Suddenly, Caston from Not Long Ago...

Unbidden, a memory rose of meeting Caston not long ago.

He had introduced himself as one of the Dragon-Fang, and he had certainly been overwhelmingly stronger than the other players — strong enough that even Yujun had been impressed. Stronger, even, than the man ranked first in Region Three, the one he had killed in the General Store.

Thinking back on it now, though, it seemed less that Caston had clawed his way up through desperate, blood-soaked effort, and more that the dragon's power had done the greater share of the work. He knew why he felt that way. At this very moment, he was feeling a dragon's power for himself.

His blood seethed, boiling and bubbling.

"Hrghk—hah!"

He could barely keep his body in hand. There was no pain in it. It was simply unbearable not to be able to vent this surplus of power.

Ugh. What am I supposed to do with this?

This was far beyond strength merely welling up.

"Aaaagh!"

It was not a howl of agony. He had shouted because he was pent up, and somewhere in that short span his chest must have swollen into a sounding chamber, because the cry came out thunderous.

Paranet nearly leapt out of his bones.

"Master! Whatever is the matter? I very nearly lost my hearing. Might you be requiring my kick once again?"

"Hey."

Yujun glared at him.

"...My apologies."

"You wouldn't know a man's pain. Not ever. Not for a lifetime. Not for an age, an eon, the everlasting — not until the day you die. Why? Because you don't have one."

"M-Master? Surely there is no need to go quite so far..."

Paranet's shoulders slumped. He looked as if he had taken a grievous wound to the spirit, but Yujun offered him no comfort. He was undead. He would regenerate soon enough.

Trying to aim for my vitals. Tsk.

The cure for the trouble born of absorbing the Dragon Blood Stone was simple enough: wait for time to pass. Some ten minutes went by, and the dragon's blood settled completely. Yujun, too, managed to rein in that rampant vigor. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Breath after deep breath. A little more time, and he was fully stable at last.

He stood quietly and took stock of what the Dragon Blood Stone had given him.

Hmm...

Put simply, he had gotten stronger. His strength had grown, he was quicker on his feet, and his reflexes and kinetic vision had sharpened. His mana had grown more efficient as well. Above all, his grasp of magic had deepened enormously. The reason he knew it at once was simple.

A hologram window had told him.

So traits can evolve like this, too.

Magic Comprehension. It might look like nothing much, but it was a trait that bore down on every spell Yujun cast. You could call it the ability that pushed Ancient Magic (EX++) to the very limit of its efficiency.

I take a transfusion of dragon's blood, and I change this much?

Yujun let out a hollow laugh. The Dragon Blood Stone had not been expensive for nothing — twice the price of a Transcendent Stone, a full ten million points. Even so, it had earned its cost.

To see exactly what had changed, he opened his status window, and his eyes went wide.

My stats jumped by a hundred each. That's insane.

No wonder power had been spilling out of his body. His stats had risen by four hundred in all, which was the same as gaining a hundred levels for free. And that was by Yujun's measure. Other players gained three unallocated stat points a level, so for them it would have been the same as leveling up a hundred and thirty-three times.

Wait...

Looking over the window, he found something else.

Why did my Chaos go up?

The Chaos he had originally possessed was 20. The raw value written on the status window was 80. It had quadrupled. Why? Because he had absorbed dragon blood? That was the guess with the most weight behind it. Judging by the size of the increase, it had not come from equipping his cloak.

Do dragons have something to do with Chaos?

If they did, it made sense.

"Ah. I'm full."

"Eh? What did you eat, leaving me out entirely?"

Paranet had perked back up in no time at all.

See? Told you he's undead.

He seemed hardier against a blow to the spirit than Yujun himself, and Yujun had Equanimity.

"Eat? I ate one thing about the size of a teardrop. Why?"

"Then why, pray, are you full?"

"It's a figure of speech. You turned undead and you don't even know that?"

"...I have learned something again today."

"Good. Learn plenty."

Yujun turned his eyes at once to the Random Rune Box.

Random. Randomized. Strange words. Just hearing them set his heart racing — pounding like a pair of drumsticks, his breath coming short. A close cousin of those words was gacha.

The box was no bigger than a seventeen-inch laptop.

What's in here that they made the box this big?

Grinning, Yujun opened it. The lid came up with a clack. Inside the wooden box lay a single long stone, carved with hieroglyphs whose meaning he could not read.

Is this a rune?

It matched, more or less, the image he had expected. A smile touched his lips. He had a good feeling about this, somehow. He lifted the rune with care and checked its information.

The description was simple. The effect was anything but.

"An experience increase?"

A rune that raised the rate at which he gained experience.

This is insane.

And the effect applied only to the two arms and the two legs. That seemed to mean he could use as many as four runes in all.

Can a rune even be erased?

If there was no way to delete one, he would have to be careful. Only the highest-grade runes, no exceptions. The mediocre ones he could hoard, or sell.

I was worried my level was low, and right on cue an experience item turns up.

The only thing that could be called a weakness of his was his level, and now a way to mend it had appeared. Even if he could not solve the problem on the spot, the pace of solving it had been pulled sharply forward.

Good.

A fair amount of time would still remain before the third event ended. It had been only an hour since he had warped to the deserted island.

Nothing else to prepare. Then I should go now.

Yujun had already chosen his destination.

Silence hung over the plaza where everyone had vanished. Only one man remained there, stranded and alone.

Who... am I?

His head was a tangle. No — the opposite. It felt as if it had been wiped to a blank page. The space was familiar. He was sure of it. And yet he could not remember.

A translucent screen appeared before him, covered in characters he did not know. Strangely, he could read them all the same.

An Automatic Resurrection Scroll. He did not know why, but he remembered this. Automatic resurrection, just as the name said — a scroll that let you live again if you died caught up in some unexpected attack or accident.

Why do I remember this?

He did not even know his own name. How, then, did he know what an item did? He had no idea. His head throbbed, and with the ache came a conviction that he had to get his memories back. The man set his feet moving with no destination in mind.

He passed the fountain. A fruit stall, wooden benches set here and there, a carefully tended flower bed. Scenes he had seen often...? Familiar to the eye, whether he knew it or not. Why?

"Ugh... ngh."

Every time he tried to call a memory up, it felt as if someone were boring into his skull with an awl. Then he noticed something strange. Everything in the plaza was lifeless. Living or not, all of it had stopped: the weapon shop, the armor shop, the general goods store, the butcher, the bank. The people standing before them were frozen stiff. They had the shapes of people, but they did not so much ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as stir, and the stillness made them seem like dolls.

"Why aren't they moving?"

Their stillness struck him as wrong. They were not dolls, and they were not models. They were people who truly lived and moved. The man knew that. He did not know how he knew. He simply did.

A stifling pressure closed in on him, and there was only one way to ease it.

I have to remember my name.

He walked, and he kept walking, trudging on while familiar scenes unfolded one after another. Until his memories returned, he had no choice but to hunt for clues. Two days passed that way, and the man felt that something was wrong.

Why aren't I hungry?

The basic appetites a person ought to have seemed to have been cut out of him. No — this was not even appetite. It was the energy survival required, and even without replenishing it he was neither exhausted nor tired.

Have I slept at all...?

There was no one who could answer him. Every last one of them stood frozen, as if time itself had stopped. The man walked on without end. Another day passed. He wandered not only the plaza but the whole of Rathenes Village, and there he found the largest cathedral in the village. A stair led underground, one he had passed before without ever noticing. He went down without hesitation.

The basement was brighter than the floor above. Ornate lights hung from the ceiling, wrapping a single stone statue in their glow.

"What... is this?"

The statue's face was familiar. It resembled the reflection he had seen not long ago in a mirror along some shopping street — not merely resembled it. The likeness was exact. The man approached slowly, and up close he could see beyond any doubt that it was identical to him.

Why?

Behind the statue stood a white plaque with something written on it. He stepped up to it.

No-Pay Casual Gamer.

The moment he took in that name, lightning seemed to strike him. His hair stood on end. Gooseflesh raced over his whole body, and forgotten knowledge came crashing in like a tsunami. Now, at last, he remembered everything.

"...It's me."

He was No-Pay Casual Gamer.

Yujun had come to the farthest edge of the deserted island — to the ground guarded by the God's Minions, who were said to be waiting no matter which way you went, out at the island's end.

"Master, will you be all right?"

"All right with what?"

"The God's Minions. You said they were no laughing matter. From what I overheard the players saying, they sounded quite vicious."

"How would you know from hearsay?"

"Did the System not issue a warning as well?"

"So what? You want us to steer clear of the God's Minions and squat on this island?"

"..."

The God's Minions surely possessed a strength beyond any ordinary measure. Yujun knew that well enough. It did not mean he feared them.

The Heresy Inquisitor was said to have Divine Realm, too.

It had seemed like only half of one, but Divine Realm was still Divine Realm — a different order of being from ordinary players, in the most literal sense. Were the God's Minions not much the same as the Heresy Inquisitor? Stand on a lower plane, and there was a good chance your attacks ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠would not land at all.

"Look over there. Some kids charging straight through, right on cue."

In the direction he pointed, two players were closing on the place where a God's Minion stood. There was only one of them.

"Oh my, so there are. Whatever could they be thinking? They are plainly going to die."

"Either they're confident in their skill, or they've got a way through. One or the other."

Yujun stood still and watched. He wanted to see how they meant to stand against a God's Minion, and he wanted to see the minion's strength for himself. The two players, a man and a woman, broke into a run at the same moment and charged. The God's Minion reached out a hand toward the pair coming on without a shred of fear.

A thin, vicious whine — and a laser lanced from the minion's palm. The man used Blink, slipping the blast and closing the distance instead.

"Use that!"

At his shout the woman nodded, and in the very instant she moved to tear a scroll—

A wet crunch. Then another. A huge hand had appeared behind each of their heads, and it clenched down hard. For all the swagger of their entrance, the end was empty. The God's Minion stood where it was, expression unchanged, as if nothing at all had happened.

Even against an opponent that trivial, Yujun did not think he could have worn a face like that. A cruel bastard. He felt a stab of pity for the two who had just died.

"Your ends. I'll remember them to the very last."

Paranet, at that, raised a doubt.

"Would they not dislike that all the more?"

"Hm? Why?"

"It was a most humiliating sight, was it not? Should they learn that someone witnessed it, they might well die a second time of the shame."

"...You think so?"

"Yes. That is so."

"What am I supposed to do? I already saw it. My memory's too good to forget the thing."

"...Nor mine."

"Then we bury it in our hearts and nowhere else. Don't tell a soul."

"Yes! Understood!"