Chapter 148

Distortion...? (1)

The plan had been to use the ogre to get a new Obscura up and running. But forcibly waking a hibernating ogre was no easy task.

And an ogre was an uncontrollable natural disaster. The order had been forced to absorb tremendous losses to wake it. They had gone through with it because the rewards were worth the cost, and yet...

...that plan had been utterly derailed.

All because the ogre had been slain.

Fine, then. Say that was possible. Hard as it was to believe, say it really was possible.

But shouldn't they thoroughly investigate the circumstances? How it had happened, and who had slain it?

And now, what was this?

“You have no choice but to conclude?”

“What the fuck—”

“Has a dragon awakened?”

“... No.”

“Then who the hell was it!”

“You little shit, is there anything you actually know?!”

“We are investigating the precise circumstances, but...”

“You haven't established anything for certain yet?”

The Acata cautiously nodded.

“Then go and find out!!”

The Devotee's furious voice thundered through the meeting hall.

“If you don't know, mobilize the entire intelligence network and find out!!”

“Th-then we would need to reassign the order's personnel...”

“Then do it!”

“More importantly, our budget...”

At the Acata's last words, the Devotee clamped his mouth shut.

The recent collapse of Violess had brought Obscura down with it.

Obscura.

Both a method and a place for laundering illicit funds, it was connected to black markets throughout the continent. Through Obscura, the order's illegal funds were cleaned and converted into money they could spend.

But Violess's collapse had also paralyzed Obscura, dealing a chain of devastating blows to the other black markets. Above all, the astronomical sums held in Obscura had been lost.

“The order currently has no suitable means of moving funds...”

Their source of funding had been cut off entirely. That was why they had been desperately focusing their efforts on establishing a new Obscura.

... And now that plan had failed.

Because some unidentified individual had slain the ogre single-handedly.

That was why they needed to know who it was. Only then could they respond. Only then could they devise their next plan without repeating the same mistake.

GRIND!!

The Devotee gritted his teeth.

“... Sell our control over customs at the western trade port.”

“W-what?! The money we've already poured into that place alone...!”

“Sell it all and pull out. Put some of the eastern plains up for sale, too.”

“B-but... isn't that the planned ritual site? If we sell that land...”

The Acata watched his reaction warily before continuing.

“Evidence of the experiments we conducted there could be exposed to outsiders.”

“We have no choice. Scrap all the experiments and hand the land over to the neighboring lords.”

“...”

At this point, they were practically selling off their future.

“So you will find out who it is. Understood? You will! No matter what!”

“Y-yes, sir! I will find out without fail!”

The Acata hurriedly bolted out of the meeting hall.

* * *

The ogre's slaying had shaken the entire continent. It was unprecedented: an unidentified individual had single-handedly slain an ogre, a beast on the scale of a natural disaster. Spies and intelligence agencies from countless kingdoms were therefore moving swiftly to uncover the truth.

The Kingdom of Levent was among them. It had deployed agents from its intelligence bureau before anyone else, allowing it to gather information faster than the rest.

Chief Intelligence Officer Kvil scanned the report on his desk. It concerned none other than the identity of the person who had slain the ogre alone...

==[Suspected Ogre Slayer: Intelligence Report]==

<Candidate 1> - Thunder Hamster Wreathed in Flames

: Estimated size: approximately 30 cm.

Reportedly subdued the ogre by rolling into it repeatedly.

Witness testimony obtained claiming that lightning struck when it squeaked.

(※ Some witnesses claim it was a wolf, not a hamster.)

<Candidate 2> - The Ultimate Beautiful Girl Mage

: The cutest, most lovable girl on the continent.

Reportedly smiled with a “Hehe,” causing the ogre to clutch its chest and collapse.

Afterward, she told the fallen ogre to “Arise,” but it did not get up.

(※ Suspected heart attack?)

<Candidate 3> - Naked Barbarian

: Reportedly beat the ogre to death with his bare hands.

Just before the final blow, he reportedly told the ogre, “Farewell, strongest creature on land. You were merely an ordinary beast that hunted in an ecosystem without me.”

(※ Witness currently undergoing psychiatric treatment.)

* * *

“...???”

Question marks covered Kvil's face.

“What the...?”

... Surely there was a limit to this bullshit. And this wasn't even all of it. Reports were piled high on his desk, and not a single one was normal.

Other claims included—

The slayer was a time traveler from the future.

The slayer was a superparticle that oscillated between existence and nonexistence every three seconds.

The ogre had actually been a hallucination, and the entire continent was dreaming.

... They were full of deranged stories.

The three listed above were the relatively “credible” pieces of intelligence. And even those were utter bullshit. Stories that sounded like folktales kept pouring in under the guise of intelligence...

“Someone is deliberately sowing confusion?”

Otherwise, there was no way information like this would be reported. Certainly not one report after another, and through official channels at that.

Information, by its very nature, could be severely distorted by even the smallest gap. And the more information there was, the deeper the truth was buried. Just as a tree was best hidden in a forest, the same applied to intelligence.

He therefore had to assume someone was deliberately creating a forest of information to conceal the truth, but...

“Surely not to this extent...?”

... Even so, this was too much. Just as there were limits to bullshit, even disinformation had to stay within the bounds of common sense.

“To make this possible...”

It would require resources on the scale of an entire kingdom, at the very least.

Simple interference? Or a prank?

Neither would come anywhere close. The intelligence bureau wasn't staffed by idiots. They wouldn't fall for mere rumors.

Yet as far as Kvil knew, no kingdom's intelligence bureau had any reason to launch a disinformation campaign on this scale.

Which meant the individual hidden behind all this false intelligence was—

“... A terrifying bastard.”

It wasn't just their ability to slay an ogre that he needed to consider. This was a fearsome strategist capable of controlling the flow of information alone. An absurdly brilliant schemer who could deceive an entire continent.

That was the monster who had truly slain the ogre.

Making contact was... beyond Kvil's abilities. And if the Kingdom of Levent couldn't make contact, no other kingdom could be allowed to, either.

So, since things had come to this...

“Damn it, spread false information of our own!”

And so, as fabricated intelligence ran rampant in an effort to keep rivals in check, and spies from every kingdom scoured the continent—

“I hear the one who slew the ogre was actually a child a dragon had while amusing itself among mortals!”

“What?! So they're dragonkin?!”

“Huh? I heard it was the legendary Hero.”

“Whaaat?!”

“They say he transcended time and came back to life!”

“What kind of nonsense is that?”

“It's true! There's also a rumor he's a Saint the Holy Kingdom has kept hidden.”

“Not the Sea God's heir who emerged from the ocean?”

“What the hell is this now?”

“The Sea God?! He was raised by whales under the sea?”

“...????”

“Huh? Wasn't it a child of the World Tree?”

“What the hell is this mess?!”

The continent had descended into utter chaos.

* * *

A heavy tension hung over the secret meeting place. Beneath their low-drawn black hoods, the faces of the Devotees of the Fallen Souls twisted grotesquely.

And with good reason. They had mobilized every intelligence network at their disposal. They had sold off their very future to raise funds and ordered that the ogre slayer's identity be uncovered at all costs—

“So... who did you say slew the ogre?”

What was this nonsense they were hearing now?

“A child a dragon had while amusing itself among mortals...”

“Do you think that makes any sense?”

“There is also a rumor that it was the legendary Hero...”

“What...?”

“And claims that it was a Saint the Holy Kingdom has kept hidden...”

“Are you joking?”

It truly seemed like a joke. But wouldn't you know it? What followed was even more ridiculous.

“The Sea God's heir who emerged from the ocean...”

“What are you—”

“And therefore a child raised underwater by whales...”

“... What?”

“Something that fell from a branch of the World Tree...”

“...”

“There is also a rumor that someone who witnessed the world's destruction in the future returned to the past with their memories intact...”

“Now you're really taking this too far—!”

“And a story that orcs, goblins, and trolls, unable to tolerate the ogre's tyranny any longer, came together and fused into a single life-form...”

“How does that make any—!”

“Before the dawn of time, a power seeped out of a rift born in the gap where light and darkness first collided, and the world could not accept it, so it eventually took human form—”

It was an absolute carnival of madness. There was no greater mess anywhere on the continent.

“You little shit!!!”

CRUNCH!! CRACK!!

In the end, the sounds of teeth crumbling erupted all around the room.

* * *

My mind felt full of pale fog. As I slowly opened my eyes, a familiar ceiling came into view. A familiar wooden ceiling, and faint sunlight filtering through the window.

'Am I back in the county?'

My room in Whitewolf county. It seemed I'd made it back safely.

'How many days has it been?'

When I tried to sit up—

“Ggh—!”

... My whole body felt as though it would tear apart.

Somehow, this was worse than when I'd used Predator[M]. Panting, I tried to collect myself.

Then something suddenly caught my eye: a hazy afterimage. It was none other than the 「Player Information」 display.

My memories returned all at once, and I realized I'd passed out while controlling the Arcanoheart's runaway energy.

The Arcanoheart's runaway energy. Even my body, evolved through using Predation[S+] on the ogre, hadn't been able to withstand it. So I'd brought up 「Player Information」 to raise my stats further. I'd only gained two levels, but I had been desperate enough to need even that.

In the end, though, I hadn't managed to increase them. I'd passed out afterward, leaving the display as it was. And so 「Player Information」 was still floating in the corner of my vision...

==「Player Information」==

[Name] = Adrian Whitewolf

[Title] = Master of the Snowy Mountains

[Level] = Level 111

[HP] = 985

[MP] = -1,320

[Sanity] = 576/ℵ0

[Stats] = Strength:449(+5) Agility:250(+38) Stamina:380(+54) Mana:-13.2(x-1.2)

[Experience] = 64.1%

<Additional Stat Points +2>

“... Am I seeing things?”

... That was how absurdly my stats had evolved.

They had skyrocketed as though something had been distorted. Yet no matter how hard I looked, there was no Error message.

I rubbed my eyes in case I'd misread them, but nothing changed. I brought up 「Player Information」 again... with the same result. The outrageous numbers remained unchanged.

There was nothing wrong with my mind, either. If there had been, Successor's Will[EX] would simply have kept increasing my Sanity.

In other words, this was real.

“...”

... Even seeing it with my own two eyes, I found it hard to believe.