Shepherd Wizard

Side Story - Dawn of the Gods (3)

In the early days, when they were busy subjugating the Elemental Elves of the swamplands and rallying players and humans together.

Otas privately felt skeptical about the fact that he was the leader.

'Who am I to be standing in a position like this?'

He was someone who had never in his life led anyone as the leader of any group.

A loner's life, always hovering at the fringes of society, wherever he went.

Did a man like that have any right to lead others?

But as time passed and he saw the state of the players following him, Otas's thinking changed.

'Ah, these hopeless bastards need somebody to lead them, even if it's me.'

From what he had learned through their conversations, the players gathered so far were all people who had been playing SSMS until dawn.

Regrettably, among people who played a failed third-rate RPG until dawn on weekdays, there were surprisingly few normal ones.

Even Caesar, the closest thing he had to a little sister, couldn't escape that assessment.

After all, she herself had once suddenly gotten obsessed with eugenics, spouting cringeworthy edgelord nonsense until people cursed her out as a Nazi.

Fortunately, Otas possessed the ability to keep them in line.

Overwhelming stats, obtained by dumping his surplus cash into microtransactions back when SSMS was still a game.

The strength born from those stats also proved a great help when, around the time they left the swamp and came out into the forest, they encountered another faction.

"You. Monarch?"

"......That's right."

What Otas's party encountered upon reaching the forest region was a group of players led by Monarch, Doo Seok-hoon.

The crew was made up of him and history enthusiasts like Haps and Rom, the sort who often hung out together and were derisively called history-spergs.

"Otaku-hyung, hi!"

A scruffy-bearded middle-aged man speaking in a cheerful, boyish tone was jarring no matter how many times he saw it.

That appearance was probably based on a Berserker character, if he remembered right.

Otas nodded with a sour look on his face.

"So you're Ymir."

"Of course it's me."

Back in the early days when he had just started playing SSMS, this was the guy who had slapped him with the nickname Otaku, because he typed in a Japanese-style manner, and because the name Otas sounded similar.

He briefly wished the man wouldn't call him by that nickname, then whispered quietly to Caesar, who stood behind him.

"Quit growling. What are you, a dog?"

"When did I ever......."

Caesar and the rest of the players on Otas's side were clearly not thrilled about joining up with Monarch's faction.

They were a crew that had made a habit of scams and dirty dealings even back in the game, so the discomfort was inevitable.

But this was an emergency where every last person's strength counted, so all such personal feelings had to be set aside.

"Mind filling me in on the situation here?"

"This place is ruled by things called Dark Elves."

"Dark Elves, huh. What are they like?"

"They command things called Undead Spirits."

"Ah, those."

He hadn't known at first, but the Magical Beasts of this world had a trait of reviving with time if not eaten after being killed.

What's more, the revived ones came back even stronger than they had been in life.

So far, at least, none had been strong enough to harm the players, but just in case, their policy was to cut off part of any Magical Beast they killed, roast it, and eat it.

Left alone, they would harm the natives of this world, ordinary humans.

Hearing this, Monarch raised an eyebrow slightly and said,

"You don't actually have to eat them, though."

"Then what?"

"You just focus on the corpse and think about absorbing its power. Not that it works for us, probably because we're all max level already."

"Oh......."

While Otas's side had been rallying humans and players to grow their forces, this lot had apparently been busy with experiments; Monarch's faction knew quite a lot about the laws of this world.

Some of that knowledge could only have been gained through rather unethical experiments, which was unsettling, but he decided to let it slide.

It was an emergency, after all.

From then on, however, he banned cruel experiments on the natives.

After merging forces, they set about subjugating the other races, just as they had in the swamp.

The Dark Elf lords here were more numerous and more powerful than the Elemental Elves of the south, but they could not withstand Otas's attacks.

Moreover, unlike the swamp, this region was fairly close to the center of the world.

As the fighting continued, players kept joining, and among them were some powerful ones, even if none matched Otas.

ToolLife, the top Thunder Lord; SarangChamSarang, the top God of Blacksmithing; even Meb, the top King of Calamity.

With powerhouses appearing who could each crush the lords of the Dark Elf kingdom to death, and with all of them growing accustomed to wielding their own power, the Dark Elves collapsed in no time.

The place they fled to, escaping the despair that walked the surface, was underground, deep beneath the earth.

"How about your side?"

"Nothing again today."

"Guess they really did all crawl into those underground caves......."

The underground world they had built was like a truly endless labyrinth.

With Undead Spirits, which had no concept of stamina, they could quite literally dig through the earth like excavators.

The players debated whether to chase them down and exterminate them or leave them be, and in the end decided on the latter.

However mighty these superhumans were, venturing into caves kilometers, or dozens of kilometers, deep underground was a daunting prospect.

One careless mistake that collapsed a tunnel, and they would be in a death race, digging frantically upward before they suffocated.

There was plenty to do besides exterminating them anyway.

Hunting the Birdmen roaming the northern plains, beating down the Merfolk that crawled up to the northeastern hills, driving out the ghosts of the western wastelands.......

By that point, they could form a rough picture of the shape of this world.

"This world's got SSMS terrain features, doesn't it?"

"The land's shaped differently, but it's like they copy-pasted the field options as-is, I guess."

"Maybe the mineral spots are the same too?"

Mapmaking fell to the 'Thunder Lord' and 'Herald of the Gods' classes, which could fly thanks to having Airbender as a subclass.

Precision varied somewhat with each artist's observational and drawing skills, but since they drew while looking down from thousands of meters up, the quality came out reasonably decent.

The strongest player among them, 'ToolLife', could climb nearly to the stratosphere, but sadly even he could not push on into space.

There was the breathing problem, and besides, the very principle of his flight relied on wind.

Amid all this there was one horrific accident, which occurred while crossing the mountain range to the west.

A Herald of the Gods player, curious about what lay beyond, built up speed and flew over the range, only to be quite literally scattered into dust.

Upon receiving the report, Otas sighed and banned all exploration beyond the mountains.

"If it's banned, then it's banned, I guess."

"Well, even without the ban, I doubt anyone would go anyway."

"Forcing natives in there is banned too, Monarch."

"Why?"

"Because they're human too. I'm pretty sure I told you before."

At Otas's words, Monarch made a sullen face but could offer no protest.

Even now, with multiple powerful Rankers gathered, Otas remained the strongest, and Monarch's voice had only grown weaker by comparison.

As time passed, the community of players and natives grew ever larger.

Once the population numbered in the hundreds of thousands, all sorts of problems naturally arose.

The fortunate thing was that the natives of this land were beings accustomed to submission.

They regarded the players, or as they called them among themselves after clumsily mishearing the word, the Preah God Tribe, as their saviors, believing in and following them. [TL: "Preah" is the natives' garbled hearing of the word "player".]

Having transcendent beings strolling right beside them, thundering that evildoers would fall into hell after death, proved an extremely efficient crime deterrent.

Even if it happened fairly often that those transcendent beings committed crimes themselves and undermined their own authority.

In the midst of this expansion, players came calling from the far east.

A player of the 'Space Weaver' class, with its teleportation skills, opened a portal spanning thousands of kilometers.

"Otas-ssi?"

"It's been a while, PuddingLover. MikeHeaven-ssi......."

According to the players from the east, their side was broadly divided into grasslands, a lake region, and snowfields.

There were Centaurs, Goblins, and White Elves, was it?

The first two were a bit troublesome, they said, but the last were small fry without much in the way of numbers, easy enough to deal with.

Just as he was thinking they must have had a fairly smooth time of it, what with having more Rankers than his own side, PuddingLover, the strongest of the Silver Sun class, let out a sigh.

"The problem is the desert."

"Ah, I did hear Giants live in the desert."

"We need your help, Otas-ssi."

"Just how strong are these Giants?"

All manner of grim rumors circulated about the Enril Desert, which by all indications lay at the center of this world.

Giants, each as powerful as the kings of the other races, living there in droves?

There was also talk that they simply couldn't be bothered to come out, and that if they ever felt like it, this world would be theirs to rule.

"We've already lost several players who were trying to clear the desert."

"Several meaning?"

"At least ten."

"Huh."

Of course, the western players had suffered deaths too.

Beings like the Elemental Elf King of the swamplands, the Dark Elf lords, or the Great Sea Serpent that the Merfolk of the hills worshipped like a god were a match for the average player, or stronger.

Still, thanks to the active protection of Otas and the other Rankers, excluding those attacked while isolated in the early days, the death toll hadn't even reached five; yet these people had lost more than ten in group battles alone.

Considering that the total number of players who had crossed over was estimated at around a hundred, it was a staggering loss.

"There are hundreds of them, each one on par with an average player......and their leader, the Giant Queen, isn't someone even we could easily face alone. Honestly, it wouldn't be wrong to say we fled the desert."

The 'we' he spoke of naturally meant the top-tier Rankers.

Considering that even the PuddingLover standing before him, while no Otas, was a tremendous powerhouse, these were creatures more than threatening enough to ordinary players.

After the talks ended, Otas asked the western players he led for their opinions on conquering the desert.

Surprisingly, the overwhelming answer was 'let's join in'.

"They're all gonna drop dead the second Otaku-hyung shoots his arrows anyway, so what's there to be scared of?"

The others voiced their agreement with Ymir's flippant remark.

Everyone was so certain of his power that even Caesar, who was on bad terms with Ymir since he usually called her a Nazi bitch, nodded along.

Everyone except, perhaps, Otas himself.

When they announced the decision, the eastern players who had come through the portal were overjoyed.

"You'll help us?"

"Yes, that's how it turned out."

"Alright! Just having you come, Otas-ssi, we couldn't ask for more!"

Since only players would be moving out, there was nothing in particular to prepare, and the deployment happened quickly.

With everyone assembling in the desert except the dozen or so left behind to protect the natives gathered in each camp, their numbers reached about sixty.

"I don't know exactly how many were logged in back then, but this looks like just about everyone."

"Well, there are a few who go it alone without joining any group."

For example, there was 'Tiago', a player who had been fairly close with Caesar.

With the Wave Rider class, which fought hand-to-hand in water, and the PvP-specialized Mimic class, he found group activities a hassle.

He was also uncomfortable with being relatively weak among players and needing the Rankers' protection.

They had plenty of players anyway, so Otas had simply let him go, but now he regretted it, thinking he should have kept him around had he known something like this would happen.

Of course, at this point tracking him down again would take too long and be too much trouble.

Not long after entering the desert, the players came face to face with this world's strongest race, the Giants.

Over fifty meters tall, with an alien build and features, the thing was dressed like a medieval knight.

He had just enough time to think that armor of that size couldn't be made of ordinary metal before a player from the east explained,

"The ones dressed like that are the warrior caste. They're stronger than ordinary Giants. Skilled in martial arts, too."

Just then, the Giant whipped its head toward them.

Despite its bulk, its hearing seemed sharp.

["Slaves?"]

Even its casually questioning voice was louder than a full-throated bellow.

But only for a moment; upon taking in the players' attire, it scowled.

["No, demons! How dare-"]

"Phoenix."

"Yessir!"

At Otas's call, the player Phoenix stepped forward.

Unlike the Night Hunter, specialized in assassination and sniping, he held a somewhat modified Twilight Chaser class, attacking enemies by commanding beasts while shooting arrows from behind them.

Against him, the Giant displayed advanced martial arts, whipping its enormous body around more nimbly than a human.

Every smooth stroke of its longsword, dozens of meters in length, split the wind, and Phoenix's summons kept getting unsummoned one after another.

Phoenix hastily fell back, shaking his head in disbelief as the ground cracked apart from the mere aftershock of each swing.

Even with agility that let him close dozens of meters in a single stride without effort, he found it hard to cope.

"Whoa, this is kind of brutal......?"

Watching from behind, Otas could roughly gauge how strong the Giants were.

One on one, Phoenix would barely win; two on one, he would lose.

Considering Phoenix sat right at the player average, several hundred ordinary Giants really were a more threatening enemy than expected.

"That's enough. Fall back."

The moment Phoenix withdrew, an arrow from Otas pierced straight through the Giant's body.

With a hole in its neck, the Giant clamped a hand over the wound and seemed to hold on through sheer vitality, but soon the poison took it and it crashed sprawling to the ground.

"Whoa......."

"One shot? Otaku-hyung, what the hell is your basic attack at? Phoenix's damage barely even registered just now."

"Dunno. Last I remember, it was around twenty million."

"That's actually insane. If you dumped all your skills into the ground, you'd punch through to the mantle."

While everyone snickered at the joke, saying it might actually be true, Otas spotted Monarch using a skill to manipulate the dead Giant's corpse, separating bone from flesh and storing them away in his inventory.

"What are you doing?"

"Gonna use it for some experiments."

As a Biologist, a class that used magic drawing on blood and flesh, was he planning to try out some related technique?

It didn't seem like something worth interfering in, so Otas nodded.

He could hear the Enchanter and Architect players muttering about how nice it would be to build structures out of these bones.

From then on, the players roamed the vast desert, hunting the Giants down one by one.

Most died to a single arrow from Otas, and when their numbers occasionally swelled, the Rankers and other players stepped forward to buy time for his attacks.

Meanwhile, the humans who had been kept as food for the Giants were sent through portals opened by the Space Weaver's power to the player communities in the east and west.

Before long, not a single Giant could be seen anywhere in the desert.

"Looks like they've all gathered at their stronghold, huh?"

"Obviously. They can't just sit back and let themselves all get hunted down."

The Night Hunter, Herald of the Gods, and Twilight Chaser type players had already tracked the Giants and pinned down the enemy's location.

The players headed for the Giants' palace, situated slightly east of the desert's center.

Fitting for a place where Giants over fifty meters tall lived, the palace was so enormous it could be seen from nearly a hundred kilometers away.

Of course, given the matter of the horizon, being able to see it from this distance meant either the planet was far larger than expected or their senses had reached some abnormal domain.

With the real battle ahead, the players each opened their inventories and used the buff items they usually carried.

In an instant their senses expanded, and muscles already brimming with strength surged with even greater vigor.

Just then, as if they had somehow noticed, Giants could be seen charging out from the far reaches of the desert.

At last, the battle that would decide dominion over this desert began.

"They're coming!"

"Hold them! Just hang on until Otaku-hyung shoots them all dead!"

The plan was simple.

A textbook raid in which ranged dealers like Otas and the other Night Hunter types shot the enemy dead while the melee dealers and tanks held the line and the support classes healed and coordinated the battlefield.

The only difference was that the target was not one mighty monster but hundreds of Giants.

"Uwoooooh!"

"Fuck, Javelins!"

"Get behind the Paladins and warriors!"

The Giants, too, had anticipated the players' visit and laid out a massive encirclement.

Its diameter alone spanned dozens of kilometers.

With every last surviving Giant in the desert gathered, they numbered over three hundred, and their great height let them close whole kilometers every few seconds, which was what made a formation of that scale possible.

Their means of attack weren't even limited to close combat.

The Javelins they hurled crossed dozens of kilometers at several times the speed of sound, threatening the players.

But the players standing against them were superhumans of equal measure.

The Silver Sun's fire and the Thunder Lord's lightning melted the Javelins, while items forged by the God of Blacksmithing and sand walls raised by the Mother of Earth blocked them.

The Crimson Noble fought hand to hand against the Giants who closed in with spear and blade, tearing them apart, while the Wrath of Frost skewered Giants with icicles that sprang from an enormous ice axe.

And the strongest of them all, the Night Hunter Otas, under the players' protection, shot shadow-shrouded Poison Arrow after Poison Arrow.

With every shot, dozens of streaks of shadow flew out, piercing Giants and gouging deep scars into the desert.

For the first time since coming to this world, he felt himself pouring out everything he had.

The dizzying exhilaration of it lasted only a moment before a single Javelin hurtling in from afar set off his sixth sense.

"Dodge!"

"We can block it!"

The tanks who ignored Otas's order and stepped up had their bodies ripped clean in half the instant the Javelin met their shields.

Just as he moved to quickly summon a Shadow Beast to block it, someone shoved him aside and stood in front of him.

It was Caesar, who had been firing beside him.

"Hey-"

Boom, and with a thunderous roar, the Javelin fell aside without reaching them.

It was thanks to PuddingLover, the strongest Silver Sun, stepping in.

While the massive metal pillar, a full hundred meters long, lay tumbled on the ground, Otas snapped at Caesar, raising his voice at her for the first time.

"Are you insane? Why would you jump in front of me there?"

"I thought you were going to die, hyung......."

"Worry about yourself, not me!"

If it were enough to kill him, Caesar could neither have withstood it nor been of any help.

But he couldn't waste time scolding her mid-battle, so Otas turned his gaze back to the enemy.

A Giant roughly twice the size of the others, clearly the one who had thrown the Javelin moments ago, was taking its stance again with another enormous metal pillar in hand.

"Another one's coming!"

At someone's scream-like cry, Otas clicked his tongue lightly and activated his skill.

His usual buffs were already all in place; what remained was to pour extra power into his next single shot.

The instant the Giant Queen hurled her Javelin, he instinctively set the arrow's trajectory to perfection and activated the skill 'Judgment'.

With the MP consumption multiplier set to maximum.

The pitch-black streak of light that left his bowstring pulverized the incoming Javelin and closed a hundred kilometers in an instant.

"Oh-"

As someone gasped in admiration, a thunderous boom rolled out from the distant Giant palace.

Considering how far it was from the battlefield, the sound might as well have been a falling meteor.

The destructive aftermath was enough that even the dozens of players fighting amid all their own commotion briefly stopped mid-battle.

Sensing that something had happened to their queen, the Giants, far from fleeing, vented their fury like Berserkers and attacked all the more fiercely.

Even the Javelin-throwers came charging in, sparing the players the trouble of a chase but making things more dangerous.

How long did they trade blows like that?

By the time the fighting ended, Otas and the players, having subjugated hundreds of Giants, were on the verge of total exhaustion.

"God, I'm about to keel over......."

"There's no way I could ever do this twice."

"Don't worry. Aside from the Giants, this world's got nothing."

While his comrades chatted, Otas looked around and clicked his tongue.

The battle hadn't been all that long, yet the once-flat face of the desert was nowhere to be found.

Physical attacks had carved out basins and heaped up sand mountains dozens of meters high in every direction, and there were even lakes of glass where the sand had melted, and pools where melted ice had mixed with poison.

Any ordinary person who came here would surely meet a bad end, one way or another.

Of course, none of these scars compared to the final shot Otas had fired.

When the players made their leisurely way to where the old Giant palace had stood, they gaped at the mark left by his full-strength blow.

"Whoa, fuck......."

"And this came from one skill at full power?"

"Insane."

True to her status as the strongest being in this world, the Giant Queen had taken Otas's Judgment without being blasted to pieces like the elf kings.

She had merely died of the poison, a clean round hole punched through where her heart had been.

But just as a bullet wounds worse on its way out than on its way in, the skill's true aftermath had landed instead on the Giant palace behind her.

The building where the Giants' queen and her kin had once lived was now a colossal basin, hundreds of meters deep and kilometers across in width and length.

It could truly be called the judgment of a god.

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