“This is the best blacksmith shop in town. If your weapons are damaged, remember to come here to maintain them.”
“You can buy breakfast from here tomorrow. The bakers here come from the royal capital and they are skilled.”
“This is the place to buy clothes. It’s snowing, and you should prepare winter clothes. If you don’t like this style, there is another one on the street in front.”
“This is Rotten Fish Bar. It sells a bitter beer [1] called ‘Danifuni.’ It is said to be brewed from burnt wheat. It is a nutritious specialty of Freezing Water Port. You can try it, but don’t drink too much.”
“This place is…”
Annan rode on the horse like a tour guide, introducing the various “special buildings” of Freezing Water Port to the players behind him. He was like an old man who lived in Freezing Water Port for a long time.
But this was of course impossible. He had only been here in less than three days.
This was because Annan knew players were coming, so he asked Senior Salvatore beforehand.
At this time, no player dared to look at the forum.
They concentrated their attention, looking around, trying to remember the route from the gate and the location of each important building.
Annan also understood it very well. He knew exactly which buildings the players cared about, so he got the specific details befitted for this situation. His introduction to the players was always on point.
Players were particularly concerned about places to buy consumables, places to buy and repair weapons and armors, places to receive missions, where to find clues, and the places they would stay.
For the other places, the players neither cared nor needed urgently, so Annan did not dig up on it. It was better not to introduce those places for the time being. It could serve as an easter egg waiting for players to discover by themselves.
When Annan set the player permissions, he also learned the way players enter this world was completely different from him. Only their consciousness was sucked into this world. Their real body slept in another world.
When they went offline, their bodies would lose consciousness and fall asleep.
It was like a soul, traveling back and forth between two bodies.
In order to prevent people from falling down suddenly while beating up a creep, and then continue to die infinitely after being respawned, Annan specifically set the permission to go offline only in “safe areas where you can sleep peacefully.” To be more specific, the players got to lie on a bed in a safe area to go offline.
The material that players consume when making characters came from Annan’s side. That allowed Annan to adjust the physical pain the players would receive.
Considering that the players lived in a peaceful world, Annan specially adjusted their pain sensation to one-third by default in order to prevent them from being afraid of fighting. Annan also activated “fighting intuition” to make the players’ first fight not to seem too stupid.
Under the premise that the attributes completely crush the opponent and the players could not feel too much pain in addition to the fighting intuition of a veteran, plus their own understanding of the game… If the players failed the starting mission…
Then, Annan would dismiss all of this group of wastrels directly and recruit other players.
For Annan, recruiting players was not without a price. But the price was very low, so low that he had no scruples at all for the time being.
In his system back-end interface, every time a player was summoned or resurrected, there would be a value of “consumed material” floating upwards. Summoning players would consume more materials, while resurrection used little material. After all, the players had not really died in a sense.
When they died, their bodies would turn to black ashes, collapsing from within and disintegrate. Then, they would float to another safe place to be reconstructed.
But the problem was that this “consumed material” seemed to have no upper limit.
In Annan’s system back-end interface, there was no “remaining material” pointer at all.
It seemed to have unlimited credit.
Just like Cat Mario [2], after the life was reduced to a negative number, it could decrease indefinitely.
When the players were summoned, the “consumed material” rose to 40. But after the players entered this world, the bright red value was dropping constantly. It then recovered to 0 again within a few seconds.
Every time the player died, it would continuously jump to -1 and then immediately return to 0.
This was also the reason why Annan immediately put restrictions on players’ resurrection.
Although Annan had not figured out the mechanism and what the material it consumed, it was better to treat it cautiously.
The cost of resurrection was indeed very low for Annan. The deaths of ten people at the same time could not drop even a whole number. But if there were more players in the future with everyone not cherishing their lives, Annan would probably start to lose balance by then.
Considering the future, Annan immediately decided to let the players develop the habit of cherishing their lives from the very beginning.
The plan came off daringly but cautious:
Since if you are dead, I will suffer a loss.
Then I just need to make you lose even more when you die, so that you won’t make me lose.
Annan’s logic was clear and practical.
After all, resurrection was a convenient privilege. If players were afraid of death, it would be like a broken sword with no threat at all.
Players’ arrogance, persistence, and fearlessness were all based on the premise that they can be resurrected after death. So Annan just added a shackle to them to make them care more about their lives and not die at will without scruples, but did not prohibit this “load game mechanism.”
This will be enough.
The adaptability of players was high. In different games, they would have different levels of concentration and adopt different survival or combat strategies.
If it did not work out, Anna could use the first mission to filter the players.
With Annan’s simply thought, a new rule was added:
In the future, all players who could not complete the initial mission would be judged as unable to survive in this world and would be kicked out of the game directly.
After all, the number of players he could recruit now was limited. Although the players had a considerable potential for growth, Annan understood his relationship with the players well:
It was the players begging Annan to let them in, not Annan begging them to play.
Can I catch up with my other plans?!
“…This is the shrine of Trade Deity Silver Sire. If you have an injury, you can come here for treatment, but remember to bring money. Everyone is equal in front of silver coins.”
Annan introduced to the players the last building to pay attention to. He was slightly relieved, and said casually, “Next is your residence.”
“Everyone is equal in front of the silver coins. That’s a good saying. I wrote it down.”
A gentle voice suddenly sounded from Annan’s side.
It was Louis Prince.
Does this guy walk without a sound?
Annan reacted quickly and nodded to the young priest who was too tall, and greeted respectfully, “Silver Sire. I wish you well, Priest Louis. I didn’t expect you to get up early.”
Seeing Annan treating him so well, Louis was also a little surprised.
After all, generally speaking, the church and the feudal lord were in a competitive relationship restricting each other. Even the immediate Mayor Salvatore wanted to avoid trouble. He lived in the east of the city and the other lived in the west of the city.
Annan naturally knew about this too. He did not waste his time studying the books.
In Noah Kingdom, the king dedicated the feudal lord and the church would be in charge of the priest.
Both parties need to collect taxes from the people. Their orders were authoritative; neither party could interfere with each other’s policies. Both parties also had the power to supervise and report the other party. This made the royals and the churches of Silver Sire almost become enemies.
The priest had the ability to heal the people, and would provide help with payment. Silver Sire was the one who advocated “putting smile in business” the most among all upright deities. Among all the priests of upright deities, their attitude towards civilians could also be ranked in the top three, even possibly compete for the first place.
From the perspective of the people at the bottom, the church would undoubtedly be much closer to them. The business people were also close to the Silver Sire Church because the existence of the church would magnify the power of their wealth.
In a few territories, the feudal lord’s authority was almost emptied by the church. They could not pass down their orders. In some places, they were embarrassed to the point where they could not even collect taxes. Therefore, many feudal lords regard the church as their primary enemy to fight against.
Priest Louis quickly realized Annan’s kindness, so he responded tenderly, “Silver Sire, please bless our feudal lord good health.
“I sensed there was fighting, so I finally got up. It seems that the battle is over now.”
“Yes it is.”
Annan nodded with his expression a little serious, “Fortunately, my guards just rushed back. Otherwise, we will be in trouble.”
“They are indeed great guards.”
Louis glanced over. He replied admiringly with flattery.
He looked at Annan’s face and guessed, “Is it still the one from Roseburg?”
“Yup.”
Annan nodded.
Louis frowned slightly and glanced at the guards, “He is too overboard this time. Let’s not dwell on this. I will go to you at dawn, and then we can talk in detail. I notice some among the feudal lord’s guards are having some serious injuries. Do you need me to treat them?”
He looked at Annan and smiled slightly, “For your sake, you can get a 10% discount.”
Annan smiled upon hearing this.
In fact, it was not Annan who gave kindness to the church, but he had respect for Priest Louis himself.
He learned from Senior Salvatore that Priest Louis came to such a remote town just to cleanse the curse here. It was undoubtedly dangerous work.
On the basis of completing this job, he also worked hard to revitalize the economy of Freezing Water Port and make people’s lives better.
Unlike the townspeople’s understanding, this was not something that Priest Louis had to do. Whether it was treating the townspeople or maintaining the economic system here, it was what the “priest” wanted to do.
He, as a substitute walker, was only required to purify the nightmare.
Even if he did nothing but just stop the nightmare from spreading, the main church would not reprimand him but reward him.
He would be distracted to do such “superfluous things,” undoubtedly because of his own character and ethics.
He did not even explain to the townsfolk. Instead, he naturally accepted these jobs that did not belong to him.
Just for this character, it was enough for Annan to greet him.
It was always a good thing to have a kind Samaritan of good character as a colleague.
Of course, it was convenient to instruct such a person.
“I have something to trouble you. Of course, I will pay. It will be a credit to Salvatore first.”
Annan smiled and said, “Tonight, I will scatter all the other entourages in your place. My guards just came to Freezing Water Port; they have no place to live. I have to rely on your help to arrange it.”
“It seems that I won’t get to sleep tonight.”
Priest Louis sighed, nodded with a chuckle. He then told the players, “Follow me. You have to be stuck with me for one night. I will definitely find you a place to live before dinner tomorrow.”
After finally losing this heavy baggage, Annan also breathed a sigh of relief.
It was 2:00 a.m.. The players were full of energy, but Annan was a little sleepy already.
But at this time, Salvatore should have finished analyzing Black Fire, right?
Annan sighed silently and hurried to Salvatore’s house.
Annan might not be able to sleep today.