Starting with the Herrschers, I Cut Down All

An Yu stood alone beneath a road sign, gesturing with his fingers.

"Take Train No. 13, then fast-forward time by four hours, and I'll reach the area with the highest concentration of mobs?"

The electronic music around him was unbearably noisy. Everyone's voices sounded like heavy-metal pollution in his ears. Looking at the mobs wandering aimlessly around him with blurred faces and stiff movements, he simply muted the sound.

"Leveling up is getting harder and harder. I hope this new farming spot can get me to level 17 and round out my attribute points."

Perhaps because this game had never been intended for release from the start, it had all kinds of problems.

The most important one was gaining experience. He could only rely on leveling up his familiars, then pray for a little luck.

After waiting about a minute for the train to arrive, An Yu darted inside, found a seat, opened the settings, and slid the clock hand forward to four hours later.

Street racing was fun too, but the map was too large. It was better to use the transportation in the game and adjust the time.

As the hands moved, his consciousness gradually sank. When he opened his eyes again, the train had already arrived in the next city.

"It'd be nice if reality had a skip function too."

An Yu muttered as he walked out of the station.

A dense swarm of mobs surged toward him. Countless gun barrels aimed at the train, and with the sound of explosions, muzzle flashes lit up all at once.

"Damn open-world roguelike!!!"

Designers, you bastards...

There were this many bugs? I disguised myself as an NPC and still got spotted!

The flesh used for his disguise vanished in an instant. The ultra-high-density metal had bent slightly, but the countless nanobots immediately repaired the flaws in his body.

Familiars continuously emerged from the air, devouring the scattered experience points around them. Come to think of it, so many parts of this game did not even have particle effects.

"Feels pretty well made. It probably isn't a small team."

Enemies had friendly fire, and he could also injure himself because he was not proficient with his skills.

"But isn't it weird to combine an open world with a roguelike? These mobs give average experience, but the experience needed to level up keeps getting more absurd."

Once his level got high enough, would he not be forced to develop toward large-scale destruction? And he would have to keep traveling across the map too.

Still...

"It really is fun."

Clack!

1,400hw of energy poured down from high above, reconstructing into all kinds of weapons the instant it shattered through the barrier, with firepower hundreds or even thousands of times greater than the surrounding grunts.

It seemed he could use the skill that pink-haired boss had used in her second phase before.

His mana bar refilled rapidly, and no one took advantage of his brief period of weakness.

War and chaos filled the air. Tens of thousands of familiars were born from the void, adding fuel to the city's destruction.

"Is it just me? Why do the armed mobs here seem to give slightly more experience points than before?"

Bullets struck his body, but his absurdly high defense reduced the damage to a grand total of 0. An Yu stepped before the only elite mob and raised his hand.

"W-wait, I'm from the Mu Continent capital's highest police department. We can..."

Boom—!

Artillery fire blew apart his head. The blurred visuals did not make An Yu stop walking.

"Come to think of it, if they had money to hire voice actors, what was this elite mob supposed to be saying?"

Just as An Yu was about to continue farming experience, a flashing attribute card abruptly appeared on that person's corpse.

Why?

This guy felt weak. If the previous elite mob had dropped an attribute card because his own level had been low, then why had this one dropped one? Pure probability?

"Is this game still a beta? Feels like there are a lot of holes left unfilled."

He stopped where he was.

[Obtained an additional attribute choice]

Attack Speed 3→4

Skill Frequency 2→3

Vitality 0→1

"The randomness seems pretty weak. Usually, once you choose a direction, unrelated things rarely appear afterward. Did the designers know that attribute cards drop too rarely?"

An Yu chose Attack Speed.

Attack Speed 4: Your attack speed increased by 80%.

Suddenly, he noticed that his familiars were disappearing at high speed. Their destination was the mobs flooding in from the city and... outside the city?

Damn it, could this open-world roguelike stop already? Was he going to get chased down and killed by the boss in the early game?

"Can't drag this out any longer. Feels like the fun would drop a lot."

He sighed.

"Sorry, but I must decline."

A Mu Continent officer stood firmly in the way of Fire Moth's forces.

Elysia paid no attention to the argument. After all, forget the Mu Continent—even the most bizarre places in Africa would not allow another nation's army into their capital at this stage.

"The Mu Continent thanks your organization for the intelligence, but your current actions constitute an infringement upon our national sovereignty! If you insist on forcing your way in, we have the right to drive you out by force!" the officer declared righteously.

Elysia stood quietly. She felt that she had changed somewhat too. At the very least, at a time like this, she could actually stand still instead of rushing forward to preach lofty principles that would have little effect.

"Your capital just exploded."

As an attendant, she suddenly spoke. Her voice was not loud, yet everyone heard it clearly.

The Mu Continent officer was just about to frown and rebuke the rude woman.

In the distant sky, a massive mushroom cloud wrapped in flames and dust rose with a thunderous roar, reflected in everyone's suddenly contracted pupils. The air seemed to freeze.

"Did they perish together?"

A Fire Moth officer beside them spoke with a trembling voice. Just the thought of fighting someone who could create mushroom clouds made him shudder.

"Excuse me. My apologies."

Elysia instantly took control of both sides' higher-ups and produced the insignia of the First Laboratory.

"By Dr. Mobius's order, I am taking command of the scene. Everyone is to maintain order and prepare for the upcoming rescue operation. I will personally investigate the situation inside the city."

Everyone in Fire Moth knew that Mobius represented the First Laboratory, which theoretically held the highest authority. Moreover, Mobius had been born on the Mu Continent and still had some influence here, so the order was swiftly carried out.

"Ma'am! I can help too!"

Hen rushed out at once. It was time to gamble with his life. If he won, he would return to promotions and riches. If he lost, Blanca would still receive a considerable pension.

Elysia glanced at Hen. In her impression, he was not weak. Though he could not compare to Sakura, he was definitely not an ordinary person who would be killed in a single strike.

"Prioritize your own safety."

That was her final instruction before she shot away like an arrow loosed from a bow.

Daring not to delay further, Elysia suddenly remembered that this Herrscher seemed to be constantly adapting to his abilities, and now he was continuously pulling out new tricks.

She had thought she could face it calmly, but the city after the shockwave was nothing but ruins, filled with wails of agony.

Less than one in ten remained. Damn it, why could this guy create even this so quickly? And it was not even the original incomplete version!

"Unforgivable..."

She muttered under her breath. The specially made composite bow in her hand was silently reinforced by an invisible force, and its string hummed.

However, when she crossed the high wall built from countless nanobots, believing her resolve to be unbreakable, the sight before her left her mind blank.

Atop a mushroom bomb nearly ten meters tall and several meters wide, the young man sat quietly, leisurely removing rotten flesh and completely replacing it with nanobots.

"Just as I thought, the main characters in this open-world roguelike have emotional code programmed into them."

An Yu muttered as he finished removing the flesh. The countless gun barrels behind him completely merged into one.

And he had been stupid to the extreme. He had thought the boss was chasing him and wanted to farm a bit of experience quickly, only to blow up most of his own familiars.

"Are you going to fight back?"

He asked casually, though he could not distinguish whether these similarly modeled creatures even had mouths.

The first shot!

As expected, it missed. The pink-haired girl, who seemed to be a late-game boss, was incredibly fast.

Elysia moved like a ghost, killing intent filling her beautiful eyes.

"By the way, how much of an emotional module do you have?"

An Yu aimed the enormous barrel beneath him, but the boss did not slow down in the slightest.

"Looks like not much. Fine, I'll restart and see if I can blow this girl to death."

A late-game roguelike boss's reward might not bring a qualitative improvement, but killing her would definitely improve his gaming experience tremendously.

Elysia did not even have time to draw her bow before the bow itself sent out waves of sound and tore straight through An Yu's chest, but the detonation command had already been executed.

Yet, at the instant before the mushroom cloud was about to rise—

Flawless Dome!

An Yu:?

Without the slightest mercy, even though the Herrscher had borrowed the model of her own younger brother within the dream.

The Flawless Flower Cluster descended from the sky, covering a tiny area in the distance. It was instantly shattered by the impact, but the remaining force of the mushroom bomb did not further destroy the already devastated city.

"Ha, haha..."

Elysia let out a bleak laugh, and her tense shoulders relaxed slightly.

Thank goodness. She had made it in time after all.

Then, a heavily wounded Herrscher of Reason was no longer much of a problem.

"Resolutely, Melting Frost and Snow."

As she whispered, elemental power frantically gathered upon the reformed bowstring. Elysia drew the bow to its fullest, aiming at the shattered dome.

The dome collapsed at once. The seven elemental arrows that followed trailed cold starlight, piercing through the target like spears of judgment before the flower cluster fully bloomed.

Without the decoration of hearts, the pure bloom tore apart and annihilated everything beneath the dome.

"It's over..."

Elysia's fingertips relaxed slightly, and an indescribable daze appeared on her face.

After all, this was only a dream. When the flying petals scattered moments later, she made her way down into the nearly hundred-meter-deep underground pit. The Herrscher's shattered body was still struggling to repair itself, but under such an overwhelming strike, 99 percent of the nanobots had been destroyed.

[Please choose your level-up direction]

Collective Will 5→Twin Familiars

Attack Speed 4→5

Artillery Support 3→4

Under the physical rules of the open world, the enormous crater was conical. All experience points within several hundred meters slid down into it, filling the final sliver of experience needed for level 14.

"Cough, cough..."

The screen that had completely gone dark faintly lit up again. An Yu watched the boss calmly standing before him. He did not even have time to curse the designers, because the designers' mothers had already died back when the Flawless Dome appeared.

"It's over."

With all four limbs pierced through, Elysia calmly crouched down. By all rights, she should have killed him immediately.

But come to think of it, would capturing a Herrscher alive be more valuable?

If she did not intend to hide herself, she could completely suppress him twenty-four hours a day.

"So special dialogue has voice acting."