Hong Yeji: The Great Cataclysm?
Partway through, he realized that answering every last one of them was an incredibly tedious chore.
Some never replied at all. Two of the names in his messenger belonged to the dead, and he sent nothing their way. The rest, he figured, had simply been too busy to see it.
Anyway, what is this thing Jo Su-a says she's giving me?
Someone was offering him something for free. There was no reason to refuse. Whatever it turned out to be, he meant to take it with thanks.
Yujun set out for the meeting place: a village in Baron Stefan's domain, in the Kingdom of Recuri.
His reason for summoning his messenger contacts here was simple. Recuri was a minor kingdom, hardly a place that caught the eye, and above all he had heard it was somewhere the Demon God Worshippers' hands reached less readily. Ordinarily one would expect them to swallow the small kingdoms first and work their way upward, but when had the cult's appetite ever been modest? They paid no mind to frontier states like this. These were the same people who had tried to seize the whole of Heaven. Yujun had slowed them for the moment, yet Heaven's fall remained only a matter of time.
All the same, the place suited a gathering. That did not make it certain, so he meant to confirm first whether any Demon God Worshippers were already there. If the area had been taken, he might have to change the meeting place.
He warped his surroundings and altered his appearance along with them. The more he used illusion magic, the more keenly he felt his skill improving, until even by his own eye every trace of clumsiness had vanished. Few had been able to recognize him to begin with, but the steady climb of his illusion magic was welcome all the same.
Since I don't even know what the Great Cataclysm is...
He had no idea what he ought to prepare. All he could do was clear the Demon God Worshippers out of the barony and receive the friends who would soon arrive.
This time, too, he had taken an elven form, though it differed from before in one respect: for an elf, the face was rather ambiguous. Judging looks was a subjective business, but set against the elven average, one could fairly call it a step below. Not striking enough to draw the eye, and — he being an elf — not ugly, either. An appearance of this degree, he was certain, would raise no suspicion among the Demon God Worshippers.
Paranet, beside him, had been made an elf as well. Kin traveling together was never anything strange, and the same went for Tapagol. He arranged the picture of a perfectly ordinary Elf One, Elf Two, and Elf Three setting out on a journey as a group.
"Kyah! A life lived as an elf, of all things... heheh."
Paranet, thoroughly worked up, said it through a sly grin. Yujun had made him the handsomest of the three, which only thrilled him further.
"You like it that much?"
"Yes! In all honesty, had this been my face, every woman in the world would have been mine."
"Don't make me laugh. The whole world already knows you're a devoted romantic with eyes for no one but Asilien."
"......"
"I'm wrong?"
"A d-devoted romantic, me? I am an elf far removed from anything so pure."
"You've turned into an elf already?"
"It is the mission you bestowed upon me, Master. I intend to deliver a method performance as the perfect elf."
"......You're more serious about this than I thought."
"But of course."
It wasn't that he failed to understand the fellow. After living as an undead of nothing but bone, he had become an elf whose looks outshone those of other races. To Yujun's eyes, though, the elf and the undead overlapped, and every time Paranet swelled with self-regard, the sight turned his stomach.
"Heh heh. Amusing."
Even now the urge to crack the back of that muttering skull was fierce, but he barely held it in.
When else is he ever going to get to be like this?
Yujun could not begin to imagine the hardship of living as an undead. Then again, Paranet seemed to have chosen undeath of his own will, so there was hardly any call to pity him.
"The village is incredibly peaceful."
"And quiet. Just the place for a discreet gathering."
The grounds were on the wide side, yet the houses did not stand packed together. Here and there, building work went on in earth and timber, and quite a few of the dwellings were shabby things no player looked likely to live in. There were almost no people about. It was broad daylight, so most had likely gone off in search of food. However old one grew, a player could hunt easily enough — though the beasts here were far stronger than the animals of Earth, so it was not wholly safe. He had heard that players were sometimes mauled to death by the predators living in the mountains. Not monsters. Merely beasts.
Either way, good that there aren't many players.
Yujun erased not only his own presence, but his summons' as well. He had taken elven form, yet there was no need to catch the eyes of other players. He stepped into an abandoned house that retained almost no trace of anyone having lived there.
"Khup! Kek!"
Paranet, having breathed in the dust, knit his brow. He was already immersed in being an elf. An ordinary undead did not hack and cough over a little dust.
"......"
Tapagol looked at him as though he were pathetic. Wearing an elf's face, it was not his usual rigid expression, but a look of genuine displeasure. Meeting that gaze, Paranet turned sheepish and looked away — and turned the subject with him.
"Master. How many will come?"
"As many as I called, I'd imagine."
"Krh... As expected of you, Master. Wisdom, in answer to a fool's question."
Yujun sat down on a pile of straw that looked long abandoned. It was quite soft.
"You two, rest."
"Yes! I have nothing in particular to do, so I shall keep watch!"
"That works."
Paranet opened the window, veiled in thick cloth, and eased only his face outside. Yujun doubted it served any purpose, but the man was pleased with himself, and telling him to stop felt wrong.
Yujun turned his thoughts to magic — not quite a deep contemplation so much as a sorting-out in his head. Casting any single spell on its own posed no great problem for him. What occupied him was how to arrive at the optimal combination.
There was no longer a way to raise the power inherent in the magic itself. With his mana, and the countless effects already laid upon him, doing anything further was impossible. Raising that power sharply by layering several spells with strong synergy, however — that was possible. The trouble was that a good combination was not easy to find. He possessed magical knowledge and theory, yet where combinations were concerned he was not so different from other mages.
Gaining New-Generation Magic had unquestionably let him wield magic beyond any comparison with others, and for that very reason he needed to know the truly broken combinations all the more. He understood the synergies among basic spells, but not the pairings of high magic that not even Ancient Magic could cast. And putting something thick with uncertainty straight into live combat was more than he could justify.
For now I'll just sketch the combinations. Actually trying them can wait until I have the time.
Working up the estimates took longer than checking a combination in practice.
Fire attribute first...
Time passed quickly. An ominous feeling stole over him, as though little remained before the Great Cataclysm Ju Donghyeon had foreseen.
Yujun had brought Manuela and Yenil from the Golden Temple as well, on the chance that players might be granted some benefit when the Cataclysm came. It was not entirely without grounds. Was this not a world built upon the game War of the Gods? He could not say whether Ner would involve herself in the Great Cataclysm directly, but if she did, there was a chance it would unfold much as it had then. And if so, might they not gain something — as in the major update that had bestowed gifts upon the players who happened to be logged in?
It had been stated plainly that the Great Cataclysm would strike the Continent, so simply being on the Continent ought to suffice. If not, it hardly mattered. A cataclysm would not turn the Continent into hell overnight. Manuela and Yenil were not going to drop dead merely because they stood on the Continent rather than in the Golden Temple, and if it came to that, they could always flee back.
"Master. The color of the sky is strange."
It was Paranet, who had been watching the outside through the window.
"How so?"
"I believe you ought to see it for yourself."
"It's gone red?"
"Yes. The sky looks as though it has been soaked in blood."
"Even so, it seems to be warning everyone that something's about to happen. At least they won't be caught completely blind."
"Are we to call that fortunate?"
"Manuela. Nothing like this ever happened before, right?"
"Mm. It looked a little like this sometimes, when you cast Meteor, but the whole Continent has never been dyed red."
"Only the Demon Realm?"
"The Continent, too. If something like this had happened, there's no way it wouldn't have reached my ears."
"True."
Ju Donghyeon would not have called it a Great Cataclysm for nothing. Had it been no more than a surprise event, he would never have used those words.
Before the Cataclysm began, most of those Yujun had summoned through the messenger gathered in the village. A few hours earlier, he had killed the Demon God Worshippers in the barony — all five of them. It hardly mattered if the villagers' eyes were drawn by players with unfamiliar faces.
Reunited with welcome faces, Yujun felt his chest swell. In truth, not so very much time had passed. But a great deal had happened in the meantime, so there it was.
Yujun looked upon the face of the one who spoke to him first.