The Wall of Backgrounds

"Skill window."

During Auto-Battle, my body had been freely crafting the word die out of slaughter energy the same way cultivators forged seals out of spiritual power, canceling their restrictions right back at them. I'd figured a related skill might have spawned from that little stunt, but nope. Nothing.

Monsters and neutral NPCs didn't region-transfer like I did — they just walked straight across the border! More precisely, the three I'd let slip earlier had simply crossed the boundary, which was why I couldn't catch them.

Anyway, I region-transferred right after them, and this time the monsters had lined up a whole wall of backgrounds in front of me and were screaming something or other.

"Demon Immortal! You didn't kill the mortals, did you? That hesitation will be your undoing! Khahahaha!"

Thousands of living mortals, seized by spiritual power and stacked like a wall of scenery across my path, poured out every kind of scream, howl, and sob — a racket so loud it scraped the ears raw.

I crushed the protests of the humanity clones inside me the way you'd stamp out a spark, and raised my slaughter energy.

"Too loud. Auto-Battle."

The wall of backgrounds shattered like so many breakable objects. From the wreckage of that single strike came slaughter energy so thin and low-grade it was barely ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠worth the name. I gathered the whole miserable heap, loosely wove it together, and raised a crude little hut.

There wasn't enough slaughter energy to build anything like a proper Tetris stack or a domino run, and since it had come from backgrounds that didn't even drop experience, the quality was garbage.

But slaughter energy was still slaughter energy. The raw force of burning it all in a single instant was more than enough for one of those monsters to handle.

"So the claim that the Demon Immortal hesitates to kill mortals was a lie...! Kgh...! S-stop!"

Crunch.

Even with its head separated from its torso, the thing kept yammering like it had some personal grievance, so I stomped the skull flat. Then I opened the minimap, confirmed the neutral NPCs and monsters still hiding among the backgrounds, and turned my gaze on them.

The moment our eyes met, a neutral NPC panicked, started flinging nearby backgrounds around, and tried to run. I hurled a cart wheel at it and smashed it to pieces.

One-shot. Must've been low-level, I thought, then opened my mouth toward the remaining monsters.

"Auto-Battle."

"Nice. Got them all this time!"

Now that felt good. Seriously. But whose idiot brain came up with the genius plan of using backgrounds as shields just because I hadn't wiped every last one of them across the whole map?

"Whoa, experience jumped twenty percent..."

So sweet my teeth were going to rot. My mood shot way up. Grinding a map for a whole month might or might not get me a level, and here the neutral NPCs had come running in to die for me. Experience this delicious didn't come around every day.

I'd killed every monster and neutral NPC, though, and the backgrounds were still swarming everywhere, making a godawful racket. I was seriously considering a physical Mute when the humanity clones holding my conscience lit up their eyes at me, so I dropped it.

"It'd be great if monsters came looking for me like this every time!"

GYAAAAAAAH?! What the hell is this?!

It was that absolute garbage of an eok-kka event that locked terrain scouting at zero percent and trapped you on the map. The only way out was to kill the field boss and get terrain scouting to one hundred percent. If the map didn't even have a field boss, you were stuck — character delete or reload. Pure, unfiltered system spite.

Was there a field boss on this map? There had better be. If there wasn't, even forcing my way back to base would slap me with a terrain-scouting penalty so brutal it wasn't funny.

And so, with her feet suddenly glued to a single map, Yu Hee tore across it hunting for the field boss.

"Of all times for the Demon Immortal to appear — most of our seniors are inside the secret realm..."

"And yet if that secret realm hadn't opened for the first time in six thousand years, we might never even have realized how many cultivators the Demon Immortal had erased."

"Even with tracking arts laid on them, the trails break every few years. Nothing to be ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠done about it."

Five late-stage Golden Core cultivators sat in a circle, sighing as they discussed what to do about the Demon Immortal.

"Any other intelligence? I heard you sent some of the faster juniors earlier."

"All of them were caught and killed. Not a single one escaped. What about yours? Your lot have more than one life, don't they?"

"Useless. All dead. Not one came back."

"Her growth rate is abnormal to begin with. By the time word reaches us and we try to send a cultivator of a higher realm to put her down, she's already reached early Golden Core."

"When the matter first came up at the Grand Assembly, she was only mid Core Formation."

"That was when Muam Fortress fell."

"...But that assembly was only about regulating the sects' personnel for the secret realm. It wasn't treated as a priority."

"So they sent early Golden Core juniors to find her, and of course they failed. If she'd already been strong enough to kill the Lord of Muam at mid Core Formation, the whole exercise was meaningless from the start."

"True enough. The real problem is that the seniors and the rest of our peers who might actually stop her have all gone into the secret realm."

They eyed one another. All five were late Golden Core, and all five had been left out of the secret realm — either for lacking political clout or for falling short in raw combat power.

Which was why not a single one of them volunteered to go after the Demon Immortal.

"When will those who entered the secret realm come out?"

"By the records... fifty years at the earliest. A hundred before the seniors emerge."

"And until then we simply leave the Demon Immortal to run free?"

"Call most of the sect disciples here, or dangle other independents as bait so she wastes her steps chasing them."

"...Gang So, say something. Do you have any other ideas?"

Gang So — Lord of Gangso Castle, a late Golden Core cultivator stuck in the farthest, most barren corner of the lower realm because he was catastrophically bad at politics — finally, at the other man's prompting, called up the image of a small girl with blood-red eyes.

And with her, the slaughter star that always hung above her like a watching eye, red as fresh blood. Gang So's mouth refused to open. He held his silence until the only plan left on the table was to lure unaffiliated independents with cultivation resources and throw them to the Demon Immortal as feed. Only then did he speak.

"In that case, I'll take my leave and return to my castle with my disciples."

"Fine. If you happen to run into the Demon Immortal on the way, you handle her."

"Hmph. No. I won't hand every last one of my disciples over to her."

"That's exactly why you couldn't enter the secret realm this time either. You'd do better to act more like a cultivator."

He ignored their grumbling without effort. They were late Golden Core cultivators who spent their time researching arts and refining pills rather than fighting, so he'd tolerated their company for a while — but he wasn't so dense as to miss that the whole point was to push ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠him into killing the Demon Immortal for them.

"We've seen enough. Let's go home."

"Yes, Master!"

He'd come partly to broaden his disciples' horizons and give them experience, but getting dragged into the Demon Immortal mess anyway — even after deliberately arriving near the end of the Grand Assembly — had left him thoroughly sick of it. Gang So loaded himself and his disciples onto a flying dharma vessel and set course for Gangso Castle, the closest thing he had to a sanctuary.

Still, all that running around had netted him a few pills and dharma tools for the disciples, so the trip hadn't been a total waste.

Gangso Castle was so remote that cultivation resources had never been plentiful, and what little he owned hadn't amounted to much. Lately, though, a friend had brought him some strange resources to sell, and after a round of trading the haul had turned out surprisingly decent.

The spiritual energy of heaven and earth in the surrounding region had even shown signs of recovering these past few years. Give it a few more centuries and the place might actually become livable. Standing at the prow of the flying vessel, gazing at the sky with that thought in mind, Gang So caught the sudden clamor of his disciples' voices and snapped his head around in alarm.

"Ah, Senior! Over here, over here!"

His youngest disciple was waving at the Demon Immortal in the form of a small girl, greeting her like an old friend. Gang So clutched a head that hadn't hurt like this since the day he formed his Golden Core.

That stupid disciple of his.

Whether she had completely forgotten how the Grand Assembly had been turned upside ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠down over the Demon Immortal, or whether she'd simply been enchanted by the girl's tiny form — privately, Gang So was certain it was the former — the fool of a disciple had scooped the blank-faced little Demon Immortal into her arms like a doll and was petting her all over.

And the fact that the little Demon Immortal showed not the slightest sign of dislike, even in that situation, was a quiet relief. Still, Gang So forced his feet to move when they absolutely did not want to.