Just how much knowledge and experience does this man have?! Purple Smoke’s final thoughts expressed awe at all of the martial experience and skill Stein must have accumulated in his long life.
But as Stein swung his fist, he also silently sent his thoughts to the monk slayer he’d once been acquainted with, who had turned into literal purple smoke. He’d learned everything the legendary monk had to offer, becoming the ultimate monk slayer and winding up defeated after an incredibly fierce battle.
“Looks like we’re pretty much done.” As Ferd looked at Stein vigilantly maintaining his stance, he also confirmed that Lara had routed the demon army, which wasn’t a dangerous force in this location either.
“Is the Boiling Mountain next?” Sazaki asked Lara about their next destination, sipping from his flask, uncaring of the world cracking around them.
“It is. Apparently, it was taken down by long-range magical attacks in addition to the true monk slayers,” she replied.
“Hmm? Magical attacks, you say?” Sazaki was puzzled, as none of the enemies he recalled encountering during the middle of the war had been capable of using magic powerful enough to cause the fall of the Boiling Mountain.
At the same time, the simulation collapsed, and the Hero’s party headed to the next one.
The mirror before them displayed the Boiling Mountain under assault from magical attacks, surrounded by a vortex of flames.
“It seems that even though I died in this scenario, I saw to it that my body was properly disposed of, but apparently my idiot mentor messed up and got his corpse controlled.” Lara’s mentor had passed away after the end of the war in the real world, but here, he was a corpse being puppeted by necromancy.
“Aaargh!” Screams erupted all across the Boiling Mountain. Though it was normally a sacred land, which was named thus for the steam rising from monks’ bodies, right now it was literally on fire. The monk slayers, monsters made of lava and proficient in martial arts, wrapped up the inexperienced and unorganized monks inside their scorching bodies, attempting meanwhile to overwhelm the few elite monks with sheer numbers.
In the real world, many mortal mages had also participated in the decisive battle on the Boiling Mountain, but in this virtual world, most of the powerful mages had already been defeated, reduced to mindless resurrected corpses. The skeleton walking at the head of the group was the great mage Reynaud, Lara and Derry’s mentor. He was one of the greatest mages ever, who’d reached the Hadal layer and left his name in history. Reynaud had already been old and had been unable to make sure his corpse was disposed of after his defeat at the hands of the demon army, so he’d now been dragged into the assault on the Boiling Mountain.
It was a very simple concept: As monks fought with their bare hands, they lacked long-range attacks, and since blocking said attacks with their muscles was unreasonable, their defensive options were limited. Furthermore, in this virtual world, Stein was currently in the middle of a stare-down with Black Smoke at the foot of the Boiling Mountain, and his mentor Albert had his hands full dealing with the assault by the elite monk slayers. A long-range magical attack by the undead now would completely overwhelm the Boiling Mountain’s defenses.
Reynaud’s body wordlessly pointed its six glowing fingers at the Boiling Mountain, devoid of a will or memories of its own. He remembered nothing—not that he’d given up on his apprentice Lara ever getting married, not that Lara had been forced to blow herself up just the other day, not that his final apprentice Derry had been killed by the demon army while performing odd jobs, and not even his own death.
The undead mages detachedly pointed their fingers at the Boiling Mountain. Before them, the clouds at the peak of the mountain parted, the light of the heavens piercing through. A massive, glowing, white magic circle appeared, large enough to perhaps cover the entire mountain. The runes of power adorning the circle were massively potent, each word they spelled out incomprehensible even to these once-great mages. Yet, they could not be expected to understand them; this was the crystallization of the power of the Abyssal layer, a power that no one had matched in seventy years—the power of ten glowing fingers. Prior to the war, the very notion of a mage who could make all of their fingers on both hands glow would have been utter insanity.
“To bed with you now, old-timers,” Lara said, despite being quite old herself.
Even though her mentor Reynaud had now been reduced to only a skeleton, she’d identified him through his mana wavelength, and fired concentrated destruction through a gigantic magic circle. The mere aftereffects of the power of annihilation that radiated from it stirred the heavens themselves as it charged toward the army of undead, Reynaud included. It canceled out the combined magical attacks led by Reynaud that it collided with, disregarding all of their magical defenses. It was said that even a single layer could make a world of difference. Their leader, Reynaud, was the only one at six fingers, while most of the other undead were of the Progressive layer at four fingers, so they had no chance of putting up a fight.
However...along with the sound of glass cracking, something unusual took place in the middle of the army of the dead. Their numbers suddenly doubled, and undead priests appeared. Their robes had originally been luxurious with gold embroidery, but now they were blackened and gave off a rotten smell. But one of them wielded a staff made of bones stacked upon each other, with a bit of rotten flesh clinging to his own skeleton and black flames burning in his gaping eye sockets.
“You damn Wiiitch!” the undead shouted. He was Kahn the Necromancer, known also as the king of the undead. He was a figure infamous even in the future.
“Kahn is here? Looks like this virtual world doesn’t understand a thing about reality.” Lara merely sneered in return, even as Kahn glared at her hatefully.
In the normal timeline, Kahn had been feared early during the great war, when he’d stolen corpses from battlefields to turn into his forces, using them to attack strongholds where the mortals least expected him. However, this puppet master, in a sense, had found himself at a disadvantage when the living made a comeback, and he’d fallen easily at the hands of the Hero’s party. In other words, although he was as well-known as Gyu Ri or Purple Smoke, he wasn’t among those who’d fought a deadly battle with the Hero’s party, so the virtual world had clearly picked the wrong person.
“Begone.” The light fired from the Witch of Annihilation became even brighter, but before it could strike the army of the dead...the simulation distorted the past even further, into a convenient scenario where a certain corpse had failed to be disposed of properly.
“Get her, Witch!” Kahn shouted.
At his signal, the corpse of a woman appeared. She had lifeless, dark brown skin, blank, heterochromatic blue-and-red eyes, a large, gaping hole in her chest, and ten glowing fingers. In this new scenario, a young Lara had been raised after death, and she now stood against her old self, sending forth an identical-looking aurora. The two auroras collided with each other and fought for dominance.
“Hmph.” In response, Lara snorted and scoffed at the simulation again.
The past wasn’t something to be tampered with lightly. In a scenario where, conveniently, Lara’s corpse had remained intact, other changes had taken place. As a result of Lara’s strenuous efforts to help those around her escape, he was now alive.
As an aside, there were people among the mortals’ ranks who could crush any mere foot soldiers effortlessly, though this wasn’t the case with the more unique or powerful among the Great Demon King’s army. For example...
“Dear me, I have no idea what’s going on here...”
“Wha—” Kahn reacted to the voice he suddenly heard near him, but his head had already been separated from his body.
Before the great war, if someone had to choose the most fearsome mage, most masters would have muttered a single person’s name in fear. The name of a mage who could even cause natural disasters yet had ultimately circled back to the basics: Lara’s mentor, Reynaud the Slaughterer.
“...But it seems you’ve been running rampant.” Reynaud had transformed back from a corpse into a living person in the blink of an eye, and he didn’t understand the situation very well. But when he noticed his clearly dead apprentice, the necromancer who was apparently controlling her, and the army of undead, he became enraged and the glow of his six fingers intensified.