Tatar's Wheel

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"Ehehehe…"

"You like it that much?"

"A dedicated weapon! My dedicated weapon? Of course I do!"

Through spiritual energy, I could feel my soul and the wheel binding together, locked in a solid connection. And along that same tether, slaughter energy circulated without end.

As the wheel turned, the slaughter energy inside my body turned with it.

It had taken several more years after Cheon ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Nan-cho returned from the prisoner expedition before I finally managed to refine the wheel with spiritual energy. The moment the [Item] judgment popped up, I literally flipped midair from pure joy — no exaggeration.

First option: ignore conditions and rules.

No idea what that even means.

Second option: additional equipment judgment.

Exactly what it says. Unlike a normal equipped item, this is a genuine extra gear slot! Woo! I can wear one more piece of equipment!

Third option: skill judgment.

Just like that, the wheel vanished from my skill window. The item itself counted as both a skill and an item, which meant I got to double-dip every buff that enhanced equipment and skills!

Of course, debuffs like equipment seals or skill seals would hit me twice as hard too!

And the final, crowning fourth option: it can kill anything.

Non-living things, inanimate objects — all of them now received a [Kill Target] judgment and dropped experience and slaughter energy. An absolutely broken, game-breaking option!

Now that was a dedicated weapon!

Just skimming the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠options, this was the kind of gear that only ever dropped out of a cheat mod!

Looking at it alone was enough to make my head float.

Was it because our souls were connected?

"I figured some nightmarish natal dharma treasure would come out of this. Honestly surprised it turned out this normal."

"Huh? Why would you even think that?"

"Because a natal dharma treasure reflects its master's nature and soul."

"Ahh, I see."

So my nature and soul were a wheel, huh! A drill would've been cooler, but oh well!

"Though according to the legends, Tatar's Wheel spares only children and kills everything bigger than the wheel itself."

"Yu Hee, you're short, but that doesn't mean—"

"It does not mean that?!"

"We'll just count it that way. Hearing the legend, this really is your natal dharma treasure. Did I survive because I'm smaller than you?"

"If you hadn't surrendered on first contact and come in as a prisoner, you'd have become one with the wheel ages ago."

Watching Cheon Nan-cho climb onto the rolling wheel and lightly jog in place, pouting with her lips twisted sideways, I finally recovered my peace of mind.

Which meant it was time to go back to leveling.

The wheel lifted my body into the air as naturally as breathing.

I needed to leave the base, find a level-300-range map, and grind.

And of course—

"Auto-Battle!"

All stats over 1300, the transformation skill, the boosts from Heavenly Slaughter Art, plus the buffs from a wheel that had grown even stronger after I reached Golden Core — nothing in front of me stood a chance!

"Kyaaaaaaaah!!"

Are you fucking kidding me — a Minor Misfortune and it doesn't even drop one stat, it drops the maximum of three?! What kind of probability is that even supposed to be?! Three stats is enough slaughter energy to level up twice and still have leftovers!!!

Zone out during Auto-Battle, get blindsided by a misfortune event that makes your emotions yo-yo like this, and your heart starts pounding all on its own.

From pure rage!

"Auto-Battle! Auto-Battle! Auto-Battle!!"

Feeling the slaughter energy pour in from the monsters pulverized by this overwhelming Auto-Battle, I finally managed to calm down.

"Auto-Battle."

Yep. Auto-Battle really is the best.

I watched a flame-wreathed skeleton get shredded by slaughter energy, roll across the ground, and crumble away like weathered bone — then kept cycling through maps for more levels, until I finally noticed the problem.

"Fuck, look at the exp bar…?"

A full month of nonstop grinding across twelve same-level maps, and the bar was only at forty-one percent? This is a game? Right, this isn't a game — this is a garbage, broken, piece-of-shit game!

"You made training experience percentage-based for this, Xianxia Mode!!!!"

A vile scheme to stop people from leveling just by clearing maps! Goddammit! I got played? By who? Well? I got played by myself!

"Urgh."

A headache bloomed in a brain that had clearly rusted over from never being used during Auto-Battle, and I cut the thought short.

Then, half out of habit, I spun up [Auto-Battle] to cool my head.

My body moved on its own. From the halo of the wheel and chopsticks, beams and needles poured out of their own accord, piercing and tearing monsters apart.

Mm. Still convenient.

Slaughter energy came in. A pathetic trickle of experience came in too.

"I really should be hunting humanoid mobs."

Cultivators gave great experience, but I hadn't seen any lately.

Hmm. Was it that?

Probably the power of my sect — Hwanga-gongdong, where relations with every other sect had flipped to "??? / Unknown"!

"Come to think of it, I still need to do the sect event."

I'd tried loading it a few times, and the event kept swapping out, so it was probably random — but every single version had a difficulty that made "what the fuck" leap out of my mouth ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠on its own.

Eternal Realm as the baseline?!

Are you joking right now?! There was a map that just said "You have entered a Deity Transformation domain!" the second I stepped in and instakilled me! This is a sect event? Is this difficulty for real?! Where did Balance Mode go! Are you even working!?

Ah. Right. This is a Xianxia Mode event.

If it's a mode, nothing I can do about it!

You think I'd say that? You absolute garbage dump of a game!?

"Ah, whatever. Exp isn't going up and time keeps moving."

"Then why don't we go back to the sect and train?"

"Should we?"

Wouldn't it be better to dump that time into percentage-based training experience instead of clearing twelve maps?

Cheon Nan-cho's words set my heart swaying like a reed in the wind.

Items and spirit stones could be handled through invasion events and prisoner expeditions anyway… wait, could I actually do this on training alone? Was that even viable? Those thoughts flooded my head.

"Base Return!"

So I went back to the sect for now.

Hwanga-gongdong. My sect.

Base! My Home! Hideout! Hidden Realm! Mm… whatever else there was, there was a lot of it! A place overflowing with buffs from every related mod. Of course, all of them ran on my innate ability.

Thanks to the Reality Patch, decorations that should have been pure background set dressing had all become functional and real!

For example, ornaments like this!

Scoop up one ladleful and it really is delicious. No HP recovery or anything like that, but the fact that decorations had been Reality-Patched into existence meant they could produce all kinds of effects.

"Which is how I can get away with crap like this."

An SF Mode decoration — a robot structure — fired beams from its eyes and deleted monsters that poured in through invasion events.

A Medieval Fantasy Mode decoration — a death knight statue — became a real death knight, mounted a ghost steed, and carved through invasion-event monsters with a crimson beam saber.

There were only two Epics like that, but Unique and Rare decorations were scattered all over the place too.

The ones with actual combat power mostly belonged to the colossal and large categories — statues and structures.

"Mm… this one's still underleveled."

I looked over a decoration that seemed inactive from low level and insufficient slaughter energy. There were Legendaries, and even Ancient and Mythic grades.

Mythic ones were mostly Mythology Mode Olympian statues, or SF Mode space war weapons and starships, but still.

"Cannot be confirmed" for the restriction meant my level was nowhere near enough — so in the end, leveling was the only way forward.

"Then training! It's training time! Cheon Nan-cho! How's the spirit field coming?!"

"Don't… talk… to me…!"

Cheon Nan-cho was clutching a supreme-grade spirit stone and attempting to convert it into a spirit field, so I shut my mouth. She looked filthy exhausted just from looking at her!

Interrupt her, fail the process, and I might waste a precious supreme-grade spirit stone.

A top-tier spirit field made from a supreme-grade spirit stone ought to jack training experience efficiency way higher, right? Holding onto that hope, I parked myself in a mid-grade spirit field and trained spiritual energy instead of slaughter energy, collecting training experience — and settled in to wait for several more years.