The Continent's Air, After So Long
The air of the Continent, drawn in again after so long, could hardly be called refreshing. Heaven's had been better. What had changed, past any mistaking, was the level of the players around him — it had fallen. Nowhere matched Heaven in the overall caliber of its players. The Continent, least of all.
That did not make the Continent a place of no account. Now and then it produced talents startling enough to leave a mouth hanging open, and the reason was simple: humans. Humans, held to possess limitless potential. Koreans, in other words.
By Yujun's measure, the Continent's highest players could not yet be called strong. Even so, the members of Coordination, and his old companions from the game, already sat at levels that were quite high. Reaching that height in a bare five years was something the other races could not have dreamed of. Give humans another five years, and they might have seized not only the Continent, but hegemony over Heaven as well.
And if I had come not five years late, but ten — what then?
The inventory privilege was overbalanced enough that he would still have caught the top players. The danger of growing, though, would have been far greater than it was now. Human jealousy was a frightening thing. No one would have left a player rising at an absurd pace alone. Interference would have poured in from every side, and with a little bad luck, he would have died somewhere in the middle of it.
I wonder, though, just how the Great Cataclysm is supposed to come to the Continent.
Going to Asilien didn't seem likely to earn him a precise answer. Ju Donghyeon had been roundabout about it as well, which suggested he didn't know the particulars either.
Preparing for the Great Cataclysm is pointless. Mah first.
His destination was the Koruna Kingdom. He had set foot there exactly once, and it hadn't struck him as any especially unusual kingdom — yet according to the Storyteller, it had become a nest of Demon God Worshippers. In short, good hunting lay thick on the ground, so far as Yujun was concerned. Experience no longer mattered. Kill as many Demon God Worshippers as possible. That was the priority above everything else.
"Still, it's nice, seeing so many different races."
"It is. Heaven was almost entirely celestials. Maybe that's why the looks we got were never very kind."
"Less because there were so many celestials, and more because they carry that chosen-people certainty that their own race stands above the rest."
Maddening as it was, there was no denying the celestials were strong. Even if a race's expected value were a real thing, there were always the strong who refused to be bound by race. Nothing was more foolish than reading an opponent by race alone.
Seen from beyond the walls, the Koruna Kingdom felt more prosperous than when he had last come. Little time had passed, and yet someone had clearly spent a fortune — the walls were neatly repaired, the roads well kept. Other races and merchants moved in and out of the kingdom in no small number.
"For a place with so many Demon God Worshippers, it seems rather peaceful, doesn't it?" Yenil said.
Yujun shook his head.
"It only looks that way from the outside."
Even now, his senses caught the presence of Demon God Worshippers beyond counting. There hadn't been nearly so many the last time he came. His detection had sharpened several times over, yes — but the number of Worshippers had truly grown. The perfectly ordinary, decent-looking human passing right beside him gave off a Worshipper's aura, and not a faint one. It was thick. The sign showed most often in low-level players, who had little choice but to be vulnerable to that sort of thing.
Looking at this... they planted the aura while the players themselves never noticed.
Players who didn't even know they had become Demon God Worshippers. It wasn't merely plausible. Most of the players to be seen in the Koruna Kingdom were in exactly that state.
"The Continent really is enormous."
It was hard to believe one kingdom's capital could spread this wide, players scattered all through it. The provinces thinned out the farther one went, of course, and even so the scale of the Continent was impossible not to marvel at. Heaven was lined with the strong, but it had never felt simply vast the way this did. When he had driven his senses to their limit, Yujun had roughly taken the measure of Heaven's size, and so he could feel the difference between the two realms properly.
Watching the clamorous, peaceful streets, everything that had happened in Heaven felt like a dream. He could hardly say he had suffered nothing but hardship there, but the scale was another matter entirely. And yet the Koruna Kingdom — all but enemy ground, gathered thick with Demon God Worshippers — was in truth the most dangerous place of all. A low standard among the players was no excuse to grow careless.
They shouldn't know I'm coming.
Yujun and his companions had used every means they had to conceal who they were. They had changed their faces, as before, and gone so far as to alter the appearance of their equipment. He had laid illusion magic over the others to reshape them as well, and though it consumed a tremendous quantity of mana, the level of Yujun's mana well never shifted. What welled back up on its own outpaced whatever was spent.
I can't afford to decide anything for certain.
An enemy you couldn't predict was more frightening than a single powerful foe. And the scale of this enemy was greater than any faction in any dimension. Heaven, the Demon Realm, the Continent — there was nowhere their hands had failed to reach.
There was something worse than a branch right here, and I walked straight past it.
The enemy had been right in front of him. A hollow laugh escaped him. If he had clashed with the Demon God Worshippers in earnest back then, survival would not have come easily. He would have to count himself dead. He was grateful, now, that he had known nothing.
"You said we were looking for the branch head, right?" Manuela asked.
Yujun nodded.
"Do you know where he is?"
"Only that he's somewhere in this kingdom. We'll have to find him."
Vast as the Koruna Kingdom was, Yujun trusted his own ability to search. So did Manuela. She knew how exceptional his senses were, and that was enough to settle her.
"Then it won't take long."
"Master! Only call the coordinates! I shall bear you there in an instant with Space Movement!"
Paranet thumped his own chest as he said it. Whether from the sheer strength in him or not, the sound came out dull and heavy.
Yujun answered with a smile.
"They'll have prepared for Space Movement. I doubt they'll let themselves be taken that easily."
"Haa. Of late, there do seem to be a great many barriers raised to hinder Space Movement magic."
"Is that really so upsetting?"
"If so, does my worth not decline?"
"You're not some Space Movement shuttle. You're precious as you are. To me — and to yourself."
"T-truly?"
Paranet looked at him as if deeply moved. Yujun nodded without the slightest change of expression.
"Of course."
At the start, a shuttle for Space Movement magic was exactly what he had been. Yujun no longer thought of him that way. Paranet's power was far too good to spend on Space Movement alone. The fellow had already returned more than the fortune in items poured into him. There had been few chances so far for Paranet to show what he could do, but once the Demon God Worshippers began to move in earnest, he would come into his own.
At the city gate, Yujun had to endure the guards' airtight inspection — but there was nothing money could not do. He hadn't bribed them, of course. He presented a forged identification prepared ahead of time. This was the good of being a merchant, and one with connections besides.
So this is why they tell you to stay friendly with everyone.
He was no sociable sort, and yet, set against the time he had spent in the Tower of Infinity, he had quietly gathered a surprising number of players on friendly terms. He felt it whenever he opened his messenger. Rushing from place to place, he seemed to have given out a great deal of help without ever intending to.
"From here on, nothing that draws the eye. Understood, Manuela?"
"I don't go wild in the first place. I stay quiet."
"So you're saying I'm the one who goes wild?"
"......"
Manuela's face tightened with a guilty flinch, and she turned her head away.
"So that's what you've thought of me."
When Yujun murmured it, wearing a look of shock he had summoned with every fiber of his acting, Manuela panicked.
"N-no! Absolutely not! I mean it. Believe me."
"Denying it that desperately only makes it more suspicious."
"......No matter what I say, you aren't going to believe me, are you?"
"No. I believe you."
"H-huh......?"
"I was teasing."
Yujun said it smiling, and Manuela pouted.
"Teasing me again."
"That's your fault."
"What? How is getting teased my fault?"
"Your reactions are too good. I can't help it."
"......I think you might just be Satan, Yujun."
Satan, over a little teasing...
That was what crossed Yujun's mind, but Manuela, genuinely startled, had a hand pressed over her pounding heart.
"Let's go. This could be dangerous, so nobody gets comfortable."
Yenil, Manuela, and Paranet all held strength beyond most top-tier players, but there was no telling what outlandish thing the Demon God Worshippers might try. Yujun meant to settle everything without losing a single companion. He had no intention of forcing matters just to take one more of them down.
"If it comes to it, we withdraw to the Golden Temple. For now, surviving is enough."
"Is it that dangerous?"
"No. Honestly, it doesn't feel dangerous yet. The problem is that I don't know anything. I tried to gather information on the Koruna Kingdom, and there was nothing to be had about the cult."
The kingdom's true strength, how many branch heads there were, what traps they had laid — he knew none of it. He would have to learn by walking into it.
The moment he entered the capital of the Koruna Kingdom, Yujun drove his senses to their maximum. He found nothing particularly suspicious — so little that all this hypersensitivity nearly looked like making a fuss. People seeded with a Worshipper's aura were thick enough underfoot to trip over, but that was all.
Did I wind myself too tight just because this is enemy ground?
He decided to ease off. He hadn't expected the search for Mah to end quickly in any case.
"I'm taking rooms at an inn. Two should do, right?"
"Huh? Yeah."
"Master. And what of me?"
"You can just go back in, can't you?"
"Surely you do not mean I am to be unsummoned?"
"Of course I do."
"......That is rather..."
"You've been out the whole time lately, so now you don't want to go back in? Let a kindness run on long enough..."
"Yes. Dooly, as you said the other day, is it not? I still do not understand the meaning... I only wish to remain a while longer at Master's side."
"Even if I unsummon you, you can feel that we're still linked."
"Come now. Seeing with one's own eyes and merely sensing a presence from afar are not the same, are they?"
"Well... I suppose it doesn't matter. I'll get a large room."
"My thanks, Master! I shall serve and revere you all my life!"
Paranet said it, breaking into a beaming grin.
That was your duty to begin with. You're a summon.
Yujun's party took the two largest rooms at a respectable inn. The four of them, though, had not yet divided the rooms, and so they were gathered in one.
"Now that I think about it, we'd be better off staying in the same room."
"S-suddenly? Isn't that much too soon?"
Manuela startled.
Yujun looked at her, puzzled.
"Hm? Too soon?"
"Huh?"
"I meant that splitting into two rooms seemed dangerous."
"Ah... so that's what you meant."
"The room's bigger than I expected, anyway. Plenty of beds."
"True! I like it. I vote yes!"
Manuela said it with her hand raised.