The Know-It-All's Parchment
◈ Option: Write a word, and information about it is displayed. If the Storyteller does not know it, the effect does not activate.
He didn't have many of them, and as a rule he hated spending one lightly — but the matter at hand left him no room to be stingy. This wasn't merely dangerous. It concerned the Demon God Worshipper Cult. When he was dealing with them, Yujun had no intention of hoarding consumables.
"What is that item?"
"Look, and you'll know."
Onto the parchment he wrote that the Demon God Worshippers and the players newly summoned to the Tower of Infinity appeared to be making contact, and he added a request for a detailed account. Then he poured mana into the page.
It'll work, won't it?
The Talkative Know-It-All had always handed over more than Yujun expected. Ask him something worthless as dung and he still answered, snap, with exactly what you wanted. So this time, Yujun wasn't particularly worried. Once he was sure the parchment had drunk enough mana, he turned it over.
Fortunately, the Storyteller seemed to have something on the subject. Slowly, writing began to appear.
Hey. You goddamn monster bastard.
Ah, sorry. Show me someone with outrageous talent and the curses fly out first. That's just how I am.
Try to understand. I lived a miserable life because of one guy exactly like you. It isn't that I hate you.
The Great Cataclysm happened not long ago, didn't it?
Looks like the new friends are making trouble. Well, of course they are. A whole crowd carrying that much power came swarming in at once.
Honestly, I think the System is pretty vicious. Why? No matter how hard you struggle to grow stronger, it goes and summons someone even stronger, just like this. Don't you feel robbed? That hollow sense of being left behind?
It probably isn't so different from what an ordinary genius like me feels when I look at you.
The Know-It-All's writing had a sharper edge than before.
Is he that sour about how fast I got strong?
Either way, the important part still hadn't come. The Storyteller always opened with a ramble. Whatever actually mattered would show up after this.
Hey. So what did you buy at the Peace Contribution Shop?
You're not going to tell me, are you? Obvious.
You asked about the contact site. This time even I don't know for certain. They hid the thing far too tightly.
So I'll tell you only what's sure.
They aren't making contact so they can be on the same side.
The head of that laughably named bunch, the Guardians of Balance, is feeling things out — a light touch, to gauge just how strong the Demon God Worshipper Cult really is.
Their arrogance is past imagining. Enough to stand level with the Cult.
And the Guardians of Balance believe the only faction that can face them is the Cult.
They're meeting to keep each other in check. How things run after that, I couldn't say...
Anyway. For the moment, you don't need to worry that the two of them will join forces.
Of course, as I said before, they might suddenly get friendly. Nothing is certain.
Shin Yujun. I'll be honest — a talent freak like you is not to my liking, but I am truly glad you exist.
Because of you, I get to stretch my legs and sleep in peace. Keh heh heh.
If you're going to stick your nose in, I recommend you do it properly.
They're both persistent bastards, aren't they?
The Demon God Worshippers may be sick to death of you after the thrashing you gave them. The Guardians of Balance are not.
The location the Elite Association found is correct, so go there.
A trap? Well... I don't know. The Cult might have prepared something to make fools of the Guardians of Balance.
Good luck.
No more writing appeared.
"What manner of item is that? Can the words on it be trusted?" Borhem asked, eyeing it with open suspicion.
"Obviously. It's more accurate than you lot, at least."
"......"
"The location's right, so we can go and see for ourselves. We head to the Elite Association first, yeah?"
"Th-that's right."
"Move out."
Yujun spoke as if he had already taken command, and Borhem had no choice but to follow.
The Elite Association never gathered in the same place twice. They kept no fixed base; that way, even if the Cult uncovered a location, the risk was smaller. Run like that, they had never once been the ones ambushed.
The basement of a rundown building. A clandestine meeting was underway when a stranger stepped in beside Borhem. It was Yujun.
The hinges shrieked, and every gaze swung that way.
"Borhem?"
"Y-you really brought him."
There had been no message that he would come in person, and the dismay on their faces was plain.
"What, should I have brought a fake?"
With Shin Yujun in tow, Borhem's nose had climbed so high it forgot the sky had a limit. The members looked at him as if he were a sorry sight, but hauling the man all the way here was no small feat, and no one said a word.
"Is everyone in the Elite Association here?"
"We may be a small elite, but we are not so few as this. Quite a number were too busy to gather. Some are off handling smaller matters."
Yujun nodded at the explanation. Then Baek Hyoyeon spoke.
"So you've decided to help us?"
He weighed formal speech against dropping it, and with this many Association members in the room, he chose to be polite.
"I have."
Borhem stared at the sudden change, dumbfounded. Yujun made a point of ignoring the look.
"The contact will happen around tomorrow evening. Will you wait with us until then?"
"How do you know it's evening?"
"We have a spy among the Guardians of Balance."
"...That's possible? They all came from somewhere else. They ought to look completely different."
"The day they arrived, we approached at once and brought a few of them over." Baek Hyoyeon said it with a sharp grin.
Thorough. The Elite Association hadn't survived this long as a small elite for nothing.
He had the companions waiting outside come in as well. Manuela glanced around the building, and when her interest cooled she looked at Yujun.
"Are we resting today?"
"Yeah. If you don't feel like resting, want to go pick golden stalks?"
"No! I want to rest!"
"...Fine."
His disappointment showed. Spare time was for gathering gold, if you wanted the best possible growth... Was even that asking too much?
If Yujun had a chronic flaw, it was hanging his neck on even the smallest scrap of growth. He knew it himself.
I've gained plenty of enlightenment already. Let's not cling so hard to a few points of mana. Even in the long run, it isn't that much of a gain.
Spending that time gathering information, as he was doing now, might well be more efficient. Better to go after gold only when there was truly nothing else to do.
"I doubt you were discussing the state of the Continent. What were you talking about?" Unlike the way he handled Borhem, his tone was courteous.
"A hidden gem we found yesterday. A bakery."
"That's right. Once the work is done, we all agreed to go together. Member Baek Hyoyeon has never been wrong."
Can I really trust these people?
Not that he had meant to trust them from the start. Seven Elite Association players sat in the room. Small and elite or not, it was too few to walk into a place the Cult was preparing in earnest. He didn't think more bodies would change much either.
Which is why they called me.
Meeting them face to face, they didn't seem to be nursing some malice and scheming to use him. They had simply needed help, and asked. Yujun let himself relax, dragged over the nearest chair, and sat. Watching them trade yet more idle talk, he thought that wherever people lived, it was all the same.
Quite a few Koreans in the mix, from the look of it.
That woman, Baek Hyoyeon — from an ordinary human's point of view, she was someone remarkable. Membership in the Elite Association alone said as much. The players kept stealing glances at Yujun, who sat quietly listening, as if he were something strange.
"There's something I'd like to ask." The president of the Elite Association looked at him.
"Go ahead."
"I know you fight the Demon God Worshippers day after day, but how far does your knowledge of the Cult go?"
"Well, I've smashed a few branches, killed one bishop, and met a cardinal's avatar once. Other than that, I don't know much about the Cult. They seem to make chimeras out of the bodies of monsters and players, that sort of thing. Oh, and there's Demon God's Grace. Once they receive it, the Worshippers become incomparably stronger than they were before. They're no different from children who are only strong, but they can grow explosively in a short time. That's the advantage."
"You already seem to know a great deal..."
"W-wait a moment. You killed a bishop? Truly?" Baek Hyoyeon asked, startled.
A bishop — the head of a diocese. What that implied was enormous.
"Yes. In case they had some resurrection ability I didn't know about, I erased them down to the ash."
"Even a bishop couldn't resurrect on their own. If you went that far, they're certainly dead. But bishops almost never show themselves... How did you manage it?"
"I walked straight into a place called the Flying Dragon's Tower, obviously. I only learned what a bishop was there. The Demon God Worshippers wouldn't stop crying 'Bishop, Bishop.'"
"Oh! The Flying Dragon's Tower? Some kind of hidden branch?"
"That's right. Good instincts."
"Of course!"
Her reactions were so good that talking became a pleasure. Yujun spent the time mixing with them in moderation.
The next day, Yujun passed the time until evening in mental image training. The further his swordsmanship advanced, the more effective that training became. Raising his realm by moving his body in the flesh was difficult now. He had not mastered every enlightenment, so he could not call it certain — but for the moment, mental image training was plainly the denser of the two.
He rose from the tree stump where he had been sitting. They had to leave before full dark. The assembly point had been set near the contact site on purpose, and they could not afford to be late.
The president and the other members came to find him, every one of them wrapped in a thick cloak with a mask over the face. Nothing good came of having one's face known.
The place where those two vast organizations — the Guardians of Balance and the Demon God Worshipper Cult — would make contact was a temple. Its coffers had failed long ago and the doors had been shut, but in sheer size it rivaled temples of considerable fame. The mana in the magical lights had run dry, and the interior was dark as could be, yet the magic of the players pouring toward it soon brightened everything around.
On the Guardians' side, it looked as if every player who belonged to them had come. The numbers were staggering. He didn't know how many Demon God Worshippers would arrive, but the mindset the Guardians brought to this meeting was plain enough.
The Worshippers showed themselves soon after. From the moment they appeared they gave off such a gloomy air that failing to recognize them would have been the harder task.
They won't clash right away, will they?
Both sides held an aggressive posture, but neither looked ready to fight on the spot.
"I'll go in close and see what I can learn. The rest of you, wait here," Yujun told the Elite Association players.
"What? Getting close is dangerous."
"He's right. On the Guardians of Balance side in particular, there's someone with an exceptional sensory—"
"It's fine."
He spoke low, and vanished.
"Did anyone just see that?"
"What did he do? Blink?"
"That wasn't Blink. He simply ran. Fast."
At the president's words, the rest lost whatever they had meant to say, their faces gone blank. Fast was one thing — but not being able to follow his form at all? Did that even make sense? They were high-level players, and their dynamic vision was naturally excellent. And yet they hadn't caught so much as the heels of Shin Yujun. The shock of it could only be large.