The Difference Between A Jackpot And A Super Jackpot.

In the first place, real luxury goods aren’t flashy. If a shabby bag is unique, it can even go for over 10,000 gold.

—Imitation Manufacturing Expert Adidadododis.

I am moving toward my destination with light steps, leaving behind the pleasant, refreshing meeting with the Creator.

At the very front of the group was Proy, as always. Instead of a weapon, he was carrying a corpse and leading the way.

Beside that Proy, Naruan followed him, grinning as she carried a large test tube.

The strange thing was that not a single trap that still seemed capable of functioning was activating.

In fact, because of the emperor’s flesh and blood—namely, the tyrant’s corpse and the item ‘Emperor’s Blood’ obtained from the Archlich—none of the magical traps were working at all, so we were moving along comfortably.

Meanwhile, I took a fist-sized bead out of my inventory and fiddled with it. At the same time, I was trying hard to hold back the snickers leaking out.

Fist-sized, round and white like a pearl. It really was the kind of bead that someone who didn’t know better might mistake for a pearl.

‘Heh heh heh heh.’

Judging by the description alone, it was an utterly useless Ego Stone. Considering that even the dirt on the ground is a useful material when crafting items, it was trash worse than the dirt on the road.

Even so, the reason I’m smiling like this is simple. From the start, when I asked for this, it wasn’t because I intended to make some grand item with it.

‘It was to torment it.’

My third question. Whose intentions were behind the messages from the ‘Setting,’ which had long since gone beyond uncooperative and openly shown hostility toward me?

It wasn’t the Creator. I met him through this luck incident and talked with him, even tried to irritate him a little, but he only bristled and showed no sign of being offended or displeased.

I even tried lowballing him with an absurd price, but he just got riled up and, if anything, seemed to be slyly trying to hand the item over to me.

Was it because the Creator was really a pushover? No.

Then there was only one conclusion. It was this Ego Stone in my hand.

—No matter what the representative does, I won’t be able to use it.

The voice that came to me when I infused divine power was that of a female ego.

The very first thing that determines an ego’s personality is this voice and tone. A haughty yet crisp ego that says everything it needs to say.

‘Heh heh heh heh.’

Was it because I only laughed without saying anything else? The ego repeated itself once more.

—I will say it again. No matter what the representative does, I won’t be able to use it. I recommend destroying it as it is.

I smiled silently and quickened my pace.

I’d already thought of a way to torment the ego. It was something I hardly ever needed in ordinary times, but I figured a guy who does what he does every so often could be used like this too.

‘Guardian.’

『Yes, Master.』

‘Want me to introduce you to a woman?’

『Yes. …What?! No, really?』

‘…Yeah.’

For a moment I wanted to say no because of the casual speech that Suho blurted out, but since there was something I wanted, I decided to hold back for now.

‘How do you date an ego? It’s a spirit body, right? How do you do this and that?’

『My, my, you sure do worry about strange things. Because it’s a spirit body, you can do it even more intensely. Things humans can’t do because of physical limits are possible. Heh heh.』

‘Heh heh. R-really?’

—N-now, wait a moment. I’d rather you destroy me!!

‘I don’t want to.’

With me smiling wickedly and Suho’s voice being deliberately made audible, that ego bitch panicked and begged to be destroyed.

‘And are you an idiot? If I was going to destroy it, why would I have stubbornly fought to get it as a bonus in the first place? Suho.’

『Yes! I am Master’s number one ego, Suho! Haha. Now, hurry, hurry, hurryyyy…!』

‘If you show performance that falls short of expectations from now on, I’ll take you back immediately.’

『Yes!! Leave it to me. So hurry!!』

It wanted the ego in a voice that even sounded mad, like some creature from a movie shouting ‘My precious.’

『Please! From now on, I will unlock the limited options! Please! Help me break the seal I’ve been living alone with for 27,000 years, 211 days, and 31 minutes!!』

At the sheer force of this idiot, before I knew it, I handed over the Ego Stone.

The moment I thought of giving it, my palm turned silver, and as if sinking into a swamp, the pearly Ego Stone vanished.

—N-no! To someone like that pervert!! I-I hate it!!

The fresh, lively scream of the ego bitch faded into the distance and went quiet. Just in case, I called for Suho, but there was no answer.

‘He’s probably busy. With 27,000 years…’

While the clueless ego bitch was being neatly dealt with, we arrived before a huge door that exuded a heavy, ominous aura.

A door from which hostility and murderous intent oozed even without approaching closely. It felt more convincing to call it a gate to hell than the imperial treasury.

“Captain…”

Froy looked at me and trailed off. It was clear he felt it too—that raw hostility and murderous intent.

If you think about it even a little, it doesn’t make sense. Opening the door to the imperial treasury with the emperor’s corpse and blood, I mean.

Would such a trick really have worked in that ancient era when magic had flourished so brilliantly? If anything, it would have been for avenging those who brought the dead emperor’s corpse.

Just like that door now.

“Come back now. Give me the corpse.”

I took the corpse, put it into my inventory, and smiled as I recalled what had happened inside the consciousness.

“W-wait!! Ple-please, s-stop! Stop!”

The tyrant’s form, riddled with holes like an old rag and turned to tatters, was the shape he took when he transformed into Suho’s shield.

Every time the cooldown ended, Holy Touch ordered the tyrant to transform into another hero.

The tyrant, apparently believing in something, transformed into another hero and charged Holy Touch again.

The result, as expected, ended with the tyrant being brutally shattered.

After going through that process, the tyrant seemed to realize that being transformed into Suho’s shield was, comparatively, the least painful, so he transformed into Guardian’s shield every time.

But even that seemed to hit a limit. As the attacks inside the consciousness increased rapidly, the tyrant’s condition was always in tatters. He was getting injured faster than he could recover.

“S-stop. Please…”

I looked down indifferently at the tyrant, who had crawled along the floor, grabbed my ankle, and begged me tearfully to stop, then moved my foot.

Thwack—!

The tyrant, his neck twisted, flew through the air and then dropped limply to the ground. All he could do was twitch intermittently like a bug, too weak to rise or scream.

“Tch, annoying. What a weakling.”

Holy Touch grumbled, walked over to the tyrant, poked him with a foot, and came back. Then the tyrant rose to his feet like a zombie.

He knelt down, held out both hands in supplication, and begged. To please stop.

“I-I’ll tell you. Th-the imperial treasure vault! The way to enter the imperial treasury that only the emperor can go into!!”

At the tyrant’s desperate words, not only I but the five heroes also seemed interested and gave him a chance to speak.

“So my corpse wouldn’t have disappeared… sir. And among the treasures you, no, Kim Han, obtained from that Archlich bastard, if you look, there should be the blood of the previous emperor. Take that and move to the imperial treasury. The location of the treasury is…”

“I know the treasury’s location.”

The guy gave me a ‘as I thought’ look and glared at me. Of course, he was kicked flying by Holy Touch right after that.

“I understand that if you approach the imperial treasury with my corpse—meaning the emperor’s corpse—the trap is triggered. It’s there to prevent regicide. The status of supreme power in an empire is such that even a child can drive a knife into a parent’s chest. However, there exists a spell that can open the treasury door when the emperor dies suddenly or fails to designate an heir, or when there is someone who received grace in an unforeseen accident. If you say that spell, the door will open.”

“If the emperor died suddenly, who would tell anyone the spell? You crazy bastard! Is that what you’re saying now, or is it bullshit?”

“S-so, normally there’s no way to know. That’s why, even though I was called a tyrant, I was able to rule the empire for decades. Because treason means giving up all the imperial treasury’s treasures that only circulate by word of mouth. And yet the three bastards plotted treason, so they must have found another method.”

“…So if you plot treason, all you get is the imperial family’s shell? Then bring it on?”

“…Yes, that’s about right. If I hadn’t come into the consciousness like this, it would have been a spell that never would have been known…”

Only then did the five heroes nod their heads indifferently. Watching their expressions, the tyrant spoke.

“B-before that! If I tell you the truth, please p-promise you’ll stop this cruel training!”

“No.”

“No, why not! Don’t I even have spirit rights?”

“I don’t know about spirit rights, but no way!”

Just as I was about to pull out the ‘I don’t know, but no way’ routine again, Sword’s Cry hurriedly stopped the two of us.

“I don’t really need treasure anyway.”

I was the first to start, pretending to be cool despite my true feelings.

“Just spread Destruction. Something like magic set up in a mere imperial palace will be devoured by Destruction just fine.”

The words of the Disturber of Rest were the finishing blow.

The tyrant wanted one hour of rest per day. We pretended to be generous and accepted, and in return we were able to hear the spell that opened the door from the tyrant.

What expression would he make if he knew that while awake, he wouldn’t enter the world of consciousness and there would be no training?

Thinking of the tyrant, who by now was probably lamenting inside his consciousness that he’d been tricked, made laughter leak out of me again.

“Suho, Sika.”

Guardian- Suho was silent, as if history was about to be made after 27,000 years.

But it did its job, as silver armor wrapped around my entire body and Posika naturally circled around me to protect me.

Not only that, four top-tier spirits also defend me and my surroundings.

“I’ve come to collect two barley buns and three coins.”

A spell that didn’t even sound like a spell. As I spoke the spell the tyrant had told me, I summoned a spear of fire imbued with the aura of Destruction.

But unlike my concerns, that vanished cleanly from the treasury door that had been seething with murderous intent and hostility.

And then the door slowly opened. Even with such a heavy door opening, not a single small sound could be heard.

Just in case, I checked several times with ‘Confirm,’ and Suho and Argus’s Eye both confirmed there was nothing wrong. It meant there was no trap and the tyrant had told the truth.

“Let’s go in.”

“Ooh!! It’s a treasure vault!!”

“Wow!!”

I went in after the members who shouted and ran inside in a crowd.

The entrance was wide, but after one look around it didn’t seem as large as I’d expected. It felt narrower than the guest room in the legion house.

A little time passed, but no noise came from the members who had gone in ahead of us.

‘Huh?’

I pushed past the others and stepped inside. Only then did I understand why the members had said nothing.

The imperial treasury spread out before my eyes was, unlike what I’d expected, terribly modest.

There wasn’t gold piled up like mountains, nor elixirs rolling around to be kicked underfoot.

Whether for storage or for display, there were only eleven display cases with magical protection systems operating.

And that was all there was: gear inside those eleven cases that didn’t feel particularly special.

If anything, the display cases that stored the equipment and kept it in peak condition felt more like treasures themselves.

I approached one of the display cases, leaving the dazed group behind, and with a soft ‘srrrk’ sound, a transparent barrier opened.

Inside the display case was a backpack. A square backpack, a form rarely seen in this dimension.

After checking the backpack’s information with ‘Confirm,’ I almost dropped it.

‘So it’s like a mobile library or something?’

Thinking nothing of it, I opened the book bag and put my hand inside, and categories appeared in my head.

The types were varied too. Diverse categories ranging from humanities to history books. It even had cookbooks.

As I scrolled down the list, a combat-related category I had half-expected appeared.

“Huh?!”