Chapter 290: Irresistible Temptation

Translator: imperfectluck Editor: Pranav

“If life was a game, it would be a terrible game that definitely wouldn’t sell.”—Roland Mist.

“If the world of Eich was a game, it would be a crappy game that would make every player want to attack all the game designers!”– also by Roland Mist.

The world was unfair, and life was filled with difficulties. Hard work could change one’s fate? Such a convenient life only existed in knight stories or Chicken Soup for the Soul.

The reason legendary tales about heroes and their deeds were so popular was that these heroes’ experiences were unimaginable and interesting to the readers, what with the countless coincidences and miracles. As for how Chicken Soup for the Soul claimed that “only those who worked hard would win in life…” from a logical standpoint, this was correct as those who didn’t work hard wouldn’t win in life. It just left out all objective conditions, birth and life conditions, personal backgrounds, how exactly to work hard, the steps needed to achieve one’s goal, and how ninety-nine percent failed in the end—things like that.

Alright then. I suppose, in the end, it wasn’t anything much apart from talking about the result of one’s success. If a proper attitude could take care of everything, the world would be far too convenient, and that would probably be even more unacceptable.

This world was unfair—utterly unfair. Golden Species such as the dragons could sleep all day every day and, when they matured, still be able to easily crush any normal Gold-rank human. No matter how much effort an ordinary human warrior put into training, they would never be able to defeat an equally-ranked Beastman warrior. Not to mention that since beastmen warriors possessed physical advantages over humans along with better combat instincts, they had an easier time progressing in rank.

What about comparing humans to humans? Wouldn’t that mostly be the same? After all, there wasn’t much of a difference between members of the same species, right? Actually, it was exactly the opposite. There was an even larger difference between humans.

In order to become a mage, knowledge and wealth was required. No ordinary wealthy merchant would be able to afford it. If you were a genius… actually, there wasn’t much of a difference. Geniuses would grow at a quicker rate in power level, which meant they required even more resources in a shorter period of time. No matter how much of a genius one was, one would require magical knowledge, magical ingredients, and textbooks about magic. The archmages themselves never felt like they had enough of such things to begin with, and even if they had extras, they would give them to their family and friends. Why would they give such things to an outsider genius?

Genius? As long as the basic population numbers were high enough, the world would never lack geniuses or eccentric talents. Unless a genius had extraordinary luck and was able to become the disciple of a rich archmage, or the genius happened to be some prince or major noble, any young mage’s path to learn magic was quite pitiful. Most would have to turn to adventuring while they were still novices in order to earn tuition money, the result of which many died.

Margaret from back in the day could be considered one of the best examples. She was born as an ordinary commoner and spent an incredibly long time as an adventurer. The money she earned was never enough for her research, which was why she had experiences in stealing, robbing, and scamming as she grew in her travels, while back in the day, I… fine then, I should stop mentioning Amelia and Harloys.

Even a SemiGod mage like Amelia often had headaches about research funds, so there’s no need to even mention ordinary mages. One’s ability to earn money was almost always directly proportional to one’s power level, magical strength, and equipment quality.

Mages were the jobs that needed much money, and they were like this—it should be better for warriors and other job classes, right? Wrong again; it was exactly the opposite. These job classes required excellent physical attributes and had even higher requirements of one’s conditions that they were born in. The best growth period for humans was only a few years while they were young, from nine to sixteen years old. If this excellent time period was wasted, and someone still lacked the most basic foundations after this age, then there was no hope of ever increasing in power level as a warrior anymore.

The poor were capable of learning magic, but only the rich could take the martial path. After all, large amounts of physical exercise required plenty of nutrition to supply one’s energy. In order to make quick progress, one needed health supplements, and bottlenecks could be overcome with precious medicines. None of this was anything that an ordinary commoner could afford. Although warriors and other physical job classes were by far the most common, those who truly became high-level warriors were actually at a lower percentage than the other job classes. Most people would never progress far in power level as a warrior.

In this world, might represented status. Commoners wouldn’t even be able to obtain the most basic sword techniques. Not to mention that it was quite easy to meet with bottlenecks when practicing sword techniques. It would be a huge amount of trouble if one made a mistake while learning, and a skilled teacher’s guidance and well-established techniques were all necessary. Illustrious families and nobles had their own inherited sword techniques, and even in those legendary tales about heroes, there would be all sorts of miracles and coincidences, such as meeting some white-bearded Sword Saint old man in a cave, or suddenly earning the appreciation of some school’s principal or so on. This type of thing was common in stories from both my original world and in Eich.

If Adam hadn’t met Rolo back in the day, no matter how talented Adam was or how hard he worked, he never would have progressed beyond becoming a town guard and would probably end up taking an arrow to the knee. Although this may sound cruel, it was the harsh reality. It was also why I said this world of Eich would definitely be a crappy game.

It was pretty much the same for the other job classes. Perhaps the easiest among them were the divine job classes as what was most important for these divine job classes was how loyal and devout you were to the True God and that particular True God’s teachings.

Priests typically had to start serving a particular church since young and would typically never leave that church’s teachings in their life—they would be a specific True God’s loyal servant until death. As for Holy Knights, it was true that the requirements to become one weren’t all that high, one just had to have a good physical appearance. The training and resources supplied to Holy Knights were quite systematic, but their future… fine then, no need for me to go any more into this, as the number of unnecessary Holy Knights was pitiful enough without needing me to spread salt on the wounds.

Oh right, there was one more job class which had really low requirements, and even helped one to find a job after graduation. This job class was: druids… Yep, those who wore beast skins (the bull faction indicates that they don’t even wear beast skins) while wielding wooden staves (druids as a job class were forbidden from using metallic weapons) would welcome you to become a child of the wilderness. This job class required very little money compared to others. It was just that some jobs would be quite dangerous, and it was easy for druids to become wanted fugitives. However, one wouldn’t need to worry about rent or tavern fees as one could simply sleep outside in the wild every day, not to mention all the animal companions and transformation magic that could even help save on transportation fees.

In summary, it was now time to introduce the fastest progressing and cheapest job class of all. Fine then, you’ve all probably guessed it. With the Tark Republic as the evidence, I’m talking about undead mages.

One only needed a most basic textbook on undead magic, plus some ingredients which would easily be obtained for free, and a person could completely learn everything by themselves. There was no limit to what power level one could reach, and there were even additional benefits like being able to transform into an undying lich after death. Apart from the fact that the Holy Church would attack you on sight and that cultivating undead magic would commonly make people less and less humane, there were basically no drawbacks whatsoever!

Cough, I seem to have gotten sidetracked. I should get back to the main topic. Since I told you so much, you should understand that it wasn’t easy to be in any job class.

Everyone loves to read stories about legends and probably hopes to be able to experience a main character’s life of endless miracles where one’s power level would endlessly increase through constant adventuring. However, the problem was that those who had a main character’s luck were truly few in number, while most people would remain ordinary for their entire life. But how would such a story possibly attract anyone?

Everyone wanted God Equipment and powerful weapons, outstanding sword techniques, and precious magical knowledge. Yet they were unable to obtain these things. If one could obtain any of these, they were called “miracles,” after all. That was the reason why people were so passionate about such things.

Perhaps there were those who finally settled for being ordinary, believing that their own talent and hard work could only reach such a level. However, there were some people that were trapped at an ordinary level, lacking just a little something more.

Did those people regret that they may have missed a once-in-a-lifetime chance in the past? Were they unwilling to spend their lives in ordinariness? Did they still want to personally improve themselves? Sure thing, as long as you were willing to sign a contract with Wumianzhe the Law and Contract God and became a warrior fighting for the sake of the mortal plane!

I could already imagine what all those who still had ambitions about themselves or those who wanted to continue one step higher would think and do when all the exchangeable items were listed on the bulletin boards of every major city in Eich.

Were your physical attributes too lacking for your martial arts techniques? Did you miss the best growth period of your life when you were young to train yourself? Then go ahead and exchange for the Body Redevelopment Holy Water Potion left behind from the great demons’ generation. After drinking this, not even a barbarian tribe leader or beastman royalty would be able to master any martial arts technique as quickly as you. It only costs 1,000 Justice Points, friend!

You don’t have any great teacher or strong techniques? Friend, you’re in luck. We have the “Eighteen Dragon Subduing Palm Strikes” and “Gandalf’s Divine Staff Techniques” available for just 100 Justice Points! Only 100 Justice Points! You want to learn magic, instead? “Dragon Language Mad Curses” costs only 100 Justice Points as well!

What? You’ve been stuck at the peak of Silver rank for ten years already? Try out this Elven Spring Potion. It costs a mere 10,000 points and comes with a guarantee that you’ll pass through your bottleneck to Gold rank in at most three months! Although it’s admittedly a bit expensive, just think about it—you’ll be a Gold grandmaster, a grandmaster! From now on, even an esteemed noble will have to address you as Master whenever they see you, which will be worth it for the rest of your life!

You’re already in Legend rank? You don’t have anything you want? Friend, even Legend-ranked Sword Saints need excellent weapons; is there really nothing that you need? We have the Bow of the Sun God, Zeus’s Gauntlets and the Twin Swords of Chaos, which are all Epic-tier weapons. What? You’ve never heard of any of these? Of course you haven’t heard of any of them because they’re all custom made. The Bow of the Sun God has thirteen different models! The best ones are the most expensive, the most expensive ones are the best! Take a look: this is the Legend-ranked Apollo 13. It’s really capable of shooting down the sun!

What, you don’t want any of these, and you prefer some customized or God Equipment? Not a problem! The Smithing God Benny can make any custom order you want, be it a spear or a club or anything you can imagine. 100,000 Justice Points for SemiGod-tier Equipment, 10,000 Justice Points for a Legend-ranked equipment, 1,000 Justice Points for an Epic-ranked equipment, and only 100 Justice Points for an Elite grade equipment! So cheap!

You insist on only wanting God-tier Equipment? Fine then. As long as you give us the God Equipment level materials by killing off a SemiGod ranked Undead Emperor or something similar, we should be able to give you one or even two pieces of God Equipment for free! And there’s no service charge!

You don’t have the strength to defeat something so powerful? Then, there’s no helping it. I suppose you’ll just have to pay 2,000,000 Justice Points, and one of us Gods will send you a God-tier Equipment.

All of you simply passing by, stop and take a look! A replica lich king sword SemiGod Equipment will cost only 100,000 Justice Points, and we’ll even throw in a free set of ice armor and evil-seeming frost cape. We promise that you’ll look more like an evil boss monster than even a lich king.

Would you like a hundred-year contract to have your own companion adult dragon? That’ll be 90,000 Justice Points, please—only 90,000! What? You’re asking what exactly this means? Do you know what a dragon knight is? You’ll become one instantly with this!

Even if you’re a SemiGod, we have things for you as well! If you’re not interested in any of our God Equipment or techniques, perhaps you as a SemiGod are interested in becoming a True God? That means you need the right to become a God along with a Divine Obligation. The only way to do this normally would be to slay a God, so are you really sure that you’re capable of this? However, we just happen to have a Divine Obligation open that was left behind by Lorci, and there are many Follower God positions open under Ayer. Would you like to come join us?

If you’re not interested in becoming a God, we also have personal research notebooks left behind by other SemiGods and dimensional masters. These contain the most foundational secrets of all.

Apologies, we don’t sell these for any amount of Justice Points. You’ll have to prove your loyalty and worth to us first before we’ll consider it. Of course, a sufficient amount of Justice Points is also what we’ll take into consideration. For example, if you can maintain the position of being first-ranked in total Justice Points for an entire year.

Only the Gods’ treasuries would contain more treasure than a dragon’s nest. This time, Ayer and his allies were giving it their all. When looking through this dazzling array of superb treasures one could exchange for, it was likely that even SemiGods would be motivated to work for us.

Of course, the True Gods would end up with many benefits for themselves through all this. That would be an overly long and complex verbose explanation, so I’ll skip it. However, as long as my plan succeeded, out of us five currently mid-ranked Gods, two—at the minimum—would be able to ascend to become Main Gods. That was the greatest benefit we were all aiming for.

News about what we had available for exchange spread quite quickly. Since the hiring of mercenaries was quite common in Eich, most ordinary warriors saw this as nothing more than a rather long-term mercenary contract. Just that this time, the rewards for being hired were incredibly high, and the employer would be the Gods. These warriors weren’t perceptive enough to sense the internal conflict amongst the True Gods, and why would they possibly not want a piece of this irresistible temptation that everyone could share in?

“The 10,000 Hero Armlets we prepared have all been given out within a single day? Should we prepare additional Hero Armlets? Not out in the open, but secretly prepare another 10,000, and put them all on the black market for me! Set the asking price to 10,000 gold coins apiece! Right, we’re also going to take preorders for the next batch of Hero Armlets, and the preordering fee will be 1000 gold coins! And we won’t give refunds!”

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