What Grates on Me

“Sorry, what?”

“Everyone here knows, right? I'm pretty sure I mentioned that the Kraken is coming.”

The Kraken's arrival was a foregone conclusion.

Stopping the Initial Damage was one thing, but there was no telling where it would surface, and as of now there was no way to hold back a tidal wave capable of swallowing the entire continent.

Not yet, anyway. The continent couldn't be covered in time.

“The Kraken I've faced and the Kraken you all know are different. Very different.”

“I asked you before—are you serious, it's actually that strong?”

“Yes.”

The Kraken I had confronted through the Multicolored Successor.

Having been killed once by the Higher Celestials, it had returned far, far stronger than before.

It had pinned down me—at half my restored strength from the mindscape—using ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠nothing but its light source.

Granted, I hadn't been fighting at even half my full power, but the Kraken hadn't used all of its eyes either.

If that Kraken appeared in DeoEn, a massacre was guaranteed.

Enduring it or blocking it was simply impossible.

Not that it'll come to that, of course.

Just as it had been with Sgaredo, every World Boss unleashed an 'Initial Damage' upon first emerging, and a 'Final Damage' when the time-attack window expired.

Since a portion of its power would be sealed, I figured that as long as it was put down within the time limit, the world wouldn't quite slide into extinction.

The sea level would rise a bit, sure.

“So what you're saying, Miss Lily, is that the fallout will crash into us during the Cataclysm, so there's no problem?”

“The problem itself will be swept away, is what I'm saying.”

“Hmm... alright, okay. Got it.”

“Actually, I have a question.”

“What is it?”

Yena looked at me as she methodically righted the figurines scattered across the western half of the map.

“Most of the major guilds are in the West, right?”

“That's right. Aside from Angel and a handful of others, you can assume nearly all of the top twenty are based in the West.”

Take, for instance, Black Moon, led by the Rank 8 ranker Vlack—countless powerful players had supposedly planted their flags in the western reaches.

They had all crowded into one region to stand against a common enemy, the Imperium, even tolerating clashes between their own territories to do it. And yet something about it nagged at me.

“Why the West, of all places?”

The South faced comparatively little imperial influence, and the East was simply pleasant to live in.

Talikal Kingdom in the East alone had rich soil, a climate kind to human life, and monsters tuned to a reasonable level of danger.

The West, by contrast, had little going for it at all.

“Ah, that goes back a bit—some of you might know the story.”

“?”

“Back in the day. Let's see... it was about a year after the game launched, I think?”

It was the era when only basic classes existed, and Rare classes were just beginning to trickle into the game one by one.

Yena, sitting at Rank 3 at the time, was riding high—a dominant ranker whose name echoed across the boards.

Most players couldn't even beat a single knight back then, let alone dream of owning territory. They were all treading on eggshells when one ranker stepped forward and declared:

'A great omen lies in the West.'

The user who spread the rumor of a hidden piece—a great omen—in the western continent. He was the first to discover how to acquire territory, and thus became its lord.

It was the first appearance of a 'Hidden Piece' in DeoEn.

The moment he became a lord, the rankers—who until then had been running little more than glorified clubhouses for guilds—flocked west in droves.

Hidden Pieces were unheard of at the time, and compared to other regions where information was abysmal, the West at least had solid intel.

Of course, if he had been an ordinary player, people might have chalked it up to dumb luck, taken the tip, and gone digging elsewhere. But his name was simply too distinctive.

The first to claim a Hidden Piece.

And his name was...

“...Cheonma? The Heavenly Demon?”

“Yep. The actual Cheonma. Not the flying horse.”

A wuxia-style Heavenly Demon.

“People are saying Michael was the first?”

“Ah, Michael was the first for a class, that's true. Holy Knight Commander or something? Anyway. But the first Hidden Piece itself was Cheonma, that's right.”

“I see.”

“Her guild was called the Heavenly Demon Faith, too. It was pretty popular back then.”

“And what about now?”

She'd claimed the very first Hidden Piece and become a lord, so surely she'd climbed to at least mid-tier ranker status. What was she doing these days?

Yena gave an awkward smile.

“When the world changes, there are always people who can't adapt. You know how it is.”

DeoEn pushed out a massive update every year.

Yena, once at the absolute peak of popularity at Rank 3, had been naturally shoved aside as World Bosses emerged and Mythic-grade weapons entered the game.

When I first met her, she was already bouncing in and out of the top hundred.

Beyond her, the rankers of the past and the rankers of the present had undergone a sweeping generational turnover.

Leo herself had been nothing more than an ordinary player until she became a Nymph.

“The only person from back then who's still holding onto the number one spot is Sword God.”

“Sword God. Well, he is good, I'll give him that.”

If only he hadn't been so greedy. Talent-wise, he'd earned the right to be acknowledged.

What a waste.

“He only came back from his break a little while ago. What do you think he's doing with himself?”

“I'm sure he's fine on his own.”

He was probably sulking over his broken sword, but honestly, better that he never touch powers like that again.

Divine power corrodes the soul and the body. Demonic energy goes further still—it corrodes the mind on top of both.

The system would offer its protections, but as the World Tree affair had proven, demonic energy is the root of corruption.

Without a soul strong enough to contain it in full, it was nothing more than a horrific, lethal poison.

“Anyway, to get back on track—the Heavenly Demon Faith was disbanded. The kingdom it belonged to fell, so the guild naturally dissolved with it.”

“What about Cheonma herself?”

“She's been gone since then too. She'd racked up plenty of rank points, but I honestly can't tell whether she quietly stepped away, or vanished completely like Sword God did.”

Cheonma's current ranking was 19th.

Sitting comfortably inside the top twenty was nothing to sneeze at, but without a Hidden class and without any special weapon, the consensus was that she'd be weaker than today's rankers.

Well, sure. No matter how skilled you are, you'd fall well short of current rankers who have both the gear and the talent to match.

Yena lifted her gaze from the West and picked up her own figurine standing on the southern side of the map.

“So that's how all the major guilds ended up rooted in the West... the rest are scattered across the East and South, but as far as overall strength goes, they're not all that impressive.”

“And the kingdom problem you mentioned—it's spread across every region?”

“Yes. Probably everywhere except the solid, stable North.”

The North, where the 'Alliance' framework held firmest, had nothing to fear—it had the strongest gathering of otherworlders outside of me, Sword God, and Leo, so none of them had reason to check one another.

The other regions, by contrast, had no clear, trustworthy players to anchor them.

Those lords were lords in name, but none of them had sworn any particular loyalty to their kingdoms.

Tap.

Yena's figurine came down on the map again.

“The way I see it, if we want to fix this mess, we're going to have to rise up. All at once.”

“Rise up?”

“Yes. Honestly, just look at what they're doing these days—it's exactly like the old days. Back when they scorned us and treated us like dogs guarding their houses!”

Slam!

Both hands planted on the table, Yena shot to her feet.

The figurines she'd so painstakingly righted toppled over again under her hands.

“Look, they did protect us a lot, that's true. We sat as lords, we got paid for it, and it was a win-win for both sides. Fine.”

“Right.”

“Fighting each other? Great! Using us to negotiate their salaries? Also great! But slapping taxes on US on top of all that? That's a bridge too far, isn't it? That's how I feel, anyway.”

“...Hmm. One question, though.”

“Go ahead.”

“Couldn't you just fold the tax issue into the terms of the deal? If they're paying us for the arrangement in the first place, getting a carve-out like that should be totally doable.”

Exempting us from taxes on sales and distribution, for instance.

Yena shook her head.

“That kind of thing comes with a lot of strings attached. You'd basically have to sign an exclusive-tier contract, and it's not like you can work with just one kingdom and call it done.”

The entire reason the kingdoms had levied taxes on trade and travel in the first place was to check one another.

Whether the residents and small-to-mid-sized guilds caught in the crossfire withered and died was of no concern to them whatsoever.

All they wanted was a strong force of otherworlders—everything else wasn't worth a second thought.

Granted, all of this would sort itself out after the Cataclysm... but exactly one thing grated on me.

The one who would seize this entire situation and turn it into an opportunity.

“The Imperium's been expanding too, right?”

“The Imperium? Well, business as usual for them...”

At the very summit of the Empire—Hwangyeolgong.