I Became The Administrator of A Sacred Ground

After a quiet dinner infused under a subtle atmosphere, Euri retired into his bedroom, head hung low the whole time. It wasn't that he was ashamed of his behaviour in the morning.

In fact, he didn't think he had done anything wrong. If a father could beat his son for their bad habits, then why couldn't it work the other way around? 

He had only spoken some unkind words. Nobody in society could be beyond criticism, right?

Rather, Euri was concerned with his internal reaction to the story his mother had told him. He had never held much love or respect for either of his parents. Both of them had destroyed their lives with their own hands.

As far back as he could remember in his childhood, his parents were drugged out of reasons whenever they had free time to spend. His distaste towards their lifestyle was anything but mild. This wasn't even the first time he had seen them be bullied at work, facing injustice, or get discriminated against. But never had he been so riled up and ready to cave someone's skull in as he was tonight. 

"Reasoning, reasoning, what are you...?"

Pacing around in his small bedroom, Euri went through a long session of introspection, trying to analyze what was so different this time.

"It has to be the power that's getting into my head, shifting the way I see the outside world. After being a powerless shrimp my whole life, I'm starting to treat everyone as inferior as I used to be, now that I'm in a better position. Punching has suddenly become less of a desperate move and more of a test to me. I am starting to lose my apprehension of real violence, because I keep envisioning myself as the victor. 

"This is not a good thing, but it is written in human instinct, and my upbringing is only exacerbating the issue."

A vibration from his miniscreen made him stop walking. Picking it up, Euri stared at the game's logo suspiciously.

"Is mere gain of strength so effective in changing someone's personality? Or is this game actually interfering in the way I think and process information now? If it's capable of planting false memories, then it certainly should be capable of false emotions, right? Emotions are much easier to manipulate than memories!"

Once again, Euri weighed his options. If the changes in his mentality really went too far, he could just chuck this miniscreen away in a river. It couldn't make him keep playing it!

....Or could it?

Shaking his head in dismay, he logged in and checked out what the notification was about. It turned out to be the alarm for the sacred ground's gas well, informing him that it had been fully recharged. Except for Scavenger Rat, the other beast familiars were cultivating around the well attentively.

The advantages of reduced recharge time were really showing. Throughout the last week, he hadn't always been able to hit two hunting modes in one day. After the twelve hours of recharge, his experiments, ambrosia production, the beasts' cultivation time, and each hunting mode took up quite some time too. 

But since the recharge time had become an hour less, he could easily fit two hunts into each day, including processing the results and experimenting.

Not willing to waste a minute, he activated the hunting mode for the second time today and watched the screen freeze as usual. 

However, no more than two minutes later, he discovered the miniscreen buzzing again. Usually, this meant that the hunting mode had concluded. But why did it only take two minutes?

The shortest period Euri had seen a hunt last was more than thirty minutes. Even after he had dumped a dozen beast cores into the gas well, this timeframe hadn't gone down. And he didn't expect it to, either. The sacred ground was not an active hunter. It had to wait for beasts to enter its defense line. 

Could it be that upgrading the gas well's quality was affecting the frequency at which beasts would invade the sacred ground? But how could the leap be so large and illogical? 

"Coincidence, perhaps," he concluded, and clicked on the screen to see the outcome. What appeared there stunned him again.

[ Invasion Attempts: 105 ]

[ Success/Failure : 0/105 ]

[ Core Depleted. Hunting Mode has been closed. ]

"What the fuck?! One hundred and five?!"

It made no sense, just like the illogically quick conclusion of the hunting mode. In a hurry, he pulled up the view of the sacred ground. At first glance, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

The wall of grayish tentacles that protected the grove from all directions looked like someone had sprayed them with green paint. But there were no beasts stuck amidst the barrier. 

After circling the entire barrier in confusion, Euri zoomed to the maximum setting to inspect the green paint, and discovered that the color was actually the result of numerous tiny green bugs resting on the tentacles! 

No, 'resting' wouldn't quite be the appropriate description. He noticed that many of these bugs looked sticky despite the cartoonish imagery. The tentacles had the ability to secrete viscous fluids too, it seemed.

These bugs had the appearance of locusts, but their wings looked too short to support flight. Euri clicked on one of them to inspect its stats window.

[ Infinity Locust ]

[ Rank-0 lifeform ]

[ Physique: 0.03 ]

[ Special Attribute: Infinite Forms ]

"Infinity, huh? That's not a bad affix. The special attribute surely has to be something incredible..."

Euri's interest was piqued. But he couldn't shake off the suspicion that something was wrong here. Since his introduction to the game, he had never seen so many creatures trying to invade the sacred ground at once. Then what was so special this time?

He clicked on another bug's information. The stats looked the same. No matter how many times he repeated this, the result didn't change.

"Is it sheer luck? Or have I overlooked something?" Nobody could answer Euri's questions.

Shrugging, he could only accept the fact that all the rules he had assumed about hunting mode till now were erroneous. Nevertheless, a windfall was a windfall. He couldn't complain. 

"One hundred and five beasts! That's enough to level up the gas well in one go! Or I can use them all behind ambrosia production! Since they all have the same affix and stats, all of them can be deposited together!"

But when he chose to sacrifice one of the locusts to the gas well, a strange notification popped up, extinguishing his exhiki

[ No beast cores detected. Sacrifice failed ]

A bad premonition grabbed Euri's heart.