The Constellation's Game [Laika]
I was grinding my teeth at the sheer viciousness of the System.
Because I could see, plain as day, that this wicked system had made up its mind to strip me of every last LP I owned.
└ Thank god you already have the Ancient Dragon bone fragments lmao
└ For real lol, there isn't a single cheap-looking material other than the Lumen Refinement Stone
└ True lol. Even the relatively affordable Draco's Core will probably run about 500LP each……
└ The Reverse Scale and Sky Loop Ore are the real problem lolol
└ Don't they both go for like 10,000LP at market rate?
As a degenerate whale of a gamer who monitored the exchange out of pure habit even on my days off, the rough cost estimate had already assembled itself in my head the moment I laid eyes on that list.
Which is to say… minimum, twenty-five thousand.
And if the supply wasn't sufficient, I'd need to be prepared to burn all the way up to thirty thousand LP.
And as it happened…… exactly thirty thousand LP was my entire net worth at that moment.
The system bastard was clearly tracking the state of my finances down to the last coin.
Well, that was one more reason to apply to whatever this Hunter's School thing was.
└ Streamer, you do realize the 8-tier Mythic greatsword that sold the other day went for 100,000LP, right?
That was 8-tier, hyung-nim……
By that logic, a 10-tier Mythic-grade longbow trades at over a million LP?
But… Drakiel will probably be account-bound, won't it?
But you can sell a weapon after using it, can't you……
In other words, I was making the case for an asset.
Seoul apartments are expensive for a reason, aren't they.
└ Unhinged rice-eater lmaooo
└ Nobody's gonna defend Dave here saying cash-farming is his "concept," right? lololol
Well……
if the Constellations want to call me a rice-eating miser, I can't exactly argue.
What can I say? The truth hurts.
And yet.
Sadly for me…… I had no option but to clear this synthesis quest.
After all, the single most expensive ingredient among them all — the 'Ancient Dragon's Bone Fragment' — was already sitting in my inventory.
In permanently account-bound status, no less.
This, I suppose, was the system at its most ruthless.
Slipping an Ancient Dragon byproduct — where the asking price is the price — into my account as a soulbound item……
If only to put that to use, there was no way in hell I could abandon this synthesis.
So then.
With my decision made, I opened the exchange and began purchasing like a storm.
Ding-!
[You have paid '512LP'.]
[You have purchased the item 'Draco's Core'.]
[You have paid '515LP'.]
[You have purchased the item 'Draco's Core'.]
……
[You have paid '10800LP'.]
[You have purchased the item 'Sky Loop Ore'.]
[You have paid '12000LP'.]
[You have purchased the item 'Golden Reverse Scale'.]
Fortunately, the supply was healthy enough that the prices stayed reasonable — but honestly, that wasn't the point. Whatever my philosophy of cash-farming might be… once I'd committed to something, I didn't look back at the price tag.
Dragging things out to save a few coins here and there offered no guarantee of meaningful savings, and worse, if the listings ran dry while I hesitated, I risked the worst-case scenario of driving my costs up.
Still, watching my LP account balance plummet toward zero in real time — it was, quite literally, flesh flayed from my living body.
Of course, the more my expression curdled, the more explosive the Constellations' reactions became in compensation.
└ So refreshing, just pure refreshment lol
└ First time in my life I've seen someone drop money this gloriously, no cap lmao
└ That's the spirit, Dave-hyung! When you invest, commit fully — that's how you unlock the potential!
Uh, no. Wrong.
This is the last time. For real.
I mean it this time.
[All materials required for synthesis have been registered.]
I'd cheerfully emptied my entire fortune to sweep up every ingredient, yet the next message made me flinch against my will.
[Do you wish to use the Seraphic Forge for the synthesis of 'Drakiel'?]
[ Y / N ]
Because the instant I pressed Y here… roughly thirty thousand LP worth of materials would vanish, just like that. Right?
Whew.
Granted, the synthesis process itself still lay ahead, but the moment I chose Y, I'd be crossing a river with no way back.
Thirty thousand LP deleted with a single click. I figured I needed at least one deep breath for this.
On the bright side, it was a click with no failure chance attached, so maybe I could count myself lucky there.
[Class-exclusive skill, Seraphic Forge, has been activated.]
[The synthesis of 'Drakiel' will now begin.]
But from here on out, I had to focus.
Vmmmmm-!
Because I would need to carve the synthesis formula I'd learned while possessing Raphael onto the pristine white magic circle that had appeared before my eyes.
[The quality of the result may vary depending on the completion grade of the formula.]
Failure might be off the table, but a difference in outcome was another matter entirely.
└ If he slips up on that, the streamer just loses 30,000LP?
└ Not loses exactly, but it might get halved……?
Consciously tuning out the Constellations' chat, I poured every ounce of my concentration into my fingertips.
[Current Synthesis Progress: 0.3%]
The skill system did offer a rough guideline, but at the end of the day, the one who drew the final line of the formula was me.
Doesn't that make your hands shake, you ask?
Ziiiiiiing-!
Well, yeah, the expensive materials had me a bit tense……
But that was all it was.
Think about how many playthroughs I put in during the beta. Do you really think this is the first time I've ever drawn a formula like this?
I'd played a couple of full runs as a run-of-the-mill Alchemist, three or four as a Magitech Engineer.
And the Spirit Summoner, who has to trace formulas much like this one? I must have taken that class for twenty-odd playthroughs, at least.
Ziing- Ziiiiing-!
So no — the reason I draw formulas this well from the start isn't some gift for fine handwork. It belongs to the realm of effort and good old-fashioned grinding.
└ Unhinged natural-born genius lmaooo……
└ That formula looks insanely difficult just from a glance; hasn't he not made a single mistake yet?
I wanted to tell them: when people call me a "natural-born genius," they've got it badly mistaken.
Hyungs, I've sunk nearly three hundred million won into these materials — if I did screw up, wouldn't that be the actual crime?
But never mind the mistakes, because……
[Current Synthesis Progress: 12.7%]
[Current Formula Completion Grade: S+]
An S+ completion grade……?
I… didn't know it would turn out this well?
└ Was carving formulas always supposed to be this easy?
Across every class, a formula completed without any notable mistakes earned an A. That was an unspoken convention within the Laika system, and honestly, my own target had been a completion grade of around A+.
Even during my beta playthroughs, I could count on one hand the number of times I'd carved a formula to S-rank or above.
[Current Synthesis Progress: 36.9%]
[Current Formula Completion Grade: S+]
And yet here I was, nearly forty percent through, still holding the S+ grade?
[A perfect 'Path of Mana' has been completed.]
[The formula's completion grade becomes all the more solid.]
[Current Synthesis Progress: 50.0%]
[Current Formula Completion Grade: SS]
The grade had even climbed another step??
└ So he could always do this, and all the agonizing over burning 30,000LP was an act?
└ No wonder the rice-eater was spending LP so cheerfully, holy crap
No, hyung-nims, I did spend that LP without ever peeking at the price tag, didn't I……
Let's not be sore losers about it.
Whiiiiiine-!
And yet, though I genuinely couldn't say why……
drawing the formula suddenly felt incredibly easy.
This wasn't some issue of the grading standards quietly shifting —
even by my own reckoning, I was truly, genuinely drawing it at an absurdly high level.
To exaggerate just a little: if I'd produced formulas like this back in my Spirit Summoner playthroughs, the fairies probably would have wept tears of joy, declaring their boy had finally discovered his talent.
It really was that good.
[Current Synthesis Progress: 67.3%]
[Current Synthesis Progress: 79.5%]
At any rate, lost in that total focus, the formula that had looked so bewilderingly complex was finally approaching its end.
[Current Synthesis Progress: 94.8%]
And as the progress bar crept toward one hundred percent, my concentration climbed right along with it, hitting its absolute peak.
And then, at that very moment —
Screeeeeech-!
before my eyes bloomed a brand-new breed of system message, one I had never once laid eyes on since the day hair first grew on my head.
['The Flow of Mana' is explosively intensifying.]
[The formula's progression speed is accelerating by 50%.]
└ Is this for real?;;
A mana surge?
Was this some special phenomenon that triggered upon reaching SS-grade during synthesis?
I'd never seen it in the beta either, so I couldn't say for certain what it was — but the synthesis speed suddenly shot up, and along with it, the difficulty of the work spiked on a geometric curve.
[Current Synthesis Progress: 97.2%]
But having come this far, there was no room for error.
If I could just carry it through to completion, wouldn't this be the first SS formula completion grade of my entire Laika life?
I had to make it happen. No matter what.
Gooooooo-
Lost in thoughts like that, I must have drifted into a state of pure flow — total self-forgetfulness.
Because when it came to the final two percent or so of the formula, I honestly can't remember what was going through my mind as I drew it.
Only that when every last stroke of the work was finally complete —
When I checked the result, I had no choice but to doubt my own two eyes.