4

The genders, personalities, and hidden ambitions of the ten lords who made up the Council of Ten in the Dark Territory were varied, but there was one thing they all shared in common.

It was that they understood, better and clearer than anyone else, the one law that power rules all.

In a sense, their proof was in the fact that this law was carved into their souls from childhood, and that their unceasing efforts—whether in personal improvement or elimination of rivals—had ensured that they were the fittest to survive and reach the top of their dog-eat-dog world.

And so, when the commander of the dark knights brigade, kneeling at the right end of their line, launched himself at the emperor with his sword drawn, none of the other nine lords were truly surprised by his actions.

If anything, more of them were impressed at the particulars—He’s doing it now? How bold. Even the chiefs of the orcs and ogres, whose intelligence and language ability had stagnated over the last three centuries, flashed their beady eyes as they realized they would get a chance to see just how strong their emperor actually was. The young pugilist, who respected Shasta as a fellow devotee of the art of combat, even secretly rooted for the knight to cut down his opponent now that he had committed to battle.

Of these figures, there were two who predicted this would happen, seconds before it did.

One was Dee Eye Ell, chancellor of the dark mages guild. She was a fierce rival of Shasta’s and recognized Lipia because she herself had plotted to kidnap the dark general’s lover.

So she was more shocked when she saw Lipia’s head encased in ice than when Shasta made his move. She had a hunch that he might draw his blade in anger, and she began to consider what she would do when it happened.

She could cast her arts on him from behind and attempt to ingratiate herself to the emperor. But ultimately, Dee chose to watch. If Shasta lost, that was all well and good, and if he somehow actually won, he would be gravely injured, and she could burn her fiercest rival alive so that she had control of the land of darkness. On the inside, Dee grinned, then licked her lips to hide her rising excitement.

There was one other figure who sensed the dark general’s rebellion ahead of time.

And this one acted instantly.

Shasta swung back his blade, his entire being dedicated only to the act of killing.

Judging by the toughness of the Incarnation in his blade alone, it was indeed greater than the time he had attempted to kill Commander Bercouli. The ferocity of his rage and mourning brought about the Perfect Control state instantly, when it typically required a long chanted command first.

Shasta’s long katana Oborogasumi was a Divine Object automatically generated about two hundred years ago by the Underworld from its VRMMO package assets. Its natural element was water, and in responding to Shasta’s overwhelming urge to kill, it transformed its deadly power into a kind of misty shadow form.

Under Perfect Weapon Control, Oborogasumi completely shortcut the normal, accepted attacking process of any sword: to deal damage by severing or piercing the target with the edge of the blade. Any target that made contact with the long strip of mist suffered slashing-type damage to their life value. In other words, no method of defense worked, aside from avoidance altogether.

Emperor Vecta (aka Gabriel Miller) drew his own blade the moment Shasta drew his, and the god of darkness attempted to strike back at his opponent’s swing.

If it had happened in this way, Shasta’s blade of mist would have passed through Gabriel’s and delivered its payload of compressed murder directly into his body.

But just before his lightning-quick strike could leap forth, Shasta simply froze where he was standing.

Somehow, there was a throwing needle sunk deep into the left flank of the dark general’s armor in a tiny gap between its thick plates. Behind him, a man as thin as a ghost stood up, his body covered by dark-gray robes.

It was the head of the assassins guild, Fu Za. He was the least noteworthy of the ten lords, preferring to stay quietly in the shadows with hardly a word at the council meetings. He slipped silently forward, drawing the most attention he had ever received in his life.

Fu Za recognized Shasta’s rebellion because he was the most cowardly and sensitive of all the lords.

The assassins guild was a place where those without power stuck together. Those who were given life without physical or magical strength, without money, without any kind of power to their names—and who also refused to live the tortured life of a slave—came together to advance the ways of poison, which was despised even in the Dark Territory.

The small number of insects, snakes, and plants with poisonous qualities in the Underworld had been placed there for the sake of the final stress test. So their effects were limited and easy enough for the residents to avoid with a proper amount of knowledge. In other words, poison was not strong enough to counteract the power of the dark arts or swordfighting.

But the ones who created the assassins guild developed a process of concentration that Rath never envisioned to produce ever stronger poisons over years and years. The guild’s headquarters, deep below the slums of the castle town, featured rows and rows of massive pots that had been boiling poisons continuously for over a century. Other pots held snakes found from all over, which were placed together so they would eat one another and develop greater venom.

However, when they finally perfected a lethal poison, it led to tragedy: assassination within the guild. Unlike with swords or arts, slow-acting poison made it very difficult to identify the aggressor.

Naturally, the one who led the guild would have to be extremely cowardly to survive. Enough to cower away from the sight (or presence) of others and so sensitive as to pick up the tiniest buds of malice in others.

And when Shasta saw Lipia’s head in the ice, Fu Za sensed his instant rush of rage more keenly and strongly than the smell of fresh blood itself. Shasta, the dark general, was also the single greatest target of Fu Za’s hatred.

How many times had he drawn up assassination plans and scrapped them? He was certain that he could perform the actual killing. But once it became clear that poison was the cause, everyone would know it was the assassins guild’s work. Within an hour of Shasta’s death, the mighty dark knights brigade would charge into the headquarters and slaughter them all. The assassins didn’t stand a chance in a direct fight.

But perhaps now, in this very moment…

He had a very good rationale for piercing his hated enemy with a sharp, poisoned needle. The act of drawing his weapon in the emperor’s presence instantly meant Shasta was no longer the dark general or a council member, just a simple outlaw.

Fu Za pulled out and threw a weapon that had been passed down continuously through the leadership position of the guild over the years. It was a very thin needle made of a dangerous metal called Ruberyl’s poisoned steel that contained a paralyzing substance of its own. The needle was hollow, so it could store other poisons as well.

Held within the weapon was a poison that was the apex of the guild’s efforts. They took fifty thousand of a rare creature called the bloodcurdle leech and ground them into a liquid, then filtered and concentrated the result many times, until they were left with just a single drop of poison. Because all their attempts to breed and raise the leeches themselves had failed, it took an unfathomable amount of effort to produce this tiny drop.

Fu Za, of course, had no way of knowing that the animals that lived in the Underworld were generated by the system to meet certain determined density levels across an area, and therefore, any animal that fell outside of livestock units like sheep and cows could not be intentionally bred by humans whatsoever.

So the poisoned needle that Fu Za hurled, both in material and poison content, represented the concentrated work of the entire assassins guild in one item. It was the synthesis of the collective hatred of the weak, distilled over centuries of torment.

Because Shasta had put all his willpower into the sword in his hand, he was not conscious of any pain from the poison needle embedded deep into his flesh.

All he knew was that the moment he tried to leap for the throne, he was stunned to find that his entire body felt as heavy as lead. The strength went out of his legs, and he fell loudly to one knee before finally noticing the foreign object lodged in his left side.

Poison…

Before the icy chill could paralyze his hands, he quickly pulled the needle free. It was so thin and fragile—barely a weapon—but when he saw how it shone a vicious green color, Shasta recognized Ruberyl’s poisoned steel and immediately began to chant a counter-art.

But the chill spread from his left flank through his whole body with terrifying speed, reaching his mouth. Before he could even say the system-call prompt, his tongue was numb, and he could not even grind his teeth together.

Finally, his right arm gradually lowered the sword, undoing the Perfect Control status. The gray mist returned to its physical form: a long blade with its tip dragging on the floor.

Shasta wound up in the exact same position—lowered head and left knee on the ground—as he’d been in before he’d made up his mind to attack the emperor. A dark robe passed silently through his vision.

Fu Za. To think it would be this man, of all people.

“…Undone by such a minor, insignificant person. Is that what you’re thinking, Vixur?” said a hissing, sibilant voice from overhead. The only thing Shasta could move on his body was his eyelids, which he squinted.

How dare you call me by that name…

“You’re probably thinking, ‘You have no right to refer to me by name.’ But actually, this is not the first time I’ve called you Vixur.”

The assassin bent his knee so he could crouch next to Shasta, putting his face into view. But the heavy hood blocked the light, leaving everything but his jutting chin hidden in darkness.

The chin trembled, and that raspy, haunting voice said, “You probably…don’t remember. You wouldn’t recall the faces of all the children you beat in the youth training academy. Nor the one who threw himself into the canal out of sheer shame, never to return.”

What? What is he talking about? Youth training academy?

Shasta was the child of a simple knight, so from the age he was old enough to hold a wooden sword, he was forced into the children’s training academy attached to the dark knights brigade. After that point, his only memories were of training all day to survive. He won in every selection test, was eventually made an officer of the brigade, and was taken under the wing of his master, the previous commander. Half his life had passed in such a rush that he never had the time to reflect on it.

Of course he could not remember. How would he remember the names of the children he’d swung swords with over thirty years ago?

“…But you see, I’ve never forgotten you for a day of my life. The assassins guild picked me up out of the culvert where I washed up, and I was worked like a slave for years and years. I still never forgot. I gained knowledge, developed many new poisons, and finally clawed my way up to head of the guild. I lost many things in exchange…but it was all in search of vengeance against you, Vixur.”

When the twisted voice paused, the hood tilted just a tiny bit, and Shasta saw Fu Za’s real face.

He did not receive a flood of old memories. In fact, even if Shasta perfectly remembered all his old classmates, he would not have recalled this one’s name. Perhaps it was the effects of poison—Fu Za’s face was horribly melted and disfigured, a countenance that would frighten even an orc.

The hood fell forward again, leaving only two glittering eyes under its darkness.

“The poison I injected into you was developed to kill you and created drop by drop through an excruciatingly long process. Our tests found that even a great land dragon with a life of over thirty thousand could be killed in an hour with it. Based on your strength and total life, I would give you another two or three minutes. So…now it is time for you to give back the hatred and humiliation I left with you.”

Hatred? Shasta looked away from Fu Za’s eyes and down at the poison needle on the black-marble floor. I put my anger and hatred into attempting to kill the emperor. Fu Za put the same power into this needle in an attempt to kill me. That’s why my blade came to a stop. Murder Incarnate cannot defeat Righteous Incarnate. Years ago, I grasped the secret after my battle with Commander Bercouli…and at the very, very end, I forgot that lesson…

He couldn’t even maintain his kneeling position anymore. Shasta fell hard to the stone on his left shoulder.

Through his hazy vision beyond that poisoned needle—there was a block of ice resting on a silver tray.

The avenger Fu Za, once known as Fuelius Zargatis, watched very closely, intent on savoring the moment of his greatest delight now that it was finally here.

Shasta, the dark general, who had taken every glory he ever wanted, now lay at Fu Za’s feet. His skin, smooth for one his age, was now ashen, his formerly sharp eyes were dull, and his breath was short and shallow.

It was a miserable, pathetic death.

And Shasta’s end was also proof that poisoning techniques were superior to sword techniques or dark arts. The confluence of Ruberyl’s poisoned steel and bloodcurdle leeches was powerful enough to leave a target instantly unable to fight or chant—and to kill them soon after.

Emperor Vecta on the throne would have realized the value of the assassins guild from this incident. When they figured out a way to mass-produce this new poison, there would no longer be any need to worry about what the knights and mages thought. He could take his real name back and return to the Zargatis family, which had abandoned him, as the rightful conqueror…

So absorbed was Fu Za in his long-awaited moment of pleasure that he failed to notice Shasta’s sword at the corner of his vision turning back into mist.

Lipia.

Just before his life hit bottom, Shasta silently spoke the name of the one woman he had ever loved.

Lipia had almost certainly attempted to kill the emperor because she was praying for the arrival of the new era Shasta spoke to her about. She surely believed that if the three-hundred-year war ended and a new law and order shone upon the land of darkness, even the orphans whose only options in life were starvation or slavery might have the right to live happily.

Fu Za…You claim I beat you in the youth training academy? And unable to bear the shame, you threw yourself into the river?

At least you had that opportunity. Your parents put you in school and gave you three meals a day, along with a warm bed and a roof to stave off the elements. How many lives in this world are deprived of even that minimum right, treated like garbage, and fated to vanish while they are still young?

Lipia gave up her life in an attempt to make this world right. I cannot allow that Incarnation of hers to come to nothing. Your petty personal grudge…

“…will not stop me!” roared Shasta, who should have been completely paralyzed. Something like a gray whirlwind swirled around the dark knight’s hand.

This was the Memory Release phenomenon that only a few of the Integrity Knights could command. Shasta’s mental Incarnation of unparalleled strength began to overwrite the Main Visualizer, that machine that stored and calculated all the information in the Underworld.

The gray whirlwind was a phenomenon of pure destructive force without any particular affinity—it simply broke down everything it touched. Fu Za was swallowed by the tornado before he could leap away. His thick black robe was blasted into nothing, dying like smoke in the air.

The scrawny, middle-aged man within it lifted his arms to hide his disfigured, melted face. His arms were torn into a cloud of flesh—and then his entirety was nothing but a thick swarm of blood in the air.

The moment the strange whirlwind rose from the dying dark general’s body, Dee Eye Ell leaped away, seized by an awful premonition. She generated wind elements in both hands and used them to fly backward at top speed.

When the rapidly expanding whirlwind touched her right leg, removing all of it below the knee without a trace, that premonition turned into the ultimate shock.

Whether bathing or sleeping, Dee always kept herself protected by dozens of defensive arts. She should have been surrounded by a perfect wall that kept out not just other magic, but all thrown weapons, swords, poison, and every other kind of attack imaginable.

Of course, it was possible that an all-out attack from one of the ten lords who shared her level of priority could break through that defense and harm her directly. But it was not possible for it to act like her defensive wall was nothing and tear away the flesh with a simple touch. It just wasn’t possible.

But no matter how she tried to deny it, the whirlwind of death continued advancing on her faster than she could retreat, carving up her right leg. Dee was an accomplished enough dark mage that she could re-create a lost limb with healing arts, but only if she survived the ordeal first.

“Aaah…aaaah!!”

At last, a scream burst from Dee’s mouth.

But it was drowned out by similar screams from the two goblin chiefs. On her left side, Hagashi, chief of the mountain goblins, and Kubiri, chief of the flatland goblins, were racing as fast as they could from the whirlwind on their stubby legs. But even Dee could not escape its wrath at full flight speed; they stood no chance.

“Kgyaaa!!”

Hagashi slipped and tumbled to the floor with a hideous shriek. With his outstretched left hand, he caught Kubiri’s ankle like a vise.

“Hiyeaaah!! Let ’ooo!! Let g…”

Splurch.

The rulers of the goblin tribes turned into bloody mist.

Zhurnk.

The remainder of Dee’s leg was blown to pieces.

Before the eyes of the dark mages guild’s chancellor, her beautiful features twisted with shock and terror, the whirlwind’s expansion miraculously came to a stop.

Shasta’s fallen body was no longer visible. The inverted cone of his raging storm was already a good twenty mels across and in height. The five lords who’d been far enough away had retreated to the western wall. The other military officers lined up along the south end of the chamber were safe, too, but just barely.

Dee’s mind was beset by confusion, but she had just enough rational power left to vaguely understand why the whirlwind had stopped expanding.

It was protecting the dozen or so high-ranking dark knights in the room. The whirlwind was something created by Shasta’s own will.

As if to back up her suspicion, the upper half of the whirlwind began to change shape. It formed a man’s torso made of translucent mist.

While it was incredibly huge, it was also clear that it was a representation of Dark General Shasta.

Gabriel Miller stared up at the oncoming tornado giant with something that indeed resembled shock.

When he had revealed the assassin’s head, he’d expected that the knight on the left end would draw his sword in response. When the head of the assassins guild used some kind of poison to paralyze the man who tried to attack Gabriel, that was not exactly a shock, either.

His plan was to crush the traitor at once and instill absolute obedience into the remaining nine. That wouldn’t happen now, but a spontaneous act of protecting the emperor was worthy of praise, he decided, so he allowed events to unfold.

But then, a gray whirlwind suddenly erupted from the fallen rebel unit, and it obliterated the head of the assassins guild and the two goblin generals in an instant. That caught Gabriel off guard.

The general units should have all been roughly equal in status. So if they fought one another, it shouldn’t be quick. It should be a long series of chipping away at HP and healing, back and forth.

But three units had just been destroyed in mere seconds. Perhaps there was some kind of logic to the Underworld that neither he nor Critter understood yet…

At that point, the giant in the whirlwind opened its mouth and let loose with an earthshaking bellow. Unable to withstand the intense pressure, a majority of the glass windows around the royal chamber gave way and broke outward.

The giant lifted a fist the size of an engine block—and swung it down at Gabriel.

It was pointless to block it with his sword, and he could tell that there wasn’t enough time to evade it on his feet. Noticing Vassago leaping nimbly out of the right corner of his eye, Gabriel stood at the throne and awaited the gray fist.

The deadly whirlwind of Incarnation that Shasta produced in his final moments transcended even the system of the Underworld.

He did not eliminate the life value of Fu Za and the goblins with numerical attack power to kill them. Instead, he forced the mental image of death directly into their lightcubes, thus destroying their fluctlights—and in reverse order, this caused their flesh to be obliterated.

So his attack against Gabriel similarly had no effect on Emperor Vecta’s vast store of life.

But the aura of death that Shasta’s fluctlight produced passed through the quantum circuits and into the STL machine where Gabriel’s organic body lay—and so the pure concentrated bloodlust of Shasta, the dark general, one of the greatest warriors in the Underworld, scored a direct hit on the core of Gabriel Miller’s fluctlight: his ego.

In the moment, Shasta’s consciousness fused with his unstoppable attack, so that he felt as though he were plunging inside Emperor Vecta.

It was clear that the life of his actual body was long gone. Shasta knew this was the last attack he would ever make.

He regretted that he would never fulfill his promise to cross swords with Integrity Knight Bercouli again. But the man would understand. He would know what the dark general wanted, and why he struck back against the emperor.

He had killed both Fu Za of the assassins guild and the two goblin chiefs, who were the most combative of all the lords. It was a shame that Dee, chancellor of the dark mages guild, had escaped, but she could not recover instantly from such a terrible wound. If the head of the dark knights brigade and Emperor Vecta himself both died, the remaining lords would surely reconsider their final war against the Human Empire.

If they could just form a temporary truce with the people of that side, who had recently lost their own ruler. If they could trade words instead of blows, perhaps some common understanding would arise.

And he could only hope that somewhere down that line, the world of peace that Lipia had desired would arrive.

Completely fused with his Incarnation, Shasta split Emperor Vecta’s brow and plunged into the core of the soul that existed within. If he destroyed this, even the god of darkness would be erased just as completely as Fu Za and the rest of them.

With a silent roar, Shasta’s will collided with the emperor’s soul—

Only to be met with the final shock of his life.

Nothing.

At the center of the cloud of light that was the soul, the place where the pure essence of consciousness and being should have been, there was nothing but dense, choking darkness.

But why? Even the soul of Fu Za, the recluse, had been glowing with a perverse fixation on life.

The infinite darkness at the center of the emperor swallowed Shasta’s Incarnation.

He was vanishing. Evaporating.

This…this man…

Does he not know life?

A man who knew nothing of the shine of life, of soul, and of love. No wonder he was starving. No wonder he wanted others’ souls.

No matter how powerful his ability to Incarnate, no sword built of murderous anger could defeat this man.

The man’s soul was dead, even as it lived.

He had to tell someone. Whoever was fated to fight this monster in the future.

Someone…someone…

But that was the moment Shasta’s consciousness was enveloped in the infinite abyss.

………Alas………

………Lipia………

And with that final thought, the soul of Vixur ul Shasta, general of darkness, was obliterated at last.

At the moment of that overwhelmingly powerful soul shine piercing him, Gabriel Miller felt more joy than fear.

The dark knight’s soul, even more than the woman’s he’d devoured two days ago, was brimming with thick emotions. Love for the woman. And a kind of beatific love that was much broader in nature and harder to understand. And using those as a source of power—an untamed drive to kill.

Love and hatred. Could there be anything more delicious in this world than those two concepts?

Gabriel was completely unaware at this time that his own life was in terrible danger. Even after seeing the three units fragged to pieces by the dark knight’s attack, Gabriel was more interested in devouring the knight’s soul than in his own safety.

If Gabriel feared the attack and wished for his own survival, Shasta’s deadly drive would have crushed Gabriel’s instinct for survival through the STL and, by extension, obliterated his fluctlight itself.

But Gabriel Miller was a man who did not understand life. To him, all life, including his own, was like that of the many insects he slaughtered when he was a young boy—automatic and mechanical. All he wanted was to unlock the secrets of the soul that powered the machine—that mysterious shining cloud.

So the destructive signal of Shasta’s fluctlight simply passed through the empty void at the center of Gabriel’s fluctlight and vanished without colliding into anything at all.

Gabriel had no way of knowing all this, but as he chewed on the knight’s soul, two things stuck in his memory.

First, that there were ways of attacking in this world beyond just the weapons and magic spells of normal VRMMOs—and that this kind of attack did not have any effect on him, apparently.

He would have to make Critter study the logic of the phenomenon he witnessed, Gabriel thought. He slowly rose from the throne.

The six surviving lords—the dark mages guild chancellor, Dee Eye Ell; the head pugilist, Iskahn; the leader of the commerce guild, Rengil; the giant chief, Sigurosig; the orc chief, Lilpilin; and the ogre chief, Furgr—were either pressed back against the wall or flat on their backsides or attempting to stanch their bleeding. But all of them were staring up at Emperor Vecta.

The only feeling in their hearts at this point was fear.

Dark General Shasta’s stunning mega-attack, which had reduced three of their number to a bloody mist in an instant and ripped off the leg of the fearsome mage Dee, had not left so much as a scratch on the emperor.

The one with the power makes the rules.

It was clear to the six lords and hundred-plus officers behind them that even if they all fought together, they could not overcome the power of Emperor Vecta.

Like a wave rippling across them, they all bowed their heads, signaling acquiescence to the emperor. Even the dark knights brigade, who had just witnessed their beloved commander’s death, were no exception.

The emperor’s voice rang out loud and clear over the scene.

“…For each army that has lost its general, the next-highest officer must immediately take command. We will begin the march in one hour, as planned.”

He did not rage about the outlaw or point a finger in blame. This fact only brought a fresh wave of fear to the remaining officers.

Dee finally succeeded in stopping the bleeding of her leg. She thrust her hand high in the air, fingers splayed, and shouted, “Long live the emperor!!”

After a brief pause, voices echoing her cry poured forth from the crowd over and over, a flood of sound that threatened to shake Obsidia Palace to its foundation.