What Is This?
What is this?
What is this?
An unknowable energy invaded his mind, and the shock of it was immediate. The force surged and heaved as if it meant to swallow him whole at any moment, so he hauled Chaos up in a hurry and clamped it down. Even so, for some reason, body and mind both began to go slack.
Sleep Demon.
He was fully aware that the devil of sleep was crashing over him, and still he couldn't hold it off. Just as an unbearable drowsiness rolled in, Equanimity took effect. It had recognized the sleep he could not endure as a kind of mental attack, and that brief return to clarity let him wield Chaos again.
This still isn't enough?
The unknown energy that had seeped into his head overcame even Chaos's power to suppress. That, more than anything, shook Yujun. What in the world was a force that could hold its own against Chaos? Was this what it felt like to be poisoned by something colorless and odorless? It was a little too uncanny for that.
He pulled Barbarism up as well. Its nature was to push the body to its limit, so reinforcing the brain was well within its reach.
I don't think this is the real answer.
He fed more strength into the Chaos holding the unidentified energy at bay. That wasn't the end of it. On top of everything else, Yujun activated Super Concentration.
Super Concentration
Tiny as particles, and numberless, the motes of energy began to be driven out one by one. His mana was so pure that it did even more than Chaos to shove the intruder back.
Have I been underestimating my own mana?
"Harp. Breath. Sweep them all."
"Yes, Dad!"
Whirrr— BOOOOM!
The moment the breath ended, Yujun didn't even check the result. He went after the bishop who had launched the unidentified energy. Traces remained, so the pursuit wasn't difficult. Barbarism pushed his body to its limit, and in barely fifteen seconds he had dropped all the way to the tenth floor—where the bishop stood frozen stiff as a scarecrow.
"......What did you do?"
"You're the one who did something. What was it?"
"You blocked it without even knowing what it was?"
"I know it wasn't magic. And I'm sure it wasn't a curse."
"......"
Gadura's face darkened. This had gone wrong—thoroughly wrong. The best outcome would have been Shin Yujun cast as the villain while he himself lived...... As things stood, it was fair to say the plan had gone up in smoke. Whether he sensed that anxiety or not, Yujun studied him with the easy face of a man who had only stepped outside for air.
"What did you do? Talk."
"Has any believer ever answered a question like that?"
"No. The prohibition."
"I am the same."
In that instant Gadura drew up every last drop of his mana for a final stand. Or he tried to.
Shhk!
His head came off before he could put any of it into motion.
"Oh. Three levels at once?"
That was plenty satisfying. He hadn't been a bishop for nothing. Rising three times in a row after already passing level 800 meant the man's level had been absurdly high.
Right. I left Paranet and Tapagol behind.
Thanks to the breath Harp had fired, there probably weren't many elite troops left anyway. He trusted the two of them to clean up on their own.
Yujun examined Gadura's corpse with care. A man who used methods that strange might just as easily come back to life. He cast Hellfire and loaded Chaos into it. Chaos mixed with flame magic became ideally suited to erasing things from existence. Where the Hellfire touched it, Gadura's corpse blazed, then vanished into ash in an instant. Under Chaos's influence even the ash was gone, so there was virtually no room left for resurrection.
Of course, you never knew. In the Tower of Infinity, nothing was ever completely certain. Among Tapagol's new abilities, the resurrection of nearby allies came with no separate restriction to speak of. If "only once" counted as a limit, then that was the limit. Beyond that, there was practically nothing. Being able to come back no matter what situation struck was an advantage too large to dismiss.
After checking the spot where the bishop had stood one more time, Yujun laid a barrier with meticulous care—one that would alert him the instant anything inside it changed.
This should be enough.
He gave a stroke to the head of Harp, who was nodding off, and went to the twentieth floor, where Paranet and Tapagol were.
As expected, the Demon God Worshippers were nearly wiped out. He'd known Paranet fought well, but Tapagol's movements—like something possessed—were what truly startled him. The space was too small for Gigantification, so the golem fought in his original form, and those short arms and legs were all but toying with the worshippers. Of his traits, Magic Immunity (SSS+) and Monstrous Strength (EX) were putting out tremendous power, and among his skills he wove in Wide-Area Taunt (SS) and Counter Strike (SSS) as he went.
Now that I think about it, Tapagol's only got the best of the best for close combat.
His body was so hard that even a clean hit from the Demon God Worshippers left little more than a scratch. That was Magic Immunity at work. Golems were already highly resistant to physical attacks, and with magic immunity layered on top of that, he deserved to be called an invincible golem.
Whether spurred by that display or not, Paranet was hunting Demon God Worshippers harder than Yujun had ever seen him hunt.
"Reliable."
Yujun watched the fight with a proud smile. They said one summon raised well was worth more than envying ten of someone else's. If ever a moment fit that saying, this was it. Paranet and Tapagol—and Harp, the divine beast, besides. All three had grown enough to impress even Yujun. Tapagol wasn't a growth-type summon, so this stroke of fortune had strengthened him only once, but the leap had been so enormous that treating him as an exception felt wrong.
By the time it would have taken to drink a warm cup of tea, the Demon God Worshippers were annihilated. Yujun had only watched until then. He'd been curious how they would fight without him, and they'd fought better than he'd expected. He was surprised—and the Demon God Worshippers were hardly a rabble.
"Master. A good deal of the equipment looked rather serviceable."
"Oh, yeah?"
It figured. Thousands of Demon God Worshippers had died in one place. Most of them had been high-level, so the gear was decent as well. Yujun quickly swept the ownerless equipment into his inventory.
Ah, right. I never asked where the Peace Shop is.
It didn't matter much. He had a guide.
"Tapagol."
"Yes!"
"The Peace Shop?"
"One moment."
Tapagol closed his eyes and spun in a full circle.
Was that the secret to finding the way?
The twentieth floor the Demon God Worshippers had been holding was where the Peace Shop stood. And yet, even looking around with his eyes wide open, he couldn't find it. His senses didn't catch it either.
"Is there some kind of hidden space?"
"Yes. It will not appear simply because you search."
"Then?"
"A condition must be met. I do not know what it is."
"The Demon God Worshippers didn't know it either?"
"They would have found it. Whether they had the key, I do not know."
"So they knew the condition."
"Correct."
"Maybe I shouldn't have killed them all."
Not a single one had been left alive. Even if he'd asked, a prohibition would have been in place, and he wouldn't have gotten the answer he wanted. Yujun kept roaming the twentieth floor with his summons, hunting for any clue at all, but nothing eye-catching turned up.
Then Harp sniffed. Cute as a puppy—but dead serious.
"Dad! There's food smell left all over the place."
"Of course there is. Demon God Worshippers have to eat too."
Yujun's senses were sharp enough that he'd been smelling the food for a while already.
"A smell? I detect nothing."
Paranet tilted his head.
"Wouldn't it be weirder if an undead like you could smell?"
"Ah......?"
Harp didn't drop the suspicion.
"But it's especially strong only right here."
"What kind of food is this?"
Yujun had eaten plenty of things even in the Tower of Infinity, but he had never smelled an aroma this distinctive.
"I'm pretty sure it is food...... I just can't tell what."
"I don't know either."
"Might it be that we are meant to cook?"
At Paranet's words, Yujun's brow creased.
"What kind of nonsense is that?"
"The Demon God Worshippers know how to make the shop reveal itself, do they not? If we cook and make food, might the shop not appear?"
"......"
"I know full well how dubious it sounds. But is it not worth trying once?"
"Well. It's not hard."
Paranet's instincts couldn't be ignored. How much help had those hunches already given him? Yujun took out the Enhanced Yeti Meat. If he was going to grill something, it might as well be a good cut.
Sizzle—!
He formed a fireball and started grilling a fairly large piece of yeti meat. Here, once again, the convenience of magic showed itself. Beyond being able to cook anytime, anywhere, there were plenty of ways it helped in ordinary life. The meat cooked quickly. A savory, sweet aroma rose, and his mouth watered. There was a lot of Enhanced Yeti Meat, but the supply was limited, so he couldn't eat it often. Smelling it after so long, he couldn't keep his hands still.
"Shall we eat?"
"And the shop?"
At Paranet's words, Yujun narrowed his eyes.
"Is that what matters right now?"
"......Was it not important?"
"Figures, for an undead. Can't smell, so you don't even know what matters more."
"A-am I the strange one?"
"Yeah."
But Tapagol, like Paranet, had no interest in food whatsoever. Then again, Yujun had never once heard of a golem eating.
Ah, right.
He didn't forget to call Manuela and Yenil from the Golden Temple. Good food, as a rule, tasted better shared than eaten alone. He hadn't always known that. After a long while spent with Manuela and Yenil, he had started to enjoy eating together.
The moment she arrived and caught the smell of Enhanced Yeti Meat, Manuela's eyes went wide.
"A feast, after all this time? The Peace Contribution Shop?"
"Haven't found it yet."
"Are all these dead ones Demon God Worshippers?"
"Yeah. Paranet, Tapagol, and Harp took down almost all of them."
"Since when? You almost never hand Demon God Worshippers over."
"I can't keep hogging everything by myself forever."
"You're not hinting at me, are you......? Sorry. I'll get stronger, fast."
"It's not that. You're doing plenty."
The memory of the enchantment stones she had made for him was still vivid, and she seemed to be working on something similar even now. On that alone, Manuela was more than pulling her weight. Yenil hadn't produced any standout results yet, but once she perfectly mastered the magic he had taught her, she would be incomparably stronger than before. In short, no one in the party was dead weight.
The balance is just right. No need to get greedy past this.
Thinking that, he remembered Masare, the Source of Darkness, inside the Absolute Sealing Orb.
Should I summon the ones I've got sealed?
He had found where the Peace Contribution Shop was, but he still didn't know how to get in. Maybe the Source of Darkness or the Blood Lord—one of the two locked in the sealing orb—knew the answer. Nothing was coming to him, so he had no choice but to try something.
Yujun drew from his inventory an Absolute Sealing Orb. He had only two.