God-Tier Enhancement: My Upgrades Never Fail-Chapter 266: Episode _Sixth Awakening (3)

4.

The difference between +0 and +1 is negligible.

At best, the stat increase is 5%. Even if a master of Enhancement like Han Simin succeeded and triggered an additional stat amplification, it would only be around 7%.

Naturally, the success rate is high, and the cost is not that great.

For the average person, the idea of paying a flat $150 per enhancement attempt—and then, considering the steadily rising price of Gold, paying the Enhancer’s fee on top of that for a total of around $300—just to get such a tiny effect is absurd.

Even so, for users who had played Fantastic World long enough to get into it, raised their levels to a decent point, and finally obtained a weapon they planned to use for life—or at least for over a year, until they found their next “lifetime” weapon—they would gladly shoulder that burden and invest without hesitation for that tiny increase.

In Enhancement.

It had become a kind of trend, a pattern, a rite of passage that everyone had to go through since the early days of the game.

All because of one person: Han Simin.

Anyone who had seen the variables he created through Enhancement and the flower-strewn path he had walked since then could not possibly deny the efficiency of the process.

Of course, even without him, the power of Enhancement would have been discovered eventually.

For low-level, low-grade items, the 5% increase from +0 to +1 often didn’t even amount to a visible stat difference. But once you hit level 50 and started looking at Unique-grade or higher weapons, even a mere 1% increase in stats was not something you could afford to ignore.

If that was true for +1, then what about +2?

+3? +4?

5%, 10%, 15%, 20%.

The stat increased by 5% with each enhancement stacked until it reached a level that could never be dismissed.

A level 50 Unique item was on par with a level 70 Rare item. With Enhancement, it became comparable to a Unique of that level. From there, if you piled on more Enhancements, its attack power would surpass it.

This was all the more true in Fantastic World, where raw attack power wasn’t everything.

Unless the level gap was truly massive—say, a difference of over 50 levels—the prevailing wisdom was to prioritize special attributes and then add Enhancements.

That was how things had become.

Naturally, when a higher-grade weapon dropped, you would toss your old one without a second thought, but attack power was secondary. In a game where victory and defeat were decided by individual skill and the difference in your stats, this was inevitable.

In that environment, once Enhancement levels passed +10, people started ignoring item grade altogether.

Han Simin had been decked out in +15 gear from an absurdly low level, but because his classes—Enhancer and Tamer—weren’t suited to fully exploiting that overwhelming attack power, people would just think, ’Ah, he hits hard,’ when he lazily swung his hammer. For combat classes, however, once they passed +10 and entered the range where percentage efficiency jumped to 20%, 80%, and so on, they went completely berserk.

Why else would corporate chairmen have tried to secure Enhancement rights from Han Simin using their personal fortunes?

Why else would Kenji have poured in so much money, even while knowing he was being taken for a ride?

As time passed, users who had once considered obtaining a Unique-grade item the pinnacle of success were now seeing Special and Legendary items appear. As the levels of those items rose, special attributes that could create variables in combat began to appear as well.

At this point, the importance of Enhancement had risen to a level that could hardly be expressed in words.

That was how it was for users.

But here, we were talking about the Demon King.

The other top-tier demons had not yet had a clear experience of the current Demon King, but she was still the Demon King.

The first succubus to successfully approach the previous Demon King and kill him!

Her level was over 200, and she was a mutant whose existence had only been passed down as legend among the succubus race!

And into her hands had been placed an Epic Legendary-grade weapon.

At +13.

If it had been Han Simin, he would have been unimpressed.

’Come on. What is +13 really going to change? At best, her attack power went up by, what, 200%?’

To him, a weapon only existed to answer one question: could he kill the enemy in a single swing or not?

That was the inescapable fate of his class.

The sorrow of an Enhancer who received absolutely no attack coefficient bonuses.

But Epia was different.

“Thank you.”

“Thank me for what? We still have a long way to go. You think you can kill them all with just that? You should be mentally preparing yourself.”

She was a combat-type Demon King.

And at the same time, a demon of the Illusion Dream type.

FWOOSH—

The moment her body vanished, darkness fell over the place where tens of thousands of demons stood.

What was a modest increase for Simin translated into an exponential boost in efficiency for Epia.

“Have a nightmare.”

In the darkness, her low voice spread.

There was no trace of the bubbly girl who made you wonder if she could really be the Demon King, nor of the pure image seen in the videos.

What emerged was the Demon King’s true majesty.

It was a command.

The Specialist was the only one unaffected by the darkness and the mist of dreams, but Grokile, who was caught within it, was shaking all over.

It was a reaction that did not suit him at all.

“Hey. What’s wrong with you?”

“...That is the real Demon King. The true form of the Demon King I once saw.”

He trembled from head to toe, head bowed, unable to even dare face the darkness.

At the same time, Han Simin remembered what Grokile had said before.

The strongest in history, the worst, cruel, and merciless Demon King!

He hadn’t paid it much mind at the time.

He had assumed they would never meet anyway, and his head had been filled with the thought, ’How strong could she really be?’

And that hadn’t changed even now.

’So what if she’s strong? She’s just some punk.’

Still, there were tens of thousands of demons.

It wasn’t as if they were a random rabble. There were dozens of top-tier demons just below the Demon King, hundreds of upper demons as strong as Grokile, and tens of thousands of lesser demons whose sole purpose was to block Epia’s senses and draw her attention.

How could she possibly kill them all alone?

The darkness that neutralized those demons was certainly cool and spectacular, and in a situation like this, where they were so outnumbered, it was an excellent choice. But it couldn’t last long.

That was Han Simin’s cold assessment.

His judgment was based on the premise that Fantastic World was a realistic game.

Unless it was some half-assed, shoddy game, there was no way the developers would set the Demon King’s stats this high.

Likewise, Epia had said she had killed the previous Demon King to take the throne.

That meant the Demon King’s combat power should be such that handling more than two top-tier demons at once would be difficult.

Even if it had been a surprise attack and she had laid a trap, there were over ten of them now.

That was how he had been thinking.

But he was wrong.

Han Simin’s judgment was off.

Even as time passed, the darkness did not lift.

Thousands of the lowest-tier demons and monsters couldn’t even muster the courage to resist; they were trapped in the dream of darkness, screaming as their dark magic was completely drained before they collapsed. From the low demons upward, they went berserk trying to wake from the dream and ended up in a state where they couldn’t fight at all. And the upper demons, who could at least still fight, had to offer up their necks to the +13 twin swords before they could even fully regain their senses.

“Gyaaah!”

“S-Spare me!”

Demons died no differently from humans.

When they sensed death, they begged for their lives.

But there was no mercy in Epia’s hands as she ignored the red blood soaking her pure white dress and dripping from her twin swords to the ground.

“...The Demon Sword of Extinction has grown stronger.”

“Huh? What Demon Sword of Extinction?”

Grokile explained the fundamental reason for the demons’ fear.

“Those twin swords contain the power to annihilate demons. If a demon dies to those swords, they may be annihilated. That is why they fear them. I fear them, and so do the demons now facing that sword.”

On the blade Han Simin had checked, there had been no such attribute.

Which meant it had been on the other sword.

He had been too busy enhancing to check, so Han Simin simply nodded.

’Really? That makes me want it even more.’

It was an attribute that was a perfect hard counter to demons.

And that attribute was on a succubus’s swords.

’It was probably something the previous Enhancer added.’

Nodding to himself, Han Simin watched Epia’s performance through the flashes of light that burst out moment by moment.

The moment he admitted his judgment had been wrong, it felt like watching a spectacular movie.

When the top-tier demons who had appeared with such bluster finally grouped up and began to show why they had risen to that rank, standing together against the Demon King, he actually tore open the popcorn he had stored in his subspace.

He hadn’t even asked for it, and yet they were creating content for him on their own.

If this were a world where he could stay as long as he wanted, he would have been seriously tempted to milk this place for all it was worth.

Especially since the revenue from just the first video of the previous Story Quest had put over $10 million into his account.

He adjusted the angle and watched.

The suffocating feeling he had had earlier—wondering how on earth they would break through those monsters and escape alive—was gone.

Epia’s darkness, which had covered the world, now felt almost cozy.

“Die!”

The Demon King and the twelve top-tier demons finally clashed in earnest.

With that, the darkness that had blanketed everything vanished.

The army that had looked like a swarm of ants had evaporated like a dream, leaving only a field of corpses. Only a few thousand demons remained, charging at the Demon King.

Of course, it still didn’t look like the Demon King could win.

It was still thousands to one.

Their main fighting force hadn’t even been exhausted yet.

The demons had had their dark magic drained in the darkness, but the Demon King must also have spent a great deal of her own to use that kind of skill.

Yet the feeling was completely different from before.

“Why does it feel like Epia is going to win?”

And it didn’t feel like just a baseless hunch.

*

Epia, drenched in blood, looked both chilling and seductive.

Was this not the perfect image of the Demon King’s true nature?

Blood ran down her twin swords, dripping to the ground, and the corruption of her once pure white dress made onlookers swallow hard.

Her ethereal appearance only amplified the effect.

And she was smiling, the corners of her lips curled up.

“Now it really begins!”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”

She answered one of the chattering top-tier demons with a chic retort and stepped forward with an easy, relaxed gait.

He was right.

The war was only beginning now.

Her dream of darkness, which had reduced tens of thousands of demons to mere thousands, was a powerful wide-area ultimate that consumed almost all of her dark magic at once and couldn’t be used repeatedly. As they were seeing now, it also had a clear, fundamental weakness as a succubus skill: it didn’t work on demons of upper rank and above.

She had sacrificed her dark magic to thin out the tens of thousands of demons and to ensure no stray attacks would reach Han Simin’s side. She had accepted the penalty going into the real fight, but she had no regrets.

Her unwavering smile and unhurried steps proved it.

There was only one reason.

“You picked the wrong time.”

“...What?”

She was strong.

FWOOSH—

“If you wanted to kill me, you should have tried right after I left the Demon King’s Castle.”

She had grown so much stronger that she no longer needed any world-shrouding dark magic.

The +13 twin swords casually sliced through the necks of three top-tier demons.