THE GOD EATER

Now that the project to convert Divine Metacs into Supreme Metacs had become a gambling game where he couldn’t reliably determine whether he was working with the right set of rules or not, he had decided that it was safer for his health to lose all hope and expect to lose each time.

So when the Major Dao failed to form, he only sighed and moved on. And when the Grand Dao formed, his face was calm as the surface of a lake.

Even the failure of the Cosmic Dao didn’t cause any ripples in his heart. But then, as he thought about what he had just done and why it had failed, something clicked in his head, and he was inspired.

”I seem to have gotten an idea,” he muttered.

As the idea popped into his mind, his dull eyes began to shine once more. He knew that it was a bad idea to get excited, but he threw caution to the wind and instead focused on the work.

The idea he got was to change the goal and try to make a wolf that grows stronger by eating. It was a tiny change, inspired by remembering the pathway the Hunting Form Metac came from, and he decided to make something suited to the Devouring Pathway.

He tried making a Cosmic Dao with this idea. It failed, but it failed at the finish line, indicating that he was on to something.

”This will work,” he said confidently.

But then he remembered that he had been wrong many times before, so he changed his stance and said, ”This should work.”

The final product was the Devouring Body Supreme Metac. It was a Supreme Metac shaped like a black wolf with many tails.

When he saw the Supreme Metac, he said uncertainly, ”It actually worked?”

The Supreme Metac was right there, and he wasn’t hallucinating, so his idea worked. It didn’t work exactly as he planned, but it worked.

The Devouring Body Supreme Metac doesn’t directly make him stronger by adding divinity to his true body. Instead, it stores divinity that he devours from Dao Lords into itself, and when he acquires the Devouring Body Supreme Metac, the divinity will become accessible to him.

So what he created was a Supreme Metac in the shape of a wolf that gives him power stolen from others by devouring them. It is not a Supreme Metac that turns him into a wolf that grows stronger by devouring Dao Lords.

Either way, it worked, and it made him realize something that made him say, ”Having a lot of knowledge about Supreme Metacs isn’t necessarily a bad thing. At least, it means I have a large pool of knowledge to get ideas and inspiration from.”

With his confidence renewed, he got back to work. The next step was the Major Dao and Minor Dao, and his expectations for them were sky-high.

The two attempts failed. But the two successive failures didn’t dampen his enthusiasm. In fact, the failures spurred him on and gave him another idea.

He tried to create a wolf that could control other people, not just wolves. This time, he was inspired by the Enslavement Pathway.

As it turned out, his new idea was rubbish. It didn’t work once for making a Cosmic Dao, a Grand Dao, a Major Dao, or a Minor Dao.

All of the time and effort he spent on it went down the drain. The worst part was that he didn’t know what he did wrong.

He couldn’t tell where he went wrong, so he couldn’t make the right changes to get closer to success. He could only fumble through different ideas and see if one would click.

Unfortunately, nothing clicked for a long time. It was frustrating, but it wasn’t enough to make him give up.

”What’s the alternative to trying and failing again and again? Give up and not try at all?” he asked with a snort of derision.

Yes, it was bad that he couldn’t learn from his mistakes, and he couldn’t make a targeted effort to improve. But the alternative, which was not to try at all, didn’t sit well with him at all.

So even though it looked like he was wasting his time, he didn’t quit just yet. Instead, he changed the Divine Metac to use as a base template for the upgrade.

So far, he had tried every Divine Metac from Fenrir except the Tracking Mark Divine Metac. So he picked this Divine Metac and began working with it.

While he was working, he went through the list of Supreme Metacs he had acquired so far.

’So far, I have 7 Cosmic Daos, 16 Grand Daos, 21 Major Daos, and 13 Minor Daos. That makes a nice total of 957 commonality for the 4-D prototype.’

’That’s enough to fill up the 24th cube with 57 units of commonality left over. I need 975 units of commonality for the 25th cube, so I need 18 units of commonality more.’

He nodded as he thought, ’This is what I work so hard for. This is the fruit of my effort, and it is beautiful.’

The Cosmic Daos are the Devouring Supreme Metac, the Time Loop Supreme Metac, the Luck Supreme Metac, the Death Supreme Metac, the Freedom Supreme Metac, the Time Rewind Supreme Metac, and the Knowledge Supreme Metac.

The Grand Daos are Dominion, Killing, Beast Transformation, Money, Enslavement, Forging, Formation, Truth, Illusion, Emotion, Abyss Devouring, Devouring Hunger, Conquering, Farming, Nanite Transformation, and Devouring Body.

The Major Daos are Speed, Mind Hunter, Soul Eater, Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Wood, Poison, Light, Darkness, Lightning, Anger, Sadness, Joy, Precognition, Fortune, Blood, Strength, Defense, and Vitality.

Lastly, the Minor Daos are Dragon Race, Human Race, Elven Race, Rat Race, Ogre Race, Ork Race, Army General, Insect Tamer, Soothsayer, Wolf Tamer, Tracker, Farmer, and Wolf Race.

In general, Cosmic Daos contain rules that govern the fabric of the world. They are encompassing, like Life, Death, Space, and Time.