Chapter 51 - After the Ending (2)

“Now you need to give a little more thought to your future!” the Witch said.

She kept tapping my upper arm with the rolled-up bundle of newspapers.

TAP! TAP!

Her whole body radiated excitement she could barely contain.

“My future?”

“Yes. Right now, you belong to all Five Great Guilds. But in practice, you might as well be unaffiliated. Since everything has worked out so well, you could even establish a new guild of your own.”

The Witch chuckled happily.

“A hunter ranked third ought to have a title like ‘guild leader,’ at least. Even if you belong to all Five Great Guilds at once, being an ordinary member doesn't quite fit your standing.”

It didn't feel real.

“A guild leader, huh.”

Me, heading a guild. Not only did it feel unreal, I couldn't even imagine it. Did I really need hunters serving under me in the first place? I had an army of skeletons.

“Then again...”

Perhaps noticing my unenthusiastic expression, the Witch shrugged. Beyond her shoulder, the Sword Star was silently watching us.

“Maybe solo play suits your personality, like that old man. There are surprisingly many people who dream of smashing through everything alone. If you're not interested, I won't insist.”

“Now, now. Are you speaking ill of me behind my back?”

“Anyway...”

Ignoring the Sword Star, the Witch turned her head.

“What are those?”

Beyond the acacia-lined forest path, the continent's soldiers were building something on a small plain. Barracks. Having abandoned their attack on Hungry Ghost's paradise, they would rest for the day before marching home.

“Oh.”

I stroked my chin.

“Those soldiers came from all across the continent.”

“All across the continent?”

“Well, to explain...”

I went on to explain. Of course, I left out everything about Hungry Ghost. I only told them how I'd deceived the continent's armies.

The Witch and the Sword Star listened together, their expressions growing stranger the longer I spoke. One remark from the Witch summed up what both of them were thinking.

“Death King... You're quite accomplished at lying, too.”

“Well, it let me clear the stage without spilling any blood.”

“No, I'm not criticizing you. You did wonderfully.”

The Witch narrowed her eyes. It was the look of a merchant who'd thought up a devious scheme.

“Now we can trade with this continent, too. That means we won't have to grovel to those old bastards in the outside world anymore. The scoundrels! Always gouging us on food prices. Let's see them try that from now on.”

Her voice overflowed with resentment.

“Trade between the Tower and the outside world is fundamentally unfair,” the Sword Star said.

“Capital, resources, technology. The outside world has more of everything than the Tower. Of course, the Tower does have elixirs and materials unavailable outside, but...”

“Food! Food is always the problem!”

The Witch kicked the ground.

When I first met her, I'd thought she was rather reserved. Was it because the three of us had cleared floors twelve through nineteen together? She had become far more expressive around us.

I supposed it meant we'd grown that much closer.

“Black Dragon leader, you're saying you intend to start trading with the people of this continent, right?”

“Hm? Of course. It's time the outside world got a taste of its own medicine.”

“In that case...”

I grinned and pointed to the army camp on the plain.

“You'll need to talk to those people now. But you can't just walk up and say, ‘Let's trade,’ and expect to get anywhere, can you? We're foreigners to the people of this continent, and they're people from another world to us.”

“That's right.”

“I'll let you use my name,” I said.

“In this world, I'm the founding emperor's heir and the goddess's apostle. If we make up a story about you being apostles sent by the goddess, too, it should at least help get trade started.”

“...”

The Witch narrowed her eyes.

“That's a welcome offer. A useful one, too. But surely you aren't offering your name for free... What do you want?”

“The twentieth floor.”

“What?”

I looked around.

The acacia-lined forest path. The small plain. Estelle's hometown.

This tiny world was the entirety of the twentieth floor.

“I want the twentieth floor.”

For a moment, the Witch was speechless.

“... Wait. The twentieth floor? You don't mean you want the entire floor?”

“Yes. To be precise, I'd like to own all the land on the twentieth floor.”

“That's...”

“In exchange, I won't take any compensation for clearing floors eleven through nineteen. The other hunters can divide all the profits from trading with the continent, too.”

The Witch closed her mouth again.

It was an extraordinary proposal.

Normally, when hunters cleared a stage, the participants first divided the spoils among themselves. Ownership of items. Even ownership of resources. But they left roughly half of those rights to be shared by all hunters.

There was no precedent for anyone owning [an entire floor].

“This... isn't something I can decide on my own.”

The Witch looked troubled.

“We'll have to call in the other guild leaders and discuss it.”

“Well, I have nothing to do for the next twenty-four hours. I'll wait.”

“... Do you really want this stage?”

The Witch glanced around.

“The land doesn't look particularly valuable. The path lined with acacia blossoms... is pretty, but there's very little arable land. The stage itself is tiny.”

“Hmm.”

“Speaking from experience, Death King, you'd be much better off simply taking your share of the proceeds from clearing floors eleven through twenty. You could make an incredible amount of money.”

I smiled.

“I prefer real estate to money. Land is the best.”

“...”

“Deal?”

The Witch sighed.

“I'll gather the guild leaders. Let's discuss it on the first floor.”

“Sure.”

“Yes, you need to show your face to the public at least once anyway. But...”

The Witch slowly shifted her gaze.

“There's something I've been wanting to ask for a while.”

“Yes?”

“... And what is that?”

I looked where the Witch was pointing.

“Fu... ck... sob... you bastard. Make this, stop...! I'm telling you to stop it! Is that such a fucking difficult thing to ask? What have you got against me? What did I ever do wrong...!”

There, the Tower's finest dancer was showing off his skills.

The dancer's sweat and tears streamed down in anguish, gently wetting the acacia-lined forest path.

Beautiful.

“Black Dragon leader.”

I gave her a radiant smile.

“You didn't see anything.”

“Hm?”

“You saw nothing. Understood?”

“...”

The Witch wore a peculiar expression, like a biologist confronted with the mystery of a lifetime.

“Well, the world has all sorts of people. I'll be understanding.”

But, the Witch murmured,

“You really aren't sane either...”

That, too, was a minority opinion.

2

I dismissed Hungry Ghost and the Flame Emperor, then teleported to the first floor with the hunters.

“Would the coffee shop from last time be all right for our meeting?”

“Yes, anywhere is fine with me.”

Babylon, the First-Floor City. It had been so long since I'd returned.

To others, it might look as though I'd come back after just five days, but not to me.

I was returning to the city after hundreds of days—years, really.

“Whew.”

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing. It's finally starting to sink in that we cleared the stages.”

The Witch chuckled.

“Well, I think it's about to sink in a little more.”

“Sorry?”

“I told you. Everyone in the Tower is talking about you and nothing else. Brace yourself.”

I didn't need to ask what I was supposed to brace myself for.

“Huh?”

“Isn't that...”

We'd barely stepped onto the first floor's teleportation stone before murmurs began rising around us.

Passersby on the street. Vendors at roadside stalls. Hunters preparing to leave for the hunting grounds. One after another, they began whispering.

“It's the Witch and the Sword Star.”

“Then that person must be...”

“It's Death King!” someone shouted.

That set everything off.

“Death King is here!”

A customer carefully inspecting secondhand weapons at a stall turned around. Men and women enjoying coffee at an outdoor café stood up. A merchant selling rare flowers, hunters chatting with their companions—dozens, hundreds of people all looked our way.

In an instant, a crowd surged toward us.

“Whoa, wow...”

“There's a rumor you cleared the twentieth floor alone! Is it true?”

“Look this way! Just a moment! Over here!”

The crowd buzzed.

I didn't even have time to react. I blinked once, and people had surrounded our group. It didn't end there. By the time I blinked twice, the ring around us had grown twice as thick.

“Uh...”

“Don't say anything to them.”

The Witch whispered softly, for my ears alone.

“You haven't dealt with the press before, have you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Mysterious recluse? Celebrity?”

“What?”

“Your public persona. Do you want to be a mysterious recluse or a celebrity?”

Even as the Witch whispered, the crowd tripled in size. Our walking pace seemed to have slowed by a factor of thirty.

CLICK! CLICK!

With every step, phone cameras sounded noisily.

Good God.

I couldn't think straight!

“Once you've settled on a persona, it's hard to change it. Give me an answer now.”

“Uh, I understand the mysterious recluse part, but what do you mean by celebrity?”

“Something like a movie star,” the Witch said.

“First, you'll need new social media accounts. You'll have one assistant managing your image and another handling the press. Of course, we'll also need to hire someone to look after your appearance and wardrobe. Oh, don't worry about money. Black Dragon will handle everything.”

I was already overwhelmed, and now it was even worse.

Beside us, the Sword Star was frowning.

He muttered bluntly, “I travel alone because I don't want to deal with that shit.”

That sounded eminently reasonable.

“The mysterious recluse, please...”

“Are you sure? Professional care really changes a person. Not only will you become much more handsome, you'll also start seeing how to deal with other people in a new light. The Inquisitor models for magazines and even does solo photo shoots, you know.”

I knew that very well.

Before I regressed four thousand days, hadn't I been a fan who collected clippings from those very magazines and photo spreads? The Black Witch standing right in front of me was a regular cover model herself.

“No. Mysterious recluse! Please, let me be a mysterious recluse.”

But it was a different story when I was the one involved.

“Why? Don't you want to do photo shoots?”

Was I out of my mind?

“I'd die of embarrassment!”

“Everyone's embarrassed at first. Well, the Inquisitor never was, even at the beginning... but that's an exception. Death King, honestly, if we're talking about embarrassment, what you shouted from that pavilion in the Aegim Empire was far more—”

“If I can't be a mysterious recluse, I'm quitting the Five Great Guilds.”

I meant it with all my heart.

The Witch laughed softly.

“Yes, I suppose you would. You seem like that sort of person.”

“So what do I need to do to be a mysterious recluse?”

“It's simple. Learn to keep a straight face.”

Never in my life had anyone advised me to ‘keep a straight face’ before.

“Absolutely no social media activity. No magazine or television appearances. Refuse interview requests from streamers and news outlets alike. An interview or two a year is fine, but I'll only send you reporters I've vetted beforehand.”

Hmm.

“... Is that all?”

“You don't yet realize how difficult it is.”

The Witch chuckled.

“Attention is a drug. The most addictive drug there is.”

The Sword Star picked up where she left off.

“And the drug that ruins people most thoroughly.”

“Yes. Even having just ten people pay attention to you can make you happy. But once you've reached this position, a few words from you can prompt reactions from hundreds of thousands, millions of people. Very few people can resist a drug like that.”

More people crowded in.

It felt as though the entire city's population had gathered here.

“It's all an illusion,” the Sword Star said.

“Yes, but a pleasant illusion,” the Witch said.

“Perhaps knowing how to enjoy this drug is part of being famous. You hold out for a while, until you grow sick of it. Or until you become disillusioned with your colleagues drinking down the same drug. What will you do, Death King?”

“...”

I looked around.

A wall of people.

They were packed together without a single gap. Camera flashes kept going off, forcing me to squint. Through narrowed eyes, the succession of flashes looked like a mirage, and the wall of people looked almost like shadows.

“... There probably isn't anyone more desperate for other people than I am,” I began.

“But what I want is recognition. And I may not know much... but I think receiving attention and earning recognition are somewhat different.”

I thought of the Flame Emperor.

The supreme figure who had monopolized all the Tower's attention before I regressed four thousand times.

“I'm fine without the attention of millions. The attention I get from the people around me is enough. Whether it's hundreds of thousands or millions, what I want from the people of the world... isn't attention. It's recognition.”

“All right.”

The Witch smiled.

“Personally, I don't think the two can be entirely separate, but if that's your answer, I'll respect it.”

“Thank you.”

“I'm glad you're that kind of person.”

Those were words I'd heard sometime before.

“So how do I get good at keeping a straight face?”

“I'll tell you the secret.”

The crowd's cries erupted from every direction.

By now, our pace had slowed to about ten centimeters per second.

“Think of a really bad memory.”

“A bad memory?”

“Yes. In my case, my father died in a civil war when I was still in the outside world,” the Witch said calmly.

“I was seven. I was fleeing with my parents, and I think soldiers were chasing us. My father stayed behind. He shouted, ‘Don't look back. Keep going.’ But...”

The Witch led the way, pushing through the crowd.

“I really did run without looking back. I heard gunshots, but I didn't turn around. I just kept running.”

CLICK! CLICK!

The camera flashes never stopped.

“You were a child.”

“I was a child,” the Witch murmured.

“I don't hate myself for running away. I was only a little girl. But why didn't I even look back? It would have been so easy. I could at least have looked.”

“...”

“Whenever I need to keep a straight face, I think of that moment. When I recall running until my heart was pounding breathlessly, it's very easy to keep my face blank. It's my own little magic trick.”

The Witch looked at me.

“You have a memory or two like that, don't you?”

I did.

A dark alley.

I recalled the Flame Emperor gripping my head as my entire body burned.

“I do.”

I didn't need a mirror to know.

My face was perfectly expressionless now.

“Please look this way for a moment!”

“Say something, please!”

“Black Dragon leader, when can we expect an official announcement—”

“What is the relationship between the two of you?”

“Sword Star! What do you think of Death King?”

When I looked around again, my eyes had already adjusted to the camera flashes, and I could see my surroundings clearly. I'd never been surrounded by such a large crowd before. I'd never been showered with flashes like this, either.

But...

“That works like a charm.”

I wasn't overwhelmed the way I'd been earlier.

My mind simply settled into its usual calm.

The Witch raised the corners of her mouth slightly.

“You learn quickly. You'll get used to this in no time.”

The world had certainly changed in five days.

But it hadn't changed so much that I needed to change myself.