Mail Bomb
"You said that, but Leo will be just fine."
After all, Leo had already contracted with spirits of four elements, and possessed a large number of blessings from mid-tier spirits and below.
It's impossible for an ordinary human to form contracts with this many spirits, but Leo was a Nymph with the Spirit Mage class on top of that — if anything, she had room to spare.
As for blessings from high-tier spirits, she'd naturally earn those in time, once her bond with the spirits deepened.
"Really?"
"Of course. Like I said earlier — you just need to work on that mouth of yours."
"......"
"Well then..."
Was it about time to wrap up?
I'd already been streaming for eight or nine hours.
Lily of DeoEn had eaten, but Lily in the real world had not.
"Oh, right! You should join the Siege War this time!"
"Yes. I heard you're participating too, Leo."
"That's right! Unlike last time there'll be three teams, so you'll have lots of fun too, Lily!"
Leo nodded her head vigorously.
Come to think of it, her speech doesn't stutter at all when she talks like a kid like this. The stuttering seems to be part of the process of her personality shifting. Skimming the chat, people said she's perfectly fine once she logs back into reality — so once the personality swap completes after connecting, she keeps speaking this way.
"I heard there are things like a Grand General and Generals. What's the difference?"
"Mm. The Grand General is like, a totally super strong person. Unlike the other participants, they only have one life, but their abilities are way stronger in exchange. High risk, high return, you know? That's why someone unbelievably strong has to take the Grand General position."
The chat was having a good laugh over Leo's sudden personality shift, but the girl herself was diligently working through her question.
"Generals are more like, the elite types? They get two lives, and they're stronger than Regular Soldiers but weaker than Grand Generals, that kind of thing."
"Then most streamers and rankers would fall under the General position, I'd guess."
"Exactly! Generals and Grand Generals are important positions because they're the ones who can destroy the 'Core.' So the people taking them absolutely have to be able to pull their own weight."
In the end, while the Siege War had all sorts of positions, the rules themselves were simple.
A game of smashing the enemy castle's Core.
Grand Generals and Generals were stronger than Regular Soldiers but bound by limits on their lives, and they were the only ones granted the authority to break the opposing team's Core.
Three teams, one Grand General each, with three Generals — four at the very most.
And around seven or eight Regular Soldiers?
Regular Soldiers had infinite lives but faced a respawn timer, and their role was helping defend the castle and gathering resources. Breaking the Core or invading the enemy castle was off-limits to them.
"...So! Regular Soldiers are honestly pretty important too, but they still have a smaller role than Generals, and there are also level-ups during the siege and special buff mobs and such—"
"I'll hear the rest some other time. Today was really fun."
If I kept listening, the real-world Lily would be raising a ruckus in protest.
When I cut her off, Leo blinked for a moment, and then, as if her thought circuits had short-circuited, her face flushed red in an instant.
"A-ahem. I-I guess I took up too much of your time. You streamed a lot today, so you must be tired..."
"No, I really enjoyed it. And your explanations were adorable, too."
"Uu... Ye-yes..."
Ever since I had set down the mantle of the Saint, battles had broken out nearly every single day.
Challenges driven by nothing but pure will to fight. Assaults steeped in countless desires. Clashes with armies. Battles fought to shield someone from harm. Invasions by nameless monsters whose identities even I couldn't discern...
I fought until I was sick to death of it.
And through it all, naturally, I grew.
There was a game system in place, but separate from that, I never believed the power of the Heavenly Tribe was tied to the system in any way.
The only things I drew from the game system were common skills — Strike, Sense, Light, that sort of thing.
Spear's Roar and the rest of the Heavenly Tribe's techniques had all been learned from another person entirely. Nothing to do with the system.
Sure, over time a certain synergy developed between the two, but if you asked me whether I'd grown strong on the system alone, I could answer with certainty: absolutely not.
And I — this same I — had experience with the 'Siege War,' fighting with a castle at my back.
Iron ringing against iron. A place where the screams of the dead and the roars of the living wove together. The moment blood soaked the earth, soaked the rivers, and finally threatened to soak even the civilians within the castle walls—
'Saint. No — you're not the Saint anymore, are you.'
There I was.
'...If all you have to offer is useless chatter, then crawl back inside the castle. Blind arrows can find you here.'
'Thank you for saving us.'
'I am not saving you. Nor your families.'
Countless monsters craving blood drew near. Ignorant beasts, and yet beings who had scraped up the filth shed by those accursed demons to gain intelligence and power.
Demon beasts.
They who would devour even their own kin had now set their sights on humans as well.
'I am saving those who would fall without ever having sinned.'
'......'
'You will pay every last debt, to the very end.'
The price had doubled when I abandoned the title of Saint.
I, who had spouted such pointless words, took up my spear.
Light rose.
And the demon beasts were no more.
Beep...! Bee... BEEP!! Beep-beep!
"Turn it o... ugh..."
Seven in the morning. I woke at the usual hour, fumbling along the shelf above my bed until my hand found the alarm. Silence at last.
"Whew..."
Some pointless dream. It happened over ten years ago, for crying out loud. Of all things, it had to be the shared word 'Siege War' that dredged up a fragment of memory I'd left buried.
And that siege and the one I'm about to fight are complete opposites, anyway.
"Ugh, my head..."
Maybe it was from drinking after so long. My brain wasn't firing on all cylinders. I hauled myself up, stumbled into the bathroom, and took a quick shower. The click of the door, and by the time I came out, my mind felt considerably lighter.
"What was today's date again?"
I draped a towel loosely around my neck and flopped into the chair in front of my computer.
February 26th.
Sixteen days, apparently, since I'd returned to Earth. An awful lot had happened in that short span of time.
I could excuse the first ten days or so, since I hadn't really done anything — but the past six had seen one incident after another erupt in DeoEn. It was the equivalent of an ordinary DeoEn user experiencing all the major events of nearly a full year, compressed into a single stretch.
But for someone who had lived shoulder to shoulder with incidents and catastrophes, it didn't stir much in me.
"Opening my inbox is terrifying."
A mailbox already thick with the smell of impending war. Above the email icon, the monstrous number +999 sat waiting for me.
Truly a number I did not want to press. But this recruitment was my own doing, so I had no choice. I clicked the mailbox.
An abominable cesspool of chaos. Was this perhaps the Demon Realm itself?
First things first — with a staggering 2,617 emails to sort through, I had to begin the triage.
The first order of business was deleting and blocking all the pointless garbage, along with the messages deliberately stuffed with lewd photos, meant to fluster me. In their own heads, these people figured that since I was a woman, I'd blush and fly into a rage at the sight of a naked picture.
'So what?' That was the entire extent of my thoughts. What on earth did they imagine sending this would accomplish?
Those emails hit the recycle bin and were shredded in under a second.
Next: the offers. Guild invitations, corporate proposals, streaming deals, sponsorship contracts — DeoEn, NewTube, Twitch...
There were more offer emails than editor and manager applications combined. For now, I set them aside after weeding out the duplicates. Most were probably schemes looking to use me up and toss me aside, but there might be a Vlack among them — someone with something I actually needed.
"Whew... this is exhausting."
The real sorting still lay ahead, and lunch was already slipping past. Today's stream might be a bit rough.
~Lily, it's Yena~
Right in the middle of my sorting marathon, a Discord call came through. The caller, naturally, was Yena.
"Yes, Yena. What can I do for you?"
Just bored, so I called. Are you busy?
"No, not busy."
This one was actually decent. Her editing wasn't bad. I gave each submission a quick ten-second scan and tossed it into a separate sorting window labeled KEEP.
What are you up to?
"Sorting through the editor and manager applications. I think today's stream might be a bit of a struggle — so many people applied."
Want me to help?!
"I'm the one doing the hiring, though. There's no need for you to suffer on my account."
Whoever I pick will be working alongside me, after all. If we don't click, that's a problem. This one's a pass...
Yena hesitated for a moment with a well, still... — then went Ah! as her mic indicator lit up.
DeoEn has a broadcast setup room, just like a normal room. You could stream from there! The internet runs through the broadcast system, so it's no problem, and it's way less tiring than doing it in real life.
"Is that so?"
A place like that existed?