Chapter 108

The mechanical being made of inorganic matter was using Eye of Truth.

Yuseong, who had understood Eye of Truth as a type of physical talent, could not help but be shocked.

‘No, was it even a physical talent to begin with?’

Yuseong had never seriously contemplated Eye of Truth until now.

Unlike other skills that had room for improvement, Eye of Truth was a perfect skill with nothing to add or subtract.

If not for this incident, he likely would have never seriously contemplated Eye of Truth.

‘Come to think of it, Alice was able to naturally use Eye of Truth even when she was just a soul. I unconsciously thought it was an ability originating from the body because of its power to visualize energy, but if it can be used even in a soul-only state then…’

Suddenly, lightning struck in Yuseong’s mind.

‘Eye of Truth is a spiritual talent.’

A minor realization.

However, the results were not minor.

By realizing where the ability of Eye of Truth originated from, he became aware of the power that existed within himself.

[‘Spirit Power’ stat has been created.]

A power different from mana or internal energy.

As Yuseong blankly stared at the pure white energy rippling above his palm, he was brought back to reality by the heavy sound of metal colliding.

Thud! Thud!

“What’s going on? I added high-level posture control and an auto-balance system…”

Alice tried to step forward but lost balance and fell to the floor.

As she kept falling repeatedly, seemingly unfamiliar with moving the body, the concerned Sophia pulled out a tablet and tapped various things, causing the gynoid to go limp like a puppet with cut strings.

Shortly after, Alice’s soul emerged from the gynoid.

-…This is completely different from moving a doll, isn’t it? It’s not just that it’s hard to move – I don’t even know how I should move in the first place, and it feels like the commands aren’t being properly transmitted.

‘I thought she could move naturally since it’s a human form, but it wasn’t such a simple problem.’

Of course, the difficulty of moving a simple doll couldn’t be compared to moving a robot made with cutting-edge technology.

He had been so focused on developing the dark art of possessing souls that he hadn’t considered this.

While Yuseong was deep in thought, Sophia finished inspecting the gynoid and spoke in a gloomy voice.

“…I’m sorry. It seems there’s a fatal error in the AI. This has never happened before – I don’t understand why this problem suddenly occurred.”

“No, I should be the one apologizing. That broke because of me.”

Yuseong explained the whole situation to the surprised Sophia.

Though Sophia listened calmly at first, her expression began to crack more and more as the story progressed.

And when the whole story ended, Sophia let out a quiet sigh.

“Putting a dead person’s soul into a gynoid… Setting aside the idea itself, is this even possible?”

“Putting a soul into an empty body to move it. Simple, right? Why would this be impossible?”

“Well…”

Soul and science.

She had thought they wouldn’t work together since they were complete opposites, but thinking about it carefully, that wasn’t necessarily true.

Though the form was different, the basic principle wasn’t much different from creating living armor or high-level undead.

The only real challenge would be finding a way to settle the soul and maintain that state continuously, but if Yuseong could handle that, there wouldn’t be any problems.

“…Come to think of it, it might work. But shouldn’t you tell me these things before making the item?”

“Sorry. I thought just possessing the soul would be enough – I didn’t expect this kind of problem. I apologize again.”

“You don’t really need to apologize. Unless it was a finished product, prototypes are made to receive feedback and make modifications, so it served its purpose. Is there anything else you’re hiding?”

After pondering, Yuseong seemed to recall something and went downstairs with a sheepish expression.

When he returned, he was holding the dwarf Vulcan’s prosthetic arms and legs that he had obtained from [Twisted World].

“This is the last one. Please check if there’s any useful technology that can be applied to the gynoid.”

“Just looking at it, it seems made with completely outdated technology. But I’ll check it out.”

“Good. Then I’ll go do some quests…”

As Yuseong tried to leave, he was forced to stop by Sophia’s hand on his shoulder.

“You can’t leave like this.”

“…Did I forget something else?”

“As you can see, the current gynoid isn’t suitable for what Mr. Yuseong wants. It seems the soul’s commands are conflicting with the AI’s commands causing errors, and to make a program to solve this problem, I need related data. And the only person who can provide that data is Mr. Yuseong.”

Sophia raised one finger with an unnaturally bright smile.

“Shall we start with a light thousand times?”

* * *

“Ughh…”

It felt like someone was stabbing needles into his head.

Groaning from the intense headache, Yuseong finally got up from the bed after quite some time had passed.

‘I can’t believe she actually made me do all thousand times.’

If it was just using energy to perform skills, he could do it ten thousand times, not just a thousand.

But the dark art of settling souls into objects consumed not just energy but mental power as well.

At first, he had confidently started believing in his mental stat that exceeded 1,000 points, but before reaching even half, he realized his limits and tried to negotiate to do the rest later.

However, Sophia’s determination was firm, and in the end, Yuseong barely managed to complete the amount after spending two full days.

“Oh come on. You could do it all along and were just being dramatic.”

It was fortunate his mental power was depleted.

If he had had even a little mental power left then, there might have been a terrible bloodbath.

‘Should I sleep a bit more?’

Staring at the spinning patterns on the ceiling with blank eyes, Yuseong shook his head with a small sigh.

Though he was tired, if he stayed here, he might get caught by Sophia again and forced to be a data shuttle.

For survival, he had no choice but to do quests now.

After finishing a shower with warm water and emptying an ice-cold can of beer that made his teeth ache, Yuseong put on his goggles with a more relaxed expression.

[Accessing multi-dimensional exploration system.]

[Successfully observed quest.]

An endless list of quests.

Yuseong narrowed his eyes in thought.

‘Which quest should I do?’

There are many criteria for choosing quests, but Yuseong had generally chosen quests based on real-world problems.

When facing financial difficulties, he chose [I Can’t Take It Anymore] to obtain gold coins and mana stones; to solve Alice’s linked quest, he obtained regeneration ampoules from [Unidentified Organism. Highly Hostile to Humans]; and to supplement his lacking combat power, he completed [Youngest Disciple of the Jincheon Martial Arts Family] to acquire martial arts.

But now there weren’t really any problems to speak of.

“Well, money isn’t urgent right now.”

Thanks to Sophia’s idea of recycling resources from the areas to be discarded, the cost needed for repairing Dragonia was greatly reduced.

Though it was still a huge sum even so, with the compensation payment from the American government, he could manage for now.

“And there aren’t any suitable artifacts.”

Artifacts only have meaning if they can be used.

Though numerous artifacts appeared in quest descriptions and rewards, most were weapons like swords, sabers, spears, bows, and guns – there were very few weapons like knuckles or gauntlets that could be stored in Thousand Hands, or artifacts that could be used separately like armor, shoes, or accessories.

“The most straightforward would be skills… The problem is I don’t know what skills I need right now.”

Tyrant’s arms’ performance was truly overwhelming.

The powerful strength and special options solved attack power, defense, and mobility simultaneously, and because of this, Yuseong had never once felt wanting while fighting countless monsters in America.

Because he didn’t know what he lacked right now, he couldn’t even guess what skills he needed.

After much consideration, Yuseong finally narrowed it down to two keywords.

‘Maximum rewards.’

He had lost 20 days due to the ridiculous 120x time ratio, and lost another fifteen days because of MartialGod’s prophecy.

Total 35 days.

If he couldn’t get compensation for lost time, he needed to clear quests with maximum possible rewards to make up for the loss.

And naturally, this leads to one problem.

‘Difficulty.’

Quests with high rewards naturally come with corresponding difficulties.

Excluding [Twisted World] which he barely cleared through luck and coincidence, the highest-ranked quest he had cleared so far was C-.

Not really a rank that matched the rewards he was thinking of.

‘With my current abilities, I can handle C- rank quests. Even pushing it, C rank is the limit. But…’

“Quest difficulty isn’t proportional to rank.”

A realization gained from clearing [Heavenly Demon Sect. The Final Moment].

Using this realization, he had succeeded in jumping three ranks at once from E+ rank to clear a D+ rank quest.

“Quests with a high proportion of raw power won’t work. I need quests where I can maximize use of tricks and cunning.”

Yuseong, who had returned to Earth to get several notebooks and pens, took a deep breath and began checking quests one by one.

First checking difficulty, second checking rewards, and third checking contents.

About one in ten passed the first check, and the ratio was similar for passing the second check.

One quest selected out of 100 quests.

After copying its contents into the notebook, Yuseong immediately repeated the process of finding the next quest.

After spending a full day filling notebooks, Yuseong took a brief rest before immediately starting to analyze the quests.

‘This one has too much uncertainty, this one seems doable but meeting the basic conditions is almost impossible with my current self, this one takes too long…’

Scratch scratch.

No sound could be heard except the pen brushing against paper.

Written on the paper were analyses of quests and numerous strategies based on them.

It wasn’t a straightforward approach.

Strategies thoroughly built on tricks and exploits.

It took another day to write out strategies for all quests, and another day to pick out the most feasible quest.

“Three days just to choose a quest…”

This could be considered fortunate.

If luck hadn’t been on his side, it might have taken 30 days instead of 3.

Having finished all preparations, Yuseong took a deep breath and started the quest.

[‘I Don’t Think I’m the Protagonist No Matter How I Look at It’ is starting.]

[Initiating Deus Ex Machina Program.]

[Dimension coordinates specified and Ariadne’s Thread connection complete.]

[Initiating spirit particle transfer.]

In the space where Yuseong disappeared, one notebook remained.

Written on it in large letters was “B+”.