Sacred Souls: Genesis

Aura Cannon!

Aura gathered over Zhao Mingwei’s right palm in the form of white light. As he promptly made a pushing motion, it was released and focused into a destructive ball of radiance, shooting towards the distant rebellion leader.

It struck the rebellion leader and a [-142] digit immediately popped up over its head, with blue sparks appearing over his body.

Shock status dealt! Any enemies with that status would take 1.2 times damage when hit with Light-attribute attacks!

***

It was ten in the morning at the moment. Zhou Mingwei was inside Lin Xi’s Cannoneer’s class advancement dungeon, and the condition to clear the dungeon was to kill the rebellion leader.

At the moment, its HP bar was hanging on a thread after Zhao Mingwei and Jiang Qiao’s spirits surrounded and attacked it.

Pale-blue aura gathered in Zhao Mingwei’s hand once again with the sound of cracking thunder, and another shot of Aura Cannon was unleashed out of thin air, exploding over the rebellion leader’s body.

Another [-152] digit appeared over the rebellion leader’s head and he dropped to the ground, dropping the revolver he had been holding with both hands on the dirt and died with a face full of disappointment.

“He’s dead!”

Jiang Qiao watched as the dungeon environment dissolved around them—most class advancement dungeons were mirages, and when Jiang Qiao recovered, he found himself in the Gunner-class guild.

Zhao Mingwei did not respond to Jiang Qiao. Instead, he was staring blankly at his own hands.

There was an indescribable thrill when he unleashed the Aura Cannon, because it was fundamentally different from pressing down buttons on his joystick to cast skills in a VR game.

He could feel the aura that was stored in his body being released as guided by his mind, releasing a destructive pleasure!

[It’s ten-thirty in the morning. Time to wake up for training, Smiley.]

Lin Xi sent a private message to him then, reminding him that the time for enjoyment was over for the day. Even so, Lin Xi himself was reluctant to leave as well since he had just completed his class advancement mission, but he has to log out without even checking out his new class skills.

“We have to go to work, god. We’re going offline now.” Zhao Mingwei messaged Jiang Qiao.

“See you tomorrow.”

Jiang Qiao gave them a little wave and watched as the two professional players vanished from his sight. He checked the time to find that it was ten-thirty.

With another wave, he opened a portal and directly entered the stargazing tower at the top of the Lionheart City castle.

“Almighty god…”

Four elderly NPCs—stargazers were there, and had waited a long time for Jiang Qiao. They were artificial intelligence set in place to monitor the invading planes, and were aware of his identity too.

“You may leave,” Jiang Qiao said as he walked to the center of the observatory platform that resembled an altar.

He quickly took out the [Sacred Souls System Tome] and put it on the altar.

Its cover began to release a searing light, and various projections of luminous spheres appeared in the observatory.

“The demon star is nigh.” The stargazers who had retreated to a corner exclaimed in panic when they saw the star map in the air.

“Ocean Blue, could you mute those NPCs?”

The NPCs Jiang Qiao made were semi-sentient. They would move as programmed, but also make certain unique judgments from time to time as Jiang Qiao granted them the capacity to evolve.

In other words, the NPCs would develop their own emotions as time passed, although that would only appear after a long time.

Then, with a wave of Ocean Blue’s hand, the NPCs dropped to the ground like robots that ran out of power, while she landed beside Jiang Qiao to read the star map displayed in the air.

“Four hours left until the invading plane arrives at the main world. Are you ready?” Ocean Blue reached out with her hand to magnify Bluestar’s position on the star map.

The dark sphere beside the blue planet was now very close to the point that the light of the blue star was being devoured and torn apart by the dark sphere.

“I think you mean are ‘we’ ready. By the way, what rewards is the best for the abyssal hunt?” Jiang Qiao asked.

“Rewards? Just give the players some items. Don’t humans always yearn greater power?”

As Ocean Blue spoke, the silhouette of a large pile of items appeared, all of which Jiang Qiao had created as game items in Maker Mode.

In Sacred Souls, items were graded Gray for cracked, White for normal, Blue for magical, Purple for rare, Orange for epic and Dark Gold for legendary.

Ocean Blue showed Jiang Qiao the items—most of them were Blue, with the occasional Purple.

Since most players who were now around Level 25 mostly used magical items, rare items were preciously few, and there were at most one or two epic items.

“With present leveling up progress, there were too many Level 25 players. That makes the attraction of Level 25 items limited… let me think, what about a mount?”

Jiang Qiao started to retrieve data and found thousands of different mounts that he created for Sacred Souls.

Since the players had not unlocked the mount system at the moment, Jiang Qiao picked four classical mounts: two regular mounts—the landbird and warhorse, and two flying mounts—the spectral dragon and the griffin.

The items used for summoning the four mounts appeared in the observatory: a rein, a feather, a whistle…

“Items are necessary. Overused Level 25 items are not so attractive… it’s better to make an item for growth.”

Jiang Qiao opened his item editor and went to work.

“What growth item?” Ocean Blue floated behind Jiang Qiao and watched as he added various attributes to a ring.

“An item that grows along with the user. Quality would be Red for unique, and it’s usable from Level 0 and it works until the user is fully leveled.”

Jiang Qiao spent less than half an hour to finish editing the ring.

[Souleating Ring]

[Grade: Unique, growth item]

[Level: 0]

[Description: The ring strengthens itself by consuming the souls around itself. After storing a certain amount of souls, it could release three different skills to strengthen the user.]

[Item attribute: None]

[Current number of collected souls: 0]

Jiang Qiao then spent another two hours editing a load of other curious growth items. Some of them were chicken food and no different from an April Fool’s joke, although others could prove magnificent in the hands of great players.

“Done.”

Jiang Qiao created another item called the [Indestructible Bag], and started to put the items he created inside, along with the Level 25 rare items, epic items as well as the reins for the mounts.

He created a total of thirty items, each consuming fifty to three hundred points respectively—it took almost fifteen hundred energy points for creating every item.

That had taken a considerable chunk of the forty-six hundred energy points that he currently had, but fortunately it only took two percent to replicate the items.

Most of his energy was used to create the unique items, while next to them were the Orange and Dark Gold items. And although more energy was required to create higher-level items, Blue and White items were not negligible either—still, it meant that creating epic and legendary items from now on takes an astronomical cost.

This time, Jiang Qiao felt the great cost of energy required for creating items, and that raising the upper limit of player levels was very important too.

Level 50 was the cap for players at the moment, and from what Jiang Qiao remembered, raising that boundary by having Ocean Blue consuming world fragments was far from enough.

“I’m counting on you for the rest, Ocean Blue.” Jiang Qiao told her as he handed her the storage bag that was as tall as an adult human.

“Counting on me… for what?” Ocean Blue felt a sense of wariness as she looked at the bag that was taller than herself.

“Have you heard about Santa Claus? I don’t know how I should put items inside the bodies of those invading monsters at the moment, which is why I’ll have you do it during the abyssal hunt so that the monsters drop them.”

“You mean to have me carry a bag so huge and fly in the skies?”

Ocean Blue instantly understood Jiang Qiao’s idea then.

“Um, is there a problem?” Jiang Qiao smiled at Ocean Blue.

She wanted to retort, but the trauma he left her in Maker Mode left Ocean Blue answering in grief, “Fine. I’ll do it.”

“Two hours left until the abyssal rift opens. Ocean Blue, do we get EXP as well when the players kill the monsters?”

Jiang Qiao pointed at the game world which had around three thousand energy points left. It was neither too much nor too little, but it troubled Jiang Qiao greatly that there was no way to recover it, and it was only by killing creatures from other planes that energy could be absorbed.

“The creatures from the other planes left the reincarnation cycles of their world when they left their plane. After the players get rid of them, the energy they absorb would strengthen… Me!” Ocean Blue exclaimed, putting her hand over her flat chest.

“That’s good.”

Jiang Qiao stared at the dark invading plane which was now tearing the spatial barrier over the skies apart.

“The party begins, and what remains is the follow-up.”

“I just hope that the follow-up wouldn’t take too much energy.” Ocean Blue knew that the follow-up Jiang Qiao was talking about is to slightly adjust the World Line after the invading monsters were killed so that the people of the real world—apart from a few players—don’t remember what happened.

“From here on out, the best-case scenario is that we invade them, and not passively waiting for them to invade us.” Jiang Qiao muttered as he looked at his waning amounts of energy.