Chapter 163: Then I’ll Go Get It

"That’s preposterous."

Zac stared at Siegfried with an unbelieved face. "How could that even be possible? A simple weapon killing a god? What is this, a Xianxia comic?"

[Wait, do they still exist?]

He frowned. "Forget the weapon. Do gods even exist? And even if they do, how could any weapon possibly be powerful enough to kill one?"

"I don’t know." Siegfried shook his head.

"All I know is what the journal claimed. According to it, a great war took place somewhere in the universe millions of years ago."

"And weapons forged from that particular material were supposedly used to kill gods, destroy planets, and even annihilate entire solar systems."

"See? Now it sounds even more preposterous." Zac looked at him incredulously. "How can a weapon possibly be that powerful? More importantly, how can you believe something like that?"

Siegfried laughed. "Tell me something, boy. If someone had gone to humanity before the apocalypse and told them that portals would suddenly appear, monsters would invade their world, and ordinary humans would awaken supernatural abilities... do you think they would have believed it?"

"Probably not."

"Exactly." Siegfried’s expression grew thoughtful.

"People have always questioned what lies beyond their understanding. And when something contradicts everything they believe to be possible, disbelief becomes the easiest answer."

"But reality has never cared about what humanity considers possible."

Zac remained silent for a moment before turning his attention inward. "System, do you know anything about this? Is what the old man is saying actually true?"

[Let’s discuss that after the man finishes his story.]

"So you do know something."

[I told you before. I know everything about the universe, both its past and its present.]

"Fine. But we’re having a very long conversation after this."

[Of course.]

[Assuming you have the required Info Points.]

"Fuck you and your points."

Siegfried continued, unaware of the argument taking place inside Zac’s head. "As preposterous as it sounds, the younger me believed that a material like that truly existed."

"So right then and there, my life’s goal is to find that material and forge it into a weapon."

"I know. Building your entire life around something described in a half-destroyed ancient journal doesn’t exactly sound rational."

"But what could I do? I was young and rash."

His expression gradually became more serious. "From that point onward, aside from forging new weapons and improving my craft, I searched for any clue that might lead me to that material."

"I became obsessive."

"I searched ancient ruins, auctions, private collections, portal records from both the past and present, old expedition logs... anything that even remotely matched the descriptions in that journal."

"But I found nothing, not even a trace."

"Years became decades."

"New portals opened, old ones closed, my reputation grew. New materials were discovered, and my skill continued to improve."

"But that material remained nothing more than a dream."

"What had once been the obsession of an ambitious young smith gradually became one of those impossible dreams you eventually learn to stop chasing."

"Even after I lost hope of ever finding it, though... I never completely forgot."

"There were times I even questioned myself. Wondered how I had managed to spend so much of my life obsessing over something I had no proof even existed."

Then Siegfried’s gaze sharpened. "And then, a few days before your sister was born, I received a message from the Association."

"A scouting team had entered a portal and detected an enormous amount of pressure coming from deep inside."

"At first, they assumed it was caused by the portal itself. But after investigating further, they discovered that the pressure was coming from a single object near its center."

"A simple-looking piece of metal."

Zac’s eyes narrowed. "I didn’t get my hopes up at first."

"Then they sent me the data. Mana readings, energy responses, and images."

"And the moment I saw them, I knew. It was the material I had spent my entire life searching for."

Zac leaned forward slightly. "How big was it?"

"Not particularly large." Siegfried spread his hands apart, indicating something roughly the size of a human head. "About this big."

"That’s it?"

"That’s it."

His expression hardened. "But its size was meaningless."

"The instruments they brought into the portal couldn’t properly measure it. Every piece of equipment they used reached its maximum limit before producing a reliable result."

"At first, they assumed the instruments were malfunctioning. So they recalibrated everything and tried again. But the results were the same."

"That was when I became certain that whatever they had found was the material described in that journal."

Siegfried looked down at his hands. "Whatever that metal truly was, its density was so extreme that normal physical assumptions became almost useless when applied to it."

"And yet it was simply sitting there, or perhaps hovering would be more accurate."

Zac frowned. "Can I ask something?"

"Yes."

"I’m not exactly a science expert, but even I know that something with that kind of mass and density should affect everything around it, shouldn’t it?"

"Yes."

Siegfried’s expression immediately soured. "That was one of the greatest mysteries surrounding it."

"For some reason, the portal itself seemed capable of keeping the material in a stable state without allowing its full effects to spread into the surrounding environment."

"It was almost as though the portal itself acted as a natural containment system. Some kind of spatial phenomenon keeping that material in check."

"Though, the pressure inside that portal was still enormous. Strong variants wouldn’t have problems withstanding it."

Siegfried’s face twisted with obvious irritation.

"And despite being a smith who spent his entire life studying materials, I still couldn’t understand exactly how it worked."

[He’s taking that personally.]

"He is a passionate smith," Zac replied.

Siegfried continued.

"I can’t properly describe what I felt at that moment. All those years of searching. All those years of wondering whether I had been chasing nothing but a story..."

"And then, suddenly, someone puts the proof right in front of you. I was happier than I had been in years."

Zac looked at him. "Then how did you finally get the material?"

Siegfried’s expression changed. "That’s where things went wrong."

Zac became quiet.

"The outer region of the portal appeared relatively normal. There were barely any monsters there."

"Even so, because of the pressure surrounding the material, the Association refused to take unnecessary risks. High-ranking variants were sent in to retrieve it and investigate the portal properly."

"But once they reached the deeper regions... everything changed."

"Monsters began appearing out of nowhere and started attacking the expedition group from every direction."

Siegfried’s voice became grave. "That was when we discovered how badly we had underestimated the portal."

"It was classified near the absolute upper boundary of S-rank."

"I don’t understand."

"The portal itself had never officially crossed into SS-rank classification."

"But the monsters inside it had."

"Especially the boss. An SS-rank monster."

"The top-ranking variants we initially sent inside were completely wiped out."

"Normally, inside an S-rank portal, you expect the dominant monster to be somewhere around S or S+ rank. Its strongest subordinates might reach A+, perhaps even approach S- rank depending on the nature of the portal."

"The remaining monsters can still be extremely dangerous, of course. B-ranks, C-ranks, sometimes higher depending on the environment."

"But this portal was completely different."

"The boss had already reached SS-rank. Four of its strongest subordinates were confirmed S+ ranks, and another six were close enough to S+ rank."

"And beyond them were countless A and B-rank monsters scattered throughout the deeper regions of the portal."

Zac slowly exhaled. "And the material?"

Siegfried stared at him. "That was the worst part."

"The metal was sitting at the very center of the portal. Right where the SS-rank boss lived."

Siegfried gave a humorous chuckle. "I spent years imagining the day I would finally find that material. But I never imagined I’d need an army just to retrieve it."

"Couldn’t you hire one?"

"With what?"

Zac glanced around the forge, seeing all the weapons and artifacts laying around.

Siegfried followed his gaze. "Yes, I’m wealthy. Wealthy enough to own a city if I wanted to. And yes, I could hire powerful Variants."

"But I’m not wealthy enough to casually convince people capable of fighting multiple S-rank monsters to risk their lives for an old smith’s obsession."

Siegfried’s expression became more serious.

"You may not know this, but fighting an S-rank monster is anything but easy. Once monsters reach A-rank, many begin developing a degree of sentience. By the time they reach S-rank, their intelligence can become comparable to that of humans."

"On top of that, monsters possess natural physical advantages over humans. Even to reliably kill a normal S-rank monster, you would usually need three or four S-rank Variants working together."

"Of course, there are exceptions, like Armani. But convincing people like her wouldn’t be easy. Plus, there was another problem."

"You couldn’t tell them what they were retrieving, could you?"

"Exactly." Siegfried nodded.

"If that material truly was what the journal claimed it to be, then the moment someone realized what it might be worth, I had no guarantee I would ever see it again."

"I couldn’t trust anyone with something like that."

"Even if I offered everything I owned at the time, anyone strong enough to enter that portal and survive would eventually want to know why I wanted that material so badly."

"And once they knew, the material itself would be worth far more than anything I could offer them."

Siegfried fell silent for a moment. "Days passed, and I spent every one of them trying to think of another way."

"My lifelong goal was finally so close that I knew exactly where it was, yet I still couldn’t reach it. And that feeling was eating me alive."

"That’s when your father contacted me. He told me he had become a father again."

Siegfried’s expression softened slightly. "It was a little happiness in the middle of all that despair."

"I went to see your family, and your father placed your sister in my arms. For a while, I forgot about everything that had been bothering me."

"We talked and laughed, and I had a few drinks. Eventually, we started talking about what had been happening in our lives."

"I asked him what it felt like now that people were saying he might become the next chairman of the Variant Association."

"Wait, what?" Zac stared at him.

"Yeah. You didn’t know that?"

"No. I really didn’t."

Siegfried sighed. "Well, it wasn’t only me who had gained a reputation over the years."

"Several years had passed since I first met your father, and during that time, he climbed the ranks incredibly fast. He became one of the strongest S-rank variants in the world, eventually claiming one of the highest positions among the Pillars of the World."

"He had almost reached the same level as the chairman of the Association."

"Oh." Zac remained silent for a moment. "I didn’t know that at all."

"It seems you really don’t know much about your father." Siegfried looked at him. "But don’t worry. You’ll learn more about him as time passes."

He continued. "Now, back to the story."

"Your father knew me too well. From the way I was behaving, he quickly realized something was wrong and started questioning me."

"And eventually, I gave in."

"What does ’eventually’ mean?"

"It means he annoyed me until I gave up."

[Another piece of genetic evidence.]

Zac ignored the system.

"I told him everything. My obsession with that material, the journal I had discovered, the decades I had spent searching for it, and everything I knew about the portal."

Zac looked at him. "Let me guess. He said he would retrieve it for you, didn’t he?"

Siegfried laughed. "Yeah. That idiot. He said something along the lines of, ’Then I’ll go and get it.’"

"I spent nearly an hour explaining exactly how stupid that idea was."

"I told him I could forget about the material. I had already spent decades without it, and I could spend the rest of my life the same way."

"But he wouldn’t listen." Siegfried shook his head. "Once your father decided something mattered, convincing him otherwise was nearly impossible."

"Then he convinced me by saying that even if he didn’t go there for the material, a portal containing monsters that dangerous would eventually have to be dealt with anyway."

"So I gave in. I created a special containment chamber for the material."

Zac frowned. "What kind of container could hold something with that much mass?"

[Something with warranty.]

"If the measurements were even remotely accurate, physically supporting the material would have been impossible. So the chamber wasn’t designed to bear its weight. It was designed to spatially isolate the material and suppress its gravitational influence on the surrounding environment."

Zac looked at him. "So you made something like that just like it?"

"No. Even though I didn’t know whether the material truly existed, throughout all those years of searching for it, I was also searching for a way to contain it."

"Eventually, although I found no further evidence of the material itself, I did find enough information to develop a containment chamber that could spatially isolate something with such extreme effective mass."

Siegfried paused. "That way, if I ever found it, I wouldn’t accidentally destroy the world trying to bring it home."

Zac gave him a dreadful look.

"Hey, don’t look at me like that." Siegfried frowned. "You can’t be afraid of everything if you want to achieve something extraordinary. Besides, that’s exactly why I created the container."

"Have you ever thought about how you were going to forge it if all you could do was keep it isolated inside a chamber?"

"Well... I thought I’d figure that out after I had the material in my hands."

"Now, if you’re finished interrupting me, can I continue?"

Siegfried glanced at Zac’s expression and frowned. "I don’t actually want to destroy the world, you know?"