Karas Forfeits
······I ate the fallen star of Wilhelm.
At the same instant, a torrent of memories came flooding in, and the Champion reeled in confusion.
Wilhelm had died. Someone had consumed Wilhelm's star. And now that confusion had reached its absolute peak.
Because—
Who am I?
"Behold! Wilhelm! He is completing a myth before our eyes!"
"Waaaaaah!"
"Wilhelm! Wilhelm! Wilhelm!"
"A berserker who grows stronger the more he fights?"
"Now that's real chivalry!"
"Take me, Wilhelm!"
If you asked who the hottest challenger in the tower had been these past few years, every spectator who had long watched the Tower of the War God would answer the same: Wilhelm.
But when he first appeared, everyone cold-shouldered him.
A knight in full plate, swinging a sword—he simply did not belong in a place as raw and wild as the Tower of the War God.
What the audience wanted was fighting in its purest form.
Wilhelm, however, showed consideration for his opponents, praised them, and spoke of honor.
He doesn't fit.
Popularity came later—but he never sat well with Sancha.
A knight did not belong in a tower of myth.
This was an arena.
A stage where what you saw—the performance—mattered most.
If some fellow in full-body armor, prim and proper to a fault, ever claimed the Champion's seat, the entire character of the tower could shift.
And if the tower's character shifted, revenue would fall.
If revenue fell and popularity cooled, the Tower of the War God would lose its very reason to exist.
"Floor Eighteen! Already standing at the threshold of the Champion's seat!"
"Can this honorable knight truly claim the title of Champion?"
"Even the current Champion has been watching every one of Wilhelm's matches in person, hasn't he?"
"Ah—so that means he's accepting the challenge, right?"
"The Champion and Wilhelm lock eyes!"
"I don't think anyone's sleeping tonight!"
Wilhelm was strong.
The more he fought, the stronger he became.
The swordsmanship he unfurled was intoxicating, and power seemed to gather in every footprint he left behind.
Watching him, you could do nothing but be overwhelmed.
If the Champion and Wilhelm fought—
Who would win?
Everyone wanted to know.
In the Tower of the War God, the Champion was a being of pure myth.
You could call him the tower itself and not be wrong.
No matter how strong Wilhelm was, inside this tower at least, the Champion had never once known defeat.
And the Champion, too, seemed to be looking forward to a match against Wilhelm.
That, above all, must be stopped.
Sancha decided he would stop it no matter what.
So he resolved to place on Floor Nineteen an opponent who simply could not be beaten.
"Clear Floor Nineteen and it's Floor Twenty—the Champion's seat."
"The gatekeeper of Floor Nineteen who will stop Wilhelm is······ wait. Hold on."
"Karas?"
"Isn't that the former Champion?"
The former Champion, Karas.
Sancha had personally brought back the man who had retired.
The original master of this tower—and at the same time a mythical being once called the War God.
"Ah······ so the former Champion and master of the tower has stepped forward."
"Didn't he yield his seat to the current Champion and retire?"
"This is··· going to be rough."
"Is this where Wilhelm's legend ends?"
Sancha was certain.
Everyone who knew Karas predicted Wilhelm's defeat.
Karas was a being on the level of a Demigod—of course they did.
He had yielded his seat to the current Champion, but that had been for personal reasons.
Inside the tower, he was a monster no different from a Demigod.
I gave up a great deal to bring you here. So go wild, Demigod Karas.
Sancha smiled.
Wilhelm could never defeat Karas.
Not inside this tower. Never.
But that confidence—that smile—would not last long.
That day.
Sancha saw it with his own eyes.
"······What the hell is that monster."
"Bunny Girl!"
"Looking sexy again today!"
"Please, just take the mask off once!"
······Auryll squeezed her eyes shut.
She had been through this any number of times already, but she still could not get used to it.
This place was a gathering of pure desire.
For an elf like her, the very air was poison.
"You've made quite a racket—but I'll let you feel the wall that is Floor Ten."
Floor Ten already.
Her opponent was a spearman with a crest of red feathers standing up from his head like a rooster's comb.
His face looked genuinely chicken-like as well.
The moment he appeared, he struck a flamboyant pose toward the audience and began showing off his physique.
"Behold! These magnificent muscles, incomparable to a frail frame like yours! The spectators of Floor Ten prefer m—"
"Boooo!"
"Get that chicken-head out of here!"
"Ugh, damn, I just wasted my eyes."
But the crowd's reaction was ice-cold.
Right now, Auryll's popularity in the Tower of the War God was scraping the sky.
A fighter of her caliber climbing the tower with genuine fan service almost never happened.
Yet despite the audience's feverish response, Auryll's face twisted on its own.
Filthy. It stinks.
That chicken-head was giving off a stench like a skunk.
The higher the floors climbed, the stronger the reek became.
The desires rolling off the surroundings grew more intense as well.
Even so, she was enduring it somehow.
Was it because she had already endured Randolph, a being who might as well have been the incarnation of desire itself?
Or because she had entered a contract with him?
She was starting to think that Randolph was preferable to this lot.
Ugh······ this is so humiliating. I want to die······.
She wanted to crawl into a mouse hole and hide.
If not for Randolph's orders, she would never in her life have climbed this tower in such a shameful outfit.
"You witch—you've even bewitched my audience! I'll kill you right n—"
The chicken-head was on the floor before he could finish the sentence.
Brushing off her hands as if she had touched something filthy, Auryll was already walking past him.
Her face still locked in a deep scowl.
Humans are so unclean!
Floor Fifteen.
In barely a week I was rocketing up the tower at breakneck speed.
And the fact that a schedule like this had been arranged meant—
Sancha has taken a liking to me.
It was completely different from Wilhelm's time.
Back then, Sancha had bent over backward trying to stop Wilhelm by any means necessary.
Now he was throwing everything he had into pushing me forward.
But even so, this was too fast.
A pace that far outstripped my expectations.
Don't tell me Sancha wants a change of Champion?
Had something shifted in him?
From what I'd heard, the Champion hadn't accepted a single challenger for the past year.
Maybe that had gotten under Sancha's skin.
"You slippery little bastard······!"
I cut off the thought and looked at the man in front of me.
A warrior pressing in hard, dual axes swinging wild.
But the warrior's face was flushed deep red.
Because I was dodging him by a paper-thin margin.
Swish!
Whoosh!
I opened my mouth, covered it with a hand, and yawned.
This was pure toying.
Thorough, deliberate toying.
"Haha! Try landing one!"
"Missing that badly is a talent all its own—a talent!"
"The title of Double-Axe Master is weeping, you idiot!"
"Emperor Penguin! Make it fun for us again today!"
The spectators joined in the mockery.
I slipped into the warrior's guard and threw an arm around his shoulders, or slid between his legs and yanked his pants clean down in one pull.
With his lower half gone missing, the warrior finally blew his top.
"Aaaargh! You son of a bitch!!!"
"Kahahaha! Looks like he's mad?"
"The Rage Inducer strikes again!"
"Another roaring success today!"
The so-called Rage Inducer.
That was the nickname I'd picked up climbing the tower.
"Revenue is up twenty percent in a single week."
"Tickets for Emperor Penguin's matches are selling on the black market for more than double the face price."
"A considerable number of spectators seem to be coming just to see the Bunny Girl as well."
Listening to the report, Sancha smiled.
Those two were gems that had rolled in still attached to the vine.
The more he pushed them, the more explosive the impact they generated—far beyond the push itself.
Especially Emperor Penguin.
That one was quality goods.
"Rage Inducer, is it······."
A Rage Inducer who provoked his opponents until the dual curses finally came flying out.
He was breathing life back into a Tower of the War God that had gone stagnant.
Toy with the long-reigning powerhouses. From the audience's perspective, you couldn't ask for a more entertaining picture.
Powerhouses floating serene on a lakeshore like lofty swans.
People were going wild over the appearance of a being who sent ripples across that lake and called up a storm.
And on top of that, he was overwhelmingly strong.
So strong he could afford that much leisure while he toyed with them.
And even then, he didn't finish things quickly—he delivered a solid performance and entertainment on top of it.
Where on earth had something like this come from?
Sancha liked him. Liked him far too much.
"And the Champion's reaction?"
"Nothing noteworthy yet."
"Hmm. So this much still isn't enough."
Sancha stroked his chin.
Emperor Penguin had settled perfectly into his favor.
Until now, the only being he had liked this much was the current Champion himself.
But what mattered in this matchup was the Champion's reaction.
The Champion had responded intensely to Wilhelm.
It had been almost pitiful—as if he had reunited with a lover parted long ago.
But once that match fell through, the Champion never turned his gaze again.
No challenger eye-catching enough had appeared since, either.
Even Emperor Penguin still seemed to lack the stimulation needed to snag the Champion's attention.
So how could he make the Champion react to Emperor Penguin?
In the end, if the Champion didn't consent, the match itself would never happen.
In that case—
Not overwhelming them with leisurely toying—I need to show him fighting seriously, just once.
He needed someone who could draw out Emperor Penguin's true ability.
But there was no way to know where Emperor Penguin's ceiling was.
Pair him with someone too strong and he might end up on the receiving end instead.
The Bunny Girl who appeared alongside Emperor Penguin.
The only one who came to mind was the Bunny Girl.
Unlike Emperor Penguin, she was carrying on a legend of ending every match within three seconds.
What if he put her against Emperor Penguin?
Wouldn't that make for a fairly decent picture?
But isn't that too obvious?
Right. Far too obvious a picture.
An obvious picture like that wouldn't provide stimulation. For a fight between the Bunny Girl and Emperor Penguin to land as real provocation, it needed a little more time to simmer.
Sancha kept turning the problem over without rest.
The strongest of the strong who had climbed the Tower of the War God.
Whether to summon every powerhouse of past eras—or to attempt something even more adventurous.
After a long stretch of deliberation, Sancha reached a decision.
"······I'll have to call that one back one more time."
Floor Seventeen already.
I looked with genuine interest at the one who had stepped into the path of my high-speed ascent.
I had never expected him to appear here.
A mere Floor Seventeen. Three floors still remaining—and a powerhouse of this caliber was standing in my way?
A half-beast with the face of a crow and the body of a man.
A living myth. A monster of Demigod rank.
Karas!
"You······."
And he, too, was looking at me with a light in his eyes.
The final opponent I had fought when I climbed the Tower of the War God as Wilhelm.
I remembered fighting him longer and more fiercely than anyone else.
Inside this Tower of the War God he was a true Demigod-class being, and it had not been an easy fight.
But I was not Wilhelm now.
And Karas would never even imagine that I had once been Wilhelm.
Even Sancha the administrator hadn't recognized me.
Then Karas raised his left hand and opened his mouth.
"I forfeit."
"Forfeit?"
"Karas said he forfeits?"
"That's a lie······ right?"
An unprecedented situation. Everyone was stunned.
A match between a rising star and the former Champion.
The stands were already packed with spectators who had gathered to watch this very fight.
It was a match you couldn't get tickets for even with a premium—and not a single person had expected Karas to forfeit.
"Has this ever happened?"
"Never. Not once has Karas come out for a match and forfeited!"