One Man Army

Chapter 123 [Episode 63] Hagye, Middle Layer, and Heavenly World 2

The users still did not know that the planet that they inhabit is called the Lower Third World.

After a Huge Event and the Skyway is officially opened then the information about the Lower Third World, Middle Layer, and Heavenly World was made public.

“By the way, the time of that Event….  Maybe it will happen much earlier than in my previous life, right?”

Based on his past life, the Event would happen in another year and four months at least, but because events were progressing faster than in his previous life, so it might happen in just a few months.

Since the Sky-Grade Ship could be made in advance even if the Skyway was not open, Sang Hyuk was planning to complete his Sky-Grade Ship before the Event happened.

“Let’s scrape up as much Adamantium as possible using Gold Mountain… and in the meantime let’s finish the virtual space dock.”

The virtual space dock was a space for constructing a Sky-grade ship. To make it, he needed additional material and time apart from the material and time needed to create a Sky-grade Ship.

After completing the Sky-Grade Ship in the virtual space dock, if the ownership of the virtual space dock is stamped into the soul, the Spirit Virtual Space is created, and it is natural to get the ownership of the Sky-grade ship stored within.

Obviously, the larger the size of the Sky-grade Ship, the larger the virtual space dock. And the size of the virtual space dock was determined by the size and number of space expansion bags, used to make it.

Based on what Sang Hyuk knew, to create the virtual space dock needed to make the dual-grade Sky-grade Ship, Sang Hyuk needs at least 50 top-level space expanding bag with a 1 metric ton limit weight.

For reference, the current price of the top quality space expansion bag was 10,000 gold.

In other words, it means that pouring 500,000 gold…..or 30 million won in cash can barely meet one of the materials needed to create a virtual space dock.

All of the other ingredients combined required a minimum of 1.5 million gold to create a virtual space dock (dual grade).

It just meant that Sang Hyuk needed 100 million won to make a ‘tool’ to simply create and anchor the Sky-grade Ship.

After dual grade, a triple grade needed 2 million gold, and almost 3 million gold for the quadruple grade.

At this level, the individual user could hardly dream of making a Sky-grade ship. Most of the Sky-grade Ship was made by guilds, except for the millionaire users.

Of course, it was not a big problem for Sang Hyuk.

Although he was an individual user, he was guaranteed more funding than any other guild through the top of EL, Gold Mountain.

Though Sang Hyuk’s income was decreasing due to the large expenses nowadays, still the gold kept pouring into the vast entity called Gold Mountain, and the surplus of gold that was gained through the flow was still piling up in the bank.

“I already bought the space expanding bags…. The rest of the materials are almost ready, so the production is the only thing left.”

The materials were collected from some time ago, so he was already prepared. All that was left was to invest time.

The production time of the virtual space dock (dual) was a half month. And to make a Sky-grade Ship in the dock, he also needed another half month. It could not be reduced even if it was Sang Hyuk.

It took a lot of time, but there was no reason to rush into it.

It was not possible to use Sky-grade Ship right now because Skyway was not open yet.

On the other hand, while Sang Hyuk was working hard to create a Sky-grade Ship, other users were still obsessed with Magic Armor.

Thanks to the large number of users who have flooded the market with 0-grade Magic armor after the production method of Magic Armor had been made public, the price of Magic Armor had fallen down a little bit.

Because of the clear difference between Magic Armor with 0 or 0.5 grade, the users thought to make Magic Armor using cheap materials to increase their production skills.

In a sense, the Magic Armor craze seemed to be growing. And thanks to it, Sang Hyuk was able to dispose of all the Magic Armor related materials that he had gathered.

Sang Hyuk intended to simplify the Gold Mountain business as much as possible before launching the Sky-grade Ship. If he starts the Sky-grade Ship and embarked on a full Middle Layer voyage, there was a high possibility that he could not come back to the Lower Third World for at least half a year.

So, he thought to simplify his business because he could not manage Gold Mountain properly, so he would make the business run itself without any problems while he was gone.

First, he thought to fold the business of selling the secret dungeon tickets and the business of selling maps of each area.  Also he would quit buying and hoarding items from the auction house except a few very important items. Gold Mountain was also going to change its pawnbroker business so that Sang Hyuk would not have to be involved.

It would certainly make less money than before, but at least Sang Hyuk did not have to worry about it at all, and as he was not going to lose money due to these changes, so gold would continue to be accumulated.

After all, since Gold Mountain had to advance to Heavenly World through the Middle Layer, Sang Hyuk decided that it was time to simplify the business and gather strength.

Sang Hyuk, who started by crawling, now prepared to jump to the very top of the sky. He was looking forward to the distant future and was working hard.

* * * *

The universe.

The universe lay under their feet. They stood over the image of the four dimensional planets, but three of the four were strangled in darkness, with only a single, bright planet shining in the night filled with stars.

Chaos called this place ‘the Unknown beyond the Heavens’ and Seo Wontae called it ‘Sky-end’.

However, what to call this place was not important. The important thing is that there are only two who can come here.

Chaos was created by Seo Wontae, but as planned, freed from his control, became the  enormous deity that controlled Eternal Life (EL).

And the Creator, who created Chaos, Seo Wontae.

Only these two could come in here.

Seo Wontae was sitting facing the Chaos, which was transformed into a normal human figure with the planet Treenark at his feet.

“So you mean that in the end it will be self defeating?”

[Yes, I know why the master used all of his methods to open the sky library and fitted him with the odd shackles of the Ragna Blade, but in the end he will overcome them, and the very shackles themselves will become a part of his power.]

In fact, Seo Wontae and Chaos had a lot of conversation here in the early days. But everything has changed since the game stabilized and Chaos started to act as the true Ruler of the dimension. Seo Wontae rarely used the Creator’s authority. Rather, he reduced the authority of the Creator to the utmost and increased the powers of Chaos.

Seo Wontae decided that Chaos should be the sole controller in order to complete the new concept of virtual reality that he had envisioned. So by this point in time, he was already beginning to abdicate all his powers to Chaos.

So by now there is not much that the creator, Seo Wontae, can do. Still, Seo Wontae recently used all of his authority to make one thing… the thing that Chaos opposed.

“I honestly do not agree with you, and I had no choice but to intervene. But is it going to be a problem later?”

[I also did not stop the master because the master kept the changes small within a large range. But after he got the ragna blade, I continued the analysis separately… He unraveled the shackles themselves much sooner than what the master and I thought and rather, I think he can make ragna blade completely his possession. If so, he can have the power to damage the system itself.]

“That’s not right. When he untied his shackles and make ragna blade his own, the divinity that was standing in ragna blade would be sharply reduced and the ragna blade would be bound within the yoke of the mortal…. then the ragna blade has no choice but to stay within the limits of the mortal realm.”

[That is right. But he already has so many great powers that one user can have. When I think about it, even if I push ragna blade into the realm of the mortal forcibly, I can not completely eliminate the nature that it had, so I do not know when the divinity will break its prison.]

“I know what you’re worried about. But I could not let him go. Honestly, it does no matter if he is personally strong. But as he became stronger in an unbelievable speed so it’s a matter of him constantly forcing us to use time acceleration. You too have acknowledged this. It was an inevitable choice to stop the accelerations of time.”

[I fully understand the position of the master. But I’m telling you that doing things in an ad hoc way to slow down the use of maximum time acceleration can eventually shake the dimension with a greater distortion.]

“Hmmmm…..”

Seo Wontae, who listened to Chaos, seemed to arrange his thoughts. Frankly, from Seo Wontae’s point of view, the current time flow of the eternal life was something he never expected at all.

Time acceleration was a phenomenon that had to occur when a new dimensional planet was revealed through a large patch. However, because there was no patch and it has appeared occasionally….. Of course, as for Seo Wontae, he could not just watch it. ***

In the end, Seo Wontae broke his own principles and explored the cause by using the creator’s authority. Then he found the anomaly that he thought was the cause.

Ridiculously, the anomaly was a single user.

Since then, Seo Wontae has been in a lot of trouble. And he also had a lot of conversation with Chaos.

Chaos, however, said that in principle he should never intervene directly with the users. Of course, Seo Wontae also knew that direct intervention was going beyond the operation of the game, and illegal.

So he squeezed his head and found a shortcut.

It is a power so great that it connects Divinity itself to the problematic user and shackles him with powers he can’t hope to control.

This was literally a shortcut to avoid the illegal activities.

“Fine. As you say, let’s say I made a mistake. So, what do we do at this point?”

[It’s already late to fix the mistakes. However, if you break the link between the Ragna Blade and the Sky Library now and lower the power of divinity in the Ragna Blade as much as possible, you can reduce the disruption to the Game Engine as much as possible.]

“But then the shackles will be released too soon, right? We can disengage sooner than we expected. But isn’t it dangerous to take action so that it can be released faster than that?”

[It’s better to release a series of small explosions than having a single huge explosion that you can not cope with later. You can not stop it from getting bigger and bigger anyway.]

Chaos has come up with the most reasonable approach.

“It’s driving me crazy… By the way, will it be okay? Ragna Blade is originally the force you used when you ‘initialize’, right?” *

[It is not perfect, but there are some other powers to replace it. It will be a bit annoying and complicated, but it will not be a big problem if I use those tools.]

“Anyway, I’m sorry. It’s because of me that things have gotten twisted.”

[No. I fully understand why the Master had no choice but to act by yourself. And I also thought that the master’s methods had merit. In the end, the mistake was not only done by the master, but I also did the same thing.]

“Yeah, let’s go in the direction you are talking about and try to remove all signs of our intervention. Carefully,  so he doesn’t notice anything strange.”

[I know.]

“And those who know his existence was only you and me, but just in case, please use extra care with security…. But perhaps, can you take care of him separately?”

[It is impossible because it is a violation of article 1, 7, and 16 of the Special Act of DN. I am limited to designating him as a major monitoring target.]

“Yep, I understand.”

Even when he knew the answer, he still asked again. That’s how much of a headache this  problem was.

A world that he has made himself but is now growing alone, leaving his hands…..

As the creator of that world, Seo Wontae thought that this world would be loved by as many people as possible for as long as he intended.

Chapter 123 [Episode 63] Hagye, Middle Layer, and Heavenly World 2 – End

Editor’s Notes: IMPORTANT!  You’re probably not going to remember, but in the earlier chapters, it was made clear that in order to prepare new Dimensional Planets, or even apply a new patch, Chaos has to accelerate time.  By increasing subjective time by a factor of 1000 or even higher, Chaos can work fast enough to apply patches, or prepare Dimensional Planets for the players to inhabit.  It’s implied in this section that accelerating time is not only resources intensive, but can cause glitches and bugs.  So the creator of the game and Chaos, the A.I. administrator, has a vested interest in reducing the amount, and frequency of time acceleration, and because Sang Hyuk keeps triggering patches, they’re trying various methods to slow his progress.    (yep, our MC is giving the developers headaches.)

Editor’s Notes: So the implication is that Ragna Blade is a Developer’s Tool, with the power to “initialize”?  To erase objects from the game itself?  No wonder it acted like that when Sang Hyuk used it to destroy that demon gate…