Chapter 1957
“Hmm...”
The woman standing in the back of the small ship pondered for a moment.
A group of mortals were huddled together on the dock, hard at work, smelting something. Whatever it was they were working on, they seemed to be almost done. She wanted to kill and plunder them all.
‘There is no way that an object smelted by the myriad spirits treasure box is ordinary. From what I can tell, it seems that it will be of the same quality as this ship... It bothers me that mortals possess the highest level of refinement. Who is the one behind distributing so many myriad spirits treasure boxes to mortals and teaching them how to use it?’
The woman suppressed her killing intent. There were too many mortals. She didn’t know what type of consequences would occur if she killed all of them and provoked an unknown backer.
‘First, let’s move according to plan.’
The woman made a strange gesture with her fingers, forming a hand seal. The speedboat she was on turned gold and there was a loud sound. Waves rose, like a tsunami was about to come into being. The woman moved tens of kilometers in the blink of an eye.
‘An underwater city...’
A few days ago, she woke up in a random city. She used soul extraction on the first mortal she met to read his memories and learn the language. According to the information she obtained at that time, there was an underwater city called Siren nearby.
‘The inner core of the sea people is precious. Let’s turn them into sweet medicine and focus on raising my realm for the moment.’
The ship carrying the woman disappeared into the depths of the sea.
***
On a certain mountain range…
An old man sighed in defeat after looking up at the night sky for days. “There are no constellations to raise an offering for! What a deep abyss this other world has sunk into! Now that things are like this, I have to refine the Selecting Star. Since I already have the key ingredients, I will be able to collect the rest of the materials after two hundred years of hard work. It’s just that… The chances of succeeding in refining it all at once are too small. I should seek out my seniors to help me out, but how much will they ask for... Um?”
The old man’s gaze shifted to the ridge a few kilometers away, where a man was leaping up a rough mountain.
‘A warrior? It is the qi refining realm and his agility is unusual. Is he from a powerful family? In any case, he must’ve had a great teacher. I should ask him about the whereabouts of his senior.”
The old man was delighted to find the cultivator and turned into a flash of light. The sight of the man climbing the rocks started to expand rapidly in the old man’s field of view.
“......!”
The warrior drew his sword and gripped it when he noticed the old man approach. The blade of the sword had a golden aura around it, and it looked quite imposing.
The old man’s eyes lit up.
“A sword forged from dragon bones. Not bones of a true dragon, but ones from a wandering dragon. Still, quite a rare material. Why was it only forged into a blade?”
The old man felt like the heavens were helping him.
“You are a rogue cultivator. I don’t have anyone around me to turn to for advice, so I am clueless. Give me the sword. I’ll show you how to refine it again as a senior.”
“A rogue cultivator...? Are you religious? Do you just mean a cultivator?”
“Culti—what? What are you saying?”
The old man looked bewildered. He snorted and began reciting an unfamiliar spell. A transparent hand floated in the air and tried to snatch the warrior’s sword. The warrior took a step back and swung his weapon. The transparent hand was split in half and scattered into dust.
The old man’s white eyebrows trembled.
“Swordsman! A warrior managed to slash me? Ah! You’ve mastered the secret art of hiding your real power, and are playing tricks on an old man!”
The expression on the old man’s face changed gradually as he shouted. He at first looked embarrassed, then angry, then convinced. He eventually sneered. To put it in Grid’s words, he was driving himself crazy. Upon seeing this stranger’s reactions, the man, Kraugel, sighed.
“I can see why the community is in an uproar.”
The hottest topic ever since the update dropped were the ‘outsiders.’ A lot of people were saying that outsiders were very quick learners and extremely powerful. They were creepy because they were violent and because their words carried a lot of weight.
Kraugel seemed to understand why people were saying those things.
‘At this point, I feel like I am facing a human from another world. I don’t think that existing NPCs were like this from the beginning... Has Morpheus, who had been developing artificial intelligence through learning, reached a singularity?’
Kraugel’s surroundings started distorting because of a space warping phenomenon caused by a powerful wave of force. He took out the god killer energy. He knew Navaldrea’s location and had no intention to waste any more time here.
The old man’s face paled as he witnessed the chilly white energy.
“T-This spiritual pressure...!” The old man felt like he was waist-deep in swamp waters. It was hard for him to breathe and his body couldn’t move properly. The protective shield on his body shook precariously like it was about to break.
‘This isn’t someone I can deal with!’
The old man’s rank might be one of a true person, but he had reached the end of his training. The technique he practiced was also unusual. He hoped that if he could make an offering to the stars and absorb its divine light, he would achieve his core formation and become a superhuman.
Dying here was meaningless, so the old man ran away without looking back.
Kraugel tilted his head to the side.
‘Well, he changed his mind awfully fast.’
The bandit was so arrogant that his stuck up nose would have pierced the sky. Now he was suddenly fleeing?
Kraugel sneered and swung his sword.
“Space Sword.”
A mixture of black and gold light slashed the world in half. Kraugel was curious about the items that an outsider would drop.
“Kuaaack!”
The old man was torn apart along with his shield and screamed. However, he didn’t turn to ash. Instead, he formed a crystal and his bisected body swelled significantly. The blood that poured from the cross section of the body was connected and the old man’s body joined back together. The old man doubled, tripled and quadrupled in size. Soon, he was engulfed in a fog as brilliant as starlight before turning invisible.
Kraugel was confused as to what happened and used Super Sensitivity, but he was one second too late. By then, the old man was already a few kilometers away.
‘I never thought he would transform with such a fuss and run away.’
Kraugel used Shunpo. He had steadily built up his status and had cut down a chief god, so he had clearly become an Absolute. The world called him a God Killer.
It was funny that the ‘rank’ applied after the update was just ‘warrior,’ but Kraugel was aware that this new ranking system wasn't proportional to actual combat ability.
The old man cried out in fear as soon as he noticed Kraugel following close behind him. “How could a senior deceive and bully a weak junior?”
The old man found this whole situation unfair. He looked pitiful next to Kraugel, like Noe did when standing next to Grid. If the old man hadn’t secretly made a hand seal, Kraugel would’ve hesitated for a moment.
‘I can’t let down my guard against him.’
Kraugel had roughly grasped the tendencies of outsiders. He knew what they were capable of, so he didn’t hesitate to use Super Storm Sword. The yellow amulet thrown by the old man was torn open, causing a thunderstorm.
“Haha! What do you think of the power of thunder and lightning? This talisman can shackle even a great person who has risen to the soul transformation rank! It’s so powerful, it can even turn someone like you into ashes in an instant!!”
The old man was boisterously laughing, but he was actually in a lot of pain. He never thought he would have to use an heirloom that had been passed down from generation to generation like this.
‘Still, it won’t be a big loss if I manage to take his sword... Huh?’
The old man was consoling himself when he suddenly stopped, shocked. The thunderstorm was cleared, revealing his enemy, still alive, still standing. He was breathing just fine despite taking enough damage to kill a person several times.
“How...?!”
He didn’t get to finish his sentence, because his head went flying.
The old man turned to ash. Kraugel picked up the bag that the old man dropped and frowned, troubled.
“I never thought half my HP would disappear with one blow. Anyway, the rewards are pretty cool.”
Kraugel’s expression slowly relaxed as he looked through the loot. There were a few treasures and materials in there that were hard to come by.
“Um?”
Kraugel habitually used the ‘materials search’ function that was introduced after the update. A certain seedling caught his eyes.
‘This… Grid will want to see this.’
***
The lair of Gourmet Dragon Raiders.
There was a cute little girl running around this place that didn’t allow outsiders to enter. Raiders’ golden scales had faded in color and were destroyed in places.
[I shouldn’t have opened the door. I mistook you for an apostle sent by the foreign god.]
“The world is too small to talk about gods. The person who pretended to be a god to deceive you ignorant people is just silly.” The girl shook her head and stuck out her tongue. She grabbed for the jade bead embedded at the tip of her smooth red tongue with her fingers and pulled it out. The bead transformed into a spear that emitted powerful waves.
Baaaang!
The girl chanted an esoteric spell, and the spear pierced Raiders’ heart. Raiders had his Absolute Defense and scales pierced by lightning strikes, so he urgently used Time Reversal.
The girl looked at him curiously as he recovered like nothing even happened to him in the first place. Her eyes widened. “A wandering dragon that deals with time? That shouldn’t be possible...”
She was about to recite a spell again.
[The ‘God Incarnation Body’ created by an unknown person has been ranked 855th on the Super Galaxy Treasures list.]
“......?” action
The girl was suddenly taken aback by the unfamiliar world message.
“An Incarnation Body is on the treasure list? I’ve never heard of anything like this in my tens of thousands of years of being alive.”
She couldn’t wrap her head around it. Ever since she woke up in a new dimension, she was becoming increasingly more confused as time passed by.
“Ah!”
Taking advantage of her confusion, Raiders teleported out of there. The girl couldn’t tell where he had gone, since he decided to hide himself in Nevartan’s lair which was tens of thousands of kilometers away.
“So, not only does he deal with time, he can also manipulate space around him as well... In terms of his power, he is stronger than most true dragons.”
The girl was intrigued by this fact. She shook her head. Her attention was solely focused on that super galaxy treasure that had just been created.
“Let’s secure that treasure for now.”
***
Noe and Randy halted their training and watched in shock as a huge beam of light poured out of Grid’s smithy.
“......!”
Because they were blinded for a moment, they were beaten into the dust by the God Hands. Noe, who had been huffing with frustration, fell silent.
Grid’s cheer could be heard from inside the smithy. Noe and Randy cheerfully walked inside, only to see two Grids staring at them.
Even Noe couldn’t tell who the real Grid was. “W-Which one is our master?”
Grid patted him on the head and carefully checked the information of the freshly completed body.
[Grid’s Divine Body]
Level: 800
Rating: Only One
Rank: Warrior.
The clone of Only One God Grid. Made out of Greed, the body can’t be damaged but it will stiffen every time it takes significant damage.
Once consciousness is linked, an artificial intelligence based on the master’s personality and knowledge will be activated. Currently, 100% of the master's stats and class-specific skills are inherited.
However, items and titles can’t be inherited.]
‘It only inherits class skills, like sword dances. However, it can learn as many new skills as I want by making use of skill books or clearing quests. Titles can be obtained by gaining achievements, and it can level and rank up just like a normal player...’
Grid saw the clone as just another player. It had the same capabilities as Grid, though it was much tougher. The only downside was that it ‘stiffened’ like the God Hands, but... This was a problem that could be solved by equipping it with items and increasing its defense.
Grid’s heart was overwhelmed with joy. There was a notification he missed, and when he checked it out on the status window, he cocked his head, intrigued.
‘Divine incarnation? Super galaxy treasure? What is all this bullshit? Oh, right, I haven’t left the smithy since the update.’
Grid had been so absorbed with building his body for the past few days that he had not yet seen any of the changes that the update brought out. He’d failed the body production method several times, and had grown so frustrated that he’d focused his entire attention on his task, ignoring everything else going around.
He laughed at his own absurd behavior. He checked the whispers and left the smithy.
‘I will meet Lord first, check the new ranking and treasure system, and wait to hear from Eligos.’
Grid made a plan before pulling out all his main equipment from his inventory and handing it over to the clone. He retrieved the consciousness he had linked to the God Hand, who was returning with Lord, and instilled it in the clone.
A light appeared in the dark eyes of the clone, which had been somewhat blank until now.
“Go to Zeratul and ask him for a skill book. Once you get used to your new skills, you will be able to venture out on your own for a while, gain some achievements and earn as many titles as you can.”
‘Yes.’
The two Grids walked in different directions.