Draco frowned as he remained strongly focused on his work before him, his eyes gleaming brightly. He was currently working on a very important device that would decide whether he would enter the Grandmaster realm of Magical Engineering or not.
With this Tradeskill, it followed the same general rules as the others, which meant that Draco had to fulfill the famous 5 steps of the Grandmaster.
1. A Grandmaster Technique above the Legendary Rank
2. A Grandmaster Design
3. The Recognition/Blessing of that Tradeskill’s Origin God
4. Craft a unique Legendary Item for the first time using your own design
5. Have at least 20,000 reputation with the Tradeskill Association.
As for the technique, he had already begun forming one after this year-long practice, and it had finally solidified over 3 months ago. With the help of Control at Tier 7 and the knowledge he learned from Armonia, Draco had even pushed his Neo-Grandmaster technique to its peak, just short of becoming a Divine Technique.
He named it the Dual Techno-Production technique.
The Dual Techno-Production technique, like his other techniques for crafting, was promptly recognized by the system and even given its own description based on its strengths and weaknesses, while also being possible for Draco to teach others using system mechanics if he so wished.
「Dual Techno-Production Technique – Legendary Technique
Effect: This technique is estimated to increase the chances of success for all devices below Divine Rank by 80%, their final quality by 300% while also increasing the production speed by 500% and consuming 90% less stamina for work. It also grants significant mastery over a unique power system with great applications in all fields.
Description: This technique is a one-of-a-kind manifestation of skill and knowledge merged with a transcendent power to give birth to something that is more than the sum of its parts. By utilizing an Eternal Talent limited to the bloodline of the Chaotic Human Race of Gerdo Galaxy, one can form a system of practice around this crafting that emphasizes perfection, precision, and transcendent omnipotence. This method was developed by Draco Morningstar, the world’s greatest Immortal Adventurer and the King of the Main Plane.
Estimated Price: 300 billion Top Grade Aether Crystals, 30 million Top Grade Divine Crystals, or 300,000 Top Grade Origin Crystals.」
Draco naturally blushed when he read the description. This AI lass—since when had her mouth become so sweet?
She has even learned how to flatter the target of her affection? What a terrifying growth speed!
No wonder they said that AI will take over the world one day!
How many fellows out there who were genuine human beings still hadn’t learned this lesson when pursuing their crushes?
However, Draco’s face changed slightly when he saw the price attached to the bottom, realizing with a sigh that this lass was truly unchanged since day one. All the sweet words were naturally to enhance Draco’s value, so that the price below would seem justified for other players or NPCs to buy.
Draco himself was not really looking forward to putting his various techniques up for sale outside of Umbra’s internal shop. After all, whether it was the Three Pound Origin Divine Technique of Blacksmithing, the Refined Star Divine Technique of Alchemy, or this recently made Dual Techno-Production technique, the prerequisite for them was to possess a certain tier of Control.
For the Divine Techniques, Tier 6 Control was the minimum requirement, and for Legendary ones, at least Tier 4 was necessary. So if someone bought this technique from the AI, upon using it, they would not only gain the technique but forcibly attain Control up to that level.
This was a genuine Eternal Talent that could condense a Seed of Law. If Draco didn’t value it, the AI certainly did! In order to curb this troublesome Draco, it even directly hijacked the price of the technique—which should be set by him, the creator—and put a terrifying price tag there.
Don’t look at 300 billion Aether Crystals and think that was not much; the entire Dragon race after countless millennia in the old era could not spit out so much. Of course, if it’s normal low-grade crystals, the dragon race had made trillions of them over the years, but top grade? Only Supreme Rank Dragons and above could make those, and the numbers were always pitifully few.
Even Draco could not foot this bill even if he sold his booty on the street, so how could anyone else pay? Even the stupidly rich Normal could not pay this price at the height of her wealth in the old era, so who was the AI expecting to pay this absurd price?
Clearly, the AI was telling him that it would absolutely not allow Control at Tier 4 and above to spread in the realm, because this was enough to make even a complete trash become a protagonist of an era. The abilities of the BoG and VoP at a mere Tier 4 were equivalent to the endgame-level strength of some story protagonists in many media, much less here.
As for the Grandmaster design, Draco thought of what to create and remembered his good old Bag of Holding design that he created back then, before the First Player Auction. That one had stopped at the Rare rank due to a limitation in techniques, not resources, so Draco was keen on fixing that.
Of course, there was the main problem that Bags of Holding already existed in the world, and even though the current AI was kind enough to separate old era creations from those of the new era, using the Bag of Holding to pass his way through would be limiting Draco’s creativity.
This solution was quite simple: change the materials involved and enhance the production method. From using leather pouches of various ranks, Draco painstakingly crafted a ring using blacksmithing that was made of Void Stone, an Epic Rank material used by all physical crafting classes for making space-related items and equipment.
While the material was merely Epic Rank, most products required the crafter to only use fragments of it, or even sometimes just a few shavings. Very few were wasteful and crazy like Draco to take an entire stone and pound it down into a ring shape by folding it over and over again.
Luckily for Draco, his space branch was powerful enough to suppress the stone. Otherwise, using a hammer on it, even if it was the Divine Rank Mjolnir, would likely cause one to create spatial displacements in the area.
Taking the unenchanted ring, Draco drew the magical circuits on it, which were necessary to allow the flow of power. These were naturally different from the runes used for Enchanting or Array Making, focusing on harmony and integration rather than empowerment.
After that came the infusion, which was done using not one, not two, but ten whole top grade Aether Crystals!
Against the backdrop of the sheer number that Draco had stocked up after all this time, it might seem pitifully small, but for the standards of this era, this was an extravagant expenditure!
Other Magical Engineers were thinking of creating designs that were as cheap as possible that could fulfill the minimum requirement, meanwhile this fellow here is thinking about how much he can splurge to create the best possible effect!
The craft was complete and the design was successful, without any suspense whatsoever.
「Boundless System-wide Announcement
Player Draco has performed a notable contribution to the human race by creating a new design for the Magical Engineering Tradeskill!」
「System to Player Announcement
You have developed a new design for an Epic Tradeskill, as such, you have been directly granted 500% experience in the Tradeskill in question. Congratulations!」
「Congratulations on creating new design: Unnamed (Device)(Legendary)
Rewards:
15,000% Exp
15,000% Tradeskill Exp
1,000,000,000 gold
100,000 reputation with the Tradeskill Association.」
Draco named it the ‘Void Ring’ and ignored the rewards. The class experience was useless since the Evil Trio were Rank locked by the goddamn AI, so even if he ranked up right now, all this delicious experience would be converted upward forcibly and be greatly reduced in value, not to mention the goddamn exp gain rate.
The Tradeskill experience was definitely nice, but was also being saved up for his Refinement. On his player panel, Refinement showed up as level 0, 35% because it was not an officially recognized Tradeskill with an Origin God backed by the system, so that 35% represented his progress in taking it to the Origin Rank.
When Draco reached level 0, 99% and took it to level 1, 0% he would become an Origin God of Refinement on the spot, with the Origin Law archived without the complimentary Source Origin, but he wasn’t worried about that. However, that would be for the law of Refinement; the Tradeskill version of Refinement on his panel would still be level 1, 0% like anyone else who learned the Tradeskill.
So to avoid wasting time, he would dump all the accumulated Tradeskill experience from all his creations over the years, which was enough to send it up to the Divine Rank peak on his panel, if not the Origin Rank. Luckily, as he would be the Origin God, his leveling of Refinement would not have any bottlenecks whatsoever.
Cough!!
Enjoy new stories from M V L
Back to the matter at hand, the gold acquired was also useless since money was just a number to the current Draco, while the Tradeskill Association reputation… well, let’s just let it be there and pretend like the Chairman of the Tradeskill Association wasn’t literally one of his Goddess Descendant concubines.
With the design completed, he only needed three more things and two of them were already in the bag. One was to actually craft the device in one’s Grandmaster Design—which he had obviously just done—and the other was to have at least 20,000 reputation with the Tradeskill Association.
The only troublesome requirement was the recognition of the Tradeskill’s Origin God, which was also one of the reasons that Tradeskills needed to even have an Origin God with its law in order to be officiated. This was a game-related mechanic, so it was not something Draco could bypass with his various cheats.
Given his beef with all Origin Gods of Western Fantasy, since Scimitar had torn the veil of fake peace between them, why would the one in charge of Magical Engineering let him through when they were future enemies? Wouldn’t that be empowering his foe?
Well, yes, that would be true on a normal basis. However, one rule which was crucial to remember about Boundless mechanics was that NPC Origin Gods could only grow their Origin Law’s strength through assimilation. An Origin Law was already perfect, but it could be even ‘perfecter’ and if one could make it the ‘perfectest’ they could then start to condense a Seed of Law to become an Eternal.
So for an Origin God, nothing was more important than having people use the theme of your Origin Law and become stronger with it while devising new ways to use it. This was why techniques in all fields were treasured, whether combat or Tradeskill.
Currently, there were three very troublesome and very notorious Origin Gods in the Core Plane who always strutted about with their noses in the air, laughing raucously as they flexed their gains from Draco. They were the Origin God of Blacksmithing, the Origin God of Alchemy, and the Origin God of the Sword.
Those three fellows did not much care about Draco’s foundational knowledge since he never went out of the box, but rather that his technique framework included Control, or rather known by its name in the Eternal World; Unity of Body and Mind.
By including it in the framework of his techniques, Draco has basically given them access to it up to the relevant tier of the technique, which was enough to give those Origin Gods a huge lead over the others.