The week after the World Championship felt like a hangover.
Not a bad one—more like the kind that came after eating too much cake at a birthday party and passing out surrounded by soda cans, glowing raid buffs, and people arguing about DPS rotation efficiency like it was a religion.
Sin and Touch Me were now proud owners of the [World Champion] job class, and—unsurprisingly—it came with its own set of leveling hell.
Even for players as busted as them, the experience curve for post-champion leveling was no joke. Most mobs didn't even give full XP anymore—they had to go after "Champion-Slaying Quests" or hidden dungeon bosses that had time-gated respawn mechanics and lore requirements that made college entrance essays look simple.
So, yeah, the grind was real.
Touch Me had taken to calling it "Divine Leg Day."
Sin just called it "content padding."
But amidst the chaos of grind quests and new skill testing, Sin was already turning his attention to something else.
His next avatar.
Now that his meta build—the Judgment-themed PvP monster known as Absolute Sin—was finished, the only thing left to do with it was gear optimization. And frankly, Sin didn't want to spend the next three months running gear dungeons that dropped 1% loot for 0.1% stat increases.
He wanted something fun.
Dramatic.
Cinematic.
Something villainous.
"Okay!" Sin clapped his hands. "Brainstorm time. Let's hear some villain ideas."
Big mistake.
That's all he had to say for a full-blown clan-wide shout fest to begin.
"I think you should play a corrupted saint!" shouted Ulbert Alain Odle, already sketching out demonic choir themes. "Like a holy figure who fell and now commands undead angels or something!"
"Make him a dragon god!" barked Garnet, who was obsessed with anything reptilian. "Like a literal world-ending entity sealed away in some forgotten realm with a tragic backstory!"
"Play a virus!" Peroroncino yelled. "Like a magic plague that gained sentience and started rewriting existence. Name him 404 or something glitchy!"
"Okay, that's a bit too meta," Sin muttered, trying to keep up as more voices joined the fray.
They were in their temporary clan base—a large, rented underground stone hall with mismatched furniture, random monster trophies on the walls, and what looked like five different crafting stations jammed into one room. It was loud, messy, and somehow cozy.
They never registered as a guild.
Too much work.
Too many naming debates.
So instead, they just referred to themselves as a clan, which was good enough. The place wasn't glamorous, but it was theirs.
Even if Whitebrim was currently trying to fry an entire suckling wyvern on a forge meant for blacksmithing.
"Hey, what about that new racial unlock?" Momonga asked. "The one you got from your Champion title—[Mythborne Sovereign], right?"
Sin leaned back in his chair.
"Yeah. Looked interesting. But I haven't really explored it yet."
"Not going to use it for your villain character?"
Sin shrugged. "Maybe. But I want to do a little research first. I like knowing what I'm getting into before I start spreadsheet hell. You know how I work."
He pulled up a floating window, blank for now.
His sacred Build Sheet.
Untouched.
Clean.
Fresh.
A new start.
A blank canvas that would one day evolve into something terrifying.
Meanwhile, the shouting continued.
"Make him a cursed emperor!"
"No, a puppet master that controls an entire kingdom in secret!"
"What about a fallen hero turned final boss?"
"Oh! Oh! What if he starts as a humble librarian, but he's secretly the Book of Endings incarnate?"
"…What?"
"Just go with it."
They tried drawing mock designs.
Some sketches looked cool.
Some looked like eldritch roadkill.
At one point, Tabula Smaragdina joined in with a literal PowerPoint presentation titled "Color Theory and Why Your Villain Needs More Than Two Tones."
"STOP USING BLACK AND RED FOR EVERYTHING!" he screamed as flames erupted behind him for dramatic effect.
Sin was honestly having a blast.
It wasn't productive.
It wasn't logical.
But it was fun.
He got to see all the weird corners of his clan's brains. The quiet ones had loud ideas. The loud ones somehow got louder. And someone (probably Variable Talisman) started writing backstory fanfics in real-time.
He wasn't even mad when someone suggested giving his villain a tragic love interest who was actually his own reflection sealed inside a divine mirror.
Eventually, they started voting by volume.
"LOUDER MEANS BETTER!" shouted Tigris Euphrates, slamming a table like a judge at a karaoke contest.
Sin just took notes.
Not because the ideas were good (they weren't, not all of them anyway), but because this was his clan. Loud, wild, sometimes questionable—but all creative in their own strange ways.
After two hours, the chaos simmered down.
Mostly because Suratan fell asleep on a pile of loot and started snoring loud enough to shake the room.
Sin stood and stretched.
"I'll start researching some of the ideas we screamed about," he said. "Might mix a few together. Villainous, tragic, cursed... something that fits the aesthetic. I'll keep the spreadsheet posted."
Momonga looked excited. "I can't wait to see what you come up with."
Touch Me—who had stayed quiet for most of it—finally added, "Just make sure whatever it is doesn't come with another blinding cosmetic."
"...No promises."
That night, after everyone had logged out or gone silent, Sin stayed in the base.
He stared at the blank spreadsheet again.
Title: Sin Alt Project #2
Concept: ???
He opened a new window.
[Mythborne Sovereign]
A being born of narrative consequence—those whose legend transcends mere mortal limitations. Able to select one of three Archetypes: The Hero, The Tyrant, or The Traitor.
"…Huh," Sin muttered.
He hovered over The Tyrant.
Not selected.
Not yet.
He smiled.
Then closed the window.
"Tomorrow."