So That's Why
So that was it...
"Drak... Drak."
Vlack rapped his knuckles twice against the table, where dishes worth a small fortune sat untouched. After a moment's thought, he spoke again.
"It's true we met briefly a year ago, but I doubt it'll help much in finding him. He simply showed up out of nowhere."
The story of how Vlack met Drak and received Black Destroyer had already come out in full on his personal stream. A video of it sat on NewTube with millions of views, and by all accounts it had been quite the hot topic at the time. Now that Drak's name had surfaced again, the view count was climbing at a steep rate.
I'd seen the video myself, but I wanted to hear the details straight from the man who'd lived them.
"That doesn't matter. Just tell me everything."
"Hmm... very well then. Yes — I met him a year ago, while I was preparing the 'Black Eye' raid at its height."
The black eye — a thing that had built its nest across part of the continent and bled darkness into the world. The nest was larger than anyone had imagined, and its domain swallowed several of Thalical's territories whole.
If it wasn't subdued within 150 days, that domain would spread to more than double its size. So the kingdoms had begged for help, and Vlack and his guild, Black Moon, had arrived in Thalical to prepare the hunt.
'You are the suitable one.'
One day, someone came looking for the mansion where Black Moon was staying. Thick, unkempt hair and eyes that gleamed faintly navy. His clothes — not even combat gear — were remarkably plain, and not a trace of mana could be felt from him.
It defied belief. How had he slipped past the guild members and reached Vlack himself?
Vlack met him instantly with his own weapon, the greatsword Black Drake.
A clean, ringing thunk.
'Below expectations.'
And then he lost.
An old man, subduing Vlack — already famous as the guildmaster of a top-tier guild — with nothing but a little hammer. The old man chuckled and tilted the hammer.
'Weak. Still weak. Like this, you cannot stop the annihilation.'
'I shall give you a trial.'
"It was a quest. An absolute nightmare of a quest."
"I did see the video. Something about hunting a thousand monsters, that kind of thing."
"Yes. And beyond that — piercing the lava of the Flame Mountains to retrieve a flame flower. Climbing to the highest point to absorb mana. There was plenty more where that came from."
The quest difficulty was outright absurd, but Vlack gritted his teeth and saw the trial through to the end. Giving up wasn't really an option — the old man was clearly no ordinary figure, and, above all, it made for decent content.
Vlack was a streamer, after all.
At last, when every trial was done, the old man came to find Vlack one more time.
'Well done.'
With that brief greeting, a greatsword shaped like a crescent moon — Black Destroyer — passed into Vlack's hands.
A genuinely Mythic-grade item. Back then, only four or five Mythic-grade pieces had been released in the entire world, so rare that hardly any player owned one, and they outclassed all lesser equipment by an overwhelming margin.
Vlack's stream descended into chaos, and the communities buzzed endlessly with talk of this "old man."
"That was the first time Drak's existence became known, and the quest 'Legend of Thalical Kingdom' appeared not long after."
"Thalical didn't exactly advertise that fact from the start, did they?"
"No. As I understand it, quite a few nobles resented the idea of outsiders — players — carrying off the Masterpieces."
"I can imagine."
He'd felt that resentment firsthand, after all. Not that it changed anything.
Vlack paused to catch his breath and wet his throat with a drink from the table.
"After that, players flocked to Thalical and claimed the Masterpieces one by one — but that part isn't important, so I'll skip it. The point is, before he left, Drak said this to me."
Bear this in mind.
'How you use the Masterpieces is your own affair — but they must, above all else, be used to stop the annihilation.'
'Is there a particular reason for that?'
'There most certainly is.'
"'A Masterpiece is a weapon with an ego. If the purpose of its birth goes unfulfilled, the weapon is nothing more than a shard of ore'... or something to that effect."
"So unless it stops an annihilation, it has no reason to exist."
"Precisely. My guess is that some kind of systemic seal exists specifically to stop people from grabbing a Masterpiece and running."
Every owner of a Masterpiece so far had gone on to repel an annihilation, so no one could confirm it — but I suspected that guess was right. The Masterpieces were, at their core, weapons forged to stop the end of the world. They would have no choice but to fulfill their purpose.
I nodded. Everything up to this point matched, more or less, what I'd pieced together from NewTube and various other sources. Drak was famous enough that speculation was abundant, and the people who'd obtained Masterpieces had talked.
The reason I'd specifically called for Vlack came down to two questions of mine.
"'Too weak to stop an annihilation — therefore, a trial.' So then, if someone is strong from the very start... does the trial simply not happen?"
"I'm sorry?"
"I can't tell whether people overcome the trials because they're too weak to wield a Masterpiece, or because they need to earn the Masterpiece's recognition — but either way, the Masterpiece and the trial don't seem all that connected."
Weak. So they face a trial, grow strong, and take up a Masterpiece. Viewed one way, it's the obvious sequence. But that's exactly where the doubt crept in.
'What if you were strong to begin with?'
If you were strong from the start — no trial required — couldn't you simply take up a Masterpiece right away? The proof was me, here and now, wielding the Green Hermit without the slightest ceremony.
At my words, Vlack froze as if he'd hit a buffering screen.
"Th... that's not really my call to make. Isn't it just a matter of quest difficulty? If they skipped trials for people who were already strong, there'd be balance issues too."
"So apart from the balance question, there's no real correlation?"
"The weapons do carry egos, so the trials probably affect them to some degree... but honestly? I doubt it matters much. He doesn't even see the weapon until every trial is finished, after all."
Come to think of it, maybe the trials run during the blank stretches of time while Drak is forging the weapon. Training thrown in free of charge, as it were.
"And I have one more question."
"By all means."
"'He comes only in times of annihilation.' Does that mean he never appears when the danger falls short of annihilation?"
"I would assume so? They say he shows himself whenever Thalical faces its crisis."
So no matter how powerful an enemy came, no matter how catastrophic the calamity — if the kingdom looked likely to survive, he simply wouldn't show up?
And Drak was the one making that judgment?
"Why?"
"I'm sorry?"
"If the kingdom can defend itself without his involvement, he doesn't appear?"
"...I suppose that would be correct?"
"......"
A hero who had guarded Thalical for centuries. It sat wrong with me to chalk that up to some innate ability to distinguish annihilation through sheer talent.
A World Boss was powerful, but it was a single entity, and no special variables came attached. The Imperium was another matter entirely. The Imperium fielded numerous knights with World Boss-class strength, and being a nation, it could generate any number of variables depending on circumstance.
When a World Boss appeared, the whole world knew it the moment it arrived — but an empire's attack gave you no warning unless you happened to have spies planted. And even with spies, there was no guarantee you could stop it.
Above all, the strangest part was the 'suitable one.'
Why forge Masterpieces for ordinary people, or for outsiders entirely — rather than for the kingdom's finest knights and mages? In a situation where every second counted, raising some unknown up to par made far less sense than simply handing the weapon to someone already strong.
And this wasn't some heroic narrative of a dragon rising from a ditch. No matter how plausible a heroic saga might be, if it repeats itself seven times, it stops being a 'hero's' saga.
'There's a reason for all of it. A reason it must be this way.'
Which meant that "the kingdom seemed likely to survive" could not, in truth, be the real reason a guardian who'd shielded Thalical for centuries from unbeatable enemies stood down.
And yet Thalical had survived countless dangers over those centuries, far beyond the seven great wars. Every Masterpiece had been forged at the brink of crisis — never before, never after.
There was something there. Not a simple reason — a conviction of some kind, something that let Drak know in advance and move accordingly...
"...Ah. Of course."
"?"
"So that's why. That's how it was."
"I'm sorry? What are you talking about?"
"So that's how it was..."
"Huh?"
Voices chattered somewhere in front of me and off to the side, but I was buried in my own thoughts. If it was really true, then...
'Drak has the power to see the future.'
And prophecy has been, generation after generation, the authority of Celestials — and of Demons.
As long as Drak possessed the power to see the future, he would never appear in Thalical again.
Because Masterpiece or no Masterpiece, I was going to stop Thalical's annihilation myself.
And now that, beyond the Masterpieces, I had a legitimate reason to meet Drak, I sank into thought.
'What would it take to summon him, I wonder?'
Should I summon a meteor over the capital or something?