Utilize the wristband, I entered into the forge portion of virtual hub. It was a small room with metal materials, forging equipment, and various fancy artifacts for building.

To be honest, I didn’t know how the majority of the tools worked. Not that it mattered, I only needed to know a small portion of them to build the drilling machine.

The forge reset every time I left.

Any work done disappeared and to test the device’s functions, I needed to physically recreate it.

Sadly, there was no such thing as hiring a blacksmith to build the requisite parts in this place… I needed to reforge the component parts by hand.

Which… is extremely time consuming, wastes many materials, and excruciatingly boring (and ends up with a result way worse than an actual blacksmith).

I’m slightly regretful that I didn’t testing the device properly when I’d created the prototypes beforehand. I simply hadn’t thought about it at the time.

Sigh… whatever, more practice I guess.

Picking up the requisite material, I brought it over to the forge and began melting down the ingots into the appropriate alloy and forging the components.

There’s actually a lot of nuance involved in heating up and mixing together the materials. Then shaping the mixed alloy into the mechanical components. If the dimensions are even slightly wrong, the entire device doesn’t fit together.

Fortunately, once a component is already built, you can immediately duplicate it infinitely using one of the tools in this place. Each component only needed to be made once.

After an unknown period of time that felt like forever (there’s no sun or other indicator of time in this place), I’d finally managed to piece it all together.

All that’s left was to installing the relevant arrays inside the device. Of course, I duplicated the finished device in case of any errors in the engraving process.

Thankfully, everything finished without many problems. After completing the device again, the engraved line glowed with the requisite white light.

Not to brag, but I’m quite the genius.

I didn’t even have to look at the schematics (books couldn’t be taken from the library). To build this device correctly in here, I had to memorize the schematics and remember how to correctly install every engraved line.

A simple task for a genius like myself (it took forever and many machines were scrapped in the process).

With the device completed, I set out to complete my main intention of creating it this time. Figuring out how the hell it worked.

After some time of playing around with the device, I finally managed to discover the gist of how the machine operated.

It didn’t seem to need a power source, which was good news.

To be honest, the machine wasn’t that difficult to operate. When I entered into the machine, a virtual interface appeared that could be use to navigate the device. I could easily use it to move the machine around the room.

However… when I exited the virtual hub and entered the machine in real life the operation interface didn’t appear.

Maybe, I created the drilling machine wrong?

Scratching my head, I stared around the machine with confusion.

It worked automatically in the virtual hub. I’m not sure why it’s stopped working in real life. Give me a bit to play around with it.

I might’ve engraved one of the lines wrong.

…

Many... far too many hours of frustration later.

I staring quietly at the drilling machine with a quiet peaceful expression, one that didn’t reveal any of the many hours of frustration I’d spent working on this device.

So, as it turns out, the machine’s perfectly fine.

The interface works perfectly and so does the rest of the machine.

My IQ, though… has been called into question.

*Cough*

Yeah, so- does anyone remember that ring I picked up forever ago? Doesn’t sound familiar? You know, the <Ring of a Forgotten God> that constantly changes color and the system stated increases my perception and reaction speed...

Err, still nothing? Well, it does really matter. It was one of the artifacts I got forever ago during my temporary expedition with Stanley. I’d basically put it on and forgot about its existence after discovering it… but as it turns out, the ring gives something similar to protections against all illusions or more commonly known as ‘true sight’.

Suddenly, the fact none of the illusions affected me in that dusty bar -where I found Rin passed out- makes far more sense.

Yeah… true sight.

Sounds extremely helpful in theory, but as it turns out not so much.

In hindsight, ‘true sight’ is almost a completely useless ability. Nobody ever talks about it in fiction, but not all illusions are done with malicious intention.

Think about it, illusions are simply a medium for projecting information.

While some people might use that in a malicious manner, the benefits such an invention could have on society as a whole is massive.

They can be helpful in, for a completely random example, operating machinery.

No need for glass, just project an illusion of the other side of the outer wall! No need for projectors or durable glass, illusions are cheaper and far easier to make.

Physically controls that can break and be expensive to fix? No problem. Just make fake illusionary controls that can control the machine. They can even provide haptic feedback.

What use is ‘True sight’ in a society that relies on illusions to project information? What’s the difference between that and blindness? Having such an ability would probably be a disability similar to color blindness, but even more debilitating.

The <Ring of a Forgotten God> cannot differentiate between harmful and helpful illusions at all.

I wanted to vomit. I felt cheated by novels that always show ‘true sight’ as a massive advantage.

How is this a massive advantage? This is just a disability that is sometimes mildly helpful and other times severely debilitating.

Stating ‘true sight’ is a massive advantage is equivalent to saying that blindness is a massive advantage because they can avoid the effects of flashbangs.

Like, yes… you can avoid flash grenades, but functioning eyes are more than useful enough to make up for that.

Effectively, after many hours of exploring every single engraved line on the machine. The entire time getting more and more confused as I couldn’t figure out exactly where exactly I’d made an error…

I discovered the machine was working exactly as intended.

I’m just a moron wearing an artifact without understanding its usage and the illusionary interface projected by the drilling machine was being cut-off by that artifact.

After removing the hindrance, the machine working as intended. I’m extremely fortunate this ‘true sight’ ability is tied to the ring and can removed at any time. At least that makes it mildly useful.

However, I quickly discovered another problem… I’d built the device in my living room.

A human-sized drilling machine.

In my living room.

With doors too small for the machine to fit through.

Staring the drilling machine, before glancing between the machine and the exit in a silent mental comparison. I scratched the back of my head and sighed.

… Sometimes, I seriously doubt my own IQ.

Without much choice, I was forced to disassemble the machine and reassemble it in a more appropriate location.

Fortunately, the disassembly process was relatively painless. There wasn’t anything complicated involved. I only needed to remove the parts and reassemble them.

After reassembling the drilling device in an abandon warehouse nearby, I stepped inside and activated it. The controls were relatively simple to utilize.

Having the machine begin its decent, I quickly realized that the machine moved in a way I hadn’t expected.

The device simply phased through the earth, as though the stone floor or dirt beneath it simply wasn’t there. There was no drilling involved or normal movement of matter involved in the process.

It just… passed right through it.  

…which ultimately meant the entire process of disassembling it and reassembling it in this warehouse was pointless. I could've just driven it straight through my floor and nothing would've happened.

Sighing softly, I dismissed the mild annoyance I felt and focused on the goal. There was no way I could’ve known that beforehand.

Focus... I need to drive 20 miles underground to a temple.

There was a HUD feature projected around the cabin of the drilling (phasing?) device that displayed important information like distance to surface (only roughly approximated through experimentation as the language and numbers weren’t translated into English). Any important ores or minerals underground… and more importantly, any openings or caves underground.

That meant I only needed to get into the vicinity of the temple and it should show up on the HUD… which ultimately made my job a lot easier.

Controlling the machine to begin its descent, I dove deep into the earth.

2 miles. 5 miles. 10 miles.

When it reached 15 miles, the metal began creaking ominously. I checked the various screens and everything seemed to indicate it was still fully functionally.

Gritting my teeth, I continued onward.

16 miles. 17 miles. 18 miles.

The ominous creaking got louder and the surrounding metal made several metallic buckling noises.

Checking a indicator I found earlier a small warning sign had popped up. (At least, I assumed it was a warning sign. It was a symbol blinking repeatedly with text beside it.)

On the HUD, the temple’s location was displayed in the distance. I could make out the building’s outline through the illusionary projections.

Continue forward… or abandon it and trying upgrading the components?

Staring at the temple’s outline in the HUD, I gritted my teeth and control the machine to continue moving forward.

It would take another week at minimum to get the materials, and there’s no guarantee they would be higher quality than the current ones. They might even be worse. The materials for the necessary alloy weren’t cheap or easy to find.

I’d be taking a risk with no guarantee of it paying off and ending with a better result.

The descent continued.

Before finally reaching 20 miles.

Whilst the metal creaked and cracked ominously, there were no signs of it collapsing catastrophically and I managed to reach the temple without problem.

I breathed a sigh of relief when the drilling machine finally entered the temple. (The drilling machine really needs a better name considering it doesn’t actually drill anything).

Gazing around from the inside of the machine, I realize the temple was quite old.

Dust covered most surfaces, there were several spider webs throughout the temple. The walls were made up of a dark stone. While in the center of the room sat a podium holding a dagger shaped object (it was too dark to see confirm whether it was god-hunter from this distance).

Stepping outside the phasing machine, I quickly realized that it was pitch black inside this place. I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face.

It made sense. There wouldn’t be the slightest light source this far underground.

Whilst the underground transportation machine had shown the surroundings, it had obviously used illusion magic to add a bit of light to make everything visible to the recipient. Otherwise, this far underground, they wouldn’t be able to see anything.

A surprising practical use of illusions that I hadn’t considered beforehand.

Struggling to pull a mana light out of my backpack in dark, I finally managed to activate it and lit up the surroundings.

Alright…

Stepping forward toward the podium, I caught a clearer sight of the dagger siting atop it. The color, shape, and outline matched God-hunter.

However… the dagger was clearly covered in dust and hadn’t been placed here recently? Is a time acceleration spell cast over this area? Are other shenanigans going on?

Or is it simply not God-hunter?