A-Rank Dungeon Reward Chest

Two levels, in a single bound. It figured, in a way. The thing had been the closest the Level 0 Biome had to a final boss. And on top of that, a quest had appeared.

"A main quest?"

A main quest was exactly what it sounded like: the core story of this Farming World. The one that began with the village restoration I was working on now had run straight through Farming World, and in the end it had led me all the way to purifying the entire map, finishing the mapping, and making the place a world of my own. The Rift Dimension, though, seemed to have another main quest entirely.

"What even is chaos energy?"

Going by the name alone, it sounded like the energy of death — the polar opposite of the energy of life. But monsters carrying chaos energy only got stronger, and that didn't fit the picture. Items touched by it picked up extra options, or simply hit harder, and honestly, from where I stood, I couldn't feel much of a difference from the energy of life at all. If anything, wasn't it better? For someone who farmed gear and sold it, the chaos energy heaped up in this corrupted forest meant more money, not less. I couldn't bring myself to call it a bad thing.

If the main quest really did require me to wipe out every trace of chaos energy before the Rift Dimension could be perfectly purified and stabilized, then I'd follow it. So long as getting rid of the stuff kept paying out like this, I wasn't about to get greedy. The energy of life alone was already enough for me to be confident I'd end up filthy rich.

"Hmm. Line it up with Farming World, and maybe a clue falls out."

The Rift Dimension was the same as Farming World. No — according to Ruru, it was fair to treat Farming World as a mimic of the Rift Dimension, built to test for a master worthy of it. Link the two in the form of a game so a candidate could adapt as fully as possible, then find someone suited to this ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠dimension's environment. If that was the shape of it, then every biome here would be tied to a biome in Farming World, and I couldn't entirely rule out the chance that chaos energy had been folded into Farming World's systems as well.

So what was it? I felt as if I'd seen something like it. I also felt as if I hadn't. One thing I was sure of: nothing like this chaos energy had ever appeared in the Level 0 Biome. Think a little further, though, and I did remember something similar, buried in the extreme late game.

A place I still hadn't been able to challenge, even after mapping nearly the whole of the final-difficulty map. The Level 10 Biome, which existed only there. I'd broken through, technically, but the environment was so vicious that merely breathing dealt damage, and I hadn't been able to stay long. After talking it over with the handful of utter demons who haunted the community, the conclusion we'd settled on was that it resembled the "demon realm" out of a fantasy novel. So that's what we called it — and the name fit. The monsters of the demon realm biome were weak to divine power.

It was a weakness attribute. Simply wrapping yourself in divine power was enough to deal double fixed damage as a baseline, and if you carried divine power's blessing, you could walk that biome without taking a scratch. I remembered scrambling at the very end to craft divine-power gear and stockpile resources because of it, right before I ended up here.

"Don't tell me it's that."

It was a reasonably sound inference. It might be wrong, but testing it wouldn't be hard. Least of all here, where chaos energy saturated the air.

I'd killed the corrupted ogre, but the corrupted energy still hadn't faded. Both the main quest and the sub quest ended only when the corrupted tree came down, which made the ogre nothing more than a gatekeeper standing watch over the place. I'd already meant to fell the tree before cashing in the ogre's rewards, so I could collect everything in one sweep, and I'd spent a long while searching for anything that might cut it. I hadn't found so much as a switch.

"Worst case, I break even."

I had no interest in going home with this itch still under my skin and spending days on end doing nothing but fret over how to bring the tree down. I drew one of the miscellaneous potions from my pouch. They were petty little things, worth anywhere from a few million to tens of millions of won, and none of them were much use in a fight. After I'd bought three doping potions, the employee had called the rest a gift and packed in more than the leftover change was worth, tossing in this and that. Useless, really. I'd brought them along on the theory that a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stash crammed with random junk might come in handy exactly once.

This one was petty. Not even petty — downright trivial. It wasn't high-grade holy water. It was a knockoff, not even half water and half divine power. Even as I'd taken it, I'd thought that if they were going to hand me something, they might as well hand me something decent. I'd kept it anyway, because in biomes where the undead showed up, it proved worth more than its grade suggested.

I sprinkled the holy water over the Sewer Sword. Splish.

Divine power settled into the blade for a while, and a faint, pale white light gathered along the edge. So faint I could barely see it. But the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠divine power had definitely taken.

"Think this'll actually work?"

Half convinced it wouldn't, I tried it anyway. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I left Leap Slash alone and simply swung.

Shhhk—

"Huh?"

It felt different. Before the fight with the ogre, when I'd tried to cut the corrupted tree with Leap Slash, it had felt like striking steel, and the blade had barely bitten. Now a sword I'd swung with no skill at all split the wood like a knife through radish.

"No way. For real?"

And the divine power smeared across that sword was only D+ rank. It wasn't even proper divine power. If it had been pure divine power of even A-rank, I doubted I'd have felt the slightest resistance as I cut. It didn't matter. If a plain swing did this much—

"Six hundred seconds... ought to be enough, right?"

More than enough to fell one giant tree that looked like the World Tree.

I couldn't have said exactly when it happened. Somewhere around the moment I'd burned through the last of my mana, carving into the corrupted tree the way you'd peel a fruit in one long spiral—

GROOOOOOO—!!!!!

A tremendous resonance rolled out of the tree, and the entire forest began to shake, vibrating as if the ground itself were humming.

Shaaaa—!!

A sound like something evaporating rang through the air, and the world grew bright. The murky fog that had sealed off my view vanished, and the clean sky of the Rift Dimension greeted me again.

It wasn't bright. Night had already fallen, and something like a luminous moon simply hung overhead. But after staring so long into that bleary fog, even this clean sky seemed like a world of boundless light.

And the two system messages that followed cleared my eyes like nothing ever had.

"KRAAAAAAAAH!"

I gave roaring like the ogre a shot.

I was a ten-year Farming World veteran, dulled as far as a person could be dulled, and I had SSS+ rank abilities on top of that. I'd figured there wasn't much left that could make me genuinely happy like this. It had been little better than a guess, but I'd found out that divine power was the key to purifying chaos energy — and that chaos energy was the same as the demon realm energy from Farming World's Level 10 Biome. It felt like I'd just stumbled onto one hell of a shortcut.

Was it luck? It could have been luck. Was it really the demon realm? Thinking that, in a way, might just have been me leaning on the only method I actually had. With the means in my hands, there was no other way to cut the corrupted tree, so I'd tried the idea on for size. And the holy water happening to be there might have been nothing but my own prayer: please, let me cheese this with what I've got.

But all of it had lined up. My thorough preparation. The variable of rounding the purchase up to a billion won, which might have been nothing more than a minor employee's sales pitch. And the holy water on top of that — a gift from the heart, or a bribe angling for next time. I couldn't tell which. Every one of those things had dropped into place like a puzzle cut just for me, and at the exact moment I wanted it, the big rewards had all come in at once. The thought alone sent my mood through the roof, and a shout tore out of me before I could stop it.

The greatest harvest, though, was the clue. I'd found a relatively easy way to deal with chaos energy — the very heart of Main Quest 2.

"Reward time."

There were so many quest rewards I hardly knew where to look first. Deal with what's in front of you. Same as the sewer. That was the order I'd settled on across ten years of Farming World.

I was about to start butchering the corrupted ogre's corpse. But in the middle of the wide clearing where the corrupted tree had evaporated, a chest was pouring out a conspicuously brilliant yellow light, and there was no way my eyes were going anywhere else.

"...Holy shit. The box..."

A legendary-grade chest. My feet drifted toward it as if something had hold of them.