How Many Demon God Worshippers

Yujun knew how thick the Demon God Worshippers lay upon the Continent, and their reach did not stop there. The Demon Realm held so many that it seemed as if nearly everyone in it served the Demon God, and even Heaven—spoken of as a pristine realm—quietly harbored its share. They could not mix openly among the angelic race, yet they turned up often enough even among the high-ranking.

Leave them be, and they would multiply past all hope of containment. That was why he killed every one he found. For Yujun, the fact that the Peace Contribution Shop stood inside one of their branches was a piece of genuine good fortune.

Steel sheared through flesh with a wet, biting whisper, and still the Demon God Worshippers came without end. A single spell could have erased the branch and finished the matter cleanly, but he held back. Buried under the wreckage, the shop might be lost where he could never find it. However long it took, he would have to kill the Worshippers and nothing else.

"Dad, shall I help?"

"Hold back. You step in, and this gets bigger than it needs to be."

He had seen Harp's breath tear through the undead legion not long before, and the words left him no choice. Harp grew in exact measure with him, and the force behind that breath was no longer anything that could be compared with what had come before.

"That's a shame. I wanted those bad guys to taste my breath."

The words were vicious, but Harp did not speak that way to just anyone. A quietly righteous streak ran through him, and he reserved a particular hatred for the Demon God Worshippers and the inhuman things they did. The more he grew, the closer his temperament came to Yujun's—not entirely the same, for he was still a great deal more innocent, but the play of his emotions had grown richer than before.

While they spoke, the Worshippers truly joined their strength and hurled a great spell. Not great in breadth so much as in focus: mana gathered and driven out in a single straight line, a devastating elemental strike. They, it seemed, had no wish to see the tower fall either.

Yujun raised his sword and waited. The instant the magic met the blade, he set his strength against it and drove the spell back. It played out much as it had in the event dungeon, when he countered a barbarian mid-sling and dropped the brute where he stood. Only the stone had become a spell of terrible force, and the scale had changed with it.

KRA-KOOM.

The mages readying the next spell were wiped out in the same instant. They had never prepared a defense against the very magic they themselves had cast.

"B-block it!"

"He's a monster!"

"Look who's calling who a monster."

He had thrown the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠words out in sheer disbelief, but the Worshipper who spoke them paid him no heed at all and fled.

Not a bad performance.

A ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠trap of staggering scale lay in wait just ahead. The camouflage had been thorough, but it could not deceive his eyes. He stood well back, loosed his mana into the air, and set it moving. Projecting mana a great distance and steering it at the same time was difficult, but at this range it would reach well enough. No one stood in his way, and the ground was ideal for brushing the trigger.

Even so, caution. Rewriting a trap's conditions of activation devoured mental strength at a brutal rate—as precarious as crossing a thread-thin rope on a single foot. Yujun, if one were to stretch the metaphor, was a master of that rope.

The trigger seated with a crisp click.

"Done."

He had retargeted the trap, just as before, so that it would spring upon the Demon God Worshippers. The moment reinforcements arrived from another branch, they would walk into a trap they had never once considered. Satisfied, he smiled and strode the trapped path in plain sight.

The Worshippers watching from a distance must have been thrown into confusion; their ranks grew restless. He crossed the gap in a flash and cut them down together. Whenever a single line scored the empty air, two or three Demon God Worshippers died without fail.

Faces thick with resentment, they muttered.

"Shin Yujun had to show up now."

"Our luck is complete garbage."

"Right when we need the shop's key, of all times..."

"You're dying because of that shop. You didn't know?"

"How..."

"How did I know? The Cardinal told me. Begged me to spare him—said he knew where the Peace Shop was, and tried to buy his life with the location."

"Th-the Cardinal would never do that."

"You expect me to fall for a lie like that?"

"Then how else would I have known to come here?"

"..."

Faces caught halfway between belief and doubt. That alone made the lie worth telling. It did not last. The sword came around, and every one of them was already dead.

Yujun pushed swiftly into the depths. The Demon God Worshippers threw themselves into his path with desperate resolve, but not one of them held him longer than five seconds. Granted the Demon God's Grace or not, they were only half a champion each, and no match for a Yujun who had achieved inner growth in the event dungeon.

I ought to bring Manuela and Yenil next time.

He was taking their heads at his leisure for now, but a cult branch was the sort of place where anything might happen without warning. If they chose to die with him and blow the entire branch apart... The cult's Demon God Worshippers, as he knew them, were more than capable of it. He quickened his pace.

Cutting them down as they appeared without end, he was reminded of the game—of the long stretches when he had hammered Forward Slash from morning until night. That particular feeling of clearing a dungeon that did the mob-pulling for you. There was an unpleasantness to it, of course. However vicious they were, the Demon God Worshippers could think. They were alive. He did not hesitate even so.

"Tapagol. Where's the shop?"

"The upper floors. Around the twentieth."

"We haven't gone up even once, have we?"

No stairs had appeared yet, and he could not begin to measure how vast the tower was. It was nothing like the view from outside. He had taken it for something merely tall. Step inside, and where was the end of it?

"This is a branch, isn't it...?"

"I do not believe so."

"Right? It's nothing like the branches I've seen."

None of them, at least, had been raised in the shape of a tower. Even setting the Peace Contribution Shop aside, he felt he would have to search the place from corner to corner.

"Correct. The cult will surely regard this place as important."

As Tapagol offered that, Yujun's brow furrowed. Unsummoned, Paranet had been sending signals without pause. He did not ignore them. He called Paranet forth.

"Master! Why have you only now deigned to summon me?"

Because there had been no need to call him. Said aloud, it would have wounded Paranet deeply, so he swallowed the words.

"Sorry. Tapagol's gotten so strong I forgot."

"Is that so... I understand."

If anything, Paranet looked more hurt.

"I summoned you now. That's enough, isn't it?"

"Yes..."

There was no time to tend to the creature's wounded pride. They were still on the first floor, and the climb to the twentieth might take an age. The stairs would have to come first. There were no forks, only a single road running on, so the route required no thought. The Worshippers barring the way had thinned markedly. They seemed to have grasped that sheer numbers would get them nowhere—though the lesson, he thought, had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠come rather late.

The stairs leading upward were easy enough to find. He was moving so quickly that he nearly strode past the flight tucked between wall and corner, but Paranet, coming up behind, spotted it. One floor up, another staircase waited immediately beside them. At least he would not have to roam the tower in search of the next flight. That was a mercy.

As they climbed, neither Yujun nor his summons met any interference at all. Had the Worshippers simply resigned themselves and given up on stopping him? ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Unlikely. Far more probable that they were waiting with every preparation in place. So he did not loosen. He kept himself honed. Barbarism, too, had climbed to its limit before he noticed.

I do wonder what it would be like to use Chaos while Barbarism is active.

The twentieth floor was the most likely place to find out.

Human trafficking, kidnapping, mass slaughter—the customary evils of the Demon God Worshippers. In the Flying Dragon's Tower, even those amounted to nothing. So fixed were they on raising the Worshippers' martial strength, by any means and every method, that they had once annihilated one of the very organizations cooperating with the cult. That had been recent.

And of late, research had found that the blood of young beastkin boys amplified the effect of the Grace, if only slightly, and so young beastkin were being abducted from every reach of the Continent. Not a single voice rose against it. The Demon God Worshippers believed, without a crack of doubt, that the cult's growth was the road to peace upon the Continent.

The Flying Dragon's Tower was among the largest of the branches, and of every holding the cult possessed, it was where research burned hottest. The tower's ordinary air was neither dank nor sullen. The faithful wore bright faces, and to an eye that knew nothing, it would not have seemed strange at all to take the place for a magic tower of good repute. Here and there, what had once been someone's body was in use as a subject of study—but magic towers conducted research of that order as well. They simply did not abduct the living and reduce them to materials, as the cult did.

"Hmm..."

The murmur belonged to Gadura, lord of the Flying Dragon's Tower. He was a Bishop, a core figure who bore the cult's very center. The rank went by another name as well, but the office was the same.

They called the tower a branch. In truth, it stood closer to a diocese. A branch was a thing divided by region; a diocese differed from it in scale, and in the work it was meant to do. Among dioceses the Flying Dragon's Tower was small. Among branches, it was the greatest. It occupied an awkward place between the two, and yet no one could deny how seriously the cult regarded it.

The Bishops answered to the Pope, and above the Pope stood the Cult Leader. The shape of it differed somewhat from an ordinary faith, but the Demon God Worshipper Cult had kept this order since ages past.

The might and authority of a Bishop governing a diocese were formidable. In personal strength they were at best roughly a Cardinal's equal, and more often lesser—but a Bishop commanded a vast body of followers. Their standing in the cult therefore did not lag far behind a Cardinal's, and that standing swung wildly with the size of the diocese in their charge.

Through a scrying orb, Gadura watched with narrow attention as Shin Yujun climbed the stairs toward the twentieth floor.

"If I bestow Evil upon him... No. That's too dangerous."

He muttered the words to himself, turning over how he might deal with Shin Yujun. In all honesty, he had prepared for none of this. Reports of the man's location had been reaching him in real time, and still he had never imagined Shin Yujun would cover such a distance in a single stretch.

"Right now, I'm the only one who can stop him."

He did not mean that he could kill him. Only that, in this moment, the one person who might buy even a little time was a Bishop. Himself.

"Bestowing Evil is the better course after all. Even if the Flying Dragon's Tower has to fall..."

Shin Yujun had come in person. Whatever was done now, the end would not change.

A Bishop bestowing Evil by his own hand. The words meant precisely what they said.

Gadura was certain that even Shin Yujun, whose will was said to be formidable, could not stand entirely clear of it.