Guild Wars
chapter-1020

With the current Mjolnir and Pair Dadeni, Draco set to work to accomplish his goal. His eyes shone with excitement and desire at the thought of accumulating the opportunity of become a God.

Draco's next action was to start with Blacksmithing. He first opened the Grandmaster menu and looked through it, making sure everything was as it should be before gathering his methods.

Once again the requirement to become a God Ranked Blacksmith was;

1. A Divine Rank Blacksmithing technique

2. A Divine Source Origin ( or alternatively, but way more costly, Divine Crystals)

3. A unique Divine blueprint/design created by himself.

This was different from the previous requirements of the Grandmaster Ranked Blacksmith which were;

1. A Grandmaster Technique above the Legendary Rank

2. A Grandmaster Design

3. The Recognition/Blessing of the Origin God of that Tradeskill

4. Craft a unique Legendary item for the first time using your design

5. Have at least 20,000 reputation with the Tradeskill Association.

The difference between going from Master Rank to Grandmaster and from Grandmaster Rank to God was extremely steep and involved many different forces and truths.

For one, a God Ranked Blacksmith was the closest being to the Progenitor of the Tradeskill, their right hand men and vice members of a sort. Grandmasters were only cabinet ministers at best while Masters were their vices and so on.

Looking at this system, the first thing you should understand that every Tradeskill that was in existence was a pyramid that got narrowed close to the top. Also, everything that belonged to those below your Rank belonged to the one above.

This was how it should have been, but from the dawn of time, Origin Gods were forced to spend every waking moment producing Origin Energy to stabilize the universe.

This directly lowered their control over their Tradeskills and allowed anyone to climb from Common to Epic without paying any price. It was only those who advanced to Legendary and above who had to pay a price, and this was only thanks to the circumstances.

Otherwise a free Origin God of a Tradeskill would have control over everyone who used his Tradeskill and could set the rules for each stage how he wanted.

This would not be very good for creative geniuses like Draco, Happy Saint or Armonia.

However now, they only limited themselves to legendary and above, because those from that Rank needed to be controlled. As you can imagine, an Origin God of a Tradeskill was not a fighter, so how did he get stronger when he had reached the peak?

Naturally the more people who practiced his Tradeskill, the stronger he got. So for those Common Ranked Tradeskills, you might think they were weak because their Tradeskills were Common, but that only meant that it was more accessible.

Rather, the lower the Rank of your Tradeskill, it showed how much more complete it system was and how powerful the origin god in question would be.

Because seriously, just because your Tradeskill was overly complex and required a lot didn't make it better. Rather one that was simple and could be used by everybody would be far stronger.

Like Cooking or Brewing.

So what did this mean for Grandmasters and God Ranked fellow of a Tradeskill? You were basically handpicked talents within the Tradeskills who also contributed the most power to the Progenitor.

A Grandmaster Technique was a Legendary technique within the Tradeskill that was self created by a crafter that allowed them to harness even more power and perfection when acting in their Tradeskill that formed a concept.

Grandmaster Techniques focused on one thing while ignoring all others. So an example was one that might increase writing speed and reduce ink consumption, but would also reduce writing quality and legibility.

They had obvious upsides and downsides, and separated the various techniques from each other. There were many Legendary techniques in each Tradeskill, almost thousands.

There were trillions of beings in the Boundless Universe, so obviously there were more than enough people who could climb to the Peak of the Master Rank and then touch upon the barrier to become Grandmaster.

These fellows would create their own techniques, but not all Legendary techniques qualified to be Grandmaster techniques. After all, apart from how to better increase a certain aspect of a Tradeskill at the cost of another, one thing that separated the two was the control of energy.

A Grandmaster technique also had a method to acquire and control Aetheric Energy for the crafting process, whether personalized or not for the creator. It had to be there.

Draco's two crafting techniques for Alchemy and Blacksmithing were generated by Control and Control itself could gather any energy necessary as long as he was at the requisite stage, so his Legendary technique naturally became a Grandmaster one.

Now a Divine technique, was a different ball game altogether. There was no separation between a Divine technique and God Ranked technique, they were one and the same.

Essentially, you couldn't make a Divine technique without fulfilling all the conditions that a God Ranked technique wold need.

Draco had already touched on this earlier. What separated a Grandmaster technique and a Divine technique was that a Divine technique had a focal strong point, usually the same as the one for the Grandmaster technique, but had removed all weaknesses and flaws.

For example, the writing technique that increased writing speed and reduced ink consumption, but would also reduce writing quality and legibility would be perfected by the grandmaster over time and maintain the increased writing speed and reduced ink consumption but lose the reduced writing quality and legibly and any other issues.

This was just one aspect. Another difference between the two techniques was that a Grandmaster technique was a singular concept, but a Divine technique was a fully formed system.

You could picture it like this, a Grandmaster Technique was a single triangle. Meanwhile, a Divine technique was a pentagram.

It was essentially a full set of many Legendary techniques or technique ideas that reinforced the main one and removed the issues, rounded off by the core. This core involved how you would increase your ability to generate and control Aetheric Energy to Divine Energy.

This was usually the biggest hurdle for those in this era because the Divine Realm was cut off from the mortal world. How were Grandmasters supposed to come into contact with Divinity or the like in order to theorize how to influence it?

There were still Aether Crystals around, so any Master with enough pull and resources to get one could eventually grasp the key of Aetheric Energy and ascend. Divine crystals though, were practically non-existent and the only ones with access to them were the Church of Light.

No one was going to ask the Church of Light for them because those little Divine Crystals they had were their foundation.

Naturally, there was business to be had by condensing Divine Crystals and selling them. Anyone in the Morningstar World with a strong enough State of Being could do so since the energy was in abundance.

Hikari could also create them endlessly if she wanted. Eva could also do same since she had her Divine Rank Divine Symbol fusion item that granted her other power to do so.

But that was for later.

A Divine technique formed a complete system and this all benefited no the God Rank crafter, but the Origin God behind him. After all, everything was fed back to him, so if you created your Grandmaster technique or Divine technique, it would bind with his Origin technique and fill in the gaps.

So then, a crucial question was, why limit Grandmasters to 10 and Gods to 5? Well, just like how religious texts and myths often told of how mankind rebelled against Gods and killed them, anyone in a higher position could be usurped by those below him no matter how high or powerful he was.

10 Grandmasters and 5 Gods were enough for them to monitor and control since 99% of their focus was spent fixing the universe every moment of time. Anymore and they would not be able to control things and who knew what could happen?

Once one reached the Grandmaster stage, they would be privy to these truths and the realm you wanted to touch so much would seem very dirty to you.

Draco had realized this back then but he didn't care. He had no interest in becoming an Origin God of these Tradeskills and only set his sights for Refinement.

He just wanted to reach the God Rank so he could spam Divine equipment and consumables with his various methods for his people and colonize the entire mortal world, then climb to the Divine World and ruin that place too.

Was it so much to ask?!

Anyway, he already had his Divine technique 70% done. Now, he needed a catalyst for it.

He had the Framework (Three Pound Origin at pinnacle level 8) and the binding agent/core (Control at Tier 6: Quantum Realm). So what should be the catalyst to making his Grandmaster technique breakthrough and become a Divine technique, something personalized to Draco and perfectly immortalized?

Naturally, it was Mjolnir!

You think Draco went out to raise it to the Divine Rank for nothing? Even if its ability to raise items was there, he still had Refinement and endless Divine materials to use and replicate, so Mjolnir's ability was no longer crucial.

However, it was precisely because of this that Draco used it and incorporated it into his technique as the catalyst! It would galvanize the whole system, and cause it to ascend!

If it was likened to a car, the framework would be the engine the binding agent the fuel/alternator and the catalyst would be the battery/sparking system!

When an engine was turned on, it could run in perpetuity as long as the parts are functional and constant fuel was supplied. So when you sparked your car by turning your key, you only needed to do it once.

Or an even better example would be any device or a PC. You pressed the on button and the motherboard was brought to life by some temporary measures and then remained on as long as energy was present.

So the Divine technique would exist in perpetuity only using Control and the Refined Star technique together, while Mjolnir's assistance would only be used once, so even if he lost the hammer, it didn't matter.

As long as the 'engine' or 'PC' didn't go off of course. However if that happened, it was either because you were crippled or one aspect of your Divine technique has become invalid.

In other words, unless Draco lost his Innate Technique Generator or control in its entirety, this was impossible.

Draco held Mjolnir and channeled his 70% complete Divine technique through it and then held the hammer upwards. Torrents of Divine energy was dragged over into the hammer and the lines on it glowed.

For a split second, the hammer seemed to generate lightning but was instantly suppressed. The Divine energy coursed into Draco and his eyes glowed with a white light as a shockwave exploded from his body.

Immediately, a system notification appeared when this fanfare settled down.

｢System to Player Announcement

You have developed a new Divine Technique in a Tradeskill. You now have the qualifications to enter the God Rank, and have been rewarded with the prowess of the half-step God Rank.

This means you are able to craft Divine items already with your technique and the relevant procedures and Divine Energy from any source. In order to become a full God Rank master, you must craft a Divine item using your own unique procedures!｣

Draco nodded and swung Mjolnir lazily. He then put it down and grabbed Pair Dadeni, doing the same for his Alchemy Tradeskill the next moment and easily pushing it to the Divine Rank since he used the right framework for it.

The same system announcement came but Draco ignored it.

Now was the time to put his ideas to fruition!