“S-Sir, you’re going to protect me?” The Sword Star nodded vigorously. “Don’t think that my age will get in the way of protecting you.” “No, that’s not it...” Well, I could see his beautifully contoured trapezius under the collar of his white shirt as he nodded. I couldn’t help but wonder if his actual age would be of any impediment to him. “Don’t be surprised. Didn’t you say that you should stay alive so that the Black Dragon Master and the others won’t regress to the hooligans they were before?” Anastasha didn’t like that. “Hooligans? I wonder who you might be talking about? Oh, are you talking about that old hooligan who goes around slashing people and claiming to kill a murderer once every ten days? Gong-Ja, as the leader of the Black Dragon Guild, my specialty is gathering information. Oh my, interestingly enough, the list of people that old man has killed and the circumstances of the incidents are stored in a secret safe that only I have access to. Would you like to take a look at it later?” “It’s a good thing my list is still small enough to fit in a vault, Black Dragon Master. Yours is so long you’d need to rent an entire building.” “I wrote it down on a file and stored it on a USB stick, not on paper! Do you have to always make it obvious that you’re a boomer?” You guys really don’t get along, huh? It seemed that their argument could be heard from afar. The Inquisitor appeared behind me after using his Divine Formula: Teleportation. “Oh! Sword Star, the undisputed number one in the Hunter ranking, and the unstoppable Rank 2 Hunter, Death King! You two seem to be on peaceful terms as of right now, but the residents of the Tower are curious about how this will turn out. The Sword Star becoming a bodyguard? That’s newsworthy,” the Inquisitor said with a beaming smile. As usual, he had an angelic expression, but the Shellmounts had been throwing him high in the air with their tentacles up until now. Therefore, the Inquisitor was drenched in the Shellmounts’ mucus. It dripped down his face as he nodded. “Uh, Bambolina, I’m sorry, but could you please step away from me?” I asked, annoyed. “Hahaha! If the Sword Star becomes the bodyguard of the Death King, everyone will know who gained the upper hand between you two!” The Inquisitor spread his arms and laughed heartily. The aloe-like mucus clinging to his clothes went flying in all directions. Naturally, I was the one who took the most damage since I was right in front of him. Well, judging from the consistency of the mucus, maybe it had some beneficial effects for my skin, at the very least. “It’s about time for your faction to step into the light, Death King. Recruiting the Rank 1 Hunter as your bodyguard will make the headlines. Let’s announce this to the entire Tower!” “Huh? Announce what?” I asked, wrapping aura around me to slowly get rid of the mucus. “That you gained unprecedented power in this Tower, of course! You already are the Tower’s hero, but your image as a warrior is still stronger. This is where the Black Dragon Master’s image-polishing skill shines! However, now you need to resemble a monarch, the king of the Tower.” “I don’t really have a reason to do that...” The Inquisitor smiled. “But you do, Master.” I looked around. At some point, the Black Witch and the Sword Star had stopped arguing and turned to look at me. When I glanced around, I saw Estelle and the other vassals of my clan. Far away, the Countess had stopped drinking her tea with the Sylvans, and the Paladin had also halted swimming with the Fingills. Everyone’s eyes were on me. Uh, what is going on? Anastasha broke the strange silence. “Gong-Ja, this old scoundrel told you earlier that he has been testing you. You might not want to hear this, but it wasn’t just him who has been doing that. We all have as we constantly observed you.” I had heard a similar story before. The others had been watching me to see if I was worthy of being their colleague, but I had probably already passed that test. Why? “We did it to see if you were qualified to be our leader. I’m happy and lucky to have you as my friend and colleague, but we can’t simply accept misfortune as an accident or good fortune as a joy.” “We are leaders,” a new voice chimed in. I turned around to see the Paladin standing on the wide rock, soaking wet from swimming with the Fingills. When she squeezed out the water in her hair, droplets fell on the surface of the rock. “The Black Dragon, the Pantheon, the MA, the OJP Sect, the Watchmen League. Aside from these five guilds, there are thirteen mid-sized guilds under their command, including the Alchemist Office. Although this is officially disclosed information, four guilds work as our subordinates. The guilds that have subcontracts with us number in the hundreds. If I trace the subcontracts of the subcontractors, they can easily cover everyone in Babylon. It’s easy to be our business partner, but it’s hard to be our colleague. It’s even harder to be our friend. What you’ve achieved is very difficult.” “So,” the Black Witch interrupted, “I thought maybe something a little more difficult might be possible.” “There is something we anticipate,” the Paladin said. “There was only one reason we maintained the Five Guilds system after the Great Purge. It was to keep each other in check. Almost everyone else in the Tower belongs to a guild.” “The Five Guilds have the same amount of power and expertise, so we cooperated with each other while competing at the same time. In addition, we swore to protect the property rights of the people who belong to the guilds, as well as the people themselves,” the Black Witch added. “Joining, withdrawing, or rejoining a guild is entirely up to the Tower residents. The guilds that don’t share their profits instead of hoarding it will naturally decline and disappear.” “With that in mind, we created the Tower’s system. In other words...” “We weren’t confident in ourselves,” the Paladin said. “We weren’t confident that we wouldn’t become corrupt if we stood alone. If I had been given the power to subdue the Black Dragon Guild, I would have gladly thrown all of its members in prison. They run various shops and information agencies that operate on the border between legal and illegal. I would have gladly sorted all of them out and defined them as cancerous lumps of the Tower, but I wasn’t sure if I could still be myself after carrying out those executions.” “I made scenarios to assassinate every Hunter from the first to the tenth in the rank,” the Black Witch said. “Though I haven’t put them into practice since the Great Purge. I’m not sure whether I would have held back if the Black Dragon Guild stood tall as the supreme guild instead of one of the Five Guilds. No matter how much I think of myself as a person with plenty of self-control, I owe that self-control to the people around me.” A calico cat approached. She had the body and the eyes of a cat, but her gaze was human. She said, “As you know, we didn’t trust each other very much. The reason a civil war didn’t start within the Tower was that we didn’t trust ourselves very much either.” “Yes,” the Sword Star said. “After all, we also wear masks to appear human. Death King, we have been testing you to see what kind of person you are.” Test? What test? For how long has this been going on? “While you were away, we got together and talked about you quite a few times.” “When in the world did you—” “After clearing the Great Library of All Life and preparing to enter the thirtieth floor, I conducted background checks on you. Your spending habits, the people you meet, your attitude when meeting strangers... I investigated and shared almost everything. That’s my specialty,” the Black Witch said calmly. “Isn’t that... an invasion of privacy?” “Yeah. Sorry. I’m really sorry about it, okay? Ah, I really am the worst human being, digging into my colleague’s background like that. Assistant Leader of the Watchmen League, I committed a heinous crime. Will you arrest me?” “Mmm, I declare you not guilty,” the Paladin replied. “Uh-oh, did you hear that, Gong-Ja? I’m not guilty. I guess that settles it then.” Right, my colleagues—my friends—were guild leaders who wielded absolute power in the Tower. “Don’t worry. I just learned again that your private life is filthy clean.” “That sounds contradictory...” “I also confirmed that you were writing a diary every night to show to the Duke of Ivansia. You should be very thankful that I didn’t acquire the contents of that diary. I was really torn on ordering my subordinates to find that out as well—” “Hello?! Anastasha, are you crazy? Have you completely lost your marbles?” “Ah, but I have an idea of what you wrote there because the very first sentence was always the same. My dear—” “Let’s break off our friendship! Bring out our friendship contract now!” I yelled. “Anyway, the conclusion is that you’re the same on the inside and the outside,” the Paladin interrupted with a bitter smile. “But that’s not enough. If we are to make you our leader, there are certain qualities a leader requires. Impressing us with your morals isn’t what’s important.” The calico cat clung to the Paladin’s calf as if it belonged to her. “We aren’t trying to see how good you are at politics.” When the Paladin took her into her arms, the Countess settled down. She added, “Politics is best left to the experts. The Paladin handles security, the Black Dragon Master is in charge of the Tower’s internal affairs, and I oversee the economy. If physical strength is needed, we can rely on the Viper. For diplomacy issues with the outside world, we can call in the Sword Star and have him do the work. He’s a stubborn old man who won’t listen to anything, but if you, Death King, make a request, he will listen. So there’s just one last thing we had to test.” The cat narrowed her eyes. She was grinning. “It was to see how you would govern people if you were to become a leader. When we first received the quest information from the Mirage-Walking Princess, I thought, ‘Aha, I can use this.’” From the thirtieth to the fortieth floors, we had to become a god and lead a species. “I didn’t write the test questions right away. The Pantheon Master ran wild for over two hundred years entirely on his own. He had nothing to do with it.” The Inquisitor laughed brightly. “Hahaha, that’s right! This is my first time hearing about this!” “Well, he was clueless, but the OJP Sect Master refused to play along,” the Countess continued. “The Pantheon Master’s sudden rampage inspired me a lot. In dire times when all the species were enslaved except for one, I watched you rally us all to rebel.” The cat gently stroked the knight’s cheek with the back of its paw. “In short, you had the potential of a revolutionary. A revolutionary! Not bad. I don’t dislike it, though the leader we need isn’t a revolutionary. Countless refugees have abandoned their countries and fled from all over the globe to the Tower. They’re busy hating, despising, and laughing at each other, so their leader should be reliable and able to console them. I needed a little more information. For example, how would you treat the foreign species that have come under your rule?” “When you say foreign species—” I murmured. For a moment, I wondered if she was talking about the Terras, but I changed my mind after noticing the smile in the Countess’ eyes. “Sylvans?” “That’s correct, Death King. I like that you catch up quickly.” My eyes were wide. The Countess purred. “The Inquisitor was the first to be eliminated, then it was me. I remember your dumbstruck look when the Mirage-Walking Princess announced my elimination.” “W-wait a minute! This is ridiculous! Why did I get eliminated?” “Umm, the Sylvans gave up on pursuing dominance.” If I recalled what the Sylvan elders had been whispering in the video that the princess had shown... —Let’s surrender. We can’t win by fighting or get anything from winning. There is nothing good to gain even after spending money. No matter what we do, our business will go bankrupt. We need a cheap way to close it down. —We offer our country to the Terras so that it will become their vassal state. In return, we ask for their protection. —Yeah, let’s surrender. —All we have to do is become a vassal state. —Thank you, Great Cat. That was what had happened. I had thought it was just a funny incident. “Did you drop out on purpose?” I asked. “To be exact, I got myself eliminated.” “The Sylvans surrendered to the Terras on their own—” “Yes, but who raised the Sylvans? What god have they been serving? If you give them some prophecies, hints, or instructions through their dreams, they are bound to obey. Death King, it’s not much different from how you cleared the stages.” If I thought about it, the Sylvans were behind the military funding for the multi-species alliance army. The person I had talked to about this before I met Uburka was also the Countess. She had advised me to negotiate in a way that benefited all the species. Following her advice, I entered Uburka’s dream. Did everything go according to her plan? If the Countess’ grand plan was for the Sylvans to surrender to the Terras without any bloodshed... “I told you it was to test you,” the Countess replied. “Ruling makes it easy to persecute others just because they are from a different country, but we’re talking about an entirely different species that came under your control. They look different, have different habits, and even worship a different god. How could the Terras not discriminate against the Sylvans? I was curious about something. Whether you could lead the Terras well or not was none of my business. We needed to see if you could rule the species that have abandoned their homeland just like we did, without any problems. That is the quality we need in our leader.” I raised my gaze to look at the paladin. She seemed very calm as she held the calico cat in her arms. “Patricia,” I murmured. She was the next to be eliminated after the Countess because she had voluntarily withdrawn from the stage. While the Sylvans had the capital, the Fingills dominated logistics, so the Paladin’s species had naturally joined the Terras too. The Paladin nodded. “Yes, Gong-Ja. I deliberately withdrew to get to know who you are as a person.” I finally realized how the Terras had conquered the continent without shedding too much blood.