-The mirror of Yata (Yata Mirror), is it real?
He had not shown much interest even in the destruction of Olympus, but now he was curious for the first time in a long time.
He was the one who had obtained the sword from Kusanagi.
As such, he knew better than anyone else the value of the Three Sacred Treasures.
"Yes, the mirror is here."
-Wow, this is insane.....
Susanoo was momentarily speechless at the confident response.
He could feel her excitement through her soul. Like Amaterasu, he coveted the Three Sacred Treasures.
Even dead, he had not lost the greed he had in life.
"As long as the bait is there, even Amaterasu is bound to take it."
-Do you really think it's just 'bait'?
"Right now I don't have it in my hands, so I'm going to make do with what I have."
It didn't matter how great an object is, if you can't get your hands on it, you can't use it. Therefore, instead of using the Three Sacred Treasures, YuWon came up with a different way to use it.
"The mere existence of the Three Sacred Treasures can be used to our advantage. There's nothing better than that as bait."
This was a suggestion YuWon came up with.
After a few rounds of review, they saw its potential.
The meeting with A
aterasu was the start.
-Using things you don't even have on hand. The way you fight, your tongue. I don't like guys like you.
"What do you mean guys like me?"
-Perfectionists. Guys who don't fight a fight they can't win.
He wasn't wrong.
He hadn't always been like that, but he had been since the moment YuWon used the Clockwork to go back in time.
-Fighting is something that must be done with death in mind. Only then is the sword sharper and stronger.
"It's not very convincing. Says the man who died."
-That's not what it's about...
Susanoo was furious.
As if he bitterly resented something, he let out a tirade of words.
-Amaterasu, if it weren't for his tricks....
"Tricks? Amaterasu?"
I'd never heard of that.
Clearly, the Three Precious Children were like brothers and he knew their friendship was extraordinary.
His curiosity was piqued.
Could it be a secret story from the past that no one knew about?
YuWon knew that Susanoo's death was due to a fight with Yamata no Orochi.
"What do you mean?"
-Yamata no Orochi. It was he who instigated the fight against him. And he clearly agreed to fight me, and he didn't help me.
Yamata no Orochi.
A monster of the worst kind, responsible for the destruction of several cities.
There was a certain secrecy to the fight between that monster and Susanoo that even countless Rankers couldn't stop.
-That guy set me up. To get Kusanagi's sword.
* * *
Amaterasu's number was stored in YuWon's player kit.
It was to keep in touch with each other when needed.
He waited ten days to obtain this number.
The preliminary task was solved.
Now all that remained was to find the real bait.
Early in the morning.
As he walked out of the dormitory, YuWon felt that he was being watched.
'This is getting annoying.
Outside YuWon's apartment.
There were eyes all over the alley.
They had heard he had a lead on the Sacred Treasures, and they were following him, hoping to catch him red-handed.
Apparently, they were trying to see how YuWon moves.
Because of this, he couldn't move comfortably.
'How far will they go?'
YuWon walked out of the city.
Perhaps they had realized that his fate had changed and were following him more closely.
He felt like a shepherd. The number of herds grew and grew to over a hundred.
So YuWon left the city. Outside the backward city was an undeveloped forest.
He went into the forest to a certain extent.
"How far do you plan to follow me?"
YuWon suddenly stopped walking and turned around.
There were over a hundred of them, more than that. Using his Ash Eyes, he could see the number more clearly.
'Around three hundred.'
This was too many, too much.
'Amaterasu sent them to follow me?'
The power wielded by the Three Precious Children on the 44th floor was considerable. They had the necessary influence to unite the various criminal gangs that were scattered like ants.
Perhaps they wanted to keep an eye on YuWon's behavior.
Or maybe they didn't.
"It's an order from the Three Precious Children."
One of them stepped forward with an imposing air.
It was nothing but a big pile of muscles.
He probably relied on two things.
The first would be his number, and the second would be the name of the Three Precious Children.
"I don't intend to use my hands, so don't be too scared. Just keep doing what you're doing."
YuWon shrugged at the man's words.
"Will you follow me? I don't need this kind of attention."
It was a relaxed look that didn't fit the situation. Even when YuWon knew that the Three Precious Children were watching him, YuWon wasn't too upset.
He knew it would be like this anyway.
No.
Rather, he expected this to happen.
'It's not Amaterasu.
Amaterasu was not a High Rank that was good at searching or stealth. On the other hand, Ash Eyes were the highest level skill among the search skills.
His Ash Eyes searched and searched, but there was no trace of Amaterasu.
He probably took the hint YuWon gave him and set out to find Yata's Mirror in his own way.
"Even if you don't want to, we can't help it. We will follow you. That is the will of the Three Precious Children."
In other words, don't resist.
To the criminals on the 44th floor, the Three Precious Children were like gods.
Branded as criminals, they had nowhere to go. No guild would accept them.
However, the Three Precious Children were different.
For them, crime was nothing more than an act of exercising power in freedom.
At the orders of their only hedge, they had no choice but to obey.
"...Really?"
YuWon looked at them with meaningful eyes.
The scene in front of them right now was the real reason why he had to fight the Three Precious Children.
- They were still this terrible.
Susanoo muttered in disgust.
'Wow.'
For the first time, he agreed with Susanoo.
The Three Precious Children had become corrupt.
From some point on, the freedom they spoke of had somehow become something only the guilty could enjoy. The Three Precious Children had become the leaders of the wicked, and they were united in one body.
Like a guild of criminals.
-Amaterasu, this guy was drunk with the power of the collective. He took his minions and made himself king, and his ideas became corrupted.
The power of a cohesive criminal group is terrifying.
Even the smallest of rats can become thousands and tens of thousands, and the ecosystem collapses.
Even more so if the criminal masterminds were powerful people with great power.
'The power of the Three Precious Children, with their respective Sacred Treasures, is even comparable to Olympus.'
Amaterasu already had a higher rank than the other two Gods, except Zeus.
However, Amaterasu, who gathered the Three Sacred Treasures, Amaterasu's rank would be incomparably higher.
"He has talent, I am sure, but his problem is greed."
That was Odin's assessment of Amaterasu.
Greed for power.
To satisfy that greed, Amaterasu crossed the line.
To unite the criminals on the 44th floor and become their king in the name of freedom.
That was the power Amaterasu chose.
"The power of a united criminal group is enough to create division from within. My inability to nip it in the bud is a problem I have not solved."
It was one of Odin's few regrets.
"I made an error in my judgment. I thought that as long as people exist, the dark side will inevitably exist. I thought it would be better to gather them together instead of scattering them all over the tower."
But it wasn't.
"Once they took guild form, the influence of the Three Precious Children grew rapidly. It's hard to stem the tide once you've ridden the wave.
When the crime rate in the tower peaked.
YuWon recalled that time. Players without rank were hesitant to go up to the Tower, and those who had no system and hadn't been chosen as players were afraid to even go out.
'We have to get rid of that.'
That was exactly what YuWon had to do here.
"I'm going to dispatch them now."
Arcane Power flowed out of Yuwon's body.
Skak-.
A jet black sword emerged from its sheath.
Yuwon pulled out his weapon for the first time since he climbed up to the 44th floor.
"I don't think any of you will feel remorse for dying, but if so, run away quickly."
The eyebrows of the man in front of him twitched at those words.
"You mean you're going to fight the Three Precious Children?".
"You're the ones who brought the fight."
"I'm just saying we'll see what you do. We weren't ordered to attack you..."
"I'm not working for the Three Precious Children. It's just cooperation. Surveillance? That's ridiculous."
"Do you think you'll be all right?"
"I don't think that's any of your business."
Hwareuk-!
The forest lit up. Flames spread like wildfire in an instant, changing the landscape of the battlefield.
"Boom!"
"F-Fire?"
"In an instant like this......."
"What are you doing, put it out, quick!"
Flames created with Mana can be extinguished with the same Mana .
The players who mastered Water Mana tried to use their skills to extinguish the fire created by YuWon, but to no avail .
Hwaaak-!
The flames were not extinguished.
Kak-.
"Now, make your choice."
YuWon spoke as he walked through the growing flames as if they had been poured with oil.
"Do you want to live or die?".
* * *
Tadak, tadak, tadak-.
The remnants of the fire clung to the trees, losing strength.
Charred corpses lay scattered on the ground.
Once the fire was extinguished, the forest was not much different from before. Not a single tree had burned.
The Sacred Fire was a fire that burned only what YuWon wanted it to burn.
Chak-.
YuWon walked out among the corpses.
No one had fled.
A few Rankers and hundreds of Players.
They all joined together to fight YuWon, and in the end, they were defeated.
A perfect victory.
But the battle was far from satisfactory.
'It's inconvenient that I don't have any items.'
This was the first time he had been in a proper fight since he arrived on the 44th floor.
As such, he could feel the absence of his divine items in this fight, including the Lightning Bolt.
'I can see why they rely so much on objects.'
I used to think that the most important things for players were stats, skills, and lastly, items.
But lately that was changing.
Stats, skills and items.
None of them were unimportant. Depending on their value, skills and items could be more important than stats.
He never thought he would feel so light just because he lost some items.
YuWon thought about the person he was before the regression.
'If I had these objects and skills back then...'
Maybe the results would have been slightly different.
Katcha-.
YuWon's player kit rang.
A call, not a message.
After checking who was calling, YuWon answered the phone.
And then...
-What the hell are you doing?
Amaterasu's voice sounded exasperated.
