Developer in the immortal World !

"And, what is your plan to create something completely original, something never seen before? How did you say it, so fittingly? Intertextuality is an inevitable condition of all creation. How, without visiting the library, can you make sure you will not simply reproduce an existing dilemma speaking to you through your subconsciousness."

"Let that be my worry, Master Qin," Jin muttered, thoughts going a mile a minute.

The Elder looked him up and down appraisingly. "It seems I was worried for nothing. Intelligence or not, spirit is also an important criterion for an illusion Room cultivator," the older man said. "I'm looking forward to what you'll show us in a week, disciple Jin." He turned around and promptly left, a breeze shutting the door behind him.

Jin meanwhile, had figured out, from his newly received memories, what niche exactly he wanted to focus on filling to make himself valuable to the sect, and thus live a safe and comfortable life with few worries.

It was very difficult for the inhabitants of this new world to face new challenges. Their society was not based around creativity, but rather an odd form of what Jin recognized as strict spiritual Confucianism. In addition, the world had not yet reached the potential post-scarcity level of technology, and thus most of its population was still stuck farming fields and were not even literate.

The artistic output of this relatively small agricultural and illiterate human population, resting perhaps at about 1 billion globally, if not less, could not compare to the artistic output of the 21st and the 20th century on Earth. Especially with the creation of the internet, which if nothing else was a machine that sped up people's ability to be creative and the proliferation of art to a previously unprecedented scale.

Jin's niche in this world was thus that he had an entirely different cultural background, one that arose from a Western school of thought, and the artistic consumer experience, saved in his brain through his photographic memory. Even if he did not have access to a mental game library of about 500 games, thousands of movies, dozens of shows, and hundreds of books, he would likely due to his different background be able to create stuff that was not, perhaps a masterpiece, but at least original.

However, he would rather not gamble his becoming an inner disciple on his up until now yet unproven creative abilities. No, it was time to access the memories of both his lives and consider which thing stuck out the most as being missing in this world.

He sat himself up in the lotus position and retreated deep into thought.

Cycling through the monsters in his mind, trying to decipher which one would be the weirdest to the people of this new world, he quickly came upon an interesting factoid.

The language he was now speaking was not English, obviously, it was simply the imperial standard. However, there was an English word which didn't have an imperial synonym, despite it really needing one if one considered how martial this society actually was.

There was no real concept of full plate armour as Westerners knew it. Which was weird. But why was that the case? Jin's mind raced a mile a minute as he considered the variables. Eventually, he settled on the most likely explanation.

Heavenly energy. The big difference between the two worlds. Heavenly energy, as was the name, came from the heavens and suffused the biology of all living things. Cultivating was simply taking in more of this heavenly energy than was strictly necessary, and using it to empower one's body, one's mind, and to use it as fuel to cast spells and other effects.

But that was the crutch, heavenly energy suffused the biology, not the inorganic. That meant that while rocks and metal were just as tough as in the last world, everything else was stronger. Due to the constant influx of energy humans were more powerful as a baseline, without any cultivation, animals were faster, and monsters were more ferocious.

A body cultivator of the foundation establishment stage would likely be able to snap a metal armour plate with a punch. Considering the plate was out of an inorganic material, it was also more difficult and costly to enchant. It just wouldn't stick. Leather armour made out of the hide of some powerful beast, however? Dead useful. Naturally, this meant that all armour was somehow flexible since it was made of organic material. The soldiers and cultivators of this world simply didn't know how it was to struggle to penetrate someone's iron full plate during which every strike resonated partially back into one's own body.

Jin had made the experience at a mediaeval festival, and it hadn't been fun. However, simply creating a creature that wore armour was hardly innovative. Armour existed in some form after all, chitin pilfered from bug monsters was somewhat similar. However, there was another thing, a weapon that wasn't very popular.

Since time immemorial on earth, humans had fastened sharpened stones, and later metals to long poles of wood, creating a safe long-distance weapon that could be thrown, as well as handled near an enemy.

The spear.

In this world of cultivation, this weapon seemed almost non-existent. At least Jin had never seen one. The absolutely preferred weapon was a sword. One of the first immortals to ever ascend, who'd doled out his skills to humanity in general, had been a cultivator focusing on the way of the sword. There was just something about it.

It was also more cost-efficient in a way. Here weapons were generally made out of bones, or out of fangs of great beasts. Dragons and house-sized tigers. Stuff like that, things you didn't want to meet in a dark alleyway. Or any alleyway for that matter...

Naturally, these resources were limited to one's ability to kill dragons and house-sized tigers and when one eventually succeeded, one would rather carve out of the same amount of material three swords, rather than one spear.

One could ask at this point why one couldn't simply create 15 spear tips rather than three swords, to then add those tips to poles of wood, and the answer was… While there were incredibly durable woods, since trees also took in heavenly energy, it was not considered very intelligent to stack materials for a weapon. The more materials something consisted of, the harder it was to enchant it. Similarly, the more materials something consisted of, the harder it was for the user of such a weapon to channel their spells through it. Channelling energy through a weapon required a specific frequency of vibration so to say, and going through wood then bone was several times as hard then simply going through either.

It would only make sense to make a spear if one could truly make it out of one piece of bone or fang. However, those gigantic fangs and bones generally belonged to very powerful creatures. By the time a cultivator became powerful enough to kill such a creature… Well, it was rather improbable that they did so bare-handedly. They'd likely done so with a sword, or with a staff. They were hardly going to make a spear out of the material and switch weapons at that stage of their journey. That would just be asinine.

As for soldiers? Why they didn't use spears? On Earth, the spear had been the staple of the mediaeval and the Roman infantryman. Every single warrior culture on the planet had developed the spear independently.

The answer to why this wasn't the case here? Other than cultural influence from cultivators seeping through the rest of society, and sword techniques being more developed in general, soldiers were a bunch that very much wanted to become cultivators, even if only for the first stages, which is what their talents usually were sufficient for. What was the point of learning the spear, if one wasn't going to use it for longer than a few years. Might as well start with the sword.

Also, people in this world generally distrusted weapons constructed out of two separate materials in general, so the point became, once again moot.

Jin had never seen a spear, and although there was a word for it in the language, he didn't think it was used by anyone other than farmers who liked to hunt for wild pigs in the forest. As a weapon of war, the spear essentially didn't exist.

He could consider a monster that was somewhat special as well, but Jin thought that putting forth a new combat style would also score him innovatively points. After all, while he could create a never-before-seen monster, which would require the "player" to think on their feet to beat it, a humanoid monster with armour and a spear would require a similar level of innovation, but could also introduce a combat style that didn't exist yet to anyone who wanted to get inspired by it.

He considered for a second if he should make one scenario with armour, and one with a spear, but then the perfect combatant suddenly came to mind.

The perfect monster to impress the judges.

If one talked mediaeval armour and a spear there could only be one really.

Dragonslayer Ornstein from Dark Souls