Jake floated silently in the air as the aura of Temlat slowly faded away. With his death, the curse and plague both disappeared, curing all those who had been infected nearly instantly. Looking down at Eternal Hunger, he wondered if anything had changed but found no obvious changes to the weapon, at least not besides its clear satisfaction with having consumed another Sin Curse to fuel itself. He did feel that the Records of another Sin Curse had slightly affected it, but… Temlat had simply been far too weak to truly affect the mythical weapon in a major way.
Sighing yet again, Jake headed toward one of the portals leading back to the House of the Architect. He had no reason to stay on the ruined planet and would leave while only offering it a few more thoughts. As Temlat had said, chances were the survivors would eventually rise again. While ninety-nine point nine percent of the population had died, hundreds of thousands, if not a few million, had survived. With no wild beasts on the planet either, there was no threat to these people, and using the materials of the old world, they should be able to rebuild.
Hopefully, the memory of Temlat would persist for a long time. It would be good if he could serve as a legend and a warning that should they indulge too much and become too corrupt, another being like him could appear. Jake hoped this, even if he knew that a case like Temlat rarely happened. In most cases, the fucked up society would just persist.
Cases like this megacity weren’t rare across the multiverse. For there to be a clear divide between grades and those who had power and those who didn’t wasn’t anything new. To take advantage of those below you was just the natural next step in the eyes of many.
Jake would also leave Temlat’s world with a lesson on what Earth absolutely couldn’t become. He wasn’t averse to those in power having more, well, power, but that didn’t mean one could just exploit others without any consequences. If that was allowed, how would people be able to rise and claim power for themselves?
After blowing away some debris, Jake arrived at one of the portals and left Temlat’s world behind. He walked straight toward the room of the Architect to submit his eighth Creation… even if it felt damn weird calling what had happened a Creation.
He had given little thought to what Temlat’s Path would mean for his submission, much less if his death would have any impact. Even if he had considered these things, Jake sure as hell wouldn’t have refused his first student’s final request just because he wanted some more Nevermore Points.
Arriving at the door, Jake once more didn’t even have to knock as he just walked in, seeing the Architect already waiting for him.
“I’m here to submit my eighth Creation,” Jake said in a calm tone.
The Architect nodded, motioning for Jake to clarify exactly what he was submitting.“I would like to submit Temlat’s Path. From when he became my student till his end,” Jake said.
“The evaluation will only take into account the impacts on his Path that you had,” the Architect clarified for Jake. “Be they directly or indirectly.”
Jake just nodded. “Alright.”
The Architect’s eyes flashed golden for a moment before the light faded. “It has been done.”
The room was silent for a while as Jake just stood there, deep in thought. The Architect didn’t make any moves to throw him out immediately, quite clearly reading he had more to say.
“Hey… I have a question. Off the records,” Jake muttered.
“I am not giving any advice on Creations,” she said, but luckily didn’t just throw him out like usual.
“It isn’t that. It’s just… you’ve been here for a long time and seen a lot, right? I know I could ask the Viper after this, but I feel like I need a qualified outside perspective that isn’t from him,” Jake began as he just laid it out straight. “I am a shit teacher, right? My first student and he ends up turning into a living calamity that I eventually end up eating with my own Sin Curse weapon after he destroys a planet.”
“Answering that question with a simple yes or no isn’t possible,” the Architect said. “It is all subjective. If your goal was to guide your student toward godhood, you did indeed fail. If your intentions were for him to realize his goals and form his own Path with you only acting as a supporting pillar, you were a great teacher.
“People take students for a myriad of reasons. Some selfish, some out of pure benevolence, and some out of obligation. The student also takes a teacher for similar reasons. In the end, it is a relationship between two people. If the student and teacher are both satisfied with an outcome, who else is to say either party was good or bad? So I think the only thing you need to ask yourself is if you are alright with what happened. If you got an outcome that you can, at the very least, accept.”
“I see your point, but... I did also allow Temlat to walk down a Path of self-destruction that ultimately resulted in him taking his own life,” Jake protested.
“You say you allowed him to do something… as if you were responsible for the Path he chose,” Nevermore said. “If you had taken responsibility for him, and you promised to help him live a long and fulfilling life, you did indeed mess up, but your student walked into this with both eyes open. He knew what he was doing.”
“Even if you say that, isn’t it my responsibility to at least warn him? To nudge him away from pitfalls like that? Temlat wasn’t in a good state of mind, one where it could be argued he wasn’t fully capable of making the best choices for himself.”
“We are back to the purpose of your teachings once more. Were you his guide? His guardian? His friend? Such things need to be decided before anyone can talk about if there were any failures. If you do feel like you made a mistake, it is something to reflect upon, but your conflicted emotions on the matter do not mean you failed in the eyes of others, not even your student’s,” the Architect continued.
“Is that a nice way of telling me Temlat never blamed me for the doomed Path he walked down?” Jake questioned, despite already knowing the answer. He knew Temlat hadn’t once blamed Jake but only felt gratitude for allowing him to succeed in his goal.
If he had felt even the slightest tinge of anger, how would someone with the Sin Curse of Wrath be able to suppress even hinting it? The answer was that he couldn’t. Never once had Jake been the source of Temlat’s anger or resentment… which, for some reason, didn’t make Jake feel much better.
“You can choose to interpret it as such,” the Architect answered in a relaxed tone. “I do not think it is my place to give you advice on teaching, but I will say one thing. You are used to your own perspective where you value absolute freedom, and that style isn’t compatible with many. However, in the cases where it does work, it is the one style that doesn’t impede your student’s natural growth and the most optimal to allow them to build their own Records. The Path one defines by themselves is the most powerful, after all. There are ways to do what you are doing, so don’t get too discouraged.”
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Jake listened attentively, but he still felt unsure about how he had approached everything. He had tried to act a bit like Villy by just allowing Temlat to do whatever he wanted and only answered questions when asked, never volunteering any advice. In some ways, it had worked, but Jake didn’t feel good about the outcome.
Upon reflecting, Jake did realize one major flaw with how he had done things. As Nevermore said, Jake was too used to his own perspective, and he also had to consider that the advice Villy gave was with whom Jake was taken into account. Jake had his damn Bloodline, which was essentially a cheat against making horrible decisions, as his intuition would always scream at him whenever he tried to do something too dumb. Villy practically never really had to caution Jake compared to other advisors, even if he did sometimes give minor warnings during their conversations.
If Jake could go back, he would have sat down and properly understood what Temlat wanted to do. He would have discussed the outcomes Temlat wanted and made clear to him the consequences of the Path he had chosen. If Temlat still insisted to keep going after that… Jake honestly couldn’t say he would have stopped him. He would just have supported Temlat in realizing his dream, even if realizing it would mean his death.
Because, as Nevermore had said… Jake didn’t want to be the type to “allow” someone he was teaching to do something. Well, unless it was something that Jake believed crossed a line that shouldn’t be crossed… which wholesale slaughter of a deeply corrupt megacity planet surprisingly wasn’t. Alright, he wasn’t sure how he would have acted if it had happened in the real multiverse… which in itself was probably a questionable moral stance to have.
Anyway, Jake knew what the Bound God in front of him was doing. She was doing that thing where she said things not necessarily because it was her true thoughts but because it would make Jake think and reflect… the same tactic Villy liked to use. Maybe it was just a god-thing…
“You look like you have a lot to think over,” the Architect said with a smile. “I believe it would make more sense to do so outside of my chambers. Good luck.”
Jake was teleported out in an instant, still a bit lost in his thoughts as he appeared in front of the closed door.
Shaking his head, Jake got his shit together and began heading back toward the lab. He had to keep his head in the game and keep moving forward. Jake was still in a Challenge Dungeon, and he had just “wasted” a bit over a week in the megacity world with Temlat. He didn’t regret having done so, but he knew he couldn’t keep delaying his crafting.
Speaking of the Challenge Dungeon and its objective… Jake had no idea how good or bad the submission he had just made was. He truly didn’t. Out of everything, even that weird small arcane marble, this was the one he felt the most unsure about. It probably didn’t help Jake felt like he had done a shitty job. Alas, there was nothing to do now besides just finishing the House of the Architect and hopefully at least honoring some of Temlat’s memory by getting a good evaluation.
But first, Jake needed to calm down his own emotions. Returning to the lab area, Jake went toward one of the rooms to gather his thoughts. On the way, he walked by where Temlat had stayed and stopped in the doorway. He looked inside and saw the sheets had been taken off, cleaned, and neatly folded on top of it. The entire room was clean to a fault and looked practically unused, making Jake look down and clench his fists.
He knew he wasn’t coming back, didn’t he?
Jake turned and continued into the room he usually used and sat down to meditate and calm himself. He ended up sitting there for over three full days as he mulled over all his time in the House of the Architect and everything that had happened with Temlat. After these three days, Jake opened his eyes again, having calmed himself enough. He wasn’t sure if what he had done could be called grieving… but he had at least reached the state of acceptance and the realization that sitting on his ass would do no one any good.
Willpower was truly one hell of a stat.
Returning to the lab room, Jake got to work without pause. He had pretty much completed both the poison and acid he wanted to create already, and now it was just the last stretch to get the final products in the bag. The first of which would be the acid.
Jake had considered the project plenty already, and he went with as simple a form as he could. One that truly made use of his destructive arcane energies to corrode other types of mana and materials. He had considered for a good while how he wanted to attune his acid but ultimately just went with pure mana. The reason for this was simple.
If he made it focus on pure mana, Jake believed he could make the acid almost adaptive. Make it so he could infuse it using Touch of the Malefic Viper right before using it if he wanted it to work on something that wasn’t just pure mana.
The creation process for acids was quite different from similar poisons. While making a poison usually required you to mix herbs and extract its energy, acids-creation was far closer to old-school chemistry. It was to primarily mix different liquids together while occasionally adding a solid catalyst. There were some plants that could also be helpful, but Jake didn’t use any of these for this acid.
As mentioned before, acids were far more stable than regular poisons. They didn’t really give off any passive energy or consumed themselves by simply existing, which was also the one reason he could make his destructive arcane affinity work with it. Jake could infuse it in a “calm” state where it wouldn’t react with the liquid it was placed inside. Only when the rest of the acid saw something and became active would the arcane mana also react to break down and destroy the item in question.
It took quite a while to properly get the arcane affinity to do what he wanted, but when he got that down, the rest was pretty smooth sailing, to be honest.
This wasn’t Jake’s first time making it, but after a few days of getting the final parts fully down and getting himself into a properly focused state, Jake made the best acid he had created so far.
Jake sat with his cauldron in front of him and stared at the transparent liquid with a faint purple hue, nodding in satisfaction as he used Identify.
[Adaptable Arcane Acid of Brittleness (Rare)] – An acid created with a mix of highly mana-corrosive acids and destructive arcane energy as its base, specifically created to corrode other forms of pure mana. Upon coming into contact with pure mana, this acid will turn highly destructive and begin to corrode it. Has an increased ability to intrude into physical objects and corrode the pure mana within. This acid is significantly more effective against passive environmental pure mana. The Arcane Acid is highly adaptable to changes in its nature that will cause it to target other forms of mana. This change can only happen once.
Without waiting, Jake poured out a bit of it into a glass beaker and took out an ingot of metal. It was a form of iron that Jake couldn’t easily damage even if he wanted to, and he usually had to use Alchemical Flame if he wanted to break down.
Starting his test, Jake put a single finger inside the acid. Nothing happened, and Jake promptly activated Touch of the Malefic Viper. A bit of energy entered the acid, and Jake saw the purple hue begin to swirl within for a moment until it stabilized. Jake quickly used Identify to confirm and nodded in satisfaction at the result.
[Metal-Adapted Arcane Acid of Brittleness (Rare)] – An acid created with a mix of highly mana-corrosive acids and destructive arcane energy as its base, specifically created to corrode other forms of metal-affinity mana. Upon coming into contact with metal-affinity mana, this acid will turn highly destructive and begin to corrode it. Has an increased ability to intrude into physical objects and corrode the metal-affinity mana within. This acid is significantly more effective against passive environmental metal-affinity mana. The Arcane Acid has been adapted to metal-affinity mana.
Taking the metal ingot, Jake placed it inside of the acid. The reaction began instantly as the entire thing began to bubble, and Jake saw the metal slowly begin to change color as it looked like small purple sparks constantly nibbled at it. After ten or so seconds, Jake took out the ingot again and held it in his hand.
Appearance-wise, it looked nearly the same, except for some chipping in the corners. However, on the inside, the entire ingot was a mess.
Clenching the ingot in his hand, the entire thing crumbled between his hands, the metal so brittle it could barely keep itself together.
Ninth Creation down… one to go.