The Gains Were Great
The gains were great.
He had come away with far more than information on the barrier. Knowledge of magic had settled into him, and beyond that, endless ways to put a barrier to use kept rising in his mind.
But even if I actually use one... there's no stopping it from breaking after three stabs.
Failing that, the only choice was to cut the barrier's power drastically, and if he was going to do that, he might as well use a shield. The mana a barrier drank was no joke either. Set beside a shield, it could hardly be called efficient.
Keep the simple condition, though—shatter it with three light stabs—and he could lay hands on an extraordinarily powerful barrier. One he could raise anytime, anywhere.
The Demon God Worshippers might not know this method.
They might not, so he had no business assuming they did. Nothing guaranteed that every one of them knew it and used it, and if the thing was triggered by an item, that was truer still.
Should I try it myself, then?
Yujun raised a barrier around himself, a little larger than Sultan and Armene's and perfectly round. The difference was nothing grand. He had simply found the structural shortcomings in theirs and upgraded them a touch, and perhaps because the barrier carried the color of his own mana, it came out clearer, shot through with blue light. Tastes differed, of course, but most people would have called Yujun's the more beautiful of the two. The gap was that plain.
Armene and Sultan stared at what he had made, eyes wide.
"What...?"
"I'm not seeing things, am I? That's not a shield, right?"
"Right."
"No, no. What is even happening here? Don't tell me he copied the barrier and made the same thing?"
"No way...?"
Shin Yujun, who did not even know how to break a barrier, had produced an identical one? Worse, that barrier looked more complete than theirs, and the power rolling off it said the impression was no illusion.
The two Demon God Worshippers, whose whole plan had been to buy time with that formidable weapon of a barrier, could not get a word out.
In the silence, Yujun set about dismantling the barrier that still protected Armene and Sultan. He did not mean three thrusts of a sword. From a fair distance, he meant to interfere with it by mana alone. Neither of them noticed the trick. They simply stood there in a daze, waiting for reinforcements, and that became their great mistake.
The barrier around them vanished without a trace. No warning at all.
The moment Sultan realized it was gone, the color drained from his face.
"...There should have been plenty of duration left."
"W-we should just retreat, shouldn't we?"
A barrier was raised with a consumable, and they had no spares on hand. Stay where they were, and they would be naked to Yujun's attacks. Armene had no confidence she could weather his strength. Even if the barrier had kept the force from landing, word was that merely meeting his weapon was enough to shatter you to pieces, and she did not even fight with a weapon. Hers was a hand-to-hand style, so the risk ran deeper still. Set her claws to that dreadful sword, and it would be no surprise if she were simply split in half.
Fleeing the mansion's great hall was impossible all the same. If the Cardinal arrived with support and caught them turning tail, they would lose face, and a heavy punishment could easily follow. Even if it meant dying in the fight, flight was not a choice they could take.
"Let's hold a little longer. He'll be here soon."
"...All right."
Yujun did not rush. Stripped of the barrier that had thrown him for a moment, the Demon God Worshippers were already as good as sitting in the palm of his hand.
Looks like they called for backup.
He had not ignored the talk around him while he studied the barrier.
A Cardinal... how high does that sit? By what I know, that's the seat right under the Pope.
And a figure of that weight was coming in person. An opening like this would not come twice.
"Master."
"What."
"How did you do it?"
"The barrier?"
"Yes. All of a sudden it looked as if the duration had simply run out, and the barrier vanished."
"That's exactly it."
"It is? Truly? Then it was not your doing, Master?"
"Kidding. I did it. There's nothing magic can't do, is there? Wasn't an easy piece of work, I'll give you that, but it was more manageable than I expected."
"My word... You used to give every impression of a man who lived by the sword alone, and now you have become a great archmage outright. Of late, in truth, your dignity as a mage seems to have climbed higher still."
"Dignity? Don't make me laugh."
Yujun smiled thinly at Paranet's choice of words.
"Even to the eye there is a brightness about you—a keenness, shall I say. I do not offer it as flattery. It is simply so."
"You can say that all you like. I don't see it."
"It is not the sort of thing a mirror will show you. Even so, I am certain that anyone who has stood at your side for even a little while would mark the change."
"...Thanks for the compliment, then."
Well. It meant he looked good, didn't it? Coming from a summon who trusted him, the words sat pleasantly enough.
I'm getting high on magic.
This chance felt as if it had pushed him a step further, and he wanted to use New-Generation Magic again. Conveniently, two Demon God Worshippers were standing right there to serve as test subjects.
He released mana of high purity into the air around him. He had already reached the stage where magic answered the bare manifestation of will, but to amplify its power he assimilated the ambient mana into his own. That, too, was possible only because New-Generation Magic had surpassed GX Tier.
The advantages of assimilating the mana around him were more than one or two. First, a spell's power rose. Second, he could seize the upper hand in a fight between mages. Third, he could head off sudden calamities before they struck—the sort of thing that had warped him away the night he arrived late to the banquet hall.
The third was the real reason. If the cult had the power to fling a player off the planet and out into space, Yujun would have no choice but to take it. He could not even be sure a player's body would hold up out there. Sent far enough, he might drift through the void with no promise of return. If such a thing had been possible they would have done it long ago, of course, but you never knew. He still could not grasp the nature of the ability that had thrown him into a virtual space, so the only sensible course was caution, and more caution.
His mana swept over Sultan and Armene.
"Hey. You two. Come here."
At his words they stayed planted where they were and did not so much as twitch.
"I said come."
He dumped mana into the cast and brought an overwhelmingly powerful Space Domination down on them.
"Kh—"
"Oh, we are so fucked."
Against a force that allowed no resistance, Armene and Sultan were hauled in like puppets. Spells such as Blink were impossible as well. Yujun was suppressing them so no mana could leave their bodies, and Space Domination carried that effect to begin with. The pair ranked among the considerably strong even within the cult, yet a single spell from Yujun left them helpless. A barrier might have changed things. Then again, even if they raised another, he would simply tear it down himself, so it hardly mattered.
"What do you mean to do with us?"
Sultan asked it with an anxious face, and the way he kept glancing aside said he was waiting on nothing except when the Cardinal would arrive. So Yujun named it.
"Cardinal almost here?"
"...How do you know that?"
"You two were yapping loud enough. Why ask me?"
"Fine. You'd do well to clear out of here before His Eminence arrives."
"Oh? Worried about me?"
"Hardly. You can't get away from him anyway."
Sultan said it like a glare, and the corner of Yujun's mouth curved.
"A Cardinal, huh. I am curious how strong he'll be."
Not a post you landed by favor alone. Martial power had to be backing the title, or he would not be a Cardinal at all, and the odds were high that this one outstripped everyone Yujun had met so far. That left him faintly tense, and eager at the same time. The reward for cutting down a high-level enemy was sweet.
That was also why he had only subdued Armene and Sultan instead of killing them. Kill the pair, and the Cardinal might not bother coming. Whether a Cardinal fretted over every last believer was anyone's guess, but support had been requested and answered, so he judged the two of them an important piece in drawing the man here.
"Nothing to do until the Cardinal shows. Feel like talking?"
Sultan and Armene kept their mouths clamped shut.
"No? Then I'll talk. That barrier of yours was genuinely nice once I tried it. Who made it? Doesn't seem like either of you. You used an item, right?"
"...We did. Why do you ask?"
Sultan made no effort to hide how the question sat wrong with him.
"Told you. I asked because I wanted to know who made it. Looking at that barrier, it felt like the work of somebody who actually knows magic."
"We only used an item we were given. We don't know who made it. Don't care, either."
He answered readily enough. So long as he was not dead, dragging the time out was the whole point.
"You on a mission? What did the cult tell you to do with the castle lord?"
"...Who can say."
"Was the goal to turn the castle lord into a puppet? Use the sky castle to recruit the high ranks of Heaven—no. To control them?"
"I don't believe I'm obliged to tell you."
"Shouldn't you come up with at least enough of a reason for me to let you live?"
"As a believer of the cult, carrying out a great cause, I do not fear death."
"And the one beside you feels the same?"
Yujun tipped his chin toward Armene.
"She does. She, too, is prepared to accept death."
"Why are you deciding that for—"
Armene nearly snapped it out before she caught herself, and her mouth shut hard.
"Why are you hostile to us?"
Sultan turned the subject at once.
There was not a soul in the cult who did not know the name Shin Yujun. Those in the lower and middle ranks had been fed information on their chief enemy until it bordered on brainwashing, and those in the high seats had been forced to look into him of their own accord—he was the single greatest obstacle to everything that came next. It was fair to say every Demon God Worshipper in the cult knew who he was. What had never been made clear was why he bared this much hostility toward the cult, or why he kept interfering so stubbornly.
"Ah, that. Pretty sure I said it before."
"Say it."
"Secret."
Sultan had nothing to offer that.
"You didn't talk either. And I don't exactly need to hand information to the DG-Wors."
"DG-Wors? What's that?"
"That's a secret too. Anyway, when did they say he'd get here? I don't have all day."
"Somewhere you need to be, I take it."
Yujun let out a short laugh.
"Why? Tell you, and you'll run straight to the cult with it?"
"That's right."
"Honest to a fault."
He was in the middle of that idle chat with the DG-Wors—no, the Demon God Worshippers—when a vast presence, the kind that raised gooseflesh over his whole body, made itself felt from far off.
"He's here."
Yujun smiled and got to his feet.