Cole needed less sleep. He did get some once Mary woke up and offered to let him rest, but he woke up only four hours later and felt fully recharged. Maybe it was a general mana benefit and Mary had only needed to sleep longer because she had missed the reset in stamina from a Rank change and was more fatigued, or maybe it was the Rank change itself improving him. Less sleep meant more time at the forge, and that was a step forward on his path in the most straightforward way possible. Less rest, more creation.
Mary's Credit limit had reset, but that wasn't the only thing that had changed. Her Credit limit for today was five percent higher than the limit yesterday. It made sense that there was a way to increase the exchange limit, as how else would you buy something worth millions of Credits in installments of seven hundred fifty? But a passive increase was definitely a strange way to do it. If Cole had been the one setting it up, he would have either tied it to Rank or made a higher limit something a Merchant could purchase by re-investing their maximum limit all at once. Both would have encouraged a large amount of growth on the path, but a passive increase would technically work as well.
Anyway, she only had enough to purchase three ingots of deep iron no matter what the limit was, so that was what she did. The ingots just appeared with a familiar pulse of space mana, although far, far weaker than anything in the pocket forge. A quick glance at the Merchant's Credits revealed that payment was automatic as well. Cole was coming around to this Class, it was pretty convenient. Mary herself seemed to find the role fitting too, although she did say that upgrading her Class was a high priority for her. With enough Credits, you could buy basically anything.
It didn't mean you would be able to use whatever you bought. A Mortal one teenager without any magic or Class strengthening his body could theoretically stumble across hundreds of millions of Credits. However, if said weakling tried to use an incredibly expensive armor meant to be used by something like a Mortal seventeen with a Class focused on durability, the pure flow of mana in the materials and runes would tear the wearer's body apart. This was made clear by the extensive disclaimers on any and all equipment, stating that the crafter was not responsible for anyone who killed themselves by wearing a set of pants too magical for their body to handle.
Once they had all the sourcing figured out, Cole summoned the pocket forge and stepped inside. Mary could follow him, but a thin barrier exactly like the one stopping him from removing items prevented the Merchant from touching anything. The three ingots of deep iron were ready, the forcefire in the forge was hot, and the forge's self-cleaning enchantments had whisked away the impurity pool.
It was time to get to work.
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Revalor-Algarium-Oxis was intrigued by this mortal. The Void God could not snoop through the System and see the Creator's status directly, but he could scry through conventional means. The enchantments on that pocket dimension were hard to crack even for him. The inhabitant was still working with single-word runes, while he was surrounded by paragraphs of magic. The scrying defense alone was forty words. 'Let none intrude upon this workplace with eyes of magic or the spirit. Let any who attempt so have their sight aimed to the Void beyond. Any for whom the Chosen Creator is allied is exempt from the previous defenses.' Most runic phrases were simply multiple concepts shoved together and roughly translated, but the pocket realm used full runes for everything. Do you have any idea how rare the rune for 'exempt' is?
And redirecting scrying was clever. Most hoped to stymie it completely, as if someone already knew where to scry then the only point was stalling their receiving of the details. But the pocket realm diverted the view in case you were tracing its owner's path back to it. Precisely what Revalor-Algarium-Oxis had done. Even after breaking through the masterworks of magic, he could only see inside the forge. Its location was still an utter mystery.
And its defenses relying on the Void was downright shocking. A glance into the Void would drive most mad, making it an incredible defense. Each Pocket Forge was modeled after its own Chosen Creator. Most of them did have defenses, but they were of the more straightforward variety. None that the Void God had witnessed before deflected scrying, and certainly not into the Void. The fact that this particular smith had not only already shown defiance to the System but also, if indirectly, harnessed the Void provided an image of the mortal that was... concerning.
And it only got worse after that. Not only did he ignore almost all of the Sponsorships, he downright refused them. Some Chosen were meticulous in which Sponsor they pledged to, but they were always weighing the benefits, never truly seeing a Sponsorship as a burden. The four other Chosen had lived up to this. The Warrior was already embraced by the Star God fanatics, and there were even some rumors among those watching the planet that the Mother of All Light herself had offered the deal.
Watching the Creator insult the second strongest being in the universe while still only at the very start of his own path had shocked Revalor-Algarium-Oxis. He had been intrigued before, but for a mere mortal to actually surprise him called upon deeper oversight. The Void God called back most of the fragments, avatars, and constructs he had floating around the world. He wanted to be as close to whole as possible with something this entertaining.
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The other three Chosen were a bore just as much as the Warrior. The Ranger was picked up by a Goddess of Beasts. The mortal was seemingly planning to walk the line between druid and tamer, and she was well set up to do so. The Sponsorship would let her cleanse Monsters of their madness and add them to her entourage. She had already managed to kill a Mortal two bear by having her small army of beasts route the Monster directly into her ambushes and traps. A clever one, if still mundane.
The Mage was sponsored by a Bloodline God. Those were an interesting sort. They could call upon the collective power of their ancestors and descendants, turning a strong family into a deadly weapon. The Mage himself obviously had no magical bloodline, but the Sponsorship had actually managed to awaken a dormant affinity. Ice, from the frigid seas and tundras of his family's history. Some sort of berserker-conquerers. What were they called again? Ah yes, the Vikings.
This information was straight from the Bloodline God himself, who was rather proud of his acquisition. Added to the Mage's natural water affinity, that was a Chosen with a dual affinity and a strong Sponsor. A dual affinity this early was good, very good. All mortals had one affinity, but the talented had two. The truly amazing, once in a planet's history heroes had three. And in all the recorded history of the universe, only seven beings had managed to scrape their way to four affinities. Even Revalor-Algarium-Oxis, one of the seven, was amazed that number had managed it.
Back to the more mundane, the coward who called herself the Rogue was chosen by the God Queen, the God of Queens. She had no actual rule over the rest of the Gods, but she was an incredibly powerful force in her own right. Definitely top ten in the universe, maybe even top five. The Sponsorship would allow the coward to really lean into her whole 'ruling the shadows' shtick. Yay, the coward could rule more cowards. How exciting.
But besides for the dual affinity Mage, all the other Chosen were completely mundane. Which made it even more surprising when the Creator he was keeping an eye on advanced to Mortal two within the first day of integration. How? Just how? The path each being walks is meant to be slow and meandering, a gradual buildup of power ending at godhood. Even the first step should have taken weeks to attempt.
At least he still had a long way to go before he brought his madness to a godly scale. The Rank within the System had five stages, each with five substages. The main stages were Mortal, Aspirant, Transcendent, Demigod, and Ascendent. The smith had taken the first step within Mortal, and at a prodigious pace.
After that, he was still confounding. He left his forge without fully preparing or taking advantage of its knowledge, apparently just to test a weapon and find a friend. He abandoned a wealth of knowledge and magic so desired that it had to be able to hide from Revalor-Algarium-Oxis, to wave around a sharp stick and pick up some other boring mortal. And then, he had agreed to travel with her! The fool was limiting himself by clinging to pre-mana relations instead of grasping for strength.
But then, somehow, the madman had made it work again. The mortal woman turned out to be a Merchant, and with an uninhabited collection of stores and a dense forest full of treasures around them, her Class would be invaluable. Even now, back inside the forge, he was using the first refined mana metal to ever grace this planet to make the mortal woman a weapon. He wasn't focusing on his own advancement and seemed determined to help the fragile mortal along.
The God of Entropy had had enough of this for the day. He waved away his scrying magic and simply let the natural void around him seep within and be transformed into true Void. The blue and green planet causing him so much stress simply hung in space before him. With a thought, he could wipe that entire species out. It would break the rules, but he could do it. And yet, when he focused on one crazed individual it all seemed far too complicated and chaotic to comprehend. Revalor-Algarium-Oxis hated trying to comprehend mortals.
A tentacle shot up and grabbed the throat of a charging Star God. The thing had only been moving at the speed of light, so he had seen it coming quite a distance away.
"No No No! You will not take the Heretic! He is ours to burn!"
Well, that was curious. Just what had the paranoid bastards seen in his genuine interest in the mortal?
"He insults the Mother! He insults us! You insult us with your obvious plans! Did you not think we would see you watching!? We have never trusted you, and this is why! The moment a Chosen becomes a Heretic you begin sneaking around in the hidden realms and watching his progression! The Star Gods have never allowed the Void to Sponsor a Chosen, AND WE NEVER WILL!"
With that final shout, the thing burst into a supernova. Killing yourself at the end of an argument was one way to get the last word. Without even a twitch, the God of Entropy broke down all the light, heat, and pure energy that had been released. The Mother of All Light didn't make her cronies like she used to, and it showed. But the thing had made an interesting point. With all the watching the Creator and taking the trouble to scry the pocket forge, it did look like the Void God was preparing to offer a Sponsorship.
He had never done so before, purely because doing so would be beneath him. It would be an admittance to the System's strength to let it move his own power around. But maybe he could try it out? There was a first time for everything. For now, he would simply watch. If the early growth turned out to be a fluke, so be it. If not, maybe it was time to show the Star Gods just what he thought of their claim on the Chosen.