Chapter 25
Low-Rank God Lee Shin (2)
In the wake of the extremely dangerous accident, the Korean Hunter Academy entered a period of reorganization. There were many cases like Instructor Oh Seong-cheol, who had grown complacent and only cared about getting his contract renewed, and an inspection by active Hunters, including Seong Chan-yang, had uncovered outdated training guidelines.
While everyone worked tirelessly for the future of the Hunters, Choi Bom was given a short leave of absence. Her father, Choi Seung-baek, had been so distraught that he had even shed tears, but after collecting himself, he came to Lee Shin to express his gratitude.
“Having you around puts my mind at ease, Shin.”
“Is Bom going to keep being a Hunter?”
“She wants to. It seems seeing Instructor Choi this time left a deep impression on her. She’s scared, but at the same time, she feels like she’s finally found a role model. She says she wants to become a Hunter who saves people.”
Lee Shin would undoubtedly continue to worry about her, but he had no intention of stopping Choi Bom from following the path she had chosen.
After all, that was the destiny Choi Bom had been born with.
If Choi Bom walked the path meant for her, then Lee Shin simply had to do what he needed to do.
“Son, are you feeling all right?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not hurt anywhere? We were terrified when we saw the news. If you were going somewhere that dangerous, you could’ve at least told us beforehand. You’re usually so well-behaved, and then suddenly you go and pull something huge like this. You’re just like your father....”
While every media outlet was in an uproar over the appearance of a historic Hunter, Lee Shin’s parents were concerned not with wealth or fame, but with Lee Shin’s safety.
They were worried that their son might have gotten hurt.
“Shin, Dad doesn’t care what you choose to do, but I don’t want you getting hurt. I know that in a world like this, someone has to do these things, but as your parents, we can’t help being selfish and wishing our son could just live comfortably somewhere safe.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’d be shocked too if you turned on the TV one day and heard that your mom had gone off to fight monsters, or that your dad had gone to a battlefield, wouldn’t you? We know you did a good thing, but... to your mom and dad, our one son is more precious than a hundred other people in this world.”
His father, who was usually so playful, was serious this time.
“No matter how incredible our son becomes, that will never change. Don’t ever forget that. You’ll always be our little boy.”
“Yes.”
Only then did the two of them smile.
“Well then, our son made a ton of money, so let’s go eat something delicious.”
While the whole world clamored that he had accomplished something that would go down in human history since the dawn of the new millennium, or that a hero who would save Earth had appeared, Lee Shin spent an ordinary, modest day in his living room.
The most precious kind of ordinary life.
“But my name keeps coming up everywhere. Doesn’t it bother you?”
“When has people talking about you ever been anything new? Shin, you remember that man who lived next door when you were little, right? His business failed and he was depressed, but then you picked the winning lottery numbers for the next week, and he won first prize. That caused quite the commotion.”
“Something like that happened?”
“Fortunately, he was a good man, so word never got out. He’s the one who sent us that beef last Chuseok too. Your dad still goes out drinking with him sometimes when their schedules line up. He helped us a lot when we opened our store as well.”
“Aha.”
“And when you were little, you’d walk around saying all sorts of uncanny things to strangers after seeing right through them. You had tons of people following you around because of it. That shaman who kept telling you to undergo a spirit initiation started following you around back then too.”
Just as his parents said, the young Lee Shin had never known how to hide how unusual he was.
As a result, he had attracted a great deal of attention.
Strangely enough, however, he had never once gotten mixed up with anyone harboring sinister intentions or a malicious disposition.
It was almost as though they had been filtered out.
“Anyway, it’s pretty amazing that our Shin can even close rifts.”
“What amazes me more is that it’s already been twenty-four years since the rifts first opened. I remember they appeared a few years after the IMF crisis, but has it really been that long already? Time sure flies.”
“Was the world different before the rifts opened?”
At Lee Shin’s question, his parents scratched their heads before answering.
“People’s lives are pretty much the same wherever you go. It wasn’t that different.”
“It was chaos when they first opened, but everyone adapted surprisingly quickly. That was thanks to the Hunters risking their lives to stop them. Back in the early days, we really thought the world was ending, but your grandmother said the Korean War was scarier. She said people killing people was more frightening than monsters killing people.”
“Your mother’s generation really did have it rough.”
As they spoke, his father’s phone chimed.
Lee Shin’s father, who had been eating, picked up his phone. When loud background music began playing from it, his mother frowned.
“Oh, honestly. You were finally acting like a proper head of the family today, and you couldn’t even keep it up for one meal before going back to your game?”
“Ah, I forgot to do my daily raid....”
“I told you not to play while you’re eating!”
Even as his mother smacked him on the back, Lee Shin’s father grinned sheepishly.
Watching him, Lee Shin suddenly asked,
“Is that the game you’ve been playing for a while?”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. I’ve been playing it for a long time.”
“The one where you build structures and develop a civilization, right?”
“You want to play too, son? There’s an event going on right now where I get five hundred diamonds on my account if a friend enters my code, so Dad will give you his referral code and—”
His father screamed as he was smacked on the back again.
Lee Shin blinked.
“No. I wanted to ask you for some help.”
“Help?”
His father looked puzzled.
Lee Shin continued,
“I don’t really know much about that kind of thing.”
A transparent window hovered before Lee Shin’s eyes.
「The Day of the Lord has dawned.」
「Current Divine Power: 73,231」
The status window displayed a number that couldn’t even be compared to what he had possessed on the first Day of the Lord.
As his father blinked beside him as though wondering what on earth he was talking about, another chime rang out and a new status window appeared.
「TIP: Do you not trust my guidance?」
「TIP: (:」
It wasn’t that.
It was just better to have more than one person look at it, wasn’t it?
***
Compared to the 100 Divine Power he had received on the first Day of the Lord, he had gained nearly seven hundred times as much this time.
He had earned plenty of Divine Power from hunting monsters and destroying the rift, but the biggest contribution came from the enormous number of his unofficial believers.
Even if each one provided only a tiny amount of Divine Power, sheer numbers were a force unto themselves.
The number of unofficial believers was rising in real time, and information about the religion would occasionally appear on internet communities.
—Wait, now there’s even a religion?
—Some cult leader saw his chance and jumped on the bandwagon.
Public opinion was far from favorable.
Most people simply regarded him as another run-of-the-mill cult leader.
Though for someone like that, the religious leader’s passion in the videos was suspiciously intense.
Anyway, putting all that aside....
「TIP: You can use your overflowing Divine Power to beautifully develop your worlds! For now, I recommend creating a [Sanctuary]!」
It was time to put his newly acquired resources to use.
“A sanctuary?”
「TIP: It allows you to exert your influence even in places outside the worlds you possess. Just like how you were able to send your believers to the sacred space created by the believer Seong Chan-yang!」
Hearing the status window’s explanation jogged Lee Shin’s memory.
「TIP: Furthermore, a Sanctuary is recognized as part of your world, making it safer, and you can use [World Observation] to connect to the worlds you possess without consuming Interference Power!」
It was a useful feature in more ways than one.
For now, Lee Shin followed the status window’s recommendation.
「300 Divine Power will be consumed.」
「You have created a [Sanctuary] on Earth No. 1.」
At the same time, light spread outward in a brilliant wave, and Lee Shin’s entire house began to sparkle.
His whole house had been transformed into a [Sanctuary].
「Small Sanctuary [Tier 5]」
「Upgrade Cost: 1,000 Divine Power」
「Current Effects: [Low-Rank Recovery], [Intermediate Purification]」
When he looked around, the status window followed his gaze.
The moment he looked at the remote control, another status window appeared.
Would you like to use [World Interference]?
When he spent a small amount of Interference Power, he was able to lift the remote control from afar.
It seemed that the Interference Power he had previously only been able to use in his small worlds could also be used within a Sanctuary in reality.
「TIP: Next, I recommend creating a [Sacred Relic] and constructing additional [Buildings]! As the Saintess of the Lee Shin Church, Eve still does not possess any symbolic item of her own!」
At present, the only things Lee Shin could choose from under Creation were Buildings, Sanctuaries, Items, and Sacred Relics.
Of those, the status window was recommending Sacred Relics and Buildings.
After creating the Sanctuary, Lee Shin thought for a moment before heading into the living room, where his father was sitting on the sofa.
His father had a blank look on his face.
“Shin, what was that sparkling just now?”
“My ability.”
“Oh, really? You didn’t cause some kind of accident, did you?”
“No.”
Immediate acceptance.
Lee Shin sat down beside his father.
“Do you remember what I told you before?”
“Aha. You’re finally going to try it?”
Lee Shin had once explained to his father that he possessed an ability that allowed him to develop and manage small worlds.
He had told him there were functions that allowed him to construct buildings and interfere with those worlds in various ways, and that it was remarkably similar to the game his father played.
“Read them out to me one by one. Dad can’t see what you’re seeing.”
The characteristics of the dwarves from Small but Deadly World, the characteristics of Eerie but Lonely World and an explanation of its skeletons....
Lee Shin told him everything he knew about his small worlds and the friends who lived in them, along with all the options he could create through Creation.
And then—
“It told you to construct Buildings and create a Sacred Relic?”
“Yes.”
“Nah, that’s wrong. Looking at the options, you said a Sacred Relic costs ten thousand Divine Power, right? And it’s not even something all your units can share. It’s a bound item specifically for that tiny Eve girl.... You can’t dump all your resources into one unit in the early game. The most important thing is strengthening your foundation.”
“Foundation...?”
“Save your Divine Power and build more structures.”
For some reason, his father looked excited.
“You said these otherworldly invaders or whatever keep sending scouts and rushing you, right? You’ve stopped them twice, so you’ve bought yourself some time. Then you need to use your minera— No, Divine Power, and get your resources circulating. From what I can tell, your faction gets stronger in the late game the further you advance its tech tree. With a faction like this, you need to have some guts, turtle up, and scale. This is Terran OP. Totally Terran OP.”
There was something Lee Shin didn’t know.
“Whoa, if they can manipulate iron and fire, then they should be able to repair their own buildings even if they get damaged, right? They can restore the structures themselves and mass-produce tons of equipment. This is completely broken! The recommended buildings are a library and an observatory? Nah. Why compensate for weaknesses when you can maximize your strengths? Start with the forge and training ground....”
Lee Shin’s father, Lee Yeong-hwan.
In his younger days, he had swept through PC café tournaments as a top-tier real-time strategy game player. Even now, he would occasionally create rooms labeled Beginners Only and amuse himself by massacring unsuspecting newbies.
A seasoned veteran who currently held sixth place in the rankings of the mobile strategy simulation game Great Kingdom!
「TIP: H-Huh?」
Once Lee Yeong-hwan learned that this wasn’t merely a game but an actual world within his son’s ability, he became even more serious than usual.
And under Lee Yeong-hwan’s guidance, Lee Shin’s small worlds began undergoing a drastic transformation....
.....
「71,000 Divine Power will be consumed.」
「Upgrading [Forge] to Tier 1.」
「[Forge] has reached its maximum level.」
「A new Building, [Factory], can now be created.」
「Creating [Training Ground].」
「Upgrading [Training Ground] to Tier 3.」
「Creating [Fortress].」
「Upgrading [Fortress] to Tier 2.」
「The technological and productive capabilities of the ‘Red City of Gepetto’ have increased explosively. The dwarves sing with joy as they reclaim the glory of their past!」
「Special Synergy: “Song of Steel and Fire”」
「For 180 days, the dwarves will work even harder.」
「For 180 days, no ‘Failed Products’ will be produced!」
「For 180 days, the probability of a ‘Master Craftsman’ emerging among the blacksmiths will increase dramatically.」
Ding!
The status window sent him another message.
「TIP: As expected, your father is great as well!」
「TIP: I knew this would happen, hahahat!」
「TIP: °.令^(0vの)「令..」
It didn’t seem like it had known at all, but there was no particular reason to point that out.
“That should be good enough. Normally, minera— Ah, damn it, I keep using terms from other games. Anyway, in games like this, you don’t hoard resources. You spend them immediately and keep your economy moving. The most important thing is making sure no resources go to waste.”
“Yes.”
“The unfortunate part is that you can’t produce food. In the end, unless you personally bring them food and water, they can’t become self-sufficient.... That might actually be the most urgent problem. If their population eventually grows into the hundreds or thousands, even if they’re all tiny, feeding them is going to become a burden.”
His father had a point.
Just then, the status window chimed again.
「TIP: There is a way to solve that!」
「TIP: But before that, let’s check the new things you’ve obtained!」
New things?
「TIP: You currently have one unclaimed Legendary-grade reward, as well as [Community], a new function that was unlocked when you became a Lower-Rank God!」