Chapter 1208: Refinement's Growth 1
Chapter 1208: Refinement's Growth 1
Draco watched the core members move out to go and complete their tasks, nodding his head with a look of satisfaction. With them handling this matter, he felt doubly sure that everything would go well, but he also had his own things to sort out at this moment.
Ten years of being a father were ten years of no progress in terms of power, but he wouldn't switch it up for anything else. Those ten years were precious to him and irreplaceable, but now that he had watched his kids enter adolescence, it was time to get back to the grind.
First things first, there was the matter of Refinement.
Refinement was Draco's current highest priority, for it was his path of becoming an Origin God. Theoretically, one only needed to upgrade their laws with Divine Essence enough and enter the Origin God trial to ascend as a player, but neither Draco, Eva nor Shuangtian were actual True Gods.
They were fakers.
Their abilities were tied to the divine items Draco crafted, which he bruteforced by forcibly upgrading Control to Tier 6 and gaining full access to the quantum realm, which equated to the Divine Rank.
Those items were non-upgradeable, so if Draco wanted their group to simulate Origin Laws using items or equipment, he would need to break through to Origin Rank in Blacksmithing and Alchemy to do that, but if this were possible, do you think the actual Origin Gods sitting in that Origin World were idiots?
If one could mass-produce items to create Origin Gods, then congrats, you were even stronger than the strongest Eternal, because no one had that ability. The AI certainly didn't with its digital world.
It could do so for True Gods because it created the Divine Rank. In actuality, there was no 'Divine Rank' in the universe, only the power scale used in the Eternal World as discovered by Shuangtian during her time there.
Mortal, Awakened, Master, Grandmaster, Origin, Pseudo-Eternal, Semi-Eternal and Eternal. (AN: Pause here and read chapter 942.)
The Grandmaster Rank was equivalent in a way to the Divine Rank, only that the AI diversified it a bit and made it far simpler for various lifeforms to climb through the stage, especially players.
Any Origin Rank being can create endless Rank 1 to Rank 7 and even True Gods as they wished, and likewise, any Origin God in the eternal world could create countless Awakened to Grandmasters.
The AI being able to do this did not make it special.
However, even Eternals could not easily create Origin beings and an Origin being could definitely not create another Origin being, so the AI was likely an Eternal-level existence since it could technically elevate players to Origin Rank using special means, but it could not turn a being with Master level power like the Evil Trio into authentic Origin beings.
As for the Source Origin thing, it was nothing special either. The AI was like a mother who had seized the money from the child that a rich uncle gave them, saying that they would keep it for them and gave it back in trickles.
This was already power that the Evil Trio had, just that the AI was legitimizing it using system mechanics. If the Evil Trio unsealed themselves fully without a care, do you think they would need to worry about mere Origin Law or Origin State of Being?
Long story short, Draco had two choices to become an Origin God or to wield the full power of one.
One was to fulfill the criteria the AI set, Rank Up to Rank 6, then Rank 7, take his own Ascension Road Trial, become genuine True God with 1 main law like the core members, upgrade it to max rank, and then undergo the Origin trial.
The other was to obtain something that could directly pierce through the ranks and achieve Origin status. One was Refinement, another was the Dragon King slot in the Ancestral Dragon City, while another was through unifying the main plane and re-attaching all small worlds and side realms to the main plane.
Obviously, between all the options, the most efficient and useful was that of refinement. Refinement was a transcendent ability that even the AI was still conceptualizing, and in a way, Draco was its vessel to perfect this law.
If Draco could take Refinement to the Origin Rank, he wouldn't just gain the ability in game, but in real life! An Origin Law, untouched and unclaimed by neither the real world, the Eternal World, or the digital world, something exclusively belonging to him!
Well, technically, the AI would have rights to it as the foundation builder and concept creator, but that was neither here nor there since the AI would only use it to enhance the game as per its prerogatives.
This was unlike Draco who could utilize Refinement's insane abilities to empower himself, his people, and even the entire human race in preparation for entering the Gerdo Galaxy!
Just thinking about it, one had to pat Draco on the back for being able to resist the temptation to practice for ten years to focus on his children. However, now there was no longer a need to hold back!
The fellow entered the Morningstar World which was the best place for the practice of Refinement and found himself a random planet in the void. This was a lifeless planet full of dead, barren rock of a grey color, akin to the moon of Earth.
It was silent and dull, perfect for Draco to practice on freely. Draco sat cross-legged and began to ponder on Refinement especially the progress he had made so far.
Norma split Refinement into four stages.
1. Mortal stage - It required a physically present material, atomic-level knowledge of the material's structure, sufficient energy of the Worldly, Aetheric, or Spiritual type, and finally, the knowledge of the end item's atomic-level structure.
It was limited in the sense that one could only transform items of the Mortal and Awakened stages according to the Eternal world's classification and Common to Epic in the Boundless classification.
2. God Stage - It required a physically present material but did not require knowledge of the source and end material's structure, and sufficient energy of any type, even non-orthodox like void, time, fire, water, etc. Here, Refinement became more about energy control, because the less energy needed to handle the transformation, the better.
It was also limited, able to handle items of the Mortal, Awakened, and Master stages or from Common to Legendary in Boundless terms. This was where Draco stood.
3. Semi-Origin Stage - It still required a physically present material and sufficient energy of any type. However, there were two significant changes here, the first being that the energy consumption was reduced by almost ten times, so what would have taken 10 units of energy now only took 1.
The second was that the scope of materials now includes living items, so one could not only refine say, a Fruit of the Orchard, but the actual tree that the fruit came from! This stage was able to handle all items up to Grandmaster in Eternal and the Divine Rank in Boundless, achieving the peak below Origin. Norma had been trapped here till she died.
4. Origin stage - This is the pinnacle, and because it is the pinnacle, its ability was frightening. Here, nothing but a smidgen of energy was needed. No physical item, no complex knowledge, no torrent of energy. Just a thought, a snap of the finger and a little bit of investment, and pop, anything at and below the Origin Rank could come into existence.
Draco was in the second stage but had brute forced his way to the third stage somewhat using a mixture of Control and his bloodline to cheat. Heck, even his current stage in the God level was cheated, using Control to achieve it.
Obviously, this wouldn't work. It was eating short-term gains at the cost of long term, he knew that even back then, but he needed refinement for many things. Now that he had relaxed and was not chasing being the strongest at the speed of light, he realized how hasty he had been.
In fact, he had been this way with all of his various powers, but luckily when he became a Semi-True God in the crafting Tradeskills he cherished, he had sat down and resolved the hidden danger with Control, repairing his rushed behavior from Tier 3 up to Tier 6.
Now, it seemed he had to do the same with this.
As such, Draco actually tried to refine an item at the God stage without using Control or his bloodline, simply using his natural spiritual power and mental control, his face changing greatly when he had to stop at a quarter of the way.
His expression was ugly, because this was way worse than he thought. Even if he didn't use Control or his bloodlines actively, he was still passively enhanced by them, not to mention his various special natures.
God, no wonder Norma suffered so much. She started with a completely human body and mind, so the effort she must have put in was crazy. It was also why she likely ran out of lifespan, she spent too long going between the stages.
But the benefit was there too. Norma had trained her 'normal' human spirit, will, and focus into something beyond what even the most powerful semi-origin Gods had, even if their laws focused on increasing mental will!
Just like how, on one side, there was a person who took steroids, dieted heavily, and muscle trained using specific workouts to build a heavenly body in 1 year, and on the other was a fat guy who ran on the treadmill every day consistently for 20 years while also lifting a few weights every day.
When the formerly fat guy arm-wrestled the steroids guy, he would crush him. Not only that but in weight training, running, and all various physical activities.
Norma was like the fat guy and the steroids guy was the other Semi-origin Gods with mind or spirit-related laws. As for Draco, he was akin to someone who had surgery to shrink their stomach or to remove fat, not even qualified to stand near those two.
Draco remembered what Norma told him, it was that he needed to simply sit down and practice repeatedly to achieve his goals. Normal mostly limited his progress in each realm by giving him a goal in terms of efficiency to reach.
When Norma was at the Mortal stage, her peak efficiency was 20% energy wasted when converting items. She had set a limit of 5% energy wasted for Draco before the next stage of the inheritance would unlock, and Draco managed to reach it after using his control which was at Tier 4 Atomic realm.
She did not even want him to achieve perfection, because Norma knew more than anyone how hard it would be. Since her inheritor would be someone better than her, they should be able to achieve this much with enough practice before moving on.
However, Draco, now here to fix the issue, directly decided to perfect his conversion efficiency using as much time as necessary. For him, he had already let ten years pass, what was another ten?
While he wouldn't completely seclude himself as he still had to fuck his women and shower love and attention to his children, this would be his main focus going forward. Draco decided to allot 8 hours every day to work on Refinement and use the rest for his daily life.
Those 8 hours would have otherwise been used for sleep, but he obviously didn't need to do that anymore. With a solid plan, Draco began his work on Refinement, deciding to create the most basic item he had researched in the past, iron.
He grabbed a handful of dust from the barren planet's ground and then began converting it into units of iron of equivalent mass and value. This was easy enough for him, but his current energy wastage was as high as 72%!
He even only had such a good number because of his base quality, various passive powers, and his accumulated experience with Refinement till now, even though he cheated.
He did have a foundation, just that it was shitty.