Beyond Spec

But not here.

This was a gathering of the masters of the sacred domains and every manner of sovereign. A Druid had appeared, and their god stood among them. At last they understood that this was no place to raise their voices and press their claims. If they carried on as they had in the Forest of Beginning, not so much as a single blade of grass would survive their annihilation—and that truth had finally sunk in.

"I permit it."

"…Thank you, Druid of the Golden Rule."

At my leave, the Elf Queen let out a breath of relief. With the queen I had expected to be the most difficult of them all yielding so readily, I felt considerably more at ease. No one else would dare question my choices or opinions now. And having been shown mercy, the queen would only revere me all the more.

"But if you divide them into groups of thirteen, that makes seven groups, does it not? Who do you intend to have lead the remaining one?"

The Giant of Annihilating Evil spoke up again. He was asking whether I had Albino in mind, or meant to appoint someone else entirely.

I answered with casual indifference.

"Me."

"……And will you choose the twelve yourself?"

"No."

"Then?"

"They will choose me."

"……?"

"Stand before whichever of the seven—myself included—you wish to follow. Once every group has filled its quota, we depart."

"And if more than thirteen gather?"

"They get cut. And the one who does the cutting is the captain."

"Indeed. Understood."

The Giant of Annihilating Evil nodded. I looked around at those assembled and spoke.

"From this moment, gather around the one you wish to follow."

"Yes. It shall be done."

The first to answer and step forward was, of course, Albino.

"Hmm. The formation feels a bit odd, but……"

Raiga took his place next. Before long, the assembly was steadily dividing into seven groups.

The Star Guardians fell in behind the Giant of Annihilating Evil. The beasts gathered under the White King. The human contingent followed Kasim, the Radiant Transcendent. The elves formed ranks behind Auryll. And nearly everyone else crowded around me.

Albino, Raiga, the One-Horned Sovereign and the Two-Horned Sovereign, Serengeti, Saintess Seia, Hudson, Isaac, Valte, and Priest Andrew. That's ten locked in.

Including myself, that made eleven already. Only two slots remained. Yet nearly twenty had clustered before me.

Al Raum the Ancient Phoenix and the Guardian of Light must be too ambiguous in nature—no one seems willing to follow them.

Well, I wouldn't have gathered around those two either. I considered who to fill the last two places with. I hadn't named them as captains, but figures of comparable caliber were gathered in force. The criteria for captaincy had never been mere strength or honor alone—what mattered more was whether they could mix with me, or not.

Those two will do.

The rest would have no choice but to follow the Ancient Phoenix and the Guardian of Light. I selected the two most outstanding among those before me, and at last our preparations to enter the dungeon were complete.

I'll show you what it means to be beyond spec.

"This cannot be."

No matter how many times he scrubbed his eyes and looked again—no matter how many times he checked and rechecked—it was incomprehensible.

Quantifying and summing the attributes of evil. The condition the Forgotten God had set was a trial that should have been impossible to clear. As the Druid Albino had said, possessing only benevolent power was no easy feat. Power and martial might existed, by their very nature, for the sake of destruction—and the stronger they grew, the more they tended to take on the attributes of evil.

Even a steadfast holy priest was no exception. Every being carried some measure of evil affinity. It could approach zero, but it could never be zero.

This had nothing to do with one's honor rating.

Simply being honorable does not mean one is free of evil affinity.

High honor could erase karmic debt, for instance. Using an Indulgence could lower one's evil karma as well. But affinity and attributes were classified separately, and they could not be erased. A Good Affinity of 100 could not cancel out an Evil Affinity of 100. You simply had a Good Affinity of 100 and an Evil Affinity of 100—you could raise them in tandem to maintain a balance, and that was all.

Moreover, a high honor rating meant corresponding strength. Class, skills, equipment, mysteries, talent, traits, or the tools one possessed—all of these could raise Evil Affinity, and it was through the martial power gained from the sum of those things that honor was accumulated in the first place.

Thus, every existence contained both good and evil. That was what set this apart from honor. Honor and karma complemented each other, but Good Affinity and Evil Affinity did not. Each had to be calculated independently.

Even a god could not escape this framework.

……Their combined total should have far exceeded five hundred.

So of course every being possessed Evil Affinity. A framework even gods could not break free of. An absolute rule.

And the Evil Affinity of the ones standing before the Forgotten God was exceptionally high. Combined: 925. On average, each held an Evil Affinity exceeding 70—higher even than the average for the demonkin known as the Sovereigns of Evil. Proof, of course, of how strong they were.

…Except for one.

There was one among them that even the Forgotten God could not comprehend.

His Evil Affinity…… isn't even zero. It's negative?

It could approach zero, but it could never be zero—not unless the being had only just been born into the world. And negative? That was even more impossible.

And yet.

Right now, standing before the Forgotten God's eyes, was a creature whose Evil Affinity registered as a negative value. And the number itself defied all understanding, all acceptance.

……Just what was this creature?

An Evil Affinity approaching two thousand—and it was negative. Even a positive two thousand would have been absurd. How was a negative value even possible?

Was it erased?

As if it had been forcibly wiped clean. But that was absolutely impossible. Even if one discarded everything they possessed, the affinity value would only register as zero.

So what was this? This number the Forgotten God was seeing with his own eyes?

A god's authority could not be wrong. Especially not here, within the World Tree!

—N-No……!

He had not misread it. This was neither dream nor illusion—it was reality. Realizing his defeat, the Forgotten God screamed.

He had lost under conditions where losing should have been impossible. And he had been crushed utterly, one-sidedly.

—What are you? How can you exist outside the Truth?

There was a Truth that had existed since the beginning. Every being belonged to the Truth; none could refuse it or defy it. But there was one exception—things that stood outside the Truth. Things for which even the Truth itself could set no standard. Things commonly called beyond spec.

But that which was beyond spec was not meant to exist, and so it was destined to be eventually consumed by the Truth. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠And yet…… this creature was unmistakably beyond spec—and it was alive and well outside those bounds.

The Truth, which permitted no exceptions, should never have left such a being alone. From the beginning of all things, there had been only a single exception—

—Another one like him has appeared……!

The words came out rough—tinged with envy, or perhaps resentment. But even he moved in concealment, never revealing himself, existing only as a black hand behind the world. So what was this one? How could he set foot so brazenly even into the Primordial World?

But the Forgotten God's thoughts stopped there. Defeat in this place was no ordinary defeat.

—I… I cannot end like this. Once more, back to those brilliant days……!

The form of the dark cloud began to twist into chaos. It shrank endlessly, its presence fading. Even the screams gradually subsided.

And then—

The notification that three Wondrous Achievements had been completed all at once. That brought our total to five. Another knight order seemed to have completed one as well, but at this pace, comparison was meaningless.

CRACK!

Lightning struck before me. In its wake lay a small accessory, blackened and scorched, shaped like a dark cloud.

So this is a Divine Symbol.

I reached out and took it. Immediately—

Information related to the Symbol flooded in without end—and its contents were considerably shocking.

……Planting an activated Symbol in the ground turns it into a World Tree?

That meant every World Tree was, in the end, a god. The god itself had been a Symbol, and through a Symbol bearing divine rank, it had become a World Tree. Even the World Tree of Honor had once been some manner of god.

And the Forgotten Gods are simply gods who have lost their names.

This dark-cloud-shaped accessory—this one, too, had once been a god that lost its name. Activate it and plant it, and it becomes a World Tree. Place it at the associated Sanctum of the Forgotten God, and it reclaims its name.

……I have no particular desire to restore its name.

This one was a bastard. Low-class, a freak who fancied himself merciful. I didn't have the slightest inclination to give him his name back. Planting him and turning him into a proper Golden Rule shuttle seemed the better option. Or there might be other uses still.

The applications of a Divine Symbol can't end with just this.

It was also said to open the doors to sealed zones within this dungeon. Beyond that, there were surely countless uses I simply didn't know about yet.

I slipped the Divine Symbol into my pocket.

What remains……

Only one thing left. The Souls of Forgotten Knights. Fully five of them. I needed to use these to strengthen the knight order. But each soul had a name, and I was curious about the manner in which they provided enhancement.

I slowly raised my head. Small points of light were already circling around me. Those would be the Souls of Forgotten Knights.

Soon the souls began to chatter at me.

Souls murmuring different things, each of them. All of them seemed to be missing a screw. Among them, one—Banyan—was uniquely silent. Or rather, more precisely, he simply had nothing to say.

"Th-This light—why is it circling around me?"