Sacred Souls: Genesis

The next day, home base of JC Kings.

Zhao Mingwei was reading the news after the day’s training session.

Being a web addict youth who was true to his habits, he rarely checked out news of any kind—and yet he had been refreshing Weibo News since yesterday.

Specifically, news about River Town’s Food Street.

However, there was nothing.

No orcs, no Abyssal Hunt… not even any damage on the street walk.

There was only news about a certain building going up in flames on Food Street, and that firefighters had arrived at the scene to help.

In fact, he would have thought that yesterday wasn’t real if it was not for the Memory of the Light Elves quietly lying around in his item list.

“Smiley, what drops did you get from the Abyssal Hunt yesterday?” Lin Xi asked as he snuggled up to Zhao Mingwei, lunchbox in hand. He had never been calm and mature like Zhao Mingwei, but always loved to show off and was never careful with words.

And from the look of how he was behaving, Lin Xi must have obtained some good drops.

“Memory of the Light Elves.” Zhao Mingwei turned on the Sacred Souls app on his phone and showed Lin Xi his item list.

“Unique item? Well, pretend I didn’t ask.”

Lin Xi pouted. The drop he received in the Abyssal Hunt was a Level 25 epic-grade hand cannon, although it turned out that Zhao Mingwei had got a better reward just when he wanted to brag a little.

Zhao Mingwei did not press him about details of the Abyssal Hunt either, because he had already asked him last night.

Lin Xi’s reply then was that he had indeed been to the abyssal rift zone which was a simulation of Food Street. Then, when Zhao Mingwei mentioned that ‘monsters appeared in the real world’, his response was that Lin Xi has had too much pressure lately and that he should get a break.

That left such a harrowing sensation in Zhao Mingwei that he didn’t play Sacred Souls for the entire night.

“Captain Zhao, the front desk can’t keep all the fans’ gifts again. Should I take them upstairs for you to have a look?” One of the club’s workers suddenly poked her head into the training room and asked.

“Sure. Bring them over.” Zhao Mingwei said.

The worker—three workers, to be specific—then started to carry in piles of gifts, putting them behind Zhao Mingwei’s seat.

“Tut, tut, Smiley… I remember debuting at the same time as you, but why the fans never remember me?”

Lin Xi was a little envious when he saw the truckload of presents. Most clubs usually leave it to their employees to handle the fans’ presents, and it was quite rare to have a player like Zhao Mingwei who’d look through every gift he receives. Moreover, he rarely showed up on Weibo or any forum boards, and as such he rarely responded to fans online.

Nonetheless, Lin Xi knew that Zhao Mingwei was attentive even to the fans’ presents. He would basically properly keep things like letters after reading through them once, wear any clothes he received and just let them pile up in his closet even if there were too many.

As for food… he would have Lin Xi taste it in case of poison, before offering it to other club members.

“I do remember many posts scorning you at the forums, perhaps that is a way of remembering too.” Though Zhao Mingwei was calm and mature, he would not lose to Lin Xi in banter—especially when the banter is aimed at Lin Xi himself.

“Damn it! I’m getting irritated just talking about it… I even had to use a sockpuppet account to curse some wise guy over a hundred comments… Argh! I’ll help you with the presents.”

Lin Xi started to unwrap the fan presents, and Zhao Mingwei followed suit.

Suddenly, he found a well-packaged chicken chop.

***

Gifting food had been a common interaction between fans and the JC Kings players when the former came nearby their club house. However, as most clubs eventually banned that, even prohibiting fans from directly giving the players presents—with JC Kings especially building a security checkpoint for that.

Nonetheless, the chicken chop was definitely from that shop Zhao Mingwei frequented, and he straightened when he read the gift note attached.

There were just a few words, which read:

‘Thank you, do your best!’

Zhao Mingwei stayed silent for some time then. Then, without a word, he opened the plastic bag and started to gorge on the chicken chop.

“Are you logging in tonight?” He asked Lin Xi as he ate.

“Definitely, since I didn’t really use that Level 25 epic-grade hand cannon I got yesterday.” Lin Xi said, before remembering something halfway and added, “Old Song said he’s coming too. He reached out to me yesterday—his game ID is InkFlashback.”

Old Song’s real name was Song Zhengning. A former teammate who built a dynasty alongside Zhao Mingwei, he was now the coach of SC Nucleons—he had actually been forced into retirement, taking the coaching job after developing irreconcilable differences with JC Kings’ management.

“Old Song has an account too? Well, let’s set a time and challenge a dungeon tonight.” Zhao Mingwei said.

***

In the morning, Jiang Qiao was still digesting the benefits from the plane’s fragment including how he should use twenty-two square kilometers worth of land, and to whom he should give the hundred new player spots.

Still, what really got Jiang Qiao’s attention was the star map’s range.

“There are really many fragments around Bluestar…” Jiang Qiao was holding the System Tome which displayed many different plane fragments.

Most of those plane fragments were staying motionless, although there were also scarlet or dark planes that were moving everywhere and devouring other planes.

The System Tome also revealed a new description from Maker Jiang Qiao.

[The new plane fragments can be considered the game’s extra dungeons and side quests. Each holds their own rules, and players could enter it after the Invasion function activates. The energy needed to create worlds and player limit in the server can be obtained from the plane fragment]

[I currently recommend this plane fragment]

The moment Jiang Qiao finished reading the description he himself wrote, a pure-white plane fragment was rapidly pulled closer to Jiang Qiao’s vision.

In a split second, Jiang Qiao could see every data about the plane fragment.

[Special-type Plane Fragment]

[Plane-type: magic, superpowers]

[Civilization grade: none]

[Plane size: ten kilometers]

[Beast level: level 30~60]

[World rule: incomplete circulation of time and life, complete laws of physics, midlevel arcane law…]

Most of the data meant nothing, because Jiang Qiao was looking hard on a description he added later as Maker.

[This plane is derived from a complete world. The structure of the plane fragment is a tower, one that beings from other worlds spent centuries to challenge. Even so, none could reach the lord of the tower.]

[The plane belongs to a sentient creature. The challenge creatures are the same as monsters in the game, possessing fixed attack styles]

[Lastly, Ocean Blue’s current level means that she’s still unable to detect complete world planes. You would want to bring players to challenge the tower if you want more information.]

[By Maker Jiang Qiao]

“Feels weird reading something I wrote myself.” Jiang Qiao muttered after browsing through the descriptions. “Wouldn’t that be a sky tower? Or maybe a tower of death? Well, that’s the one I guess, since I want the players to train and player limit to increase.”

As Maker, there were four objectives for Jiang Qiao at the moment: obtain energy points to create things, increasing limit on number of players, increase size of Sacred Souls’ maps, and players’ level limit.

Jiang Qiao had some measures to secure the first three. When he killed creatures from other planes and the other players obtain EXP, he would also receive energy points and the server limit could be raised.

Increasing the map size of Sacred Souls meant that other plane fragments must be devoured, but it was simple too—a few fragments would suffice.

The most difficult was the last objective, which was to increase player levels… in other words, he had to increase the maximum level of all Sacred Souls creatures.

Right now, Jiang Qiao could at best create Level 50 NPCs and monsters, and he must collect Ocean Blue’s divinity to increase the limit on levels.

“I remember seeing one of her divinity fragments near Bluestar…” Jiang Qiao looked around on the star map, and found a dark-blue plane fragment as he expected.

[Ocean Blue’s Divinity Fragment—Small World]

[Plane-type: magical, superpower, chaotic]

[Civilization grade: medieval]

[Plane size: thirty-seven kilometers]

[Beast level: 50~60]

[World Rule: Incomplete circulation for time and life, complete laws of physics, higher arcane law…]

[Description: Stop peeking! We must at least get the players fully leveled before we hit this dungeon. The things inside are troublesome, that’s why you have to hurry up with recruiting and increasing the limit on player numbers, and level yourself up… I mean, level myself up as well.]

[Maker Jiang Qiao]

‘Am I complaining to myself? And wasn’t I supposed to be super serious in Maker Mode?’

Jiang Qiao was left a little speechless by the description, but it certainly reminded him that he should at least be publicizing Sacred Souls to Bluestar gamers in some way.