Tapagol
"Tapagol. You could fire lasers, too?"
"Yes."
"That wasn't among your skills……."
"Lasers come installed as standard. This is nothing more than a very basic function."
"……R-right. I see."
"Yes."
Yujun was beginning to doubt whether the thing in front of him was a guide golem at all.
No way something like this popped out just because my stats are high…… Did some of my luck bleed into the summon?
Still, a capable Tapagol was nothing but good news for him. He reached up and patted the golem's head. Set against the size of that skull, Yujun's hand was hardly bigger than a speck of sleep in the corner of an eye. Had Tapagol possessed any sense of touch, it would have felt like an ant crawling over him.
"Master!"
Paranet chose that moment to shout directly into his ear.
"Agh—don't do that. Stop talking into my ear. Starting now."
"That is hardly the matter at hand, Master."
The empty sockets of Paranet's eyes looked unusually resolute today.
"What's the problem?"
"Why will you not stroke my head as well?"
"What?"
"You look upon that lump of rock with such tender affection, and yet I am forever left out in the cold. Why is that?"
"What is wrong with you? That's creepy. Do you even know how old you are?"
"What does age matter! What matters is that I am your summon!"
"……."
"In any case, I beg you to treat me as you treat that golem. No—I ask that you treat me better still."
"No. It's gross."
"Is that not terribly cruel of you!"
"Hey, what if the baldness rubs off on me or something……."
Yujun clapped a hand over his own mouth in a hurry. There were things a man could say, and things he absolutely could not. Baldness was not a subject to raise in front of Paranet.
"Paranet."
"……."
Paranet's jawbone jutted out a good ten feet.
"You sulking?"
"I am not."
Anyone could see he was sulking. Yujun, however, did not bend.
"Even so, the head is off-limits."
"……."
A man's hair was as precious as his life. If he went and patted that skull on a whim and caught some strain of Paranet germ—ugh. The mere thought was horrifying.
They arrived at the General Store. With his original task complete, Tapagol shrank back into his usual form. Yujun glanced around. Aside from a handful of players, everyone had put a wide stretch of ground between themselves and the golem. He walked straight inside.
A chakram came flying the moment he crossed the threshold. The weapon was a flat ring of metal, and few people bothered with them. To Yujun's eye it wasn't a particularly efficient arm—but once a player's abilities were folded into it, that changed. He slipped the ring with a spare, economical motion, drove his sword through the circle, and planted the blade in the ground. The chakram, trying to fly back to its owner's hand, was pinned where it was.
"Quite the welcome."
"So a proper one finally showed."
The speaker was a handsome man with a sharp face. His name was Undo, and he was one of the Hon, a rare race. Yujun recognized him at a glance.
"Oh. A Hon?"
"You know of us?"
"Sure. I was in a party with one not long ago."
"Then I will show you mercy. Leave this place before I kill you."
"Word is you were rank one in Region Three. That true?"
"It is."
"So what are you doing here?"
"Control."
"Why?"
"Nothing you need to know."
"Prickly bastard."
Yujun lifted his sword a fraction and brought it down on the chakram. The ring split with a crack, sheared clean in two, and only then did the color drain from Undo's face.
"You broke my weapon?"
"What, you thought yours wouldn't break?"
"……How dare you."
"Was it expensive? Sorry."
"I meant to show you mercy…… I'll kill you."
"Hotter-blooded than the other Hon I've met, aren't you?"
Rougher than expected. Undo's expression hardened to stone as he slipped his remaining chakram over his hand, closed the distance in a blink, and swung, arm and ring as one.
The air tore. Steel bit. Yujun never took so much as a single step. He simply swung his sword to meet the strike, and the chakram—lunging in with vicious force—was severed in one clean cut.
"Impossible……."
Undo's face went blank with disbelief. The instant Yujun's foot left the floor, the world slowed. More precisely, he alone had been thrown into acceleration, and Undo could not answer that speed. Yujun did not hesitate. He took the man's head.
The blade sheared through. Undo wore armor that rose all the way to his throat, as if to guard the neck, but against an attack of that caliber such a flimsy defense could do very little.
And so Undo, champion of Region Three in the first event, died an absurdly empty death.
Yujun turned to meet the gaze of a woman who had been watching him in silence.
"At last, a change of customer. The one beside you a summon?"
"Yeah."
She looked to be of a fair age, though hardly old—mature, with a gentle, comforting air about her.
"This is the General Store, right?"
"You didn't come here already knowing that?"
"Long as it is, we're good. Can I buy something right now?"
"If you've got the points to spend. And from the look of you, you've piled up quite a few."
"Yeah. Show me."
"There's no fun in buying and selling with no feeling to it. Shall we introduce ourselves, just briefly? I'm Kantra."
"Shin Yujun."
Kantra, keeper of the shop, smiled a meaningful smile.
"So you're the human Manuela was talking about."
Yujun flinched.
"Manuela? You know Manuela?"
"Do I ever. You have no idea how much that girl has gone on about you."
"About me? What did she say?"
"It's a secret. If I told you everything, I'd feel far too sorry for her."
"……."
Was this about earlier? How badly must Manuela have talked behind his back, for Kantra to wear a look like that? His mood soured on the spot, and he answered bluntly.
"……Whatever. Just show me the goods."
The door clacked. A player stepped into the General Store—a beastkin. Interrupted, Yujun turned with irritation already on his face, mana rising—
"Sh-Shin Yujun. It's Shin Yujun……."
"Yeah, that's me. What."
"I'm sorry!"
The beastkin bolted in a panic.
"……."
"What was that?"
Out in front of the General Store, the beastkin ran about shouting.
"It's Shin Yujun! He's in there!"
The players who had been watching with hawk eyes visibly panicked. A few had already known the one who entered was Yujun. Most had not.
"Sh-shit."
"Shin Yujun? The Region One guy?"
"Ah—they say he's rank one, don't they?"
"He's more than rank one. You didn't see the nine and a half million?"
"The what?"
"Hopeless. When the first event ended, the scoreboard went up in the sky. His kill count was over nine and a half million."
"……For real? That many?"
"You think I'd make it up? You don't know a thing, do you?"
"How do you even kill nine and a half million? Don't the usual rank-ones fail to break a million? Has anyone else broken it?"
"No. Shin Yujun is just a monster."
"Listening to you, he's past even that."
"An unprecedented monster. If he isn't, there isn't another word for him."
"Come on. Just compare him to a god, then."
"……Try saying that in front of the God's Minions."
"Huh? Those God's Minions that are supposed to be on this deserted island? Have you actually seen one?"
"I heard something once…… You can't put those things on the same level as players like us."
"What? Why not?"
"You know what caliber is, right? When the gap gets bad enough, your attacks just don't land. Their caliber is Demigod. Not quite gods, but on a completely different plane from created beings like us. Obviously our attacks wouldn't so much as touch them."
"Isn't that unfair?"
"Hey. Even if our caliber matched, do you really think we could beat them? They aren't called God's Minions for nothing. Strip the caliber away and they'd still be so strong we couldn't lay a hand on them."
"……Then what about Shin Yujun?"
"What about him?"
"If he fought a God's Minion."
"……Hard to say. The God's Minion would probably win, wouldn't it?"
"Hah. They're that strong?"
"No. It's the gap in caliber. I heard that man hasn't even been a player for a full year. Of course his caliber would be low."
"Wait a second. If his caliber is low after less than a year, isn't that even stranger? If it's low, then how did he kill the rank one of Region Three? That Undo was well past level six hundred, from what I heard."
"He must simply be strong enough to overcome it."
"Then a God's Minion, too……."
"How many times do I have to say you can't put a God's Minion on the same level as a player? Were you even listening?"
"I-I'm sorry."
Once word spread that Yujun was inside the General Store, the players' attitude changed sharply. Those who had been waiting for the slightest opening to slip in began, very quietly, to edge backward. If they happened to be nearby when he came out, some stray attack might catch them and end their lives.
Most of the players who had survived all the way to the third event were top rankers, and there were plenty of unknown powers beyond even that. They grasped the situation quickly and put distance between themselves and the shop.
"Guess we can forget about going into the General Store for a while."
"Tsk."
"Why did Shin Yujun have to show up now, of all times?"
Everyone was grumbling when one player resolved, all the same, to go in. His name was Hamuntas, and he had particular faith in his stealth. He had been the foremost blade of a renowned assassination syndicate, and if he set his mind to it, he was confident he could take a throat without a single soul ever noticing. He always had. Not once had he been caught, and not once had he failed a contract. It didn't matter how strong the target was. The moment his dagger entered a neck, no amount of defense could keep the victim from dying on the spot.
I didn't dump everything into attack-option gear for nothing.
He had set every other option aside and worn only items tied to stealth, or to amplifying attack power. It had proven quietly effective. No one ever got the chance to hit him in the first place. A smile touched Hamuntas's mouth as he slipped into the General Store.
The back of a head came into view—the man called Shin Yujun. Hamuntas's eyes changed, turning into the eyes of a beast that had found its prey. Five seconds. His estimate said five seconds would be enough to kill him. To keep the stealth from breaking, he would have to close in slowly, and keep his composure while he did.
Something rushed him.
"Eh—Master. I have the feeling something is coming?"
"I'm busy. Handle it yourself."
Body Slam!
A tremendous impact slammed into Hamuntas as he crept toward his mark. The blow blasted him backward with a crash, and he flew out of the shop still locked in the posture of having been rammed, a strangled cry tearing out of him.
The players outside stared, bewildered. Hamuntas, foremost assassin of a contract-killing syndicate, was a very famous man—but because he was an assassin, he had never shown his face to anyone. Looking at his appearance alone, not a soul could tell who he was.
"Who's that? When did he even go in?"
"Right?"
"So even among the players who made it this far, there are idiots."
"What a moron."
Hamuntas stared into empty air, the sense knocked clean out of him.
"What in the world was th—ghk!"
The absurdity of it could wait. The injury was far too severe. Every rib felt crushed. His organs had ruptured, and dark blood poured from his mouth without pause. For a single collision with an undead, it was a catastrophic state—because his defense was miserably low for his level. His breath cut off before he could so much as draw a potion.
For a player who had once shaken the whole assassination trade, it was an empty end. He had not even died to Shin Yujun. A summon's body slam had been enough.
Paranet dusted his hands.
"Master, he was nothing but a worthless nobody."
"Well done."
Yujun turned his attention back to Kantra, keeper of the General Store.
"Doesn't look like anyone else is going to interrupt. Mind showing me the goods?"
"Fine. Just remember—the moment another player comes in, the dealing stops."
Yujun nodded. At last, the time had come to buy from the General Store. The points he had stacked until now came to no less than this.
He had more than enough ammunition ready.