Null Grade

Aurin simply stood there, watching Randolph’s back as he left the tower.

What… did I just see?

The stele had suddenly transformed into a massive crow. The tower had been rebuilt. Karas had ascended to godhood.

And that was not all.

The tower had expanded.

Afterward, Randolph had climbed without rest all the way to the thirtieth floor and dueled the newly divine Karas.

……Even for Aurin, it had been a sight that raised goosebumps.

It was not merely because Karas and Randolph had clashed.

Before a godhead, a mortal should not even be able to meet their eyes.

A godhead was an existence equal to a god—or a god itself. An absolute powerhouse no mortal could ever defeat. Until they granted permission, one could not even dare lock gazes with such a being.

Pointing a sword at one and trading blows was something beyond imagination.

It was instinct for every mortal. Standing before a great existence, being overwhelmed was only natural.

Yet Randolph had faced a godhead without the slightest tremor.

On the contrary—

First strike.

…He had attacked first.

He had freely wielded his blade and faced Karas head-on.

Behavior that violated ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠common sense. A mortal standing toe-to-toe with a godhead!

Godheads are guardians of balance who only purge the great evils that disturb the world. Even those colossal evils cannot look up at the sky so long as a true godhead exists, or so I heard.

When great evils looked to the heavens, a godhead would pinpoint their location—and punish them.

For mortals to face a godhead directly was simply impossible.

They say a godhead’s eyes are so deep that one cannot meet them……

Gaze into a godhead’s eyes and your soul would be stolen on the spot. That was no mere conjecture or baseless rumor. Every ancient record said the same—about the godheads who had truly existed, and about Martial God Karas as well.

And yet Randolph had looked Karas straight in the eyes.

There was only one case in which that was possible.

……Then Lord Randolph truly is a godhead of the same rank……

A god.

Only one who stood on equal footing could do such a thing.

But from Randolph she felt none of the same “divinity” that radiated from Martial God Karas. Of course, as a High Druid he was someone every race of the great forest ought to revere, yet he was still far from a godhead.

Then was he a god who had hidden his identity? A deity who concealed countless faces while intervening directly in the world?

I’ve never even heard of a godhead like that.

Once again, it defied common sense.

The duel with Karas that followed was the same.

One could declare with certainty that no one could defeat Martial God Karas inside his own tower. A fight no one could win no matter how one looked at it. He had lost in the end, so the result had been predetermined.

……Predetermined? That?

……The result had been so.

But looking at the process, it entered the realm of the incomprehensible. How could anyone call that “common sense”?

Karas had received Randolph’s sword exactly as it came, leisurely displaying the dignity of a Martial God. The problem was that as time passed, the duel had begun to grow strange.

Terrifying adaptability.

Randolph had adapted to Karas’s style—faster than anyone. With every exchange of blades, Randolph’s sword strokes had drawn steadily closer to Karas.

When at last he left a long cut across Karas’s chest, Aurin had shuddered.

In the end, even Karas had been forced to decide the match. He had known that if it continued, one of them would have to die for it to end.

Just what……

Randolph.

Who was he?

The way Aurin looked at him now was completely different from before he had climbed the tower.

The Ominous Clan.

Every single stat of this crow sat at 120, matching a two-star Transcendent. On top of that it possessed the Martial God’s abilities, so its actual combat power would be even higher.

The power of an Ominous Clan crow changes depending on which tower it manages.

Both strength and abilities shifted. In other words, if I could secure an Ominous Clan crow that managed a higher-tier tower, I would gain an even more powerful ally. Even this one alone would clearly be a considerable help.

I’m curious what the Martial God’s abilities actually are.

My eyes could not see them. But after crossing blades with Karas, I had a rough idea. That overwhelming spectacle of using feathers as weapons had left even me without an answer.

Anyway.

I quietly shifted my gaze to the reward settlement list.

I had earned 1,990 points—the highest score among every Main Quest I had pushed so far—but that was only natural. I had set foot in a domain no one had ever challenged. An achievement of this magnitude—annihilating a demon, rebuilding a tower, and resurrecting a godhead—would be hard to find again even in the future.

Yet something else caught my eye more than any of that.

…Item combination?

A phrase I had never seen while clearing Main Quests. Moreover, it told me to choose three items from among the Myth-grade armaments that had appeared as rewards so far and combine them.

Already-chosen rewards are excluded.

The list of rewards I had already selected was nowhere to be seen. Only the ones I had not chosen. Looking at the names—easily fifty of them—I stroked my chin.

Combine them to birth a completely new piece of equipment.

Equipment of a form that had never appeared in Pangenia. Completely new. There had never been a case like this before. In short, it was no different from an additional reward.

The highest grade obtainable while clearing Main Quests is Myth.

But simply handing out Myth-grade rewards would have been far too underwhelming for a score this overwhelming. Even giving several would not have been enough to digest it. What did that mean?

…Don’t tell me it’s talking about Unique grade?

If it was new and only one of its kind, the only thing that came to mind was Unique grade. Since it could not hand me a Unique-grade reward directly, was it telling me to make one myself? The result would vary wildly depending on the combination, after all.

In the end it all comes down to how I do it.

The more I thought, the more questions piled up. Whether options simply merged, whether there was some separate mechanism like set items, whether the names themselves mattered—there was no way to know the format of the combination. This damned game was unfriendly with every single explanation.

Still, most of the names are ones whose options I already know. That’s a relief.

I carefully examined the names on the list. Every one of them was hard to obtain, yet most were things I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠knew. Many I had even used once or twice myself. There was probably no one who knew them better than I did.

I should look mainly for ones that cover each other’s weaknesses.

They were not set items. Set items gathered unique names to produce additional effects. If they were going to be fused into a single combination, I might actually lose the advantages of set effects. So it would be more reliable to choose pieces whose drawbacks compensated for one another when used together.

Robe of Radiant Honor. Main option: functions scale with Honor.

The higher the Honor, the stronger the equipment’s performance. The drawback was that when Honor was low, it was barely better than nothing. With Hell devouring Honor every day, it was gear I had to think carefully about choosing.

But—

Dorian’s Phase. If an option related to Honor exists, it always draws out maximum efficiency.

The combination of these two had a function that cleanly covered each other’s weaknesses. Both main options were tied to Honor. It was one of the combinations commonly called a “dream combo.” I myself had only ever thought about it; obtaining both was on the level of plucking stars from the sky, so I had given up.

If the main options are included, then for the last one…

I locked in the two. Now it was time to decide the final piece.

I stared at the list for a long while before settling my gaze on one entry.

……Pureblood Blueprint.

A fleeting, insane thought. A Unique-grade blueprint. Something that could not be crafted without materials. Why did my eyes keep going to it?

There had been no rule saying I had to combine equipment with equipment. It had simply said to combine “any three” from the list.

The Unique-grade equipment “Pureblood” was so famous that virtually no one was unaware of the name.

A ring everyone knows by name yet no one has ever possessed. Pureblood.

It was one of the “Absolute Rings” said to have been used by the emperor of the old empire back when the continent still lay on the surface. He had founded the old empire and become emperor with five rings. Mentions of those five rings appeared in countless quests and histories—dozens of times—so it was impossible not to know the name.

It was one of the rewards that appeared when I cleared the Abyss Labyrinth. The materials were so impossible to obtain that I never chose the blueprint itself.

Perhaps because Riley had been one of the Six Heroes of the old empire? After defeating Riley in the Abyss Labyrinth, one of the survival reward options had been that Pureblood. But the materials were things I would never obtain in a lifetime, so I had abandoned the blueprint entirely.

Combination means adding and merging main functions. The main function of a blueprint is, of course, to craft something of the corresponding name.

What if I put that blueprint into the “combination”?

I did not know. The result was unknowable. I could not be certain my predictions were always one hundred percent correct.

Yet if someone asked which item on the list came closest to “Unique grade,” I would name that Pureblood Blueprint every single time.

The final one.

Wouldn’t it be better to put something more certain instead?

A flicker of hesitation.

I may have hesitated, but I did not deliberate long.

At the same time—

On top of that, the added blessing and divinity.

The tower and Karas were assisting this combination. This, too, was a first. Yet recalling the Tower of Mystery from before, it was entirely possible. When I had achieved consecutive feats no one else had managed, the tower itself had granted me the out-of-spec Mystery “Eternal Randolph,” had it not?

Likewise, the Tower of the Martial God and Karas were essentially one body, so their aid would clearly exert a profound influence on the result.

Soon after—

Hoo.

Dark Star let out a long breath.

The commotion had died down. Now it was time for him to become the protagonist once more.

“……What matters right now are those demonkin attacking us. The reality we face. To survive the vicious, hellish assault of those demonkin, nothing is more important than our unity!”

Unite. Become one and fight the enemy!

The Randolph currently in Pangenia was a man who had turned his back on reality. Nothing more than a coward who refused to unite and ran away!

That was what Dark Star was saying. Phantom, climbing the Tower of the Martial God alone in Pangenia, was of no importance to them whatsoever.

“……He’s right.”

“Guess we got our hopes up for nothing.”

“I really thought Phantom would be somewhere in the coalition army……”

Many people accepted it. Demonkin stood right in front of them. Earth—their homeland—was under invasion. Everyone gathered here had believed Phantom would be somewhere among the coalition forces. But the message that had just ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠appeared had told them that was not the case.

Good. The mood has shifted.

Dark Star recovered his composure. He was certain his time had returned. After all, he was the one leading them now. If he successfully repelled this invasion, he would become a far greater existence than Master or Gracia. A giant so massive that even Lucifer, who tried to manipulate him from behind, would be unable to do anything about him.

“Tomorrow everything will change. The enemies will fear our unity, and the world will—”

“What now?”

“Something’s complete?”

“‘Phase of the Radiant Pureblood’?”

“……Whoa, that’s insane.”

“Pureblood? Don’t tell me it’s the Pureblood I know?”

“But what the hell is that grade?”

Dark Star’s face twisted. The discomfort was written plainly across his features. He could no longer hide the emotions surging up inside him.

Phantom…… you son of a bitch!

A ring red as blood steeped in radiance.

Pureblood.

Its appearance was similar to the real Pureblood. Yet it was not completely identical.

Phase of the Radiant Pureblood……!

If anything…… it was more beautiful.

Far more so than Pureblood, one of the five Absolute Rings said to have been used by the emperor of the old empire.

Of course I did not know everything about the Absolute Rings, but it seemed fully comparable. And that was not merely a matter of appearance.

……Options that made me dizzy just looking at them.

The only thing that directly raised a combat stat was natural regeneration, yet that was precisely one of the things I needed most right now.

Moreover—

Insane. Double Honor!

It was a shame I had not received this effect while climbing the tower, but it did not matter. It meant the doubling would continue from now on as well. The importance of Honor needed no further explanation. It was not only Hell’s food; many major quests and pieces of equipment required a certain amount of Honor to equip.

Divinity?

That divinity would be added according to Honor was a little unexpected. Divinity was the power of a god. Did that mean I might actually become a god myself?

Faith Divine Word.

Leave a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Faith Divine Word—upon those who held faith.

Wearing the ring, I looked at Aurin and spoke.

“Aurin. Sit.”

“Yes……?”

Thud.

Despite the puzzled tone, Aurin sat down on the spot.

“Th-this is……!”

Aurin looked startled. So was I.

Oh-ho.

This was even more immediate than Winter’s Covenant. Then did distance matter?

“Hudson. Come through the seventh warp of the Tower of the Martial God.”

“W-what are you doing?”

“Hmm.”

I moved my feet and approached the seventh warp—the one with the least traffic. If Hudson came through, I would know immediately.

How much time passed?

Ziiiiing!

The warp hummed, and a man appeared.

“Y-you called for me?”

……The one who had crossed the warp was Hudson.

Just in case, I tried it on a passerby. No effect. I even learned their name and tried again. Same result.

It leaves a Divine Word upon those who trust and follow me. No distance limit.

So that was the ability. If I founded a religious order and massively increased the number of people who believed in me, what would happen? The world would fill with true fanatics who lived and died by my command.

But I suspected that was not everything.

It leaves the words of a god. Perhaps it can even be used in other religious orders……

The old emperor had also stood in a position like an absolute high priest leading every religious order. Perhaps this ability could be used even within other faiths. That would require a little more experimentation.

And absolute observation immunity on top of that.

It made observation of me myself impossible. Limited to observation, yet it seemed to exert a more absolute power than even Hidden Traits. This was the first time I had seen a description that read “nothing can.” Did that mean even gods could not observe and grasp me?

What happens if I gather the Absolute Rings?

I did not know that either. But…… one thing was certain.

Depending on how it was used, this ring would clearly produce performance beyond Unique grade. Raise Honor to strengthen divinity, then use the strengthened divinity to leave even stronger Divine Words.

That was when it happened.