Civil War

It was a completely unexpected message.

While his wisdom and mental stats had been steadily increasing, he never imagined there would be a limit on growth.

“A special enlightenment, training, or item, huh.”

Enlightenment was out of the question.

He couldn’t even begin to grasp what enlightenment meant in the first place.

Training and items seemed the most promising options.

Internal energy mental techniques, mana cultivation methods, elixirs.

While considering various methods, Yuseong suddenly recalled an item he had obtained long ago.

“I’m sure I put it somewhere around here.”

After rummaging through his subspace for quite a while, Yuseong found an antique bottle containing a silver liquid and reached for it.

<Stat Increase Elixir>

-Rank: B

-Type: Consumable

-A mystic pill that randomly increases one stat by 1–3 points when consumed.

-The higher your stats, the lower the chance of the mystic pill taking effect.

“I wonder if I could use this for a Limit Break?”

The mystic pill he had received as a reward for clearing the [I Don’t Think I’m the Protagonist No Matter How I Look at It] quest.

Due to its vague penalty where effectiveness decreased with higher stats, he had just been keeping it stored in his subspace until now, but this changed things.

Excluding the ones used to raise the client’s pathetically low stats in the [It Hurts, No, Stop] quest, there were 270 Stat Increase Elixirs remaining.

Though he didn’t know how low the success rate would be when consuming it at 999 points, with 270 attempts, at least one should succeed.

“I’ll consume them later.”

The stat affected by the mystic pill was random.

Rather than now, it would be most efficient to consume the mystic pill when all stats reached 999 points.

“So 999 points is essentially the limit for raising stats with stat increase rights.”

The estimated price for an A-rank stat increase right was 10 million karma points.

Spending that many karma points to raise a stat by 1 point was far less efficient than purchasing skills or items.

[Magic power stat has reached its limit.]

[Spirit power stat has reached its limit.]

“I can raise internal energy with the Black Dragon Divine Pill and Dragon’s Inner Core later, so next would be skills.”

Perhaps because stat increase rights had consumed so much karma, skills costing at most 10 million karma points seemed trivial now.

As Yuseong was casually purchasing any skills that seemed useful, he discovered a familiar name in the middle of the list and slowly tapped it.

<Prime Code>

-Rank: C+

-Type: Accessory

-A token containing control rights for the mobile fortress Vimana.

Though the description was brief and perfunctory, its implications were anything but light.

A token containing control rights for a massive mobile fortress that was no less impressive than Dragonia, and even surpassed it in pure combat power.

Though its displayed rank was only C+, its actual value was S+ rank, no, even beyond that.

“Hmm.”

If he sold the Prime Code to Changwei, who currently possessed Vimana, he could likely gain astronomical benefits.

Changwei was one of the Three Strong and China’s hero, the strongest nation in the world.

With high-rank skills and items as a baseline, if he could leverage China’s resources and funds, he could instantly complete Dragonia’s repairs that had been dragging on, and even mass produce unmanned combat machines like androids and drones.

No matter how he thought about it, selling it immediately would be profitable, but Yuseong hesitated.

“Something just doesn’t feel right.”

According to Teresa’s testimony, Changwei was a terrible villain.

While it would be wrong to judge Changwei based on one person’s words, the fact that he had taken one faction’s strategic weapon during a great war with the world’s fate at stake was enough to confirm he wasn’t a good person.

Though there was a possibility he had taken Vimana for Earth’s defense while turning a blind eye to the consequences, that seemed unlikely given that Changwei was one of the two users, along with Carlos, who were least active.

In the past year, his appearances could be counted on one hand, and he hadn’t shown even his nose during Europe’s undead crisis.

Would handing Vimana’s control rights to such a person benefit himself, or more broadly, Earth?

“Let me think about this for a while.”

The situation wasn’t desperate enough to require selling Prime Code immediately.

Income from ability awakening potion sales was steady, and both Alice’s body construction and Dragonia’s repairs were nearing completion.

After putting Prime Code back in his subspace, Yuseong opened his inventory one last time to check the quest rewards.

And froze.

“What is this…?”

Unlike subspace, items couldn’t be arbitrarily placed in inventory.

Only items held when starting a quest and quest clear rewards could enter the inventory.

Therefore, the number of items in inventory never exceeded a few dozen at most.

However, the inventory list before Yuseong’s eyes now far exceeded dozens.

“Thousands, no, tens of thousands?”

Perhaps even more than that.

As Yuseong was confused by this incomprehensible situation, the quest reward details suddenly crossed his mind.

“All belongings of demon race members defeated during escape.”

Yuseong had interpreted this to mean materials like demon horns, hearts, and shells.

But that wasn’t it.

Weapons, armor, consumables, materials, miscellaneous items, and so on.

Literally “all” belongings of the demon race members had come in as rewards.

Browsing through the inventory with blank eyes, Yuseong discovered a human-shaped icon and headed to the open space in front of the pyramid.

Thud!

When he touched the icon in the inventory window, a massive steel giant appeared before him.

It was clearly an unmanned robot weapon used by the demon race.

“…Am I dreaming right now?”

While low-rank items or simple materials might be understandable, giving tens of thousands of high-rank items from a dimension with Civilization Grade 2.02 as rewards was impossible by common sense.

A+ rank?

Even clearing S+ rank quests wouldn’t give this level of rewards.

After pondering for a long time, Yuseong arrived at one hypothesis.

“Could it be they set these rewards not expecting so many demons would be killed?”

Though absurd, it was a perfectly plausible hypothesis.

Think about it.

In a world of Civilization Grade 2.02 teeming with trillions of demon race members, the quest’s objective was to find about 20 people and return to their original world.

If you went around killing demons just to get more rewards, you’d be instantly hunted down by the armies and mercenaries that would swarm in.

The orthodox method of clearing this quest would have been to avoid detection by the demon race as much as possible while gathering survivors, infiltrate Black Citadel, and return to the original world using the gate.

But Yuseong hadn’t avoided the demon race.

He had committed terrorism and killed demons in facilities, killed pursuing soldiers and mercenaries.

During the escape, he had rampaged at sonic speeds killing countless demons, and at the final moment even blew up the central plaza with a black hole bomb.

The fate change rate of 495.7% spoke to just how outlandish his method of clearing the quest had been.

Gulp.

He couldn’t know if this guess was correct.

However, one thing was certain – his inventory now contained thousands, tens of thousands of items.

“L-let’s organize this first.”

Yuseong began taking items out of his inventory one by one with trembling hands.

And after all work was complete, several small hills made of items had formed in front of the pyramid.

“Most are broken or damaged.”

This was natural, if anything.

Since these were items held by defeated demon race members, very few were in pristine condition.

Some items had clear traces of Blood Energy remaining, while others were blackened as if caught in explosions.

Most striking were items grotesquely melted as if exposed to extreme heat, and items stretched so long their original form was impossible to guess.

Thinking of the craters throughout the city and the black hole bomb he had thrown at the end, Yuseong shook his head.

The quest was already over.

Nothing would change no matter how much he thought about it now.

“Though it’s disappointing there are few intact items… this is enough.”

Joy appeared on Yuseong’s face.

Previously he had tried to equip Dragonia with armaments and deploy unmanned weapons but had to give up due to the astronomical budget required.

But with these items, things would be different.

Countless items made in a world with technology far beyond Earth’s.

If he entrusted these items to Sophia, who had the technical ability but was limited by materials and parts, she could create an army of machines in a short time.

“This isn’t the time. I need to meet Sophia right away.”

Yuseong activated the power of the crest and returned from Dragonia to his home on Earth.

Woong! Woong! Woong!

As soon as he returned to Earth, his smartphone began ringing madly.

“Something must have happened again.”

He had been away from Earth for a month.

Something had clearly occurred during that time.

As expected, there were dozens of messages asking him to call back immediately and missed calls on the screen.

Drrrring.

-The number you have dialed is unavailable. You will be connected to voicemail.

“This doesn’t seem good.”

Kang Changseok, who always answered before the second ring, hadn’t picked up until the signal ended.

After trembling briefly with anxiety, Yuseong ended the call and connected to the internet.

If something big enough had happened that Kang Changseok couldn’t answer, there would surely be related content online.

As expected, numerous articles were posted on portal sites.

“…Civil war breaks out in Japan? What is this about?”

Yuseong wore a dumbfounded expression at news of civil war breaking out in a country that had been perfectly fine just a month ago.

Civil war occurring in Japan, which wasn’t unstable or badly damaged by monsters but rather was one of the countries that had blocked monster invasions with minimal casualties alongside Korea and was considered the safest country in the world.

If Kang Changseok hadn’t failed to answer the phone, he would have dismissed it as an early April Fool’s joke.

[Sharp increase in violent crimes by Contractors! Need for new legislation to regulate Contractors with powerful abilities emerges.]

[Terror attack at Tsuruga Nuclear Power Plant! Experts suspect meltdown…]

[26 dead and 112 seriously injured in clash between Contractors and civilians during anti-Contractor protest, leading to incidents across Japan…]

[Ten Swords rebellion? Ten Swords claims WeaponMaster Tanaka Ryuhei’s weapons must be confiscated and distributed to Contractors to save Japan from crisis…]

Yuseong’s expression grew increasingly grim as he dug through internet articles to understand the full situation.

The situation was far more serious than he had expected.