Chapter 239: Artificial Souls (1/2)

After the chit-chat session with key personnel of Town Zera, the changes across his town became more significant.

The newcomers were no longer mistreated, and general cohesion increased. The efficiency of production and quantity of offerings went up. Everything was looking great, including the new options for offerings.

The gods must have decided that they were sick of eating raw produce. Hence, they added more offering options with greeted GF credit ratios. These items were also coincidentally highly sought after commodities in Rino's empire. Taro beer, flour, butter and cheese were some of the new options that paid the highest GF credits, but Rino decided to let his villagers determine what they wanted to offer to the gods.

It was the nature of the living to be greedy. Everyone wanted the best for themselves, and Rino wondered how many would actually sacrifice their weekly limit of the good stuff for the gods who gave them nothing in return.

Surprisingly, many people did this. Rino wasn't expecting more than one person to do this, but there were quite a few. In fact, they made a pact to offer premium goods to the statues while sharing the good food with their friends.

Rino knew that Quasimodo and those on the farm might offer their cheese and butter. However, he was not expected for the beer-loving earth gnomes to offer one barrel of beer every week.

After further investigations, Rino heard from the grapevine that the drows and monster rabbits made a pact to give the earth gnomes half of their beer rations because they weren't allowed to drink on duty. In return, the earth gnomes would help them offer to the statue what they did not drink for 'collective contribution'.

It was a smart move, and Rino did not hate this kind of collaboration. It benefitted all parties involved, including himself. Some parties benefited more than others, but it could not be considered a terrible deal when all sides were winning. He only wished that this kind of thing happened more when he was still a court magician. Greed was not necessarily bad, and rivalry did not need to be marred by toxic jealousy.

It took a few weeks for things to smoothen out, and Rino did not do much about the newest daily quest received. Surprisingly, the gods were not pressuring him for progress. The deadline was still reflected as ”NA”, and Rino decided it was probably time to start investigating what made an artefact an artefact.

Visiting the secret vault, Rino stood a good distance from the four artefacts. These weapons might be low-levelled artefacts crafted by the dwarves before they abandoned the mines, but they were powerful enough to deter Rino from messing around with them.

Compared to mythical or legendary grade weapons, artefacts were considered more powerful than mana-imbued weapons made from rare materials. The one significant difference was their ability to choose their masters and influence the battle's outcome.

Putting it into a different perspective, fighting with a mythical or legendary grade weapon was like adding more percentage to a warrior's damage ability based on their skill. However, if a warrior was given an artefact, it would not simply multiply their damage ability. The warrior is also given a new set of skills in battle that do not belong to him. In other words, an artefact could act as a supporting member in a party that is wielded by its user.

There were very few records about artefacts, even in Rino's previous world. He had no idea how these artefacts were created or how they chose their masters. Some artefacts weren't made for battle, and others were sealed away because of how many deaths they caused trying to find a worthy master.

Rino read the tutorial provided by the gods. It wasn't a very useful tutorial about artefact creations. However, it was a good information archive introducing the basics and explaining what artefacts were. Rino read this in the stone plate library and compared it with the dwarven tablets.

After several hours of research and note comparison, Rino concluded that artefacts were indeed living objects instead of mana objects. The difference between living and mana objects was their ability to freely use the mana stored inside them.

Living objects do not produce their own mana. They relied on a source that was usually the mana core of powerful creatures like dragons. From there, they develop a silver of consciousness that could affect their actions, such as casting automatic buffs on their user or even rejecting unworthy users.