Raising the General's Favorability (2)
You already know you need contribution points and materials from high-tier magic beasts if you want to upgrade your territory and raise your peerage, right?
Here’s an easy way to snag them early.
First, finish setting up your defensive traps against the magic-beast army, then immediately form a detached force and haul ass toward the Abyss of Magic.
In the game’s opening stretch you only need to get there within a month, so you’ve got plenty of time. Stock up on supplies and go.
When you arrive, the Magic Tower will be under invasion by a magic-path spirit that just crawled out of the Abyss of Magic.
Rush in and help them.
Whether you help or not, the Tower’s going to repel the invasion anyway, so don’t sweat a total wipe.
Guard the Tower for about a week and everything will more or less settle down.
At that point the Magic Tower’s favorability will have climbed high enough that you can recruit one of their mages as a companion.
Ignore every Blessing or whatever else the mage has. Look at one thing only: mana capacity.
Pick the one with the biggest mana pool—minimum five thousand. Nothing else matters.
Once you’ve got the biggest mana tank, clean out every last coin in the cities around the Tower and start grinding favorability with that mage.
You only need to hit four-star favorability.
While you’re doing the favorability grind in the city for about two weeks, a Magic Fusion Entity will burst out of the Abyss of Magic and re-invade the Tower.
Anyone who’s cleared Crack Kingdom even once knows this thing self-destructs at the end and wipes the Magic Tower off the map.
That’s why Magic Tower mage characters dry up completely, yeah.
We’re going to exploit that.
If you’re hanging around the cities near the Tower, news that the Magic Fusion Entity is attacking arrives super fast. The second it does, pack your bags and head straight for the Tower.
When you get there, the Tower Master and the high-ranking mages will be dumping every spell they have into the Fusion Entity, pushing it into overload.
The moment the overloaded Magic Fusion Entity’s HP drops to around ten percent, throw your mage in.
Only the mage. Do not send anyone else. They’ll get caught in the blast and die instantly.
Once you send them, the mage will activate Mana Burst to protect the Tower that is their pride.
It’s the technique that burns the very source of their mana, permanently crippling them as a mage in exchange for an extreme temporary boost to every magic-related stat. The bigger the mana pool, the stronger the effect.
They’ll hit the Magic Fusion Entity with Mana Burst and basically finish off its remaining HP.
Anyone who’s done this knows what happens when an overloaded Magic Fusion Entity dies, right?
Exactly. Massive explosion. Magic Tower gone.
Every Magic Tower mage who was chipping away at the Fusion Entity dies, and so does the one who used Mana Burst.
In the end, the only ones left who participated in the hunt and survived are our party, who stayed outside the Tower.
That’s how you casually snag one hundred percent contribution on the Magic Fusion Entity kill.
Being a fusion entity, it drops a ridiculous variety of materials, and if you’re lucky you can even dig good artifacts out of the Tower’s ruins.
Plus you get a fat pile of contribution points for “helping the Magic Tower defeat the Magic Fusion Entity.” Yeah.
This build-up is legit broken, so go use it, lol.
For those who walked the path of magic—the magic path itself—there existed a last-resort technique that could be used only in moments when their very lives hung in the balance.
Its name was Mana Burst.
By using the very source of mana seated in the heart as fuel, it allowed a mage to unleash explosive firepower far beyond their normal limits.
In exchange for that temporary surge of power, the user became a permanent mana cripple, never again able to wield mana.
It was a once-in-a-lifetime finishing move that burned the present self in dazzling glory, paid for with the future.
And now Rien realized that Offen Termin’s manifestation of destruction was a technique of the same kind.
A power that consumed a price to grant overwhelming strength—the resemblance was unmistakable.
He had spent that once-in-a-lifetime chance to destroy the Abyss of the Army.
Rien could not even begin to guess how steep a price that must have required.
“To abandon one’s talent for mana for the sake of humanity… how could anyone make that choice?”
From Offen Termin’s earlier claim that he was no mana practitioner, Rien had assumed he had paid with a brilliant talent for mana.
As one of the Ten Swords of the Kingdom, she knew full well how vital mana was for surviving this brutal world, and that only made Offen’s decision feel all the more magnificent.
“The price I paid was not my talent for mana. A single person’s talent alone could never have so much as scratched a Great Rift.”
Offen’s reply told her she had been wrong.
“Then what price did you offer?”
Hearing that it had not been his mana talent only made her more curious about what he had truly sacrificed.
“Can you tell me what that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity actually was?”
Rien asked, her voice trembling before she could stop it.
Offen Termin paused for a moment, then slowly opened his mouth.
“I offered the chance to achieve the goal of my entire life… and the chance for those who devoted their lives alongside me to fulfill their dearest wish.”
There was no falsehood in the words Offen Termin forced out with such difficulty.
The longing carried in his voice proved it.
He had given his life for humanity, for his territory, for his house, for his people.
“……Baron Offen. I heard your father and brothers joined the subjugation force. Is that true?”
“Yes. My father and elder brothers led the territory’s soldiers into the subjugation force against the Abyss of the Army. All of them died honorably in battle.”
“I see.”
The Termin family had sacrificed their lives for humanity.
And Offen Termin, above all, had paid a price more precious than life itself—his lifelong wish—to destroy the Abyss of the Army.
The moment she understood that, Rien felt something hot surge up from the deepest part of her chest.
It was the awe of an ordinary person who had beheld a saint who completely transcended her, and the profound emotion stirred by such radiant self-sacrifice.
“Baron Offen, as one of the Ten Swords of the Kingdom, I formally declare this here and now.”
Rien placed her right hand over her heart, bowed at the waist toward Offen Termin, and spoke.
“I will never forget your devotion. Thank you. Thank you for destroying the Abyss of the Army. Baron Offen—you are a true hero.”
It was the highest expression of gratitude a knight of the Benos Kingdom could offer to anyone who was not the king.
The favorability of Rien, one of the Ten Swords of the Kingdom, toward the hero of national salvation Offen Termin had reached its absolute peak.
Watching Rien bow and offer her thanks, I cheered silently inside.
That she would go so far meant her favorability toward me had maxed out.
The look of pure emotion on her face right before she bowed made it obvious—she had completely misunderstood my words, just as planned.
The only reason I had been able to destroy the Abyss of the Army was the Red Button mod.
Installing that mod had locked me out of ever clearing Crack Kingdom’s Rift difficulty on vanilla, and it had also made it impossible to keep the promise I had sworn with everyone in the Rift-difficulty gallery: that we would clear it together.
The “Crack Kingdom Rift Difficulty Vanilla Clear Attempt” I had poured my entire life into had become a dream I would never fulfill.
To me it was tragic and wretched. To anyone else it was just giving up on clearing a game.
But words are a funny thing—change one syllable and the whole meaning shifts.
Clearing Crack Kingdom’s Rift difficulty had been important enough for me to stake my life on it, and I had told Rien that truth without a single lie.
“Truly, thank you, Baron Offen. It grieves me that no matter how many times I say it, I can never fully express what I feel.”
And this was the scene that honesty had bought me.
Rien possessed the ability to sense lies through the wind, and that ability had given her a certain habit.
If someone’s words were true, she believed them completely and without question.
For someone holding the heavy responsibility of a general of the Benos Kingdom, that habit was extremely dangerous.
But she was the type of knight who lived on the battlefield rather than behind a desk, so she had never realized just how dangerous it was.
And right now, that danger was revealing itself for the first time.
If you hid the concrete truth and spoke only in broad strokes the way I had, she fell for it this easily.
One of the Ten Swords of the Kingdom, this gullible…
I clicked my tongue inwardly and resolved that from now on I would have to look after Rien carefully so nothing like this ever happened again—at least, not without me controlling it.
“To hear such words from you, General, is a true honor. I am certain my father and brothers in heaven are rejoicing as well.”
“Is that so? Then I am glad.”
“G-General Rien, if it would not be too presumptuous… might I ask one favor of you?”
“Speak freely. For a true hero like Baron Offen, I am confident I can grant anything.”
After all, Rien’s honey was mine alone to savor.