Volume 6, 12: Don’t get mixed up in strangers’ conversations without permission. Okay? (3/8)
Volume 6, Chapter 12: Don’t get mixed up in strangers’ conversations without permission. Okay? (3/8)
A long time ago, the Seven Great Mages were defeated by a man who called himself the Great Sage.
Iselda did not remember the circumstances leading up to the battle.
The only thing that she remembered intensely was that she was defeated with no way out.
For the first time in her long life, she was decisively defeated. It was an astonishing event for Iselda, who had thought she was the strongest, the best of the seven, and was convinced that she didn’t need to get any stronger.
In that battle, five great mages survived.
She guessed the Great Sage didn’t care about the great mages.
She just let it happen and two people died in the process. That was about the extent of it.
What happened to the surviving great mages was different.
One has given up everything. He gave up his glory as a great mage, his wealth, his power, and his magic. It is said that he threw all of that away and went into hiding. So he should have died a long time ago.
One of them joined the army of the Great Sage and became a sage. He may have been trying to gain power, but to Iselda, it looked like he was running away. No matter how strong he became with that, he would never be able to defeat the Great Sage.
The remaining three had vowed to overthrow the Great Sage, but each had a different approach.
One of them simply trained himself to be the strongest he could be, and searched for more power. However, those who had come to be known as great mages had already reached their limits. No matter how much self-restraint they exerted, no matter how hard they tormented their bodies to the point of ruin, there was already no room for growth.
What happened to him after that, Iselda did not know. She had heard that he had challenged the Great Sage again, but it would have been a desperate and fruitless attempt.
One sought another’s power.
Ancient magic, dragon language magic, the blessings of the demons, and the grace of the gods.
The research seems to have had some success, and the name still remains. Iglesia was the name.
There were many legends about her, such as sealing the demon gods and building the walls of the Manny Kingdom’s royal capital, but she had yet to reach the rank of Great Sage.
And Iselda thought that she could not compete with the Great Sage with her previous power.
She had to use the power of the Great Sage to bite the Great Sage. She knew she had to use the Gift.
It was a power that had somehow covered the world and changed its logic.
By inheriting the Gift, a person was given a role (class) and special abilities (skills) according to their class.
Her power had become overwhelming in this world.
Iselda obtained the gift from a being called Koryuu, the Fallen Dragon.
Koryuu was the highest level gift holder connected to the root of the system, and was unrelated to the sages.
Even if they were a Great Sage, they couldn’t interfere with the Gift of another lineage.
If she wanted to get the Gift, she would have to start closer to the root. It worked, but there was one problem.
Gifts tended to become more specialized with each passing generation.
In other words, being close to the root meant that all possibilities were open, and therefore not all useful powers would manifest.
And the power that Iselda had gained was not something that could compete with the Great Sage.
So Iselda tried to reincarnate.
The laws of class manifestation were shrouded in mystery, but even so, it was believed that the approximate direction was determined by the class of the inheritor and the class tendencies of the inheritee.
As long as the class propensity is innate and the inheritance source can was a descendant dragon, no matter how many times she repeated it, she’ll just have more of the same classes.
And that method had its limitations. There was a limit to the area in which a gift can be installed, and if you fill up the area with useless gifts, that was the end of it.
But if the class tendency was innate, then all you had to do was reincarnate.
That would solve the problem of the realm, and she could start over again as many times as she wanted.
If a convenient gift arose, it would be possible to reincarnate to a descendant and create a more powerful gift line.
Iselda repeated the reincarnation process.
Even now, Iselda was still on her way to becoming the strongest.
But the results were definitely showing.
She was confident that she would eventually reach the rank of Great Sage.
*****
The ship left in the evening without any problems.
Hornet, the leader of the Crimson Lotus Bonds, returned to his room after the meeting about the ship’s escort.
“I’m back.”
“Ho-kun, you’re back.”
“What? Where are my sisters?”
Hornet’s mother was drinking tea elegantly. But there was no sign of the sisters who were supposed to be with her.
“They’re exploring the ship.”
“It’s part of their job to stay in the room…”
Hornet joined her at the table, grumbling.
“Don’t worry. No matter what happens, Ho-kun will be there! “
“No, there are times when I just can’t do it alone.”
“You don’t deal with pirates, do you?”
“No. Pirates are to be dealt with by a different unit.”
There was little work assigned to the Crimson Lotus Bond.
A specialized unit was supposed to take care of the perimeter and fight off pirates.
The Crimson Lotus Bond was a trump card for emergencies.
Therefore, their main duty was to wait in their room.
The ship had hired a high profile warrior just to be a shield.
Hornet of the Crimson Lotus Bond was famous in these circles.
A brave warrior, a sword emperor, a great mage and a harem master.
As a warrior with four of the top classes on his own, he was highly respected.
“That’s exactly what we’ll have to do if the iceberg doesn’t come.”
“Mother. Don’t get mixed up in strangers’ conversations. OK?
Hornet remembered what had happened before they had come on board, when she had seen a girl worrying about icebergs in the South Seas.
“But they have never been on a boat before! I think they were anxious!”
“That’s true, I suppose. She was a pretty girl, though.”
“What? I don’t think you’re ready for that kind of talk!”
Iselda casually guided Hornet’s consciousness.
Hornet was one of Iselda’s reincarnations, and her consciousness as Iselda resided within him.
Hornet didn’t know this.
He was born as Hornet; he grew up as Hornet.
If nothing happened to him in the future, he would go through life and die knowing nothing.
For Iselda, Hornet was just a passing point on the road to becoming the strongest.
After so many reincarnations, she didn’t see the value in experiencing life again.
All Hornet had to do was to increase his offspring, and to that extent she could leave everything to him.
But Iselda was now activating her consciousness.
There was someone who was more than a little curious about.
Iselda was always investigating people around her to see if there was a better line of gifts.
If there was a good bloodline, it had to be reincarnated or mixed to create a new bloodline, but in the course of this research, she found a strange person.
This was the girl Hornet’s mother spoke to earlier.
The girl’s gift was not manifested, so her class tendencies were not known, but her body itself was interesting.
It was a combination of sensory organs, nervous system and muscles that were far too efficient for her own good.
It seemed to be the result of some kind of experiment that could not have come about naturally.
Iselda was intrigued by the girl.
She wanted to be the strongest, but she wanted more than just a gift. In order to overthrow the Great Sage, she would have to consider all the factors.
“It’s not like that!”
Hornet said, but inwardly he was interested in the girl and wanted to make contact with her.
The idea was to bring the best people into the bloodline and create a more powerful incarnation.
This is what Iselda has been doing for a long time.
“Hmm? What is it?”
As Iselda was wondering how to guide Hornet in the future, Hornet noticed something.
Are they back?“
The doorknob of the front door moved with a jerk.
They thought it was unnatural, because the sound of the knob being moved continued for a while, even though the door was locked.
The sisters, of course, had a key. Even if the door was locked, they would have noticed and unlocked it immediately.
“Mother! Be careful!”
A few moments later, the door opened.
A strange man was standing there.
“It’s locked, I thought no one was here, is this an automatic lock?”
“Who the hell are you?”
“Can’t you say anything more clever than that? That’s what NPCs should do.”
As usual, Iselda carried out the appraisal process.
The man who came in was a VRRPG player, which was a strange class.