It Was Yujun

It was Yujun.

He cut through the sky, repeating the same words dozens of times. He had poured so much mana into his voice that not a single player on the battlefield failed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to hear him.

"Shin Yujun? What's gotten into him all of a sudden?"

"Looks like he's about to cast something."

And indeed, a tremendous quantity of mana was churning in the air around him. The ominous pressure set the players stirring.

"Even so, you think it'll reach all the way out here?"

"Hard to say. I'm not taking the chance. I'm pulling out."

"Come on. You could dump dozens of Meteors and they still wouldn't make it this far."

"Then stand right there, if you want."

"......I'm coming with you."

A few players refused to listen to the very end.

Yujun gave his final warning and began preparing the spell he had only ever turned over in his mind. He had warned them as much as he meant to. Beyond this, he could shout until the sun came up and it still would not matter.

He intended to use mana of a quality and quantity on an entirely different order from anything before, and so the air itself shook with unusual violence. Tension was plain on his face. Even he had never cast magic on this scale. New-Generation Magic might have driven the theory to its absolute peak, but predicting a spell's true scale was another matter — the results had always outrun what he expected. That was how heavily item options weighed on his magic.

"Uh... that actually looks kind of dangerous?"

"......Maybe I shouldn't have acted tough. That confidence of his wasn't empty after all."

A handful of players who had not budged despite the warning finally felt the crisis, once the mana around Yujun only kept swelling as though it had no ceiling, and they fell back.

Then the spell was complete. The preparation had looked long, but he had merely been gathering mana to amplify its power. It was not a casting process. Yujun unleashed it at once toward the field where the undead were packed tight.

Blizzard Meteor differed from an ordinary Meteor in two respects: the falling stones were ice, not rock, and there were a great many of them. It was a spell unique to the new generation, one that did not exist even in Ancient Magic. On top of that, he had invested mana that vastly surpassed the usual requirement, so its power and scale would stand in another dimension from any ordinary Blizzard Meteor.

Ice meteors had another advantage. Unlike Meteor, the area of effect did not sprawl out at random. Not down to the finest detail, but the range could be shaped to a meaningful degree — if he wanted the spell to fall in a perfect square, it would do exactly as he willed. The form resembled Blizzard Storm, but the power was of a different order entirely. A flake of ice, and a meteor of ice. No one needed the difference explained.

The undead spotted the ice meteors and tried to flee. They seemed to possess at least that much intelligence. But this was not a spell one escaped simply by dodging. Unless they snapped off a spatial teleportation in the same breath, there was no getting clear, and no mere undead could wield magic of that order — not unless they had gained it as a skill, the way Paranet had. Yujun did not give them the time.

Crack. Craaack!

The ice meteors had only taken their place in the sky, and already the structures of the Holy Empire were freezing over. The players were no exception. Recoiling from the cold that seized their whole bodies, they ran. Yujun had not foreseen this either, and it unsettled him, but he could not cancel the spell after coming this far.

Less than ten seconds after they revealed themselves, the ice meteors struck the ground.

KRA-KOOM! KRA-KOOM!

The undead had already frozen solid before the meteors ever touched the earth. Reduced to little more than ice statues, they had no choice but to take the impact head-on. The power of an ice meteor was not decided by weight alone. The purity of the mana bound into the spell itself drastically magnified its force — which was precisely why the purity of one's mana mattered. And it was not purity alone. The effects of magic-related item options were enormous as well. Given all of that, it was in truth impossible for the undead to withstand the attack power carried in Yujun's magic with no defense at all.

System messages burst up before his eyes like an explosion.

Listed one by one, it looked like almost nothing. In truth, his Peace Contribution had risen by the hundreds of thousands. Of course it had. The largest undead legion on the Continent had been annihilated by a single spell. The unidentified barrier that had been shielding that legion was, in fact, Masare's power, so in a sense the outcome had been inevitable.

His level had climbed far beyond anything he had imagined as well. Seven levels, all at once. It felt like compensation for the experience he had been unable to claim because he had not killed Masare.

Save for a few dozen undead at the very edge of the spell's range, the field had been wiped clean. For a time, silence hung over the battlefield.

"That was way too close......"

"We almost ate that ourselves, didn't we? Our instincts saved us."

"Seriously."

The ice meteors had shattered a good number of buildings, but they had fallen so that they only clipped the outskirts, and the damage was not so great. The Pope and the Cardinal had not been all that far from where the aftermath reached.

"Your Holiness......"

The Cardinal did not need to finish. Pope Leje already knew what he meant to say.

"Is that truly the power a player possesses?"

Hollow with disbelief, the Pope laughed bitterly to himself, almost like a fool. It was common knowledge that humans ranked among the players with the highest potential, but this had left the bounds of common sense entirely. Even if a true dragon — the sort that lived only in myth and story — had come, it could not have produced a sight like this. He had never once seen magic of that kind. A single ice meteor, perhaps. But hundreds forming all at once?

This was not a matter one could wave away by saying he simply possessed a great deal of mana. The Pope himself had mastered Ancient Magic of A-rank, and even with that knowledge the spell stood at a height he could not approach.

Unless his mana is close to infinite, creating something like that by raw output alone is impossible. Which means......

Nor did it seem he had particularly relied on an item. The explanation with the most weight — the only one that held water — was that Shin Yujun's magic stood far above his own. That was far more plausible than the absurd assumption of infinite mana.

"The odds that he is in league with the Demon God Worshippers... there are none, I suppose."

The Pope let out a short breath of a laugh.

"Is there a player fighting the Demon God Worshippers more actively than Shin Yujun? He has likely killed more of them than our own Raidan."

"I am not saying I suspect him. I only spoke because if that were some elaborate performance, it would be too dreadful to contemplate."

"Well. Others may find it tiresome, but a habit of doubt is a sound way to think. They do say there is no harm in caution."

"Even so, I find myself thinking that to doubt him now would be rank ingratitude."

"You are not wrong."

Pope and Cardinal were sincerely grateful to the man named Shin Yujun. He had done alone what they could not have accomplished even if they had taken the field themselves, and because of it the Holy Empire's losses had been lessened. That alone made ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it something they could laugh off, even if he had monopolized the Peace Contribution.

The strong take all. In the Tower of Infinity, that was both a common saying and a plain truth — all the more so when one considered his exploits, the good he had done the Holy Empire, and the achievements he had left behind.

"Your Holiness... would it be all right if we did not go to him?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Why?"

"He has already left."

"......So he has. I don't see him. When did he go?"

"Just now."

"I didn't notice a thing. The rumors were true. He really does come and go like a ghost."

Having properly confirmed the spell's power, Yujun could not keep the smile from his face. The reason he had hurried out of the Holy Empire with Manuela and Yenil was simple. With the great undead host eliminated, there was no reason to remain.

Come to think of it, I think I picked up a title from that mass slaughter of undead.

He liked the effect. Using this spell had left his magic in an even better state than before.

If I'd used a sword, hunting those undead would have taken forever.

Even Weapon Earthquake only worked on so many undead monsters.

Blizzard Meteor isn't something I can use unless the battlefield is wide open.

Its scale dwarfed Meteor, and the damage it dealt the surroundings was enormous. A little less care, and he might have earned the disgraceful title of destroyer of the natural environment.

If I had more mana, I feel like I could make something even worse than that.

The scale had not stopped growing because his theory or his skill fell short. It was a problem of mana. His Magic stat was already absurdly high, but it would only climb higher still. The real question was how often he would have cause to cast a Blizzard Meteor like the one just now.

He had not yet settled on the next destination, but he might as well have. If someone asked what that meant, the answer was simple. He only had to go to a nation on the brink of ruin because of an undead legion. Places already holding their own did not need his help — they might even rage at him for stealing their Peace Contribution. So he meant to choose only the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠dangerous ones. Those would surely field large legions as well.

For that, information was everything. As it happened, he had an excellent source: Stelln, the dark elf elder he had met not long after being summoned to the Tower of Infinity. The man liked to talk more than Yujun had expected, and he had his hands on a great deal of recent news — by what means, Yujun could not say. Either way, ask him, and the matter would solve itself.

It had been a clear spring day, but as evening drew on and the first dusk began to settle, the light slowly thickened toward dark. There stood a temple whose architecture was at once elegant and sleek, steeped in an otherworldly beauty.

Ner — the operator who had created War of the Gods, a seventh-rank god — was bent at the waist with her neck craned all the way forward, peering into an enormous crystal orb to spy on Shin Yujun. She had become his true patron only recently, and so she gave her ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠champion even more attention than the other gods gave theirs.

This undead event was a serious matter for the gods as well. There was entertainment in watching events unfold across the Continent, certainly, but it was also a chance for players whose growth had stalled to surge back. Gods who sponsored several players were beside themselves, staring into their crystal orbs without so much as sleeping. Ner was not so different from them, save for one thing: she watched only a single player.

He's handling it just fine on his own.

Watching Shin Yujun dispose of the undead legion that had attacked a village with ease, Ner smiled, proud and satisfied. In truth, even she could not grasp the full extent of his power, but she knew it was enough to brush aside a legion of this scale.

Then she saw him make straight for the Holy Empire, and her eyes flew wide.

For the first time in a truly long while, she was thrown into a panic. The undead host soon to fall upon the Holy Empire had the Root of Darkness mixed into its ranks — the worst ever recorded in history.