Patience

······because the opponent had conquered every last stretch of the Star Lands.

With all manner of effects stacked and amplified, the man's attacks were no longer mere "little skewers."

Thud!

Every single strike was landing as a critical hit.

It was enough to drive anyone mad.

But it was still too early to give up.

"···My sword?"

······far too early to surrender.

The Giant of Evil Annihilation lowered his gaze to the blade buried in his chest. He reached out and strained with all his might, but the sword lodged in his body refused to come free.

This was not the holy sword Radiant Lu-Maria — it was the other blade the man had been carrying.

And that sword, driven deep into his flesh, began to drink.

Gulp. Gulp.

Greedily, it gorged itself on his blood.

Then—

Get everything, or lose everything.

Like most games, Pangenia had combination-type and evolution-type items. But such items were vanishingly rare, and even when you found one, finishing it was brutally difficult.

Among them, Lu- and the Transcendence Sword were infamous as the most demanding of all.

Lu- was a combination-type holy sword — you had to fuse it with another Myth-grade holy sword whose name ended in -Maria. Holy swords were hard enough to obtain on their own; requiring a perfect name-pair on top of that pushed the difficulty into the stratosphere.

Fortunately, I had been able to buy everything from the Golden Rule Shop. The real problem was the Transcendence Sword.

A growth-type blade. Honestly the hardest of all to complete.

The Transcendence Sword itself wasn't impossible to find. Ransack a dragon's treasure vault long enough and it turned up at low odds — a sword warped by centuries of soaking in the mana of Mythic species like dragons. That was the Transcendence Sword.

But finishing it was far harder than completing Lu-.

First, it had to grow through four stages — Extreme, True, Annihilation, Severing — and that alone was absurd. It only grew by drinking blood, and each higher stage piled on stricter conditions.

To reach Extreme you need the blood of about fifty people. To reach True, about a hundred.

Growing the sword forced you to become Chaos. Your karma score climbed until the brand of "Sinner" stamped itself on you automatically. A hundred-man killer who didn't hide his identity couldn't even enter an ordinary city. Major cities were completely off-limits — priests who could read karma usually stood at the gates or in front of the warp points.

Annihilation requires the blood of a transcendent Mythic species. The final stage, Severing, demands the blood of a Named Guardian species.

Those last two stages were especially outrageous. Transcendent Mythic species were rare enough to find, and you had to solo them for the kill to count. Named Guardian species? Exactly what it sounded like — star guardians who possessed actual names.

The Giant of Evil Annihilation satisfied both conditions. I had finally punched through and completed the growth.

And the finished sword became a combination-type item all over again, offering one more chance to leap higher.

I never thought I'd complete this a second time.

I had finished it once before, in the past. Fighting a Named Guardian species for the Holy Star, I had barely scraped out a win and completed the sword. And I had regretted it bitterly.

······I tried a combination that didn't match at all and wrecked the whole thing.

The two swords you feed into the combination. I had forced a pairing with clashing natures and gotten a useless hybrid for my trouble. The finished name was even "Sword of Great Chaos." It could induce confusion in an enemy, sure — but as a sword, it performed worse than the materials that went into it. Three precious blades, gone up in smoke.

Still, I had learned something from the disaster: never make the same mistake twice. Completing the Transcendence Sword hinged on the affinity of the swords you combined with it.

Light's Path. Lu-Maria. Both holy swords — and both refined to the extreme.

Both Unique-grade, both of the same nature. So I fed them in without hesitation. I even had a measure of confidence.

The Transcendence Sword has the potential to complete at Unique-grade or higher.

A blade born from centuries of Mythic mana. In other words—

The Transcendence Sword has a chance of gaining an Ego.

It could finish as a sword with a self — like Winter.

That was why I hadn't used Winter. There was the risk of my identity being exposed, yes — but more than that, I needed this gamble on the Transcendence Sword to succeed.

With trembling eyes, I looked at the sword completed inside the Giant of Evil Annihilation's chest.

Messages kept rising without end. But the one that seized my attention above all the rest was the line that appeared next.

A Hidden Trait evolution!

Nothingness — which had never once produced an anomaly — had evolved into Void the moment I acquired two Supreme-grade swords.

A fine tremor ran through me. The options on Patience, the Hidden Trait evolution — there was nothing here I could afford to throw away!

"······Why won't this damn thing come out······!"

Crrrk!

The Giant of Evil Annihilation twisted his face and heaved with everything ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠he had to wrench Patience free. But the blade buried in his chest refused to yield even to that monstrous strength. The harder he pulled, the more it chewed through flesh and drained his vitality.

"Ghhnnn!"

His whole body flushed red as he poured every ounce of force into yanking the sword free. Still it would not move.

BOOM!

At last the Giant of Evil Annihilation toppled onto his back, balance lost from overexertion.

Tap—!

I did not waste the opening. I sprang onto him at once, planted my feet on his chest, and seized the hilt of Patience.

In that instant—

As expected. It has an Ego.

Zrrrrr!

Patience trembled. It did not speak the way Winter did, but I could feel its will. The sword vibrated in a way only I could sense, and it felt for all the world like—

A puppy wagging its tail.

······exactly like a dog so happy it couldn't stop wagging.

That was when it happened.

"Druid of the Golden Rule! Are you unharmed?"

"···Oh-ho."

Right on cue, Albino and Raiga appeared in the distance.

"D-did you bring down the Giant of Evil Annihilation?!"

"Haaah······!"

One after another, every knight of the order came into view. There was a slight misunderstanding — I had merely climbed onto a giant who had toppled himself while straining — but from where they stood, it looked as though I had felled him.

The problem was that our knight order was not the only audience for this scene.

"Th-the Giant of Evil Annihilation······!"

"Wh-what in the world happened in the meantime?!"

The other star guardians were present as well — all of them held as hostages. Some looked combat-incapable; others had voluntarily surrendered the fight to keep their fellow star guardians alive.

"······I'm sorry, Giant of Evil Annihilation. Those two captured so many of ours that we couldn't continue the battle. ···Though you don't look much better yourself."

One among them — a star guardian in the form of a massive wolf — offered the giant an apology. "Those two" meant Albino and Raiga.

The strongest combination. While I bought time, Albino and Raiga — ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠whom I had judged to have no equal — had delivered the overwhelming result I expected. Perhaps because I had ordered them not to kill the star guardians, they had used hostages to force a total surrender. I hadn't anticipated that, but—

Thankfully, no casualties.

There were wounded, but no dead.

I turned my head and looked down at the Giant of Evil Annihilation sprawled beneath my feet.

"Are you going to keep going?"

"······."

"Doesn't look like a particularly good option."

"······."

The Giant of Evil Annihilation was silent for a long while. He could still fight if he wanted to. His vitality was barely spent. He was confident he could hold out against every one of them. He might even run out the timer and force a draw.

But······.

The Giant of Evil Annihilation looked at the living star guardians. He could have killed them all — and yet every one of them had been left alive. Even in a contest structured as mutual slaughter.

Because the Druid of the Golden Rule had wished it so. Because that man had trusted and commanded his knights more completely than the giant himself ever had.

The Giant of Evil Annihilation closed his eyes.

And then—

"······We concede defeat."

······for the first time in his life, he acknowledged that he had lost.

In that moment—

The same choices rose the moment we crossed the threshold. There was nothing left to consider.

I roughly understood the definition of a Boss Room now.

Get everything, or lose everything.

And this time, the Forgotten God had joined from the very start.

Of course — that only suited me better.

A stage made for me.

Taming monsters. Evolving them. In that field, I was a specialist.

Baby Hydragon

"······The star guardians look rather worse for wear."

In the place the Golden Rule Knight Order had left behind, the massive wolf that still lingered on the Star Lands broke the silence.

Mythic beasts who had once been called star guardians with pride — their dignity and self-respect had been thoroughly shattered.

"Black Swamp Wolf. Had you fought with your full strength, you would not have lost every star so easily."

The Giant of Evil Annihilation, having put himself back in order, shook his head as he spoke.

The Black Swamp Wolf.