Heaven, Damn You!

"Heaven, damn you!!!!!!"

Why?! Goddammit, why?!

"Ahaha... I'm sorry, Senior..."

I'd cooked up the perfect plan to mess with the Heavenly Tribulation when my Friendly NPC San Gi-yeon broke through to Foundation Establishment — but the problem was Yeona had worked so hard that by the time I got back to base, she'd already hit Foundation Establishment on her own.

A beginner levels up and I can't even congratulate her, much less vent my frustration to her face, so all I could do was scream at the sky!

Ugh. At this rate, was I going to have to use that last resort we'd hashed out so thoroughly in my Mental World? If cheat mode was off the table, then bugs were the only option left. For all I knew, the currently active Comprehensive Bug Fix Mod had already patched whatever exploit I was thinking of — but I might as well try...!

"If it's about spiritual energy, couldn't you just take a few hundred years and cultivate at a leisurely pace, Hee-ah?"

"I don't want to waste that kind of time. The mid-game crisis is going to hit before then."

Between the Double Speed Mod I'd been juicing since the Training Ground and all that save-load grinding, my sense of time was completely shot. I had zero idea when anything was supposed to happen!

If the early-game crisis was pure Eok-kka and the late-game crisis was the kind of absolute Eok-kka you had to throw everything at, the general consensus on the mid-game crisis was more like... this is the mid-game crisis? Even if you modded the mid-game crisis events every which way, the reward that popped out was always the same handful of fixed artifacts locked to the event log. That was the whole problem.

What was it called again?

One of the Humanity Clones inside me scribbled a sketch on a sketchbook and held it up before the name finally clicked. Wait — where did you even get a sketchbook and crayons in there?

Right. The reason the mid-game crisis got treated like a joke compared to the early- and late-game ones was this useless forced-equip event artifact.

Unlike the early-game crisis that hit you while you were still in tatters from the opening events, or the late-game crisis that demanded you dump every scrap of power you'd built up, the mid-game one you could half-ass your way through — and yet people still said this is the mid-game crisis? The reason it still counted as one was right here.

Unless it was your first guaranteed special event, you could only equip a single artifact. The mid-game crisis forcibly overwrote whatever you had equipped, which meant anyone running a Dharma Treasure deletion event grind build had to go hunting for a replacement that fit their setup — a double dose of reroll hell.

Anyway, my sense of time was so wrecked by the Double Speed Mod that I had no idea when the mid-game crisis would hit, so I kept my preparations ready at all times. Still, it grated.

"What are you doing, Hee-ah?"

"Blowing off steam?"

I was doing the stupid thing of condensing slaughter energy into chopsticks and flinging them at the sky. The chopsticks soared as if they might actually reach the edge of heaven — then every last one bounced off some invisible boundary and got flung back down.

I retrieved the ricocheted chopsticks and threw them again, burning through slaughter energy on pure busywork. Only after I'd burned through most of my regenerating slaughter energy did I dump a spirit stone straight into my mouth, crush it between my teeth, and force the spiritual energy into my Golden Core.

In the process, the wheel floating above my head like a halo spun round and round.

Interfering with spiritual energy rather than slaughter energy was actually easier through my Natal Dharma Treasure — the dedicated weapon — than through the Golden Core suppressed beneath the Seas of Slaughter.

That said, even though the wheel was a Natal Dharma Treasure forged by overlaying spiritual energy onto slaughter energy and linked to my soul, it was still fundamentally specialized for slaughter. The efficiency was nothing to write home about.

I expanded the Golden Core's spiritual energy to match my level so it wouldn't get crushed under the slaughter. That was the only way to raise the experience gain rate.

The fastest, easiest, best method — simply snatching and devouring a cultivator's spiritual root or Golden Core — had been blocked by the Humanity Clones and Elder Togo.

The plan to raise a prisoner, then snatch their Heavenly Tribulation and claim the spiritual energy for myself, had failed when I missed the window with San Gi-yeon. And prisoners? All I had were San Gi-yeon, Cheon Nan-cho, and Elder Togo anyway.

"Why not just use this?"

"...I want to use it too."

Cheon Nan-cho pulled out the last remaining Supreme-grade spirit stone — the one left after I'd blown through the rest building the spiritual land and ley lines — and waved it. The item window for the Supreme-grade spirit stone in her hand floated up in front of me.

That single spirit stone held more spiritual energy than my entire Golden Core.

Hence the level restriction. A thoroughly considerate warning — and a hard lock — that my Nascent Soul would only be able to contain that stone once I'd reached Nascent Soul and pushed past mid-stage.

The level restrictions bounced around all over the place, but the real mechanism was simple: if the system decided I couldn't handle something based on my slaughter energy or spiritual energy, it slapped a [UNUSABLE] tag on it.

In short, the level requirements on slaughter-based items had dropped, while the ones on spiritual-energy-only items had skyrocketed.

Which was also why Cheon Nan-cho could use it and I couldn't.

And why was the grade even listed as Supreme in the first place? By rights that thing was just currency, so grade-wise it should have been Common. Wait — the fact that game currency had a grade attached at all was already weird!

Gyaaaaah! This goddamn xianxia mode! This piece-of-shit reality patch!

"Hey, could you maybe stop having a meltdown? At this point you're starting to scare me."

Only after Cheon Nan-cho spoke up did I finally reel in all the killing intent and slaughter energy that had been leaking out of my Mental World, absorb every last scrap of it, and let out a long breath.

"Where's the Great Elder?"

"Hm? I sent Elder Togo out on a quick prisoner expedition."

He'd flown off like he was just going for a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rehab stroll. Hopefully he'd come back loaded with spirit stones! Of course, prisoner expedition rewards were pure random, so I wasn't getting my hopes up...

"More importantly, Cheon Nan-cho — just asking, but is there any way to deliberately trigger a Heavenly Tribulation?"

"You're not afraid of Heaven, Hee-ah?"

"Not particularly?"

A hardworking civil servant of a Heaven was way less scary than the Eok-kka events that popped up out of nowhere like a problem customer.

"Hmm... if you deliberately want a Heavenly Tribulation, the only way is to touch the Forbidden Records."

"What's that, and why does it sound so badass?"

"To put it in terms you'll understand, Hee-ah — break those and Heaven will do whatever it takes to kill you."

"A blacklist!"

"Why are you happy about that? You're supposed to be scared."

"The only thing that scares me is Eok-kka events — the absolute peak of unfairness."

Compared to that, Heaven was a civil servant, right?

In online game terms, it was the admin. And not just any admin — a rigid, mechanical one completely bound by hard rules and regulations, with zero flexibility.

So from a game perspective, what was there to be afraid of?

Something like that was practically begging to be exploited.

Thud.

A spear of conscience stabbed into my inner world. The other Humanity Clones had blocked her from swinging it properly, so in the end she'd settled for hurling her conscience at me like a javelin — her way of making her opinion known.

What? Stop thinking of everything like a game?

Then what the hell was I supposed to do? Huh?

Was I supposed to treat this like I'd been reincarnated or transmigrated into this absolute garbage fire of a game and start thinking about it realistically? Huh? You all know this already. This way is way more efficient and way easier.

That's why you fight among yourselves too. You all died without lasting a single round, and now you want to leave me alone — leave me to treat this shitty game like reality?

"Don't you fucking start."

I really needed to cut back on the swearing, but I genuinely couldn't hold it in. If they were going to make my conscience hurt like this, I might as well just kill the Humanity Clones all over again right now — or so one of them was screaming at the top of her lungs as I summoned her into the Mental World and manifested there myself.

"Kyahahaha! Looking to take it out on me? Feeling guilty because I caught you power-denying reality? The others are the same — 'it's a game'? That's my line. Don't you fucking start."

"It is a game."

"Hmph? You know I'm you too, right? No point hiding it — all our thoughts are shared anyway. You've just been power-ignoring it, or deliberately not ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠saying it out loud."

"You fucking bitch."

"We've even got a skill for it! The very first skill we ever got! A passive, no less! A mental barrier built before the chopsticks or the spoon ever existed! The grave that killed us all and buried us!"

"Why are you trying to deny us all over again? Hm? Think you can? You've already tasted warmth again under the excuse of Friendly NPCs. Hm? Really?"

"I'll kill you!"

"Sure, go ahead and kill me. It's fine. We all died that day anyway — from the moment we cowardly ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠used our own corpses as a shield and started looking at the world like a game. You resurrected us on a whim with the tiniest scrap of leftover pity, and ever since then, I don't know about the others, but I've never been okay with it!"

She was me, but she wore the form of a mature woman. I seized her with one hand and hurled her straight off the tower into the Seas of Slaughter below, then opened my eyes and left the Mental World.

In protest, she'd picked up a spear and started fighting the other Humanity Clones. The aftershocks of that brawl made my heart ache, and I forced a scowl as I opened the Status Window and dumped every last residual stat point into Mental.

Only then did the system messages swim hazily into view. I swapped into the mental-resistance gear registered in my quick slots and scrubbed the debuff clean.

"You're having meltdowns a lot today, Hee-ah. Here."

"Tell me about it. Ah — thanks."

I drank the sap-like liquid Cheon Nan-cho handed me, and an ice-cold energy flash-froze every Humanity Clone still brawling inside me, turning them into something like rapidly frozen fish.

A bit better.

Wasn't it a little much that every single one of them fell into Confusion too? Seriously, not one ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of them managed to resist.