Chapter 333: As for the Ice Ring Magic...
The Cardinal knew the Ice Ring spell well enough to try smashing his way out in a single blow, but the situation refused to unfold the way he had imagined.
"......"
No matter how much strength he poured into it, the Ice Ring held firm. If anything, the harder he strained, the tighter it cinched around his body.
Yujun took up the Sealing Orb and approached at an unhurried pace.
Who was in the Sealing Orb again? I remember the Blood Lord.
He had brought the Blood Lord out to deal with the Lord of the Forest, and in the end he had succeeded in turning the Lord of the Forest into one of Marcus's kin.
Right. Balrog.
The creature's presence was so faint that Yujun had simply forgotten him. His memory seemed to have improved, and yet things still refused to surface when he actually wanted them.
Is Balrog even useful anymore?
He had only two Absolute Sealing Orbs. If he could manage it, he wanted to swap the occupant for the Cardinal.
The Blood Lord Marcus had a great many kin and could be put to all sorts of uses, so he was out of the question. Balrog, on the other hand, definitely needed replacing. Against someone like the Cardinal, the moment the seal came off he would be slaughtered on the spot, and Yujun had no use whatsoever for a subordinate like that. Balrog, of all things, was a being the Demon God Worshippers had summoned in the first place, and his rebellious streak ran deep.
Yujun summoned Balrog and moved to put the Cardinal into the Sealing Orb.
He tried. The Cardinal had been reduced to the brink of death, and yet for some reason the orb would not take him.
"You... got a real body stashed somewhere else?"
"You already knew, didn't you."
Yujun nodded. He had more or less guessed as much.
"Why'd you leave the real one behind? Scared?"
"Don't get cocky. You could never handle my true body."
"If you're going to talk like that, shouldn't you at least put up a decent fight first? Your real body's twice as strong as this, at best."
"......"
When Yujun pinned it down that precisely, the Cardinal looked faintly startled.
"Amusing. You're right. But understand this—what I possess is not merely level and stats."
"Where'd your staff go? Looked nice. I was going to take it."
"Coveting something with no substance. That was nothing more than a mana replica of my weapon."
"So the real weapon's even better?"
"It is."
Yujun's eyes flashed.
Meeting that gaze, the Cardinal felt an inexplicable chill crawl up his spine. If he kept boasting about himself here, he had the absurd feeling he would be stripped of everything.
"Thought you were a nice cut of meat. Turns out you're just a picked-clean bone. So long."
Yujun's sword split the Cardinal's clone in half, Ice Ring and all.
His level, of course, did not rise.
"Damn it..."
So he had gained nothing at all. Merely surviving a fight with the Cardinal was nowhere near enough to satisfy the greed packed into Yujun's chest.
No point sulking. Find the Sky Castle Lord first.
If the Demon God Worshippers' priority target were taken, things would turn ugly. The one with a hold on him had to be Yujun himself.
And it was not over. He had only dealt with the Cardinal's clone, not the Cardinal, and the two Demon God Worshippers he had already subdued had vanished to who knew where.
He widened the range of his senses.
"Hm?"
The Sky Castle Lord was hiding in a nearby pile of building rubble.
"Why are you in there...?"
When Yujun spotted him and called out, the Sky Castle Lord rose with a sheepish look, dusting off his hands.
"I wished to watch the fight, yet no properly safe place presented itself. So I remained here."
"And if the Cardinal had come after you?"
"If the outcome is favorable, is that not enough? I lived, and you dispatched the enemy unscathed. All has turned out well."
The Sky Castle Lord was genuinely relieved. They had barely crossed paths a handful of times, and yet he found himself trusting the young man in a way he could not quite explain. Stay with him, and no matter what happened, he felt he would come through intact. The boy was far younger than he was, and had been a player for less than a year, which only made it harder to believe—and, for that very reason, all the more extraordinary.
"Know a safe place? Somewhere the Demon God Worshippers aren't likely to come after you."
At Yujun's question, the Sky Castle Lord swallowed a low sound of hesitation. Nothing suitable came to mind.
"Then follow me."
"Where do you intend to go? As Lord, I cannot leave Sky Castle empty..."
"I've got somewhere I need to step out to for a bit. I'm just dropping you off to sit there for ten minutes."
"A moment. Is it nearby? Or do you mean to travel far by spatial movement? Could you not at least tell me where?"
"The Golden Temple."
"What?"
"See? Hearing the name doesn't help you."
"It isn't a dangerous place, is it?"
"Why would I send you somewhere like that? I'm an ally. Ever heard that the enemy of your enemy is your friend? You know perfectly well how much I hate the Demon God Worshippers."
"......Very well. I shall do as you say."
Yujun moved to the Golden Temple with the Sky Castle Lord.
Manuela was off somewhere, and only Yenil was sitting there. She greeted him as he arrived.
"Wh... who?"
"The Sky Castle Lord. Safety problem, so I want to leave him here a little while. That all right?"
"I do not mind. I am hardly the master of this place."
"Okay."
Having secured Yenil's permission—such as it was—Yujun left the Golden Temple at once and returned to the vicinity of the Sky Castle Lord's collapsed manor.
He extended his senses and tracked the presences of Armene and Sultan. They had vanished all at once at the Cardinal's doing, but traces of mana remained. Follow those, and he would learn where the two Demon God Worshippers had gone.
Ordinarily—no, even for a player with exceptionally keen detection—those traces would not have been easy to find. To Yujun, though, they stood out as clearly as if someone had laid a trail of potent perfume, and the work was almost effortless.
Around the ruined manor, players were in an uproar. Some, pinned beneath the debris, were forcing their way out with shouts of effort. The manor had come down in a single instant, so few of them had managed to react in time. There were even dead among them, which said everything about how tremendous the Cardinal's destructive power had been.
And that wasn't even the real body. Just a clone.
Yujun had wanted to handle that clone technique himself, but it turned out to be a domain magic could not reach. If New-Generation Magic could not do it, then it simply could not be done. He would have to obtain it as a skill.
And it isn't as if having a clone is purely a good thing.
A clone was useful, but the backlash when one died was enormous. The Cardinal had put on a fine face, yet for the time being he would not even dream of wandering about. Which made Yujun suspect that even if he possessed a clone ability, he might not end up using it all that often.
If I'm ever truly short on hands, I'll need it. Not yet.
In any case, skills and traits were not things one could obtain simply by wanting them. Martial arts like swordsmanship or spearmanship might be reachable through truly grueling effort, but an ability like a clone could not be earned by effort at all. Whether it was a fortuitous encounter, an item box, or a skill archive, luck played the greater part. Yujun believed he yielded to no one when it came to luck, and his Luck stat was in fact absurdly high—but even he could not hope to pick up exactly the skills he wanted, right on cue.
Still, the way I unexpectedly gained the use of that peculiar barrier this time, I might stumble into rare abilities without meaning to.
New-Generation Magic was nothing more than a name Yujun had stuck on it himself, but there was no denying it was the most advanced magic in existence. He did not know precisely what the magic of the dragons—called the progenitors of magic—was like, yet he was certain his New-Generation Magic would not fall short of it.
Copying another person's original magic was possible as well. Stealing the barrier and learning it had been part of that.
Among mages, copying someone else's magic was treated as taboo. But that unspoken rule was, in truth, meaningless, because seeing another's magic a few times and reproducing it was no easy feat. For most people. Nearly every mage, one could say, was incapable of it. Even Yenil, outstanding among the ancient mages, had been left dumbfounded—which said it all.
From here on, whenever Yujun came across magic that struck him as unusual, he intended to dive into research without a second thought. He called it research. In practice, it meant replicating the spell, modifying it, and ending up with something better.
It's not like my creativity is all that outstanding.
Even with the Genius trait, astonishing ideas did not keep welling up in him. Nothing of the sort. With the barrier, too, he had only decided he could learn it after seeing it. He had never thought, from the start, that he ought to create a barrier of that kind.
Making one tracking spell wouldn't be a bad idea either.
He was always the pursuer, never the one being chased. Having a spell or two suited to that role seemed worthwhile.
Yujun set off at a run, following the traces of the two beastkin who had been rather unusual for Demon God Worshippers. A fair amount of time had passed and the traces had grown fainter, but once he brought Super Concentration to bear as well, finding the path was no trouble.
What followed came after the Sky Castle Lord had been abruptly invited to the Golden Temple.
Manuela had finished gathering her materials and was walking along with a bright grin, already thinking of how she would decorate the temple, when she spotted the Sky Castle Lord, flinched, and stopped short.
"......Who are you?"
She wrinkled her nose, sniffed, and tilted her head.
"Doesn't smell like Yujun."
"You mean Shin Yujun? He brought me to this place."
"Why? You close with Yujun?"
"Not precisely. He said he had somewhere he must go and return from. He told me to remain here, as it was dangerous."
"Aha. But I've seen that face in the banquet hall."
"......I am the Lord of Sky Castle. Scarcely anyone fails to know my face. How regrettable."
"Huh. Okay."
Manuela nodded as if it meant nothing to her and walked toward the stele that controlled the Golden Temple.
"Is that the whole of your curiosity?"
The Sky Castle Lord was reduced to asking as much.
"Yeah."
"I... I see."
Manuela had never been interested in other people to begin with. When she had something important to do, she slipped into a state of complete indifference—and the only thing that still held her attention then was anything to do with Yujun.
"Oh, then I'll ask just one thing."
At her words, the Sky Castle Lord nodded vigorously.
"I was on the verge of dying of boredom, so speak of whatever you wish."
"Where did Yujun go? He didn't go somewhere really far, did he?"
"Might you, by any chance, be Shin Yujun's lover?"
"......"
At the Sky Castle Lord's words, Manuela's mouth opened and closed.
What was she supposed to say? What was she to Shin Yujun?
Vaguely, just a companion? That felt far too cold.
Then a close friend they could entrust their lives to? She herself believed she could entrust her life to Shin Yujun. Whether he felt the same, she could not say.
A friend they spent every day with, sharing each other's feelings. And if they could entrust even their lives to one another...
There's no harm in calling us lovers.
Having reached that conclusion on her own, Manuela nodded with a satisfied smile. But she could hardly tell a third party the plain truth about the two of them. She was not entirely sure, either.
"I'm not his lover. Not right now."
"Not at present, you say. I understand perfectly."
Well seasoned in matters of this sort, the Sky Castle Lord grasped the situation at a glance.
"I thought he might be a rather oblivious fellow. Turns out he isn't much of a man."
"Huh?"
"Pay it no mind. Something amusing occurred to me, and I muttered it without thinking."
"Weird old man..."
It was not a remark one ought to make to a witch older than oneself, but the Sky Castle Lord did not know her age, and so he laughed it off.