Chapter 152: Mechanical God’s Protection

As Yardpirun turned out to be Bluebird’s guild leader, Sila was no longer wary of her. The three of them were sitting in the palace, awaiting the return of the Android King. While they waited, Bluebird changed the subject by asking Sila to tell him about what had happened during his return to the Island of Beginnings.

For the record, Yardpirun sat next to Bluebird and listened carefully to Sila’s story while Bluebird was restless and couldn’t focus at all. His eyes wandered to his guild leader from time to time.

“...And this is the Black Dragon Sword that I got from the fight against Montra. As for what happened after that, Miss Yardpirun should know.” Sila pulled out the sword for the others to see.

“Isn’t it too easy?” Yardpirun expressed her doubt.

“No? I died a total of four times fighting him. If it wasn’t for...” Sila tried to explain.

“That’s not what I meant; I know that Mister Sila did your best in the fight against Montra. Rather, I’m suspicious about the fact that he left the sword behind. You might think that it’s inevitable that Montra had to abandon it, but I’m quite sure that it’s a part of his scheme. If he left the sword, that meant he wanted you to have it.”

Sila couldn’t help but be reminded of Sanon’s warning; ‘Montra will always be planning ahead.’

“Aren’t you thinking too deeply about it, Miss Yardpirun? It might just be that Montra was really desperate.”

“That wouldn’t be. I’m studying Montra closely and can pretty much say that he never does anything without planning ahead.”

Yardpirun looked at Bluebird, to which he nodded, before continuing.

“Actually, this is my top secret. However, to show you my sincerity, I will tell you. I’m currently acting as a spy in the Heavenly Dragon Guild. My other persona is Cheris, the Star-Finishing Warlord, one of the Heavenly Dragon Guild’s Five Dragon Warlords.”

Shocked at what he just heard, Sila was surprised that the mysterious guild leader of the Blue Pigeon Guild could sneak in and stay that close to Montra, though a lot of questions appeared in his mind.

“And no one has ever found out about you? Surely at least one of the members of the Heavenly Dragon Guild should be able to discern your real identity.”

Bluebird was the one to answer this question in her place. “Boss possesses the highest mastery of Mind Concealment, Disguise, and Psychic Manipulation in the game. If she wishes to mask her identity, no one can detect her.”

Closing her eyes, Yardpirun’s body transformed into a woman with curly black hair. Her facial appearance changed completely, and even her clothing was replaced by a black kimono.

“I can even disguise my rank. Please check if you don’t believe me,” she said with an entirely different voice.

Looking through his system window, Sila confirmed that what she was telling him was the truth. The inspection result shown on his screen was ‘Player Cheris, Level 1000 Emperor Rank’. Emperor Rank was still uncharted territory for all players, so this information was obviously fake; that meant she could completely manipulate the information that other players saw.

“Compared to other types, a psychic-type player has a lot of tricks up their sleeve. Besides, my main weapon is a sword, which is the most common weapon. For this reason, if I don’t slip up or show my real ability, no one will be able to tell my persona apart.” As she finished speaking, her appearance transformed back, though the information on Sila’s screen stayed the same. Witnessing this peculiar phenomenon, he started to find psychic type appealing.

“I understand. In conclusion, you know Montra better than I do, and think that he had a hidden motive behind leaving the sword in my care.”

“Yes. At the very least, if someone has a tracking ability, they can always locate your location.”

Swinging the sword around, Sila found that he was, mysteriously, getting more and more familiar with using a sword. It was a unique experience for him, as he had never touched a sword even once in his life.

“I will be careful about it, then. Do you happen to know a way to prevent him from tracking me?”

“I know at least three methods. One, hold onto the weapon longer than the previous owner. Two, melt it down and recreate it. Three, seal it.”

He reviewed the options in his mind and came to a conclusion. The first seemed impossible, the second sounded bothersome and he wouldn’t know when the new sword would be finished and returned to him. The war event was almost upon them, and he wanted to quickly familiarize himself with swords. Hence, Sila chose the third option.

“Hey, Blue, among the skills we can select in Lost Grea City, is there a skill for sealing?”

Bluebird snapped his fingers. “There is! It’s even in this very palace; in the fourth research laboratory on the second floor.”

At first, Sila barely cared about the three psychic-type skills he could obtain within Lost Grea City. However, his mind changed when he witnessed Yardpirun display her skill. It seemed he would have to quickly read the list of the skills that Bluebird had prepared.

“The reason I came here is because I want to make a deal with you, Mister Sila. A business deal. Can we talk right now?”

Yardpirun had told him that she had some matters to attend to in Lost Grea City, but Sila didn’t expect that her matter was related to him, and a business-related one at that.

“Please tell me more about it.”

Yardpirun coughed once. “The thing is, our Blue Pigeon Guild is currently dealing with serious financial issues.” She glanced at Bluebird, who avoided her gaze. “Bluebird gave me a report that Mister Sila owns two Invitation Cards to Lost Grea City. Therefore, we would like to purchase one of them.”

Sila took the Invitation Cards out. He really owned two of them. He obtained the first when he finished the invasion and got himself another one from the Android King for the request to retrieve the Eternal Onyx.

“I really have two. Do we have to make a trade though?”

“Yes, we do. Mister Sila might see Bluebird as your friend, but a business is a business. We need to make things right. Of course, we can’t possibly pay you in cash as the value of an Invitation Card to any of the main cities is incalculable. Therefore, my proposal is that I will pay you with the Heavenly Dragon Guild’s detailed information, including the information about Montra himself and his important teammates. The accuracy of the information is guaranteed as I’m the one collecting it myself. Since Montra is your enemy, I personally think that this proposal will be a good deal for you.”

Sila scratched his head; his information about Montra was indeed lacking. If he were to know more about Montra and the Heavenly Dragon Guild, he would have a better chance of winning against them.

“What are you planning to do with the Invitation Card, Miss Yardpirun?”

“We are going to run a new business; collecting a fee in exchange for being teleported to Lost Grea City. For your information, Lost Grea City is one of the cities that many players wish to visit. Sadly, the missions to enter the city are too troublesome, and that stops them from accessing it. As such, we can make a lot of profit by utilizing the Invitation Card.

“As a bonus, Mister Sila will benefit from our service as well. I heard from Bluebird that you get a fair share of the profit generated in Lost Grea City, so your earnings will increase with more people entering the city. Of course, Mister Sila can choose to do this business yourself. However you seem to lack manpower, so we, the Blue Pigeon Guild, want to be your business partner.”

“I see. Um... it’s not that I’m against your idea or anything, I’m just curious, but doesn’t Blue already have the Invitation Card as well?”

“Yes, he does, but with two of them, we will be able to run the service in two branches. I plan to open the business in both Zhongsuyuan City and Grea City. With this, we will get more customers coming to Lost Grea City, especially since the war event is approaching; everyone wants to get their hands on a good weapon.”

“Miss Yardpirun’s proposal sounds good to me, so I don’t see any reason to decline your offer... Anyway, my Invitation Cards are slightly different. Do you know why?”

“The left one is fine for us. It will teleport the user to the middle of the city while the other will teleport the user directly to the palace,” answered Yardpirun.

Sila was surprised by how much she knew. Even he, the owner of both Invitation Cards, didn’t know the difference between them. For the record, the latter Invitation Card was given to him by Orpheus; he was in a hurry to get the Eternal Onyx, so he gave Sila a card that would let him teleport straight to the palace.

Receiving Sila’s Invitation Card in her hand, Yardpirun said, “Thank you. I have sent you all the information I have regarding the Heavenly Dragon Guild, and I will send you more if I get new information in the future. For the record, each piece of information that I sent will have a tag to indicate the certainty of the information. There are three levels: confirmed, waiting for confirmation, and uncertain.”

Sila nodded and opened his system window to check the message. Unexpectedly, there was another unread message left in his inbox.

[From the outside world 1/1]

[Immediately come to our dojo after you see this message.]

[From Mora]

“Immediately?” exclaimed Sila. He wondered if something happened to the dojo as he stood up and prepared to leave. It was at that time that the Android King returned.

“It’s completed!! My new masterpiece. Oi, kid, where are you going? Come and get your armor first.”

Sila was restless. Teacher Mora wasn’t the type to give a lengthy explanation and the message was very short, so he couldn’t tell what had happened at the dojo.

“Will it take a long time? I need to log out as soon as possible, sir.”

“It won’t. Time in the game flows five times faster than reality. If we talk for five minutes, it will only be a minute in the outside world.”

His urgency aside, Orpheus’s statement was correct; Sila still had some time. He sat down and watched as Orpheus took out the armour he was proud of creating.

“Behold the S-grade Mechanical God’s Protection; the armor with Orichalcum as the base material, enhanced by the Eternal Onyx, and produced by the world’s greatest weaponsmith.”

The thing in front of Sila didn’t look like armor, or even clothing, at all. It looked like a simple crossbody bag made of black metal and engraved with the picture of three gears on top of a larger gear. Upon touching it, he discovered that its texture was soft and warm instead of hard and cold like metal.

“It looks like a tiny bag,” said Bluebird, and his opinion triggered the Android King’s Mind Oppression. He quickly hid himself behind Yardpirun.

“I said it was armor, so it’s armor. Do you take me for a fool? The ability of Eternal Onyx is ‘evolve’ so it will adjust itself to the wearer’s preference. The longer you wear it, the more it will understand what kind of person you are and thus evolve into the most ideal armor that matches you. It doesn’t have your information yet so it looks like this. All in all, I guarantee that it’s the best protection armor and you won’t ever find something better. Even if Zeref were the one who produced it, he wouldn’t be able to surpass this masterpiece.”

It’s not that Sila didn’t trust Orpheus, but as Bluebird had said, it really looked like a bag. Regardless, he took it from Orpheus’s hand.

“Remove your clothing first. It needs to come into direct contact with your skin. It’s also a type of clothing. Do you plan to wear clothes on top of other clothes?”

Sila removed the upper part of his outfit and strapped the Mechanical God's Protection over his shoulder. It immediately attached to his back, and Sila soon felt like he was jolted by electricity.

“Ouch!” Sila fell to the ground. Fortunately, the electric didn’t continue to jolt him.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you that you would feel a bit of pain, like a mosquito biting you,” The Android King said in a carefree manner.

Even without looking at his back, Sila could tell that the armor was functioning. All the gears engraved onto the armor were spinning; the larger gear was rotating clockwise while the three smaller gears were rotating counterclockwise.

“Will it take a long time? It’s vibrating. My back is numb.”

“It’s analyzing your body and evolving itself accordingly. Learn to wait. Good things always come late.”

As he was waiting for the Mechanical God's Protection to complete its analysis, Sila got his chance to ask the Android King about something that made him curious.

“Mister Orpheus said that this armor would have the power of a weapon, right? The Right Arm of the Sealed One also states that I can’t use a main weapon. So, what if I want to use a weapon? How can I do that?”

“Oh? There will be no problem. You can just use anything you want to use.”

“Eh? The system says I can’t use it though.”

Orpheus walked over to an empty chair and lifted it up. “It depends on what you think ‘using a weapon’ means. For example, if I lift this chair up and smack Bluebird with it because that guy is so talkative that it’s annoying, will you say that the chair is a weapon?”

Shuddering, Bluebird instantly transformed into a tailorbird and perched on Yardpirun’s shoulder, his body shaking non-stop.

“In that case, I think the chair is considered a weapon, sir.”

“Exactly. Monster Soul gives you a lot of freedom. By saying you can’t use a main weapon, it just means you can’t equip it. You won’t get the relevant support skill or the options attached to a weapon.”

The advantage of being able to equip an item was the ability to summon it back and forth from the system window. Nevertheless, Sila had Hidden Weapon Firing so summoning it wasn’t a problem, though he had to manually return whatever he summoned to the system window. As for the support skill, it referred to weapon mastery skills like the one he used to possess when he used a dagger to kill slimes; it would increase his base attack power when using the relevant weapon. Lastly, the options attached to a weapon meant the weapon’s special ability, like setting the enemy on fire with a slash, increasing health recovery rate while wielding the weapon, or enhancing the death penalty for anyone who is struck down by the weapon.

In conclusion, if Sila didn’t plan to rely on these three advantages, he was free to use a main weapon like others.

The analysis was finally finished. All of the gears accelerated and shone a bright light that covered Sila.

Soon, the light faded away, and the gears stopped spinning. Orpheus brought a full-length mirror out and placed it in front of Sila so he could see himself.

Reflected in the mirror was Sila in black futuristic wuxia clothing. His short sleeves had two layers; the inner layer tightly embraced his skin from the shoulder to his elbow while the outer layer was loose and had a silver shoulder guard. The back of the armour was still engraved with the same two-layered gears. His pants transformed to jeans with a similar black color but slightly less saturated, and his shoes were deep black. Regardless of the appearance, the most important thing to Sila was being able to move comfortably. Even though Orpheus said that it was armor, it was more comfortable than any of his previous sets of clothing.

Feeling extremely satisfied with his new gear, Sila opened his system window to read its description and asked Orpheus some questions about it, before finally proceeding to log out.

***

(S) Mechanical God’s Protection [Orpheus]

A special kind of protective armor that will always adapt itself to the user’s preferences and body condition.

*Produced from Orichalcum, but cannot collect experience points.

+ Increases both physical attack and defense points by X (determined by the user’s energy reinforcement infused in the armor, without an upper limit).

+ You are immune to all poisons and curses.

+ It will automatically promote your Rank once when you reach the maximum level of the Rank. (The exception is promoting from Lord Rank to Emperor Rank.)

+ Unbreakable.

- Cannot be sold or transferred.