[The inspection is in progress.]

Hyunsoo froze when he heard the alert.

No matter how long he waited, Inspector Bon didn’t show.

And with the words inspection in progress, several scenarios came to mind.

The most likely one was that someone was fighting.

Kern put weight behind that guess.

“The original commander of Atlas, Commander Bon, was truly strong and exceptional. But it’s said that because they held such power, they also had a proud nature, and a tendency to look down on others.”

Hyunsoo decided he couldn’t just stand around and wait for them.

“It’s been an hour and they still haven’t come. And we don’t even know what’s happening. We need to find them fast.”

The one saving grace was that during the inspection, NPCs wouldn’t die.

Hyun’s Forge changed the plan from waiting to going out and striking first.

They would spread out and search.

Hyunsoo clenched his teeth hard.

Who the hell are you going after...!?

Then—

[Guild member. Nell has logged in.]

After all the tea time, Nell must have been exhausted, because she’d fallen asleep right away.

Now she heard what happened through the guild members.

She spoke in guild chat.

[Nell: Ben, Barad, and Saint Aria still haven’t arrived?]

“......?”

Hyunsoo made a puzzled face.

Why would they be coming to Atlas?

Nell explained that she’d had tea time.

[Bark: Then why aren’t the three of them coming?]

[Risel: It was only an invitation—so whether they come or not is their choice, isn’t it?]

That made sense.

Hyunsoo could see why she’d acted on her own.

Collecting Seeds of Life was brutally hard for the people of Hyun’s Forge, with their tiny numbers.

Nell had met them through her own initiative to make the seed collection happen.

Hyunsoo wasn’t angry.

He understood her intent.

Sometimes someone else’s words carry more force than mine ever could.

Her independent move had been for Hyun’s Forge, too.

[Nell: Could they have collided with one of those people?]

It was a real possibility.

Which only made Hyunsoo move faster.

Just as Hyunsoo mattered to those three, Hyunsoo also cared about them.

And soon, Hyunsoo found Bon and the 500 elite troops.

Did they actually clash with one of the real legends?

Their HP had already plunged below 50%.

And compared to the 1,000 he’d heard about at first, the number had shrunk drastically.

One thing was clear: the inspection was being conducted by force.

Hyunsoo activated the power embedded in the Twin Dragon Sword at once.

[Link.]

[The Twin Dragon Sword maximizes the power residing within the wearer, and the speed at which those powers connect becomes more than 2x faster.]

I can finish them.

The moment Hyunsoo saw them, he could tell they were utterly exhausted.

And when HP drops, status ailment resistance usually drops sharply with it.

Hyunsoo pulled them all in front of him in one go.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Hyunsoo, the new lord of Atlas.”

It was anger—at the thought they’d grabbed and tormented innocent people(?).

Hyunsoo didn’t know the three legends had been together.

But he judged that if they’d been separate, fighting these elites wouldn’t have been so easy.

That’s a terrifying power....

Bon felt the massive power in the sword Hyunsoo dragged behind him.

Bon and the elite troops were exhausted.

Just moments ago, they’d met beings so far beyond common sense that they’d barely been able to think.

Bon had insisted that a lord being strong, too, made no sense—he’d denied it outright.

But that denial was shattered miserably the moment he saw the Twin Dragon Sword being drawn back.

And then—

[Overwhelm]

The Legendary stat Hyunsoo had newly obtained, Overwhelm, asserted itself.

According to its description, it could exert more dramatic power depending on the situation.

Bon and the 500 elite troops—worn down to the bone—fit that “dramatic situation” perfectly.

All of them, including Bon—

KUUUHHHHHHH—

were being literally overwhelmed by the crushing aura coming off Hyunsoo’s sword.

And Overwhelm was a special Legendary stat, a power that could manifest various status ailments.

[You are afflicted with the status ailment, Stiffness.]

[You cannot move your body due to sudden fear.]

Bon stiffened in place.

And the power packed into the Twin Dragon Sword Hyunsoo dragged behind him—

It was the power that, in the Continental War, had cleaved hundreds of rankers in half in a single stroke.

[One Strike, Two Halves]

[Cutting power is maximized to 641%, and it cleaves horizontally across a radius of 5m.]

With his right foot braced against the ground, Hyunsoo hurled the Twin Dragon Sword with all his might.

SHK—!

Bon’s pupils dilated.

What is this—?

He couldn’t stop himself from being horrified.

He was level 475—power that was practically legend-tier.

And yet he’d taken a massive injury and had nearly been cut apart.

And the power that split a 5-meter radius—

The elite troops, packed tightly by Gather just moments before.

About 200 of them scattered into ash in an instant.

“Commander Bon!”

“Damn it!”

The surviving 300-odd elite troops rushed in to protect Bon as he staggered.

They shouldn’t have.

FLUTTER—

Hyunsoo had already swapped to the buff-type Twin Dragon Sword, and he was soaring high into the air.

Hyunsoo thought.

What is an inspection?

It was them trying to see whether he was worthy to hold Atlas.

So Hyunsoo threw a question back at them.

Who are you, to dare “inspect” me?

Inspection meant someone above evaluating someone below.

And Hyunsoo understood this situation better than anyone.

He didn’t know who they’d run into—

but right now, Hyunsoo had stumbled into another pure jackpot scenario.

Bon and the elite troops’ HP were low enough that if he landed his ultimate properly, he could wipe them in one go like a clean finisher.

[Three-Foot Oath to Heaven.]

[Mountains and Rivers Lose Color.]

In an instant, the aura of manifested debuffs slammed down on the 300 charging elites—and Bon among them.

“Kkhup...!”

“Ku-heuk!”

RUMMMBLE—

And then—

[One Sweep, Total Purge.]

[Blood Stains Mountains and Rivers.]

The Twin Dragon Sword, strengthened to the limit under buff power.

“The sword’s cry.”

Hundreds of blades shredded through them.

But something strange happened.

Expressions that should have been shock and terror began to show an odd flicker of relief.

And that relief was in Bon’s eyes, too.

The 300-odd soldiers vanished into ash.

Bon, too, met death—

but he wasn’t dead.

[An inspector will not die until the inspection ends.]

His flesh, which seemed about to disperse completely, was recreated.

And the reason Bon and the elites had felt that small relief—

Before he opened his eyes again, Inspector Bon recalled a conversation with the Saint.

“Sir Bon. The next master of Atlas must not be someone weak like me—someone who merely holds these Seeds of Life. Because I was weak, I didn’t have the power to protect my territory, my people. If someone appears whom you can serve within the bounds of what you acknowledge—someone who can keep that tragedy from repeating—then follow them. Not for your sake, but for the awakened.”

That was the nature of Bon and the elite troops.

Someday, they were meant to serve a new lord.

On the day they were struck by the dragon’s Breath, Bon and the elites had seen it.

Everything precious they and the Saint had built—scattering into a handful of ash.

That despair, that loss, that pain...

I didn’t want to see history repeat itself.

When he opened his eyes, he saw the new lord, breathing hard.

He still didn’t know whether that trio were Hyunsoo’s subordinates or not.

But it was clear they were people trying to protect him.

Hyunsoo’s expression as he stared at Bon was sharp.

“You should’ve come to me first. You had no right to attack them.”

Bon could understand the anger on his face.

In reality, it was Bon who’d been beaten like a dog—

but Hyunsoo, misunderstanding, was cherishing and worrying about someone.

And Bon realized:

Even if it had been the territory residents, Hyunsoo would have felt the same.

“So. Is this enough for you? Satisfied?”

In truth, Bon had already died once, so the inspection was practically over.

Bon answered.

“Not bad. And I won’t apologize. Because it was something I had to do.”

Bon began to fade away.

And as Bon’s eyes closed while disappearing, Hyunsoo heard an unbelievable alert.

Hyunsoo didn’t know it, but coming from Bon—a proud figure—Not bad was the highest praise.

[The inspection ends.]

[Bon gives all 100,000 seeds they can give.]

[The number of seeds exceeds 200,000 in total.]

[At the current level, you can awaken the maximum.]

Bon didn’t make excuses to the angry Hyunsoo.

He didn’t say he would serve.

But he gave the highest inspection score he could, and the greatest number of seeds he could give.

As Bon scattered away completely, they thought:

When I awaken again, will you be able to win my heart, too?

That was something only the distant future would answer.

After Bon vanished completely, the guild members who’d heard the commotion came rushing in.

“Hyunsoo, are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Even with 200,000 seeds now in his possession, Hyunsoo had a worry.

Those 200,000 seeds in his pocket.

It was an amount that could awaken an unknown number of people.

“......Can we handle them?”

Nell understood what he meant.

“It’ll be hard. If tens of thousands of territory residents awaken, our current funds won’t even come close.”

If they awakened, they’d need money to feed them, clothe them, and put them to sleep.

Of course, once they awakened, they’d begin producing, and taxes could be collected.

The problem was they didn’t know how many months stabilization would take.

“Still... we should awaken them, right?”

“We have to. Hyun’s Forge is weak to the point of being pathetic right now.”

Hyunsoo thought of his bank balance.

“I need to stop trying to become a king in real life.”

He’d probably have to spend the money he’d been saving to buy buildings.

Nell spoke, too.

“I’ll tighten my belt as much as I can.”

“We’ll focus on hunting for a while and pour it into territory funds, too.”

In truth, that would stall the guild members’ growth for a while.

Hyunsoo felt bitter.

Because his guild members were suffering after meeting an incompetent master.

And so they trudged back to the lord’s castle after finishing seed collection that wasn’t purely joyful.

Then something unexpected happened to Hyunsoo.

The three legends arrived.

“This is your housewarming gift.”

“Hoho. Took some effort to bring it.”

“This is a housewarming gift from the Ares Church.”

[You obtained 1,703,010 gold.]

“Ghk!?”

The housewarming gift amounted to 1.7 billion won.

And when Aria—who had subspace—emptied it out completely, piles of miscellaneous loot stacked up like mountains.

Counting even the miscellaneous loot, the total gift came out to 3.6 billion won.

And after hearing what had happened from the three of them, Hyunsoo shouted inside his head.

Jackpot! Massive profit!

Chance and circumstance stacked on chance and circumstance to create all of this.

And now, Hyunsoo wasn’t afraid anymore.

No matter how many territory residents I awaken!

Because now he had enough money to lead them and run things.

And there was something he had to do right away.

[Please use the Seeds of Life.]

It meant using the Seeds of Life to awaken the sleepers—and become a true lord.

Hyunsoo started walking toward the Seeds of Life usage point, his heart pounding.

Then—

[You gathered Seeds of Life exponentially in a short period of time.]

Through the alert, he learned one fact.

[One of what the Saint left behind.]

[You can learn a passive skill.]

[Ultimate Art is Transcendent grade.]

There was still a reward left to claim.