Breaking the All-Time Record
The vacation was over.
Originally, I'd planned to visit the scenic spots of Net Canyon and travel to plenty of other places as well — but then we'd come under a completely unprovoked attack.
"You know, right before the trip, I had this feeling?"
"What kind of feeling?"
At my question, White Autumn raised both hands as if shuddering.
"Like something bad was bound to happen if we went traveling. Because somehow, anywhere you go, Boss, there's always some kind of incident—"
"So it's my fault?"
"N-no, that's not what I meant, uh, um. I'm sorry…"
"I'm joking."
I gave a light laugh at the sight of White Autumn bowing her head.
Well, to be fair, she wasn't entirely wrong.
A lot had happened in the four months since my return.
Of course, compared to the past, this much barely counted as an 'incident' at all.
"Still, I'm glad it ended on a good note. You ended up rescuing everyone yourself, and you even took Kiki Island, didn't you?"
"Took it is a stretch. All I really did was erase the dungeon."
I had conquered Kiki Island without meaning to, but I hadn't gained its operating rights or any portion of its authority.
To be precise — I could have taken them, and chose not to.
Alice.
The girl who, like the me of the past, had yearned for a dream that could never come true.
It hadn't been a particularly pleasant meeting, but I still wanted to make it happen for her.
Even if it was fake.
If the whole world called it a lie, it wouldn't matter — as long as she believed it was real, it became real.
It probably wouldn't change unless Alice one day transcended into something beyond and discovered the truth for herself.
And personally, I hoped that dream of hers would never shatter — just as mine never had.
"Are you really going through with it?"
"Yep."
I nodded at Jjoa's question and pressed the button to start the broadcast.
"If you lay a hand on my people, you'd better be ready to pay for it."
The price had not yet been paid in full.
Kiki Island had been conquered.
The news reached the ears of nearly everyone in Deoen — including the people who had been on the island itself.
What kind of place was Kiki Island? One of Deoen's three great tourist destinations, famous enough that tens of thousands of Gold changed hands there daily, complete with a unique growth system that let visitors raise their stats simply by enjoying themselves.
And the fact that it was, in truth, a dungeon was something anyone worth their salt already knew.
Dungeons in Deoen were places 'anyone' could challenge — but Kiki Island had been the exception.
Precisely speaking, it was one of the locations where conquest was forbidden by 'unspoken rule.'
Crere, the island's master, had raked in enormous profits from the tourism business, donating portions of that wealth back to Deoen — engaging, in other words, in what you might call 'reputation management.'
On top of that, a place with the absurd trait of raising your stats just for lazing on a beach had become a protected zone for numerous guilds, preserved almost like a 'cultural heritage site.'
And then.
Kiki Island — that very Kiki Island — was conquered.
By Lily. The Lily who had only recently slain a world boss and been crowned the single most influential user in the scene. The moment she set foot on Kiki Island, she blew the whole thing wide open.
At first, Lily claimed it was merely a vacation, and people were only half-convinced.
The vacation was a pretext, surely — wasn't she really here to clear a dungeon designated as a 'protected zone'?
There was plenty of suspicion, but watching her casually turn on her stream, cook, and laze around without a care in the world, those guesses naturally died down.
Surely she wouldn't.
That was what everyone thought.
Kiki Island — Kiki Beach Resort has been conquered.
The dungeon is dissipating!
And with the dungeon's disappearance, all those dormant suspicions reignited into a full-blown explosion.
Had she simply declared a dungeon conquest from the start, the backlash wouldn't have grown to this scale.
After all, Kiki Island was still a dungeon, and Deoen itself had never forbidden access to it.
But Lily had cleared the dungeon under the banner of a 'vacation.'
Those defending Lily and those insisting 'even so, this crosses the line' clashed endlessly.
Lily's current standing was sky-high — five million subscribers within arm's reach, an average live viewership surpassing three hundred thousand. As a streamer, she had become famous enough to rank among the top handful in the country.
And with more fans, naturally, came more anti-fans.
Especially the viewers who had nursed a quiet grudge against her ever since the Sgaredo incident seized on this affair as their cue and began tearing into her with abandon.
Two hours after the internet war erupted—
Lily went live.
Within two minutes of the stream going live, a hundred thousand viewers flooded in.
Even now they kept pouring in, the chat scrolling furiously.
On screen, Lily sat in a beach chair while cool waves rolled in behind her — neither angry nor apologetic, simply gazing into the camera with an odd, unreadable smile.
As if she were waiting for exactly the right moment.
For ten full minutes, Lily said nothing — didn't even manage the chat — and simply waited. Then she glanced to the side.
Five hundred and ten thousand viewers.
A new all-time record.
The final Sgaredo raid had peaked at four hundred and ten thousand, and now a full hundred thousand more had flooded in on top of that.
Apparently everyone's attention was riveted on the news that this 'Lily' person had caused some kind of trouble.
Besides, Lily had once bowed her head and apologized for the trivial reason of not finishing all the donations on her very first stream. This time she'd caused a genuine controversy — people were dying to know what kind of apology she'd deliver.
"Looks like everyone's here, so let's begin."
Her first words in ten minutes — that clear, bell-like voice.
Lily gave the blazing chat a cursory skim, then played a recorded video.
The video opened on a cage — with her editor and manager locked inside it.
Lily shattered the bars, freed them both, and looked up at the broken sky.
─ You're more soft-hearted than I expected?
It was Crere.
Bathed in radiant light, Crere looked down at Lily, and that arrogant voice carried out to the five hundred and ten thousand watching Lily's stream — no, five hundred and thirty thousand now.
─ I don't understand why you bothered scheming just to buy time. You could have simply left the cage be.
Crere had sacrificed his own left hand to open the altar.
And then, laughing like a proper villain, he laid out his entire plan.
─ Ah… why not simply say exactly what you're thinking?
─ After all, here you'll lose your Blessing and never be able to speak a word about me again.
With every line that left his mouth, the chat went utterly berserk.
If before it had been four parts Lily-bashing to six parts Lily-defense, the ratio had now collapsed to something like one to ninety-nine.
Public opinion had flipped as easily as a turned palm.
And then, hammering in the final nail, Crere said it with a laugh in his voice:
─ This is a mindscape that runs on willpower, not physical strength. Even someone as formidable as you can't use that tremendous power of yours here.
─ And you'd say the same applies to me? Correct. But behind me stand four races — races of exceptional willpower and mighty standing.
I ended the video there.
Everything after that point was for the haters.
"As you've just seen, Crere kidnapped my editor and manager in order to steal my Blessing of Fortune. His plan was clearly to use the two of them as bait to lure me in — and it failed, of course."
There was more, too — how I'd met Alice, how I'd shattered the so-called great races and made a wish of my own — but I left all of that out.
I let out a short, bitter breath, hugging my knees to my chest, and murmured,
"Honestly… I just came here to have a nice, quiet vacation. And then suddenly there's kidnapping, and attacks… Thanks to all that, the rest of my itinerary is cancelled, and I'm feeling really down about it."
Right now, words like these landed far better than any of those other ones ever could.