Chapter 116

"…another failure." With a blank face, Ray threw the object in his hand to the growing pile or failed bullet he was trying to make.

"Haah… why is it so hard to get it to work? Always either sturdy to hold spells but can't store or the other way around." Scratching his head in frustration, Ray took out a magic tome and started to read it again.

"Also, the scummy system. Why can it just work like The Gamer system?" He complained again after remembering how the Job Classes actually work.

Unlike the referred, The Gamer system. The Job Classes, for example Artificer didn't automatically allow Ray to craft an item using skill or granting him the knowledge, basically giving him shortcuts to success.

The Job Classes only give him the starting point for the selected Job Class instead of instantly catapulting him to the finish line. Ray needs to start from the basics, which is learn to walk, then he can run to the finish line. This became his source of frustration because all that learning needed time.

He is already optimizing the learning process with the help of AI. But still not enough. Which Lilith quotes 'A forest didn't just grow in a day like how mushrooms sprout after rain.' to Ray after hearing him complaining he couldn't learn the entirety of Alchemy and Artificing in a single day.

Reading through the Alchemy tome that he bought from the Marketplace after unlocking the higher tier merchandise with an astronomical amount of points. Effectively making him a tenth poorer with his almost trillion amount of points.

"Transmutation wouldn't work simply because I didn't know what material is good."

A few pages later…

"Double enchantment…? Wait, hold on a minute. This might work!" Ray pushes away the Alchemy tome and his fingers quickly dance through the Marketplace's screen and buy a new batch of material to test on.

*Ding*

[Maximum EXP reached for Level 152, leveled up to Level 153.]

Ray ignored the notification after giving it a glance before returning to the materials that just appeared on the workbench after finishing the transaction on the screen.

Carefully Ray grabs the magically enchanted scalpel and starts carving the crystal in his hand, roughly into the shape of a bullet. Then he swapped for another scalpel with different enchantments to smooth out the carved crystal into a silky smooth crystal shaped bullet.

Putting away the scalpel, Ray turns to the right and pulls out a flat board that has a magic circle carved into it. His hand snakes into his inventory and pulls out a beaker full of quicksilver or mercury if according to modern knowledge. Ray poured it on the carved board and formed an universal Alchemy magic circle.

A universal magic circle according to the Alchemy tome he is learning from, is a basic magic circle that can be used for simple Alchemy processes. But a more complicated one required a specific magic circle. For the current process, Ray only requires the basic one.

He roused the mana from his fully healed dragon core and injected it to the mercury which immediately glowed in bluish white light. Quickly he put the recently carved crystal bullet on the magic circle and started the enhancement process.

The first step is to guide the mana to the intended place which in this case is the edge of the inner crystal. He roughly guides the mana while the AI starts fortifying the intended part on micro scale. Like [Reinforcement] from Nasuverse, the mana fill the gap of the crystal structure to increase its durability. This is the first enhancement, [Fortify] and then the second enhancement is forming another layer above the fortified structure to further increase the sturdiness of the material.

After finishing enhancing the crystal bullet, Ray tries to store a fourth level spell, [Exploding Fireball]. A self made spell that evolved from [Fire] > [Fireball] > [Great Fireball] > [Exploding Fireball].

Very simple name but it's easier for Ray to create the imaging required for casting spells compared to extravagant but frivolous names.

The spell only increases in size and output up to [Great Fireball] but [Exploding Fireball] is created by compressing an equivalent of five [Great Fireball] into the size of normal [Fireball]. One could easily imagine what happens when the densely compressed energy suddenly expands very rapidly in volume and temperature. Well? The answer of course is violent reaction or in simpler words, explosion.

Carefully, Ray casts the spell but stops it from finishing forming before directing it into the enchanted bullet to be sealed.

As for how the bullet will work when shot from his firearm. The spell matrix that is already being filled but in stasis form, inside the bullet will be inserted into a bullet casing that has propellant just like a normal bullet would.

Remember that the enhancement only fortifies the internal of the crystal and not the outside?

It was done on purpose. It works similarly in design as Impact Grenade. The crystal bullets are made on purpose to be easily broken from outside so that once it is shot and hits a target, it will break or crack the crystal's structure and unleash the spell stored inside.

Though the bullet will initially crack when the propellant pushes it out of the casing. This is also on purpose so the bullet will not litter the battlefield like a mine, waiting to explode when an unsuspecting person or animal accidentally breaks it and explodes. The fine crack produced when it exits the bullet casing will ensure the bullet definitely will explode on its own after a few seconds have passed.

This has been what Ray has been making for the past five days while hiding in the Lobby. He was thinking of ways to upgrade his own firepower for the upcoming conflict and this is what he thought can increase his power in such a short timespan. For now, he only successfully created three bullets out of two hundred odd attempts. One is [Great Fireball] version of the bullet he just created while another one is kinda a successful prototype but also a failure. Kinda both because it's usable but not what he had intended to create. Instead it's a lesser and weaker version of what he intended to create, a brand new Anti-Divine bullet.

The Boosted Gear and Divine Dividing are both Longinus Gear, Sacred Gear with potential to slay gods. Both of their powers, [Boost] and [Divide] can technically do the job in theory by using [Divide] to siphon the gods power and weaken them while diverting the siphoned power to empower a curse using [Boost] that will increase the potency of the curse. As for why curse? Curse is fundamentally the easiest to afflict an opponent with and also hardest to dispel once it takes its root on the target. Ray even adds Ophis power into the mix for a good measure just in case but he forgot about one crucial thing while developing this bullet.

Curses are very potent once the target is afflicted but the trade off for this is the curse is easy to be dispelled at the early stage just like how a sapling can easily be uprooted while a full grown tree is very hard. Divine beings, for almost 99.9% of the time, have magic resistance that can easily shrug off curse the level of what Ray used. For a curse to penetrate the magic resistance, the curse must be very potent and high ranked unlike the common curse on an unhealthy dose of Ophis made, magical steroid that Ray is using.

Feeling the drowsiness from two days of non-stop working on the experiment, Ray cleans up the workbench and jumps to the sofa in the Lobby while trying to have a quick rest.

"As if I could rest without my floofy body pillow." Ray sighed and switched his position on the sofa several times, trying to get comfortable and fall into a nap but the thought of completing his prototype kept his brain awake.

The prototype Anti-Divine bullet lacks only a very potent and strong curse. When speaking of a very strong curse, there is only one that comes to mind. Angra Mainyu, initially merely a nameless human crowned as King of Daemon and bore the six billion curse but in a certain timeline Ray remembered Angra Mainyu managed to use the grail somehow and became a true god instead of nameless person impersonating the Zoroastrian god of darkness. However, the god is inside the grail and couldn't escape from it alone. Hence the whole shitshow called the 4th Grail War of Fuyuki. The fake priest Kirei Kotominei is helping Angra Mainyu to escape the grail by using the grail as a womb and being born through it to escape the Grail.

Ray is confident that he can complete the prototype Anti-Divine bullet which will be his trump cards against the traitors of the Council of God's. However, how will he reach Fateverse? Abusing [World Jump] until he reaches Fateverse is impossible because god forbid if he got stuck like last time in Infinite Stratos world and also the one year cooldown before he can use World Jump again to return to DxD world. There is literally no way he can go to Fateverse at this moment where there's too little time to spare. Well, until the system suddenly sent him a message.

[User are now part of the Administrator, as the messenger between the system and the local inhabitant of the Hub's world. User now have privileges to enjoy and one of them being Custom Quest where user can choose the details of a quest and the system will generate them for a price.]

[User wants to generate a Custom Quest?]

Ray stared at the screen with a mix of shock and disbelief before he quickly accepted the offer and listed out the details for the custom quest he needed.

[1 Merit tokens are deducted from the user's balance.]

[Generating Custom Quest…]

Ray looks at the screen to discover a new currency that he never noticed before until now and the only Merit Token he has was just deducted to create the Quest.

[Generated Successfully]

[Evil God Resurrection]

Difficulty- Impossible

Participant limit- 1

Time Limit- 2 days

Reward- Angra Mainyu[Contracted Demon]

Task- Prevent the evil god, Angra Mainyu resurrection and claim the evil god as your bi- *cough* Contracted Demon.

Failure condition- True Death or Captured by Alaya

Looking at the difficulty immediately made Ray frown but the system explained the difficulty is measured according to his overall strength, abilities and equipment but didn't take into consideration about Ophis, Lancelot and Lilith because they are external strength which isn't truly part of him. Although knowing this, Ray becomes relieved because this means he can steamroll this quest. Dip in then out as soon as he gets his hand on what he needs because there is two more days before the estimated day the people Goddess Rhea gathered will start their attack on the Council of God's.

Now he has a quest to complete, Ray jumps off the couch and takes a bath for the first time in three days before he goes out of his Lobby to gather his crew for his little quest to steal a corrupted wish granting Holy Grail and the evil god that lived inside it.

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