An Oath in the Goddess's Name
An oath sworn in the Goddess's name. No priest broke one of those lightly — the penalties saw to that. Holy power could wane, or a priest could be stripped of their office altogether. Of course, anyone who hadn't reached a certain caliber couldn't make such an oath in the first place.
To invoke a penalty upon yourself, you needed to be capable of drafting a Divine Contract at the very least.
And I was nowhere near that level. The words, then, were meaningless. And yet they would be more than effective enough.
Because the Temple itself would see to the punishment.
If a priest had the oath notarized and then broke it, an inquisitor would be dispatched. Should the violation be confirmed, the offender would face excommunication or disciplinary sanction — and the path to nobility I had claimed to want would be as good as sealed. Even if you weren't fully excommunicated, the mere record of a priest breaking an oath sworn in the Goddess's name would leave your honor in the dirt, and honor was something nobles took very seriously. You'd be turned away for lacking the dignity the peerage required. Even if I seized this territory, the moment that written oath turned up, it would all be over.
If he had me leave a trace of my mana on the document and sent it somewhere safe the instant he received it, he'd have every assurance I couldn't stab him in the back.
"...So you're saying."
"Yes. We'll go to the Temple and draw up a written oath. I have absolutely no intention of coveting this territory."
The contents of that oath would be pretty ridiculous. Even after I build a faction, I have no intention of taking Tidrind Territory. How absurd was that? There would be a clause about not being attacked first, of course, but that much was fine.
In the end, I had as good as achieved my goal.
"...If you're willing to go that far, I suppose I have no reason not to trust you."
Lord Tophen nodded.
"In that case..."
"Very well. The mine contract. Let's do it."
I allowed myself a faint smile.
"A wise decision, my lord."
I'd achieved everything I'd set out to do. It felt as though I'd taken everything I needed from the Lower Floors. All that remained was to keep the gnolls in check, establish a foothold from which to secure the mine, and finish off the already-weakened Black Gnolls.
Wiping the Black Gnolls out completely would probably take months. Or perhaps it would prove impossible even after years. We were the weakest force in the region to begin with — abandoning the castle to dispatch a large body of troops was the kind of move that invited disaster. If humanity committed its full strength and marched into Black Gnoll territory, they could win, at an astronomical cost. And even that was only possible because the Black Gnolls' power had already been shattered.
And after that? Tidrind Territory would be finished.
A meaningless gesture, in other words. Worse, if we raised an army on that scale, the other gnoll tribes were hardly going to sit and watch. They'd either strike the emptied castle or hit us first and wipe us out.
What needed doing, then, was to first put our own house in order, then chip away at the Black Gnolls alone — with a force small enough not to provoke the others. That role would fall to our party and the mercenaries, with a handful of elite soldiers bringing up the rear.
Even so, there were limits. Settlements above a certain size were too much for us to hit first. The Crouching Black Gnoll Tribe in particular was untouchable — go after them, and we'd be the ones in danger. Even with the six of us plus mercenaries and soldiers, the extras weren't as strong as we were. The largest force our party could safely ambush was anything under three thousand. Even with mercenaries and soldiers backing us up, anything over four thousand and we'd likely take heavy casualties. To be precise, even charging three thousand would get a fair number of those mercenaries and elite soldiers killed. We'd come through untouched. They wouldn't.
The point was this: with humanity's strength alone, even taking down a single Black Gnoll tribe that had already been weakened to the brink was nearly impossible — unless we were prepared to go down with them.
I made sure Lord Tophen understood all of this, laid out the scale of fighting our party could actually handle, and in return got a detailed picture of the territory's strength. He was ready to throw himself at the problem with death in his eyes, convinced that if the Gnoll Hero were left alive the territory had no future. I talked him down.
"There's still close to ten years left. You need to take the long view."
His expression remained bleak, but as we talked, a thread of hope seemed to take hold.
"So in the end, we're still using the other tribes."
"We don't have a choice. Until my mercenary companies arrive, keeping them in check is the better play."
"There's no way to speed that up?"
"They're not fully my companies yet, so it's impossible."
"A real shame. If we only had them..."
They might fall short for now, but they would grow at a staggering pace. Honestly, I was confident we could sweep the gnolls aside before the Gnoll Hero ever appeared, even without harassing the Black Gnolls — but saying so wouldn't have made him believe me.
So I matched his thinking instead, walking him through methods for bleeding the Black Gnolls and schemes for setting the tribes at one another's throats. A long stretch of conversation later, both of us were satisfied. A draft of the plan took shape, and we went to find his commanders to discuss how to refine it further.
I wanted the Lower Floors wrapped up as soon as possible. The work that needed doing was, for all practical purposes, nearly finished. On top of that, my own growth had stalled. Strength was still creeping up thanks to the correction, but I had nothing left to train except Weapon Mastery, and the impatience was starting to gnaw at me.
Impatience alone, however, never got anything done. I started working through it one step at a time.
Lord Tophen and I visited the Goddess Temple and drew up the written oath. The investigation team returned and confirmed that the three-way war among the gnolls was real. Blood everywhere, they said — the ground itself had turned red. Every last investigator wore the same sickened expression.
I laid out for the party everything I'd discussed with Lord Tophen, including my intention to build a faction of our own once trainees started entering the Lower Floors.
"That's a good idea. Having a faction of our own... would be nice, yes."
"...I'd rather it just be us, though..."
"Even if we build a faction, our party stays as it is. We might recruit a few more people, but that's it."
"...If that's the case, then fine."
Na Seoyun looked a little put out, but she agreed we needed the numbers. Six people was a disadvantage in more ways than one. Even as our quality rose, there were things only numbers could accomplish — and we'd be safer besides.
"So you'd be the leader of the group, then?"
"...Probably."
Nam Eun-ju seemed fine with it. She had the certainty now, and the confidence to match — no more worrying about being left behind. Then again, considering what she'd gained, that was hardly surprising. She'd always been the type so sensitive to safety that she'd once carried a skill called Survival Instinct. If anyone was going to welcome more people, it was her.
Na-yeon nodded as well. We planned to grow the organization without turning away even the weaker ones, and she seemed to welcome that. The weak would have virtually no say, so it made no difference to me. The ones actually steering the group would be myself and a handful of chosen others. Taking in a few people whose skills were lacking wasn't a bad idea for the organization's image, either.
They didn't know it, but competing with the factions of other nations on the Middle Floor meant we needed to stand together. Raw numbers were one of the measures of a group's strength. In the end, the ones who would actually fight the Giants wouldn't be those people — it would be the real talents — so they were, ultimately, just that. Still, they could provide support. Not entirely useless.
And so, with the party's agreement, the plan gathered momentum.
Once the preparations were in place, we started raiding the Black Gnolls in small strikes, backed by mercenaries and soldiers. Clearing Area 26 through Area 27 was straightforward enough. Mercenaries who'd hesitated to join at first began signing on one after another as the results and the pay kept coming, and it wasn't long before every mercenary in the region was in the fight. They were so short on people that the local militia had to take over patrols around the villages.
The Black Gnolls' strength dwindled by the day. They'd already been cut in half, and they had never expected us to press this hard. We poured more than a month into hounding them without letup, and you could feel them drawing in on themselves.
Before we knew it, a year had passed since we'd entered the Tower. A year from the day we arrived — which meant the age displayed on the status window had ticked up by one. In a sense, it was our first birthday in the Tower. Which, of course, produced the miraculous situation of every single trainee sharing the same birthday.
Na Seoyun made a point of telling me she was finally seventeen — that she was a high schooler now, and adulthood wasn't far off.
"You've still got three years."
"That's so mean!"
She hadn't even started high school. How exactly did that make her a high schooler?
On top of that, my month-long stretch of sage mode had finally worn off. As a result, Joo Ha-yeon would occasionally come find me at night, even in the middle of a subjugation campaign. Every time she did, I had to endure the mercenaries' and soldiers' knowing looks, not to mention Na Seoyun's expression — like she was about to burst into tears. There was nothing I could do but ignore it.
The land that should have been Area 28 had been downgraded a rank, likely because the forces inside had fled further up. Pushing deeper, we found an unexpected presence in a region that was clearly Black Gnoll territory.
"Aren't those the mad dogs?"
"This is Black Gnoll territory. What are the red ones doing here...?"
Red Gnolls, in Black Gnoll land. Apparently, just as the Brown Gnolls had started encroaching the moment the Golden Gnolls faltered, the Red Gnolls had begun going after the Black Gnolls as well.
A welcome development — and one that had come up in my talks with Lord Tophen. I reported the situation to him at once, then swept the region for information with Ha Yoo-jin.
We spent close to two months gathering intelligence and piecing the situation together. Information mattered that much. What we came away with was more than worthwhile.
"The Browns and the Reds clashed?"
"Yes. The Black Gnolls were already losing ground as their numbers dropped, and once we started hitting them from the rear they shrank back even further. The red ones read the situation and pushed in immediately."
"Those bastards really are the craziest of the lot."
Of all the gnolls, the most savage were the Red. Before the Golden Gnolls' rampage, the village that had contributed the most militia and soldiers to Tidrind Castle was Chegen Village, which sat on the border of Red Gnoll territory. That spearhead, having turned on the Black Gnolls, was now colliding with the Browns. Most of what had originally been Black Gnoll and Golden Gnoll land had been taken by the Reds and Browns respectively, and their territories now shared a border.
"What happened to the Golden Gnolls and the Black Gnolls?"
"The Golden Gnolls are all but wiped out. Their territory's been reduced to the barest scrap. Do you remember the Holy Land I mentioned?"
"I do."
"Even that was taken from them. They fled further up. Further up is desert... and even there, what's left of them is barely a force."
At this rate, the Golden Gnolls might go extinct before we ever laid a hand on them.
"And the black ones?"
"They've managed to preserve their strength, at least. They seem to have abandoned most of their territory of their own accord, pulling back around the largest tribe — the one that holds the banner. The Crouching Black Gnoll Tribe."
They'd kept only the minimum they could actually hold. Just enough to avoid withering away. But with the Gnoll Hero in mind, they were almost certainly playing a longer game.
"Did they deliberately pit the Browns and Reds against each other?"
"It's not entirely out of the question."
"Cunning bastards... If that's the case..."
Hitting the Black Gnolls any further had just become much harder. The lord's face hardened. He was uneasy, and with good reason — if the Gnoll Hero was born and the tribes united, it really would be over. I set about reassuring him.
"Even so, with chaos on every side, they're fighting among themselves more and more."
"I heard that was your doing?"
He wasn't wrong. Just as I'd once made life miserable for the Black and the Gold, I was now needling the Brown and the Red as well.
"That's true, but the red ones are running so wild that..."
Back then, I'd done it from Area 29, the deepest zone, and the effect had been enormous. Now we were working closer to the weaker areas, so the impact wasn't as great. But the Red Gnolls were so vicious that the fighting with the Browns was only growing. Unlike the Black or Grey Gnolls, who had spent years at war with the Reds and learned how to handle them, these two had lived two territories apart. They were strangers to each other — and they were tearing into one another with everything they had.
If their strength kept bleeding away like this, so much the better for us.
"Still... if they keep fighting and weakening each other, that's good for us, but how long will it last...?"
They wouldn't fight like that forever. However mad the red ones were, they wouldn't risk their entire race. Which meant the war had to be made bigger.
"That's why I'm planning to use a few tricks."
"What are you planning this time?"
Perhaps because of what I'd already accomplished, Lord Tophen looked at me with the eyes of a man who couldn't wait to see what I'd do next.
"We should get our hands on the mine sooner rather than later. The territory itself needs to grow stronger. And when the chance comes, the Black Gnolls have to be wiped out completely."
"True enough."
Doing that would take far more resources. For my own purposes as well, the mine had to be secured.
"But the Grey Gnolls... don't tell me—"
I grinned.
That's right. The Grey Gnolls — the only ones still in one piece.
I had no intention of leaving them in peace.