During their errands, Lucian discovered a crucial piece of information: the current tiline. It was currently sixteen years before the canon story began. The legendary Zeus Familia and Hera Familia had already successfully subjugated the King of the Land, Behemoth—one of the Three Great Quests. Right now, they were aggressively mobilizing their forces to launch an all-out war against the King of the Sea, Leviathan.
This ant that these two titan Familias hadn't yet been wiped off the map by the Black Dragon.
One year... Lucian fell into deep thought.
He wasn't sure if he could power-level fast enough to catch up, but if possible, he desperately wanted to prevent the complete annihilation of the Zeus and Hera Familias. If they fell, Orario would spiral into absolute chaos. The Evils, currently suppressed like sewer rats, would violently rise up, plunging the city into the 'Dark Age' that would terrorize it for the next seven years.
But what could he realistically do? He didn't even know much about the disaster himself, only that the One-Eyed Black Dragon would undergo an unexpected mutation that completely blindsided the gods. Even if he tried to warn them, explaining his intelligence source would be a nightmare. As a complete rookie—even an otherworldly one—trying to imdiately dictate world-altering events was pure arrogance. He still had ti; he'd just have to plan things out slowly.
Pushing the impending doom to the back of his mind, Lucian focused on the present.
By the ti they finished buying his supplies, it was already noon. The Hephaestus Familia had its own private cafeteria, and als were completely free for its mbers. However, a portion of the profits from any weapons forged and sold by the blacksmiths was funneled directly back into the Familia to maintain its operations.
For a novice smith, Hephaestus was more than willing to provide a financial safety net to get them through the difficult beginner phase. But she absolutely refused to coddle leeches.
(Yes, Hestia, I'm looking at you.)
That useless goddess had descended to the lower world six months before the main plot kicked off, spent three solid months mooching off the Hephaestus Familia, and was eventually thrown out onto the streets by a thoroughly fed-up Hephaestus. In Heaven, they were the closest of friends, practically sisters who would die for each other. But as a patron deity, Hephaestus had a rigid obligation to her own children. Even among the benevolent gods, she was known for fiercely protecting the interests of her Familia.
It was perfectly normal for a Familia to fund their deity's lifestyle, but Hephaestus never squandered her children's hard-earned wealth on frivolities; every Valis went back into the faction. Bluntly put: Hestia was welco to drain Hephaestus's personal wallet, but not the Familia's coffers. This strict, zero-tolerance policy was exactly how Hephaestus had earned her reputation as the most disciplined goddess in the pantheon.
Hestia and Hephaestus had been friends for hundreds of millions of years, so she obviously understood this line in the sand, which was why she hadn't held a grudge after getting the boot. Plus, Hephaestus had at least secured her a ruined church to sleep in, sparing her the indignity of sleeping in an alley.
This is painfully average, Lucian complained internally as he chewed.
Reading the subtle grimace on his face, Hephaestus sighed. "Just endure it for now. The food quality will improve as the Familia grows."
"I'm not that picky," Lucian replied diplomatically.
"Good." Seeing that he ant it, Hephaestus finally relaxed. She was honestly astonished by how seamlessly he was adapting to a completely alien environnt.
After lunch, Hephaestus took a brief rest before diving back into her administrative duties. Lucian, anwhile, retreated to a quiet corner of the courtyard to dissect his new magical arsenal.
I'll permanently forge the Sli Armant tonight. That way, I can drain my magic completely and just pass out. Starting tomorrow, he'd be apprenticing under the Goddess of Forging herself. His high-school-graduate brain was sharp, but his sluggish, physically weak body would definitely bottleneck him. To maximize his learning curve and avoid looking like a complete idiot in front of Hephaestus, he desperately needed a buff to his cognitive processing.
"[Rule Creation]." This specific magic was frustratingly vague. Conceptually, a 'rule' was a law that dictated the flow and operation of a system. Usually, it implied an agreed-upon regulation governing a group, where compliance was mandatory and violation resulted in severe consequences.
When translated into raw magic, the chanics were a bit abstract, but the core principle remained: a mandate engineered by Lucian that reality was forced to obey. That was the conclusion he reached after so initial testing. So far, he had isolated three primary applications.
First was Rule Establishnt. By forging the foundational logic of a concept, he could drastically increase a spell's malleability, significantly slash the ntal cost of his [Magic Creation] or [Annihilation Maker], and dramatically boost the structural stability of his constructs.
Second was Rule Execution. For example, he could decree: 'All incoming attacks directed at will be intercepted'. The interception itself would be carried out via karmic manipulation—a hostile fireball might misfire, an ally might randomly step in to block it, or a defensive spell would automatically trigger. The more chaotic and reality-bending the required intervention, the steeper the ntal tax. If the cost exceeded his mana pool, the rule's absolute authority would degrade. If the attack vastly overpowered him, the rule would shatter entirely.
Third was Rule Penalty. Lucian could impose a restriction, such as strictly forbidding anyone from attacking him. The mont an enemy violated that law, Lucian could instantly trigger a pre-programd punishnt. Lightning strikes, debilitating curses, spontaneous combustion—all karmic retributions whose lethal output scaled dynamically with the power gap between him and his attacker.
Admittedly, as a standalone combat skill, it was far clunkier than he had hoped. But when chained together with his other two spells, the synergy was absolutely broken.
Instead of relying on random chance to block a fireball, he could manually set the rule to trigger a specific, low-cost spell like a water wall. The ntal cost would be significantly cheaper than casting the barrier manually, and the system would automatically calculate the exact thickness needed to absorb the impact perfectly. That was its combat utility.
On the support side, Lucian could lay down a simple passive rule: 'While actively receiving instruction, my focus and learning comprehension are exponentially multiplied'. With that logic locked in, he could spawn a magic beast to act as an external hard drive to force-feed him knowledge, or engineer a spell that passively burned ntal energy to supercharge his brain.
Both variations required different foundational rules. Whether birthing a beast or weaving a spell, as long as the creation strictly adhered to the established law, the mana cost would plumt while the ability's ceiling skyrocketed.
It's a chanic, but not a straightforward one. Becoming an invincible, rule-bending glitch in the matrix wasn't going to be an overnight process. But with enough grinding, it was an absolute certainty.
Lucian already had a blueprint in mind, locking in his very first custom spell: [Focus Magic].
The human hardware was incredibly robust; the only real difference between a genius and a fool was processor utilization. Using magic to overclock his own brain was vastly superior to relying on an external parasite.
The only downside was that [Focus Magic] was a massive drain on stamina. To counter this, Lucian engineered a complentary magic beast: the [Phantom Butterfly].
This fragile creature possessed a localized ti-reversal magic capable of physically rewinding Lucian's bodily state. While he could have just created sothing that directly pumped him full of stamina, Lucian had realized a terrifying loophole in his skill set: any spell tethered to a [Rule Creation] possessed a standardized baseline cost.
In layman's terms: casting a spell to rely recover lost stamina cost the exact sa amount of energy as casting a spell to completely rewind his physical tiline. With a few minor tweaks to the rule's paraters, Lucian could easily whip up a self-healing spell that rewound catastrophic, fatal injuries suffered seconds ago, snapping him from the brink of death straight back to peak condition.
Simply put: a basic healing spell and a reality-denying causality-reversal spell had the exact sa price tag. Furthermore, channeling that ridiculous temporal magic through a spawned beast was dramatically cheaper than casting it raw.
In his arsenal, [Magic Creation] was the raw engine, [Annihilation Maker] was the specialized chassis, and [Rule Creation] was the nitro boost that shattered the speed limit.
So this is what it ans to be a broken chanic... He had severely underestimated his own kit. It was beautifully, disgustingly overpowered!
The only glaring flaw was that rewinding his physical state couldn't refill his ntal energy. Wait, no—technically it did refill it, but the mana spent to cast the rewind perfectly canceled out the mana he got back. It was a net zero transaction.
And scaling wouldn't fix it. Even if he leveled up, the spell would always act as a percentage-based drain. That was the brutal reality of [Rule Creation]: the cost scaled inversely with the target's strength. As Lucian grew stronger, rewinding his own existence would demand exponentially more power. A fair trade for immortality, really.
. . .
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