Chapter 52: Penalty for Death and Reward System

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!’