Infinite Dendrogram - Volume 19 - Chapter 3

Chapter Three: The Next Stage

Paladin, Ray Starling

After the second match, I went back home to the eighth arena.

Just like I had this morning, I was now lying on the stage and watching the clouds pass. I heaved a heavy sigh.

“Kshoo? (Are you...feeling down?)” Smol Gar asked as she sat on my forehead and lightly slapped my face.

“Honestly...yeah, I am.”

“Kshaa. (I see...)”

After the match, Lei-Lei’d told me she had fun fighting me. I didn’t know if she was just being nice or if she’d actually enjoyed it.

She’d also said that if she won and got the right to challenge the UBM, she’d invite me and some other clan members into the battle, though, and added that she’d try her best to come out on top—not that I could really imagine her losing. So, as far as the clan was concerned, this was kind of a good outcome. I’d even told everyone who was going to come to cheer for me to go cheer for her instead.

But on a personal level...yeah, I wasn’t taking this too well.

“Hrm...” I knew Lei-Lei was a Superior, but I’d lost to her with almost no effort on her part.

Honestly, this left me pretty shocked. Sure, this wasn’t the first time I’d lost like this. I couldn’t even count how many times someone had made quick work of me during sparring, but despite that, my defeat had hit me way harder than the time Marie had first killed me, or the time Miss Eldritch had overpowered me in her base.

That had to be because until I’d lost to Lei-Lei I’d actually believed I’d grown stronger since those incidents. Nemesis was now a high-rank Embryo, plus I had Silver and three MVP rewards, along with a general increase in my stats. And then there was all the experience I’d built up during my many battles here in Dendro. I’d thought I was way better than I’d used to be, and that was why it had stung extra hard that Lei-Lei had beaten me so easily.

Considering that she’d shut herself up inside the crest, Nemesis must’ve felt the same way.

Still...

“...Ksha? (...Are you broken now?)”

I didn’t need Smol Gar asking me questions like that to realize it—I could see my feelings clearly with just a little introspection. However, the pain and shock I was feeling now...none of it was anything I couldn’t recover from.

“...No,” I said. “I’m just a little bent.”

I could see this feeling for what it was: a pain meant to make me stronger.

The shock was something else, but I hadn’t been broken. Lei-Lei had crushed me in the battle, but I’d still gained something from the whole experience. I was really an idiot, thinking I’d already gained enough power and that I had enough tricks up my sleeve.

It was exactly because I’d been defeated that I could once again clearly see what I had to focus on in order to grow stronger. And now that I’d realized that, it gave me the drive to stand up again.

“If you are bent, then we must simply hammer you back into shape,” Nemesis said as she appeared from the crest. She’d had the exact same thoughts as me.

“Yeah. There’s still time until night falls and the final match ends. We should do some training before then,” I said.

“Indeed!”

It was pretty clear that Lei-Lei would win this Tournament, and the winners had the right to pick the day on which they’d fight their UBMs.

Since Lei-Lei had schedule issues, though, she’d almost certainly want to fight her UBM right after the winning match. I didn’t think I could become the MVP with her fighting alongside me, but UBMs were powerful, so fighting it was a good way to get some combat experience nevertheless.

“I guess we should do some leveling to prepare for that... I’d like to do some tests on this thing here too, but that will probably take some time, so I’ll save that for later.”

As I said that, I reached into my inventory and took out a weapon—the nameless axe.

Nemesis jumped in shock at the sight of the weapon.

“What?! Ray! You still intend to use it?! But it turned you into dust!” For some reason, she was full of indignation at this. “It scattered you into pieces at the worst possible time—right before you could deliver the decisive strike!” Apparently, she was really upset by the way the battle had ended. Nemesis was a weapon herself, so she must’ve not appreciated the results.

“But, Nemesis...it’s not like it was the axe’s fault.”

She was right that I’d basically lost to myself rather than Lei-Lei, and...yeah, it was because of this axe. But that defeat had allowed me to notice something about the weapon and finally understand it.

While sparring against Rook I’d only lost an arm, but in the Tournament I’d lost my entire body. I could kinda see what had caused this difference now, and it was all because my enemy was Lei-Lei.

The effect that had destroyed my arm and body wasn’t just simple physical damage. That was why it had become way worse after Lei-Lei had reduced my resistances.

I didn’t know what was the power that had flowed through my body, but this was a big hint.

If I had some sort of resistance item that directly countered this effect—similar to Monochrome’s Light Absorption—I might have been able to wield this axe without any consequence.

“This axe isn’t some crazed monster—it has its own rules. What happened was just the result of that.”

“Hrm...” was Nemesis’s only response.

I was thinking I could use the barrier at our base to try and find out the nature of the effect this axe inflicted upon me. Getting all the resistance gear would probably be difficult, and the testing would take a lot of time, but I at least had an idea what I had to do now.

“But...what if this had nothing to do with Lei-Lei’s skill, and the axe merely made the effect worse because it was in a bad mood?” Nemesis suggested.

That...could be true, I guess... Wait, could it? No. There’s no way...right? I’d talked to the axe a bunch of times this morning, but I really doubted that would put it in a bad mood.

“We’re cool...right?” I tried asking it, but the axe obviously didn’t respond.

“Well...let us put that aside for now,” said Nemesis. “More important right now is the leveling. Where do you intend? Gideon’s surroundings are too crowded for that.”

“Oh yeah, that’s true.” Thanks to The Tournaments, a whole lot of Masters had come to Gideon. Many wouldn’t be participating until the later days, and from what I’d heard, a bunch of them were currently leveling or adjusting their builds by killing whatever monsters they could find around the city.

I also wanted to avoid any unnecessary attention, so I didn’t want to level anywhere with too many other players.

“And I can’t use Hellish Miasma wherever there’s people,” I added, following this line of thought.

“Ksha. (It’s really...useful.)”

“...I feel you are becoming too reliant on it,” Nemesis said.

Well, regardless, if I was gonna level, I’d have to do it in a zone that didn’t have many people, was right for my level range, and was close enough to let me come back by night.

And, well, I actually know of a place like that, I thought.

“You do?” Nemesis answered me, out loud.

“Shu told me about it. It’s about an hour from here by Silver, and it’s just right for me to level solo. It’s actually at the very south edge of the kingdom, and it used to be a buffer zone between Altar and Legendaria.” Apparently, it had been dominated by a powerful UBM at some point, but after Shu had teamed up with someone to beat it, the area was annexed by the kingdom. “It’s a mountainous area with almost no roads going through it, but Silver can fly, so that’s not a problem. It’s also on the opposite side of the Border Mountain Belt from all the Skydragons, so we probably won’t run into any of them either. And if something happens in the air, we can just flee to the surface. It’s perfect, isn’t it?”

“I see. It does sound like it.”

“Rook said that he leveled there too.”

“You began at about the same time, yet your levels have grown so far apart.” Rook had always been a fast leveler, but while I had to reduce my login frequency because of college, he’d started power leveling like crazy and was way ahead of me now.

“His three girls have become stronger too,” I added. Apparently, they were close to becoming Pure-Dragon-tier.

It’d depend on who he was matched with, but I was pretty sure he could win his Tournament.

The only difficulty he had in duels was the time he needed to prepare the Union Jack. You could get on mounts and take out your tamed monsters as long as they didn’t exceed your minion capacity, but preparing skills before the start of the fight was a no-no.

“Ksha? (Instead of thinking about others, you should focus on improving yourself...right?)”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

“Very well.” I took out Silver and jumped on him. Nemesis sat behind me like she had earlier, while Smol Gar got on the top of my head.

I hope she doesn’t fall off, I thought.

Anyway, I refocused myself and went to level at the Altar-Legendaria border to the south—in the area once occupied by the UBM known as “Divine Disks.”

◆◆◆

Gaol

This was a place meant to contain Masters who’d broken the law and was currently a realm of death.

Three days ago, the Superior known as King of Plagues, Candy, used his Embryo Resheph to infect it with a deadly virus that killed nearly all the prisoners. That had turned it into an uninhabitable space where merely logging in meant infection and a consequent death penalty that banned you from the game for three days. The few survivors had also been massacred by another Superior—Gerbera—who’d been excluded as a target of the virus.

This extermination, which had continued for nearly three days now, had left the gaol empty of everyone but the Superiors, and nobody could even log in because of the death penalty.

All this was merely part of Sechs’s plan to take the members of Illegal Frontier out of the gaol. The other Masters inside it were uncertain variables that could interfere with the prison break, so they had to be removed as preparation.

And now, the actual prison break was barely an hour away.

“Phew. So this is the last time we’ll drink this tasty coffee here,” said Candy.

“Yeah...but it’s not like we won’t ever get to drink the leader’s coffee again... Oh, leader—don’t forget this dolphin glass.”

They were all sitting at the counter in Sechs’s café, Dice, and shared their thoughts while enjoying the last coffee they’d have here inside the gaol.

The café had been cleaned up and now looked empty, like a home before a move. April, AKA Diamond Slayer—the café’s employee and Sechs’s property—had also been stored away into his inventory.

“I feel like a lot of time has passed since I was sent here at the start of April, but the month isn’t even over yet...I really can’t keep track of the time here.”

Gerbera felt as if she’d always been in the gaol, her perception no doubt affected by the tripled time.

Candy seemed to share her sentiment. “I feel like it’s been forever ago. I was just getting some XP in the great outdoors when suddenly some weird-looking meanie in shades fell from the sky and made me drop. I figured I’d just level up in the gaol, but Sechsy got in the way and Hanny the big-legged forever-bachelorette crushed me.”

Remembering every detail, Candy looked back at his first days here.

Those words reminded Sechs of something. “Figaro actually proposed to her shortly after she was released.”

“What...?! Uh, I mean...oh, really?” Candy was so shocked he broke character for a moment—that’s how big a surprise it was for him.

“Yes. This is info from a reliable source too.”

“Wow. Just...wow. Hanny was my tea-drinking bestie, but I always thought that thing she had for him was one-sided...”

“I believe everyone besides Hannya and Figaro themselves thought the same thing.”

“Human relationships make my head spin. Not even a god like me can understand them!” Candy said, throwing in a random wink and pose.

Sechs showed no reaction to Candy’s theatrics and maintained his usual smile. “I’m glad Hanny’s happy though. I graciously forgave her for crushing me and forgot all about it, so she can have my blessings!”

The very fact that Candy mentioned it at all meant that he’d neither forgotten it nor forgiven her for it, but it did seem like he was genuinely in a celebratory mood.

“Hrmm...that got me thinking though. Hanny’s already gone, and our jolly crew’s about to leave too, so...be honest with me, what’ll happen to the gaol?” Candy went on.

“The prisoners will probably split into small factions and fight for dominance. This will last a while—maybe even a very long time. It may even become a completely lawless area and remain like that forever.”

The existence of the Superiors was a pacifying force here. The prisoners sent to the gaol had fewer ways to enjoy Dendro to begin with, but the overpowering presence of the Superiors had made them go further and keep a low profile to avoid being marked. The regulars who weren’t trying to avoid their notice wanted to act like Illegal Frontrier’s underlings, but the overall effect was the same.

Once the Superiors were gone, they would most likely start having fun by fighting for dominance.

“What about that shut-in?” Candy asked.

“Fu’uta?” Sechs replied. “I don’t believe he will do anything soon.”

“Why does he even log in to Dendro, anyway? What’s so fun about just staying in that hole at the edge of the gaol? Plus, my viruses don’t reach him for some reason, and I just dunno what that’s about.”

“That’s exactly what he’s doing there—nothing.”

Fu’uta had been in the gaol since before both Sechs and Candy had arrived. He was sitting in a dungeon, but he wasn’t even doing any leveling.

In fact, he couldn’t level up even if he wanted to—he didn’t even have a single job.

He also didn’t gather any items or interact with anyone else. He completely refused to have fun with the game and just stayed in that one place.

“Nothing? If you ask me, reality is a better place for that.”

“He is waiting for his preparations to be done.”

“Preparations?”

“Time is his ally. He will slowly encroach on the Resources comprising the gaol, and then finally eat his way out of it by himself.”

Candy furrowed his brow at these words. They made Fu’uta sound like a malignant disease, which Candy felt was supposed to be his thing.

“And then? What’ll he do when he’s outside?”

“I did not speak to him for long, so I am unsure myself. However, I do remember the words I heard him whisper once.”

Sechs had tried to invite Fu’uta to Illegal Frontier several times in the past, but Fu’uta had refused every time, and had continued rejecting him even after Sechs had given up on recruiting him and simply wanted to become better acquainted. Despite such limited interactions, however, Sechs was actually the Master who was closer to Fu’uta than anyone else.

That was why he’d been able to hear this whisper.

“Apparently, it’s ‘For dad.’”

“...Dad?” Candy couldn’t make sense of that. “He’s being a shut-in and preparing to break out of jail for his papa? I don’t get that at all. It’s even more confusing than Hanny’s relationship!”

“You aren’t wrong. I suppose he must be driven by some feelings nobody else can understand,” Sechs said, taking a sip of coffee and thinking back to the time he himself acted on nothing but his own inscrutable motives. “Anyway, the situation means that Fu’uta will not influence the state of the gaol after we leave. It will become a place where the more cunning prisoners—or pre-Superiors such as Gakido—play a game of domination.”

“That sounds kinda fun too,” Candy said—ironically, since his presence was part of the reason such a conflict had been impossible up until now. What meaning was there in a battle for control of the gaol when there was someone who could completely destroy the whole place around?

“That made me wonder...what’s gonna happen to this café?”

“I decided to transfer control of it to a prisoner. More specifically, after we leave, the ownership will go to the first person who visits it.”

“Well, lucky them. Hm...?”

Candy tilted his head in confusion. Normally, this would be the part where Gerbera, being the downer she was, would say something along the lines of “this place is basically cursed and haunted, so I’m not sure if whoever gets it is lucky. That person would be our leader’s successor, kinda, so they’d probably be targeted over ownership of the building.”

However, Candy realized that Gerbera was no longer at his side.

Where did Gerby go? How long was she gone? he wondered. Gerbera had been with them, enjoying her last drink in this café—but now, all that was left was the dolphin glass she liked so much.

She’d vanished so naturally it was shocking. Her control over her skills was far above what it had been before. While Gerbera’s self-confidence had dropped, she had become so much more competent that it was beyond comparison. Her behavior had actually changed precisely because her self-worth had dropped, and as a result she’d become more careful and cowardly.

On that front, Sechs could only thank Shu for sending her here, and Rook for taking her down a peg despite being less powerful than her.

It seems she is preparing for it, Sechs thought. Gerbera acting like this was part of the reason why their prison break would surely be a success.

“Anyway, we finished our coffee, so...let us begin.” Sechs washed their glasses, put them away, and looked at Candy as well as the observer of the gaol, who was surely watching them from somewhere.

“And now, we leave,” Sechs declared, as if it was already a settled matter.

King of Crime would now escape the cage maintained by an Infinite Embryo.

◆

“...It’s about to begin.” In a control AI workspace surrounded by countless windows, the observer of the gaol and control AI no. 6—Red King—adjusted his glasses as he spoke.

One of the windows showed Sechs, standing at the edge of the gaol.

Red King had known this day would come soon. Sechs had asked him if he could break out, and Red King had given him permission. The criminal was free to try it.

Red King had also added that he wouldn’t go out of his way to bring Sechs back here either.

Masters were sent to the gaol only if they came back from a death penalty without any usable save points. However, after the prisoners returned from their death penalties, they could log in and out normally. If they logged out after breaking out of the gaol, they would be able to log in at the same location they’d been when they logged out.

They would be free the moment they took a single step outside the gaol.

Red King wouldn’t send anyone to chase them down. If they happened to get the death penalty again after escaping, they’d be sent back to the gaol—but until then, they’d be completely free.

“No one has successfully passed this test of mine. I wonder how he will rise to the occasion.”

Despite having given them permission, Red King had no intention of just letting them escape. Anyone trying to go from inside the gaol to the outside would be obstructed by Space Fixation.

This was the power mimicked by the pre-ancient superweapon, Acra, and the wall of fixed space it created was so tough that no amount of simple physical force would be enough—not even King of Beasts would be capable of it. The power and scope of this Space Fixation far exceeded its copy.

The wall also could not be influenced from the outside. The gaol was located at a certain set of coordinates within Infinite Dendrogram, but it couldn’t be touched.

You couldn’t even see it from the coordinates it occupied. Even if someone outside passed right through the place where the gaol was, unlike those inside, they wouldn’t hit any walls and would simply move right through.

The gaol was an isolated area that was almost impossible to escape. The only ways you could do it was by using King of Destruction’s Right of Destruction; the Primeval Blade, Altar; or an Embryo that could manipulate space itself, just like Red King could.

And still, not even those methods would be a guarantee.

“Sechs has many cards he can play. I’m not aware of all of them...but it should still be a difficult task for him.”

King of Crime had declared that he would break out of the gaol, but Red King did not know the means by which he intended to do it. Red King was the warden here, but not even he had a full grasp of the many and varied abilities Sechs had in stock.

But even if Sechs had some resource or ability that Red King was not aware of, breaking out would still be a challenge no matter what.

“Especially when there’s three of them...” To escape as a group, they would have to break the gaol’s wall on a large scale.

This had not been impossible for Sechs at an earlier point. If he’d used his ultimate skill to transform into King of Destruction, Shu Starling, then used Split Spirit to divide into six, and then used Right of Destruction to attack the wall, he may have forced open a hole that would’ve taken longer to fix, allowing all three of them to escape.

But he couldn’t do that now. He hadn’t yet recovered the levels he’d spent on the battle that’d sent him to the gaol in the first place—and King of Destruction had leveled up since then, already making it impossible for Sechs to transform into him.

What about the other two?

If Candy used the MVP reward he’d gotten from the Irregularity, Disaster Bioweapon, he may have been able to break the Red King’s cage—but that only applied if Red King was in an area infected by Candy’s viruses.

As long as Red King himself didn’t contract Candy’s diseases, they would have no effect on him. King of Plagues’ powers were effective against living beings and matter, but not against space itself.

Because of this, Candy wasn’t a threat to Red King. His role in this prison break had begun and ended with the extermination of all other Masters here in the gaol.

The last one of the three, Gerbera, wasn’t even worth considering. Even if she could become invisible and imperceptible, she would still be within the gaol. This Space Fixation had no gaps in it, and slipping through it was impossible. Thus, she couldn’t do anything. She had absolutely no means of overcoming Red King’s spatial control.

Realizing once again that Sechs was the core of this prison break, Red King remained in his workspace, safe from the viruses, and prepared for the attempt.

The Infinite Embryo and warden of the gaol wondered how they would try to outsmart him and—as imprudent as it was—he looked forward to seeing it.

◆

Sechs was standing at the edge of the gaol, right next to the Space Fixation wall separating the inside and outside.

The area around him was covered in marks left by countless assaults. At some places the surface was melted, and large fragments of metal were scattered all around.

These were the traces of the attempts others had made to challenge this wall—the scars left behind by those who’d tried and failed to escape by destroying the indestructible.

Everyone in the gaol knew that there was a wall here, but as of yet, no one had passed through it.

The only one who’d been able to even open a hole in it was Hannya, and it was only after she’d become a Superior. She’d tried to break out many times before her sentence expired, and in the end, she’d been released before she could succeed.

“One could compare this wall to an impregnable fortress. Not that it is a Castle, of course.”

Sechs was among those who knew that the control AIs were Embryos.

Based on his observations, he assumed that Red King was originally a Type World mixed with Apostle. And because spatial awareness was a specialty of the Angel type, he guessed that Red King was a Type Apostle-Angel/World.

This meant he had three core traits: space domination, space awareness, and space deployment.

Indeed—the gaol was managed by an Embryo that exceeded all others in his control over space itself. Red King was the uncontested ruler of this realm, and the edge of the gaol was the web that he’d spun.

This was the only exit out of here. Many had approached it hoping to break out.

And unlike regular prisons, there were no punishments for planning or attempting prison breaks. In fact, the control AI actually recommended that the prisoners attempt to escape.

After all, it was possible that a strong will to leave the gaol could be the trigger that drove an Embryo to become Superior. That was what had actually happened to Hannya’s Sandalphon.

Just like Cheshire—Tom Cat—had once served as the final barrier to the true duel champion, the walls of Red King’s gaol were just another trial the control AIs had set up.

Therefore, to break out of the gaol, one had to prepare something more powerful than that wall—not only the barrier itself, but the entire arsenal of the being known as Red King.

Or, alternatively, outwit him using something he couldn’t expect.

“Now...considering my current level, I can do this at least once. I may not have enough for a second time.” Sechs thought of the person he would now transform into, as well as what he was about to do, and gathered his resolve for what he was sure was his first and final attempt. “Still, the odds are not against us here.”

He faced the spatial wall and finally played the ace he had kept up his sleeve.

“I Take Countless Forms—Nu...”

This was the ult that rarely saw use due to its heavy cost of 500 levels. It allowed him to completely transform into anyone who was a low enough level compared to him.

Who he picked was...

“Schwartz Beine.”

...a pair of black, towering legs—Hannya’s Sandalphon.

◆

“It is true that the power to destroy space is a must-have in a situation like this. But Sechs...” Red King said as he watched King of Crime, now transformed into Sandalphon. “That will not suffice. You saw with your own eyes it does not suffice.”

Just like Red King, Sandalphon possessed a power that influenced space, so he may have been an obvious choice for Sechs. Upon becoming a Superior Embryo, Sandalphon had even acquired the “Downfall Screamer” skill, which focused his spatial domination ability into the tip of the legs and then used it to drill through space itself.

It was a power designed specifically to overcome Red King’s walls. The evolution had even used ■■■—the emergency mechanism left only in Maidens and Apostles. Because of this, Sandalphon definitely had the power to break the spatial barrier.

However, that didn’t mean it had the power to break out.

“Sandalphon is just far too large.” The Embryo’s legs were enormous and, more significantly, they were long. Compared to the hole they could bore through the wall, they were simply too big. And as an Embryo that had Gear in its typing, Sandalphon could only be used while mounted. To escape through the hole opened by Sandalphon, the user would be forced to dismount and stop the drilling, which gave Red King more than enough time to restore the wall. That was the reason Hannya herself had never been able to escape.

“Unlike Hannya, I suppose, Sechs is able to create copies of himself,” Red King mused.

Sechs’s Nu was a Type Body that turned him into a slime. He could split himself into multiple bodies and control the resulting copies freely. Unlike Hannya, he actually could attempt to drill and escape at the same time.

“But there’s still the problem of the main one.”

Red King was aware that not all of Nu’s splits were equal, with the one that had the most volume becoming the main one. And when the main one disappeared, the one with the second-highest volume would take its place. Also, there was a limit on the distance at which the main and secondary bodies remained linked and able to cooperate. When it was exceeded, the secondary ones would vanish.

That made the power all but useless for a prison break.

“Sechs isn’t a core-based Type Body—its main body switches depending on the volume. That is strong in its own way, of course, but...considering the situation and the transformation he chose, it means nothing.”

Even if Sechs did manage to get his various bodies out of the gaol, the moment Red King fixed the hole in space and isolated it again, it would sever their connection with the main body. That meant there was no point having only his copies escape. Since it was volume that decided which body was Sechs’s main one, transforming into Sandalphon—the gigantic legs—had effectively rendered it impossible for Nu to escape. If he diverted too much volume into the body that he wanted to send outside, he would no longer be able to maintain the transformation into Sandalphon or use his skills.

And even if Sechs somehow broke out of the gaol using his copies, he would be the only one to escape, leaving his companions behind.

“What’s he planning, anyway? Hm...?”

The moment Red King muttered that to himself, Sechs—still transformed into Sandalphon—split himself into three.

This was Split Spirit—the skill he’d used against Shu.

There were now a whole three Sandalphons towering over the gaol.

All of them were a kilometel tall, and looking up at them would no doubt overwhelm the faint of heart—though, Candy, standing at the side, looked like he was enjoying the view.

“Downfall Screamer.”

After several dozen seconds, the three Sandalphons used their space-drilling skill, thrusting the tips of their legs, now spinning rapidly, against the space above the deteriorated ground. From that seemingly empty space, there was the faint sound of an impact and something tearing.

A moment later, the space around the tips of the three Sandalphons’ legs began to shake.

The shivering space then quickly cracked, creating an opening. Through it, you could see a mountain forest—the scenery that surrounded the gaol.

The tunnel that had just been drilled through space itself was clearly a way outside.

“I see. Hannya was alone, wasn’t she?” Only Sechs can do this, Red King thought.

While it was too much for one of them, three Sandalphons were indeed capable of creating a large tunnel. This would allow at least Candy and Gerbera to break out. In fact, even Sechs himself could leave.

Looking around, Red King saw another Sechs standing next to Candy.

That meant there were four of him—not just the three Sandalphons.

Red King quickly understood the implications of this. “I see you have found your means of escape,” he said.

Split Spirit wasn’t based on Sechs’s self-separation ability as a slime. It was instead caused by his Embryo’s last skill—a fearsome ability that allowed him to multiply his ultimate transformation by up to six. It was also extremely high-risk, though, because it divided his HP evenly among each body, and it wasn’t restored even after the skill expired and all of the copies vanished.

But that was exactly what had made it such a powerful tool in this prison break.

Right now, Sechs took the form of three Sandalphons and one ordinary Sechs. The latter version of Sechs wasn’t a copy made by his skill, but the main one. While the other three would vanish once the skill expired, he would not.

Thus, if he passed through the tunnel and canceled the effect, Sechs would be completely outside the gaol.

“I see—quite an impressive combination. He even considered the costs.”

Sechs had split into four bodies rather than six so that he would have more HP left once he was free.

Since he couldn’t use the save points outside, breaking out of the gaol would mean nothing if he simply received the death penalty again and respawned back in the prison. Keeping his HP loss to a minimum reduced the chances of that happening.

Three Sandalphons were just enough to open a tunnel large enough for people to pass through. Sechs must’ve watched Hannya as she tried to escape and made his own calculations based on that.

“Sechs, I must say...you’ve used the cards you’ve been dealt to make a play that surpassed my expectations...slightly.” A single Sandalphon would never be able to break out this way, and Red King felt Sechs’s scheme deserved a small amount of praise. “It does not, however, surpass my power.”

As he watched Sechs’s prison break unfold, Red King had transformed into a new form—humanoid in shape, but appearing more like a wire-frame model. In the dark space within Red King’s body, there were countless floating orbs that seemed to represent the universe.

This was his form as an Infinite Embryo. He was Type Infinite Apostle, “Infinite Space, Macrocosmos.”

Red King watched as Sechs’s two allies tried to enter the opening he’d created...

“Ah...!”

...only to be pushed back.

Looking at the hole again, they realized that although they could see the other side, they couldn’t physically pass through it. It still let light through, but there was now some kind of lid over the tunnel.

That tunnel—this dimensional hole through space itself—had been opened by the focused power of three Superior Embryos, and closed by only one.

There was no better display of just how much more powerful an Infinite Embryo was than a Superior.

“Did they think I couldn’t close it while they were drilling?” Since the moment the three Sandalphons had begun to open the tunnel, Red King had been taking action. “Sechs, Candy...and Gerbera. None of you will pass.”

Gerbera had the ability to avoid this fearsome warden’s gaze. Red King had assumed that they may have been expecting him to close the opening and thus had planned to get her out as fast as possible, before the Infinite Embryo could react.

However, that had been a pointless exercise. Red King had closed the tunnel the moment it was only one millimeter wide. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t see Gerbera—she couldn’t pass through regardless.

“They set Sandalphon’s space destruction against my power of space fixation. It all comes down to offense against defense, and there is no scenario in which an Infinite like me would lose.”

The three Sandalphons continued their struggle for a while longer, but it produced no results.

This continued all the way until the skill expired—but in the end, they couldn’t pass through the tunnel, and once they vanished, Sechs and Candy logged out as though they’d given up.

◆

Sechs’s attempt at breaking out had failed miserably.

Red King, having returned to his previous appearance as a young man, watched it until it was over.

“He’ll need a few months to regain the levels for another try,” Red King said—and he realized he felt slightly disappointed that they’d failed.

Of course, as the warden of the gaol, he would not benefit from Sechs breaking out. While it was excellent when high-rank Masters evolved while trying to escape—just as had happened to Hannya and Sandalphon—Sechs’s trio were already Superiors, so to Red King, there was no point in their efforts right now. Despite that, a part of him had hoped that Sechs and his allies would greatly surpass his expectations, so this result was somewhat underwhelming.

As such thoughts were running through his head, he was suddenly contacted by a colleague.

“Hm? A call...? From Alice?”

It was the control AI in charge of avatars. Because of their roles, they were in touch fairly often, but Red King found it odd that she would call him now, of all times.

“Indeed. Is anything the matter, Alice?”

“You’re pretty careless, aren’t you?” The first words Alice said made Red King tilt his head in confusion.

“What are you saying?”

“You can do everything by yourself, but despite that and being one of us, you work by common sense. You’re not too good at thinking outside the box or cooking up wild ideas. Well, you also struggled to gather enough Resources to become Infinite, so I guess you also don’t like being wasteful...”

“Again—what are you saying...?” Red King couldn’t make sense of her words, so he urged her to get to the point, slightly irritated.

“Their prison break was a big success.”

Those words gave Red King one of the few real shocks he’d felt in his entire life. “Huh...? How? I’ve not missed or overlooked anything. I instantly closed the spatial hole Sechs drilled open. I am certain I did not allow them the opening or the time to escape.”

“You closed the hole?”

“Of cour—”

“All of it?”

“Hm...? Ah...?!” Red King was confused about what she meant for a moment—and when he realized what she meant, it made him shudder.

He could not believe what they had done.

“Imagine telling someone to do that. Imagine actually doing it. They both have a few screws loose,” Alice commented with a wry smile audible in her voice.

Red King was overwhelmed by the fact that he’d overlooked the truth, as well as impressed by Sechs’s trio for making him overlook it.

◆◆◆

A Certain Area on the Continent, Several Minutes Ago

Mountains covered by dense forests stretched as far as the eye could see.

The area linking the gaol’s outer edge to the continent was an undeveloped wilderness. No one knew its coordinates, and it was hidden using Red King’s spatial manipulation.

And then all of a sudden, this scene where nothing was supposed to be unusual underwent a major change.

Three cones—the legs of three Sandalphons—burst out from seemingly nowhere, drilling open the space itself.

From the inside of the gaol, these three large weapons broke through the spatial masking.

However, the holes in space opened around the drill were instantly closed by Red King’s spatial manipulation, leaving not even enough space or time for even a single ant to pass through.

However, the tips of the drills were still sticking out of the gaol.

This wasn’t unexpected. All of Sandalphon’s spatial manipulation powers were focused on that point. This was Sandalphon’s greatest offensive weapon, but the one defending against it, Red King, could still focus his own spatial manipulation to prevent all three of the drills from sticking out like this.

However, that would cost a lot of Resources. Because of that, he figured that the more simple and less wasteful method to deal with this was to simply close off the tunnel they’d created. It would still be enough to keep them from breaking out.

Red King was an Infinite Embryo, but he was also a man of reason, so this decision was completely in character for him. It made sense and was by no means a mistake.

But because of this, he’d overlooked one wild plan that was clearly a mistake from a human perspective.

The change in the environment was instant. A number of the trees around the drills broke apart, and there was now a trail on the ground as though something large had slid across it.

However, whatever had actually created the trail was nowhere to be seen. The actual breaking of the trees had not been visible—one moment they were standing, only to be fallen the next. It was as though the world itself took several seconds to notice the destruction inflicted upon it.

At the tip of this destruction of nature, a person’s silhouette could be made out.

It was Gerbera—bloodied, bruised, and battered.

“Nngh...I thought I was gonna die. Egh...” Her limbs were twisted in an unnatural way, and a mixture of blood and vomit dripped from her mouth. She looked as though she’d suffered a fearsome attack, and that was no surprise—after all, she was actually right near Sandalphon’s Downfall Screamer—inside one of the spinning drills.

While Nu could copy people’s appearances and abilities, the copy maintained his nature as a slime. Sechs had shown this during his battle against Shu. Back then, he’d used it to restore himself, as well as move missiles within his body to fire them from a different location. This time, he’d used this quality of slime to put Gerbera—who’d used her ult—into Sandalphon’s drill.

And, after drilling through the space, he’d released her outside.

The centrifugal force of the drill had obviously sent her flying—thus the destruction.

“It doesn’t hurt...but this feels like crap... I feel like I’m gonna die...” Sechs had turned pain off so he could sense Gerbera touching him. Pain or the lack of it meant nothing against Red King, so turning it off didn’t affect their escape plan.

Even if it didn’t make them feel pain, a person spun by a drill could not possibly remain unscathed.

“H-He’s such a liar... He told me that I’d only have to wait for him to transform into Sandalphon and touch it...ueegh...”

Her inner ear was a mess, the insane centrifugal force had broken most of her bones, and the impact after she had been fired out was enough to kill her instantly. The only reason that hadn’t happened was because she’d used her ult to merge with Alhazred. The Embryo had Pure-Dragon-tier toughness, and with it taking most of the damage, Gerbera had managed to get away with only horrific injuries.

Alhazred, almost completely destroyed, had returned to the crest. This undid the effects of her ult, so she had appeared again in this state.

“Nnh...I gotta hurry before I die...” Fighting the unpleasant sensations, she reached for the blood-splattered ground and picked up a ring-shaped inventory.

After removing a large number of high-quality Potions, she poured them on herself. That caused her HP to stop falling and eliminated some injury-based debuffs.

The email she’d received from Sechs had said, “Take my inventory, disappear, and touch me after I transform into Sandalphon.” She could hardly believe that that was all it would take to escape, but she’d agreed regardless.

She certainly hadn’t imagined that she’d be used like this, though.

Methods like these were something you’d expect from Sechs’s rival, Shu—and in a way, the fact that Sechs had thought of it at all was proof that Shu had had an influence on him.

“...I guess this is one of the reasons I had to go through all that training...” Gerbera remembered the hellish training Sechs had put her through, where he’d made her turn pain back on and damaged her body in many extreme ways. Without that experience, she might’ve not been able to bear being in the current state, even with the sensation of pain eliminated.

“Ughhh...I hope there aren’t any monsters here...” Gerbera kept on pouring the Potions on herself, slowly recovering her HP.

However, her trusted Alhazred was still in no state to protect her, and she herself was a total mess.

“...Oh. Right.”

Remembering this, Gerbera reached into Sechs’s inventory and took something out.

It was an object much larger than herself—a carriage. Putting this out was one of the orders Sechs had given her in the email.

“There we go... Now the bodyguard...” Then, from the same inventory, she removed April.

“You called, my venerable temporary owner?” she said. Perhaps because they were in a forest rather than the café, she was already in her combat mode and spoke smoothly.

“Keep an eye out for me... I’m a bit groggy, so I’ll take a rest until they come. I can’t use Alhazred yet, so, yeah...”

“Understood.” April looked around for danger while Gerbera leaned on the carriage.

A few minutes later...

“Mmm! The air outside the slammer sure is delici... Well, actually, it smells like puke. I don’t like it...”

...she was joined by Candy, who had most certainly logged out in the gaol.

“...Looks like it worked,” Gerbera said. Candy’s appearance here was proof that Sechs’s plan was a success. This was a relief for Gerbera, since she could now just wait for Sechs to come and heal her.

“Oh. Gerby’s almost dead! That’s hilarious!”

“You are such a...”

Candy cut her off by pointing at her battered body and laughing as though it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen.

“Oh, poor girl! You’ve even lost your boobs... Oh wait—there were never any there to begin with!”

“You got a death wish, shitlord?!” Gerbera snapped, so incensed she even tried to stand despite her injured state. She had indeed lost her pads sometime during the spin in the drill or the impact after, but her actual chest was more or less unharmed.

Candy’s teasing and Gerbera’s angry squawking continued until they heard another person moving within the carriage.

“I am glad you two are well.” With those words, Sechs stepped out of the vehicle as if the action was of no significance.

“Total success!” said Candy.

“...Do I look ‘well’ to you? Heal me already...” Gerbera pled.

“Of course,” Sechs said, transforming into a long-haired woman. This was the form of the Special Superior Job he’d acquired at one point in the past—The Saint.

“...Gotta say,” said Gerbera during the treatment. “I’m surprised we could actually use this to escape the gaol.”

She was looking up at the carriage as she spoke. Her Identification gave her some information about it, including its name: “Save Point Carriage.”

“A mobile save point...I heard you couldn’t use these to come back from a death penalty.”

“You cannot. But we did not use it for that, did we?”

There were three steps that led to wanted Masters being sent to the gaol. First, by getting on the wanted lists, they became unable to use save points. Then, they had to receive a death penalty. After that, they would return to the only save point they could access—the one inside the gaol—and were imprisoned there from then on. Even if they saved at a carriage with a save point, that save would vanish at the second step, making it impossible to come back that way. It was explained to Gerbera that the carriages were more like suspending the game and resuming it rather than a proper save.

“We, however, have simply logged out and logged back in again.” They’d saved at the Save Point Carriage while still imprisoned, and by taking it out now, they were able to create a login point that placed them outside the gaol.

“And Red King didn’t notice? He must have seen you save, right?” Gerbera was the only one who’d actually taken the inventory out of the gaol rather than use the Save Point Carriage, so she was curious about this.

“I observed Red King while I was in the gaol, and through my observations, I found out that he only has one visual point. He may be omniscient in the space he currently occupies, but recently, he has been avoiding the gaol itself because of the epidemic.”

“...Oh, I guess that was the other reason for spreading it.” Even if there were many of the monitor-like observation points inside the gaol, the observer couldn’t look through all of them at once. Things may have been different with Cheshire, who specialized in parallel operations, but Red King wasn’t like him.

Sechs had also confirmed that the other control AIs did not involve themselves with the matters of the gaol. He had learned some of this through chats with Red King himself, in fact.

They had also saved at the carriage while Red King had clearly been focusing on something else—Sechs while Hannya was trying to break out, and Candy while Sechs was talking to Red King.

Clearly, this mobile save point had been part of their escape plan for quite some time now.

“...By the way, did I have to go through this? Couldn’t we have just thrown the inventory out...? We have April, and she’s tough.” Gerbera figured that if they’d just given April the inventory with the Save Point Carriage, she wouldn’t have had to be shot out of a drill into a forest.

Sechs shook his head, though.

“You can make yourself impossible to perceive, but Red King could easily notice April. If he saw her inside the drill, he would have certainly done something about it. This was proved when he closed off the tunnel we used as a distraction. Using your skill was necessary to ensure a more secure prison break.”

“And what about my security...? Ugh,” Gerbera sighed as though she’d given up. “What were you planning to do while I wasn’t here, then?”

“I would have hidden myself instead—though I believe that would have been a great deal riskier than having you be the one inside the drill.”

Sechs had actually formulated a plan to break out of the gaol before he’d even added Sandalphon to his stock—and even before he’d been jailed. As King of Crime, Sechs had been going to the internet or DIN to gather info about the gaol’s workings, then using his findings to build an escape plan. Back then, he’d been planning to use a space-controlling Embryo he acquired before being jailed, but since it wouldn’t have had as much power as Sandalphon, the odds of success would’ve been lower, and Sechs would’ve lost far more volume—or rather, HP—than he’d lost now.

And since he now had Sandalphon, he’d removed all the other spatial Embryos from his stock.

The reason why Sechs had spent so much time in the gaol was because he was waiting for those outside to prepare, and because he’d thought he could craft a better escape plan by observing Hannya.

He was later joined by Candy and Gerbera, so one could say that his decision had been the correct one.

“I am very grateful that you came to the gaol,” he told Gerbera.

“...I see,” she replied.

Because he’d used Split Spirit to split into four, Sechs’s maximum HP had been reduced to just a quarter of its the original value, but that was still more than he would have had left in his original escape plans. “We have a long trip ahead of us, so I certainly appreciate having more HP,” he explained.

“I haven’t been on a big trip since my XP tour!” said Candy. “Where are we now, anyway?”

“This is a buffer zone between Altar and Legendaria... No, wait—it has recently become part of Altar. Still, I have quite a bit of nostalgia for this place,” Sechs said, recalling the time he cooperated with Shu.

This was the very place once dominated by the UBM known as Divine Disks, Spindle.

Sechs had noticed this when he’d watched Hannya try to break out of the gaol. The location he’d glimpsed through the gaps she opened was one that he would never forget, and he instantly knew exactly where in the world the gaol resided. Before then, he’d entertained the possibility that the gaol was somewhere off the continent—or perhaps even in space. That would have made the prison break more difficult. Discovering that it was in a familiar location made it much easier.

Perhaps the Divine Disks developed spatial manipulation powers precisely because Red King had built his gaol here, Sechs wondered. The creation of the gaol—the hidden realm built by manipulating space itself—may have influenced the evolution of the creature that had once resided here, or so he imagined.

“...Phew.” Eventually, Gerbera was completely healed. She then used Instant Wear to replace her damaged clothes and stood up. “So, what now?” she asked.

“No one passes through here, so we will simply avoid any unwanted attention and head toward Tenchi.”

“Is that so...?” Isn’t that a bit too far to go on foot? Gerbera wondered. Well, we have a carriage, so I guess we just need to get a horse or a landdragon or something.

Suddenly, April, who was standing next to her, looked up at the sky.

Gerbera, Sechs, and Candy all followed her gaze and did the same.

“‘No one ever passes through here,’ huh...? Are you sure about that?” Gerbera asked.

Their eyes were focused on one point in the sky—a black-clad Master, looking down at them in shock from astride a silver Prism Steed. Through coincidence or design, it was someone who had ties to the very person who had sent them to the gaol in the first place.

His name was Ray Starling.

◇◆◇

Gaol

“...I am thoroughly beaten,” Red King said as he stood in the gaol, now missing three of its most important prisoners.

Alice had explained to him the process they’d used to escape, and he had understood and come to terms with it. They’d since ended the call, and now, left alone with his thoughts, Red King was looking back on his actions.

“This feeling of defeat is somehow...wistful.” Since he’d lost his Master, Red King had rarely been forced to consider his flaws—the moments he had could be counted on one hand.

He’d gained three things from this entire ordeal—an important lesson, a new countermeasure, and a shapeless nostalgia.

“Sechs...I was unable to see your plan, and your thinking has surpassed mine. You deserve recognition for that.” The warden earnestly praised the prison breaker who’d risen above him. Red King may have failed to fulfill his duties, but he couldn’t help but be honest about this. “However, not even you can see through everything. And because of that...you may very well be back here soon.”

The words that he spoke were not those of a sore loser—he genuinely believed what he was saying.

Red King had enough reason to believe that.

“When you were in the gaol, you could only learn about the outside indirectly.”

Red King, the ruler of space, could see the multiple entities approaching the escapees right now.

To the north, flying from the city of Gideon, was a Master known as Ray Starling. He was one who would be placed on the side of good, and thus he would certainly clash with Sechs, who went out of his way to be evil.

However, he was not a major problem. Ray’s brother may have been capable of it, but the odds of Ray himself stopping Sechs were unbelievably low.

But there was someone else.

The moment Sechs had transformed into Sandalphon and drilled through space, influencing the outside world, an entity far more fearsome had sprung into action.

Red King checked the surroundings of the gaol—and indeed, there he saw them. From the south of the gaol, from the domain in Legendaria, a massive group was on the approach.

“There are many stories that only truly begin after the escape.”

Thus, the control AI who had stood against the prisoners began monitoring the events outside. The participant became a spectator, and he settled in to watch the second act.