Nothing But a Black Sword
After a short word with Yena, she threw herself at the challenge a few more times on the strength of my advice before finally burning out and logging off.
It had been a month since Yena became trapped in her hidden quest, but that didn't mean she was locked in for good.
Yena was still a user. The moment things got too much, she could always step back into reality through a simple logout.
Left alone once more, Myosin settled onto the base of a tree with the ease of long habit and gazed blankly up at the sky.
"Myosin."
'...Oh. You came?'
"Of course I came. I've been here since earlier."
We had simply pretended not to know each other so we could both focus on the sparring—nothing more.
'Ahaha. Oh, have you?'
'Hoo. How awkward. Is this how Rasty and Professor Pharaoh felt all along?'
"Those two were exactly like Yena is right now, you know."
'Some things never change.'
Swish.
Myosin pulled back the hood that had been veiling her face.
A feline face, framed by long strands of pink hair that spilled down like silk. The pink ears perked atop her head swayed in the breeze, and a pair of pink eyes—wells of mystic power—turned to look at me.
And last of all, the flowing, pale-pink silk robes she wore, neatly pressed and elegant. The god of the beastkin race I had once annihilated, the last survivor of the cat beastmen, smiled brightly.
"It's been a long time, Unnie."
I had become certain the Agent was Myosin about a month ago, when Yena first received her hidden quest.
Truthfully, I'd felt for a while that the Agent seemed oddly familiar, but I'd never had one hundred percent certainty of her identity.
After all, one hundred percent was hard to claim—she could simply have been someone with abilities similar to Myosin's, and beastkin still remained in this land.
But Yena's efforts had inadvertently revealed a part of the Agent's true nature, and that was what convinced me.
'The Agent before me is the Myosin I knew.'
"You noticed who I was a month ago, and only call me out now... aren't you being a little cruel?"
"I can't have the guest upstaging the host, can I?"
A moving reunion is a moving reunion, after all.
Myosin was supposed to be training Yena right now. If I barged in and stirred things up, it could throw off the girl's focus.
And if that happened, Yena wouldn't finish growing into her full strength within the time we had.
By now she'd more or less adapted, so a certain amount of conversation was fine.
When I finished explaining all this, Myosin pulled a weary expression.
"Hoo... you really haven't changed a bit, Unnie."
"That's just who I am. So—how have you been?"
Unlike Rasty and Pharaoh, who were sealed within my soul, Myosin was an ancient monster sealed within a weapon, like the others.
All the countless weapons I once carried had been lost the moment I returned, and naturally, Myosin had vanished along with them.
She wasn't in the Void Space. Not even a trace of her remained.
And now, out of nowhere, that same woman was sitting in the Agent's seat on Kiki Island.
Unable to leave, bound to this place and this place alone.
Myosin sat quietly for a while, lost in the past, then burst out laughing.
And she kept laughing. For a long, long time.
"?"
"Ah—sorry. It's just, it's just..."
Hm...
"It feels like a dream. I never once imagined a day like this would come."
"Dreamlike is one word for it."
I certainly never imagined I'd be doing this after my return, either.
"I suppose that means everything is coming back. It's good. So good that... hehehe..."
"Are you going to be all right?"
"Of course. Perfectly all right."
Eung! Myosin sprang to her feet.
Perk! Her ears shot straight up, and the tail swaying behind her gave the faintest little flick.
"I received an offer. From the golden raccoon... he said that if I took the Agent's seat, someday I would obtain what I desired."
"Would this raccoon happen to have a blue ring floating above its head?"
"That's the one. So you've seen him too, Unnie?"
"......"
The Yellow-Blue Clan.
A race that managed part of the System itself—and given how frequently they'd been showing themselves lately, they looked to be the middlemen administering Deoen.
A species wielding power on par with the celestials and the demons.
'Maybe even one of those two.'
"When was the offer made?"
"Roughly... five hundred years ago? I fell asleep after parting from you, and when I woke, there was a raccoon standing right in front of me. At the time I thought some celestial had transformed itself."
"Hmm."
Five hundred years...
A strangely long, yet strangely short span of time.
One could argue five centuries was hardly brief, but the Myosin standing before me was an ancient monster—if she willed it, she could live an endless life.
By that measure, five hundred years wasn't truly all that long.
Above all, it had already been thousands of years since the war between celestials and demons ended.
"And your claws?"
"The weapon I was sealed in... is gone. For whatever reason, when I woke, the connection between me and my weapon had been severed."
In its place, she was now bound to this place.
She wouldn't be free until she gained the power to surpass it.
Sreek.
Myosin drew the hood back over her head once more.
The beastkin aura that had been radiating from her dimmed, and the enigmatic, prismatic energy spread out around her again.
'I've heard the world is about to fall into chaos once more.'
The Kraken, calamity of the sea. The demons. And now even Scorpio, the scorpion beast.
'I may not be able to take the field myself. But I promise you—between now and that day, I will train that girl Yena properly. Thoroughly.'
And... hmm...
Myosin scratched at the edge of her hood, at the spot where her cheek would be.
Something like a gesture of brushing a finger along her cheek, shy and hesitant.
'...My seat's still open, isn't it?'
"Of course. When the time comes, I'll call for you."
The day I judged that the connection between Myosin and this place could be severed.
The woman who had lost her home would return to it once more.
'Hehe... I've been waiting for those very words.'
Beneath the hood, she was beaming.
Slash.
Slash.
Buuuuuung...
The horizon of a sunrise over the open sea.
Beyond the jet-black seawater, an ominous foghorn groaned across the waves, and a man with a sword at his hip stood atop a reef, gazing out at it.
Anyone might assume it was merely the sound of some distant ship. It was not.
Buuuung... eudeu... uuung...
The horn's bellow came out crushed and mangled, spilling a grotesque noise into the air.
It sounded like something being devoured alive—like a being's very existence being ground to paste.
Simply hearing it was enough to make the body fail to obey its owner's will. That was the kind of grotesque sound it was.
"......."
And yet the man standing quietly on the reef didn't so much as flinch, glaring steadily at the sea beyond.
Bugeugeuk... geuk. Geuk, geuk...
Grotesque. Utterly grotesque.
He had met countless strongmen in his time and beheld monsters beyond number, yet never once had he encountered a creature as wrong as the thing lying beyond that stretch of ocean.
It was, in every sense of the word, a disaster.
A monster so irrational that its very existence defied comprehension.
Any ordinary user would lose the ability to sustain life from that being's mere presence alone.
'Especially that faintly glimmering purple—'
Stir.
"...I've been exposed too long."
It would be a problem if I lingered too late...
Du. Tok.
The man had endured the endless grotesque noise as the rising sun suddenly sank back below the water. Without a shred of regret, he turned away.
"So this place has fallen too."
How many Sea Dungeons was this now?
Feeling the weight of fatigue, he spread out the ghost map he had procured through his own efforts and marked an X over the point where the dungeon lay.
The map he held already bore more than a dozen such X marks.
He was drawing a breath and returning the map to his sub-space when the dungeon gate burst open, and a woman clad in black martial robes as dark as this place itself came tumbling out.
Her black ponytail whipped in the sea wind.
"You are... the Heavenly Demon."
"Do you have any idea how long this Venerable One searched for you? You vanish without so much as a login, only to be squatting in some bizarre dungeon like this."
Thanks to which, three years of cultivation interrupted—no, a full month of training lost.
Tak.
The woman in black robes—Cheonma—stopped before the man and surveyed their surroundings.
A shattered port. The ominous presence looming beyond the sea. A night that would never end.
"This Venerable One intended to explain the reason for her visit, but it seems there is no need."
They already seemed to share the same objective, after all.
With that, Cheonma held up the small bracelet fastened around her wrist.
As the violet bracelet shimmered, a portion of the ominous aura radiating from the creature beyond was cut off.
"You were searching for the locks of the 'Eye of Calamity'?"
"Indeed. So you had already taken the field?"
"I had."
The man, in turn, showed the bracelet on his own wrist and brushed past her.
He extended his hand, and the sixteenth Sea Dungeon cleared, a gate to the outside grinding open.
"As you can see, the thing possesses a strength beyond comprehension. Sea Dungeons like this one are spawning across the continent—across the entire world's oceans—even as we speak."
And yet the Cataclysm's monster had not so much as shown its face.
What would happen if that being ever deigned to appear in person?
"The whole world goes to hell, obviously."
"The world will collapse. Every continent will drown, and all of humanity will be reduced to prey for that sea monster."
"And is that not precisely why this Venerable One sought you out? Well? Will you join me?"
Hmph! Cheonma flared her robes to show off her own might and thrust out her right hand.
The man furrowed his brow and turned his head away.
"...Even a thousand of you wouldn't leave a single scratch on it."
"What?! What does this Venerable One look like to you!"
"A slightly stronger small beast."
"Why, you insolent—"
Furious, Cheonma mobilized her Heavenly Demon Qi—but half the man's body had already passed through the dungeon gate.
"Still, if it can be sealed, it can be cut. You concern yourself with the sealing."
"You will cut it? You seem weaker than you were in the past."
"I've found a new goal. An incomprehensible enemy. I will cut that thing down, and climb to an even higher realm."
"Hoh! A higher realm, you say."
The killing intent steeping her Heavenly Demon Qi guttered out.
In its place, another emotion radiated off her, thick and unmistakable.
'Amusement. Or perhaps... fascination.'
"Now THAT, this Venerable One likes very much!"
"...You are. No—never mind."
"What?"
"It's nothing. Don't trouble yourself with this side. I'll handle it my own way."
"...Something about your mood feels strange, but fine. You have your reputation, so this Venerable One will trust you. The other lock bearers have also agreed to cooperate, besides."
"......"
"Have you something to say?"
When Cheonma asked, the man—who had nothing left of himself now but his head—turned his gaze toward somewhere very far away.
That direction...
"...It's nothing but a black sword. Weapons mean nothing to me."
"?"
"Fine. Stay ignorant."
The man vanished completely, leaving Cheonma alone on the bleak, windswept shore.
"More amusing than Yena is right now, aren't you. Disappearing after spouting nothing but riddles."
Buuuuuung...
"...I suppose training will have to wait."
The omen was already underway.