Chapter 60: Why Can’t I Keep My Hand In Check?
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.
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.”