The Dark Territory was home to five great races.
After its first emperor departed, the Council of Ten had been established to maintain order, mediate conflicts among the races, and preserve the balance of power.
That balance, however, had already reached its breaking point.
The Dark Territory's land was barren, and as its population continued to grow, so did the pressure on its limited resources. Conflicts became increasingly frequent and severe.
Countless people were therefore waiting for one thing: the Life of the gate leading into the fertile Human Empire was about to run out.
Once the gate's Life was exhausted, the armies of the Dark Territory would be able to invade that prosperous land and enjoy its limitless abundance.
Of course, war would inevitably follow.
The humans on the other side would never stand aside and allow their land to be taken.
For years, both sides had sent agents across the border to infiltrate enemy territory. Each sought to prevent the other from crossing over, and their agents had slaughtered one another in the shadows.
The Dark Territory's most formidable enemy was the Integrity Knight Order.
Many of the Dark Knight Order's finest warriors had fallen to them. Even the order's commander, Dark General Vixur Ul Shasta—one of the Ten Lords—had barely escaped alive after facing a single man.
That man was the commander of the Integrity Knight Order, Bercouli Synthesis One, a monster who had lived for nearly three hundred years.
Of course, the true monster was Administrator, the Highest Minister of the Axiom Church.
And now, Shasta had witnessed the rise of another monster.
An utterly unkillable one.
In only three days, this man had conquered half of the Dark Territory.
Shasta had heard that when the man first appeared, he had been incredibly weak, no stronger than the lowliest soldier.
Who could have imagined that he would grow this powerful in a mere three days?
With an immortal body and strength that grew more terrifying by the hour, he had crushed one target after another and brought entire races under his rule.
Half a day earlier, Shasta and the Dark Knight Order had also been defeated and forced to submit.
In fact, the Dark Knight Order had suffered the fewest casualties of all the factions conquered during the man's campaign.
It wasn't because Shasta yielded easily.
He had simply seen hope in the man's arrival.
Shasta had never truly supported launching a war of slaughter against the Human Empire and seizing its land by force. He wanted negotiations. All he desired was enough territory for the people of the Dark Territory to live and thrive.
The man who had appeared out of nowhere offered him that hope.
He claimed to have come from outside their world and revealed the truth about its existence.
With the man's help, Shasta had reached a system console known as the Throne and established contact with the outside world. He had seen reality with his own eyes.
In all honesty, his entire worldview had collapsed at that moment.
Naturally, Shasta had not revealed the truth to the Dark Knight Order, much less announced it publicly. Almost no one could endure learning that their entire world had been created by people from another realm.
Ultimately, Shasta had little choice but to submit and cooperate.
All he could do was hope that the man had not deceived him—that he would honor his promise to grant them habitable land and allow their world to continue existing.
The Dark Knight Order had now joined the man's forces and was preparing to conquer another faction: the Dark Arts Guild and its leader.
Of all the factions represented among the Ten Lords, the Dark Arts Guild was the most troublesome. Its leader, D.I.L., was an extraordinarily ambitious woman who coveted the position of empress.
She was also a fervent advocate of war.
Inside RATH's control room, less than half an hour had passed since Kain entered Underworld.
Inside, however, nearly four days had gone by.
That was the result of time acceleration.
The acceleration had not been caused by the Highest Minister within Underworld. She did not possess the necessary authority.
Someone in the outside world had accelerated time.
G.O. had operated the controls under orders from her commander.
The current acceleration rate was already close to the maximum safe limit.
This was not the limit of the equipment itself. The safe acceleration threshold for an ordinary human was twelve hundred times normal speed. Exceeding that threshold could cause serious problems.
If they were merely observing artificial fluctlights—the native inhabitants of Underworld—rather than monitoring someone logged into the world, the safe upper limit was five thousand times normal speed.
Kain was currently experiencing an acceleration rate of nearly two thousand times.
At that rate, almost four days inside Underworld should have amounted to only a few minutes in reality.
The reason nearly half an hour had passed was that Kain had logged out several times to assess his condition, allowing them to gradually determine the acceleration rate most suitable for him.
The terrifying part was that his physical body was directly connected to Underworld.
The increased rate at which his brain had to process information and release neurotransmitters would have killed an ordinary human long ago.
Yet Kain remained completely unharmed.
That wasn't even the most terrifying part.
Every injury he suffered inside Underworld was transmitted back to his physical body as genuine pain.
All the wounds he sustained over an entire day of battle were compressed into only a few minutes in reality.
The very thought made Higa's scalp prickle.
An ordinary person would never endure it. Even a warrior who had undergone the harshest training might die from the sheer agony.
As for the time-acceleration rate, it had not immediately been raised to nearly two thousand times. The acceleration was linked to Kain's level.
Underworld's system had been designed so that combat granted experience and allowed an individual to level up.
Kain had defeated opponent after opponent and continuously raised his level. The rate of time acceleration had increased proportionally.
They had not started at nearly two thousand times because Underworld itself could not accommodate Kain at that speed.
It wasn't because Kain couldn't withstand the acceleration.
The higher a person's level became, the wider the system opened its photonic transmission channel, allowing them to move and act more effectively within Underworld.
That was where Kain differed from an ordinary person.
It could be compared to network bandwidth.
When an ordinary person leveled up, the system might grant them a transmission speed of ten megabytes per second. However, someone who had only just reached that level would be unable to use the full bandwidth. They might initially transmit data at only one megabyte per second.
As they continued accumulating experience and gradually improving their attributes, their transmission rate would rise until it reached the maximum. At that point, they would be close to leveling up again.
Kain was different.
The instant he leveled up, his transmission rate immediately reached the maximum. He effectively began every level with fully accumulated experience.
However, the system would only permit him to level up after determining that he had defeated someone whose level exceeded his own.
This restriction was one of Underworld's safeguards. If something went wrong with the fluctlight interface and a logged-in user became directly connected to the system, the restriction existed to protect them.
Nor could it be removed by altering the code.
It was imposed by the physical limitations of the hardware.
A fighter jet might have a maximum speed of Mach 2, but it couldn't reach Mach 2 the instant its engines started. It had to accelerate gradually.
If it somehow jumped to Mach 2 instantly, its engines would explode.
Only now did Higa truly understand how terrifying Kain was.
The man himself was essentially an unimaginably powerful fluctlight vessel.
The quantum field composing his consciousness was beyond anything Higa had ever seen.
He had previously suspected that Kain might be a partially mechanical cyborg. Yet according to the Soul Translator's readings, Kain appeared to possess a completely organic human body.
No—he was a superhuman.
Perhaps he had undergone some form of genetic modification and evolved into a new kind of human who had transcended the limits of the species.
"Hm?"
The control room suddenly shook.
It felt as though the entire Ocean Turtle had been rocked by an impact.
Under normal circumstances, such movement should have been impossible unless the ship had been struck by a tsunami, caught above an erupting undersea volcano, or subjected to an explosion nearby.
Their instruments had indeed detected something resembling an explosion.
Higa and Kikuoka exchanged troubled looks.
Five minutes earlier, G.O. had informed them that some unwelcome guests were approaching and that her companions had gone out to deal with them.
She had even provided information about the intruders.
They belonged to a covert North American military unit. After learning that something valuable was hidden aboard the Ocean Turtle, they had dispatched a state-of-the-art submarine to slip beneath the vessel and infiltrate it from below.
Judging by the explosion, their submarine had just been destroyed.
Pshk!
A sword pierced a man's body. Its hilt prevented the blade from passing all the way through him, causing the force of the strike to spread across his entire body and carry him backward.
He was nailed to the wall.
"Go—"
The ground suddenly rippled like liquid, but the assassin's shrill cry was cut short.
An even faster attack tore through his vocal cords and throat, sending his head flying.
Thud!
Before the severed head could hit the ground, Kain kicked it like a soccer ball.
It smashed directly into another assassin's head.
They burst apart like two overripe watermelons slammed together, scattering their contents everywhere.
At the same time, Kain snatched the dagger from the decapitated assassin's hand and drove it into the temple of another attacker emerging from his shadow.
A piercing shriek suddenly split the air, loud enough to rupture an eardrum.
It came from a magically enhanced crossbow bolt.
The projectile skimmed past Kain's cheek by the narrowest of margins. He had predicted its trajectory and tilted his head aside before calmly straightening it again.
He had to admit that this world felt even more realistic than SAO.
If he couldn't still sense his physical body in reality—his current condition was similar to being half-awake and half-asleep—and if he hadn't been able to summon a simplified personal-status display, he might truly have suspected that he had entered a real world.
The body formed from his consciousness inside Underworld could express physical abilities even more dramatically than his real body.
Kain pushed off the ground.
The floor cracked radially beneath his foot as though struck by a massive hammer, blasting dust into the air.
His body shot forward like a cannonball.
His target had been more than thirty feet away, yet Kain crossed the distance almost instantly.
The man had nearly finished sinking back into the shadows.
Or rather, he was merging into the stone itself.
The result was inevitable.
Boom!
"Guh!"
A torrent of blood erupted from the mouth of Fu Za, leader of the Assassins' Guild.
Chunks of shattered stone battered his body, but their impacts were nothing compared to the agony of his ruptured organs.
He was certain that almost everything inside him had been pulverized.
The tremendous impact crushed his body, forcing blood and fragments of his organs up into his windpipe. A powerful sensation of suffocation followed.
Fu Za could still exhale, spraying blood with every breath, but he could no longer draw air into his lungs.
His opponent was a monster.
Kain's hand had punched straight through solid rock and struck Fu Za in the chest. His rib cage had crumpled like a metal box struck hard enough to cave in from one side to the other.
Fu Za regretted everything.
He should have surrendered immediately instead of listening to the Dark Arts Guild.
At the very least, he could have remained neutral.
As long as he didn't attempt to assassinate Kain, the man would not have attacked him.
But once Kain took control of three factions represented among the Ten Lords, the balance of power collapsed. Remaining neutral had become nearly impossible.
Fu Za glanced around from the corner of his eye.
Corpses lay everywhere.
A bitter smile tugged at his bloodstained lips.
They had been nothing but a flock of sheep, yet they had arrogantly believed they could kill a lion.
Anyone who faced Kain was torn apart in a single exchange. Almost no one survived.
Practically every strike from his weapons inflicted a fatal wound.
The light dimmed as Kain walked past him.
He didn't even spare Fu Za a glance before continuing onward to eliminate the remaining assassins.
That was the last thing Fu Za saw.
His vision faded into eternal darkness.
"...What a shame."
The sigh came from Shasta, commander of the Dark Knight Order.
He reached down and closed Fu Za's blood-soaked eyes.
Shasta had expected the leader of the Assassins' Guild to be an extraordinarily troublesome opponent. Instead, Kain had killed him through the simplest and most brutal method imaginable.
Only a few days earlier, Fu Za had clashed bitterly with Shasta during a meeting of the Ten Lords.
Now, the leader of the Assassins' Guild was gone forever.
The guild itself would soon become a relic of history. It had been nearly annihilated.
Those who remained had either fled or surrendered.
"With this, only five Lords remain," Rirupirin, chieftain of the Orcs, said regretfully.
He was deeply grateful that he had listened to the commander of the Dark Knight Order instead of allowing D.I.L. to manipulate him.
Otherwise, he would have suffered the same fate.
Most Orcs were stubborn and straightforward. If he had been killed, they might have abandoned all reason and attacked Kain in pursuit of revenge.
The result would have been the extinction of his entire race.
Yes, Kain would have killed every last one of them.
In the past, the idea that one man could slaughter his way through an entire race would have sounded absurd.
After witnessing Kain's abilities, however, Rirupirin no longer doubted that he could do it.
Several thousand members of the Dark Arts Guild had already been slaughtered to the last.
The guild had performed some kind of spell that drove all its members into a frenzy, causing thousands of dark arts practitioners to launch suicidal attacks against Kain.
Their leader had suffered the worst death of all.
D.I.L. had attempted to unleash an explosive spell, but Kain reacted too quickly. His interference destabilized the technique, causing it to go out of control.
The spell detonated in her face and blew her body to pieces.
One day later, inside Obsidia Palace in the imperial capital.
Someone once again sat upon the throne of the first emperor and claimed it as his own.
The throne room below was saturated with the stench of blood. A crimson mist still hung in the air.
Chunks of flesh lay scattered across the floor. Someone could have pieced them together into more than a dozen bodies of varying skin colors and textures.
In the end, there had still been those who refused to accept that someone who looked unmistakably human had taken the throne.
They had poisoned it.
The instant Kain sat down, the poison engulfed his entire body.
At the same moment, more than a dozen people charged him.
What happened next horrified everyone present.
The man on the throne merely raised a hand and swept it toward them.
An invisible force instantly sliced their bodies into chunks.
The attackers had leaped through the air together, intending to kill him. By the time they struck the floor, they had already become a scattered mound of flesh.
This power—the ability to annihilate people with a casual gesture—far surpassed anything Kain had previously displayed.
Those who had not participated stared at him in terror.
"Iskahn."
"I am here, Your Imperial Majesty."
The man before him—no, the emperor—had never given them his name.
From the very beginning, he had told them that if they needed to address him, they should call him Emperor.
He had clearly set his sights on this throne from the start.
Perhaps he had been born to occupy it, a predestined emperor secretly chosen by fate itself.
The man who answered him was Iskahn, the tenth-generation champion of the Pugilists' Guild and one of the Ten Lords.
"You will assume control over the former territory of the Assassins' Guild."
"Thank you, Your Majesty."
With that, the rewards were distributed.
The territories of the five eliminated Lords were annexed by the factions controlled by the five who remained.
"Shasta, I will soon depart for the Human Empire. You will govern the Dark Territory in my place."
"Understood, Your Majesty!"
Shasta dropped to one knee and accepted the emperor's command.
Kain intended to cross into the Human Empire and deal with the Highest Minister.
Once that was done, a portion of the fertile land there would be granted to the people of the Dark Territory.
"As for the rest of you, I hope I won't discover that any of you have caused trouble while I was away."
The man on the throne spoke calmly.
Yet his gaze seemed to possess physical weight as it pressed down on everyone in the hall, sending needles of dread crawling across their backs.
After his eyes swept over every person present, the air—and even space itself—distorted around the emperor.
His figure shimmered once, then vanished.
(End of Chapter)
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