Ch.229229. +2 Corrupted Ring

Finding purification stones isn’t so much difficult as it is tedious.

For someone like me who lives within the confines of 24 hours a day, life before awakening as a user was spent mindlessly grinding in farming worlds 24/7, 365 days a year because I had too much time and nothing better to do. Yet even in that life, I was always racing against the clock, meticulously dividing my time in farming worlds.

Now that the Rift Dimension has become my reality, 24 hours isn’t enough—I’d buy more time with farming points if I could.

Grinding is enjoyable work.

Invest time in repetitive actions, and rewards follow.

The reason laborers in the real world find grinding difficult, annoying, and tedious is because they believe they aren’t getting returns greater than the time they invest. If someone were paid 50,000 or 60,000 won per hour for manual labor, no one would think the work was boring, tedious, or worthless.

The same applies to me.

If gathering corrupted resources offers good rewards for the time invested, I wouldn’t find it tedious at all.

At least in the farming world and the Rift Dimension, my grinding has always been time-efficient.

To be precise, if the efficiency of rewards for time invested wasn’t good, I simply wouldn’t do it.

Over 70% of my playtime was spent grinding repetitive tasks, but I did them because I judged those repetitive actions to be investments for greater rewards than hunting or doing activities at bases.

It’s the same now.

Farming corrupted resources to make a +2 corrupted ring and, while I’m at it, to level up the corrupted purification cauldron is grinding that’s completely worth my time investment.

But having tasted the sweetness of automation, I can’t help but find it annoying now.

“I’ve really gone soft.”

I let out a hollow laugh.

In the farming world, such thoughts were forbidden to me, almost idiotic. I was so obsessively diligent in the farming world that I created daily routines and meticulously managed everything that needed my attention without any compromise.

To find such basic, obvious tasks tedious? Annoying?

These were thoughts I couldn’t entertain unless I was showing signs of quitting the game altogether.

It couldn’t be helped because the farming world was my life.

In a world where I couldn’t pay to win and could only grow stronger through time and effort, I was a solo player who couldn’t rely on anyone else to maintain and protect the world I’d built. I knew better than anyone that the moment these processes became annoying, I’d start dropping them one by one, and eventually, Suhyeon’s Farming World 1 would become just another game world where I’d invested a lot of time.

I don’t think the Rift Dimension is any different.

If anything, I know I need to be even more careful and meticulous because the Rift Dimension is more real. But now I’ve gained an understanding about companions that I never had in the farming world.

I don’t need to do everything alone.

In the farming world, my thoughts were: Who can I trust? What if they make mistakes? What if they’re careless?

Such concerns prevented me from delegating tasks, making me think I had to do everything myself. But in the Rift Dimension, whether by luck or because we’ve met like-minded people in the real world, I’ve developed enough trust to consider entrusting even SSS+ level abilities to others.

I don’t know how long this trust will last.

At least so far, our staff has been solid and dedicated to their roles. I don’t yet know what choice I’ll have to make if they succumb to temptation, burn out, neglect their duties, or harm the farm.

Nevertheless, this multiplayer approach clearly benefits the farm, so despite the potential risks, I intended to maintain the current situation.

“Phew. I’ve gathered quite a lot.”

Before I knew it, the sun had set, and I’d collected many resources.

When it comes to miscellaneous tasks, nothing beats grinding.

I’d gathered so many corrupted resources from the Steam Forest.

I also mined some cloud sugar on my way back, which made both Ji-hyun and Su-jeong happy.

“Oppa, doesn’t the food taste much better these days?”

“Well, you have SS+ cooking.”

“No, it’s not just that. I’ve been using cloud sugar instead of regular sugar lately. We need to take care of our health, right? I mean, you can cure cancer or whatever, but food tastes better with cloud sugar. This kimchi stew has cloud sugar in it too—isn’t it delicious?”

“It sure is.”

Ji-hyun was happy because she needed cloud sugar to create sugar substitutes through alchemy.

Su-jeong said she’s been enjoying cooking lately.

“I realized that having a high cooking rank doesn’t mean you’re automatically good at cooking. I didn’t have much experience, and even following recipes was difficult because there’s a lot of personal touch involved. But it turned out to be an ingredient issue. With better ingredients, ability boosts make delicious dishes more likely. Actually, about 70-80% of the cooking ability is just adding options to dishes.”

Having played the farming world and spent more than three-quarters of my days there alone, I’m thoroughly familiar with various life skills.

Especially cooking—I ate more meals in the farming world than in reality, so I probably know more recipes than Su-jeong even without a cooking ability now.

That’s why I know that having a high cooking ability doesn’t automatically make someone a good cook.

The cooking ability doesn’t make you a cooking king; it allows you to add options and buff effects to dishes you make.

Of course, there are passive skills that adjust the taste of food, so the ability to make food delicious is included, but cooking isn’t alchemy—you can’t turn excrement into chocolate. Ultimately, fresh ingredients and seasonings have a significant impact on taste.

So cloud sugar is essentially a universal seasoning.

No matter where you add it or how much, it automatically adjusts the sweetness perfectly, so even if you mess up other flavors, the dish won’t taste terrible.

“Hehe. Call me the queen of sweetness.”

“Anyone would be a queen with cloud sugar.”

“…Hmph, don’t ruin my moment. Oh, Oppa, how’s the ring enhancement going? You said you were going to try.”

“I’m heading out to attempt the level 2 enhancement today.”

After eating, I made purification stones and headed back to Kukum’s forge.

Level 2 requires 140 purification stones.

“Doubling the requirement seems a bit much.”

[Corrupted Ring +1 Purification > Corrupted Ring +2 Purification Enhancement Required Materials]

– Purification Stone (Normal): 0/140 (Enhancement Chance: 35%)

And the success rate has been cut in half too.

I suppose I should be grateful it still only requires normal-grade purification stones.

I’m not sure if that’s really something to be grateful for.

Anyway, I’ve barely managed to gather exactly enough for one attempt.

“Friend, you have so many purification stones? I need some too…”

“I’m stingy, so I have nothing to give.”

I cut off Kukum as he eyed my stones greedily.

Purification stones are truly scarce.

The purified options from purification enhancements are much better than item options, so if I could apply them to all my items, I’d spend day and night gathering corrupted resources for purification.

And he wants me to give him some?

I’d like to ask for the return of the purification stones I gave him when first unlocking this content.

“Just do the enhancement.”

Looking at the probability, I really need to learn SSS+ enhancement soon and do it myself.

An SSS+ ability would probably provide some correction to the enhancement probability.

“I wish you luck.”

Kukum places the purification stones on the corrupted ring and strikes.

Clang!

At +1, the 30% failure chance didn’t trigger, so the enhancement succeeded.

For +2, conversely, the 35% success chance needs to hit for the enhancement to succeed.

“Please.”

A desperate prayer. My luck has been good lately. Now it’s 35%. It’s time for a low probability to hit as a reverse bet.

[Corrupted Ring +2 Purification Enhancement Success!]

“Phew…”

I thought I’d be jumping for joy, but my heart sank, and a sigh of relief came first.

Even in this dimension with immeasurable resource deposits, corrupted resources are truly limited.

It might be because we’re still in a low-level biome and the corrupted purification cauldron’s level is low, but if days of grinding and practically stripping an entire biome only yields a little over 100 purification stones, they’re genuinely hard to come by.

The map itself is vast, and purification stone acquisition options are starting to appear on the cauldron, so things might change later, but for now, each attempt burns through current resources, making it all the more desperate.

With a pounding heart, I check the option.

– (Purification) Random stat +2 grades in corrupted areas

“…Wow.”