Instant Death

Underground Ruins - First Floor

Ignoring them, Yuuki called up Lisa"s action log and saw the mysterious crumbling of her magic, then her death. Shortly after that Chelsea joined the battle only for her dolls to be rendered useless, upon which she lost her will to fight. Still alive, Chelsea told the two cla.s.smates all the information she had regarding Yuuki"s side.

"Well, not like I ordered her to keep things secret."

The degree of mind control his personal guards were under was exceedingly small, for the simple reason that living dolls that could only say yes wouldn"t have been very interesting companions. Furthermore, Yuuki didn"t consider it a problem for the Dominator cla.s.s" mechanics to be leaked. There was no weakness for his enemies to discover, and the more they would find out about his cla.s.s the deeper they would fall into despair.

He ordered all the insects in that hotel"s vicinity to search for Yogiri and Tomochika, soon finding them still in the middle of going down the emergency staircase. Yuuki decided to keep watch on them in real time from now on, so that wherever they may go, thousands of eyes would follow them.

"He says he can kill people just by thinking about it, what do you think?"

Yuuki told Euphemia about what happened and asked for her opinion. He didn"t feel like remembering all the details of this world"s inner workings, so whenever he was curios about something he would ask one of his personal guards.

"It"s a rather absurd claim, but I suppose it could be achieved in a handful of ways. One possibility is the interference of an individual that ranks higher in the hierarchy of the Sages" blessing."

The system, called the sages" blessing by this world"s natives, was continuously pa.s.sed on over the generations, beginning at the maintainers of this world. This inheritance essentially was the same as the install that the students had undergone, making people awaken to special powers but in return locking them into a power relation that strictly placed them below the sage their power originated from.

"Is that related to how the sages can restrict my skills?"

"Yes. When receiving the Sages" blessing a kind of restraint is placed upon you, making it impossible to go against them. That restraint is also what makes it possible for them to render skills unusable, or even lower one"s resistance to instant death magic to zero. That said, I believe it"s highly doubtful that either of these two might rank above Lisa and Chelsea in terms of hierarchy."

"Yeah, even if they were lying about being ungifted, at best they should be in the same position as me. Or wait, is it possible to upgrade your blessing"s standing or something?"

"It"s certainly possible for a person"s blessing to be altered, but even so I can"t imagine them somehow ending up with one that puts them above Lisa and Chelsea."

"Alright, so what other explanation is there?"

"An extreme difference in level would make it possible. In that case, making a fight look like the opponent"s magic had been rendered useless and killing them so one-sidedly it looks like instant death wouldn"t be difficult. However, on top of their regular strength the girls received additional power from you, Lord. I don"t see how they could possibly outlevel both Lisa at level 70 and Chelsea at level 56 to such a degree."

"True, without using a leveling method like mine rapidly increasing their levels like that shouldn"t be possible."

One"s level represents the aggregate amount of energy one"s existence holds. That energy is necessary whenever one tries to make use of the system, and absorbed when killing a being that also has the system installed in them. As such, in order to quickly raise one"s level it was necessary to kill as strong as possible enemies at an as fast as possible rate.

In his whole life, Yuuki Tachibana had never known the feeling of regret, because he had never experienced true failure.

That was the source of his optimism: His continuous success had him convinced that in the future, too, he would always end up victorious.

He was certain that he was currently at a safe distance from him, and even if his plan failed he could easily recover and attempt a different approach -- with that mindset Yuuki gave the order to kill Yogiri.

He acted on his intent to kill, through which his killing intent formed a concrete connection to Yogiri.

Regarding the system and its hierarchy

So far we know two ways to acquire the system:

＊ Inherit it from your parents

It seems that having a sage bestow it to you puts you at the same rank as regular people, i.e the bottom. As a reminder, the reason the sages bother with j.a.panese sage candidates in the first place instead of looking for new sages among the native population is their synergy with the system, meaning they tend to awaken to more powerful cla.s.ses.

Moving up the ladder things get complicated; there"s probably an agreement that allows all sages to control all regular people, but among the sages themselves there are most likely all sorts of higher and lower ranking leaders and followers.

The sword saints" blessing is also based on the system, but has its own hierarchy; whether the two hierarchies eventually fuse at the top is currently unknown.

Mind you, this is merely our interpretation of it. If contradicting information pops up this will be edited. Sword saints are elaborated on in a future arc.