Wh-What Is This...
"Wh-what... what is this..."
Branch Head Kaines muttered the words, his face blank with disbelief.
He had tested it himself. He had confirmed, beyond any doubt, that the barrier would not so much as flinch under a meteor spell. So what was this? A single meteor had not only shattered the barrier without mercy—it had brought the branch building, piled high into the sky, crashing down. Worse, more than eighty percent of the cultists living in the branch had died as if their lives had never meant a thing. He had never dreamed the barrier he trusted so completely would break this easily beneath Shin Yujun's magic.
"Aaah..."
"Ghk—!"
Players who had lost arms and legs poured potions over themselves, writhing in pain. They were the lucky ones. Most of the others had vanished without a trace in the searing flames, or been reduced to piles of ash.
"Branch Head! What do we do?"
Kaines had no answer for the deputy. What meaning would a retreat even have, declared this late? And staying to fight would be nothing but stubborn folly. Better to gather what Demon God Worshippers remained, get clear of this place, and plan for another day. Set the wounded pride aside, and that was the best choice he had. Pride, after all, did not put food on the table. Right now it was also the single greatest obstacle to staying alive.
"Retreat! Fall back along the escape route you were assigned! Anyone too badly wounded is to be left behind!"
And so Kaines—famous, in ordinary times, for his towering pride—gave the order to withdraw. Fear of reprisal from above played its part, but more than anything, he prized his own life above all else.
The more of them there are to serve as meat shields, the better.
His subordinates could die by the dozen for all he cared. The most important player in this place was the Branch Head himself. The cultists would have been appalled to hear it, but Kaines meant every word. His influence within the branch was considerable, in any case. So long as he lived, it did not matter how many of them died. Still, walking out alone would look a little too ugly. Taking a few subordinates along was the wiser course.
"Watch for another strike from Shin Yujun! Do not flee in a cluster, no matter what!"
A strike—an air raid, in the most literal sense. Hundreds of fireballs were falling out of the sky.
"D-dodge!"
"One hit and you're dead! This isn't like earlier, when you only caught the shrapnel. It's on a completely different level!"
"Why... why is he coming after us!"
The great fireballs came down in a rolling thunder and blanketed the entire branch. A few managed to slip away in time, but they were a handful at best. Yujun had not given them long.
Explosions chained one after another, and the screams rising from every direction began, instead, to vanish. Even the cultists who had clung stubbornly to their last threads of life lost them. No one tried to stand and answer. The number of survivors was already small, but more than that, they had lost the will to fight before the fighting even began. Above all, the power of each individual spell was beyond imagination. Players wrapped in dozens of layered shields watched every last barrier shatter under a single fireball. To see that and still have the will to fight would have been the strange thing.
Most of the cultists had been brainwashed into a deep hatred of Shin Yujun, but even hatred had its limits. Almost none of them were willing to throw themselves blindly into a minefield. And almost none meant that a few still were.
"Diiiie!"
"It's Shin Yujun! We only have to kill him! You son of a—!"
"He murdered our parents!"
Watching the Demon God Worshippers come flying in on Fly spells without a shred of fear, Yujun scratched his head.
"So I'm the one who killed their parents."
In a way, it was only natural. How many Demon God Worshippers had he cut down by now? Even so, the resolve that they had to die did not waver in the slightest. He drew his sword and met the swarm rushing in at speed with a counter of his own.
The bulky player charging behind a shield that covered his whole body was split clean in half. In the same motion, the swordsman preparing an attack from behind lost his head. All that remained were those readying spells. With blades he had quietly manifested through Sword Unity, he cut the mages down all at once.
His level did not rise. Yujun had grown so quickly that finding a player of a higher level than his own was no longer an easy thing. In raw power, of course—but even by the number of his level alone, he had climbed to a tier beyond Heaven itself. The Demon God Worshippers who failed to see it—no, who saw it and charged in anyway—paid the price for that.
"I've got to catch the big one."
Finding the Branch Head was no difficult task for Yujun. His senses blanketed the entire branch and still had reach to spare, enough to peer past the sea. Among them, he picked out the Demon God Worshipper who carried the most overwhelming presence.
He's the one running the farthest, isn't he?
Yujun looked at Paranet.
"Understood. Call the coordinates, if you would."
"Right."
Paranet seized Manuela and Yujun and cast Space Movement.
There, putting everything he had into widening the distance, was the back of the Branch Head's head. Sensing the party's presence, Kaines panicked.
"Hold them! Buy me time!"
"But..."
"No arguments!"
"Y-yes, sir!"
Within the Demon God Worshipper Cult, disobeying a superior was all but impossible. Brainwashing played its part, but refusal also brought execution, or a punishment just as final. Better to die here following the order than to defy it. The Demon God Worshippers threw themselves forward to shield Kaines.
"Paranet. You handle them. I'll go finish that one and come back."
"Yes, Master!"
They were fairly elite believers, but Paranet had grown a great deal stronger. Yujun judged he could be trusted with them. While the towering death knight engaged the Demon God Worshippers, Yujun closed in on the Branch Head.
Kaines noticed the approach, of course, and used Blink. Not Space Movement—Blink. And how far could Blink really take him? Yujun caught up in a single step, without even using a skill.
"Where do you think you're going all by yourself? Not a shred of camaraderie?"
"Lord Shin Yujun."
Kaines stopped dead and dropped to his knees. The sudden move caught Yujun off guard for an instant.
"...What are you doing?"
"Please. I beg you, spare me."
"..."
So this was a plea for his life. Even so, wasn't the surrender a little too quick? Then again, it was not impossible to understand. Yujun was famous for showing Demon God Worshippers no mercy, and he had a habit of taking lives in a single stroke. Had Kaines not moved this fast, his head would already have been gone. Throwing away even his pride to kneel might, in a sense, have been the right answer.
But Yujun was no ordinary player.
"If I let you live, what's in it for me?"
"I can give you the location of one more branch!"
"Huh? There's a geas on you. You shouldn't be able to say it."
"No! I know a way around the geas! And I'm not the only one—several others know it too."
"You can get around the geas? How?"
"You use a certain item. It's difficult to obtain, but... a few believers have slipped the geas with it."
"Hmm."
It did not sound like a lie. Hadn't Asilien herself, even while counted among the Demon God Worshippers, given them a branch's location? A geas would certainly have been on her as well. Like the Branch Head, she must have known the method.
"What item?"
"Most items that strip buffs or debuffs have no effect on a geas whatsoever. But there is something called the Mushroom of Nullification. It grows wild in Heaven. The trouble is that it can turn up anywhere, and only one grows in each region, so finding it is genuinely difficult. Still, eat just one, and you are free of the geas. The geas itself remains in the body, so at the next inspection, so long as you do nothing too conspicuous, you may not even draw much suspicion."
"The Mushroom of Nullification? What rank?"
"Rare."
"That's low."
"Yes! But as I said a moment ago, it is not something one can obtain as easily as other Rare items."
"You have any left?"
"I do not—"
"Then I kill you."
"There is one left."
"Okay. Hand it over."
"Yes..."
With no other choice, Kaines produced the Mushroom of Nullification and held it out. He swallowed his fury in silence. Before the strong, he was endlessly weak.
"Thanks."
◈ Nullifies buffs, debuffs, and curses.
The option was simple. It could not erase an effect—only nullify it. It was also the one item capable of striking the geas, that chronic affliction of the Demon God Worshippers, stone blind.
Not bad. No—better than not bad. The uses for this are practically endless.
And it was not an item of which only one existed. He would be clashing with countless Demon God Worshippers in the days to come, and the value of a mushroom that could nullify their geas could not be measured in coin.
Getting this here... I can only call it luck.
Meeting a Branch Head this groveling was part of that luck as well.
"You know where a branch is?"
"Yes."
"Is there one in Heaven, too?"
"Yes."
"There's another one in Heaven?"
"Yes. There is."
Then he might as well smash that one on the way through. Of course, Kaines could be lying, so Yujun did not jump to a conclusion.
"Tell me where."
"Yes..."
"No. Send it by message."
"You would go so far as to... exchange messengers?"
"Obviously. You might take what you want and bolt. Of course we exchange."
The system's auto-translation seemed to have carried the meaning of eat and run well enough. Kaines accepted it and nodded.
"Understood."
In truth, the messenger was not entirely meaningful either. The other side could sever the link whenever they pleased. Still, a message already sent did not disappear, so there would be no forgetting the location.
"You only know the one branch?"
"Yes. Aside from that one place, even I don't know any others."
"Send me the location. By message."
"Yes. Understood!"
The moment he confirmed the branch's location through the messenger, Yujun cut Kaines's throat without hesitation. Kaines ended his life without even registering that he was dying. Yujun had never had the slightest intention of showing a Demon God Worshipper mercy. He had taken everything there was to take, and that was satisfaction enough. He turned on his heel and headed back to where the others waited.
Manuela and Paranet were finishing off the few Demon God Worshippers who remained.
"You're back?"
"Yeah. You killed a lot of them."
"Please. The table was already set. I only laid a spoon on it."
"Indeed, Master! Ah—and I picked this up."
Paranet rummaged through his armor and produced something.
"What is it?"
"A marble. Is it not the very sort of thing my master favors?"
"..."
Yujun's eyes went wide at the Synchronization Marble resting on Paranet's enormous palm.
"Where'd you find it?"
"It simply turned up while I was rifling through that building. Ah, and the Legendary equipment—might I be permitted to keep a little of it...?"
Paranet said it with a sly grin. Yujun laughed, too incredulous to do anything else.
"Take all of it. And thanks, for finding the marble."
"Think nothing of it. Should it be for my master's sake, I am prepared to search even the ocean's abyss."
"Then go look."
"...That was a joke, was it not?"
"Yeah."
"Ha... haha."
"You turned the whole place inside out, right?"
"Yes. I searched every nook and cranny. There were no further marbles."
"Got it. Seriously, though—thank you. I mean it."
"I can tell from your expression alone. Heh heh..."
Today, of all days, Paranet looked unusually endearing.
And with that, the inventory synchronization began.