The Price of Miracles
Unlike the legendary weapons wielded by heroes of old, the divine instruments were items that would become my greatest source of power in moments when I was unable to use my words—or when I needed to land an additional decisive blow.
Which meant they demanded all the more care.
There was one I had asked about once before: the Ruyi Bang.
No—the Ruyi Jingu Bang, the weapon of the Great Sage Equal to Heaven. It held power on an entirely different plane from mere treasure-grade weapons, and so its cost in Faith would inevitably be steep as well.
…How much Faith does it take to transmute the Ruyi Bang?
Transmuting the Ruyi Jingu Bang, weapon of the Great Sage Equal to Heaven, requires 30,000 Faith. A weapon through which divinity is inherited demands that its wielder pay the corresponding karma; unlike treasure-grade weapons, its Faith requirement cannot help but be vast.
That was a lot.
Granted, the Ruyi Bang was a weapon of monstrous mass, capable of growing its width and length without limit. And once I had transmuted it, I would be able to wield it freely, unbound by its weight.
Furthermore, the Ruyi Jingu Bang possesses the ability to draw a barrier upon the ground.
A barrier?
It is called the Barrier of Demon-Breaking—a power that bars the approach of evil beings and purifies them.
At the System's additional explanation, I decided to table the idea for now.
The one silver lining was that, unlike Awe, my Faith was still climbing even as I sat here.
What about Pandora's Box? What ability gets inherited?
It is a box that contains every calamity. Upon opening it, all the disasters that could ever befall the world will begin to erupt simultaneously. The duration is one year; if the single hope slumbering within the box is drawn out before then, it can be ended early.
Barely any different from what was written in the documents.
Frankly, Pandora's Box seemed like it wouldn't help against the Demon King in the slightest.
As I read on through the documents, what I stumbled upon—unexpectedly promising—was the staff of Hermes, the messenger god of Greek myth. Wondering what power slept within it, I found a record of an ability to pass freely between the underworld and the world of the living.
The Kerykeion, staff of the messenger god Hermes, functions like a pass granting entry between the underworld and the living world. Should the user transmute the Kerykeion, they may interfere with the boundary between the underworld and the living world—once per transmutation.
Couching it in roundabout phrasing like that only made it harder to grasp.
I simply couldn't fathom what "interfering with the boundary between the underworld and the living world" would actually translate to in practice.
To interfere with that boundary means this: when the user receives a blow that should kill them, it can be rewritten into a blow that does not. Be warned, however—this power is strictly one-way, and the point of alteration will always begin from death.
Which meant the reverse—landing a simple attack on an enemy and then interfering with that boundary to rewrite it into a lethal one—was impossible, I supposed.
If the latter had been possible, I wouldn't have even hesitated.
So I shelved that one too and let my gaze drift downward.
The Palm-Leaf Fan is the treasure of the Rakshasa, a demon that reformed itself into a guardian deity of Buddhism. Wave it once to summon a fierce gale; wave it twice to call down rain; wave it three times to rouse a typhoon.
I hadn't exactly asked for advice in my head.
But the System—whether it had noticed my gaze lingering—offered its counsel all the same.
And it is said that the Palm-Leaf Fan's gale can fling a person a full eighty-four thousand li.
Eighty-four thousand li, converted into kilometers with my past life's memory, came to roughly thirty thousand kilometers.
Given that the distance from Korea—my homeland in my past life—to the distant foreign shore of America was about eleven thousand kilometers, I had a fair idea of just how far it could send something flying.
But those were inherited records concerning ordinary humans, nothing more.
How much force it could actually bring to bear against the Demon King's army itself was an open question.
Even if it truly could hurl them to the far side of a continent, that wouldn't be pulling the threat up by its roots.
Hah.
Exhausting. My skull was beginning to throb.
Outside, dusk had fallen at some point, and all I wanted was to crawl into bed. Why did I have to be the one bound in the fetters of this fate, anyway?
But I couldn't follow my grumbling with an escape, and so I pressed on with the work.
Could you tell me about the Astras?
The documents contained nothing beyond a note that these divine instruments of Indian mythology came in many varieties.
If that was all the library—a perfect recreation of my past life's memories—had to offer, then my past self had only ever glanced at them in passing.
An Astra is a spell-art that summons weapons imbued with the power of the gods of Indian myth. As such, like the Banhonhyang, it consumes only a very small amount of Faith to transmute; the Faith required varies according to which god's power the summoned weapon carries.
Could you give me a list?
Deciding this much was worth writing down, I prepared to transcribe onto paper whatever came.
First, I will list the class that consumes the greatest amount of Faith.
I nodded and copied the System's notifications straight onto the document.
The supreme Astras the System told me of numbered three in all:
One. Brahmastra, of Brahma the creator god.
Two. Pashupata, of Shiva the destroyer.
Three. Narayanastra, of Vishnu the preserver.
In truth, rather than calling them spell-arts for summoning weapons, they were closer to the enchantments common in games—perhaps best described as swinging a weapon steeped in the aura of a chosen god. In a word, a divine instrument performed in shamanic form.
Besides that, the three Astras the System described were so mighty that even the original records held that if anyone ever used one of the three, countering it absolutely required the use of another of the three. And when an uncountered strike from one of these Astras left behind its horrific aftermath, eliminating that too demanded the same procedure.
…Granted, viewed in the abstract, anyone with power of equivalent caliber could manage the counter or the cleanup without needing the exact same method.
But so long as I inherited the records wholesale and drew my power from those very records, having "equivalent power" wouldn't be enough—particularly for the aftermath's removal, I would have to use one of the three Astras, no two ways about it.
Factoring in the allies who would be caught in the blast radius, using a single Astra on the battlefield meant I was saddled with the absurdity of needing to stack a second, contingency Astra on top of it.
In other words: the worst cost-effectiveness imaginable.
Fortunately, the System went on to list other, more serviceable Astras.
Five in all:
One. Vasavi Shakti, of Indra the thunder god.
Two. Agneyastra, of Agni, god of fire.
Three. Varunastra, of Varuna, god of water.
Four. Rudrastra, of Rudra, god of storms.
Five. Manavastra, of Manu, progenitor of humankind.
These five high-grade Astras, I was told, could have their aftermath suppressed by me personally—by loading the power of my word of Nullification into an incantation.
How much Faith does transmuting and using a supreme Astra cost?
25,000.
An awkward number.
Twenty-five thousand might sound modest on its face—but a supreme Astra requires a second Astra of equal caliber to quell its own aftermath. One use, in other words, meant fifty thousand Faith in total.
And with only three supreme Astras in existence, one of them would be left perpetually unusable.
Still, being able to choose which one to spend was itself an enormous advantage.
Nothing else here has much meaning at this point, does it…
The one that caught my eye was something like Hades' helm—an instrument that erased the wearer's form and presence entirely, rendering them utterly unnoticeable until they performed some action that would give them away.
But the average Faith cost of transmuting a divine instrument sat around thirty thousand, meaning my current holdings would cover three of them at most.
Just as I thought I could no longer keep my grip on my flagging spirits, one final item caught my eye: the Akashic Records.
I have a question.
Ask.
The transmutation list seems to reflect the inherited records almost perfectly—am I wrong about that?
You are not. Words acquired through the expenditure of consonants and vowels involve no additional payment, so if their meaning-range grows excessive, karma is adjusted to compensate. The transmutation list, however, requires payment not only of consonants and vowels but of additional values as well.
Beneath that cryptic phrasing lay a second meaning: if the range of the karma being rewritten was too egregious to be reasonable, adjustment would kick in there as well.
After all, the White Feather Fan carried its own built-in constraint—a bounded window of time—yet even so, its observation of the future had been excluded at transmutation.
Then would these Akashic Records, in fact, inherit their records in full, as the description claims?
Yes.
At the System's flat affirmation, I flinched and steadied my breathing.
The Akashic Records.
If I used it—an item that fell squarely within the category of divine instruments—I would be able to observe my own future after the Demon World Tree's resurrection.
The question that remained was why the line between simple weapons and divine instruments blurred in places like this. The White Feather Fan had been denied the observation of the future; the Akashic Records were granted it.
Since collecting Faith is harder than collecting Awe, do instruments paid for with Faith simply carry more value—and thus a wider autonomous range of karma?
Setting the question aside—there was no need to agonize over it—I concluded that this was, above all else, the divine instrument I needed right now, and set to work.