Luke practically swaggered out of the prison. All he could say was that the guards here were painfully incompetent—though even if they had tried their hardest to stop him, he was confident he could have left unharmed.
Breaking out after killing someone had not been a spur-of-the-moment decision. Although Endspace seemed to want him to obediently participate in the Kengan Annihilation Tournament, he had no interest in that kind of fighting-his-way-through-the-bracket gameplay.
The sad part was that quite a few of the participating fighters simply wanted a worthy opponent and a good match.
But the nature of the Kengan Annihilation Tournament meant their matches could never be that simple. Beneath the blood-soaked fights lay a contest for the merchants’ interests. To put it bluntly, the fighters were nothing more than the merchants’ toys.
They sat in the stands in neat clothes, sipping tea and eating snacks as they watched the fighters slaughter one another with smiles on their faces. Just like the nobles watching the gladiatorial arenas of ancient Rome, even their laughter carried the scent of blood.
This was nothing like the martial arts tournament Luke had imagined. And with his strength, he had no interest in slowly fighting from the preliminary rounds all the way to the finals.
He would go to the Kengan matches, but not as a challenger. Nor did he want to become some merchant’s dog. He wanted to find someone to work with as an equal.
Besides those reasons, there was another, more important reason why he had killed someone and escaped from prison.
[Main Quest, Phase One: Asura]
Quest Objective: Place first in the Kengan Annihilation Tournament ten days from now and display the true form of an Asura.
Quest Difficulty: Easy–Difficult
Quest Reward: 10,000 Endspace Coins
Failure Penalty: All attributes -1
There was only one main quest. Its rewards were generous, and the failure penalty was not particularly severe. Although its maximum listed difficulty was no joke, Luke felt that the main quest was not what he needed to focus on most right now.
[Hunt Quest: Hunt Violator No. 41213802]
Quest Objective: Kill Violator No. 41213802 during your stay in this world. When the Violator enters within ten kilometers of the Pioneer, the Pioneer will obtain its precise location.
PS: Pioneer, you must kill the Violator before it comes into contact with the "Seed."
Quest Difficulty: Normal–Certain Death
Quest Reward: Bronze Pioneer Medal x1
Failure Penalty: All attributes -2
Luke had not expected work to land on his doorstep the moment he became a Pioneer.
According to the "contract," shouldn’t this be an Arbiter’s job? Endspace really knew how to use people. Just how much work did it expect him to do in one mission world?
The reason he was grumbling internally was that he had yet another special quest.
[Pioneer Quest: Origin Seed]
Quest Objective: Find the source responsible for this world’s mutation. Kill the Origin Seed’s current holder and transfer ownership of the Origin Seed.
The Origin Seed’s holder will receive a substantial increase in strength. The Pioneer may use this to identify the Origin Seed’s holder. When the Explorer Mark touches the holder, a clear prompt will be provided.
Quest Difficulty: Normal–Certain Death
Quest Reward: Origin Seed
Failure Penalty: Erasure
Yes, this was the truly annoying quest. Not only was its upper difficulty limit high, but failure meant being erased.
Based on the description, he could roughly understand the Origin Seed as something that allowed a person to grow stronger continuously. The longer he delayed, the more dangerous it would become. Even if he found it later, he might no longer be able to win.
Right now, he felt that if he could not settle this quest during the tournament, it would become extremely difficult afterward. Once everyone scattered, finding the holder would be much harder.
He did not think the Origin Seed could have randomly landed on some ordinary person. If that were the case, Endspace would not have provided absolutely no clues or tracking. The quest would be ridiculous.
So Luke believed the Origin Seed was probably in the hands of one of the fighters who had appeared in the original story. They were all people he could approach and find.
"Let’s sort this out first. What would Sosuke Aizen think in a situation like this...?"
Luke muttered to himself beneath the moonlight as he walked along the riverbank. He wanted to figure out his precise location first. After all, the original story had never said where the prison was located.
...
The next day, inside a ramen shop in Tokyo.
Under the server’s astonished gaze, Luke finished the last bowl of extra-large ramen, then happily raised a cola and went gulp gulp gulp.
This cola really was amazing. Too bad drinks like this no longer existed in his era. All they had were bizarre beverages manufactured by the Company.
He wiped his mouth and tossed several bills to the server.
Oh, and the money had been generously donated by a few street punks he met the previous night. They had clung to his hands with tears and snot running down their faces, insisting that he take it. It would have been rude to refuse, right?
Full and satisfied, Luke opened a special interface with a thought.
This was the public channel function Endspace had specially enabled for this world. It was only after reading the chat for a while that Luke understood why Endspace had opened a public channel in the first place.
"There’s an Origin Seed in this world. That thing actually exists—it isn’t just a legend. Can you believe it?"
"Sounds pretty awesome. I got a quest telling me to find it too, but the reward is only average. It probably isn’t anything special."
"The hell do you know? I was lucky enough to hear the leader of my adventure group tell a story once. He mentioned legends about Endspace, and the word ‘Seed’ came up."
"Huh? What legend? Tell us, boss. I won’t compete with you for the Seed."
"Tch, compete, my ass. If it really is that Seed, even if we got it, we’d only be helping Endspace recover it. You really think it’d belong to you?"
"What the hell are you even talking about? Can you just explain what the Seed does? Is it the kind that lets you download porn?"
"Screw you. All you know is jerking off. This is the Origin Seed, one of the nine Seeds from legend. When our leader brought it up, he treated it like mythology, not something real. Who would’ve thought it actually existed—and that it would appear in a Tier 1 world?"
No one replied for a while after that. Clearly, they were all waiting for this know-it-all to explain.
"According to the story our leader heard, there are nine unique Seeds across the myriad worlds. No one knows where they came from or what they do. All anyone knows is that those Seeds are extraordinary and may be connected to Endspace’s origin."
"If the Seed in this world really is the thing from the legends, then it’s easy to understand why they opened a public channel for us and gave everyone the same quest. Endspace must be panicking. If not for the restrictions in its rules, it might have already been preparing to send high-tier powerhouses in."
Luke lurked in the channel for a while longer and roughly understood the current situation. Put simply, the Origin Seed was indeed incredibly valuable. Whether for his future development or the quest itself, he had to get his hands on it.
After being sent into this world, the Explorers had been assigned all sorts of identities and dropped in different locations. Having a public channel to communicate through would undoubtedly accelerate everyone’s information gathering.
One question Luke was considering was whether the Violator was in this public channel too.
He had once asked Endspace about Violators. Endspace told him that Violators were people who exploited loopholes in its regulations. They had originally been Explorers themselves, but after repeatedly breaking rules and ignoring warnings, they were marked. Only then were people like him sent to hunt them down.
So in essence, the Violator was still an Explorer. They were bound by the overarching rules and would be sent into mission worlds by Endspace. That meant the Violator could very likely see the public channel as well.
What puzzled Luke was this: why was Endspace so complicated? If someone broke the rules, why not just erase them? Why waste manpower?
It looked like such an advanced system, so why did its regulations have so many loopholes? Endspace had probably been operating for years, hadn’t it? Had no one ever optimized the rules? Even constitutions get amended every year...
In any case, Luke found both the existence of Violators and Endspace’s need for people to deal with them rather strange.
This couldn’t possibly be part of Endspace’s ecosystem, could it?
Luke shook his head and stopped thinking about it. If he kept going, he would definitely burn through a lot of brain cells.
He typed into the public channel, "Does anyone know how to get to the Kure Clan?"
The nickname he used in Endspace was Prison Demon. Only one’s nickname was displayed in the public channel, which served as a measure of identity protection.
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