Chapter 161

“Ha… my friend. Have you warmed up a bit?”

From the very moment Grand Master Orléans turned away from the Emperor and began descending the dais, I was already taking his measure.

His gentle breathing. An aura that was perfectly compressed but occasionally rippled with minute sparks. A stable core, an impeccable center of gravity, and an incredible reaction speed to external stimuli.

As a result, the conclusion I drew about him could be summarized in a single phrase:

‘If he is given just fifty more years of time, he is prime material to achieve transcendence.’

To put it plainly, he had climbed as high as a mortal could possibly go.

‘He hit his wall early. His progress has been stagnant for a long time. It must have been suffocating for him. That’s likely why he seems half-crazy now; he probably wasn’t always this type of personality.’

‘A hard worker. Even after hitting the wall, he didn’t despair and just kept slamming himself against it. It looks like he even managed to gain something from that process.’
‘Not forcing his disciples to copy his own style might be a sort of experiment on his part.’
‘The reason his eyes flipped the moment he saw me… isn’t out of simple competitive spirit toward a rival, but rather the thought that clashing with me might yield a clue to break through his wall.’

And using the conclusion derived from that, I compared him to myself.

‘In terms of pure physical stats alone, I wouldn’t even amount to half of his.’

Of course, that didn’t mean I couldn’t win. The current me was several times stronger than back during my days wreaking havoc in Sinan, and I was still growing in real-time.

I let out a subtle, hollow chuckle as I recalled the shocking(?) spectacle I had witnessed inside my own Imagery not too long ago.

Disis, holding a whip, was seated high up on a grand perch, shouting furiously at those who used to be her doppelgangers but had now become residents of my mindscape.

“Barton!”

“Y-Yes…!”

“Where did your manners go!?”

“Ah, aaah! Long live Sword God!”

“Exactly. You must always engrave the mercy of Sword God, who allowed you to live in this place, into your minds!”

“Y-Yes!”

“Good. Let us get to the main point. Why are your results so pathetic? Does it make any sense that you can’t even hunt five hundred monsters a day!? The performance of the group you’re in charge of is the absolute lowest!”

“B-But, Lady Disis… no matter how you look at it, a daily quota of f-five hundred is just too much…!”

“Fifty people only need to catch ten monsters each a day, and you call that too much!?”

“Well, our male group lacks combat capabilities compared to the female groups… and the majority of us are scholar types to begin with….”

“Does it make sense for a man to be weaker than a woman!?”

“I mean, you were the one who made us that way, Lady Disis….”

“That’s… hmph. Well, since I am female-form, the female-form doppelgangers naturally had slightly higher stats.”

“That is exactly my point!”

“But that cannot be an excuse! Don’t you know that all the doppelgangers who entered this place start on the exact same baseline, regardless of what their past professions were? Your combat capability goes up the more monsters you hunt! A portion of the pure spiritual power recovered becomes your own strength!”

“Even so, there’s no way people like me, Emblem Scribe A who used to only hold a pen, can be equal to people like Kelly, who did nothing but eat meals and swing halberds…”

“Eek! Shut up! Do you think I am doing this for my own amusement!? We are still just guests here! We are mere mayflies who could be kicked out the exact split second Lady Sis or Lady Bel feel like it!”

“Don’t you know how much I have to walk on eggshells around those ladies!? We must constantly prove our usefulness to Sword God! We have to rub our hands together until our palms turn into soles just to cater to his whims! Why do you think I swallowed my pride and established ‘Long live Sword God’ as our official greeting!?”

“T-That’s….”

“Do you think I’m doing this just for my own sake!? I’m doing this so we can all live well together! So we can shout long live independence on the day of our eventual liberation(?), that’s why!!”

“But….”

“Silence! You and your group are sentenced to punishment! Kelly! Kikar! Take them away! Toss them into the ‘Hell’ section!!”

“N-No! Not there! Anywhere but there, please!! Lady Kelly! Lord Kikar!! S-Spare me…!”

“Sorry. I’m also in a position where I have to follow orders when told.”

“You should have cleared your quota on time.”

Just like that, the man named Barton and the fifty or so men in his group were dragged away by Kelly, Kikar, and several other former doppelgangers dressed in uniforms, being escorted off to somewhere.

And that place was….

“Mmm, aniki.”

“Ahhh, aniki~”

A certain ‘ranch’ where pitch-black, bald, muscular behemoths known as Super Aniki Demons were being ‘bred.’

Hundreds of bald brutes inside the ranch, who had been eagerly waiting for their prey(?), brightened up and came stomping forward in a massive stampede as the fifty or so men were dumped en masse into the iron cage.

“Anikiiii~~!”

“Mmm. Mmm. Mmm~”

“H-Hieeeek!”

“N-No! Ever since Verus went there a few days ago, the way he looks at me has become completely strange! Whenever he has a moment, he just smiles all creepily and winks at me! At a glance, he’s totally lost his mind!!”

“W-We have to run…!”

Kikar coldly threw spears and swords down toward them, spitting out a final remark.

“I will let you out at this exact time tomorrow. Whether you choose to fight those things to fill your remaining quota, or give up on fighting to spend a delightful(?) time with them, is entirely up to your own free will.”

“Mmm~”

“Where are you going, aniki~”

“Aniki~ put away those dangerous things and let’s play together~”

“N-Not me! Big Brother Barton over there is much plumper—urgh!”

“S-Spare… no, don’t come near me…! GYAAAAAAAARGH!!”

Watching the screen that Sis was showing me under the guise of administrator privileges, I asked with a thoroughly bewildered expression.

“…So, what the hell has been going on while I briefly had my eyes turned away?”

At that, Sis snorted, looking like she wanted to be praised.

“An automatic mob-hunting system created by Bel and me. Thirty thousand people must fill their given quota every single day. Otherwise, they get punished. Those who do not work shall not eat.”

“Ah, automatic hunting… I see, so that is why my physical stats have been shooting up like crazy lately, even allowing me to use pure spiritual power. But… isn’t that a bit too intense?”

Bel, who was standing beside her, let out a bitter chuckle.

“It isn’t that intense. It’s a six-day workweek system, with the seventh day as a rest day. Catching ten monsters a day is also based on the weakest mobs, so as long as they have the will, it’s a perfectly achievable number regardless of what role they played in the outside world. For the record, higher-difficulty ones count as multiple kills even if they only hunt one.”

Sis added to the explanation immediately after.

“If the pure spiritual power obtained from hunting a mob is ten, sixty-five percent goes to Sword God. And out of the remaining thirty-five percent, twenty percent belongs to the person who hunted the mob.”

“Then what about the remaining fifteen percent?”

“Ten percent belongs to Bel and me. Five percent goes to middle management like Disis, Kelly, and Kikar. We figured we should give them that much if they’re going to be taking the heat on our behalf, so we decided to be generous.”

“Ah.”

As Sis firmly clenched and unclenched her fist, white light condensed over her palm, transforming into a shiny, round white metal coin.

Clink.

“This is a pure spiritual power coin. We made it so this drops whenever they hunt a mob. They can use the coin exactly as it is for currency, or consume it to raise their own combat power. Frankly speaking, as long as they clear their quota, they can live without lacking a single thing.”

“Wait. Is this… my face?”

“Yeah. Engaging the ruler’s face onto currency is a universal rule. Why, you don’t like it?”

“Good grief. Forget it, forget it. More importantly, why did you bother to manifest pure spiritual power into a currency form? Is there even a place to spend money? When all thirty thousand people are part of the automatic hunting workforce, where are you going to find anyone working in service or manufacturing jobs to justify a currency?”

Sis smoothly switched the screen view and pushed it toward me.

And inside that screen, there were countless ‘robots’ staying inside the doppelgangers’ residential area, running shops and manufacturing goods.

“…Robots?”

“To be precise, metal golems fueled by pure spiritual power. I created them using administrator privileges.”

“Ah… I see how it is. You put a lot of thought into this.”

“Heh.”

“Ah, right. By the way, what the hell was that Aniki Hell from earlier? When did you even build something like that?”

Bel burst into a light giggle. Mmm, considering the desperate screams of those old guys from earlier, I didn’t think it was something to laugh about like that.

“Even if it isn’t those Super Aniki Demons, we are capturing, breeding, and ‘multiplying’ several types of mobs. They have quite a lot of uses, you see.”

“That ranch for the Super Aniki Demons was also originally built as a type of training ground rather than for punishment. They are sturdy but their attack power isn’t all that strong, making them the perfect training sandbags.”

“Of course, to folks who were just slacking off like those people earlier, they must be an entity more terrifying than a demon.”

“How do they… multiply?”

For a moment, a horrifying imagination of those bald brutes doing this and that flashed through my mind, and I violently shook my head to dispel it.

Surely it wasn’t anything like that. It better not be. I would absolutely never tolerate such a thing happening inside my Imagery.

“Ah, it’s nothing like what you’re imagining, okay? If you just toss them a pure spiritual power coin as feed, they consume it and multiply through fission.”

“Phew… I see. If it’s that, then fine.”

In the end, the gist of it was this:

The thirty thousand doppelgangers were so-called ‘hunters’ who caught mobs.

They earned pure spiritual power coins by hunting mobs, and through this, they strengthened themselves or improved their quality of life.

And as the master of this world, I took sixty-five percent of the pure spiritual power they earned as tax, while Sis and Bel took five percent each as administrators.

“…Wow, it’s a total black company.”

“It’s not a black company. It’s a six-day workweek and we even pay a daily wage. If you just work hard normally, you won’t get punished.”

“In the real world, that’s exactly what people call a black company.”

“So what? Do you dislike the automatic hunting?”

“I never said a black company was a bad thing, did I?”

“Oh, seeing you chuckle so brightly, it seems you were also fiercely anticipating our clash.”

Casually brushing off his comment, I layered various buffs on myself.

As I said, I wouldn’t lose… but if I didn’t buff up, the fight would take a form rather different from what the countless watching eyes were expecting.

As mentioned before, what mattered right now was impact.

Let’s see. I’ll pull out about six from my priestly miracles… and as for magic, I can only use one.

First, the miracles.

From the low-level miracles, just one: Bless.

From the intermediate miracles:

Divine Might.
Fist of the Divine.
Blessing of Swiftness.
Touch of Ruin.
Blessing of Sinew.

I cast these five.

And from magic, I cast Haste, which Sodin had specially arranged for me as a 3rd-level spell.

Of course, it was a half-baked buff with all control-related functions stripped away, but managing that on my own was a breeze.

“Phew….”

After layering the buffs like that, I felt my physical stats shoot up to roughly seventy percent of the Grand Master’s. Originally, it felt like it would be around sixty percent… so a ten percent increase was a perfectly solid defense.

“Come at me.”

“Here I come.”

CRAAAAAAAAANG!

His longsword and my blade collided with a violent, metallic screech, and—

Immediately after, Duke Orléans went flying backward, spraying blood like a total lie.

“Kehooh…!”

“The Grand Master was…?”

“My word…!”

“How can this be….”

“M-Master…!”

After lying on the ground for a brief moment to catch his breath, the Grand Master wiped the blood from his mouth and leaped back to his feet.

“…What on earth was that just now?”

Standing before the Grand Master, I raised my index finger and pointed toward the ‘high-dimensional direction’ I perceived.

“Now then~ can you tell me exactly where my index finger is pointing right now?”

The Grand Master stared intently at my finger before suddenly gagging, letting out a dry heave.

“…I cannot tell. I truly cannot tell. What is this? What am I looking at right now?”

“If you cannot comprehend where this finger is pointing, you will never be able to defeat me in close-quarters combat for eternity.”

Well, even if he did comprehend it, he still wouldn’t be able to win.

“Surely that isn’t the extent of your reserves? Try using something else. That thing that a Grand Master should naturally be capable of wielding.”

“…Do you mean Inherent World realization?”

At his words, I flashed a wide grin.