Foul Power Reversion and Origin Energy Echo!

Lin En stared at the panel before him, stunned.

He had never expected to unlock two skills at once. Moreover, his ability to devour emotional fragments seemed to have been further strengthened and upgraded by his advancement.

"Can I appoint a familiar?"

Lin En pondered.

Taken literally, it should mean that he could grant his ability to harvest emotional fragments to someone he designated, then have them do the harvesting for him.

Lin En immediately understood.

That was right.

For him, the best way to obtain emotional fragments quickly was actually to manifest his true form and unleash tremendous panic and turmoil in that world, harvesting sanity on a massive scale.

"But if I really did that, wouldn't I be exposed pretty quickly and bring a massive crusade down on myself?"

Lin En rubbed his chin.

Although he was indeed human, his body had unfortunately turned into something bizarre. If he rashly revealed his true form in the human world, his ugliness would definitely cause an uproar.

That would certainly let him obtain a huge number of fragments in a short time.

But it would also bring unexpected challenges and dangers.

But if he could designate someone else...

Lin En glanced at the ghostly flame behind him.

An exquisite image instantly sprang into his mind: himself lounging on a sofa, holding Hana Ye and laughing heartily, while his slave hauled cart after cart of fragments over for him to eat.

(oﾟ▽ﾟ)o!

Wow, was he going to become an evil capitalist?!

Lin En immediately spoke with authority:

"Do you need wages to work for me?"

Salgon froze.

"Wages?"

"Little bits of money." Lin En closed his eyes.

Salgon shuddered and immediately dropped to one knee.

"You must be joking, Your Majesty! Please never say anything like that again! I am your servant and your slave! Being allowed to stay by your side is already the greatest grace you could bestow upon me! Have you ever seen a slave demand pay from his master?! Others never even get the chance to follow you. Meeting you was already the greatest fortune of my life!"

"..."

He was really good at sucking up.

Still, looking at it that way, this really did seem like a business with enormous returns for almost no investment.

Lin En rubbed his eyeball.

Then his gaze fell upon his other two skills.

[Foul Power Reversion] and [Origin Energy Echo]

Judging by their descriptions, both skills involved origin substance. In other words, he could directly create origin substance by consuming emotional fragments?

Lin En felt a stir of excitement.

"Activate!"

Bzz-

In an instant.

He felt a force drawn straight out of his body, turning into wisps of black vapor that gathered upon a tentacle he had extended.

[Ding! You have consumed 300 satiety and obtained first-order origin substance x1.]

As the system notification sounded in his ears.

A crystalline object wreathed in a pitch-black sheen instantly appeared on his tentacle.

[Origin substance (unactivated)]

[Rank]: First order

[Implant location]: Brain

[Sequence count]: 2

[Current sequence]: Sequences inactive. Cannot display.

Lin En's pupil immediately contracted.

So that was how it worked?

If so, couldn't he harvest emotional fragments in bulk and get huge amounts of origin substance for free?

An idea stirred in Lin En's mind, and he glanced at Salgon, who was kneeling nearby.

"Hey, didn't you say you knew a lot about that world? Tell me about [origin substance]. I want all the information."

Salgon immediately came over and knelt. "Yes, Master!"

Before long, Salgon's explanation had given Lin En a much deeper understanding of the power system built around origin substance.

"So [origin substance] is actually a manifestation of the Spirit Realm's power, rather than something born in the physical world?"

Lin En rubbed an imaginary chin.

"Yes, Your Majesty," Salgon said from his knees. "That is also why those humans do not completely seal themselves off from the Spirit Realm. To obtain enough power, they must risk venturing deep into the Spirit Realm to draw upon its origin energy. And [sequences] are those powers given concrete form."

Lin En understood.

In a sense, origin substance was more like a vessel that could collect water.

Sequences were the water inside it.

But because the Spirit Realm's power was so impure and heterogeneous, what you collected might not be water. It could be urine, or something even stranger and more muddled. That was what gave rise to the distinction between positive and negative sequences.

"And precisely because of that, the more positive [sequences] someone possesses, the stronger they are in battle! No living being can implant more than nine origin substances in their body. Even if they awaken every sequence within them, that still only amounts to eighty-one sequences. So the further they progress, the greater the advantage enjoyed by those with more positive sequences!"

Salgon explained.

"And among these paths, there is one that is exceptionally unique."

"It involves avoiding other [sequences] mixing into your origin substance as much as possible, specializing in just one and possessing only that single kind of sequence. Rumor has it that the mighty Valkyrie took this very path. All eighty-one sequences in her body were the same [Holy Flame]. And that was precisely what allowed her to slaughter her way through Eternal Night and become that world's last deity!"

"Thus came the legend that gathering eighty-one identical sequences is the ultimate path to godhood!"

Lin En was startled by those words.

"That's actually possible?"

He could not help glancing at the door to the little dark room next door.

In that case, that Valkyrie sounded pretty damn impressive. No wonder she could hack away at him for ten years. So she had a history like that.

"But this has little to do with ordinary people. Opening up sequences requires nurturing them with the Spirit Realm's power. Yet because that power is so heterogeneous, anyone wishing to develop a specific sequence can only seek out sources whose power is uniform and pure. But places like that..."

Salgon shook his head.

"They are either controlled by powerful human factions or claimed as the lairs of mighty figures in the Spirit Realm. Ordinary people cannot even dream of approaching them."

Lin En rubbed his chin.

So that was it.

Sure enough, every world was pretty much the same.

Rare and expensive resources would always be monopolized, with the scraps tossed to those at the bottom. The strong grew stronger because they controlled the resources, while the weak grew weaker because they had none. That principle truly had never changed.

He looked at the origin substance in his hand and cast Salgon a glance.

"If it really works the way you say, shouldn't it be fairly easy? Just remove the unwanted sequences and keep trying through trial and error. Eventually, you should be able to make origin substance containing nothing but identical sequences, right?"

At those words.

Salgon shook his head and answered firmly:

"No, Your Majesty. That is impossible."

Lin En immediately looked doubtful.

"How so?"

Salgon explained solemnly:

"Because sequences cannot be removed from origin substance! Once a sequence forms, it immediately becomes fixed and locked in place. Tamper with even one, and all the other sequences will collapse and dissolve at the same time."

"This path has already been proven to be a dead end."

He was not joking.

Many people throughout history had attempted it, but every single one had ultimately failed.

Whatever sequence you got was the sequence you got.

You could attempt to replace [origin substance] through some form of surgery, but replacing the [sequences] within it was absolutely impossible.

"And that is precisely why only that one Valkyrie has appeared in thousands of years."

"Many top factions and powerful figures in the Spirit Realm actually want to reproduce the Valkyrie's miracle. But to this day, I have never heard of anyone succeeding."

He shook his head.

There were simply too many uncertainties along that path.

And even if replacing origin substance was possible, once others learned that you were trying to forge a god, they would surely band together against you and bring all your efforts to ruin.

"Then what do you think of this ability of mine?"

Lin En suddenly asked.

[Ding! You have consumed 300 points of satiety and obtained first-order origin substance x1.]

Lin En held one origin substance in his left hand and another in his right.

Then-crack-

A dazzling halo flashed.

The two origin substances immediately merged into one, fusing into a new origin substance.

Salgon stared blankly at Lin En's sleight-of-hand-like maneuver, utterly dumbstruck.

The panel for that origin substance also appeared before Lin En.

[Origin substance (unactivated)]

[Rank]: First order

[Implant location]: Brain

[Sequence count]: 3

[Current sequence]: Sequences inactive. Cannot display.

Lin En's eyeball turned toward him as he said:

"One origin substance with two sequences and another with one sequence smashed together to make one with three. If I collected lots of single-sequence origin substances, do you think I could gamble my way to a maxed-out origin substance whose sequences were all identical?"