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"Why must you disturb the slumber of the dead…" Her voice was void of any emotion. "Ahh…I feel a despicable presence from you."

She released his arm, and Jiang Qiao quickly retreated. In this time, she slowly stood up from her position on the throne.

The moment she stood up, she pulled out the sword impaled in her chest with a sudden movement, the blood gushing out from her chest as if a stopper had been pulled.

"Ocean Blue, the great and powerful goddess, once my only belief, and the enemy that I must erase," She spoke slowly, her tone cold as she walked through the pool of blood under her towards Jiang Qiao.

Hey hey hey, was the boss fight going to begin just like that?

"Miss Maya please wait, I have something to ask you before you enter the boss fight!" As he shouted, he realized his vision was split into two.

It was at this moment that he realized that the probe was cut into two halves in a fraction of a second.

He felt the bit of consciousness he imbued on the probe being absorbed by the queen, and so he could only expend another ten points to revive it.

"Can't we negotiate?" Jiang Qiao asked as he fixed the probe together again.

"Negotiate?" She tilted her head and thought for a moment, before Jiang Qiao was split into Jiang Qiao 1/2 again. " I will not listen to the deception of the Devourer God."

How bad was Ocean Blue's reputation?! None of her past believers liked her anymore!

As he grumbled about the bad reputation of his goddess in the starmap, he used another ten points of Maker Energy to revive next to the queen.

"I'm not here to talk as the Devourer God, but as a game developer…We can make a deal!" Before he could finish his words, he was split into Jiang Qiao 1/3.

So there was no room for discussion?

Jiang Qiao could feel a strong hatred coming from this woman in front of her towards Ocean Blue, and even though she seemed expressionless from the outside, her sword was quite honest.

Jiang Qiao had been split into fifths in another moment.

"I just wanted to ask one question!" After being insta-killed for the fifth time, he completely gave up any chance to resolve things with her peacefully. "You…Do you have a second mode?"

"Second…Mode…?" Queen Maya pondered for a bit, before splitting Jiang Qiao further into fifteen fractions in confusion.

"Fine, let's meet in battle then…Wait, I mean, you wait here for me to call reinforcements!"

After throwing down a declaration like a dog that had been beaten up, he disappeared in a flash of light.

As Jiang Qiao opened his eyes again, Ocean Blue was leaning close to him with a worried expression.

The moment he saw Ocean Blue, Jiang Qiao retreated reflexively before comparing the goddess in front of him with the queen that completely won in terms of beauty and aura, and sighed aloud.

"What are you sighing for this time?" Ocean Blue had noticed Jiang Qiao sigh as he looked at her time and time again, and she was quite perplexed what it was about her that caused it.

"Nothing, I just think that the final boss this time is a little hard to deal with."

"Hard to deal with? What was their name, perhaps I can think of their weaknesses?"

Ocean Blue wanted to help Jiang Qiao in her normal state and not in Maker Mode, and normally she could only help Jiang Qiao… clear out the food that was almost going to expire in the fridge.

"Her name was Maya Steyn, do you have any recollection of her?" Jiang Qiao wanted to know her weaknesses, and if she had any trump cards hidden up her sleeve.

"I don't think I know her…" Ocean Blue sighed. "I don't remember a lot from my original world, and I only remember some useless stuff."

"That's alright." Jiang Qiao didn't expect Ocean Blue to be able to do anything in the first place.

"How is she hard to deal with?" Ocean Blue continued to ask.

"She's pretty and quite dignified, too pretty, in fact." Jiang Qiao thought that was the greatest edge the queen had over players, far scarier than any instant death skills she might have.

"What's hard to deal about that?" Ocean Blue couldn't understand Jiang Qiao anymore.

"If the final boss is too good looking, the players might rebel."

"What?"

"They would make an order of knights in her name to protect her, for example."

Jiang Qiao seriously told her the bad news, but Ocean Blue was still confused on what he was talking about.

"Let me put it this way. I've said that Sacred Souls is an amusement park for the players, and the monsters, elite monsters, and bosses are considered as playthings for them. With that being said, the players might take a liking to these playthings. When a boss that's strong, beautiful and has a special charm, there will definitely be doujin… Bah, there's going to be trouble, basically."

"Is it not enough for those players to have me?" Ocean Blue finally understood what Jiang Qiao was getting at, and so she crossed her arms over her chest indignantly and said, "As a goddess, aren't I stronger and more beautiful than any female enemy?"

"Uhm…"

Jiang Qiao removed his gaze discreetly from Ocean Blue, and opened the System Tome to plan further.

"Don't try and avoid the subject! Do you really think that I would lose to that whats-her-name queen? If I make my debut, the players would probably…"

"Ocean Blue, the black pepper steak that I ordered is here. Can you help me fetch it?"

"So quick?! Ah….Alright, I understand." Ocean Blue was going to continue on the topic of whether she was prettier or the queen was, but she relented due to the black pepper steak.

Jiang Qiao used this time to open the System Tome and check on the amount of Maker Energy he had left.

He had 17400 points left, and every few seconds or so it would be increased by several dozen.

These were the points that the players helped him earn through the Tower of Trials.

According to the multiple times Jiang Qiao and Queen Maya had clashed…More like a massacre on one end, Queen Maya could absorb the Maker Energy from Ocean Blue's creations.

This was quite a piece of bad news.

"You tricked me, it was just fried chicken chop!" Ocean Blue suddenly went online and shouted.

"Leaving that aside, this dungeon with your divinity fragment is going to be quite hard." Jiang Qiao closed the System Tome, knowing that they couldn't let the players revive endlessly and clear the dungeon with their lives like they always do.

"Is that human really that beautiful?"

"Not that! She has the ability to absorb your Maker Energy," Jiang Qiao explained.

"No, that's not possible! But if she had my divinity fragment, she would probably be able to do it…"

Ocean Blue started thinking of ways to deal with it, but with her current ability she had no way to restrict the queen from absorbing her Maker Energy.

"In the world of Sacred Souls, the players don't use up any energy from dying and reviving because it's basically just transporting them from one point to another, but in that plane, the players would probably be absorbed by the beings of that plane. In conclusion, we would have to use more energy to revive them," Jiang Qiao concluded promptly.

"How much?" Ocean Blue asked curiously.

"Not much, only a few dozen. But seeing as we have so many players it might be quite a large number. Not only that, the more times they revive, the more energy we have to expend." Jiang Qiao told Ocean Blue some news that gave her pause. "But I have a theory that the players would be able to retrieve their energy if they defeat the monster that killed them in the first place."

"Where did you get that theory from?"

"A game." Jiang Qiao started to think about how to design this large-scale dungeon. "We just have to increase the death penalty from dying in the Divinity Fragment Plane, starting from the NPC that players come into contact with the most."

Jiang Qiao brought Ocean Blue to the place where players saw the most, the Cathedral of Resurrection.

The interior of the cathedral was its own independent space, and any player that entered it wouldn't meet any other player. As Jiang Qiao entered the Cathedral of Resurrection, the hustle and bustle of the city were completely cut off, leaving behind a tranquil atmosphere.

The light shone in through the stained glass windows on the platform that players revived on, and the Vigilist Floria that was the only NPC in here was sitting on the stone steps leading up to it.

The gray-robed NPC was sitting all alone, looking at her palms.

She wasn't flooded with players unlike other NPCs that were almost suffocated by throngs of players at once.

The Vigilist Floria was a special NPC for each player, meaning that each player had their own 'Vigilist Floria'.

This was also the reason why Jiang Qiao wanted to start his plans from her.

"Gentle sacred soul, you have returned."

As Floria saw Jiang Qiao enter the Cathedral of Resurrection, she slowly stood up from the stone steps and held her hands to her chest with a gentle smile. Jiang Qiao had made sure to design her character like a gentle housewife.

"Let's remove the NPC touching restrictions first." Jiang Qiao walked over to her and lifted the restrictions he had set on her.

Players couldn't actually touch NPCs in Sacred Souls other than perhaps their hands. Jiang Qiao knew that if he lifted this restriction, this game would probably quickly become restricted for children.

Now, Jiang Qiao was experiencing this R18 version of Sacred Souls first-hand.

Jiang Qiao reached out and pinched her cheek, while she continued looking at him with her default expression.

Her skin was soft and supple to the touch just like a normal human's, but it didn't have any warmth.

All the NPCs were created by Jiang Qiao in Maker Mode, and now he had to confirm some of the details about this NPC.

This included how the NPC felt to the touch, and whether they would react when touched in specific places.

"Great God, what can your faithful servant do for you?"

The moment Jiang Qiao touched her, Floria immediately changed her manner of speech, knowing that Jiang Qiao wasn't a player at the moment but a game developer.

"There are presets for this too? Tell me, how many players have you come into contact with up till now?"

Jiang Qiao released Floria's cheek and started asking about her popularity within players.

"3421 people have spoken to me. The young sacred souls would talk to me for long periods of time, mostly about some private matters in real life. I seem to have become some sort of character like a lover or a therapist. This is the same even for female sacred souls." Floria's voice was quite emotionless, and her soft tone was pleasing to listen to.

"There's only a little more than 4000 players in the server right now, or should I say it's expected of our mascot?"

Jiang Qiao opened the browser tool and clicked open the Sacred Souls forum which was still filled with posts about Floria.

The game became popular in the first place because of Floria's looks and setting, and players only discovered how interesting the game was after playing it.

Most players on the forum called Floria their 'waifu'.

"It's a little bit of a shame to use you as a sacrificial lamb, but I'm going to need your cooperation for the penalty to work…"

Jiang Qiao was here to design a whole new penalty for players who died.

The original penalty wasn't that severe—Only a slight decrease in the durability of the player's equipment, without even a deduction from their EXP.

This sort of penalty was quite common in online games.

Jiang Qiao didn't have any plans of changing the original plane of Sacred Souls, because to the players the entire plane in itself was a large scale 'beginner village'. Only when the players leveled up fully in this plane would this game truly start.

Jiang Qiao was planning to only make the penalty for dying on the Ocean Blue Divinity Fragment Plane worse, so that they would not die in overly ridiculous ways when fighting with Queen Maya.

"Penalty? Are you going to…"

Ocean Blue made a motion of swiping her finger past her neck, somewhat unwilling to continue her assumption.

"If I kill off this character, the players would probably be furious with me and not Queen Maya…" Jiang Qiao knew that this NPC was the soft spot of the majority of players.

If he poked this soft spot gently it would probably be fine, but if he stuck a knife into this soft spot and tore it, Jiang Qiao would become the subject of the players' anger.

"Isn't there any other way?"

Ocean Blue thought Jiang Qiao was really going to do something terrible to Floria, and out of her love for her creation, she asked for mercy.

"If we don't make the penalty worse, the players are definitely going to do as they like! Have you never seen how players use their lives to fill up the dungeon completion gauge before?"

"Kind of, but how do you plan on doing that?" Ocean Blue had spectated a few times on players clearing dungeons.

Each dungeon in its beginning stage was cleared through the countless deaths of parties and guilds.

Jiang Qiao wasn't going to restrict this method as a whole, he just wanted the players to die usefully instead of going to die just for the heck of it, by extension increasing their Maker Energy expenditure.

"After players die thrice in a row on the Divinity Fragment Plane, Floria will lose her life and turn back into a doll…"

"Didn't you say you weren't going to kill her off?!"

Ocean Blue shouted, and from the looks of it she was about to hide Floria behind her so that Jiang Qiao wouldn't kill her with a knife or something.

"I wasn't finished. What I want to do is something more of a mute status." Jiang Qiao continued, "In the background setting of the game, the players' ability to revive comes from the Vigilist Floria. I'm going to say that the enemies on your Divinity Fragment Plane have the power to strip them of that ability, and after they die thrice in a row Floria would weaken so much that she would revert back to a regular doll. The players would have to kill the monsters that killed them in the first place to release them from the curse."

"What if they die more than thrice?" Ocean Blue asked, realizing a loophole in his design. "Not all players care about Floria, after all."

"After their third death, they would not be protected by the blessings of the Vigilist Floria and their EXP will decrease by 50% on the fourth time. On the fifth time and later, they're going to lose one level every time they die, until they kill enough monsters to break the curse." Jiang Qiao suggested a penalty that would probably make the players so angry they would smash their keyboards.

"Once they break the curse, their EXP would be returned to them and Floria here is going to be revived, until the second time they die thrice in a row."

"But wouldn't it get harder and harder? Are you sure they're going to help us defeat Queen Maya like this?" Ocean Blue felt the penalty he designed was quite dubious.

"High risk, high reward after all. I'm going to design a bunch of rewards that they won't be able to refuse, starting from unlocking the second stage of affection for Floria."

As he looked at Vigilist Floria again, she seemed to realize something and reached to pull at the edges of her mouth with her fingers, squeezing out an awkward smile.

Jiang Qiao suddenly remembered the saying that goes, 'Say you like them and make them pay another thousand!'

[Miss Doll smiled at me! I wanna talk with her for an entire day!] Posted by: ACertainPlum.

[Isn't there a way to change waifu's clothes? The ones she has are too shabby!] Posted by: CutestTheresa.

[Do you guys think this is a love simulation game or something?] Posted by: BadMood.

Jiang Qiao browsed the forum and found that quite a number of players were hoping to change Vigilist Floria's clothes.

Her gray nun robes were too shabby after all.

"These are the preset dialogues for you. Try guiding them towards the topic of increasing their levels and about the War of Divinity."

After reading all the comments on Vigilist Floria on the player forums, he started planning ways to scam…No, guide the players to become stronger.

"I'll try my best, my lord."

"Share the preset dialogues I gave you just now with your sisters." Jiang Qiao closed the System Tome that he was holding.

Jiang Qiao added more than a hundred dialogue branches, as well as a whole new main quest in preparation for the upcoming War of Divinity.

"Synchronizing…" Floria closed her eyes, and reopened them a few seconds later. "Synchronization complete."

"Notify me when a player manages to unlock the main quest alright?"

"It has already been activated."

"That fast?"

It had only been two seconds after the data had been synchronized between the different Florias.

Perhaps some players completely treated this game like a love simulation game and talked to Floria all day?

"Code 107, the version of me serving the sacred soul StarlightScribe."

107 was the index number of players that had logged in, and any code before 1000 were the players that entered Sacred Souls in the first testing. Jiang Qiao remembered this ID—It was the one that had posted the thread that had caused this game to blow up in the first place.

Jiang Qiao defined this sort of player as the scholars, and they represented the casual player base together with the ones that went around checking out the scenery. Instead of focusing on the game, they focused more on discovering the lore and storylines of the game.

"Recreate the scene please."

Jiang Qiao pulled Ocean Blue a few steps backward to leave enough space for Floria, and a semi-transparent hologram appeared in front of her.

The hologram was that of a mage character with a large hat, and from his actions he seemed to be listening carefully to what Floria was saying.

…

The Starlight Scribes was an organization among players that had the objective of discovering all sorts of settings and background stories in games.

Fan Xing was the creator of this organization, and before this he had always been checking out dungeons in War. As soon as he came into contact with Sacred Souls, he was completely drawn in by this realistic world.

The NPCs in War only had a couple of preset dialogues, but the NPCs in Sacred Souls had a few hundred per character!

In his very humble opinion, it was a feat that was near impossible. When an NPC's purpose was only to help repair equipment and do some miscellaneous tasks, no game developer would waste that effort on setting so many dialogues for them.

This was an MMORPG and not a love simulator after all, doing it was synonymous to a great waste.

But Sacred Souls did exactly that, and especially with the character called Floria.

Every time he spoke to her, the conversation would always turn out so different that he almost thought she was a real human.

That was until he asked the same questions that she repeated her answers that he realized that this was just an NPC, a cluster of data.

That being said, he was still extremely enamored by this lifelike character that he didn't even bother training and grinding for levels, choosing to record her words and upload them onto the forum instead.

Fan Xing had managed to record an entire 573 pieces of dialogue, and this was probably all of her dialogues in his opinion.

"Good morning Floria."Fan Xing started asking and experimenting with Floria again to see if he could get any new lines from her.

"Good morning great sacred soul," Floria replied, and Fan Xing had already heard this so many times he was numb to it.

And so he started to communicate with Floria, but was quite disheartened by how her replies were all ones that he had heard before. It had already been a while, but he hadn't heard any new lines from her.

"She's an NPC, after all…" Fan Xing scoffed at himself, thinking, 'Is it wrong to try to pick up a girl made from a cluster of data 1?'

Should he go check out some other NPCs?

After asking for a little more and giving up, he sighed as he walked out of the Cathedral of Resurrection.

"Great sacred soul."

Suddenly, Floria spoke, and Fan Xing stopped his steps and looked back hopefully.

"May you find your value in this broken world."

This reply made Fan Xing sigh again as it was the default message whenever he left the cathedral.

"But before you leave, I have a question, if that's alright?" Floria's next sentence made the sullen player look up so quickly he might have gotten whiplash.

A question?

She had never asked him any questions in these few days that he talked with her, did he activate some secret conversation, or did Floria have the ability to think independently?

"What is it?" Fan Xing quickly made his way back to the stone steps.

"The pope has taught me about the church, about God, and about the ones that God loves…" Floria softly uttered a piece of dialogue that Fan Xing had never heard before, her tone somewhat confused. "But, does God really love her creations?"

What kind of question was that? Fan Xing was taken off guard, but he still recorded the line dutifully. Floria's next movements made him stop typing on the keyboard.

"I am but a doll created by you humans, have you ever thought of loving me?" Floria placed her hands on her chest, her glass eyes wavering as she stared at Fan Xing. "Of course, I love you dearly…Is that not why you created me?"

F*ck! F*ck! F*ck!

As soon as he heard this, Fan Xing's breath practically got caught in his throat. It was his first time being confessed to, even if it were just an NPC!

He really wanted to hug Floria and tell her that he did!

But the touch restrictions didn't allow him to do so, so he only nodded.

"Thank you for your kindness, sacred soul, but as a mere doll I cannot accept your love…" As soon as she finished her sentence, Fan Xing received a system notification.

[Main Quest: Preparations for the War of Divinity]

[Quest details: You have come upon the truth of Vigilist Floria, and she seems to have a premonition of an upcoming cataclysm and a chance to change—The War of Divinity…As a doll created by the church, Floria longs for a heart like a human's, will you assist her?]

[Quest Requirements: Player LV50]

[Quest Reward: Unlocks Stage Two of Vigilist Floria's affection…]

There were more rewards, but Fan Xing only needed to see the first one before making up his mind. He didn't need anything like EXP, Equipment, or Renown!

But he needed to be Level 50 before he could accept the quest? He had been so engrossed in discovering her dialogue that his level was only Level 25, not even as high as the second batch of players.

'I must grind for levels! Grind until I'm max level!' This thought took root in his mind and grew endlessly.

As the thought of grinding popped up in Fan Xing's mind, his next step was to first post on the forum before doing anything else.

Due to his professionalism as the creator of the Starlight Scribes, he quickly composed a post so that everyone who loved Floria knew of this hope-filled dialogue.

As for why he didn't keep the quest a secret to himself, he thought that since everyone loved Floria, they were all comrades in arms!

The post was quickly posted onto the forum with the title [Found the way to unlock Floria's Second Stage of Affection! Miss Doll wants you to grind for levels!]

In less than ten seconds, a couple of notifications started popping up that people started to reply to the post.

As he stepped out of the cathedral, the number of notifications had already increased to twenty-three.

Perhaps the most motivating moment of each person that posted was when they received a flurry of notifications.

When the number of replies on his new post increased to fifty-two, he knew that this post was going to take the first place in the popularity ranking of the entire forum.

Back when he posted about War, he would only be able to get around fifty replies after a whole day, while this post increased to fifty-two in half an hour!

The euphoria he felt wasn't something that could be summarized with a few simple words.

As he clicked open his post, the replies had continued flooding in until there were more than a hundred!

PowerOfLove: 'So you're saying that I'll be able to change Miss Doll's clothes after I get to Level 50?'

MetalBall: 'Noob battle mage seeking support for the Gray Mist Valley, please save me! I haven't been able to get into a party for an entire day and I want to give my waifu some nice clothes too!'

NotWideAwake: 'Who knows if you'll only be able to change her clothes? Maybe we would be able to unlock an R18 version?'

DustyNoise: 'Shut up you heathen! Our Miss Doll is sacred so don't even think of it! Also gimme your coordinates, battle mage.'

AlwaysDazed: 'QWQ I wanna play with you guys too! I wanna get a waifu too! Please give me an activation qualification, I've been on the official site for three days and three nights!'

The replies on the post continued to multiply, but Fan Xing had already closed the web browser to contact his friends in-game. For his waifu, he had to work his hardest!

As Fan Xing ran out of the city, Jiang Qiao walked leisurely out of the Cathedral of Resurrection too.

"What next?" Ocean Blue floated next to Jiang Qiao and looked at the crowd of new players running and jumping around on the streets.

Ocean Blue had a sneaking suspicion that all players had some disease that made it impossible for them to move around without bouncing like rabbits. Eight out of ten players in Sacred Souls skipped and hopped as they walked, while the two left were bouncing on their mounts.

"I don't know," Jiang Qiao replied, making Ocean Blue look at him in confusion.

"Do you really think that I'm omnipotent? This is all I can do at this point as a game developer." Jiang Qiao looked at Ocean Blue's expression and shrugged, as if saying that he had times when he didn't know what to do either.

But thinking back, Ocean Blue's greatest and only contribution was to unlock Maker Mode for Jiang Qiao, while the goddess became something like a mascot character.

Ocean Blue hadn't played any modern games before, so she could only hand all the planning and development to Jiang Qiao without being able to give him any solid advice. That being said, Jiang Qiao wasn't some experienced game developer himself, and so the creation of Sacred Souls wasn't a smooth path.

"Shouldn't we make an estimate of our forces?" Ocean Blue asked, as if she suddenly remembered that she was a goddess and not Jiang Qiao's pet.

"An estimate?"

"Estimate our general forces and stuff? The armies back in my original plane seemed to do it so that it would be easier to manage their troops."

"Manage…Or is it because you're uneasy?"

Jiang Qiao could see that Ocean Blue wasn't very confident—Queen Maya was a whole Level 65 with more than sixty million HP after all.

Even if the players were at max level, they would only be Level 50. Adding onto that was the fact that Queen Maya might be able to revive the corpses to form an army, which made the upcoming battle an uphill one.

"I-I'm not scared!" Ocean Blue puffed her cheeks indignantly.

"I didn't say that you were. It's true that we have to do it sooner or later, but it's completely insufficient to just judge and estimate based on data alone, but their skill level too…Hm, I could use this chance to check out the guilds one by one."

"Guilds? Do players in guilds all have strong skills?"

Ocean Blue saw the difference between regular players and professional players quite clearly back when Zhao Mingwei fought with the spear knight, and she knew that players like Zhao Mingwei could beat ten equal leveled players at once.

That was what Ocean Blue thought, but Jiang Qiao valued their management abilities even more.

Solo players could be compared to a bunch of guerrillas, and Jiang Qiao wouldn't be able to control where they went, but it was a different story if there were guilds and guild players.

In Jiang Qiao's opinion, those large-scale guilds don't lose to seasoned and experienced armies.

As the game developer, Jiang Qiao had the duty of a general that issued orders to the army. Instead of using his position as a ruler to press them and punish whoever didn't follow his words like what they did in the past, what he had to do in Sacred Souls was to give them motivation through quests, rewards, a sense of honor through achievements and the popularity of certain characters or players within the players.

As long as he had these, Jiang Qiao could let these guilds defeat bosses and they would rush into the dungeon with their weapons at the ready, defeating the boss even if they died multiple times.

Jiang Qiao didn't even have to set any quests and just say that he would reward whoever killed the boss first would get epic mounts and equipment along with a server-wide announcement, and whoever did it would forever be recorded in the history and lore of the game…

The second day, the large guilds would all flood the dungeon to defeat the boss.

So now it was the problem of how many slave organizations… Bah, how many large scale guilds there were.

Jiang Qiao opened the Sacred Souls leaderboards, which held the rankings for player levels as well as the rankings for the combined guild prowess.

These two were both leaderboards that Jiang Qiao created on a whim, and players could check out their ranking from the Stone Slabs of Honor in front of the Lionheart City Palace.

The player that was ranked first on the player level leaderboard was still FreeMilk, and in a few days she had already leveled up to Level 38.

The player in second place was an elemental mage called Zanshin who was only Level 35.

Jiang Qiao wondered whether FreeMilk had been grinding for levels ever since she first logged into Sacred Souls.

'Do liver emperors on the leaderboard not have to eat or sleep?'

Jiang Qiao remembered such a complaint on the forum, and after a bit of thought he figured that they could just have survived on IV drips.

The reason why Jiang Qiao didn't implement the function to refresh the players' minds from the mobile version of Sacred Souls onto the VR version because it was way too surreal even for Tiangong-13.

That being said, FreeMilk truly hadn't gone offline ever since the day Sacred Souls started.

This made Jiang Qiao suspect that this player really was playing games with an IV drip…

Leaving this healer's insanely long online period aside, Jiang Qiao moved his attention to the guild leaderboard.

The guild leaderboard was ranked according to the overall prowess of the guilds, and it was calculated based on several factors such as the number of members, their levels, the number of sacred relics they owned.

The first on the leaderboard was the Jumping Nucleons guild, and it had been that way ever since the start.

There were a total of 245 members with an average of Level 32, which was quite a scary number considering that the total number of players Level 30 and above was barely 700. A third of this total was were members of this guild.

The reason why the Jumping Nucleons guild could recruit so many elite players was because of the popularity of SC Nucleons that was behind it. Most players joined the guild because they wanted to fight alongside professional players.

Jiang Qiao could understand how the players felt, and if the word went out that Zhao Mingwei was in Jiang Qiao's guild, he would probably receive dozens of requests in a heartbeat.

Of course he wouldn't do something like that as No Name was purely a friendship-based guild. The reason why he created the guild in the first place was purely to test the guild functions and have fun playing the game.

This was completely different from the Jumping Nucleons guild that had their eyes on being the number one guild from the start.

This number one wasn't only in terms of the number of members, but the average skill of the members too. They wanted to grab the first place in all the dungeons records and the popularity within players too!

Jiang Qiao felt the ambition of this guild, and the other professional game clubs definitely knew of this ambition too. According to the competition between guilds and clubs, they wouldn't let the Jumping Nucleons guild have their way.

Like the Abyssal Shrine guild in second place, for example.

Compared with this guild that was joked as the evil organization, Jumping Nucleons was much more down to earth.

There were 432 members in that guild with an average of Level 21, and the popularity of the club behind it was the on par with SC Nucleons.

The competition between these two guilds extended into Sacred Souls, and Jiang Qiao guessed that a few more guilds and clubs were going to build their forces in this game sooner or later.

Jiang Qiao didn't have any plans of stopping this competition from happening, and only planned on watching the show go on. This competition would become a motivator for these guilds to continue becoming stronger, and these guilds would be an important force for Jiang Qiao in the future.

"I need to find a way to get them to fight…" Jiang Qiao continued to look through the guilds in the leaderboard.

The guild in the third place was a guild called Sinking Dreams Wedding Committee. Jiang Qiao raised an eyebrow when he saw this name, but after seeing the guildmaster's ID and the members he knew why it was named this way.

The guildmaster was the live-streamer ModaoSwordsman, and one of the admins of the guild was a Level 5 warrior called SinkingDreams.

Jiang Qiao knew that this warrior was one of the most popular live-steamers on Raccoon, and one fun fact about her was that she was already thirty-seven years old with ten of millions in her bank, but she never had any boyfriends.

Her audience and even some haters wanted to dig up some dirt on her, but even after getting her past data from middle school until she graduated, they couldn't get any news on any men that were even close to her.

In the player community, SinkingDreams had the nickname of the Ice Cold Iron Virgin, and even ones called the Pure White Auntie, the Maiden Grandma Dreamie. She had also gotten several nicknames along this vein due to having a penchant for playing violent characters.

This wasn't what caught Jiang Qiao's eye, however. What caught his attention was how they had a whole 600 people, and in terms of the number of members, it was enough to beat both Jumping Nucleons and Abyssal Shrine.

…Well, their average level was only Level 13, but still!

This was a guild made completely from fans for the sake of entertainment, but Jiang Qiao still couldn't ignore this force.

Looking down the leaderboard, Jiang Qiao saw the guilds of the seven great game guilds in Hua Nation, like the Kings guild which was created by the game club that Zhao Mingwei was in.

"You want these guilds to fight amongst themselves?" Ocean Blue somehow had a chill down her spine as she listened to Jiang Qiao muttering to himself, perhaps a little traumatized by how he wrote Floria to 'death'.

"Ah, don't put it like that! I just want the competition between them to become even more intense."

"Isn't it already intense now?"

Ocean Blue didn't know a lot about managing guilds and about the game clubs.

"There isn't much competition right now. It's just the top two guilds fighting over the dungeon records and not much else." Jiang Qiao spoke the truth. All the competition was between the top two guilds, while the other guilds either weren't strong enough nor interested enough to compete.

But in Jiang Qiao's opinion, their competition was quite casual.

"What do you plan on doing to make them fight? Give them strong epic equipment as rewards?" Ocean Blue thought that Jiang Qiao wasn't really like a creator god, but more like some villain plotting behind the scenes.

"Epic equipment could only be used to make a single person stronger, what these guilds want is popularity! To leave behind a lasting impression on the players, and such."

"Ah, then how…"

"We're going to start from the dungeon records. Increase the influence of the dungeon records, as well as increasing the rewards of the Divinity War…"

Jiang Qiao knew that what the large guilds truly valued was a first kill record and dungeon records on a worldwide scale that would be kept in the history of the game. This was an honor that was worth them to contest.

"Are you sure they won't kill each other?" Ocean Blue thought a while, and used a more severe term.

"The hatred between players might get extended to real life to the point where they might fight, but for the competition between these large guilds mostly stay on the degree of just quarreling. They won't do anything because they have their pride, and most of these professional players know each other anyways."

Jiang Qiao knew that while the fans of these professional clubs quarreled a lot, the actual players themselves were acquaintances and even good friends.

"This is in preparation for the War of Divinity too. Floria's quest gave the players motivation to level up to Level 50, but to the frontline players, what they wanted wasn't a love simulation experience but a sense of honor…Well, some of them love Floria too."

As he said so, Zhao Mingwei messaged him asking if he had accepted the main quest with Miss Doll.

As the guildmaster of Jumping Nucleons, InkFlashback broke the first sacred record together with a native of Aquaflow and his guild members at a time of thirty minutes and seven seconds.

This was almost ten minutes faster than the records made by the natives!

This was a record that natives would not be able to break without the help of any players.

When InkFlashback came out of the Tower of Trials, a large crowd was awaiting eagerly with applause and flowers for the 'historical feat'.

Of course, these people weren't players but the soldiers and some ministers from Aquaflow.

The players outside the Tower of Trials had already gotten used to how the Jumping Nucleons guild broke the sacred records with an NPC. Perhaps they would have cheered the first time they saw it happening, but it had already happened so many times that they didn't even think it was worthy of note anymore.

"Great sacred soul, the world shall remember your strength," a minister started praising the players as they saw the record of thirty minutes and seven seconds.

"Oh. Where's the reward?"

InkFlashback didn't really pay any heed to them, reaching out towards the minister, while the latter got the idea and took out a large bag that contained 1500 magical stones.

When InkFlashback touched the bag, a message appeared asking how he wanted to distribute the magical stones.

Magical stones weren't tradable items and could only be used to buy items at the Faerie Merchant's stall. Upon receiving the reward, InkFlashback gave all of them to FluffyRabbit.

In the past few days, all of their members had already obtained the skins that they wanted instead of FluffyRabbit who was still three off. This time they went into the dungeon was purely for the sake of getting new clothes for FluffyRabbit.

"Great sacred soul, may I ask why you collect these magical stones?" That minister saw that the party was about to leave, so he quickly asked.

"A hidden quest? No…" InkFlashback glanced at Prince Segman who was still talking to FluffyRabbit. He was the only native in the team, and in the time they were in the dungeon InkFlashback had a hard time seeing him as a mere NPC.

The NPCs in Sacred Souls all gave InkFlashback the impression that they were all real humans, and this made him accustomed to their high intelligence and insane amount of preset dialogues.

"To get new clothes. If you want more information you can ask that faerie over there. This record would probably be maintained for quite a while, so we won't be accepting anymore requests for the first level. As for the second…"

Before InkFlashback could finish his sentence, the first ranking on the Stone Slab of Honor was broken!

'Congratulations to the Abyssal Shrine guild: Zanshin, Eyeless, EggFriedRice, Dishcloth, SwimmingPolice, NoSlippedDisc have broken the record with a speed of twenty-eight minutes and thirty-two seconds!'

InkFlashback's brows furrowed, and his nonchalant expression froze in place.

Those ministers that thought that the sacred record was in Aquaflow's grasp started panicking, looking at InkFlashback and back at the entrance of the Tower of Trials.

"Old Song! Sorry for breaking your records again!"

The elemental mage Zanshin walked out of the entrance, and InkFlashback wasn't really surprised. The Jumping Nucleons and the Abyssal Shrine guilds have been competing for a long time, and both guilds have developed a sort of strange rivalry.

"It's alright, we already have enough magical stones and are going to challenge the second floor." InkFlashback was quite calm about having their record broken, because he knew that the greatest use for breaking the records in the first place was to get magical stones from NPCs.

They already had enough magical stones, so there was no need to squabble further with the Abyssal Shrine guild on the first floor. This record didn't even have a global notification after all.

Such an insignificant dungeon record wasn't worth 'waging war' with Abyssal Shrine.

"Ah, we're going to do that tomorrow, but we can refresh the records of the first floor by about one minute today…" ZanShin walked towards the ministers of Aquaflow, not even hiding their intent on stealing their business.

The ministers were quite troubled by this turn of events, but the sacred records had been overtaken by the players quite a while ago. If they didn't seek help from them, Darkfire and Sunshine would do the same too.

"Guildmaster, are you sure we shouldn't try again?" The Cannoneer IonPlasma asked with a frown.

"It's pointless anyway. The players know of these records are too little, and it won't be able to help our guild out."

"Guilmaster! The official page of Sacred Souls was updated!" Another party member shouted.

"What?"

Hearing so, InkFlashback quickly opened the browser tool and opened the official page.

The official page was still minimalistic and tidy, with only a login button and the gacha button for the activation qualification.

Every time InkFlashback saw this page, he would be dubious about what the official team of Sacred Souls wanted to do.

With the popularity of the game currently, every game company would be thinking about how to haul a fortune, how to promote their game, and how to sell activation codes at a high price.

InkFlashback believed that people would even spend hundreds of thousands to buy an activation code for this game.

Not only were there no promotional activities on the official page, but the website itself was also abnormally simple. There were no screenshots of the game, neither were there trailers on the site, as if it were saying, "If you got the activation qualification good for you, if you didn't that sucks I guess."

On such a website, a new option appeared that was called [Sacred Records].

Sacred Records? Wasn't that just a name that the NPCs called the dungeon clear records?

InkFlashback clicked in and all the names of the dungeons in the game popped out in front of him. Without much thought, InkFlashback clicked into the one that said [Tower of Trials-First Floor].

The first thing that InkFlashback saw on the new page were the words 'Sacred Record Keeper: Abyssal Shrine Guild', along with a list of player IDs.

If it were just these words, it was nothing much, but the officials had attached a video below the names with the title 'MVP'.

InkFlashback clicked open the video and realized that it was the YouRabbit player, meaning that the officials had uploaded this video onto YouRabbit too with the account 'Sacred Souls Official Team'.

This video was exactly the footage of Abyssal Shrine defeating the first floor.

The random watcher wouldn't have the patience to watch the entire twenty-eight minutes, so the video was edited to maintain the most flashy and remarkable parts with movie-grade editing and camerawork.

There were three scenes recorded in this video. The first was that of Zanshin and a Shielder called EggFriedRice.

In the footage, the shield in EggFriedRice's hands shone a brilliant red light as it rammed into an Automaton Mantis, and when the sparks flew the scene camera angle changed quickly.

That Automaton Mantis was sent flying into another one, and the camera quickly panned over to the elemental mage Zanshin that was standing behind the two monsters.

Zanshin's ruby eyes flashed dangerously as icy blue runes appeared on his hands. Along with a smile, the runes quickly bore frost and ice, and the camera panned out again as icicles bloomed from the ground. The moment the Automaton Mantises were pierced by the icicles they were frozen immediately, and the scene ended.

Frost Banquet 1 was a skill that Elemental Mages could only learn at Level 38, and Zanshin probably learned it by using some special piece of equipment.

That being said, this was actually just a regular scene of a Shielder crowd controlling monsters and the Elemental Mage killing them, but…

"This video is so cool…"

"Did Abyssal Shrine bring along their own cameraman? This is completely on the level of a promotional CG."

"Do we have this sort of cameraman?"

InkFlashback listened to his party talk about how the cameramanship and the rhythm of the video wasn't something that could be created by the regular cameraman.

This video that was made by the official developers recorded the highlights of the battle, from the angles to the fast pacing of the video to the effects of the skill itself, the moment Zanshin used Frost Banquet it seemed like he was a legendary caster that could destroy everything with a flick of his hand.

This sort of video had only ever appeared in the promotional videos of games, and it was the sort of video that would make the random watcher want to play the game immediately.

InkFlashback logged onto YouRabbit and found the video called [Tower of Trials-First Floor Sacred Record holder Abyssal Shrine].

There were only still a few danmaku comments on the video, but InkFlashback knew that the screen would quickly be filled with danmaku comments like 'Strongest editor', 'Don't trick me with a promotional CG!'.

"Do we have one of these?" A player remembered that they had broken the record earlier and asked.

"No we don't…" InkFlashback searched on the official web, but he couldn't see the Jumping Nucleons guild anywhere. All of the records were taken by the Abyssal Shrine guild.

"Boss, why don't we try breaking the record again? We can't just take this lying down!" IonPlasma said.

"I think you just want to get your own video." SingingInTheRain quickly saw his true motive.

"Don't you? This is the first time I saw a player's fight get used as a promotional video!"

Smart.

InkFlashback watched the video a few more times, and even with his experience in gaming for all these years, he was still so moved by this video that he wanted to battle a few more times.

No matter how skilled and well renowned the Jumping Nucleons guild was, it was filled with a bunch of players with an average age of around twenty years old. Even InkFlashback himself was only twenty-seven years old.

As a player and a young one at that, what would one want the most?

A chance to act cool, of course.

Each and every player would never miss the chance to show off. Like getting a pentakill in MOBA games, or taking first place on the battlefield and recording the footage of their game so that they could show off to everyone…

InkFlashback knew better than anyone how depressing it was to not have anyone see or know when he did something especially spectacular.

But the MVP system of this game seemed to be a great help to him, and all the players who loved to show off.

It would record the skilled moves of the players in game, and preserve them all with movie-grade editing and camerawork.

Who could resist that!

InkyFlashback thought that if the MVP system were released earlier, a whole bunch of players would be thinking of how to make flashy moves whenever they entered the dungeons.

The most important was that it was uploaded for everyone to see on the official site!

There were probably a whole bunch of people refreshing the official page endlessly right now!

InkFlashback knew that if they broke a Sacred Record, and even all the Sacred Records in the game, how scary the popularity and honor it would bring to their guild!

Of course, they would have to break all the records in the first place!

"We will fight!" InkFlashback hadn't felt this hot-blooded in a long time.

"I knew I could count on you boss!" IonPlasma shouted, but InkFlashback's next sentence caught him off guard.

"IonPlasma and FluffyRabbit go rest first. If we have to break the record, we would have to change our members."

"Huh? Boss, what are you saying?! Aren't I the one with the highest Attack in the team?" IonPlasma was still hung up on getting an MVP, but before he could carry out his plans he was kicked out by InkFlashback.

"That record isn't our limit. If we have to beat Abyssal Shrine, we would have to make a record that they would never be able to beat. You and FluffyRabbit's skills are still…Insufficient." InkFlashback thought for a while before speaking slowly.

"He's saying that we're noobs!" FluffyRabbit quickly understood what InkFlashback meant.

"If we're noobs, then is Boss going to invite two more professionals?"

IonPlasma didn't continue complaining. InkFlashback was the coach of the professional club and SingingInTheRain was a retired professional player, and who knows how many more pros they knew.

"I'd have to ask… Also, I've read the rules of the sacred records and as long as more than half the party is a part of a certain guild the name of the guild would be left on the sacred record, so asking for outside help is allowed."

"Abyssal Shrine wouldn't have pulled their professionals to break the record with them too, would they?" IonPlasma knew that the same option was open to the other guild too.

"They're already doing so. Zanshin and Eyeless are both retired pros, and a warrior called Anemia and a sniper called WhiteEye are probably going to appear later on. If that's the case, then it would be their all-star team."

Another reason why Abyssal Shrine was called an evil organization was because their game IDs were mostly related to disabilities.

"Is the healer called MetalPlate coming too?" IonPlasma asked again.

"Probably."

"Why is this dungeon record like an all-star battle from War?" FluffyRabbit grumbled softly.

"The flame of battle has been ignited, so of course every guild is going to give their all. If it weren't for the fact I'm afraid of getting my salary deducted by our boss, I would have already pulled all our current players here already…That's just a random thought of course."

Three days later, Jiang Qiao checked the financial reports of the game and its current situation at the Astrology Tower.

The System Tome showed Jiang Qiao the data of the server through holograms.

From the System Tome, the income that the game brought Jiang Qiao was zero.

That being said, this game's commercial value had completely shown itself as the players continued to enter the game. The value of one gold coin had already increased to 372 dollars a piece, which was double the price that it was back at the start.

This was all according to Jiang Qiao's predictions, but what was truly expensive in this game was the special equipment.

"Aren't you going to put these to be sold on the trading site?" Ocean Blue asked as she ordered takeout using the Tiangong web browser. Because this browser was the one that Jiang Qiao used too, there were a few websites that he had bookmarked.

Ocean Blue had been learning how to surf the internet rapidly, and today she found a website for trading in-game items called the 4396 Gamer Trading Site.

This website was the largest of its kind in Hua Nation, and when she browsed through it she was surprised to find a division specifically for Sacred Souls.

In the Sacred Souls division, it showed the trading rate of gold coins, and recently the price had increased by ninety percent with the potential of increasing even further.

This was much more profitable than buying shares.

Jiang Qiao would get pleasantly surprised every time he saw the rates go up himself.

What attracted Ocean Blue's gaze was in the equipment trading division, and one of the most expensive pieces of equipment called Garona's Piggy Bank.

This was a special piece of equipment that didn't grant any stat bonuses, but it had the unique effect of increasing the gold earned by twenty-five percent when the player that equipped it beat a boss or an elite monster.

This special equipment didn't have a level requirement, but it took up a space in the player's equipment slot nonetheless.

The equipment that a player could equip on themselves in Sacred Souls were helmets, upper body armor, belts, leg armor, shoes, capes, gloves, two rings, two accessories, an extra Blessing Totem and weapon spaces for both hands.

Some classes like Hunters and Gunslingers even had a special slot for their ammo.

In total, there were around fourteen equipment slots, and if the special equipment that a player obtained were a ring, then this special equipment would have to take up a slot for a ring.

In Jiang Qiao's design, many of these special equipment had comedic effects with the cons greater than the pros. Therefore, an item like Garona's Piggy Bank that could be used by all classes and that didn't have any detrimental effects naturally had an extremely high price.

Garona's Piggy Bank was sold at the price of four hundred and thirty thousand Hua Nation currency, and with this price Jiang Qiao could already get enough to buy a decently priced car.

Sacred Souls had basically eliminated the possibility of people using workshops or bots to earn gold coins, so the price of gold coins would undoubtedly increase further. As the piggy bank was an accessory item, so if someone bought two and equipped them, they would be able to obtain fifty percent more the gold coins they would have originally gotten. If they were hardworking enough, they could probably be able to get back their money's worth.

"I have around ten of these things! Like the Fire Elves' Rage, Light Elves' Memory, Water Elves' Mercy…" As Ocean Blue said so, she took out a pile of Garona's Piggy Banks and three sparkling Light Elves' Memories, three small fireballs, and a water droplet.

The price of the elemental elf series of equipment was still sky high at this point, and they took the place of the Blessing Totem equipment slot with the effect of having a certain rate of Level 35 skills and below to be released twice in a row.

Even the cheapest of these pieces of equipment were more than thirty thousand dollars.

"What kind of game developer are you, to think of selling your own equipment?"

Jiang Qiao closed the System Tome and knocked it onto Ocean Blue's head, and the piggy banks in the latter's arms clattered onto the ground.

"Can't I…?" Ocean Blue muttered as she rubbed her forehead. This was already the second time she had been rebuked by Jiang Qiao for suggesting an idea.

"If you want to become broke. These equipment are only so expensive because they're limited in supply."

Jiang Qiao knew that the special equipment sold on the website were all from the first Abyssal Hunt, and they couldn't be obtained from any dungeon currently available.

As for epic equipment, players could obtain those in high difficulty dungeons, and while the difficulty was still quite high, but there was still a stable source. If a player had a skilled enough party, they could probably be able to get a whole set within a month.

"They wouldn't be able to tell it was us, would they?' Ocean Blue didn't have any knowledge on finance and management.

"You've only been eating takeout, so there's no need for so much money. Don't worry about the profit, it's going to come in the future as long as we manage the game well and increase the maximum players allowed on the server."

Jiang Qiao didn't really value money all that much. It wasn't that he didn't have any needs or wants, but he could control himself from earning money that he wasn't supposed to, like the way Ocean Blue suggested.

"Fine…" Ocean Blue nodded with a pout, before continuing to order her takeout.

She was quite obedient in some ways, and Jiang Qiao had the feeling he was keeping a pet, and not a goddess.

After analyzing the current financial situation of Sacred Souls, Jiang Qiao reopened the System Tome and checked on the current growth and development of the server.

Jiang Qiao's schemes… Ahem, development plans were quite successful, and the newly released main quest by Vigilist Floria gave all the players motivation to raise their levels as quickly as they could.

The MVP system in Sacred Souls gave the large guilds motivation to compete and brawl for the dungeon records, and the rate at which they partied up for the Tower of Trials and other dungeons was a few times more than before.

Jiang Qiao knew that the large guilds had already started to become serious, and not only did they start exploring and strategizing seriously, they also seemed to have started to seek help from outside the game.

These three days, Zhao Mingwei and Jiang Qiao had both been invited endlessly to challenge dungeons. Zhao Mingwei was their main objective, while Jiang Qiao was seen as an added perk.

As a result of this severe competition, the maximum number of players allowed on the server practically doubled, and when compared to how it increased by around three hundred daily in the past, it quickly increased to a steady rate of more than seven hundred a day.

The number of players in the game had finally broken the threshold of six thousand people, with a total of 6700 players.

Jiang Qiao was so elated by this that he wanted to celebrate with a cake, but he knew that this bit of players were still not enough when compared to the many successful games on the market.

This server limit was achieved through the efforts of the players in the Tower of Trials.

"Now we only have to wait for the Maker Energy to increase, huh?" Jiang Qiao glanced at the Maker Energy he had, and the amount had increased from fourteen thousand from nineteen thousand, with a rate of three to four points every day and the occasional fifty to sixty.

This Maker Energy was all from the players that killed the monsters in the Tower of Trials, as well as the sacred relics that they obtained.

"Hm? Well if it isn't the 'whale' 1 Segman?"

Jiang Qiao saw the number of Maker Energy jump from three and four to +700 all of a sudden, and he knew that the prince had appeared.

Were these sacred souls all monsters?

This was the spear knight's thoughts for the past few days.

After fighting with the players for three days and three nights with no rest, even if he had the spirit of the tower replenish his fatigue and life force he still felt quite mentally tired.

He didn't have enough mental prowess to fight for seven days and seven nights, and what made it worse was that these sacred souls really had a bunch of strange powers.

In the past three days, the spear knight had been bombarded by all types of magic and spells, fought with swordsmen and gunslingers, bashed in the face by shields, and been cast with all sorts of debuffs and status effects like bleeding, poison, and curses.

What made him feel the most flabbergasted was how these sacred souls started to challenge the first floor of the Tower of Trials like crazy.

The spear knight had challenged the first floor of the Tower of Trials before when he was young, and had created the record of the seventh ranking at forty-five minutes and thirty-seven seconds.

This record was maintained for a few decades, and it became one of the highest records of their world.

The spear knight thought that his prince was already skilled enough to clear the first floor with thirty-nine minutes, but ever since the arrival of these sacred souls, the Sacred Records of the first floor entered a whole new era.

They could defeat the dungeon that required an average of an hour to beat in a mere fifteen minutes.

The current fastest record was thirteen minutes and twenty-two seconds by the Jumping Nucleons guild.

This already wasn't a record that could be touched by the natives, but thankfully the first floor didn't reward any precious sacred relics because it was only for youngsters of thirty-five years old and below.

But the problem was that these crazy sacred souls started to set their sights on the Sacred Records of the second floor! These records could be seen as the lifeblood of the four great countries in their world.

The sacred relics rewarded on the second and third floor were all strategic resources for each of the countries.

The speak knight didn't know what the higher-ups were thinking, but he could finally leave that damned battle arena.

He received orders from the king himself to escort Prince Segman to challenge the second floor of the Tower of Trials.

The second floor of the Tower of Trials was limited to only people below seventy years of age, and the spear knight was forty-seven years old with a past record of clearing the second floor himself.

For the ambitious Prince Segman to challenge the second floor wasn't out of the spear knight's expectations, but the other contents of the king's decree confused him greatly.

'Never, ever let the prince touch an alchemical device called an Enhancing Machine. If he has any intent of touching it, please knock him out and bring him back to Aquaflow immediately. This is a decree of the highest order by the king, the elder mage, and the sacred relic management vault!'

An Enhancing Machine? What was that?

The spear knight read over the letter thoroughly, and in these three days he hadn't gotten to know anything other than fighting, so he had no idea what an Enhancing Machine was.

He didn't even know why the sacred souls wanted magical stones in the first place.

"Sir Kaermo, I've kept you waiting."

Segman appeared behind the spear knight, and after glancing at Solar who was fighting on the arena he bowed a knight's salute to the prince.

"You're already the most excellent of your age, Your Highness. You don't have to rush to challenge the second floor…" The old mage trailed behind Segman with a worried expression.

"Then what about within them?" Segman pointed towards the players who were having an impromptu party again, then looked back at the old mage.

"This…Prince Segman, these are sacred souls and the chosen saviors of our world, you don't have to compete with them." The old mage knew that Segman had been pressuring himself to become stronger in order to become the strongest not only within the natives, but the players too.

"Why can't we be our own saviors? Aquaflow has never lost to anyone!" Segman shouted, before realizing he was speaking out of line and lowering his voice. "I don't think that it's a given for us to be weaker than those sacred souls."

"Your Highness…" The old mage wanted to continue, but the spear knight blocked his way respectfully.

"Great sage, please have some rest. I will take over from here."

The spear knight had an admiration for the prince, because he saw his own ambition in the young prince.

The old mage sighed and nodded, knowing that Segman was so stubborn not only because of his personality, but because he had fallen in love.

Prince Segman had already challenged the dungeon twice with the Jumping Nucleons guild, and even though it was true that they had cleared the first ranking together, but the more Segman came into contact with the players, the more he realized his own weakness.

Segman's actions were that of a hormonal teenager who was thinking of how to show off in front of the girl he liked, and in their world it was completely normal for a person to reach puberty at around thirty years old.

But now the problem was, how could Segman show off in front of a sacred soul girl while he himself was just a mortal?

The answer lied in the Enhancing Machines.

"Your Highness, are you going to look for those Enhancing Machines?" The spear knight asked, seeing the prince walk towards where the players were dancing around.

"Are you going to stop me too?" Prince Segman threw a sidelong glance at the spear knight.

"As long as you don't tell His Majesty, I will not stop you. I was a rebellious child in the past myself, after all." The spear knight was quite open on the topic, and as long as this alchemical device did not harm Prince Segman, he had no reason to stop him.

"Very good!"

Segman brought the spear knight into the area where the Faerie Merchant set up shop, and as soon as he stepped in here he thought he stepped into some strange cult with all the players wearing strange animal headmasks.

Solar had deduced that these sacred souls might have wanted to get magical stones to buy these strange headmasks, but it was so absurd that most of the people who heard it thought that it was impossible.

When Segman walked into this area, all the Sacred Souls smiled meaningfully at Segman, and the spear knight didn't know why that was.

"Your Highness! Another one of your sacred relics is going to be blown up!" A player that was wearing a horse headmask shouted from far away.

Segman only continued walking towards Enhancer Ellie with a resolute expression, and cleared his throat with a cough.

"I want to use machine number three!" Segman handed several magical stones to Enhancer Ellie.

"How many pieces of equipment do you think he'll blow up this time?"

"I'm betting five! He's way too greedy to want to enhance every equipment of his by thirteen times."

The players that were watching at a side said loudly as they saw him hand over the magical stones.

"I haven't even started yet! Why must you people be so rude?" Segman shouted towards all the people surrounding him.

"Rude? I saw you try to enhance five sacred relics to +13 with your own hands! They all blew up, didn't they?"

At this point, Segman blushed brightly and lowered his head in a mix of anger and embarrassment, before suppressing his emotions and shouting indignantly.

"I-It was just a bunch of small sacred relics! Don't you sacred souls do the same to test the waters? The stuff that I used was just a trial run, how could you say it blew up!"

In the past two days, Segman had either been battling in the Tower of Trials, or 'feeding' his country's sacred relics to the Enhancing Machines.

The enhancements that the machines brought were way too addictive for him. The staff that he was holding right now was a +13 enhanced Burning Staff, and through the enhancements made to it, the destructive capabilities had tripled!

"Prince Segman…What are you going to do?" The spear knight had a bad feeling as he listened to the comments of the sacred souls.

"Shut up and watch!"

Segman had already entered a state of focus, and took out a red statue, placing it carefully into the machine.

Serial number 213, the Flame-Converging Statue!

The spear knight quickly recognized the important sacred relic of their country as the prince threw it into the machine, before the machine shook and spit out a pile of charred fragments.

"Your Highness…Where did that sacred relic go?" The spear knight was stunned, not wanting to believe that the exquisitely made statue had been turned into a pile of charcoal.

"It's broken, don't you see?" Segman seemed to be quite bummed out as he took out an azure crystal ball.

Serial number 327, the Magical Sphere!

The spear knight had managed the sacred relic vault for a while in the past, so he could remember the serial code, the name, and the preciousness of every sacred relic in there.

As Segman threw the crystal ball into the Enhancing Machine, his heart was filled with fear, knowing that it was just the start.

If a +1 would pop up from Jiang Qiao's head whenever he obtained one point of Maker Energy, then +600 and +700 would be popping out from the top of his head right now.

Jiang Qiao was watching Segman together with the group of players that were surrounding him as if they were watching a wrestling match.

"The eleventh enhancement of the tenth piece of equipment failed, is this NPC made by the game developers to make us feel good about our chances?"

"Would such an NPC fail ten times in a row?"

"Look! He succeeded! A +13 armguard!"

"Maybe he's really such an NPC…"

Jiang Qiao listened to the comments of the players as Segman stuffed the fifth sacred relic into the Enhancing Machine, before the machine bounced around dangerously and spat out red armguard.

Segman laughed in elation and almost crazy happiness, and without saying anything more he picked out another sacred relic and was about to stuff it into the machine.

At this moment, the spear knight finally realized that he had severely neglected his duties! If Segman continued to brawl with this machine, the entirety of Aquaflow's fortune would be turned into a pile of charcoal.

"Prince Segman! Please stop touching that strange machine!"

The spear knight forcefully pressed down Segman's shoulders and stared him in the eye.

"Put it on." Segman didn't refute any more, just pushing the armguard into the spear knight's hands.

"The Armguard of Strength, I've worn this before, Your Highness! Please do not ruin our precious…"Wait, what?"

The spear knight put on the armguard on as he spoke, already expecting the small increase in strength that came with wearing the armguard.

The increase in strength had always been noticeable, but it came with the effect of consuming the wearer's stamina if time went on.

As soon as the spear knight wore the +13 enhanced armguard, he felt like he could kill ten bulls with a single punch!

If the degree of enhancement were 0.1 before, now the enhancement would be 0.7!

"This is impossible! Isn't this the serial code 307 sacred relic, the Armguard of Strength?" The spear knight muttered perplexedly, looking at the '+13' rune carved onto the armguard.

"This is what the Enhancing Machine does, if this rune here turns to thirteen, the effects of the sacred relic will increase by three times!"

As he said so, Segman looked over to the blood-red spear that the spear knight was holding.

"Do you want to try, Sir Kaermo?"

"This is… No!"

The spear knight quickly hid his treasured spear behind him protectively. This was a sign of his position, and a treasure handed down from his ancestors!

If this spear were turned into charcoal by this machine, then the spear knight wouldn't be able to wash away his sins even by committing suicide!

"It won't become charcoal before it gets enhanced to ten! It won't even fail before it gets to six, and at the cost of just a few magical stones! Don't you want even more power?"

At this point, Segman had already gotten addicted to the power due to his near twisted ambition to be stronger.

"This… No! Your Highness, I can't risk this and neither can you!" The spear knight suppressed his own thirst for power, but still pulled out a pendant. "But if there is no risk for the first six times as you say…"

…And another one bites the dust.

Jiang Qiao listened to Segman's conversation with the knight quietly, before glancing around at the crowd of players.

In the three days, a lof of spies from the native countries had appeared at the Tower of Trials.

The prophecy foretelling the end of the world had been spread throughout the native world, but the other countries didn't really believe in it. They just wanted to see if they could recruit the sacred souls.Read the next chapter on our vipnovel.com

Jiang Qiao didn't have much to think about the spies wanting to recruit the players, instead he was quite happy if they were recruited by any countries, because if they were recruited it would mean rewards, and if there were rewards, it meant that the player could become even stronger.

There was a Moment Quest System that had been created by Jiang Qiao, and there were several dialogue choices that were added onto the regular dialogues from this system.

This was a system like artificial intelligence, and the conversations between Segman and FluffyRabbit were based on this system.

If the players wanted to live out their own stories in the Sacred Souls, Jiang Qiao didn't want to interfere overly much. What he could do was to guide the overall direction of the story from a side.

What he could do now was to prepare for the upcoming War of Divinity.

"Ocean Blue, let's go."

"Huh? Don't you want to trick them into throwing some more sacred relics into the machine? It seems like a lot of natives have the idea to do so too."

Ocean Blue had a keen eye, especially on the matter of her food source. When she stayed over at Jiang Qiao's place, she almost finished all the food that Jiang Qiao hid away.

It was the same even in this world. As she was floating around the Tower of Trials, she saw multiple spies and natives that seemed to be eager to try out the Enhancing Machines.

"Perhaps we can make an event for this later, but now we have to start on promotions for the War of Divinity."

Jiang Qiao pulled out the leaderboard again, and the liver emperor FreeMilk had successfully reached Level 40. From her current speed, she could probably reach max level in just a few more days. The players in the lower rankings were all Level 38.

The motivation that Floria brought to the players was far more than what Jiang Qiao expected. Not much later, there would probably be a whole bunch of players that would reach Level 50.

Once the players reached the maximum level, they would definitely want new content for the game.

"Promotion? How?"

"The players need to know what sort of dungeon this new event is set int, and we should introduce the bosses in there too, no? We have to get started on the backstory too."

Jiang Qiao left the Tower of Trials and went back to the Astrology Tower together with Ocean Blue. As soon as she saw Jiang Qiao create another probe, she knew what he wanted to do.

"You want to take pictures and record videos of my divinity plane?" Ocean Blue had already become a qualified goddess of the twenty-second century, and now when she had takeout she would even post it on her social media. Granted, Jiang Qiao was her only follower…

But Jiang Qiao believed that if the War of Divinity went well, she would have more followers.

"More precisely, we're going to take the pictures for their funeral."