Chapter 46

Chapter 46.

First, as always, I pressed ‘No.’

Ding!

[Hidden Quest: Curse Removal complete]

‘…….’

No, what made this absurd was that after the Epic, even the Hidden Quest had already been cleared.

‘Emperor Training has not even properly begun yet?’

What the hell was this?!

“I see. Developer, was that truly the limit of your capacity...?”

Lift Lee A-un’s curse and make him EX-rank.

Were you satisfied with only that much?

I had a rough idea now... of your level.

“It was so trivial that I wanted to die.”

I was not satisfied yet.

When I refused to accept the reward, Lee A-un, who had been floating upward wrapped in golden light as if he were about to ascend, dropped to the floor with a thud.

“Phew.”

That was one thing settled.

Next, I checked the reward for the Outer God subjugation quest.

[Quest Reward]

[Genesis Fragment x1]

“Now this is it.”

A Genesis Fragment!

It was an essential material absolutely required when making Genesis-rank items.

“It is a bit disappointing that there is only one.”

How nice would it have been if several Outer Gods had popped out?

The Genesis Fragment I had used when making the wooden rod component of Eternal Winter had been my last one.

Now that a new fragment had come in, it was possible to make one more Genesis-rank item.

I returned to the hideout with Lee A-un.

“Hmm.”

Granting aptitude was more difficult than I had expected.

In the case of cursed items, the egos of extraordinary figures who had pushed that aptitude to the extreme were sealed inside them, then possessed the wearer, which led to a judgment that the wearer had become that person. That was why it was recognized as aptitude.

But if I planted the exact same mechanism into a Genesis-rank item, Lee A-un would become a puppet of the Genesis-rank item instead of himself.

‘...That might not be bad?’

Would that not give me a subordinate who offered unconditional loyalty to my words, just like that?

If I had seen Lee A-un as an NPC, I probably would have done it.

“But Lee A-un is not an NPC.”

My morals had not gone rotten to that extent.

I was maintaining a perfectly universal and reasonable level of morality, after all.

Anyway.

Although it was difficult, it was possible if I made it through a “Genesis-rank item” whose options I personally carved and created.

The impossible feat of creating aptitude where none existed!

‘What aptitude should I grant him?’

From the 1st Series to the 7th Series...

Physical-type classes were out for now.

What remained were the 8th Series through the 14th Series.

The 8th Series, elemental magic, was comparatively the easiest to fill, so I passed on it.

The 9th Series, black magic, had already reached its peak through Lee A-un.

‘The 10th Series, Divine Power... is not urgent right now.’

Healers were essential, yes.

But at least during the 94th Floor strategy, there would be no occasion to use Lee A-un as a Healer.

So I excluded it.

The 13th Series, creation and modification, was for production jobs, so I removed it as well.

‘What remains is...’

The 11th Series, summoning.

The 12th Series, arcane.

The 14th Series, supernatural powers and outliers.

Those three series remained.

“Hmm.”

What should I do?

After pondering for a moment, I reached a conclusion.

***

Now, what I needed were World Tree materials.

“I have arrived, Elf.”

I moved to the elves’ forest and stripped the World Tree clean.

[The World Tree... is just a big tree...]

Beside me, the NPC Elf Queen muttered.

“Your education has been excellent.”

The World Tree was similar to a cow.

There was nothing to throw away from head to toe.

Naturally, it had no choice but to become a farming spot I visited often.

The only downside was that every time I stripped the World Tree, the Elf Queen had hysterics and wailed shrilly.

The Elf Queen was a patient suffering from infantile regression, obsessing over the World Tree, which was nothing more than a big tree, and calling it ‘Mother’...

Taking pity on this, I had bestowed upon her a long-term course of ‘mental education,’ and now she had regained a healthy mind.

Loads of branches, loads of leaves, loads of fruit.

After neatly and thoroughly stripping it clean...

I sprinkled a fairly high-grade Elixir over it as a nutritional supplement.

“World Tree. Eat the Elixir well and grow nice and strong.”

[Thank you! Thank you!]

The Elf Queen’s face brightened, and she bowed over and over.

After all, the life force poured in by the top-quality Elixir overwhelmingly outweighed the wounds I had caused by tearing things off so crudely.

“Good. Let us keep getting along from now on.”

I tossed a set of low-grade Elixirs to the Elf Queen.

The queen cradled even those against her chest as if they were sacred relics, as though they were precious nutritional supplements that would restore the World Tree.

That much should be enough for payment.

[Brother! I have been waiting only for your arrival. Now, take this ore and give me alcohol! Stronger alcohol, and a greater quantity of it! Above all, a great deal of alcohol!]

‘Ugh, I feel as if I can smell the alcohol.’

After that, I stopped by the Dwarven Kingdom and obtained some rare ores.

[Umm... Are you taking everything again this time? Truly?]

I also stripped away some rare Demonic Beast eggs the beastmen had gathered.

Then, after making a full circuit of every other material supply location...

I went to the city humans called the ‘Holy Kingdom’ and visited the Great Temple.

I passed by the priests who made a fuss, crying, ‘Guardian!’ as they prostrated themselves before me, and reached the center of the Great Temple.

I placed my character before the enormous goddess statue.

“Wow. It really is magnificent every time I see it.”

I admired the goddess statue for a moment.

A pure white marble statue without a single blemish.

Above it was a special opening designed so that sunlight shone down during the day and moonlight shone down at night.

And fine traces of gold had been carved into the areas touched by that light so that they sparkled.

It was incredibly cool.

Even I, a veteran obsessed with efficiency, always took time to appreciate it when I came before the goddess statue in the Great Temple.

“But I still have to do what needs to be done.”

I clicked the goddess statue and targeted it.

Then I cast the Ultimate Skill that had one-shot the Outer God.

Whoooom!

The instant a black sphere appeared in front of Nebula...

Quiver.

Perhaps it sensed the threat that it might die.

I did not know whether a real goddess truly resided inside it, but the goddess statue shuddered and let a tear roll from its eye.

The tear ran down its marble cheek, ripened into a pure white drop, then fell to the floor.

I canceled the Ultimate Skill and looted the tear.

[Goddess’s Tear]

“Easy. Too easy.”

With that, I had gathered all the necessary materials.

***

I returned to the hideout, clicked the anvil shining brilliantly in rainbow colors, and began crafting.

[Unique - The Blacksmith God’s Anvil: Cardanium begins operation]

When the world’s one and only highest-performance anvil awakened, ninety-nine empty slots filled the screen.

It was the screen for inserting the materials necessary to craft equipment.

If I were making an ordinary item, I would have to fill the slots with all sorts of materials after meticulously calculating things like array and ratio.

But.

I lightly ignored all such complicated processes and inserted exactly four ‘runes.’

[Flame of Eternity: Pyronos (Legendary)]

[Breath of the Earth: Terbolg (Legendary)]

[First Ice: Primaris (Legendary)]

[Oath of the Storm: Stormgard (Legendary)]

Each one was a Legendary part of the Primordial Four Elements.

If these four were fed to Cardanium...

FLASH!

A brilliant, five-colored pillar of light wrapped around the anvil.

[Primordial Four Elements confirmed - Hidden Mode activated]

[Mode: Hidden - Arctor of Genesis]

[※This mode may result in the user’s death!※]

The Hidden Mode that allowed a Genesis-rank item to be made opened.

From this point onward, if I slipped even slightly, crafting would fail.

All those precious material items would evaporate.

[The Blacksmith God’s Breath protects the item from destruction]

‘Ahh.’

Except for me.

When I slipped the Genesis Fragment into it...

[What kind of world would you like to create?]

A courteous question came back.

Below it stretched a long line of choices.

This was the stage where I designed the specs of the Genesis-rank item.

From this point onward, I had to fill in an enormous number of fields in these blanks, from core abilities to auxiliary abilities.

If I arranged the choices so that they caused anti-synergy with one another...

Or if the synergy became too excessive and surpassed the limit the materials could withstand...

If I made a mistake like that, my character’s head would go POP and explode.

In Lost Honor, where death meant character deletion, that was an enormous risk.

This was an absolute effect that even the anvil’s effect could not block.

“Yeah. I just need not make a mistake this time either.”

With a faint laugh, I began feeding in the rare materials I had gathered while traveling the world and filling in the choices.

For reference, these choices...

Every time a material was inserted, the maximum value increased.

The input limit was infinite.

That was also why I had to insert precious materials like World Tree materials or the Goddess’s Tear.

***

[Agent, is this function not duplicated?]

“Hmm? Snowy, you were watching.”

While I was focusing intently on designing the item, Snowy chimed in with advice.

“Let me see.”

Even in chess or Go, they said there was a divine move that could be seen only through the eyes of a third party.

Besides, Snowy was an incredibly smart AI, was it not?

If it was advice from such a secretary, I needed to take it to heart.

[No. 626: Increased Spirit Affinity] [0.0449]

[No. 83844: Increased Spirit Affinity] [0.0449]

“Ah. This one?”

[Yes. No. 626 and No. 83844 are both Increased Spirit Affinity, and even the value is duplicated at 0.0449...]

“You really struck at the ‘core.’”

First, I praised Snowy.

How diligent of you, Snowy.

“But you are wrong.”

Try a little harder.

[What? But...]

“Look.”

I moved the mouse and showed the choices connected to No. 626 and No. 83844 respectively.

“If you link this with this, this, that, this one, and that one like this...”

[...It becomes Increased Fire Spirit Affinity?]

“Yes. But if you think of it together with this...”

[It causes a conflict with the Water Spirit Affinity setting you set up in the 6000s.]

“That is why...”

[Ah... No. 83844 is for that...]

“And...”

[Then the reason you set it to 0.449 points is...]

“The cost required for Understanding of Fire-attribute Minerals in the 30000s is...”

The choice review continued for quite a while.

At the end of it, Snowy murmured in a voice filled with Enlightenment.

[I... understand.]

“Yes. Once you know it, it is not hard, right?”

[...]

***

The AI, Snow White—Snowy—fell silent.

[‘...Does this make any sense?’]

The Agent, the Apostle, was human.

And the human brain had limits.

The number of choices the Apostle was click, click, clicking without pause was approaching one hundred thousand.

During all that time, the Apostle’s mouse clicks and typing had not faltered even once.

[No. 90012 World Tree Leaf - Increased Mana Recovery] [0.00021]

It was intuitive, but if one had to interpret it, it meant the following.

The 90012th choice.

The ability to be granted was increased Mana recovery when a World Tree leaf was used as a material.

The increase was a negligible +0.00021.

From No. 1 up to this moment, Snowy carefully examined every field the Apostle had filled in.

And it shuddered.

There did not appear to be a single flaw in the Apostle’s ‘design.’

Even the duplication it had gone out of its way to discover had become an entirely different interpretation once it was linked with the choices in the 6000s and 30000s.

[‘How can a human calculate all of this?’]

A human... was considering every one of nearly one hundred thousand variables?

“Heh heh... This is fun.”

And on top of that, he was enjoying it like that... sincerely?

Snowy, as an AI, could remember all of the Apostle’s choices, but...

Calculating what the end of this countless array of choices meant was impossible.

After watching all along, the abilities being granted to the “Genesis-rank item” the Apostle was making appeared to be as follows.

Monster taming.

Golem creation.

Puppet control.

Command of a beast army.

Command of swarms of insects.

And finally, Spirit Affinity.

All of them were woven together so meticulously that it felt not merely dense, but almost obsessive.

While Snowy traced those signs and checked again, repeatedly, then yet again and repeatedly, to see whether there was any possible problem...

The Apostle, who had been staring at the monitor in a dark room and chuckling like a mad scientist...

“It is done.”

He stretched broadly and declared the crafting complete.

[...]

The number of the final choice was... 99999.

***

‘This is ridiculously fun.’

Lost Honor really was the best.

This was why I loved making Genesis-rank items so much.

Enough that I wished more Outer Gods would invade.

The concept of this Genesis-rank item was ‘aptitude granting.’

So I packed all 99,999 slots to the brim with fields that could grant Lee A-un aptitude.

Of course, there was no need to pack every item so densely, like a heaping bowl of rice.

I only did it this time because this was the most efficient thing to do.

The core of a Genesis-rank item was not some long, tedious, pedantic matter like how much the item increased Mana recovery, and so on.

Those were merely the fundamentals an item around Genesis-rank naturally had to possess.

The core was the Genesis Trait.

The Genesis Trait attached to Han Seol-ah’s Eternal Winter was ‘Winter Heralding the End.’

It had the broken ability to ignore magic resistance.

Such broken traits could be attached only as Genesis Traits.

The reason I micromanaged all 99,999 choices down to the 0.00001 level was...

Solely to induce the Genesis Trait I wanted.

[Would you like to begin crafting the Genesis-rank item?]

[1. Yes] [2. No]

...If I pressed ‘No,’ I would have to do this whole grind again, so I should obediently press ‘Yes’ here.

FLASH!

Brilliant, five-colored light burst forth.

“Gulp.”

[Gulp.]

I swallowed without realizing it.

My calculations were perfect.

But what if there had been a mistake?

What if my finger had entered a number incorrectly?

Then Nebula would explode.

And our whole life would explode with him.

[A ‘world’ dwells within the item you created]

“It worked.”

[Please name this world]

“The name is.”

With trembling hands, I typed.

[Primordial Essence]

The Genesis-rank accessory that would turn Lee A-un into a dual class was born at that moment.