About a year had passed.
In that year, things had progressed considerably.
The elf village was nearing the completion of a full surveillance network.
I never expected them to have gathered so many Reincarnators.
It was clear that the elves had been securing Reincarnators long before I made my move.
They were even using the Teacher to do it.
No matter how many excellent mages the elves had, no matter how many connections they maintained with various shadow organizations, collecting this many Reincarnators was an incredibly difficult task.
Unless you had the Ruler's Authority as an exception.
I couldn't imagine
Using that information, the elves were collecting Reincarnators one after another.
I could more or less guess why the elves wanted to gather Reincarnators.
They wanted to keep them penned up and neutered—prevent them from ever reaching their potential.
Reincarnators, born with a massive stock of Skill Points from the start, had the potential to grow into cheat-class powerhouses.
The elves wouldn't allow that.
They'd nip any potential threats in the bud before they could bloom.
The reason they weren't killing them outright was probably either as bait to use the Teacher, or because they couldn't see through D's true intentions and were hesitant to pull the trigger.
Or maybe Black's threats had some effect.
That was all speculation, of course.
I'd fallen way behind in the Reincarnator collection race.
The only Reincarnator I currently had on hand was the vampire kid.
I'd managed to identify a few others, but what remained were either high-ranking royalty and nobles—people I couldn't touch easily—or those under the protection of the Divine Word Religion.
The same seemed to apply to the elves. They were keeping tabs on these individuals from a distance but were clearly avoiding direct contact.
Among the oddballs, there was one inside a mercenary company who appeared to be a Reincarnator currently clashing with the Demon race army.
I'd stationed a split body and Mela, who happened to be dispatched to that area, to keep an eye on the kid so nothing fatal happened.
What else was on my mind—there was the Ogre that had reportedly appeared recently.
I'd only heard about it through rumors and hadn't seen it with my own eyes, but it supposedly possessed anomalous abilities unheard of in a normal individual.
Apparently, when it glowed, it made a full recovery.
Apparently, its combat capability spiked dramatically.
Apparently, it wielded multiple magic swords.
That first one—the full recovery—wasn't that just a Level-up heal?
The second one rang a bell too.
The
That meant someone had acquired Wrath.
Wrath would blow your Status through the roof, but the downside was brutal—it continuously eroded your Divinity domain. An insanely dangerous Skill.
What kind of idiot would take a landmine Skill like that? Well, more like—what kind of specs would you need to even acquire it? Only a Reincarnator could manage that.
Ruler Skills were that difficult to obtain.
But with their overflowing Skill Points, a Reincarnator could probably brute-force their way into acquiring one.
I had no idea why anyone would pick such a time bomb of a Skill, though.
And then there was the magic sword.
A Skill for forging magic swords—something a Reincarnator could plausibly have.
So the odds of that Ogre being a Reincarnator were extremely high.
If so, I had to make contact.
I sent a split body to investigate, but unfortunately, I couldn't find it.
It turned out the Imperial Knight Order had already mobilized to subjugate the Ogre ahead of me.
And the squad was led by a mage who'd been seeking an apprenticeship.
Last time I'd met him, he was one step short of being an old geezer, but now he was a full-fledged old man.
That old man had cornered the Ogre to within an inch of its life, but it had slipped away at the very last moment.
It had taken a brain-piercing spell straight through the skull, survived with that full recovery trick of its close call, and escaped.
Close one.
That should've been fatal.
If my hunch was right—that the full recovery was the Level-up heal unique to Reincarnators—then Mr. Ogre had walked a dangerously fine line.
Surviving a near-death moment thanks to a perfectly timed Level-up—that was some serious real-world luck.
I wished he'd share some of that luck with me.
Still, the brush with death must have fired up his survival instincts, because it looked like he'd used Wrath during his escape.
That was bad.
From what I'd investigated, Mr. Ogre had been using Wrath at a pretty alarming frequency.
It was only a matter of time before he lost his reason.
I'd ideally want to secure him before that happened, but would I even find him?
I ordered my split body to search the area.
While I was chasing after Mr. Ogre, I had a separate problem on my hands.
The vampire kid.
I'd raised her on a whim, but considering what I was planning to do, I really shouldn't have let her acquire any Skills.
At this rate, wouldn't my own plan end up killing her?
Raising a kid just to kill her—what kind of monster did that make me?
I had to think of some countermeasure, some way to keep the vampire kid alive.
And on top of that problem, the little brat went and piled on a new one of her own.
Almost simultaneously with Wrath, the Jealousy lock came undone.
The culprit was someone close at hand.
Oh yeah—my split body had witnessed the whole thing. She'd used a test shot and then acquired the Skill right there in front of it.
The vampire kid—she actually went and picked up the Jealousy Skill!
Was she an idiot? A moron? Did she have a death wish?
No, seriously.
The Ruler Skill that topped the list of "Skills you absolutely must not acquire"—why would she go and pick that one?
I was in no position to talk, having held multiple Ruler Skills myself in the past, but still.
A Ruler Skill—it was an absurdly overpowered Skill with broken abilities, but at the same time, it was a landmine that unconditionally corroded whoever held it.
I'd gotten off easy. I'd had Heresy Nullification, after all.
I wasn't that badly affected by a Ruler Skill's mental corruption.
But the vampire kid wouldn't have it so simple.
At this rate, she'd turn into a full-blown Jealousy maniac!
For now, I'd impose a ban on her using the Skill as a stopgap measure.
That should minimize the damage at the very least.
I also needed to ask her why she'd picked up such a Skill in the first place, and I should probably go see her in person to have a proper talk.