A Score Beyond Measure
—Kakakakakakakaaah!
Hell stood there with both arms full of something. Hidden beneath his cloak, the objects were hard to make out—until Hell stuffed one straight into his mouth.
Crunch!
—Kakakakaaah!
He let out an even louder peal of laughter, as if it were delicious.
"Apples?"
"Y-you mustn't eat those! Those are unfinished Fruits of Good and Evil—they haven't even been completed yet…!"
Crunch! Crunch!
Chomp chomp chomp!
Buuuuurp~
In an instant, the unfinished Fruits of Good and Evil vanished.
"Good heavens…"
Hypnos pressed a hand to his forehead, then spoke.
"The fact that a Guardian of the Gate is here with us… means the Gate itself must have fallen from the Heavenly Realm—down into Pangenia."
"Hell isn't the only one. There are eleven more brothers who look just like him."
"The Twelve Guardians who protect the Gate. Did anyone come with them, by any chance?"
"You mean the sleeping Emperor of the Empire?"
"I do not know who that is, but he would know the Gate's whereabouts."
The one who had plummeted into Pangenia clutching an Orthodox egg.
That was the current Emperor of the Empire.
And to think he had truly come from the Heavenly Realm.
He had opened the Gate and descended—so of course he would know where it was.
But the Emperor was asleep.
Moreover, Wilhelm was highly likely to carry the Emperor's blood. The claim that Wilhelm had been born of a being from the Heavenly Realm—his soul, vast and beautiful, seemed to prove it. Above all, Wilhelm's body had grown without end; if he truly descended from a heavenly bloodline, that endless growth made perfect sense.
And that body is now in the Demon King's possession.
…This could be far bigger than I'd thought.
The Demon King had never shown himself directly, so it was hard to gauge—but looking at the Lords of Hell, resurrected and stronger than ever, he would be no easy opponent.
In the end, all of this is the thrashing of those who want to reach the Heavenly Realm.
If my guess was right—
MintChocoIsDelicious, Bluebird, the Demon King.
Every party involved wanted Heaven to open.
But I did not.
No matter how I turned it over, that place offered nothing but harm.
In a single instant, I reached my conclusion.
"I'll have to kill the Emperor."
…I would kill the Emperor.
If the one who knew the Gate's location disappeared, Heaven would never open.
The 2nd Generation Awakened grew at a terrifying pace.
After surviving the tutorial on God's Island, and with the full backing of the major guilds, they began blasting through the Main Quests faster than anyone else.
Choi Kangnam was the man who had reaped the greatest benefits among them.
Northern Temple cleared!
Main Quest 6: Clear a Party Dungeon completed.
Settling results…
An overwhelming performance that even the Constellations of the Hall of One Hundred Constellations would find astonishing!
Total Score: 370!
Hall of Fame rankings have been updated.
"Uwaaaaaaah!"
The moment he stepped out of the dungeon, Choi Kangnam—coated head to toe in dust—let out a roar.
He had finally surpassed it.
Randolph's score!
He had prepared with obsessive, grinding determination for the sole purpose of overtaking Randolph. Once inside the dungeon, he had fretted over every last detail, leaving nothing to chance.
True, Randolph had cleared the Demigod Trait Dungeon—the most brutal of all party dungeons. But the Northern Temple that Choi Kangnam had cleared was a place that could never be beaten without overwhelming genius.
"I did it—!!!"
The effort and sacrifice of his party members.
And Choi Kangnam's own genius—at last, it had shone through.
He had proven himself the absolute best among the 2nd Generation Awakened.
With trembling eyes, Choi Kangnam looked at the Hall of Fame once more.
1st — Choi Kangnam (370)
1st — Arin (370)
3rd — Randolph (350)
4th — Wilhelm (345)
"I am the strongest—!!!"
Choi Kangnam cheered.
How many times had he brushed against death? Easily more than twenty.
You're probably challenging a party dungeon around now too, Park Hyunmyung.
But this time was different.
Park Hyunmyung would never surpass him. He had already overtaken both Randolph and Wilhelm—how could anyone climb past that?
"Do not get carried away."
"…Master. But—"
"I said don't."
"…"
Choi Kangnam shut his mouth.
The woman he called Master stood beside him—Arin, Vice President of the Hero Association.
More beautiful, more powerful, and wiser than anyone.
In truth, none of this would have been possible without her. Without Arin's help, he never could have scored that high.
Still, he was happy.
I am the strongest—!!!
He shouted it over and over in his heart.
Choi Kangnam intended to keep growing stronger, to earn Arin's favor—and eventually rise all the way to the Association President's seat.
Whether Choi Kangnam cheered or not—
Let's compete, then.
Arin—no, Basara, the Seventh Lord of Hell—smiled inwardly.
Could Park Hyunmyung surpass the score she had engineered?
Come to think of it, Basara had seized an Awakener's body, yet she had never pushed the Main Quests herself. Merely overtaking Randolph and Wilhelm's achievements would not be enough.
Basara wanted to compete with Park Hyunmyung.
"Huh…?"
That was when Choi Kangnam screamed.
…
Even Basara could not help but be startled.
Because—
Hall of Fame rankings have been updated.
Once again, their Hall of Fame rankings had shifted.
Which meant someone had reclaimed first place.
When Basara saw the name and the score—
"…You lunatic."
—she could only let out a hollow laugh.
The competition wasn't even a competition. It was absurd.
And Choi Kangnam—
"W-what? That's a lie, right? That's impossible—aaaaaagh! Guh!"
—screamed, clutched the back of his neck, and collapsed unconscious on the spot.
The Constellation of Purity.
Basara did not so much as glance at the fainted Choi Kangnam. Passing out over something this trivial—she couldn't even spare him a look of contempt. It would have been a waste.
Instead, she fixed her attention on the message that had appeared.
The Hall of Fame rankings had been overturned. Everyone currently progressing through Main Quest 6 would have received the same notification—and every single person who checked the rankings would react exactly as she had.
The score was simply… wrong.
Only moments ago, 370 points had seized first place. Now a number three times that size had appeared—and as if that weren't enough, a question mark was attached to it.
In other words—
Over a thousand points. Impossible to estimate by ordinary means…
He had accomplished something so unfathomable that the System's own scoring method could not even calculate it.
But the scoring method Basara had experienced was quite rational. It always produced scores within a range everyone could understand. It never spat out question marks.
Which meant the reference data used for scoring was piled as high as a mountain.
It records every trial accumulated over countless ages, and every achievement of the heroes who overcame those trials—then scores against that standard.
When Basara had seized this body, she had also grasped the nature of the System. The System she understood was a vast repository of information that had existed for an immeasurably long time.
The Main Quests had been designed along the footprints of heroes who left great achievements, and scores were calculated using those heroes as the baseline. Naturally, each Main Quest had a ceiling on the points it could award.
Information accumulated over eons. Every type of trial and every method of resolving it would be contained within. Unless someone solved a trial in a way that simply did not exist in this world, a truly new challenge was impossible.
He cleared a dungeon of a kind that does not exist in this world—or one that has never appeared before.
A question mark meant an entirely new method had been introduced. Either a completely new type of dungeon unknown to the System's data had appeared, or he had solved a dungeon through some utterly impossible, outlandish method.
Perhaps both.
Either way, it was self-evident that he had far exceeded the bounds of the ordinary.
Basara was genuinely curious.
"…Just what kind of dungeon did you clear?"
Park Hyunmyung.
What dungeon had he conquered?
And…
What did you obtain?
What reward had he received?
Even the reward for briefly reclaiming first place with 370 points had been enormous. The reward systems of the System and the Hall of One Hundred Constellations were designed to reliably strengthen humanity—and they were obligated to produce rewards commensurate with the score. That was how the System worked.
So she truly had no idea.
…What would be given to someone who had resolved an achievement beyond all estimation?
The Hall of One Hundred Constellations.
The Constellation of the Most Radiant Hero felt a dizzying disorientation—as if every concept he had ever held had been shattered to pieces. He could not bear it alone, so he spoke to the 101st Constellation, the Constellation of Purity.
"Constellation of Purity. …Is the Hall of a Hundred Gods the predecessor of the Hall of One Hundred Constellations?"
The Hall of One Hundred Constellations—a nesting place for countless stars. There, the great starlights called Constellations dwelled and watched the stories of humans. Yet no one truly understood the Hall's true nature.
Save for one.
Save for the 101st Constellation, who should never have been able to appear.
"Oho. So you have finally reached a Hidden Story."
The Constellation of Purity—a vast question mark engraved across his face—nodded.
He was the being who had appeared when Randolph completed the Hidden Quest born from the trial of becoming Master of the Mountain of the Cultivator. The moment sword proficiency reached Level 32, the Master of All Mountains had created this "Purity."
With his appearance, the Constellations of this Hall of One Hundred Constellations had learned of other Halls. But they, too, had questions—about why the Hall of One Hundred Constellations even existed.
And then… the Constellation of the Radiant Hero, who had been watching both Randolph and Park Hyunmyung, had learned the truth through their stories.
"Indeed. The Hall of One Hundred Constellations is an imitation—a replica of the Hall of a Hundred Gods, where the gods dwelled in ages long past."
The Constellation of Purity nodded.
The gods of the Hall of a Hundred Gods had bestowed trials upon mortals and granted rewards, so that mortals might forge their own path through the world. Thus humanity entered a golden age.
But after the appearance of Ruin, everything burned to ash and vanished.
The Constellation of Purity also knew why the Hall of One Hundred Constellations had been rebuilt.
"The Hall of One Hundred Constellations was created for the resurrection of the Hall of a Hundred Gods."
"The resurrection of the Hall of a Hundred Gods… You mean we become gods?"
"What are you talking about? You are already a god."
"…!!!"
The Constellation of the Most Radiant Hero's eyes flew wide open.
What was a Constellation? Beings who had left footprints great enough to become stars.
And yet the Constellation of Purity was saying that even that was not the full truth. They were already gods—only—
"You have merely been forgotten."
…Merely forgotten.
"This is a story you yourself agreed to. No—every Constellation of every Hall of One Hundred Constellations agreed. To be forgotten. Only the Constellations of a single Hall—the one that gathered the most Stories—would reclaim their names. And through that, they would earn the chance to become complete gods once more."
"…What… are you saying?"
"The gods who faced Ruin regretted it. Even on the brink of destruction, they had failed to unite. But they all knew that even if given another chance, the ending would be the same. They would fracture and fall into chaos again."
These were gods who had already grown far too vast. Prejudices and stubbornness accumulated over uncountable ages could not simply be discarded. And there were far too many gods. Selection and concentration were required.
"So they abandoned their names and memories?"
They had chosen to cast aside their names and be forgotten so they could start from the beginning—so they could unite without any prejudice. So that only a fixed number of gods would be resurrected, bound by stronger ties.
In the golden age, there had simply been too many gods.
The Constellation of Purity nodded.
"Ah. They agreed that only by building everything again—from the absolute beginning—could they unite, could they have a chance of victory. Only then—"
The Constellation of Purity shrugged and continued.
"—only then could they smash the Heavenly Realm to pieces. Or so they thought."
A blood feud.
To reverse the destruction—to annihilate the Heavenly Realm that had ruined their beautiful world.
They had abandoned their own names. They had chosen to forget every memory.
And the Constellation of the Most Radiant Hero had agreed to it as well.
"How do you know all of this?"
"I already told you. I once entered the Gate of Truth and came back out."
"Don't tell me… that 'Mouth' I saw—was that Truth itself?"
The Constellation of the Most Radiant Hero.
Once, he had lost every last starlight and stood on the verge of annihilation. But in the darkness of death he had seen a Mouth, and by offering up all the Stories he had accumulated, he had been reborn—from the Constellation of the Radiant Hero into the Constellation of the Most Radiant Hero.
At this, the Constellation of Purity shook his head.
"No. It is a key. Incomplete still—but a tool capable of opening the Gate of Truth."
A key?