When Hyunsoo saw the Artifact Quest, The One Who Must Become King, he was stunned.

It upgrades to Mythic grade if I become king...?

It was hard to believe.

In fact, because Hyunsoo had already seen the power of the White Tiger Sword, the shock hit even harder.

Because the White Tiger Sword was an artifact that displayed truly invincible power when it came to evil.

Then Hyunsoo made a puzzled face.

“Huh? That doesn’t add up.”

Because the notification had definitely said a hidden effect would be unlocked.

It had never said a quest would be unlocked.

Why did a quest pop up instead of a hidden effect? Hmm... is this a system error?

But that only made it stranger.

As far as Hyunsoo knew, the virtual reality game Ares did not have errors.

Then could it really produce a contradiction like this?

Still carrying that doubt, Hyunsoo looked over the form of the Sword for the One Who Follows the King.

Thank you, Elder... 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

The smoothly connected blade and white wooden grip had become one.

And on the black blade, Takashi had engraved the words, For the New King.

But then—

What?

The inscription For the New King, etched in white, suddenly began releasing a brilliant light.

Ding!

[Congratulations.]

[You are the first to obtain an artifact imbued with a modifier effect!!]

[It contains the sincere wish of the sword’s creator that you would become king!]

[The sword receives a modifier!!]

[The modifier is Longing!]

[No other user will ever obtain the modifier Longing again.]

[The pattern Longing is additionally engraved into the Sword for the One Who Follows the King!]

[The modifier Longing grants new power to the sword!]

[All abilities of the Sword for the One Who Follows the King are enhanced.]

Hyunsoo was startled.

Because the word Longing had been added to the opposite side of For the New King.

This was, literally speaking, an enhancement effect for the artifact.

To begin with, once an artifact reached Transcendent grade, enhancement became impossible.

Of course, it was not completely impossible in theory, but it required a truly enormous amount of resources and was far from easy.

Still, Hyunsoo had thought about this from time to time.

In the end, even Transcendent became outdated.

That was only natural.

A sword that had once been supreme could, after a few years, end up effectively power-crept into mediocrity.

Proof that nothing in this world lasted forever.

So Hyunsoo had thought:

At some point, the game Ares will hit the limits of inflation.

In the end, Transcendent would become old, and something even greater would have to be released beyond it.

But he had not thought that thing would be Mythic.

And now, in the present—

It looked like Pureum had created an artifact one rank above Transcendent by adding this modifier effect.

Come to think of it...

Hyunsoo was the creator of artifacts beyond Transcendent.

But then one day, after an update, Transcendent-beyond-Transcendent artifacts stopped appearing altogether.

In other words, rather than producing those Transcendent-beyond-Transcendent creations, Pureum had apparently judged that strengthening through modifiers like this—

modifiers granted when certain conditions were fulfilled, though Hyunsoo did not yet clearly understand what those conditions were—

was the better route.

In other words, it was to restore some degree of balance.

Even so, the Necklace of Desire Hyunsoo possessed had not been updated.

Which meant they had not nerfed the old items.

So does that mean this modifier system is just an inferior version of Transcendent-beyond-Transcendent?

Thinking that, Hyunsoo checked the Sword for the One Who Follows the King.

(Sword for the One Who Follows the King)

Grade: Transcendent

Durability: Infinite

Attack Power: 1,001

Restriction: Hyunsoo

Special Abilities:

·Critical hit chance increases by 140%

·Attack speed increases by 40%

·Movement speed increases by 10%

·3% chance to stun the opponent for 1 second

·Active Skill: Extinguishing Flame

·Active Skill: Blade of Longing

·Passive Skill: Royal Command

·Passive Skill: Longing

·If you become the first king, this will upgrade into a Mythic artifact.

·It is the first artifact ever imbued with the modifier Longing.

Description: This is an artifact created by an old man who was once a master blacksmith, carrying the wish that Hyunsoo would become king.

If you become king and take up this sword, you may become the first user among all kings to wield Mythic.

What the hell...? This is basically at a +5 enhancement level, isn’t it?

That was by top-tier Transcendent standards.

The best benchmark was the attack-type Twin Dragon Sword.

The attack-type Twin Dragon Sword was about average for a Transcendent.

And even if the attack-type Twin Dragon Sword were considered top-tier, Hyunsoo thought it still would not measure up to this sword.

What kind of attack power is this...?

The White Tiger Sword had attack power in the 1,300s.

But that was when it was in its Mythic state.

This sword, meanwhile, already had attack power in the 1,000s.

As far as Hyunsoo knew, there were exactly two artifacts in Ares with attack power in the 1,000s.

The White Tiger Sword. And the other one is this.

Of course, 1,001 was an awkwardly specific number.

But one thing was certain.

This sword is going to become my main artifact now.

There were several reasons proving that.

For one thing, the Sword for the One Who Follows the King was a ring-pommel saber.

On top of that, it came with a 40% increase ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ in attack speed.

At present, Hyunsoo could probably swing the White Tiger Sword about thirty times in ten seconds.

But with this sword, it would probably be around forty-five times in ten seconds.

Because of that 40% attack-speed effect.

And it was not as simple as saying the sword was lighter and easier to swing, therefore attack speed up 40% meant the number of swings doubled.

You had to take into account the user’s actual movements and the various kinds of fatigue that built up the more times the sword was swung.

Even so, the result was still forty-five swings.

And the damage is even higher? There’s no reason not to use it. On top of that, its critical hit rate increase is higher than the White Tiger Sword’s.

The White Tiger Sword raised critical hit chance by 120%.

This sword reached 140%.

And as for the skills, it was true that they were attack-oriented, and true that they were extremely powerful.

But there were also areas where it fell short of the Twin Dragon Sword.

The Twin Dragon Sword is insane in wide-area combat.

Accumulate, Chain, Cut Through in One Stroke, and so on.

But this sword excelled in single-target attacks.

The more disappointing part was that one sword also included effects intended for subordinates.

In other words, it was not made up of attack skills alone.

There was also something strange.

That was the passive skill Longing, which seemed to have been created by the modifier’s effect.

Hyunsoo tried to inspect it again.

But then—

[Passive Skill Longing cannot be inspected.]

[Please verify it directly through repeated testing.]

[Once verification is complete, its effect will be fully revealed.]

“???”

This was the first time he had seen a case like this, and Hyunsoo recalled Pureum’s usual claim.

There’s fun in the user finding things out for themselves.

Hyunsoo gave a crooked smile.

“Right, because it’s more fun if I discover it myself, so they’re telling me to go find it myself out of some beautiful intention... my ass.”

Hyunsoo was dumbfounded.

They really knew how to wear a person out.

And it also made this thought occur to him.

“Maybe this is less impressive than it sounds...”

What if attaching a word turned it into a modifier?

“Then there have to be thousands of them.”

Which meant it was an artifact effect that could have thousands of variants.

And the conclusion was that the ‘skill’ created by that probably could not be insanely good.

“Still, it’s better than not having it.”

Hyunsoo let out a hollow laugh.

And it definitely made him think one thing.

That he needed testing.

He could not even remember the last time he had fought users in a normal way.

After coming down from the Tower of Honor, he had fought with the White Tiger Sword.

That was not Hyunsoo’s pure martial power.

It had been hidden inside the White Tiger Sword.

Then right after that, he had immediately come to get power-leveled.

And after receiving all kinds of buffs here, he still had no proper grasp of his own strength.

Especially now, what he needed clearly was testing in combat against users.

Because war is coming soon.

And wars were, by definition, full of users.

On top of that, the moment One-Day White Flame ended, Hyunsoo immediately hid his level ranking.

From here on, he had to conceal himself.

Because his growth would become a far bigger variable if it stayed unseen than if it stayed visible.

And that applied to the amount of damage he himself did not yet clearly understand in user-versus-user combat as well.

There’s still one day left on the buff period... well, I’ll be farming with Saintess Aria too.

Hyunsoo looked at Karsel, who was lying there.

At this point, it almost seemed like he might be faking being dead.

“Lord Karsel?”

Even when called, Karsel did not get up.

But then...

“Let’s head back.”

JOLT—

“...An excellent idea, Brother.”

“?”

“...??”

“?”

“...???”

This was the first time Hyunsoo had ever seen such a bright smile on Karsel’s face.

In any case, Hyunsoo returned to Atlas in order to check his damage output.

*****

Intern Park Mingyu had graduated top of the class from Korea University’s newly established Department of Virtual Reality.

There were many departments Park could have chosen from, but there was one reason Park chose Virtual Reality.

Because Park had taken a great interest in the game Ares, which was praised as a second world.

And there were still countless things in Ares that users did not know, along with an enormous number of hidden elements.

There were also plenty of fascinating events the public never got to see.

The honor of getting to see those first from the front lines.

If one worked at Pureum, surely that ought to be possible.

And the place where Park could see the most of it was exactly where Park stood now, in the Special User Management Team.

And right now, what Park had been hoping for was about to appear before Park’s eyes.

I get to watch Hyunsoo test how much power he can put out against other users while wielding a new sword!?

For a moment, Intern Park felt as if Park’s chest were blazing.

But the excitement only lasted briefly, and Park’s thoughts turned to what Hyunsoo had said.

Is an artifact modifier really not that big a deal?

Hyunsoo’s reasoning had made sense.

“Are there really thousands of modifiers?”

Park asked Team Lead Kim and Associate Lee Jihee, both of whom looked crushed by overtime.

For some reason, Team Lead Kim’s face was colored by an indescribable tension.

Among the interns, Team Lead Kim was known as Kim the Poker Face.

Rumor had it that Lee Sejin had personally offered Kim the position of Korea branch chief, and Kim had boldly turned it down—a super-elite among elites.

And yet an elite like that was showing a tense expression?

Then Team Lead Kim spoke.

“Not even close. User Hyunsoo’s prediction missed the mark completely.”

“Huh?”

There were thousands of possible modifiers.

That meant a huge number of them could, in theory, be released.

So Park could not understand how Hyunsoo could have been that wrong.

Lee Jihee answered instead.

“Unfortunately, there are exactly one hundred modifiers in existence.”

“...!?”

One hundred.

Considering that the game was played by more than a billion people, that number suddenly felt drastically smaller.

That left Intern Park with another question.

“Then why wasn’t the skill Longing revealed right away?”

Lee Jihee looked at the monitor.

“User Hyunsoo is misunderstanding something. It’s not staying hidden because it’s less impressive than expected.”

“...Then why?”

“It’s staying hidden because it’s too incredible compared to expectations, and the system wants him to discover it himself.”

Intern Park was shocked.

Even if it was one out of a hundred, Park could not imagine that being possible.

At that moment—

Team Lead Kim began typing rapidly.

On the screen were several things that could become artifact modifiers.

“Modifiers vary wildly in how difficult they are to obtain, and their grades are all different. See that modifier called Valor?”

“Yes, I see it.”

“If you ranked them by grade, that one would be near the very bottom. It’s also one of the easiest to engrave. But the modifier Longing is different.”

“...”

“The modifier Longing is also a reward for the first person ever to obtain a modifier. It also produced synergy with ‘the one who follows the king,’ and because User Hyunsoo is the closest to becoming king, it was obtained through a chain reaction that fulfilled more than five separate conditions.”

“Could you explain that a little more simply?”

As the explanation grew more complicated, Intern Park said it out loud.

Team Lead Kim explained cleanly.

“The modifier Longing is one of the five strongest modifiers.”

Intern Park could not hide the expression of shock.

Park could not even imagine it.

He’s going to test the Sword for the One Who Follows the King with one of the strongest modifiers attached to it?

The excitement that had briefly cooled began boiling up like mad again.

And there was a clear reason for that too.

Because on the monitor screen, Hyunsoo had finally chosen the first target for his experiment.

—Long time no see.

It was Hyunsoo’s other rival.

Asura Kabel.