An Unusually Rapid Synchronization
This synchronization climbed at an absurd pace. In no time at all, the rate had reached 118 percent.
Good thing this isn't when I'm supposed to receive an item.
A transfer that fast was unsettling in its own right. The odds were high that whatever was coming was junk—something so worthless it didn't take long to send.
Maybe I can look forward to the next one.
Until now, only items suited to Yujun's circumstances had come through, but there was no guarantee that would always hold. He resolved in advance not to be disappointed, even if what arrived wasn't anything remarkable.
Don't get my hopes up. The greater the expectation, the greater the disappointment.
Yujun swept his gaze over the burning branch and spoke.
"By the way, Paranet. Was the Synchronization Marble hidden, or was it sitting out in the open?"
"There was something like a vault. I smashed it, and out came the Synchronization Marble along with a heap of junk."
"Junk, meaning?"
"The Legendary items I mentioned earlier... those, Master."
Paranet hemmed and hawed, afraid Yujun might claim them. But Yujun had no interest whatsoever in Legendary-grade equipment. Consumables might have been another story. Paranet was a terrible liar—the truth always showed—so the vault had almost certainly yielded nothing but equipment and the Synchronization Marble.
"Let's hit another branch. It's a fair distance from here, but we can't afford to drag this out."
"If we're late, they'll withdraw, won't they?"
"Yeah. Assume anything connected to me is under watch. They might even already know there's a way to lift the prohibition."
He didn't believe they had overheard their voices. Magic or an item that capable would never have escaped his notice. Observation from a very, very great distance, though, was another matter. There was no way they had missed that something had changed hands. If they'd caught the scent, the odds were high they would abandon the branch and flee.
Yujun looked at Paranet.
"I'm counting on you."
"Yes, sir! Everyone, hold fast to me!"
Paranet's Space Movement carried them to the vicinity of another branch. This one's barrier didn't look particularly strong.
"Smaller scale, too."
"Even so, there must be hundreds inside."
"Packed in tight. Convenient to wipe them out in one go."
Once again, Yujun prepared two spells from high overhead.
I've seen enough fire. Let's try something cold this time.
The moment he decided, the air around them filled with cold. Against air that froze in an instant, Manuela rubbed her arms briskly.
"H-hey, it's way too cold."
"Hm? I thought the gear I gave you had a warming effect."
"This isn't a chill some little insulation can block, is it?"
"Fair enough."
But he hadn't even started. He hadn't cast the spell—he had only shaped the bare minimum environment needed to maximize ice-attribute magic.
He had a reason for setting meteor and flame magic aside. The Synchronization Marble. He had no wish to see that precious thing erased without a trace by a meteor, or burned down to ash. Freeze it, and at least it wouldn't vanish. That was why he had no intention of using any spell that fell from above.
Frozen Field. A spell he already held as an SS+ skill. Even cast as an ordinary skill, Frozen Field wasn't weak—but that much wasn't enough to satisfy him. He laid the Frozen Field skill over a foundation of New-Generation Magic, then invoked a spell of extreme freezing that amplified every ice-attribute effect.
Extreme Freezing was something he had only just conceived and improvised on the spot, and the chance of it failing converged on zero. That didn't mean he had reached a realm where he could invent and cast magic from nothing in the moment. It was possible only because he had already worked out, in advance, how such a spell ought to be shaped. Creating magic blindly wasn't necessarily difficult, but there was no guarantee the result would be useful. The Extreme Freezing he had finished conceiving and then cobbled together in a rush, however, was unmistakably overflowing with use.
The Frozen Field unfolded through New-Generation Magic had its effect amplified nearly several dozen times over. On top of that, he had already prepared an environment favorable to both Extreme Freezing and Frozen Field, so the power climbed higher still.
"Draw any nearer, and even I shall truly freeze to death."
"Isn't the scariest thing for you freezing and not being able to die?"
"Correct. With my strength as it stands, I daresay I could smash the ice and break free myself... but escaping Master's ice magic would be difficult."
"Want to test it?"
"...Even if an unsummoning is possible, I honestly have no desire to try. I cannot feel pain, but when it is cold, I still get that aching-in-the-bones sensation."
"Is that so?"
He knew the undead were weak to fire. Were they vulnerable to cold as well? That was new to him. Or perhaps Paranet was simply being dramatic.
A tremendous chill and a gale slammed into the branch together. The wind itself wasn't all that fierce, but the cold was so savage that even Yujun, far away, felt a shiver run through him. He frowned.
"We should back off a bit..."
"R-right? I'm not the only one who thinks so, am I?"
Paranet agreed vehemently and retreated first. Yujun moved back as well, putting distance between himself and the branch. The spell was stronger than he had expected. The Demon God Worshippers inside couldn't mount any response at all. They simply froze where they stood.
That was the end of it. The barrier had long since shattered, and not a single Demon God Worshipper in the branch was spared.
There was no need to regret gaining only a single level. He hadn't come here for experience in the first place.
"We can't go down right now, can we?"
"I can cancel it."
"What?"
"Cancel the spell, and we're fine."
"Is that possible? I am no mage, but as an alchemist I know the rough of it, and magic on that scale cannot be canceled by the caster, as I understand it."
"Right. That's what I thought too."
Manuela was of the same mind as Paranet.
"Watch."
Yujun opened a Drain Gate to absorb the Frozen Field spread across the entire branch. Drain Gate was a spell that summoned a dimensional door which swallowed magic. He hadn't conceived it just now; he had created it before they ever came to this branch. In truth it was an inefficient spell, devouring an enormous amount of mana—but Yujun had mana to spare, more than he could ever use. Unless the situation was truly desperate, he had no need to conserve it.
He opened the Drain Gate. The Frozen Field, blanketing the whole branch and boasting a tremendous chill, began to be sucked inside.
Wooong. Wooooong.
The Drain Gate shuddered violently. Seeing a gate that absorbed only magic and left the surrounding objects untouched, Manuela's eyes went wide.
"What... is that?"
"First time I'm actually seeing it, too. Looks pretty grotesque."
The Drain Gate looked as if it had been stitched from the hide of an ogre that hadn't been washed in years. An appearance one didn't want to touch—but the effect was excellent, and he was satisfied.
"What kind of spell is it?"
"I told you. I can cancel magic. It does something similar. The name's Drain Gate."
"Can it absorb any spell?"
"Yeah. For now."
"For now?"
"Meaning any magic I know."
"Other people's magic, too?"
"Doesn't matter whose. As long as it's magic. The problem is it eats a lot of mana, so I can't spam it."
"Even so, I like it. I've never seen a spell like this. Did you make it?"
"Yeah."
"I knew it. Your rate of progress is honestly unbelievable. You're not slipping off to some training room, are you?"
"We've been together the whole time. When would I have gone?"
"It's just. You. Hmm..."
Manuela trailed off.
"What?"
"You seem like a being summoned to stop the Demon God. Like a hero who only exists in legend?"
"A hero?"
Yujun let out a hollow laugh. So that concept existed here, too. He had thought it lived only in comics and novels. People were the same everywhere they lived. More precisely, this wasn't a place where only people lived.
Manuela wasn't wrong. In any case, it was true that more than ten million players had been summoned to stop the Demon God. And among all those people, he had the uneasy feeling he had somehow become the leading candidate...
If I even received the inventory privilege, I ought to pull my weight.
That privilege was the payoff for pouring the money he had made on Bitcoin into the game. Because of it, he had ended up saddled with the grandiose goal of saving the world. More precisely, he was being forced into it by indirect means. Not that he had any complaints. He could hardly be grateful enough for the chance to grow this strong.
He didn't know whether Ner was a good god or not, but he was genuinely thankful she had granted him a privilege simply for spending money on the game. If he had come to the Tower of Infinity with nothing but knowledge of the game, would he really have grown this strong? No—he might have died long ago. If things had gone well, he might have ended up like Do Jiyun or Kim Yohan. At least he wouldn't have started five years behind everyone else.
Still, looking back now, aside from the Demon God's descent, I think I could have caught up no matter how late I started.
Players could grow without limit, and yet in practice they had one. It sounded contradictory, but it was true. Raise one's level and stats, and a player could grow endlessly. The higher the level, though, the stronger the beings one had to hunt before experience would rise, and experience only came efficiently from killing something stronger than oneself—something of a higher level. Killing lower-level beings, the so-called farming of the weak, made growth nearly impossible.
From that point on, one had to surpass others through items, skills, and traits, and obtaining those meant taking risks. Taking risks meant staking one's life, and players who survived staking their lives dozens or hundreds of times were, naturally, exceedingly rare. That was why he said there was a limit.
If there hadn't been so many players, it might have been a different story, but the Tower of Infinity was crawling with them. An ordinary commoner of a kingdom was a player, and so were the beggars who scraped by day to day, begging for their next meal.
In that sense, the Great Merchants seem a little different.
Having money. Wealth, too, was a talent that could punch through a player's practical limit. The Great Merchants he had seen recently were, without exception, strong. That didn't mean becoming a wealthy merchant was easy.
Am I doing the right thing right now?
With a single spell, he had killed countless lives. Until not long ago, Yujun had lived a peaceful life, and he often felt a strange alienation from his own actions, as if he were playing a game. There was no right answer. Only the results that followed from what one did.
Facing the corpses of Demon God Worshippers whose bodies had stiffened rigid, Yujun and his party collected the items as if nothing were amiss. The Worshippers were strong because of the Demon God's Grace; their equipment, aside from the high ranks, wasn't much different from that of ordinary players. If anything, it was worse.
No Synchronization Marble.
They searched the branch buildings from top to bottom, but there was no Synchronization Marble. Naturally, they found no Mythic-grade items either. Destroying the branch had been the real objective, so Yujun left quickly. He had no intention of leaving Yenil alone for long. He had originally meant to smash one place in a blitz and be done, but by luck he had learned of one more branch, and so the time had stretched a little.