Those Who Mention Yujun...

Players who mentioned Yujun turned up often enough. His name carried real weight across the Continent—no, weight didn't cover it. He was closer to a genuine celebrity.

And little wonder. He was a first-year player and a top-ranker at the same time. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Word had even spread, through someone or other, that the members of Coordination—those quietly spoken of as the strongest of the strong—had fallen to him. By any measure, he was the hottest name on the Continent, and it was only natural that players talked about him.

For a while, no new notification windows appeared. The players began to look around. The landscape was no different from any other grassland. The one difference was that never before had so many players gathered in a single place.

"This is something else..."

Jo Su-a caught Yujun's murmur.

"What is?"

"Just that there are this many players on the Continent."

"...Huh? This can't be all of them."

"What?"

"They probably split everyone up by region. The players, I mean."

"Huh?"

Yujun tilted his head. She was saying the crowd gathered here wasn't everyone? The mass of players stretched past the edge of sight, and his senses caught a presence close to tens of millions.

"There are more?"

"Of course. Do you have any idea how vast the Continent is? There have to be several times this many."

"Whoa."

Back in War of the Gods, the user count had been tiny. He had never imagined the number of players could climb that high.

"I heard nearly ten million Koreans alone were summoned."

"...That's no joke."

"I was shocked at first, too."

"So there wasn't any scientific progress? Ten million people from Earth should have been more than enough."

"There were definitely people who tried. There just weren't anywhere near enough of them."

"Because of player abilities?"

"Exactly."

That clicked at once. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠This was a world overflowing with powers that outstripped science. Magic alone was enough for a life as comfortable as anything on Earth. How many people would bother pushing science forward?

Yujun dropped down where he stood and looked through his inventory. He had to keep a constant eye on what he was carrying if he wanted to react fast when things turned urgent. His greatest weapon was still in there.

Still plenty of consumables I haven't touched.

Level 500 Mythic gear was excellent, but plenty of the consumables were every bit as good. He checked the equipment he had swapped out not long ago, when he reached level 450.

There were all kinds of armor in the world, but Yujun insisted on equipment that pushed his stats to the limit. He had the Primordial Player's privilege, and he meant to use it efficiently. The Omnipotence set was a considerable upgrade over the God of Destruction's set. It had even been enhanced with special items, which put the two beyond comparison.

…

…

The accessories, needless to say, boasted options that were outright broken.

No wonder level barely means anything.

Ordinarily, the gap between level 600 and anything at 500 or below was enormous—two whole tiers of difference. Even if a player in the 400s somehow posted higher Attack and Defense, a fight against a level 600 simply didn't exist. And yet Yujun had handled Demon God Worshippers past level 600 as if it were nothing. He had killed two of them only moments ago. Overwhelming stats, Attack, and Defense had carried him straight past the gap in tiers.

If there hadn't been a tier gap by level, the Demon God Worshippers wouldn't even have been a handful.

The more he thought about it, the more he regretted how low his level still was.

If I could just break 500 in this event...

That was when it happened.

"..."

"..."

Mouths fell open across the field. The conditions were absurd. Out of more than tens of millions, only ten thousand were meant to survive—roughly one in every several thousand. And they would have to kill one another to do it.

That wasn't the end of it.

Mechanisms. The scale of what the System meant by that word was beyond imagining.

The whole of the ground began to shake. Then, here and there, totems the size of a decent building thrust up out of the earth. Players who had been standing on ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠those spots lost their lives to sheer bad luck.

"Wow. Those guys are screwed."

"Why'd they have to be standing right there..."

Plenty of players were eliminated before the fight had even started.

"Totems?"

"What is that thing?"

While a few players were still blinking in confusion, another message appeared.

"So that's how it is."

Yujun smiled. The red totem here wasn't a bad effect for him. Some of the others were surely handing out debuffs. Fighting had already broken out in places.

Boom. Boom. BOOM.

This was a grassland packed with tens of millions. Of course it turned into a riot. Explosions never stopped, roaring up from every direction. People were shouting. Magic of every kind came screaming in, so thick there was no dodging it.

Yujun raised a thick shield. No spell punched through it.

KRA-KOOM. KRA-KOOM.

This is insane.

It was a sight, though. It felt like standing at the end of the world.

"Whoa..."

Jo Su-a stared at the scene in front of her, struck dumb. No film, however grand its scale, could have staged a sight like this. It had left the realm of what CGI could fake.

What does the System want?

This event, too, was probably tied to those beings called gods. The thought settled in, and the fighting did not let up.

BOOM.

"AAAAH! My arm!"

"Die!"

"Shield! Make a shield, now! What are you doing?!"

The dead were past counting, and yet the players didn't seem to be thinning out. The scale of the magic only grew. Meteors began to fall. Simply standing still left his ears ringing—the shield stopped the spells on its own, but it did nothing about the noise. So Yujun raised a sound-blocking barrier as well.

"We can't just stand around either."

"Right? They said a high kill count means a better reward. This is not the time to be taking a break. Right now the losses are brutal."

Jo Su-a answered with her face flushed.

"Right. Huh...?"

Yujun cocked his head.

Where have I seen that?

He had run into that way of talking somewhere before. Not from anyone's mouth—he was fairly sure he had read it.

Being a player, the memory came back at once.

OnlyIDontHaveACat used to say the losses were brutal all the time.

A user who never missed a scheduled raid and chased profit to the absolute limit. That person came to mind.

No way...

Yujun let out a short breath of a laugh. A coincidence that ridiculous couldn't exist. And this was not the time to be standing around thinking about it.

He drew his mana up. For killing in bulk, nothing beat magic. Amplified by item after item, his stats sat in the thousands, and his mana had climbed to a monstrous height along with them. Add an equally monstrous Attack on top of a spell like that, and the result didn't need to be seen to be obvious.

Yujun opened his inventory and took out a single item.

A consumable he had used once before: the Magic Amplification Elixir. It was a precious item. Yujun drank it without hesitating. The next spell he cast would hit three times as hard.

He started simply, by summoning a meteor. Simply—and he poured every drop of his mana into it, with the elixir's effect stacked on top. Naturally, the meteor that formed was so vast it couldn't be compared to any of the others. Players who saw it went pale with shock.

"What is that?"

"A-are you insane?! You trying to wipe out the whole planet? Know some limits!"

"We're dead."

The meteor Yujun had made was large enough to leave most of the players staring in blank despair.

The drama.

Something that size wouldn't erase a planet. The other meteors simply weren't very big, so his looked especially huge. Of course, Yujun was the only one who thought so.

The meteor drew closer and closer to the ground. There was nowhere to run. Look any direction and the battlefield was walled in by players.

KRA-KOOM—KRA-KOOM!

The meteor fell.

"R-run—"

A tremendous blast and a bone-deep shockwave hammered the grassland. Even players standing far from the impact lost their footing and went down. Of those caught inside Meteor's area of effect, the survivors could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Everyone in that stretch of ground had been swept clean away.

"Been a while since I used Meteor. Doesn't feel half bad."

"..."

"What did I just see? Everything in front of us is corpses... right?"

Yotolban of the Hon said it with a face gone utterly blank.

"Yes. But I'm not getting any experience at all."

"Then it will most likely be settled as a reward once the event is over."

"Got my hopes up for nothing. If they'd handed out experience, I probably would've hit level 500 in one go."

When he said it with open regret, Yotolban answered as if he couldn't believe his ears.

"Even this much already puts you overwhelmingly in first, does it not?"

"Well, yeah, but..."

Right now he was armed with the strongest items from the days of War of the Gods. On top of that he had claimed plenty of titles at Legendary and above, and he had the Primordial Player's benefit besides. His combat power sat on a level that left the No-Pay Casual Gamer character nowhere close. He couldn't be satisfied with merely this.

High overhead, the hologram scoreboard lurched into a massive shift.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

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