Even Gods Make Mistakes

I sat myself down in the practice field I'd installed on the single high-grade spiritual land I'd managed to raise by sheer luck with a high-grade spirit stone, and began drawing spiritual energy into myself. Careful not to overlap the channels where slaughter energy already flowed through my body, the spiritual energy I pulled in was concentrated onto the spinning waterwheel of slaughter energy, plating over it like a coat of gold leaf.

But the spiritual energy layered over that whirling slaughter-energy waterwheel would strip away in an instant, or else erode and melt under the slaughter energy's corrosion. I compressed it slowly, trying to make it hold on even a little longer — but still.

"Guess not, after ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠all…"

Even borrowing the power of a high-grade spiritual land, my current realm wasn't nearly enough. Still, unlike with mid-grade spiritual lands, I'd at least managed ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to wrap it at all — and that counted for something. I left the practice field, eyed the spiritual land that had been corroded by slaughter energy until it lost all function, and dismantled the practice field.

Watching five wooden planks, only half-recovered, go tumbling across the ground, I gathered them up and stuffed them into storage, then looked up at the base that had changed so dramatically in the meantime.

Drawing on her experience as a field boss, Cheon Nan-cho had cultivated a flower garden across the spiritual land I'd contaminated, and the basin was now so packed with flowers of every color that it made my eyes spin.

It was classified as an ornament, of all things — a structure for intercepting intruders.

The Hwanga-gongdong prefix boosted every effect by 100% on any map tagged Hwanga-gongdong, too. Even so, bare flowers alone looked sparse, so I'd bought insect ornaments — bees, butterflies, that sort of thing — from the decoration mods. The flowers ate them in seconds.

Not by draining their energy, either. They physically wrapped them up in petals and swallowed them whole.

"…Maybe I should capture some insect-type monsters as prisoners."

I'd have to deliberately use gear or consumables that lowered my attack power, plus a bunch of annoying busywork, so I gave up on the idea immediately. My build was so attack-stacked that a few pieces of gear wouldn't put a dent in it anyway.

Unless I got hit by an eok-kka event, every same-level mob died in one hit. That was the problem.

Even monsters higher-level than me couldn't tank my attack power and just died. How was I supposed to use only weak attacks that would drop their morale without killing them? Even a bare-handed basic strike wrapped in killing intent shaved off huge chunks of their HP.

I held back and, by my own standards, tapped them gently — and their heads still went flying, holes punched clean through their torsos. The attack power gap was just that absurd. And if I didn't even wrap them in killing intent weaker than slaughter energy, the hits didn't register at all, so I couldn't drop their morale that way either.

Plus, if I goofed around trying to take prisoners and ate an eok-kka event for my trouble, I'd be completely screwed.

"Base Return!"

I'd been bare-handed using Spoon, so this was the moment for decisive judgment — abandon everything and bail back to base! Chopsticks scaled off weapon attack power, and with equipment swapping locked, I wouldn't be able to swap out when durability dropped, couldn't repair, and the gear would shatter. A quick call to protect my endgame belt was the right move.

To use a consumable for equipment repair, you had to put the gear in your inventory outside of combat. Even a belt that restored durability by killing elites could still get wrecked by a Misfortune event on ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a normal map — this wasn't the Abyss, where elites were everywhere!

"Come to think of it, I still need to redo the Sect Gate event."

I needed to use the empty Secret Record Book and go run the recovery event, but since it was a Xianxia Mode exclusive event, I wanted to bulk up as much as possible first and steamroll it with raw stats.

Because I'd already charged in once, died, and rolled back to a save point — a thoroughly miserable backstory.

Seriously, how was I supposed to 1v1 a giant at the Nascent Soul level who was carrying a mountain on his back?!

Naturally it was boss-tier, so Auto-Battle didn't work, and even with a transformation I couldn't reach his thighs — I just died on the spot. With that kind of level gap, of course I was going to lose!

Even if I was only at Core Formation right now, my innate talent and slaughter-energy advantage let me take down Golden Core cultivators with ambushes and pure luck. But Nascent Soul was so far past the line it wasn't even funny.

This was a Sect Gate event…?

All it had was land!

Not that getting land was a bad thing, mind you!

I wasn't sure I could clear it even after reaching Golden Core. Late Golden Core still wouldn't cut it — I'd probably need to hit Nascent Soul myself before I had any real shot at competing.

The reason I could kill Golden Core cultivators at all was that slaughter energy punched through their defenses, and then I finished them with attack power so massive no one would believe I was Core Formation. That giant? I couldn't pierce his defense. And even if I did, he was a giant — his HP and base defense would be in another dimension. From where I stood now, no strategy I could think of gave me any angle on killing him.

Getting mashed into jerky, unable to regenerate, and force-loaded back to a save point had been horrifying enough — but losing every scrap of slaughter energy, experience, materials, and items I'd gathered after that save point was even worse.

Except skill experience stayed.

More precisely, only the training experience stayed.

That was how I'd ended up just farming spirit stones on maps and then locking myself in the base practice field.

Wait — if I just train as hard as possible and then load the save over and over, doesn't that mean free level-ups?

To test the hypothesis, I trained hard, earned a few spirit stones, trained some more, then used Load — and amazingly, the training experience really did stick and grow.

"This really is a garbage game!"

Now this was the broken, trash-tier mess of a game I knew and loved!

Sinking into relief, I flopped onto a bed I'd crafted from the production window. Furniture took up inventory slots, so I hadn't made a single piece before — but since I was going to train and then Load back anyway, I decided to waste materials freely.

Of course, since the save point was the save point, materials reset too — meaning I still had to run maps over and over whenever I ran short on spirit stones!

And sure, new maps and new events kept popping up every time, but now that I had both Base Return and Load, the moment an eok-kka event showed its face I could bolt or reset on the spot.

"This almost feels like being a regressor!"

"What kind of nonsense are you spouting now? To even attempt a reincarnation technique, you'd need to reach the legendary Spirit Transformation realm."

"Huh? I'm already a reincarnator, though?"

"You were at Spirit Transformation in your past life?!"

"No, I was a Mortal."

"What kind of answer is that."

"Right?"

A regular person from an entirely different dimension, no less.

Just some factory laborer who'd clung to a dead game since student days, kept making mods for it even after going independent, even built a whole community around it — anything to keep playing the damn thing.

Cheon Nan-cho brushed off my rambling with the ease of long practice, half-buried herself in the high-grade spiritual land, and dozed off with little nods of her head. Leaving her behind, I headed back into the practice field.

I'd bluffed my way into Core Formation through slaughter energy and the Status Window, so the more I got used to controlling spiritual energy and training properly through steady practice, the more the training experience naturally dwindled. And yet —

My level was still climbing for sure!

Even if my slaughter energy wasn't increasing at all.

"Unlike combat experience, training experience really does seem to work on percentages rather than absolute values."

If it didn't, there was no way my level would climb this well from half-regressor nonsense — infinite Loads farming skill proficiency and training experience!

"Hmm… if things go well… I might be ready for a bottleneck breakthrough within a hundred runs…"

I was leveling up and grinding skills, but slaughter energy wasn't stacking, and events got wiped by Load so my stats barely budged either.

"Hmm… keep Loading, and when a Training Ground spawns, farm slaughter energy and stats like crazy there, then stop. That should work."

The catch was that finding a Training Ground meant carefully combing through maps — and I'd gotten so used to mindlessly running Auto-Battle, picking up spirit stones, and Base Returning that I kept forgetting and just Base Returning anyway.

Maybe I'd been running on too little brainpower.

But Auto-Battle was just so convenient!

Without Auto-Battle, I'd have to move my body and fight manually, stay hyper-alert for every Misfortune or Fortune event that popped mid-combat, and react to all of it individually?

Yeah — Auto-Battle was a god!

"Son of a bitch."

Apparently even gods made mistakes sometimes.

With my stats, how the hell did I lose to an elite? What? Legendary Combat? Was the monster the one fighting legendarily, not me?!

Ah. A named elite from a classic formation, complete with its own title! Checking the log, a Great Success event had slapped a Legendary prefix on it while I was completely zoned out. I'd seen "Success" and just clicked past it without thinking!

"This is some real bullshit eok-kka… and the fact that Load and Base Return are both locked while I'm a prisoner makes it even worse…"

Watching the bone-armor soldiers dangle me from their necks like war trophies, cheering for their bone-armor general as they spun in circles like they were doing some kind of victory dance, only made it more humiliating.

I was getting teabagged by mobs!