WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: WeTried
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◈ I Made a Tier List the Transcendents Are Obsessed With ◈
Chapter 35: Be Cursed!
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Every being has a story of their own.
Those individual stories grow larger as they intertwine with others, and when those larger stories gather together, they become a Narrative.
I knew how tremendous the power gained at the end of that process could be.
In the original work, the protagonist wrote all those Narratives personally.
In this life, I intended for Judy and Wendy to write those Narratives themselves as well.
My role would be to make the path they were originally meant to walk a little easier.
So what should I do?
"Mm, this tastes fucking awful..."
I had neither the courage nor the ability to write a heroic epic.
No matter how you looked at it, I was just an ordinary human.
I was merely an ordinary person who knew a little about this world because I had reread the original work countless times and persistently questioned its gaps through messages and comments.
That was why I had no intention of interfering with the Narratives they would write.
Likewise, I had no intention of getting any more involved in the war among the stars currently unfolding in the Gallery.
Still, my own story must be steadily piling up even now.
I did not know what kind of Legacy Garment I would eventually receive, but it certainly would not be insignificant.
"Urgh."
That was why I planned to use a little trick.
While repeatedly cultivating and cramming down all sorts of spiritual treasures and medicines, reaching 8-Star was not difficult at all.
[ One Life, One Birth, One Shedding, One True Art ]
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There was no reason to hesitate.
My total Points had already surpassed six million.
At this point, I could wield a meaningful amount of Karmic power using Gallery Points alone.
A piercing pain, as though an awl had been driven into my head, struck for a moment after I accepted. Then it faded.
What filled me during that brief process was knowledge. Simply recalling it allowed every circulation of the cultivation art to proceed naturally.
...No matter how I thought about it, that was an absurd perk.
"About fifteen days, then."
I could reach 8-Star in roughly three days.
The reason the cycle was actually faster than going from 6-Star to 7-Star was that I had pushed my realm a little harder this time.
After cultivating myself, I could tell. At this pace, I would not lose anything in cultivation even without pursuing perfect stability.
It meant that next time, I could cultivate a little faster.
"...Though I don't know how many times I'll be able to do this."
One Life, One Birth, One Shedding, One True Art.
...It was a cultivation art developed by a cultivator who could have been called a freak in the original work.
They were probably still alive, but they did not play a major role in the original work. For various reasons.
In any case, this art had an extremely unusual feature.
For Mages, there were the so-called Major Realms, divided into System Magic, Concept Magic, the path of magic, Transcendent Magic, Hierarchical Magic, and Magic Emperor.
When one was ready to break through the boundary between those Major Realms, they could increase their own potential by losing all accumulated Minor Realms.
So if I reached 8-Star and then used this art to become a 1-Star Concept Mage, I could become a stronger 1-Star than before.
This still applied when a Minor Realm rose.
Of course, the increase in potential was fucking small compared to the loss of realm, so most people did not even look at it.
A few races born with disgustingly long lifespans learned it early in their cultivation.
But I was perfectly suited to this cultivation art.
Put bluntly, if I just kept raising my cultivation realm, I could transcend in no time.
That was because the Archive contained materials with every insight beneath transcendence.
As long as I crammed down spiritual medicine of an appropriate grade at the right time, I could raise my realm without facing any obstacles.
Unfortunately, it seemed I could not apply this to anyone else.
Still, Judy and Wendy would both grow well on their own, so I was not too disappointed.
"I'll be going to the Great Heavenly World as late as possible anyway."
There was absolutely no benefit to breaking through the dimensional boundary and ascending to either the Upper Realm or a Great Heavenly World right away.
Therefore, I planned to transcend when Judy or Wendy did, or later.
As long as my timing matched the main story, that would be enough.
Until then, I could repeat the rise of my realm forever.
I would send Wendy and Judy to the major events, while I stayed home, ate spiritual medicine, and browsed the Gallery.
"I sound like complete trash..."
If someone wanted to give me a derogatory label, I could not object to being called a "resting cultivator," but I could not deny this was the most efficient method available to me.
I hoped everyone would work hard...
* * *
Perhaps her essence had not changed, because Judy was still not talented at making things, just as in the original work.
You could call it endearing human imperfection, but being on the receiving end of something meant to show that imperfection was simply painful.
"Is it good?"
"...Yeah."
I smiled as I ate tomato pasta that was closer to sour-and-sweet than sweet-and-sour.
It was not so bad that I could not eat it, but the tomato pasta, which had surely followed a fairly orthodox Western recipe, somehow tasted like bland Napolitan.
It had transcended the 13th Dimension to serve me fusion Western cuisine in the style of a neighboring country from my past life.
That truly was an Authority worthy of a protagonist...
"Yay, I wuv pasta! Did Judy make it?"
"Yep! Sis!"
"Let's see how it tastes... Bleegh."
Fortunately, Wendy spared me from suffering by personally revealing that there was something fundamentally wrong with the pasta.
I did not have the heart to tell my adorable adopted daughter, "You have no talent for cooking."
"...Why did you force yourself to eat it?"
"No, I really did think it was good."
"You're lying... It tastes like tomatoes that've been stepped on..."
Damn it, Judy.
Were you a genius even at judging food?
After tasting her food again, Judy summed up every impression I had felt in one self-assessment.
Then I nodded as she declared she would give up cooking. She had plenty of other strengths, so it did not matter.
This was the path to utilitarian happiness...
In any case, after the morning uproar involving "tomato pasta trampled by leather shoes," Judy, Wendy, and I prepared to leave the Magic Tower together.
"So we're going outside Hyeondeok City?"
"Yeah, we should. Is this your first time leaving the city, Judy?"
"Yes. I've never left before. Unless it was when I was so young that I can't remember..."
There was nothing funnier than a child saying, "When I was little."
"I'm a little nervous. A mission..."
"You came along last time too. What's there to be nervous about?"
"That time, you blew everything up by yourself as soon as we got there."
"If it seems dangerous this time too, I'll do the same."
That was only natural.
I had no intention whatsoever of putting them in danger.
That was why I had deliberately taken on an easier mission.
"Come on, take my hands."
Judy and Wendy each took one of my hands.
Then, immediately afterward, I used the ring's spatial power.
The view before us shifted.
The three of us arrived at the edge of a solidly paved road.
"...Is this Gangju?"
"Yeah. Probably."
Four-wheeled carriages powered by mana rather than horsepower bustled along.
People wore somewhat old-fashioned clothes, and the atmosphere was gloomier than Hyeondeok City's.
A sharp metallic smell reached my nose.
It looked remarkably like Gangju City as it had been described in the original work, so we had probably arrived in the right place.
Seriously, what an absurdly overpowered item.
Knowing a place was enough to use Spatial Teleportation, so I never had to worry about travel time.
Of course, it had used up sixty percent of my total mana. Still, there was no chance of being harmed in Gangju, a lower-ranked city than Hyeondeok City.
"That place over there. Isn't that the place we saw earlier?"
"I think so, sis."
Wendy pointed to a black roof beyond the bridge that stretched along the paved road.
I nodded and was about to take their hands again, but after seeing Judy's face, I changed my mind.
"...Wow."
It was more rundown than Hyeondeok City, but the city had a charm of its own.
The neatly laid-out roads and the clear stream flowing beneath the bridge were quite beautiful.
Judy's gaze had been captured by the view.
"We're not in a hurry. Want to look around the city a little?"
"Can we?"
"Of course!"
"...Why are you answering?"
"Am I wrong?"
"You're not."
At that, Wendy grabbed Judy's hand and ran off.
Where had the person who said she was nervous gone?
I could only stare at them in slight disbelief.
* * *
The former Head of the Precept Court, Celestial Wind Daoist, felt the greatest fury of their life.
A great undertaking that would have been accomplished within tens of millions of years at most had been destroyed by some unknown thing.
"Oz... Oz... You damned bitch...!!!"
Grrrk.
No matter how much fury Celestial Wind vented while grinding their teeth, the current situation did not change.
That fact was unbearable.
Had they ever been in such a position before?
Born almost simultaneously with the 13th Dimension, they had accomplished everything they wanted as a Venerable acknowledged by all.
How could they have known that they would become a miserable wretch wandering through the Chaotic Rift like a ghost?
Screeeech!
Woooo...
In a place filled with nothing but strange noises and chaos yin energy, they had no choice but to endure the pain continually inflicted on their soul.
Faced with the grotesque pain that felt as though their entire body were freezing solid, their hatred grew ever greater.
"You damned bitch...! I won't let you get away with this!!!"
How long would they have to endure in this rift?
Even they did not know the answer.
If they returned to a Great Heavenly World belonging to the 13th Dimension, every sort of vermin would surely come for their throat.
So even amid that burning fury, they had no choice but to slowly die.
Whenever pain seeped into their true soul, unbearable rage boiled up within them.
"...You should feel it too."
Celestial Wind eventually carried out the greatest revenge they could enact in their current circumstances.
They decided to sacrifice a considerable portion of the Dao attainment they had accumulated and some of their true soul's vitality to launch baleful force.
The result would surely be disappointing considering the enormous price they paid, but Celestial Wind, blinded by revenge, did not calculate any other gains or losses.
As long as he could make her feel even a little of this pain, nothing else mattered.
Heavenly Fate Flying Baleful Curse.
He unleashed a vicious curse that would call forth a disaster capable of shaking the target's fate.
No matter how extraordinary his opponent was, she would suffer some degree of harm!
"Kuahahahahaha!"
...That thought, and Celestial Wind's wild laughter, came to nothing.
Because the curse technique had not precisely identified its target, more than half its power collapsed when its assumption that the target was a female Absolute Deity proved false.
After passing through the Chaotic Rift, crossing dimensions, and growing weaker as it crossed the boundary between the Upper Realm and Lower Realm, the curse faded with pitifully weak power.
"Ah, fuck. If you've taken a dog shit, clean it up."
Thus, it all ended with the sole of an expensive shoe being dirtied once.
"Kuahahahahahaha!"
Of course, Celestial Wind had no way of knowing that.
Footnotes:
- Napolitan is a Japanese-style ketchup pasta dish.
- "Resting cultivator" adapts a Korean meme based on the official "resting" category for people outside both work and job-seeking.
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