The Tyrant's Strategy
Right after the disaster zone ended, Tuto, the dispatch leader of the Kogogi herd in the Dessert Desert, finally returned to his homeland after what felt like roughly 120 years.
“It’s been long……! Really long……!”
When he departed, he had been a Level 7 Epic Ascendant. Now he returned as a Level 12 Legendary Ascendant.
It wasn’t merely a five-level increase. He had even cleared the promotion exam from Level 10 to 11 by his own strength. Among every creation dispatched to the Dessert Desert, Tuto’s growth shone the brightest.
Nyaltartep had already reached Level 13 in that time and remained an untouchable opponent, yet Tuto had still managed to spar with Chaltteoggua before leaving, crawl all the way to the Nectar Well, fell dozens of Bisyakheet, drink raw nectar, tear off one of Abhojuth’s tentacles, and even burst one of Yogur-tosoth’s eyeballs. He had collected every achievement worth boasting about.
His subordinates, who had set out as nothing more than elite mages rather than heroes, had endured such hardship that many transcended their upper ranks entirely, becoming embodiments or even Epic Ascendants themselves.
“I never imagined I would miss our desolate homeland this much.”
“Indeed. I’m sick of grass and beasts! I’d rather have this wasteland littered with corpses.”
Sesaisa’s world had grown so barren that even those returning after 120 years called it “a wasteland littered with corpses.” While expanding the artificial Spiritual Realm beyond its natural limits, Sesaisa had bulldozed every terrain feature and filled the land with grotesque structures woven from nerves, brains, and the corpses and souls of the defeated.
Still, there were a fair number of acorn trees left. Biin’s consulting had preserved a few “green belt” regions under nature protection. Everything else, aside from the bare minimum needed for agriculture, remained a corpse-strewn wasteland.
Tuto and his party flew through the sky on their own mysteries and approached the colossal Kogogi at the center of the world—Sesaisa’s Avatar, the strongest creation forged from the world’s own latent power.
“Our creator. We have returned. We fought and overcame those dreadful evil spawns in the Dessert Desert, and we have grown this strong.”
They brought with them the plant seeds Nyaltartep had prepared and the addictive herbs that worked especially well on Kogogi. These strange substances could even awaken new mysteries when inhaled continuously.
Because the Avatar’s body was enormous, they had prepared an extremely potent quantity—several times what their own size would require—and burned it to powder, sealing it in a pouch to be held to the nose.
When they placed the pouch against Sesaisa’s long trunk and lit it, Sesaisa’s eyes flashed wide. Inhaling the scent, his mouth split into a grin as he looked down upon Tuto and his followers.
“I commend you, my creations. To think you could experience something this intense. As expected, a body of flesh is a fine thing……!”
Then, with a booming laugh, Sesaisa decided to grant them a reward worthy of their 120 years of hardship—the kind of reward intense enough to make such suffering tolerable.
“Here. Feel 120 years’ worth of ‘happiness.’”
“Ooooooh!”
Sesaisa extracted only the purest positive emotions—happiness, joy, pleasure—from the vast currents linking himself, every Kogogi, and the world itself, then poured them over the returnees.
“O-Ooooooooh!”
An overwhelming wave of bliss crashed down, so powerful that even their high Mental stats could barely endure it. Ecstasy. Nirvana. Climax. A satisfaction beyond any words, flooding their bodies and souls with every conceivable form of contentment.
“Eheheheheheeh!”
Their sturdy physiques barely held together. Their nervous systems felt ready to burn out, their minds on the verge of collapse. Since Sesaisa wanted the reward to last rather than simply intensify, he arranged for the returnees to drift in that endless satisfaction for more than ten years—until the next collision.
“I shall make good use of the knowledge you brought back.”
While they basked in that pleasure, he copied portions of the currents flowing through their brains and seamlessly integrated them into the great flow seated upon his throne. Tuto’s experiences would not end with him alone; they would become a positive legacy that every Kogogi could swim through endlessly within that vast current.
Should Tuto ever die—though that seemed unlikely for some time—his soul would be drawn into the artificial Spiritual Realm densely installed throughout the Great Boundary leading to the underworld. There it would be absorbed, its every scrap of knowledge extracted, and forced to swim through that eternal moment until the day Sesaisa was defeated.
This was the tyrant’s way. He drove his creations mercilessly, then repaid them with pleasure so overwhelming it far exceeded what they believed they deserved.
Sesaisa’s Kogogi found Nyaltartep’s herbs pleasant enough, but the infinite happiness Sesaisa distilled and bestowed upon them was far superior.
That was only natural. Nyaltartep’s herbs merely provided temporary, artificial stimulation the body could not normally feel, whereas Sesaisa’s gift pushed every biologically possible sensation to its absolute limit.
Such blessings, however, could not be savored for long. Unless one had endured 120 years of hardship in the Dessert Desert like Tuto’s group, the pleasure lasted only a fraction as long.
After manipulating that massive torrent of emotion and spirit, Sesaisa once again linked his Avatar to the world’s entire flow—an artificially recreated Deity-World Oneness. Though its power fell far short of the true mythic trait, the fact that he had reproduced a mythic-grade characteristic at this stage alone proved Sesaisa’s extraordinary talent.
Controlling every current flowing through the world with his Avatar’s immense stats, Sesaisa once more wore a smile so savage it was almost terrifying.
“Oh? There are those who defy me.”
Sesaisa knew the physical limits of flesh and pushed his creations right up to that edge. Occasionally, however, certain individuals appeared. They had not yet reached their physical limit, yet they claimed they could no longer endure the pain and refused to become slaves to pleasure, abandoning their work to flee.
He never let them escape. Sesaisa’s will, connected to the entire world, extracted the opposite currents from those he had drawn before—concentrated emotions of pain, despair, terror, and horror—and drove them into the deserters.
“Aaaaaaaaagh!”
Their bodies and souls simply melted under the endless agony. Sesaisa reshaped the melted remains into new Spiritual Realm circuits. As an apology to the other laborers who would now have to work harder because of the deserter’s absence, he granted them five minutes of pleasure before urging the “baby factory” to produce a replacement worker at once.
Remarkably, while performing these operations, Sesaisa experienced both that infinite pleasure and infinite pain simultaneously—more intensely whenever he exercised his authority directly.
Pleasure was easy to understand, but finding joy in pain was a somewhat harder sentiment to grasp. Yet Sesaisa cherished pain just as much as pleasure. It was the genuine suffering that only a body of flesh could feel.
Just as some drew life’s vitality from unpleasant emotions, just as some sought out horror films or self-harm, Sesaisa devoted himself to experiencing everything a living being could feel through his own flesh alone.
“Ah. This is wonderful. Truly sweet.”
But no sensation compared to the pleasure of annihilating an opponent’s soul. The feeling of completely “ending” someone! The means to terminate an eternal, infinite flow!
To erase, in a single instant, the countless years of experience and accumulated time a being had gathered while alive—rendering them nonexistent in this world!
Merely performing that act allowed Sesaisa to drown in a supreme sensation that material life-forms could never comprehend.
“Oh. ‘Friends’ have arrived in the meeting room.”
Even more remarkable was that, while savoring such sensations, his outward appearance remained perfectly composed, maintaining the dignified bearing of a noble.
Sesaisa let his meeting-room clone handle conversations while his divine mind focused on cartel activities and community engagement. His Avatar continued reshaping the world.
Most players used the mythic trait Avatar for combat. Sesaisa, however, had leveraged his exceptionally high Mental, Intelligence, and Mana stats to connect it to the entire world and unify it under his will. His Spiritual Realm, built upon the pinnacle of spiritual flow studies and mystical knowledge he shared with no other Meteor, allowed him to control everything simply by sitting cross-legged upon his throne. In the beginning he had accidentally destroyed half the world while drawing in underworld currents or reduced Kogogi to literal lumps of meat by overexerting his power, but now he maintained perfect control.
Thus he needed no fellow gods. Everything in the world existed according to his will; nothing could escape him; all things grew alongside him and would perish alongside him.
If this was not tyranny, what was?
“Still not enough. I have yet to push the knowledge I possess to its absolute limit.”
His Industry and Technology levels were insufficient. The world’s resources and the quantity of available flows were still too meager to fully manifest his mystical knowledge.
In his world there was too little material substance, and the transcendent authority that had been impossible for a mere marquis now existed only in theory. The moment he realized that hypothetical structure, he would become a true “god” capable of manipulating not only his own world but every opposing world at will—controlling everything from his throne.
That was Sesaisa’s main plan. Strictly speaking, until that technological singularity arrived, he was merely enduring by receiving as much consulting as possible while groveling and surviving.
If I truly ascend to the seat of a god, I could do this to the entire universe.
What kind of sensation would that be? What was it truly like to wield omnipotence over the world?
Perhaps the organizers already knew. If they could manipulate the flow of time at will and create a game spanning every dimension and the entire universe, then they were true gods among gods.
“Well now, Lord Sesaisa. It would be troublesome if you overvalue yourself too much.”
His angel said so, yet Sesaisa could only find the angel itself the most suspicious of all.
How could it read minds?
And how could nothing interfere with its flow?
Above all, why could the world’s creations never perceive the angel no matter what they tried?
At a glance it seemed like a three-way conversation involving the angel and the creations, but Sesaisa knew the angels revealed themselves only to players and remained completely invisible to creations.
As though the creations were unworthy of seeing them.
How fascinating!
After all, Sesaisa’s profession was that of a scholar. Discovering such unknowns was a pleasure in itself.
Could he one day reach a state where he could freely create, annihilate, and command even angels?
“Haha…… It’s not impossible. I was created too, after all.”
Listening to the angel’s awkward laughter—one that showed not the slightest concern about being threatened—Sesaisa prepared for the eleventh collision.
First, he had to win. Together with the comrades called meteors, he would destroy and annihilate everything.
And if he had to name the one meteor he must be most wary of, it was undoubtedly Mihun.
That suspicious True Immortal who could not even be annihilated. If they fought, Mihun would have to be the final opponent. Sesaisa both eagerly anticipated and worried about that future.
He could enjoy both emotions.