown past ten million.
"Quantity against quantity, sure — but when I think back to that last Raid... and the waves are only at stage forty so far. I need to grow this army more."
So I sank every point I'd collected this time into upper-tier units.
My Superior Combat Units had already surpassed three hundred, so there was no need to add more of those. What I wanted now was units of a genuinely proper caliber.
Gatherers, engineers, and maintenance units kept rolling off the line as my territory expanded. But at this moment, what felt thin were the scouts and the Heavy Weapons Units.
In the end, both swelled until the Heavy Weapons Units alone reached twenty thousand. And since I wanted to focus more on elixirs than artifacts from here on out, I churned out medics in staggering numbers as well.
"Finally."
Path of the Unique Trait (3) — Complete!
Reward: Special Machine Legion Deployment
"Special Machine Legion?"
"What! The Special Machine Legion? Finally!"
"What is it?"
"It means you can summon the overhauled Legion units I've been working on! The maintenance units won't have to upgrade every single soldier by hand anymore! Yippee!"
"I see... So what should I summon?"
"The Superior Combat Units built specifically to protect you, of course! I've programmed them so that nothing in this world gets to lay a finger on you, Master!"
Following Pitasha's recommendation, I summoned every single unit designed with one purpose: keeping me alive.
By the time it was done, dozens of combat units were hovering above the castle where I resided.
"Next up, I should pull rescue-type units, and then..."
Pitasha was practically glowing at the thought of finally escaping her life of infinite labor.
I was in the middle of a leisurely chat with her when Rune came looking for me.
Knock knock.
"Shall I head out to stage forty-two?"
"Yeah. You don't need to keep repeating it — just go on out."
"Thank you."
"Mm."
Rune left with the faintest curve of a smile. Coming from her, though, that was her smiling at maximum capacity.
"What kind of past does Rune have, that she hates orcs that much?"
"I know, right...? Say, aren't you curious about mine?"
"Hm? Ah... I mean, sure, I am."
Fidget, fidget.
Pitasha mulled it over for a moment. She looked like the words were caught in her throat, and I was about to tell her not to worry about it when she spoke.
"The truth is, the world I came from wasn't the kind of fantasy you're imagining, Master. It was incredibly advanced — a world where cyberpunk and fantasy had fused together."
Her world was, quite literally, one where cyberpunk and fantasy coexisted.
Orcs there didn't train; they fought with the fighting spirit that poured straight out of their arms. One's realm could be raised by replacing parts of the body with machines.
At some point, the world had stopped climbing through effort and simply chosen to grow strong by wearing machinery instead. It had become the natural order of things — an era where anyone who still worked hard was the fool.
And in that world, Pitasha had been a researcher.
"My parents had their organs replaced with machines just to stay alive... and then they sold me off for the money and ran away. So I just worked. Learned the technology there, and worked."
Why, though?
Her parents hadn't just been ordinary people. They'd been outright simple-minded. And yet, as if to defy fate itself, Pitasha possessed staggering talent for developing technology.
The inventions she produced at the place she'd been sold to changed the entire world — and barely ten years later, nearly everyone alive had become a cyborg.
The ones who hadn't were simply the ones who couldn't afford it.
Then Pitasha ran. Using technology she'd developed in secret.
Naturally, since she was officially state property at that point, she'd had no choice but to hide away in some remote mountain valley and keep developing there. Anyone who came to eliminate her, she eliminated instead — and from their bodies she harvested the materials for her next breakthrough.
Her craft grew by the day, while the world's technology — which had come to depend entirely on her — began its slow decline.
And so, alone in her hideout — in a place where no one could reach her anymore — she kept developing, kept inventing, until at last she transcended.
"Wait, then why did you tell me not to get any implants...?"
"At first everyone just said, 'Come on, just one part, only one.'... And then somehow it was all of it? Haha... I wonder why."
She seemed to know exactly why it always happened that way. But the way she kept dancing around it told me the old restriction on her was still in place.
If she couldn't even manage a conversation this ordinary, then asking her about Rune would be premature.
Still — the fact that she'd tried to talk me out of even a single implant...
It's Omnissiah. Like a virus.
It would be the power of a god, after all. What chance did a mere human — a human whose body was being replaced piece by piece with machinery, no less, a human drunk on greed — have of refusing a god's temptation?
Either way, it meant Pitasha had been alone all that time.
"You've been through a lot."
Pat pat.
"Haahh... nheheh..."
I had no idea why, but whenever I stroked just her head, Pitasha's tongue started tripping over itself.
I was deep in quiet conversation with her when—
BOOOOOOOM—!
"What the—!"
I rushed outside and found Kuma, expanded to massive size, hovering there. And beneath him stood an orc, blades locked with Rune.
Three hours. It had only been three hours.
"Master... we're at stage fifty-six right now..."
"What the hell is that orc?"
"That's a Sixth Order!"
Rune was locked in combat with an orc covered in a multitude of tattoos — and around her, a crimson aura was wavering, swirling. An aura turned ferocious.
"GYAHAHAHAHA! So it's true! To think I'd meet the woman they said stood closest to god! Von Asteria Rune!"
"Shut your mouth!"
The orc seemed to know her.
"Eek! He's speaking Korean!"
"No he isn't. Listen closer."
The sounds leaving its mouth and the words reaching my ears didn't match, as if something were translating them on the fly.
"Rune! You are the one who drove our clan to extinction! I am its last surviving descendant!"
"Then killing you ends it."
"Try it! I may be but Sixth Order, but as the final heir of my bloodline — grant me strength, Pakuta!"
GUOOOOOOOOOOOO—
The orc began to bellow out an aura that wasn't his ordinary green fighting spirit, but something darker — a deep, inky green that had curdled into blackness.
His aura rippled and swayed, and above it, a colossal orc took shape. Tattooed across its entire body — even carved into the whites of its eyes. That spectral orc began manifesting itself from condensed aura.
And just as I was staring at it, a message floated up before my eyes.
"Hey, hey! Now this is getting fun. You do it too!"
"Do what?"
"Hurry up and summon this Great Sage, Sun Wukong!"
"How am I supposed to summon—!"
And right as I was thinking that, energy suddenly began pouring out of me at a blistering rate. At the same moment, my points started plummeting.
"GYAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
KUUUUNG—
What appeared before my eyes was—
"...What is this?"
"I am the Great Sage, Sun Wukong!"
"You're just a Chinese monkey."
"YOU—!"
He looked exactly like the monkeys from those Chinese internet videos. Just... a monkey, sitting there, looking like it would bare its teeth and throw a fit if you offered it a biscuit and then snatched it back.
No golden crown, no somersault cloud, no staff. Sun Wukong grinned wide.
"Hey! Pakuta!"
"Well, well... if it isn't the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, that wretched monkey. What's with the getup?"
"You're burning through the last descendant's very life force just to possess a vessel, and you're talking?"
"Hmhm... You, of all beings, surely took part in #*$*#."
Whatever the being called Pakuta said — god, transcendent, who knew — came through censored.
"KEHAHAHA! You broke the rules and descended upon this plane yourself, did you not? I merely did the same! Call it the law of cause and effect!"
"MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
"Ugh!"
Rune was being driven back in an instant by Pakuta's sheer momentum. As she went flying, Kuma swept in from behind and caught her.
At the sound of Pakuta's laughter alone, the countless combat units hovering nearby were ground into powder.
"So this is... a Transcendent."
"Rune's no pushover, but this isn't even her full strength. She's under a restriction, same as Pitasha."
Come to think of it, Pitasha could only unlock her techniques as the waves progressed. Which meant Rune, too, was fighting like this while far from her true state — and still showing that level of martial prowess.
"Hmmm? This one is... curious. So THAT's why that cursed woman is lingering in the mortal plane — she's here bound by a restriction? What is this? Who rewrote the laws?"
"Ghh... Don't make me laugh, Pakuta!"
"Heh...! Before you transcended, you wanted this body, didn't you? You should have said so before you left!"
"Die!"
SHWOOM.
HISS—
"Heh heh heh... No. Not happening!"
Pakuta swatted aside, almost casually, the strike Rune had charged her crimson aura into to its very limit.
And our monkey launched himself straight at Pakuta without hesitation.
"Am I invisible to you?"
"GYAHAHAHA! Come at me then! Let's have a match — it's been ages! Here in the mortal plane!"
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!
A Sixth Order orc and a Chinese monkey clashing — and yet a shockwave of insane magnitude rolled over us.
"Master! Into the castle!"
"Right!"
Once we'd retreated inside and I checked through the Superior Scouts, there stood a Sun Wukong transformed into something else entirely — white and black swirled together, like a figure painted in ink wash.
"Ahh... I can't hold this form for long either, you know. Right?"
"MWAHAHAHAHA! A duel in the mortal plane! Think of how much my divine standing will rise when I break you!"
The two of them were about to clash again when—
"Fire."
BOOOOOOOOOM!
From the sky, the hundreds of Superior Combat Units lying in wait unleashed their breath.
Not a long, sustained torrent — a single shot. One compressed blast, custom-modified by Pitasha for one purpose: putting an enemy down for good.
"GRAAAAAAH! COWARD!"
"KEHEHEHE! Since when was I ever fair and square? Clone Technique!"
He plucked a tuft of fur from his own shoulder and flung it into the empty air.
And in the next instant, Sun Wukongs were sprawled all around Pakuta, who had barely held his ground behind a shield of condensed aura.
Grin.
"Let's begin — the battle where I rob you of your divine standing!"