Polymath Redux

Chapter 4//The Tiny Lord of Evil

Once the exact specifications and functions of his abilities were understood, it had become an exceedingly easy feat for Mordred to scale down the remaining few thousand metres of the mountain. A sigh of relief escaped him as his feet finally planted down onto real, solid ground. When he had a moment, he stared down and examined his own hands- undoubtedly his, yet unfamiliar. They were the hands of a ‘game character’. “It still feels rather unbelievable,” of course, such a fantastic occurrence such as this wasn’t so easy to take in, no matter how much first-hand experience he had gotten.

He focused his attention back onto the mountain which just moments ago tried to have him killed. Burning and crumbling to pieces, the scene of its destruction was nothing short of being the cherry-on-top; the sensation of relief salted with satisfaction was delicious. As for the main culprit behind it all, Mordred turned to the slain body of the large red lizard. It laid dead. The wine-tinted ooze of its life oozing out from beneath its corpse. This too was a delightful image.

‘He’ did it, no matter how unbelievable it all seemed. It was all real. ‘He’ killed the giant red menace. ‘He’ scaled down several thousand metres from a crumbling mountain. ‘He’ was ‘Mordred’; the gamer and game character as one. Yet, the very fact that there was not even the slightest bit of discomfort in his unfamiliar body was frightening to say the least; like he had been under this skin for all his life. Yet, was it the same?

Everything that ‘Mordred’ was, now accessible to him at the snap of a finger. What does one even do when given so much power they are essentially rendered directionless? What was the point of all this?

He could now do literally anything. With those thoughts Mordred extended his index finger towards the deceased dragon as if to accuse it. A small sphere of celestial blue flames formed at the tip of his finger, emanating with the intense heat of heavenly judgment. The infernal ball began to expand- larger and hotter. Once it had reached the size of a tennis ball and gave off the heat of a blast furnace, it shot off at dragon’s corpse as though it had a personal vendetta. With the slightest contact, the entire scenery before Mordred flared up into an azure pyre, searing and charring the remains of the first nemesis. In just a few short seconds, the only evidence that this dragon had ever existed was a black scorch mark against the ashen white blades of grass.

This was exactly the point. Even the lowest rank magic spell: ‘Firebolt’, when multiplied by the effects of Mordred’s equipment and magical upgrades, could be turned into something of apocalyptic proportions. Thus, the question remains: with powers that could bring about the end of times, ‘what does one do from this point onwards?’

Perhaps there could never be a satisfactory answer to that question so long as he lived. For now, it was infinitely more important to fully internalize the ‘character’ that is Mordred. No matter how natural of a transition it had been, there would still have been dissonance. After all, ‘Mordred’ was more akin to an extremely warped version of himself, or conversely it could be said he himself was a watered-down version of Mordred.

Due to the reasons of synchronising those two personalities, there was a small part of him that was thankful for the Dragon. It had allowed Mordred to test his own abilities against a moderately strong foe and immerse himself within his role as his character. At the very least, a dragon was unlikely to be one of the weaker monsters in this world, so it set up a good bar for his strength. “In this ‘world’… yeah, I guess it probably isn’t Earth anymore.” Yet, that kind of thing didn’t bother him any, the more pressing matter was getting out of this ‘forest’ now he was down from the mountain. From what he remembered, it was just a sea of trees.

Before all that however, there was one more thing he needed to make sure of. It was on whether his other abilities were inherited over by him. While there was no reason that it wasn’t, it was still a good thing to check. Though, on the off chance that his other abilities did not function, just the ones he used prior were more than powerful enough to go by. The problem was on ‘how’ to activate them.

If this was anything life from the game all he would’ve needed to do was press on the ‘C’ button to bring up his character status, and ‘K’ for skills. “That doesn’t exist here,” he shook his head. It wasn’t too much of an issue since he had known his character’s statistics off-by-heart, though he was a little curious. The fact he could kill a flame dragon was probably a good indicator that those stats were transferred over. There was also the ‘inventory’; all his most valuable equipment and items were stored there. It would’ve been a simple matter of pressing the ‘I’ key, but right now Mordred couldn’t help but sigh at the lack of directions.

“Hmm, in these kinds of scenarios, it’s often the case that all you need to do is think about the item and…” just as the thought crossed his mind, an item suddenly materialized into his hand. It was an incredibly fragile-looking double-edged sword; made out of a transparent slice of ice with an extremely thin and narrow blade: known as the ‘Beautiful Demise’.

He stood silently for a second, staring at the fantastical design of the sword. There was a white, frosty aura about it and froze whatever it touched, except for its master. “That scared me,” he muttered. “But, I see… so all I need to do is think about whatever items I want to withdraw from my inventory. That certainly makes things a lot easier.” With that figured out, the obvious next step was to try the opposite; returning the sword back into the inventory. As expected, the process was as simple as merely thinking about it; the sword disappeared from his hand and returned to his inventory.

With that out of the way, he tried one more time with a different item. A pebble-sized black crystal that could be held comfortably between his thumb and index figure. He held it up to the sky to let the sunlight seep through and saw a faint red glyph etched within. It was beautiful beyond words- it exceeded the concept of ‘expensive’ and entered the realms of ‘priceless’. They drew his eyes, almost into a hypnotic trance by its elegance and marvel.

This was a category of items known as a ‘Familiar’s Insignia’. The game had a system that allowed players to permanently tame monsters and use them as battle partners. Every monster in the game could be turned into a familiar one way or another- be it through drops or a long questline- with some more difficult than others. Of course, boss-type monsters were a special case in that they required a tediously long quest chain, or special events to obtain them. Once the player succeeded in whatever task was necessary, they would be given the appropriate ‘insignia’.

They came in a variety of colours, but all served the same purpose. This particular insignia that Mordred had taken out was the rarest of the rare, one known as the ‘Insignia of the Demon Lord’. Even amongst rare and unique items in the game, this one had been infamous. The monster contained within was the coveted ‘Demon Lord’, a boss-type monster that appeared at the end of the game’s second hardest raid dungeon, ‘Hellgate’. A special monster that served as the hidden final boss to the core story of the game.

That said, there was only one way to receive this insignia and it had truly been a pain. It was given out as the grand-prize in an event known as the ‘World PvP Tournament’ organized by the game’s developers. Suffice it to say, Mordred hadn’t been as strong as he was back then, so it really was a hard-fought victory. Unfortunately, though he held onto such a powerful item, there were no real opportunities to use it. A Demon Lord tier familiar on top of his already overpowered skills would only have been overkill.

However, the situation has changed now. As confident in his skills as he was, the fact that there were no allies he could count on gave him a sense of unease. Even an A.I. controlled monster was acceptable. “There’s no use letting it rot in my inventory like this.”

When he lightly tapped across the insignia’s surface and it trembled in his hand as it let out a mysterious black light and miasma. With no need of Mordred’s support, it flew out of his hands and hovered before him. It was minimal, but a certain potent pressure could be felt emanating from the gem as though a quietly beating heart.

“Now that I think about it, this is the first time I’ve summoned a familiar.” There was never a situation where this was necessary. When he first started the game, the familiar system had not yet been introduced yet, and when it was he was already powerful enough not to need it. Interestingly, he stockpiled a bunch of different high-levelled monster insignia as a sort of trophy and to pass time.

The intensity of the dark glare was dialled up to eleven as it temporarily engulfed everything in darkness. Even Mordred had been left momentarily blinded. When the darkness subsided, he saw a short and childish figure waiting for his words.

The ‘Demon Lord’: ‘Morialia’.

The girl looked around 10 at most. She unrestrictedly floated mid-air, her long black hair elegantly flowed around like the fins of a beautiful, tropical fish- glittering marvellously with a surreal prismatic aura. Her childish, rounded face smiled back with those cherry lips, her scarlet eyes staring back at Mordred inquisitively. It seemed like just a single glance from those eyes could peer through a person into the very depths of their soul. A single obsidian horn poked out of the left side of her forehead, revealing she was not Human.

She wore a simple white shirt with black shorts that were propped up by suspenders. Having not quite the level of mastery needed for proficient flying, her black-booted and stubby little legs kicked against the air to regain her balance. Overall, she had a very ‘playful’ look about her, and the word ‘Demon Lord’ would be the very last thing one would use to describe her.

“Wait, I remember you!” the little girl- Demon Lord Morialia- exclaimed as an explosive flash of expression appeared over her face. “You’re the guy that kept on defeating me!”

“What do you mean?” Mordred asked back, although he already had an idea as to what she was talking about. The penultimate raid dungeon ‘Hellgate’ was part of the end-game content, so naturally he had frequented it to gather up rare materials and equipment. Since the end boss was Morialia, he had also faced her all those times and won without fail. “Are you telling me you remember the times we fought?”

“Of course! How could I forget all the humiliation I felt each time you defeated me?! Heck, after a while you never even came to my room to fight me, you only wanted to gather up the materials around my castle! I was just the side attraction!” she protested while flailing her hands around as if a child throwing a tantrum.

“Interesting… so you’ve somehow inherited memories pertaining to events that transpired in the game.” Mordred didn’t know how he should take in this information. On one side, he was glad she wasn’t just going to be an automated A.I. controlled monster, but on the other hand she seemed to harbour resentment against him. “So? What do you plan to do now?”

“Huh? What am I going to do?” she parroted his words.

“I’ve summoned you through a ‘Familiar’s Insignia’, meaning you’re now my subordinate. However, by the looks of it you’re powerful enough to break free of any control I have over you as the master.” Of course, this wasn’t something that happened in the game, but it was quickly hypothesized that it was probably an effect of the game’s element transitioning into reality. This was ultimately a good thing, because even if he didn’t have control over her, it meant that this tiny lord of evil was quite powerful and would serve as a worthy companion. “Are you going to serve? Or perhaps you’re thinking of rebellion?”

“You think I’d fight against you? The guy who treated me as though I was just a fancy dessert after raiding my castle like an all-you-can-eat-buffet?! No thanks!”

“Considering the ‘humiliation’ you said you felt, I don’t see why you wouldn’t. At least, if I were in your position, I would rebel even if there were no chances of victory.”

The tiny Demon Lord thought about it by herself for a moment. She floated in the air while humming ‘hmmmm~’. “Nah,” she shrugged off all that resentment with a light-hearted sigh. “It’s not like I particularly hate you or anything. Besides, it’s because I lacked strength you could beat me all those times. It’s ultimately my own fault.”

“Is that so?” a smirk flashed across Mordred’s face. “Then you’ll serve me?”

“Guess so. You did summon me through the Insignia after all,” saying so, she then floated closer, almost until their faces were just within kissing distance. She stared right through into Mordred’s sanguine eyes. If one didn’t know any better, the similarity of their colour schemes would’ve suggested that they were related. She winked back at him playfully, “let’s get along, ‘master’.”

“Likewise.”