Blood-Rite Magic
So that was the method?
"Blood-Rite magic."
So Candy Star would be using the magic wielded by Rasty, the Progenitor and sovereign of the Blood Nobles...
If she could master it perfectly, she'd show an overwhelming gap even against the likes of Leo or the Sword God — but it was by no means an easy school of magic to learn.
Demons were the race that had reached the very pinnacle of magic.
Rasty, whose body had become half demon, wielded magic that surpassed mine in certain respects.
"Can she learn it?"
"The True Blood-Rite is out of the question, of course. She wouldn't be using blood to cast in the first place."
"Candy Star's own mana? It wouldn't harmonize, would it."
The real question was whether the formulae of blood magic could hold Candy Star's starlit mana at all.
Blood magic was a sorcery of crimson light born in the depths of thick darkness.
It shared the quality of being light, yes — but the difference between it and true light was the difference between heaven and earth.
Clack.
"Of course it wouldn't. So I improved it a little. The basic formulae will respond without any trouble."
"...You made it yourself?"
"Mm-hm."
I had expected her to tell Candy Star to adapt her own magic to fit — I hadn't imagined she'd craft a spell from scratch just for her disciple.
Rasty's magic was a long history, everything of her life poured into it.
And Rasty had rewritten that history with her own hands.
"That surprises me. I didn't think you'd do something like that."
"What's the point of dwelling on it now? I have no regrets anymore."
"Truly?"
"Mm. I don't intend to whine and beg for it back, unlike some people."
Whining, is it...
"...It's not entirely wrong, I'll admit."
Pharaoh had received back the body reclaimed from me, but he still lacked the strength to claim it outright.
The body itself had also been left untended for far too many long years, and its condition wasn't great.
So while he went through a period of stabilization, Pharaoh would go on living as a stone statue — in exchange, he was devoting himself to rebuilding the Empire of Desertum, as promised.
Rasty smirked.
"It's still funny watching him play with his sandcastles. He's not like me — he wasn't asleep, he was awake all those thousands of years."
"Maybe spending thousands of years doing nothing made him miss it all the more."
"He's such a child."
"Rasty, is there nothing you want?"
Swoosh.
Rasty's twin crimson eyes fixed on me, unblinking.
What she desired.
"What I want?"
"I promised Pharaoh he'd handle Elbritte's affairs and hold the desert in his grasp, but come to think of it, Serek's doing all the work and only Pharaoh collects the reward, isn't he?"
Of course, Pharaoh rebuilding the empire was a good thing for Serek too.
Their relationship — whatever one called it — had been made abundantly clear through what I'd seen of the past, and Serek herself wished for Desertum's revival.
But setting the reward aside, Pharaoh wasn't actually doing anything tangible.
"Part of me wants to take it back... but for Serek's sake, I'll let it slide."
"So you'll take care of me too?"
"Yes. You are helping with the professor work, after all."
Someone on Rasty's level certainly deserved to be looked after.
Rasty, fidgeting with her empty teacup, soon stirred up a spell and refilled it, then took another sip.
"...That's not like you, big sis."
"?"
"Being this kind to 'monsters' like us, I mean. It feels like yesterday you just threw us all in one place and told us to fend for ourselves."
The ancient monsters were all beings sealed inside weapons, or within my soul.
Every one of them had been a vicious existence that once threw the world into chaos, and however tragic their individual stories, I'd never singled anyone out for care or special treatment.
And if any preferential treatment had existed, it had amounted to nothing more than being used as a 'weapon'.
I tilted my head.
"But I did take care of you. A lot."
"I know. That's exactly why I'm grateful. But you never offered fair, equal terms like this. It was always — you used this weapon in the last battle, so that weapon has to fight the next one. That kind of thing."
"Well, it was a war."
I hadn't been playing some collectible monster game.
I was in a war where lives hung by a thread, and I simply drew the most efficient weapons from my arsenal and fought.
The reason Rasty appeared so often was that she possessed power far greater than the other monsters — that was all.
Tap. Tap.
Rasty brushed her fingers over her clothes with a pale hand.
"No other wishes?"
"I told you. I have no regrets."
"What about founding a kingdom of the Blood Nobles?"
"You'd kill me for it. Do I look insane to you?"
True enough.
I rose from my seat and wrapped Rasty in an embrace.
Her body, devoid of even a flicker of warmth, slowly drew mine away from me, bit by bit.
"...I've come up with a wish after all."
"If it's a wish for you to stop using honorifics with me, I'm not granting it."
"Drop the honorifics."
"Nope."
"Tch. And here I thought you said you'd do it sometime."
"That's a completely different matter. You can't paper over a mistake by lumping it in with a favor, you know."
"Then the better I do, the sooner you'll let me?"
After holding me for a long while, Rasty finally released her arms and looked up at me.
Despite living nearly ten thousand years, her eyes still held hope within them.
Hope she'd reclaimed long ago — because of me.
"Depends on just how well you do."
Rasty closed her eyes with a satisfied expression.
"That'll do..."
"Good night."
"Mm..."
Click.
Classes at the Academy were progressing steadily, and the skill levels of both the students and the rankers were climbing day by day.
At this rate, by the time the new year rolled around, every last one of them should be strong enough to at least put a scratch on the Kraken.
"It's Lily."
"Lily?"
"No way, really?"
"Lady Lily!"
"Whoa, it's actually her?"
I had come to a field hunting ground for the first time in a while.
It was one of the few places on the continent where level-80 monsters — a pack of Black Demons with crimson horns — 'respawned'.
High-level monsters didn't respawn at all; once killed, they vanished for good. But that didn't mean hunting grounds with revival mechanics were entirely nonexistent.
Not a system-driven respawn, but a hunting ground with a special gimmick that revived its field monsters on a fixed cycle.
The moment I appeared at this place where one such pack was hunting, the murmur of the crowd swelled even louder.
Judging by their look, they seemed to be a small-to-mid sized guild.
A man who appeared to be their leader came toward me, a sword slung across his back — though he didn't look particularly strong.
"Whoa... Lady Lily, really you?"
"That's me. Were you hunting here first?"
"Ah, yes, yes! If you'd like, we can step asid— kuhek!"
The man, who had approached as if spellbound, was seized by the back of the head by someone and shoved face-first into the ground.
A woman in crimson gauntlets and gauntlets worn over crossed shoulder straps, her irritation plain on her face.
She grabbed the struggling man's head and pressed her weight down onto his back.
"What nonsense are you spouting? Don't you know this place was secured through a trade with the Crimson Moon guild?"
"Agh— but it's Lady Lily, come on..."
"Oh, so our members' experience points don't matter, is that it? Our guildmaster's lost his mind."
The woman twisted her head around to look at me.
Her level was roughly 70, maybe mid-to-late seventies at most.
Compared to the countless top-100 and top-1000 rankers I'd seen of late, she was far weaker.
Her stats were lacking, and so was her gear.
I hadn't examined her closely, but her actual skill probably fell short of the rankers' as well.
And yet, if anything, that made her all the more interesting.
Truthfully, exceptional players like Leo or Yena were the anomaly — most of the people playing DeoEn were like her.
"Are you perhaps here to hunt?"
"Ah, no, I have something to test. Could you let me know when you're done hunting?"
"Of cour— kek!"
"I'm sorry, but we've rented this place and have to give it back. I don't think that'll work."
Squeeze. Squeeze.
"Y-you there! How dare you manhandle the guildmaster like this! And you call yourself vice-guildmaster?!"
"What do you mean, 'give it back'?"
"Don't look down on me!"
"As you know, high-level hunting grounds are limited. It's not like the lowbie grounds where the servers are split into multiple instances. And since there's no respawn once they die—"
At the start, when players still needed to build strength and experience, the servers had been split — but beyond a certain level, respawning was disabled to prevent mindless grinding.
DeoEn itself was a game more focused on dungeons than on hunting, after all.
"But you can't run dungeons every day either. Unless they're hidden, they don't give much experience, right? And high-level monsters are hard to find."
"Isn't there plenty across the continent, past the great divide?"
When the new continent had opened, word was that high-level monsters roamed everywhere over there.
The woman — the vice-guildmaster, still pinning the man down — shook her head.
"They're too strong. It's not just about us leveling up — we have to look after the rest of the guild members too."
"Urk—"
"Besides, mounting an expedition costs money no matter how you slice it. Scouting new hunting grounds, preparing for hazards, hunting down linked quests... ugh."
"That's why we stick to places I know well, urk—"
"Those aren't exactly crawling with level-90 mobs. You can barely kill them yourself, and you're lecturing me about what?"
So that was the kind of trouble they faced.
However possible revival was, however painless death might be, dying once meant dropping experience, your gold, and a portion of your items.
High-grade equipment wouldn't drop unless you were spectacularly unlucky, but even so, it had to weigh on them.
Consumables would pile up in cost, too.
"Anyway. With hunting grounds this limited, people have no choice but to crowd into them. This one's managed by the Crimson Moon guild — we're just... renting it, for now."
"Ah, I see."
"Hehe. Business is good these days, though. The horns you get from the Black Demons are a magic ingredient, and they sell better than you'd think."
"Minus the cut Crimson Moon takes, you mean."
"Money's money, however it comes in. More importantly, get up already. It's about time for the respawn."
"Don't spout nonsense. I have to level up today."
"Fine, fine."
The woman rose to her feet with a stern glare, and the man, freed at last, got up with a distinctly wistful look, scratching his head.
"Ahem. Lady Lily!! If the chance ever presents itself, I swear I will—!"
"Quit flattering and get going."
"Shall I help?"
"Your... pardon?"
"I said I'll help. I'll help you hunt."
The guildmaster, leading a small band of barely fifteen members, went bug-eyed.
The cheers of celebration at hearing something he simply couldn't believe lasted only a moment before the vice-guildmaster, who had been standing silently, eyed me with suspicion.
"Why?"
"I have an experiment to run. If I fill your quota for you, you'll have time to spare, won't you?"
"Yes! That's rig— mmpf!"
"Well, sure, but it won't help much. There's a respawn timer, so we can't kill that many regardless. No matter how much time you shave off, we'd get one extra spawn at best. They come up once an hour, so it doesn't mean much."
According to her, their rented time on the Crimson Moon hunting grounds totaled six hours — enough for three full clears, four at the very most.
Even trimming kill times down to the second, the spawn intervals capped them out at five rounds.
And they weren't just trying to level up one person — they were raising the entire guild, meaning every member had to personally strike the monsters.
Killing everything single-handedly would be pointless, she was saying.
"Then we simply need more spawns."
"...I'm sorry?"
"Oh! Now that's a method!"
How to kill more than five rounds' worth.
Simple — make the dead come back faster.