Shepherd Wizard

Side Story - Dawn of the Gods (2)

"O great being, please take pity on these slaves."

Yun-seong looked at the shabby figures of the people bowing their heads before him.

Their hair, which looked as if it had been hacked off unevenly with sharpened stones, was crawling with lice and fleas, and their bodies, roughly wrapped in hides, were so emaciated from starvation that their ribs showed through.

Even the oldest among them looked to be somewhere between thirty and forty, and there seemed to be no need to ask what had become of anyone older than that.

"What is that thing that just died?"

At least it was fortunate that, as he had sensed a moment earlier, conversation flowed naturally between them.

Yun-seong deliberately spoke in a high-handed, domineering tone.

He figured that if he tried to be friendly and approached them humbly, they might take him for weak and start getting ideas.

With the power he now possessed, it wouldn't matter what schemes they tried, but even so, he didn't want to hurt fellow humans.

As expected, the people accepted his attitude as natural and submitted.

"That is a Green Elf, one of the Elemental Elves who rule this land."

"Elemental Elves?"

"Yes. Beings with long ears who wield the powers of nature."

It seemed that attributes like fire and wind were being translated as "elements", based on the theory of the four elements.

He glared at them, demanding further explanation, but the humans, at a complete loss, only trembled without opening their mouths.

Not only did they know very little, they weren't proactive enough to work out on their own how to explain anything.

After pressing them several more times, Yun-seong learned that this swampland was the territory of a race called Elemental Elves, beings who commanded the power of Spirits like the one he had just killed, and that all humans were their slaves.

Regrettably, he could learn nothing about the size of the swamp, or about the elves' ranks or strength.

Because no Elf had ever bothered to kindly explain such things to a human.

Judging there was nothing more to be gained, Yun-seong sighed and gave his orders.

"Very well. Dispose of the corpse yourselves so it won't be found. That way, surely no one will suspect you of killing it......."

"As you command."

Until that moment, Yun-seong had assumed they would quietly carry the corpse off to some hidden corner and bury it.

But the solution the humans came up with was beyond anything he had imagined.

"No."

Astonishingly, they all swarmed in together and began tearing into the headless elf's corpse with their teeth.

When the skin proved too tough for their teeth to pierce, they brought sharpened obsidian blades and struggled to carve off the flesh however they could.

Appalled, Yun-seong spoke before he could stop himself, and though it wasn't a loud sound, the humans quickly pulled their mouths away and prostrated themselves.

They seemed to think he was angry that they had dared to put their mouths on the elf's body.

"I'll dispose of the corpse myself."

Cultural differences were one thing, but he couldn't stand to watch humans devour something that had spoken human words.

The villagers looked crestfallen, but they didn't dare stop him from taking the corpse.

How far had he gone, dragging the elf's corpse behind him, leaving them in his wake?

Caesar, following behind, spoke in a low voice.

"Doesn't something feel off?"

"Like what?"

"I'm looking at a corpse...... and it doesn't bother me at all. Is it just me?"

"Me too."

Come to think of it, man-eater or not, they had killed something that spoke human language and were now dragging its corpse around.

Even someone unaccustomed to it might retch just from butchering a chicken, and there were limits to having a strong stomach.

Yun-seong intuited that his transformed body had changed his mental state to some degree as well.

Even as he hurled the headless elf's corpse into the swamp, his heart didn't waver in the slightest.

That evening, the two of them made a simple shelter up in a tree.

There was no particular need to light a fire.

The swamp itself wasn't very cold, and these superior bodies of theirs felt neither heat nor cold.

In truth, it wasn't even clear whether resting at night made sense.

Their bodies could see through pitch-black darkness lit only by starlight as if it were broad daylight, and they felt no fatigue whatsoever.

Resting like this just because it was night was purely a matter of mental fatigue and old habit.

"Do you think this is really inside the game?"

"Who knows."

For a world inside a game, it felt far too real.

More to the point, elves like the one they'd met that afternoon had never existed in SSMS to begin with, and humans committing cannibalism would never have made it past the ratings board.

When he laid out these points, Caesar hung his head.

"I don't know what we're supposed to do from here."

Yun-seong couldn't think of anything in particular either.

All the financial knowledge he had accumulated over his life would hardly be of use in a situation like this.

As for finding people, they were all primitives, and the other races all seemed to be man-eaters of one kind or another.

"Come to think of it, why don't we introduce ourselves properly while we're at it? We can't keep going by game names forever. I'm Hong Yun-seong. You?"

"Me? Kang Ye...... no, just call me Caesar. I like that better."

Yun-seong could roughly guess where that refusal to exchange names came from.

Revealing his real name here would force him to truly feel that he had been flung into another world out of nowhere, hence the urge to escape into the idea that the one standing here wasn't himself, only a character.

"All right, then we'll stick with Caesar. Call me Otas, too."

"Got it, hyung."

That "hyung" was probably part of the same roleplay.

After all, having gone from being a woman to being a man, the confusion had to be that much greater.

Come to think of it, if they weren't the only ones who had crossed over here, there were probably quite a few other users who had been men and were now women.

That catfisher, what was the name, 'SarangChamSarang'? Someone like that might actually be thrilled, though.......

"Ah."

"What is it?"

"We need to find the other Players."

When he thought about it, there was no way he and Caesar were the only two who had suddenly been dropped here.

One person might be a fluke, but two implied three, or more.

"We could find them if we focus on our sense of smell. We and those primitives smell completely different. Should we move out right now?"

"Let's move in the daytime. We can see fine at night, but I'd rather play it as safe as possible."

After that, the two of them talked until they fell asleep.

Perhaps because they now had a course of action laid out, Caesar's gloomy expression had brightened a little.

*

The next day, the two of them immediately set out in search of Players other than themselves.

Fortunately, none of the enemies blocking their way through the swamp posed any real danger.

The giant monsters here were so weak they couldn't even withstand attacks from Caesar, who was far weaker than Otas.

Every time his Musket spat fire, dozens of trees went flying and the swamp's floor was laid bare.

"Don't waste your strength."

"This much is nothing! I could probably fire hundreds of these and be totally fine......."

In contrast to his gloom the day before, Caesar seemed intoxicated by his own strength.

Then again, how many people wouldn't rejoice at having this kind of power?

How many hours had they roamed like that?

While covering a distance nearly enough to circle the Korean Peninsula, they discovered dozens of small villages and members of the race the locals called Elemental Elves.

Fortunately, since their keen sense of smell let them detect the elves first and approach under Concealment, no clashes broke out.

Caesar argued they should strike first, capture some of them, and extract information, but Otas refused, considering the danger that there might still be beings among the elves on their level, or above it.

If the elf they had killed was the bottom rung of that society, and the next one they attacked turned out to be some tremendous bigwig stronger than they were, it would be truly horrific.

It was that evening when they finally came face to face with other Players.

"What's that?"

"Let's go check it out!"

As they traveled, something shining brightly appeared in the far distance.

Closing a gap of dozens of kilometers in an instant, they felt the heat radiating from the source of the light.

To the two of them it felt like nothing more than a sauna, but the way the waterlogged trees dried out and burst into flame in an instant while the swamp's filthy water evaporated made it clear how tremendous the heat truly was.

"A Silver Sun?"

"That's right."

One of SSMS's 4th Job Change classes, a holy knight position that wielded the powers of light and flame along with sword and shield, and even boasted healing abilities.

The one radiating the heat was a Player of that very 'Silver Sun' type.

He and several other Players were locked in battle with elves wielding all manner of elements.

From the look of it, those drawn by the light he had raised earlier had gathered from all directions and split into two camps.

"Aaargh!"

"Fuck, Pingping's hurt! Healer!"

"Die!"

The clash between the two forces was nothing short of a natural disaster.

A single sword swing carved a massive crater into the ground, while pillars dozens of meters high erupted from the earth and collapsed, kicking up sandstorms.

The sight of all those flashy effects from the game destroying the natural landscape was downright surreal.

Yet despite wielding such immense power, the Players couldn't push the elves back one-sidedly.

Their abilities were far superior, but they weren't used to fighting in those bodies.

Not only did they fail to make full use of their physical abilities and skills, they were also clumsy at coordinating with one another.

The elves, by contrast, deftly commanded Spirits of fire and water, wind and earth, lightning and light and darkness, toying with the Players and wearing them down.

One Green Elf wielding wind looked especially powerful among them, overwhelming one or two Players on its own while still having leeway to help the others.

"W-we should help, right?"

"We should."

If the enemy were overwhelmingly powerful, they would have to swallow their tears and run, but against foes merely fighting those Players to a standstill, he calculated that they could win with room to spare.

"Let's split up first. Nothing good comes of us sticking together."

"Okay!"

Sending Caesar to the opposite side, Otas immediately nocked an arrow and ran through skills in his head.

An attack suited to this situation, one that wouldn't do serious harm to allies.......

The moment the thought formed, he released the bowstring, and dozens of shadow streams shot out, engulfing the elves mid-battle.

Each Shadow Arrow struck with nearly the force of a missile, and they tore apart in an instant the Spirits that had been holding their own against the Players' attacks.

"What in the world is-"

"Enemies! Protect the king!"

When more than half of the forty or fifty elves lost their lives, the survivors cried out in panic.

In that moment, Otas intuited that the one they called king was the most powerful Green Elf and immediately launched his second attack.

Of all the Night Hunter's skills, the one with the greatest single-target lethality, a technique used mainly in one-on-one combat.

A single arrow carrying 'Judgment' pierced through the barrier of wind and ran through the one presumed to be the elves' king.

The power packed into the arrow was so immense that the creature's body disintegrated in an instant, leaving literally not even remains behind.

The elves who witnessed it stood there, faces blank with shock.

"My King!"

"Ah......."

Just then, with a bang from the opposite side, Caesar's Musket spat fire and blew away several elves standing in a daze.

Judging by the vortex swirling around the area, he seemed to have used that 'Prophecy of the End' skill of his.

What followed was closer to a one-sided slaughter.

Having lost their commander and half their comrades, the elves fled in panic in every direction, and the Shadow Beasts summoned by the two Night Hunters ran down their prey and tore it apart.

Those among the other Players with the mobility to excel at pursuit likewise massacred the beleaguered elves.

When all the fighting finally ended, the Players came to their senses at last and approached with relieved faces.

"Otas!"

"Is everyone all right?"

"Probably...... thanks, no, thank you."

The one expressing his thanks was the 'Silver Sun' class Player who had been lighting up the surroundings so brightly until moments ago.

His name was 'Who's Who Engineer', wasn't it?

There were five or six other Players besides him, most of them familiar faces.

After all, it was a Shitty Game whose total player count barely scraped a few hundred.

"Don't tell me you lit that beacon to gather people?"

"That's right. Which is how this......."

"That was reckless."

At Otas's sharp rebuke, Engineer hung his head.

Just as he said, it had been a dangerous moment, one where they might well have died without the help of the two who had come following the light.

"I just figured wandering around searching was never going to work."

"That's true enough. And thanks to it, quite a few of us have gathered."

Among those gathered were several with the 'Mother of Earth' or 'God of Blacksmithing' classes, who seemed like they would be useful to travel with.

RPGs were, after all, balanced around the assumption of party play from the start.

Afterward, they gathered with the other Players and exchanged the information they had learned so far.

Unexpectedly, 'Engineer' knew more than expected.

The day before, he had captured a elf and tortured it to death to dig up information, he said.

Hearing that, Otas looked around anew at the Players nearby.

'It's definitely not just me. None of us are in a normal state of mind.'

Superhuman bodies or not, their minds should have belonged to people who, until just recently, had been citizens of a twenty-first-century developed nation.

Yet here he was, recounting the torture of a fellow sapient being without hesitation, and everyone accepted it as a matter of course.

Not only that, despite having fought for their lives just moments ago, not a single one of them showed any sign of PTSD.

Everything about it was abnormal, but Otas didn't bring it up.

It would most likely only add to the confusion.

"Apparently the one that died this time was one of the seven Elf Kings who rule this swamp."

"That thing was?"

"Maybe not for you, Otas-ssi, but it was a pretty tough opponent for us."

Then again, not every Player could be as mighty as he was.

There wasn't a single top ranker among those present.

Still, if the one that had died ranked among the strongest of the elves, that was some reassurance.

Unless hundreds of thousands or millions of them literally came swarming, he couldn't see how they could possibly lose.

*

With their numbers grown to around ten Players, they first elected a party leader.

Naturally, the role fell to Otas.

Not only was he among the oldest of those gathered, his abilities were such that he could sweep away the other Players with his Shadow Wolves alone, without even drawing his bow.

Though against someone like Caesar, he might at least need to shoot.

The main objective of Otas's party was to unite the Players.

To that end, the two 'Silver Sun' Players took turns lighting beacons to draw attention, while the others hunted or captured any elves that came, gathering information.

And in the process, Players and elves weren't the only ones drawn to the light.

Ordinary humans, particularly those whose Elf masters had died in battle against the Players, or who had always lived evading the elves' rule, approached the light and swore their obedience.

"What do we do with them?"

"It's not like they're any use......."

"We'll take them all in for now. We can't very well leave them to die."

To the Players, the humans of this world were, quite literally, nothing but a burden.

With their overwhelming physical abilities and the armor they had brought straight over from their game days, they needed neither houses nor clothes, and as for food, they were better off catching and cooking the monsters, the Magical Beasts, as the locals called them, than eating anything those primitives could make.

The humans of this world who came to Otas's party, on the other hand, were deeply content to serve them.

Far from eating them, these new masters passed on new knowledge and even provided food in such abundance that they never went hungry, so compared to the elves, what merciful rulers they were.

The one they revered most of all was the party's sole 'Mother of Earth' line Player.

She held the Healer and Purifier classes, and with those abilities she could cure every human suffering from endemic disease or permanent disability.

"Ahh, O Great Earth Mother!"

"We humbly thank you!"

To the swamp's humans, who went barefoot at all times and so were prone to infections that often cost them their feet, she was nothing short of a goddess of salvation.

With the humans worshipping the Players as gods like this, the Players in turn grew quite enthusiastic about caring for these primitives.

After all, as the saying goes, a little praise can make anyone dance.

Months passed like that, days filled with battle and city-building.

Once every leader of the Elemental Elves had been hunted down and the race had completely collapsed, Otas decided to lead the Players north.

If they were going to make a proper civilization flourish, he figured they would need land more livable than this.

It was around then that they met Players from another region.

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