In a dark room, Turan leaned back in his chair and gazed at a brightly glowing screen.

Framed in black, the object was about four handspans wide and a little under two high. It looked remarkably similar to one of the ancient relics on the ground floor of the Tomb of the Gods.

Astonishingly, that tiny patch of light contained another world—a world where people from every corner of the earth gathered to communicate through text and voice, fight enemies, and build friendships.

Within it, Turan sometimes became a person roaming all manner of underground labyrinths and hunting grounds, and sometimes sat beside a bonfire in the square, socializing. Unlike other popular games, this one was half dead, played only by its dedicated few. Every name and face was familiar.

[Buff Enchanters pls]

[Why buff an already broken-as-fuck class?]

[Why does this person want Enchanters to be stronger? Have you no conscience? Please improve Healers first.]

[Just fucking die, you catfishing bitch!!!!]

A red-haired woman resembling Maysa shouted something and was promptly beaten up by the others. Of course, the square was a safe zone, so no actual damage was done. Everyone else watched and laughed, typing strings of "lol."

In truth, the whole thing was something of a performance. Anywhere combat was actually possible, the woman could have dispatched her attackers in an instant. That was precisely why her earlier remark had earned so much mockery and abuse.

[Night Hunter advancement dungeon bugged again? Boss has ten times the defense. Can't do any damage.]

[I'll run it with you. Can handle up to thirty times easy. Let's go.]

[You can party up for a Job Advancement dungeon?]

[If I leave before the kill, it counts as a solo clear.]

Elsewhere, two young men, one black-haired and the other gray-haired, left the square together as they talked. The gray-haired youth in the lead carried a huge bow over his shoulder. Something about his face seemed quite familiar. Behind them, a blue-haired youth pointed at the pair and addressed a middle-aged man with light blue hair and two axes.

[He's fourth advancement like me why's his attack two whole digits higher??]

[Because our boy Otaku devoted his life to this... Try dropping a billion won yourself.]

[Why the fuck would anyone do that in this deadass game;]

[Did someone force you to pick a PvP class with shit stats?]

[I like copying skills in every game lol]

As he chuckled at their conversation, a private message arrived that only he could see.

[Spent any money?]

The sender belonged to the same group as Turan. He had spent a fair amount, but his class was so bad that he remained something of an outsider to the meta. In a guild full of older people, their relatively similar ages had brought them close.

[Yeah]

[Snuck onto Mom's phone while she was washing]

[I'm dead if she finds out lol]

Turan snickered as they exchanged secret messages. Outside, he was a miserable loser, but in here he could hold his head as high as he liked. No matter how much he indulged his real-world vices here, they could never connect his virtual self to his real one.

"Open this fucking door before I break it down!"

Just then, a middle-aged man's shout came from outside, accompanied by a loud pounding on the door. A woman's voice tried to stop him, saying everyone could hear.

Turan flinched at his father's voice. Still sitting in his chair, he grabbed the blanket beside him and pulled it over himself. It solved nothing, but instinct made him want to protect himself somehow.

Crude insults poured through the door. He was a loser who had dropped out of school to do nothing but play games. Did he enjoy stealing his mother's phone to buy things?

'Fuck, why's he giving me all this shit? Other people earn enough that they wouldn't even care about this much. It's his fault he's so useless.'

Swearing inwardly, Turan spread the blanket over both himself and the monitor. Like this, it felt as though nothing existed except him and the world on that screen.

If only he could become his character in the game instead of a shut-in wreck who had dropped out of high school because of bullying—

* * *

"... Ah."

Early that morning, Turan opened his eyes in bed and retraced the dream he had just had. The dark room, the fantasy world, the accusing parents, the longing...

Though clearly not his own, the memories were as vivid as if he had recalled them himself.

'Could those be Kadram's old memories?'

Not long ago, Turan had ground Kadram's soul into tiny pieces, just as he had once threatened to do to Resion and the other half-elves. He had proceeded only after checking, to the very last moment, whether Kadram had any intention of communicating.

The result had been dozens of soul fragments like those that had once controlled Midan and Bisen. Turan had absorbed one of the smaller ones, but all he had seen were faint, fleeting visions.

In the end, he had entrusted analysis of the fragments to the librarian, who had recently finished organizing the old books and grown bored. Then, all of a sudden, he had dreamed this.

'It was as though I'd become Kadram.'

Within that world, he had truly thought like Kadram—or rather, like a boy who had dropped out of high school and shut himself in his room. The "real world" the half-elves had described several times, never quite making it feel real to him, had abruptly become tangible.

Rising from bed, Turan recalled something Resion had once mentioned in passing. The survivors of the ancient Freyans, himself included, had been relatively young.

Death caused by the aging of the spirit chain—the chain binding flesh and soul—had come for the older ones first.

["The truly powerful ones who left their names in history were mostly among the strongest players in the game. Naturally, obtaining such power required investing a great deal of money, and older people had the advantage there. As a result, most of those who barely survived were subordinate gods who had made little name for themselves in this world's history—brats in their mid-to-late teens or early twenties in real life."]

But with so many popular games available, how normal could young people who poured their lives into an outdated, dying game possibly be? Resion had said it as though it had nothing to do with him.

Had they been more mature and knowledgeable, they could have steadily changed the world while switching bodies. Instead, all they had managed was to blunder about like the immature youngsters in Two Years' Vacation.

At the time, Turan had struggled to understand exactly what he meant. Now he had a rough idea. The same went for the conversations his grandfather Talis had held with Karmine's divine people, and for Ymir's ramblings. The reason great gods such as the Night Hunter and the Earth Mother, whose names endured through the ages, had failed to reincarnate was astonishingly petty.

He had barely sighed at that fact when he looked at the closed door and suddenly imagined someone pounding on it. The door must remain closed; nothing but fear came from beyond it...

"Maybe I'll kill him if I ever go back."

Turan had unconsciously muttered the words while thinking of Kadram's father. Then he clicked his tongue. He had become too immersed in his dream self and identified too strongly with its feelings.

If he continued absorbing Kadram's soul, he would probably reach a point where he could no longer clearly distinguish Kadram's emotions and thought patterns from his own. And this was the result of absorbing just one of the thousands of pieces of a soul.

Now he understood why the librarian had said that feeding someone enough soul fragments could even resurrect their original owner.

'I'd better refrain from absorbing souls from now on.'

Absorbing a single fragment had allowed him to grasp the players' thinking almost instantly, which was a considerable benefit. But it meant nothing if he lost himself in the process. To Turan, his own memories and his own way of thinking were what unmistakably defined his "self."

"Kill who?"

A voice came from the bed he had just left. Maysa was rubbing her eyes and trying to sit up. Turan gently pressed her shoulder to ease her back down, then drew the blanket over her half-exposed body.

"Maysa, what would you think if I said Enchanters need a buff?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. Just wondering."

Since she looked so much like that woman, he had wondered whether she might remember something. Apparently not.

* * *

After that unsettling start to the morning, Turan finished breakfast as usual. Instead of commuting to Baraha, however, he immediately mustered a force: an elite unit consisting of twenty-five nobles, without a single knight.

With even Maysa among them, they were few in number but strong enough to take on most great houses.

"Is everyone ready?"

"Yes, my lord!"

Their eyes shone with resolve as they answered. Turan had them board the enlarged Vije, then soared high into the sky. Some of Kalamap's citizens cried out in awe at the bird large enough to blot out the sun.

"It's the House Head's bird!"

"O black eagle, shelter us beneath your mighty wings..."

Unaware of the prayers rising from below, Vije grumbled.

"I could go faster without them."

"Bear with it. It's better if we travel together this time."

Perhaps it was because the pair had so recently enjoyed making fools of Ruban's army, but Vije seemed decidedly unhappy about being slowed down by all these passengers.

The journey was not particularly long. Before long, they reached the mountain range separating the Gray Zone from the hills. Turan halted Vije's flight and asked the noble beside him a question.

"Which way from here?"

"A little farther east, I believe, my lord."

The noble who answered ruled the nearby city of Solon.

His report was the reason they had come here: an unidentified force had entered the Gray Zone.

The original intention had been to make contact and determine the circumstances. Surprisingly, however, the strangers had surrounded their entire camp with an opaque barrier that concealed everything within. That alone made it clear this was an army of wizards containing numerous nobles.

It was why Turan had been forced to give up attacking House Ruban's fleeing army. After all, Kalamap and the Gray Zone remained his most important power base.

After several more minutes of flight eastward, Turan detected presences through his tracking magic and adjusted Vije's course. Soon they spotted a camp nestled in the mountains.

"Hmm..."

"Certainly looks like an army, whichever way you look at it."

A force much like the Ruban army Turan had recently repelled had established itself in the mountains. The site lay almost at the summit, making it difficult to say definitively whether it belonged to Karmine or Parsha.

Turan gazed down at it, then brushed off his clothes and spoke.

"I'll take a closer look. Wait here."

Before anyone could answer, he leaped off Vije and activated stealth and flight magic. Then he used magnetism, and his body lurched forward as though someone had pulled him.

Though the mana expenditure was considerable, the technique briefly let him fly as fast as Vije, perhaps even a little faster. After much effort, he had managed a crude approximation of the technique Badal Arabion had once demonstrated.

'Now, let's see...'

Reaching the vicinity of the camp in an instant, Turan first examined its barrier. Usually, to conserve mana, such barriers were thrown up like a rough fence. These people had painstakingly created a sphere enclosing the camp from floor to ceiling.

Not even a Zahar noble could infiltrate that without breaking through. The whole barrier had to be dismantled and rebuilt whenever someone crossed it, and constructing it took a horrendous amount of time and effort. It was rarely done.

'They're definitely guarding against Zahar... No, against me. The barrier's mana makes it hard to sense who's inside, too. Just who are these people?'

He had originally planned to slip inside and identify them, but that no longer seemed feasible.

Turan lingered there in thought. Should he attack without warning and wipe them out, or make proper contact and discover their identity?

After a brief deliberation, he chose the latter. Killing people first would make negotiations difficult afterward. More importantly, he had not come alone this time.

It would be awkward if one of his companions spread word that Parsha's House Head had summarily wiped out a force merely camping along the border. The head of a great house was expected to display a certain dignity befitting the position.

'Let's see.'

Following the sequence he had grown familiar with through repeated use against House Ruban, Turan fired a railgun shot straight at the upper portion of the barrier. A flash of light erupted. The barrier warped violently, then tore apart and dispersed into mana.

Though relatively small, it was sturdier than the Ruban army's barrier—enough that he doubted even a shot intended to kill would have dealt a fatal blow. Unless they had brought a dozen or so nobles with the Barrier-user bloodline, they must have something on the level of a Holy Relic.

"We're under attack!"

"Everyone, defensive positions!"

As he watched the entirely predictable uproar, Turan sensed Vije approaching from afar with Parsha's force on her back. They must have seen the effects of his railgun shot.

The unidentified army seemed to sense her as well. They stopped scrambling and turned their attention warily to the sky.

That allowed Turan to approach without interference and ascertain the enemy's identity. A few had conjured orbs of light, but he could withstand this level of illumination with only somewhat increased mana consumption.

'So it's Karmine.'

Over half wielded the combined power of the water-controlling Rapids bloodline and the cold-controlling Frost bloodline. The question was why these people were encamped here. Shouldn't they be busy retaking their capital from the great sea serpents?

Judging by his Holy Relic's senses, their composition was far from that of a full-fledged invasion force: one upper-tier noble, five or six middle-tier nobles, a dozen or so lower-tier nobles, and roughly sixty knights.

Standing just beside Karmine's camp, Turan switched from complete stealth to its lesser form, which concealed only his appearance, and spoke.

["You dare bring an army into Parsha's lands? Does Karmine's House Head wish to wage war on land as well as at sea? If not, prostrate yourselves where you stand. Now."]

Carried by wind magic, a voice with no discernible source swept chillingly around Karmine's army.