Goggles

Alice lying on a silver iron bed.

Sitting beside her while staring at the monitor, Sophia nodded and said.

“System all green. There’s some damage in the chest area but that can be left to auto-repair, so we just need to replenish consumable weapons.”

“Right? I said there was no problem, but Mr. Yuseong worries too much.”

“Hmm, looking at the records, you seem to have fought quite a formidable opponent. Shouldn’t we enhance your combat abilities? If adding two arms seems too much, how about starting with just one? According to my calculations, just adding one arm would increase combat power by over 20%…”

“Absolutely not.”

“Tch.”

At Alice’s resolute refusal, Sophia clicked her tongue shortly and snapped her fingers.

Robot arms emerged from the bed and began replenishing the feathers, ammunition, tails, and other consumables used in the recent fight.

“It’s a really good modification that you couldn’t get even if you paid for it elsewhere, and right now I could specially add an arm brought from a Civilization Grade 2.3 world.”

“…”

Sophia muttering loudly to herself and Alice with eyes closed, not moving a muscle.

After muttering for a while, seeing Alice not even pretending to listen, Sophia bit her lip slightly.

A custom android using a dragon heart as its power source, created by sparing no astronomical budget and all sorts of rare materials.

Though she had traveled through numerous worlds focused on scientific civilization, there was no work comparable to this.

With just a bit more modification it could become much stronger than now, but being obsessed with maintaining human form meant proper performance couldn’t be drawn out.

‘It’s really too wasteful to end it like this. Should I try persuading Mr. Yuseong? Or maybe secretly modify it and deal with the consequences later?’

“What a waste, such a waste.”

Thinking she had said it for her to hear, Alice flinched slightly.

However, Sophia was just lamenting her own situation, not even giving Alice a glance.

‘It was a chance to fully demonstrate my abilities after so long. If I could really go back to the past, I wouldn’t even look at that damned Olympiad competition.’

There were two major reasons why Sophia was particularly weak compared to other users.

One was the foolish decision made by her past self blinded by money and fame.

Other users with no affiliations could freely purchase what they wanted.

But Sophia, being affiliated with the US government, had to regularly purchase knowledge or items related to things largely useless in this world – like artificial intelligence, anti-aging, virtual reality, and so on – to satisfy those around her, taking losses in growth accordingly.

And the other reason.

It was due to Sophia’s own greed.

‘If I had known this would happen, I should have grown step by step.’

Unlike ordinary martial artists or mages, users have severe ability imbalances since they only learn skills they need.

They can freely use internal energy techniques considered the essence of martial arts while being unable to manifest sword energy several levels below that, or can complete high-circle magic with eyes closed while being ignorant of basic magic that even ordinary people unfamiliar with magic would know by name.

Among them, Sophia’s imbalance was particularly severe.

Due to her thirst for knowledge, especially the desire to know more difficult things, she ended up growing by mainly completing quests in high Civilization Grade worlds, leading her knowledge to become extremely biased.

What could 21st century physicists, mathematicians, and computer scientists do if they went to the primitive age with no foundation?

Depending on the field, some like chemists or medical scientists might be able to accomplish something, but even that would take a long time and they wouldn’t be able to utilize even a tenth of their knowledge before dying.

That was exactly Sophia’s situation now.

‘If only Earth’s Civilization Grade was a bit higher…’

Earth’s Civilization Grade is 0.76.

Too low to properly utilize even the easiest knowledge Sophia knew.

If the Civilization Grade was 1.3, no, even 1.2, they could have instantly advanced science and technology to block monster invasions and expand into space and other worlds, but it was truly regrettable.

‘Haah, what’s the use of regretting now. Let’s just work.’

Though she didn’t know how he did it, thanks to the parts Yuseong brought last time, she could utilize her knowledge a little bit.

Making various things might help improve her gloomy mood somewhat.

Thinking that as she was about to turn her gaze to the tablet she was holding, the firmly closed door opened and a man entered.

“Mr. Yuseong? What brings you here?”

“There’s something I wanted to check quickly.”

“Ah, sorry. If it’s about the unmanned weapon unit, that’ll take a bit more time. Some parts you provided are lacking so I need to make them directly with my machines…”

“No, that’s not it. I came for something else.”

“Something else?”

Yuseong passed by Sophia who was asking back and approached Alice, taking something out from his chest.

“Um, Mr. Yuseong? What is this?”

Something clunky that looked like it was made by gathering junk, about the size of a fist.

Looking closely, it was in the form of a headgear.

Watching from behind, Sophia asked in a puzzled voice.

“It looks like an old VR device. The design is quite crude.”

“I originally wanted to make it sleek and futuristic like goggles, but maybe because it’s my first time making one, it wasn’t easy at all. I should have learned at least one production-related skill.”

“I see… huh?”

Unable to understand the intention behind suddenly coming and taking out such an item, Sophia made a puzzled expression and narrowed her eyes slightly.

Yuseong held out the item to Alice and said.

“Try using it.”

“What is this?”

“You’ll know when you use it.”

“Messages saying ‘Registering new user information’ and ‘Please keep wearing this device while registration proceeds’ are appearing, but what is this?”

“Just wait a moment and you’ll know. I was worried it might not work properly since you’re an android, but seems those worries were unfounded.”

“Ah, yes.”

Alice, who had no idea what was going on, stayed still after hearing Yuseong’s words.

However, Sophia behind them wore an expression of shock.

If her memory wasn’t wrong, what Alice just said was definitely the message shown to someone wearing the goggles for the first time.

“J-just a moment. Mr. Yuseong. That just now…”

“Shh. Sorry but I’ll explain later, so please wait a bit.”

“Ah, another message appeared. ‘Registration and authentication complete’, ‘Granting user privileges to Alice’… huh?”

Alice, who belatedly understood the situation, also opened her mouth slightly and let out a dumb sound.

Regardless, Yuseong continued speaking calmly.

“You know about quest difficulty, structure, skill usage rate, artifact usage rate, and such factors, right?”

“Yes, I heard roughly from Ms. Sophia…”

“Good. Then take this.”

Yuseong took out a small bag containing weapons, food, potions and such from subspace and placed it in Alice’s hands.

“Since it’s such a special item, I felt uneasy about letting some random person test it since they might get stuck in an infinite loop like I did. Alice, I brought this thinking you could clear it since you know more about quests than anyone except users and have direct experience, do you think you can do it?”

“W-well. I’ll have to try to know…”

“Start with F rank, no, choose an E rank that looks easy to you. If possible, try aiming beyond the quest’s stated goals.”

Alice said nothing.

And shortly after, Alice disappeared into particles of light.

“So that’s how disappearing looks. It’s the first time seeing it directly, quite fascinating.”

“Mr. Yuseong.”

“Yeah, what?”

“Was that just now what I think it was?”

“That? What do you mean?”

“I’m not in the mood for jokes right now.”

Facing Sophia’s gaze that looked ready to pounce at any moment, he shrugged his shoulders and said.

“Yes, they’re goggles.”

“…There were other goggles besides those the users have? Just where did you get that?”

“Wrong. I didn’t get it, I made it.”

“Made it?”

Toward Sophia who was frowning as if she couldn’t understand what he was saying, Yuseong gave a slight smile and began taking out various pieces of junk from subspace and laying them on the table.

Sophia, who had been tilting her head at first, gradually made a strange expression as the junk piled up.

Though not comparable to Yuseong, with her high wisdom stat, Sophia could recall the original form the moment she saw the pieces of junk.

“…Don’t tell me you disassembled the goggles?”

Yuseong silently nodded.

Heavy silence fell, and soon Sophia spoke in a much calmer voice.

“Surely you didn’t disassemble your own goggles, so this must be either a newly obtained eleventh pair of goggles, or goggles previously owned by existing users. Since it’s unlikely for more goggles to appear now when there have only been 10 for over a decade, it must be the latter, and since users wouldn’t stay quiet about losing their goggles, this…”

“It belonged to Carlos.”

No.

Sophia wasn’t maintaining her composure.

She was trembling as if about to explode at any moment.

“…May I look at them?”

“Go ahead.”

The moment Yuseong gave permission, Sophia brought the goggles fragments in front of her.

After observing the goggles fragments in every possible way – touching with her hands, scanning with lasers, immersing in silver liquid – Sophia soon muttered in a trembling voice.

“My god! To think the structure was this simple! No, it’s not really simple, but with this level of difficulty, with just a bit of tweaking we could mass produce these even with Earth’s current technology! This is a miracle!”

Why had humanity been pushed back by monsters?

It was because the number of ability users was absolutely insufficient.

The number of humans who have survived since the monster invasion until now is roughly 2 billion.

Compared to a year ago it had decreased to a quarter, but it was still a large number nonetheless.

Then how many ability users were there?

According to Kang Changseok, the number of Contractors slightly exceeded 5 million.

In terms of ratio, just 0.25%.

This means one Contractor has to protect 400 ordinary people.

Obviously an impossible figure.

Moreover, Contractors’ power has clear limits.

Even armed with weapons using monster materials and armor applying Sophia’s exoskeleton technology, they can’t hunt even a single medium-sized monster alone.

The academy is no better.

No matter if they have ability awakening potions and teach only necessary attributes, cultivating martial artists or mages couldn’t be that easy, and fresh academy graduates weren’t that strong either.

Hundreds of thousands of ability users graduate from academies worldwide at monthly intervals and most of them die fighting monsters.

In other words, even if users achieve brilliant accomplishments and win battles, they ultimately lose the war.