Yujun Raised His Sword High
Yujun raised his sword high.
Chaos and mana wound together and sank into the blade, and smoke curled off the steel like summer haze. The skill he meant to use was none other than Weapon Earthquake (EX)—a technique that drove a weapon into the earth and kicked up a devastating shockwave. On its own, though, the skill would be wasteful. It would strike the entire forest.
What he needed was to hold the whole wood in his mind’s eye. He had to know the lay of the land and the place of every structure in it, because he intended to send the shockwave only where the Predators were.
It might have been an absurd attempt, but his instincts told him it was not impossible. If anything, he put the odds high. He had not pinpointed the phantom races in a single sweep for nothing.
The Predators’ positions.
They stood out before him as clearly as a map on a game screen.
So this sort of thing actually works.
The System was not drawing it for him. He had built a concrete map from nothing but his own stats and senses. He was no machine, and no supercomputer, so it could not be perfectly exact—but a minor error was easy enough to ignore. Spending a little extra mana, or felling a few more trees, hardly counted as a problem.
For the last fine control of the Earthquake, Yujun even called on Super Concentration (EX++).
Super Concentration (EX++)
Subjective time slows to a near standstill.
“Feels right.”
As if they had sensed the unnatural pressure, the Predators in the forest broke into a frantic flight. Sharp survival instincts, these ones.
Wait. If the Predators get out of Sourtul Forest, isn’t that a disaster?
Among the players on the Continent, how many could actually stand against Sourtul Forest’s Predators? A bare handful. And if those creatures spilled beyond the forest…
A catastrophe was all but certain.
Whatever measures the phantom races might have prepared, he could not simply trust them and stand aside. This was the moment to step in himself. An unaccountable sense of justice welled up in him.
A massive haul of experience… no. For the sake of the innocent players, I suppose I ought to put in a little effort.
His face set with resolve, Yujun drove the sword hard into the ground.
Weapon Earthquake (EX)
A catastrophic shockwave erupts from the point where the weapon strikes the earth.
Kuguung. Gugugugung.
The earth itself heaved.
The Predators ran even more desperately, but the speed of the Earthquake’s shockwave was beyond imagination. Waves burst up all through the forest. A surge rising from the ground was not something a Predator could escape merely by trying to dodge. Those struck head-on had their insides churned to pulp and vomited blood, and their screams rang through the woods without end.
Then message windows erupted before Yujun’s eyes.
A full five levels.
He had been killing lower-level Predators, and still the gains were this large. That meant the forest had still been thick with them.
And I can’t have killed so few of them myself…
The Demon God Worshippers must have had a miserable time of it. Where had they even scraped together this many monsters? They had poured a long while into the work, and clearing every Predator in the forest would have been grueling labor.
Not for Yujun.
Kuguung. Gugung.
The roar never let up. All of it from a single use of Weapon Earthquake.
Pour in that much mana and Chaos, and the range really is no joke.
And the range was not the whole of it. The force of the shockwave was monstrous. The instant a Predator touched it, the creature dropped in a heap with no resistance at all.
Cold sweat streamed down Yujun’s brow. This was not a matter of throwing one attack and being done. He had to keep reading everything around him and send each wave to the proper place. Sword planted in the earth, his whole body trembling, he drew a worried look from Manuela.
“You okay?”
“…I can hold.”
“You’re not drinking a potion?”
“Feed it to me.”
“Huh? Y-you want me to feed it to you?”
“I can’t move my hands right now. Please. I’ll pay you back for the potion later.”
“…Fine.”
Manuela drew a mid-grade potion from her inventory, worked the cork free, and carefully brought it to his lips. She had never imagined she would get to do, in the flesh, something she had only occasionally daydreamed about. A potion instead of food made the picture a little different from the fantasy, but Manuela was content with this. She felt her hands shake, drew a deep breath, and forced herself calm.
Yujun took the potion in his mouth, swallowed it in one go, and let out a long breath.
“I think I might live.”
His head did not exactly feel clear, but the splitting headache was gone. He called on Super Concentration again and closed his eyes.
Mental acceleration resumed. Subjective time crawls to a halt.
The experiment was a success.
While disturbing Sourtul Forest as little as he could, he killed most of the Predators that lived there. Some died without ever understanding what had struck them. Others fled for their lives and were caught all the same. In short, every Predator’s fate was already sealed.
When the sweep was finished, Yujun dropped where he stood.
“Whew. This is rough.”
“That bad?”
“Yeah. No joke.”
Holding Super Concentration for so long was part of it, but so was reading a map that changed in real time while he sent the waves. Neither task was easy. Doing several of them at once felt as if his skull were about to split.
“This is really the end. All that’s left is getting out.”
“Thank you, Yujun.”
“Hm? Out of nowhere?”
“Thanks to you, I gained a lot of levels.”
“I did it for myself, so.”
He had already fixed the location of Sourtul Forest’s exit in his mind while scanning the whole wood. Yujun and Manuela left at a quick pace, and they were clear of the trees before the sun went down. A smile touched his mouth.
“Finally out. Whoa…”
“The mood in there was so gloomy. Not a place I wanted to stay.”
Yujun agreed. Some places lifted your spirits just to look at them. Sourtul Forest was the opposite—dreary, damp, and sticky, with every unpleasant quality gathered in one spot. And on top of that, Predators of horrific appearance had kept turning up.
Even so, it had not left him with nothing but bad memories. If anything, Sourtul Forest had given Yujun only good things: levels, items, titles, skills, and traits. Choosing to enter it had been the right call.
Get stronger, and that’s all that matters.
Neither Sourtul Forest nor the Underground Kingdom had been pure hell, either.
“The Demon God Worshippers didn’t even come at us much, toward the end. Didn’t expect that.”
“Isn’t that because you got too strong?”
“They weren’t the type to care about that.”
“I’m their enemy, but I kind of get it. Every time they showed up, they got wrecked.”
Manuela said it as if she were proud.
“Why are you the one looking pleased?”
“Well… I helped a fair amount too, and we’re the sort who’ll be together for life, so…”
“Hm? For life?”
“…We’re not?”
“If it’s for life, I’m the one who wins big.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“What a relief.”
Manuela murmured it under her breath. A pink flush rose in her cheeks.
Yujun was thinking something else entirely.
So I get to keep using Manuela for buffs and blessings.
He had not expected her to volunteer for a support role on her own. He had thought she would return to the Demon Realm one day, and here she was, saying she would keep traveling with him. Luck with people was a kind of luck too. Even while he was clearing Sourtul Forest’s Predators, Manuela’s blessing had been a great strength. He could finish them in a single blow while spending less of himself. Without the Blessing of the Hot-Blooded Warrior, hunting every last one of them would have taken far longer.
Right now, he could not do without Manuela. He felt that plainly.
I should treat her a little better.
For the time being, though, a cold manner was still allowed. He had already given her several pieces of Mythic-grade equipment. If she griped that he paid her a little less mind, then Manuela would be the crook.
“Paranet.”
“Yes!”
“Space Movement, if you would.”
“Shall I take us to the residential zone?”
“Oh. Right. How’d you know?”
“Say the word, and I catch it at once! The bond between Master and myself is of a depth even the System could not fathom, is it not?”
“Is that so…?”
“Oh, why must you feign ignorance? Do you mean to say you cannot see this red thread of fate that binds Master to me?”
“Yeah. I don’t see it.”
“…It may simply be too fine to see. But it shall not snap, so cast your worries aside!”
“Sure.”
“….”
Yujun’s reply was dry as dust. Paranet wilted.
“Just hurry up and teleport.”
“A-ah. At once.”
Paranet’s magic unfolds.
Destination: Residential Zone
For long-distance travel, Paranet’s Space Movement was especially useful. It was nothing less than a teleport portal that went where he did. In an instant, Yujun and Manuela arrived in the residential zone.
“So what now?”
Yujun answered without a moment’s hesitation.
“Climb the Tower.”
“And me?”
“How high have you gone?”
“I think I reached the 54th floor, a long time ago?”
“…That’s high.”
Yujun was still in the thirties. Set beside the 54th floor, the number looked somehow shabby.
“Just go on ahead.”
“So we can’t go together, because the floors you’ve cleared are lower…”
Manuela had said it without any particular meaning, but to Yujun it sounded like a sigh of disappointment. His drive caught fire.
“Go wait on the 47th floor. I’ll catch up fast. You said the 54th, right?”
“…Huh? Wasn’t I supposed to go to the 47th?”
“Does that matter right now? My floor count is lower than yours— Anyway, go and wait.”
“Ah. Okay.”
Bewildered, Manuela set her hand on the gigantic statue and moved to the 47th floor.
Yujun made himself a promise. He would clear the 47th-floor trial within thirty minutes.
I’d like to push all the way to the 54th, but I can’t do that.
This was no time to indulge himself. He set his hand on the statue.
Pabat!
Yujun kept the promise he had made to himself. He truly broke through the 47th floor within thirty minutes.
The higher the floor, the harder the ordeal, but for Yujun the Trial of Ascent was little more than a children’s game. If the floor were far higher than this, perhaps. Struggling at a floor of this height would have been the strange thing.
I’ve gotten strong past any comparison to when I played as No-Pay Casual Gamer.
Having sat the Trial of Ascent well over ten times, he felt it for certain. The proof was that his level did not rise even once. The experience granted was a speck of dust, which only showed that the hunting ground did not match his level. Yujun already carried combat power far beyond that level. How could his clear speed be slow? He cut down every monster in the trial, without a single exception, in one blow.
Manuela, waiting before the statue, went wide-eyed.
“Already?”
“No time. We have to move.”
“Where?”
“Just follow me for now.”
Someone might be listening in on his words. That was why Yujun did not carelessly let the words Skill Library leave his mouth.
Anyone who knew what it was would lose their mind over that place.