Shepherd Wizard

Side Story - Dawn of the Gods (4)

With the Giants extinct, no enemy remained on this land capable of standing against the Players.

Superior specimens like the centaur great warriors, the goblin lords, and the elf king had all been hunted down, and what little had fled or survived was mere small fry.

Of course, threatening enemies did still remain in the sea.

The colossal monsters the Merfolk worshipped, the Great Sea Serpents.

Each one was a formidable foe capable of matching an average Player, and the geographic advantage of the sea made them all the trickier to deal with.

But unlike the Giants, they had no overwhelming individual like the Queen who could threaten even Rankers, and their solitary nature meant they had never formed a proper society.

They did rule over the Merfolk and wield them as an army, but even the Merfolk royals who could transform into sea beasts were no match for the Players.

"Hup!"

The one who played the biggest role in subjugating the Great Sea Serpents was Meb, a Player with the 'King of Calamity' job.

He favored a Trident bearing the same name as his job; a single strike of it against the ground raised a tremendous tidal wave that literally laid the seafloor bare, making him a veritable second coming of Poseidon.

Having been unable to display his true power during the Giant subjugation because the fighting took place in the desert, Meb was eager to redeem himself, actively touring the two seas and slaughtering Great Sea Serpents and Merfolk.

While Players specialized in fighting at sea ran wild here and there, a new task fell to those who remained.

Namely, how to govern the five hundred thousand humans who had gathered under them after suffering oppression at the hands of the Non-human Races, and how to rebuild civilization.

"A name for the one and only nation in this world......."

"How about the Holy Roman Empire?"

"It's not holy, it's not Roman, and it's not an empire."

"Can't speak for the first two, but if it's got an emperor, it counts as an empire."

It was Rom, the history enthusiast, who defined their collective as a nation and gave it the title of empire.

With the name settled, the next thing to come up was the question of who would be the empire's emperor.

Feeling everyone's eyes turn to him, Otas shook his head.

"I'll pass."

"Why?"

"You're the strongest one here."

"Would the UFC heavyweight champion make a better president? There's a reason they say absolute power corrupts absolutely. Back in wartime, sure, but these days we're better off running things as a loose community."

Following the strongest man's opinion, their collective ultimately became an empire without an emperor, which a few of them found all the more amusing.

After all, it was now not holy, not Roman, and not an empire.

Even after settling on a name, problems abounded.

For instance, how to build a self-sufficient environment on the foundation of five hundred thousand people and make civilization flourish.

At present, they had split into several factions centered on the Rankers and scattered across the world.

Humans were far too frail to survive by hunting, and they lacked the know-how for agriculture, so the Players had to hunt Magical Beasts to feed them; if everyone gathered in a single region, the Magical Beasts there would soon run dry.

Otas decided to settle with a handful of his followers in the land where the Giants once lived, the Enril Desert.

Right beside the spot where he had felled the Giant Queen, he raised a castle built from Giants' bones to serve as his stronghold, and filled the crater carved out by his arrow with water to make a lake.

In any case, the current arrangement, with the Players one-sidedly feeding the humans, couldn't continue.

They couldn't spend forever working like this, and as humanity prospered and their numbers grew, the burden would only mount.

So the Players tried all manner of methods to solve the problem.

Rapidly advancing science to arm themselves with firearms (this failed for lack of knowledge, and because producing black powder proved impossible), or making use of techniques like the Soul Magic some of them had secretly passed down.

The dilemma was solved in a truly unexpected way.

"This kid is yours?"

"Probably......?"

"Well, obviously. A Player sowed the seed, so of course something like this came out."

"It's flying!"

The Players gazed up with fascinated expressions at the newborn giggling as it flitted through the sky.

Due to the nature of the game, a large share of SSMS's playable characters were male.

And among the Players, quite a few had relieved their desires on the native women.

Otas and the other Rankers punished anyone who raped an unwilling woman, but they didn't go so far as to stop women who wanted to throw themselves into a god's arms.

As a result, starting about a year and a half after the Possession, the Players' children began to be born one by one.

Astonishingly, these babies displayed superb physical abilities and all manner of mysterious powers from the moment they were born.

It was the very moment the first wizards came into the world.

"So, you're saying we strategically increase the number of Players' children...... these 'Demigods', so to speak, and have them protect the humans?"

"Exactly. Though I think we'll have to raise the kids ourselves!"

Otas nodded along to the proposal from the Player SarangChamSarang, then glanced down at her leg.

Her right foot, twisted and dark crimson, was the mark of a perk she'd received back in the game days; because of it, the humans called her the Lame Goddess.

She wasn't alone; the other Players also rather enjoyed the process of their job titles becoming divine names of a sort.

After all, not everyone's original nickname could sound so impressive.

"Ourselves? Why?"

"Because the kids are too strong. If ordinary people raised them, the death toll would probably hit triple digits before the kids learned right from wrong."

According to her explanation, the Demigods possessed strength surpassing a grown man's even in an infant's body.

Apparently, just being cranky or frightened was enough for them to set things ablaze or hurl nearby objects around with telekinesis.

As she spoke, she suddenly let out a deep sigh.

"I'm pregnant now too, and I don't know if the baby will come out all right. I have a feeling there'll be problems one way or another."

"You're pregnant? And the father is... don't tell me, a Player?"

For an instant Otas lost his composure and let his shock show plainly.

He knew, after all, that this beauty with her cascading red hair had originally been a man.

"A native. I fooled around with some Players before, but it seems like babies just don't happen with them."

At her revelation that she'd been with other Players too, Otas let out a dumbfounded laugh.

She'd made her living pretending to be a woman and sweet-talking money out of middle-aged men in the first place, so that much figured; but to think there were people who'd go for her knowing full well that what was inside was a man.

'Strong stomachs, all of them.......'

Then again, compared to the natives, most of whom were grubby and unkempt, she was beautiful enough to suit the name of goddess.

She was, after all, the product of meticulously customizing an already handsome game character.

Noticing his distaste, the woman shrugged.

"The body's a woman's anyway, so why not enjoy life to match? It's not just me; the others decided to just go with their body's sex too. And what about you? Caesar's a woman on the inside... could you love her?"

At her words, Otas glanced over at Caesar, who was chatting with someone else a fair distance away.

"Let's drop that subject."

"Anyway, think it over. It's not certain, but it seems like the stronger the Player, the stronger the child."

*

When Rankers from other regions repeatedly made similar proposals, Otas finally agreed to take part in producing children as well.

The world still teemed with Non-human Races and Magical Beasts they had yet to exterminate, and having the Players chase down and eliminate every last one while protecting humanity was more than cumbersome; it was impossible.

Naturally, among the humans remaining in the Enril Desert, there was no shortage of women who longed to be embraced by the great Night Hunter.

Of course, the natives, having lived in harsh conditions, fell short of the Players in looks, but among them were several who cleaned up rather nicely with a good wash and some grooming.

The day he first took women to his bed, Otas faltered for a moment at the look on Caesar's face.

"Ah......."

All Players possessed superb senses, but among them the Night Hunters, or more precisely those whose jobs were based on the Chaser class, excelled in smell.

Caesar's face turned bleak as he detected the scent of women lingering on Otas's body.

"You okay?"

"I, I'm fine. Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?"

Watching Caesar give that halfhearted answer and slip away with slumped shoulders, Otas let out a small sigh.

By now he knew that Caesar harbored feelings for him beyond those for a close hyung, or by the old standard, a familiar oppa.

Perhaps it worked by sensing hormonal changes in the body or something of the sort, but their almost hypersensitive noses could at times even discern the emotions a person carried.

But there was no way for him to answer Caesar's feelings.

In the end, Caesar's body was now a man's, and Otas was unmistakably heterosexual.

Caesar, too, knew he was in no position to plead for love as he was now, and so he simply swallowed his tears alone.

Even as someone's love shattered in that crossing of sexes, time flowed on like water.

The Demigods, now reaching adolescence, regrettably failed to become humanity's protectors, contrary to the Players' expectations.

They might submit to their mighty parents, but they did not regard ordinary humans, no better than vermin in their eyes, as their own kind.

Condescension and contempt went without saying; at the slightest annoyance they would beat someone to death or incinerate them with a mere glance, until people came to fear them even more than the Non-human Races.

A few of them at least pretended to obey, but a good number of the Demigods had temperaments little different from psychopaths, and in the end the Players had no choice but to carry out a 'Culling'.

"W-wait, Otas-ssi. Just one more chance......."

"Sorry, but no. That little shit has killed over three hundred people. How am I supposed to let that slide?"

"They're NPCs! Unlike those things, she's my daught-"

Crack, the Player's words went no further at the sight of the girl's neck being severed by a Shadow Wolf's claws.

The execution of wayward Demigods like this became the duty of the Rankers of each region, Otas included.

Among the Players devoted to their children, some refused or came to resent Otas for it, but most resigned themselves meekly and left it in his hands.

Many of them had regarded their unions with the natives less as love than as a way to relieve lust while producing units to dump the tedious work on.

Around the time the first generation of wizards ended in miserable failure, Monarch summoned the Players from every region and presented a new idea.

"Impose restraints with Soul Magic?"

"With this, we can manipulate their personalities to a degree and forcibly instill morality. It's even hereditary, and-"

"How did you find this out? Don't tell me you experimented on humans?"

Otas cut him off, glaring at Monarch with a grave expression.

Unlike Otas, who had based himself in the desert, Monarch had made his base in the plains far to the northwest, forcing Otas to relax his watchful eye; Monarch had clearly exploited that gap to conduct all manner of experiments.

Knowing about the Eyes of Truth, Monarch couldn't even lie; he hemmed and hawed, then said quietly,

"That's not what matters here."

"It matters. I made it perfectly clear that experimenting on humans was forbidden."

"How the hell was I supposed to figure this out without experimenting!?"

Bang, Otas shot up from his seat, and as he loomed over him, Monarch chewed his lip and took a step back.

The pressure he felt wasn't because his 'Dominator'-based build left him half a head shorter than the other man, nor because his opponent was strong enough to kill him in an instant.

Perhaps it was the seasoned authority of the leader who had guided this world for the past year and a half, but Otas gave off an aura entirely apart from all that.

One that made it hard to dare stand against him, simply as one human facing another.

"This is your last warning."

At the low voice, Monarch nodded, even as humiliation gnawed at him.

*

Whatever its origins, the 'Leash' Monarch proposed succeeded in restraining the Demigods quite efficiently.

Wielding the amorphous, mysterious powers called magic, they stayed loyal to their powerful parents, protected the frail humans, and expanded humanity's domain.

However, Otas ordered that Monarch's Leash be applied at a weaker intensity to the children of the desert, his own included.

There was the risk of side effects, and above all, he was convinced that a snake like that would never have failed to plant some strange backdoor.

Thanks to repeated verification with the Eyes of Truth, the restraints Monarch placed on the desert's Demigods were far weaker than those on the others.

Naturally, as relations between Otas and Monarch soured, so did relations between their respective followers.

Though in truth, Caesar had been on bad terms with the military crowd, Ymir and Habs and the rest, since long ago, so it was nothing new.

What finally broke their relationship beyond repair, over a century after the empire's founding, was the matter of subjugating the Dwarves of the Gray Zone, which lay between their two regions.

"I told you before. I'm not lending them out."

"If we let those bastards keep stockpiling technology, someday we're the ones who'll be in danger!"

Unlike the other Non-human Races, most of which hadn't even reached a medieval level of civilization, the Dwarves were a race that had developed steampunk-style science and technology.

In the early days when the Players ran rampant, they had resisted without knowing any better, but upon realizing they stood no chance, they had hidden themselves deep within the ravines; Monarch wanted to borrow the power of the Night Hunters, Otas among them, or their descendants to exterminate the Dwarves.

"Look, I'm not even asking you to come yourself. At the very least, just lend me the Demigods with tracking abilities......."

"Last time you took my children to wipe out the Dark Elves, and you got them killed."

"I'll be careful."

"Being careful isn't the issue. I don't want to see our Demigods put in danger. And I and the other Chasers are too busy to go ourselves. So go home."

At the repeated refusal, Monarch's face flushed scarlet.

As he turned away, a muttering voice drifted from behind.

"Fuck, like some well-fed pig bastard......."

Not seeing any worth in a reply, Otas sent Monarch out and buried himself in his work once more.

There was more than enough to do as it was.

Things like raising the civilization level further, which had advanced somewhat over the years, or building new cities to house the growing population and dispatching Demigods to them.

Looking down at documents written on papyrus scrolls, he frowned at a new document brought in by Caesar, who served as his secretary.

"So the humans here really are incapable of invention?"

"Probably."

That the civilization level had advanced less than expected, even more than a century after humanity's liberation, wasn't only because they lacked proper scientific experts.

Over the years, the Players had come to realize that the natives of this land lacked something called creativity.

Teach them scientific principles, and there should have been a natural feedback loop of mastering them and building further; but these people learned exactly what they were taught and stopped there.

In the end, civilization advanced only through the Players, and only through the small minority among them with any real store of scientific knowledge, so the pace could hardly be fast.

If anything, raising primitives to this level in a mere hundred-odd years deserved to be called an achievement.

This very point was one of the reasons Otas had refused Monarch's request.

Of all the Non-human Races, the Dwarves had never been particularly keen on eating humans to begin with, and after the initial clashes they had acknowledged their inferiority and gone into hiding.

So his calculation was that once humanity's civilization level rose high enough, he could draw them out and advance further through technological exchange.

Organizing the thoughts in his head as he unrolled a new document, his eyes went wide at an unexpected piece of news.

"SarangChamSarang says she's going to build a road spanning the empire."

"Doesn't that eat up a massive amount of Architect slots?"

The 'Architect', a subclass of the God of Blacksmithing, could spend resources to create structures with special options, and a separate gauge existed that would not recover unless the creations were reclaimed.

Even the simplest option, Indestructibility, would consume an enormous amount over a road of that length.

Otas nodded at Caesar's question.

"I guess that much is manageable for her. Everything else she's built is still standing, after all."

"Well, she is someone who works hard even while she's busy popping out babies."

Otas read the jealousy in Caesar's voice.

Unlike Caesar, who had been a woman and become a man, she had gone from man to woman and not merely adapted perfectly but positively enjoyed it, and that seemed to rub him the wrong way.

Even after a hundred-odd years, Caesar had not slept with a woman or fathered a child.

Perhaps he didn't want the one he secretly loved to see him as a man.

For Otas, who could not return those feelings, an awkward smile was the only answer he had.

*

Before they knew it, some three hundred years had passed since they descended into this world, and the empire was flourishing, dazzlingly so.

The mighty Demigods subjugated Non-human Races and Magical Beasts daily, and beneath them, the people expanded their territory.

With only slight exaggeration, a new village sprang up in the blink of an eye, and a city appeared between one sunset and the next dawn.

Even when a powerful enemy occasionally appeared out of nowhere to threaten it all, there was nothing to worry about.

For the great Preah God Tribe, the saviors of this world, stood waiting.

Gods who hadn't aged in the slightest despite the long years were naturally regarded as immortal beings, and they themselves believed it too.

After all, if someone hadn't gained a single wrinkle in three hundred years, surely dying of old age would take a millennium at the very least.

And so, when the first of the Players died, they never imagined it could be a death by lifespan.

"ToolLife-ssi passed away?"

"Yes. They say it just happened suddenly, as if he'd fallen asleep......."

Beginning with the Thunder Lord, ToolLife, the Players began slipping one by one into a sleep from which they would never wake.

To the humans they passed it off as 'Ascension', but the gods who knew the truth scrambled to analyze the cause.

Before long, the Lame Goddess SarangChamSarang discovered that these deaths were determined by the Player's own age.

The first to die had been in their fifties back on Earth, and those following close behind were in their forties.

"Hold on, our bodies changed, but we die because of our old age? How does that make any sense?"

"Why on earth......."

The Players panicked, scrambling in every direction with no idea how to extend their lifespans.

Some looked into whether an answer might lie in Soul Magic, which only a handful of eccentrics like Monarch had ever studied.

Otas's secretary, Caesar, was one of them.

As luck would have it, one of the early deaths had been one of the few Space Weavers, so Caesar had to run all the way to another region and back; he came to find Otas covered head to toe in dust.

"Otas-hyung. No... oppa."

"Don't call me oppa in that voice. It's creepy."

"Talk to Monarch and try transferring your body. I know it's still experimental, but you have to at least......."

Upon learning that Players who had once been in their thirties were starting to die, Caesar had fallen into a state of half-panic.

His unfocused eyes and trembling hands would have made anyone think he was the one facing imminent death.

Otas smiled wryly and patted him on the head to calm him.

"Forget it. My life isn't precious enough to keep going by stealing a perfectly healthy person's body. And if it failed and we both died, that would be a sorry business."

"They're just NPCs, though-"

"That's a sad way to put it. This is the land we've tended and the people we've governed. Even if it really were true, shouldn't we at least treat them as if they were people?"

He still remembered the Demigods he had killed because there was no saving them, and his own first children, and sometimes they appeared in his dreams.

In front of others he acted as though he were utterly without mercy, but Otas regarded them as human beings, the same as himself.

Seen from that perspective, the method Monarch proposed was nothing short of horrific.

To survive as nothing but a mind, hopping through the bodies of one's descendants like an evil spirit; wasn't that a wretched end for the saviors who had rescued this world?

After soothing Caesar and sending him off with a promise to look for other ways to extend their lifespans, just in case, he sat quietly in his office chair and gazed up at the ceiling.

His body ordinarily knew nothing of fatigue, yet today, for some reason, his eyelids felt terribly heavy.

The Night Hunter closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep.

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