Positive, Cute, Sunshine, Sexy, Menhera, Decadent, Busty Beauty

The work simply went on. It was done in less than an hour, and yet the aftershock of that genuine, grinding tension had already flooded every inch of his body.

"......Ugh. I'm sore all over."

There wasn't a single place on him that didn't ache. The obsession that he could not afford even one mistake had overloaded every muscle he possessed.

Thanks to that, at least, the elixirs had come out perfect. All he had really done was assist, keeping the medicinal potency from going bad, but a crude method did not mean a crude result. Fifty-two bottles, diluted to one part in a thousand. Six more, diluted to one part in two hundred. The eighty-million-hwan bill for the cyberware was no longer worth a second thought.

"Unreal. Seriously."

It ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was only the third day since he had logged into the Transcendent Gallery. Set against the days when he had been pinching pennies over a few tens of thousands of hwan, the difference was enough to make his head spin.

Pop—!

He thumbed the cap off one of the elixirs he had sealed the moment the brewing was finished. The one-in-two-hundred dilution, of course. It was nothing beside the ferocious scent he had caught while cutting into the fruit's flesh earlier, but a dangerously alluring fragrance still unfurled into the air.

He didn't hesitate. He tipped it back and drank it down.

The potency slid along his throat and spread in an instant. Left to itself, that savage energy would have torn through his body unchecked, but the base he had compounded from several preparation methods held it steady.

"Haa......"

What seeped into his blood vessels and his dantian mingled with the energy that was already his, and then it asserted itself. It seized the places long occupied by the somewhat turbid qi his body had harbored. Displaced, that old qi howled and searched for a way out. Every seat inside him had already been claimed by the elixir, so the only exits left were the openings of his own body.

"Hwuuuueeeek—!"

Nausea surged. He yanked over the bucket he had set out beforehand and emptied himself into it. Most of what came up was little more than gastric fluid, but the fit dragged the turbid qi out along with it. Once he felt the effect, the last scrap of hesitation vanished. He vomited everything still inside him, heave after heave, and when there was nothing left he dry-heaved anyway.

"Ugh... hhh..."

He retched for so long he half-wondered whether he had coughed up his own organs. His insides still felt turned inside out, and the turbid qi that had failed to escape kept stabbing at him from every corner of his body. Even so, the result was unmistakable.

"Third star..."

He had cleared an entire realm with ridiculous ease, and not merely cleared it. He stood at the near-perfection of the third star—not simply past one wall, but with the next realm already in sight.

Five bottles of elixir still waited in front ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of him. There was no question they still held plenty of potency. He couldn't know on which bottle his body would start to resist, but the moment it did, he could simply stop.

"Next time, I should really look into a method that hurts less......"

Ordinary training would, of course, be hundreds or thousands of times more agonizing. Even so, the hand reaching for the next elixir trembled on its own. This was not merely nausea climbing his throat. It was pain that felt as if his limbs were about to be torn clean off.

But what else was there to do? If he was going to take the beating, better to take it early and be done with it.

He shut his eyes tight and downed the elixirs one after another.

And then—

"Kkh... nngh..."

The fifth bottle. He drank straight through to the point where a near-total resistance finally set in, and the moment he finished, he collapsed where he stood and could do nothing but convulse against the floor.

"Hah... hah..."

How much time had passed? The angry red swelling that had ballooned across his whole body sank back down, and his breathing gradually evened out. Inside, though, he was still a wreck. There was hardly a place left intact. A week, at least, before he would be able to move. Doing anything at all in this body was out of the question.

From the gallery crowd's point of view, that would be welcome news.

"Still. I pulled it off......"

Separate from a body that had been reduced nearly to scrap, the achievement itself was certain.

"Fourth star...... no. Fourth star and a half."

The reservoirs of mana inside him—the spaces mages themselves called stars—now numbered four and a half. If anyone learned what he had just accomplished, they might well pass out on the spot. They might quit cultivation entirely and crawl straight back to an ordinary life. The growth was that far past the point of making sense.

The backlash, of course, meant living half-crippled for the next few days. Set beside the achievement, that barely qualified as a penalty.

"Forget it."

He hauled himself, barely, up onto the stiff, crumbling mattress. All he managed at first was to dump his body onto it; arranging himself into anything like a proper position took several minutes more. For a while, it seemed, this was simply going to be his life. The bed, and nothing else.

......So he might as well browse the gallery in the meantime.

Once, that would have been nothing but a shabby little pastime. Now it was something he had to do for the sake of his future. Even he found that a little hard to swallow.

Whirrr—

A hologram rose from his wrist, chiming with a notification. The source, of course, was the Transcendent Gallery.

"......Should I just turn it off again?"

That was the number floating in the upper right of his profile. Every sort of bastard under the sun had apparently sent him a DM. A quick look showed plenty whose true identities couldn't be guessed from a nickname and a handful of posts. It wasn't something a measly fourth-star mage had any right to say, but the place was packed with small fry who had long since fallen off the main story. Mid-rank gods at best, or somewhere between Heavenly Immortal and the Heavenly Martial Extremity. In this gallery, their standing ran a little low.

He was blocking a few of their messages when he couldn't help noticing something off.

"What the fuck is this."

More than half the previews in his DM history were that sort of thing. He could not begin to understand why this circus had broken out. An incomprehensible hellscape. He killed the DM window at once and went straight into the free board, and there he found the culprit.

"He's insane."

Existence None. That lunatic void-serpent bastard ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had gone and spread a blazing rumor.

Another peaceful day in the Transcendent Gallery.

......In truth, genuinely peaceful days had always been the majority. The gallery's traffic had never been all that high to begin with. Unless some enormous incident broke, people traded the occasional bit of small talk, or put out a call for someone who could no longer be reached, and that was the extent of it.

Set the usage of those days against the usage now, and the difference was something like elevenfold, twelvefold. Not a gap anyone could shrug off with a merely. Between the two eras there was a chasm. And that chasm had been opened by Oz alone. After Oz arrived in the gallery in person, the traffic swelled all over again.

So it was only natural that public sentiment caught fire again during that brief absence. In practice, nothing moved at all unless it was bait about Oz or the tier list. Wild speculation about the promised Fifth-Dimension Transcendent Battle Ranking, Prepared for Eternal Annihilation was being mass-produced alongside posts hunting for Oz, and that was the whole of the board—until one abrupt thread appeared from the very being everyone expected to land on that ranking, and to react to it the most violently.

It was not the sort of thing anyone was prepared to take at face value. Hadn't he, until just recently, been acting as the head of the most rabid anti-Oz faction? So the gallery's transcendents pressed Existence None as one, and Existence None, of course, fought them tooth and nail along the way.

KUUUUUUNG—!

"Spill it, honestly, you bastard!!!!!!"

"You damn wyrm, you actually tracked me down over this? Are you insane? Gweeeek— let go— let gooo— hweeeek—"

"Say it straight!!!!!!"

The onslaught did not distinguish between online and off. In the end Existence None failed to last half a day, and confessed everything.

The gallery detonating immediately afterward was the natural next step. The original fact passed through several rounds of embellishment, and Oz became, beyond any shadow of a doubt, a ranking beauty straight out of the Myriad Beauties Register—a positive, cute, sunshine, sexy, menhera, decadent, busty beauty.

......That is what he had become.

A truth no one in the gallery bothered to refute. Only one person rose against it.

His own entrance, visibly packed with rage no matter the angle. And Existence None, who vanished without a trace the moment it happened. In the middle of that delicious situation, the gallery was livelier than it had ever been.

Protests of that sort were, of course, not accepted. The belief that had been planted stood firm, solid enough that even the denial of the person in question could not bring it down.

And once that surrender had been declared, the Transcendent Gallery took on the air of a victory, as if some great evil had been struck down. It was not far from the truth. To everyone who had ever been entered on those tier lists and rankings, Oz was a creature of fierce, tangled love and hate.

And so, watching him carry out his actual job (?), the gallery enthroned Existence None as its second great hero. The merit in question was the summoning of Oz, and the concretizing of his personal details.

A few hours later, however, the tier list was published. The moment it went up—

The gallery's hero showed himself again, bewilderment written all over him with nothing held back.

The second great hero—fallen, right on schedule!