1346  [Sandbox]

The golden portal shone brightly before Arthur emerged from it. He arrived once again at the desolate palace that had once stood strong, but now contained nothing other than ashes. His mood had shifted. Before the discussion with Gaia, Arthur was ready to fight her to release him from his debts. After realizing the true strength of his spiritual energy, he no longer felt the need to sacrifice his mana of creation. Arthur waved his hands, and a gale of wind swept over the fallen palace. The ashes flew into the wind, but Arthur was not bothered by the destruction his hands had caused. Instead, he felt liberated from ancient shackles. “My guild can protect this world, and the legacy can save the weak,” muttered Arthur while stretching his body. “As for me, I can focus on defeating calamities and gods while enjoying my time with Diana.” After feeling his body grow lighter and savoring the return of his sight, Arthur raised a hand. A rune appeared, one that had accompanied him since awakening his powers. [Detect.] “If used extensively, it could drain all of my mana. But if altered, mana no longer becomes an issue.” Arthur began infusing the rune with his spiritual energy. The rune started to morph, but at a certain point, it collapsed. It disintegrated into runic symbols and vanished. “What the hell is happening?” [Spark] hadn’t had this issue earlier. [Detect] was far more complicated than [Spark], so the complexity might have made it harder to customize. Arthur wanted to decrease its mana cost to use it over extensive areas. After a few minutes of thought, Arthur had a crazy idea. He closed his eyes and entered his sea of consciousness. At the epicenter of his world, there existed a spiritual artifact that Jizo had once given him. [–––––– Legacy] Arthur had deleted the name long ago. The first thing he did was give it a new name. Level Up Legacy was a proper title, but Arthur needed more than just that. He began to dismantle the legacy to change a few things about it. Strength was no longer something Arthur needed. As long as he had the runes, he could strengthen himself. However, he needed to increase his capacity to hold the mana of creation, which required a body strong enough to handle it. [Levels] [Stats] [Quests] [Mechanics] [Storage] [Skills] [Bestial Archives] Arthur could see the different components of his legacy. He studied their structure before choosing to create a new function to aid his new abilities. The process was complicated, and Arthur had to write several runes in a diagram to create a prototype of the function. [Sandbox] A function specialized in testing runes and their effects. It would focus on studying the changes Arthur made while infusing the runes with his spiritual energy. It was akin to coding and testing his code. The new function wouldn’t just test his runes but also identify the mistakes that made them fail. Arthur used sophisticated runes like [Ethereal Records] and [Omnipotent Observation] to achieve these results. Then, he calculated the mana cost he would need to use the Sandbox. [Total Mana Cost: 1859] That was the cost for each test. Arthur almost coughed up blood as he looked at the price. He couldn’t afford this amount of mana for each runic test. Therefore, he began to use a little roundabout way to lower the cost. Spiritual infusion! “Ahem,” Arthur felt embarrassed that his knowledge about spiritual artifacts was so lacking. Jizo had been a scholar and deserved every respect a man could give. He had managed to create a legacy that didn’t require any mana to strengthen Arthur or use its functions. “A world without mana,” muttered Arthur to himself with excitement. “This is what Rhys talked about—a perfect world that didn’t require mana. And if a world became self-sufficient without mana, then the gods could no longer benefit from sending nameless beings to devour worlds.” 21:09

The more sophisticated runes collapsed, but Arthur managed to improve the basic ones. After tweaking them here and there, he managed to lower the cost a bit. [Total Mana Cost: 1320.] “…Still more than I can afford, but why is it so expensive?” Arthur wondered to himself, unaware that what he was trying to achieve had already been attempted by Jizo himself. The language of creation was perfect as it was, but Arthur was attempting to improve it. A crazy notion appeared in his mind. If spiritual energy could reduce the need for mana, then could there be a point where every rune of creation no longer needed mana? Could a world exist where mana was no longer necessary, but the world remained safe and complete? “A world without mana,” muttered Arthur to himself with excitement. “This is what Rhys talked about—a perfect world that didn’t require mana. And if a world became self-sufficient without mana, then the gods could no longer benefit from sending nameless beings to devour worlds.” Arthur couldn’t tell whether his idea was foolish or insane, but it was undoubtedly impossible. To create that world, he would need to test and improve every rune in existence to reach perfection: a self-sustaining state—independent runes! “That might take millions of years, haha,” laughed Arthur to himself as he decided to put the idea on the back burner. He needed to focus on perfecting this Sandbox to improve his [Detect] rune. After that, he could use the rune to visualize the entire world. As long as he could handle the influx of information using the spiritual artifact before him, he could find anything he was looking for, including Kar and Deluge. “You guys are the real issue here,” muttered Arthur with a frown as he looked at the runes in his Sandbox. Each of them would require tons of mana to work at the same time. “Hold on a second… if this Sandbox is a car that requires mana, then what if I add a gas tank? Or in other words, a mana tank?” Arthur felt like he had grown smarter after being freed from his burdens. For the first time in a while, he started having fun using his abilities instead of being punished for them. He began crafting a mana tank to attach to his Sandbox, and his ideas began to turn into reality.