Everyone watching was shocked, both the viewers who were watching the livestreams of the streamers who were playing the game, and the players themselves who were experiencing Chapter 01 in person. Even though the Game Demo was extremely fun and very different from what they were used to for games, they didn't imagine that Chapter 01 would be close to as deep and interesting as it actually became! The scene where the players entered the village for the first time and the Lycan ripping off two fingers from their hand made most players' hearts almost stop in fear!
In other games, when the player died, normally the player's vision would just go black and the player would restart the game, but in Residual Devil, when the Zombies bit the players, they would see that amount of blood coming out as part of their body's flesh fell off. It was a completely different feeling! It was so realistic that they forgot they were just in a game and Players with the weakest of hearts sometimes couldn't resist and had to stop to rest repeatedly.
Fortunately, the Players in this world weren't just ordinary people, but people with gifts developed for battle, so as much as they didn't feel comfortable with some of what they were experiencing in this game, most players who tried the game had already witnessed something similarly brutal in real life.
Of course, even players who had already witnessed this seeing it happening to a partner in a mission still felt bad after seeing the two fingers missing from their hand, and the fear that this could happen in real life became even more acute.
Unbeknownst to most people, in Sandstone Bay an F Rank game was becoming extremely popular among players, where not only F Rank players were very interested in it, but even E Rank players started downloading the game in order to experience it. While the game's Demo had only had 1 hour of content for players to experience, Chapter 01 now had a total of 3 hours for experienced players and 4 hours for normal players.
So for the F Rank players who normally had less than 2 Mana Units, despite meditating a large part of the day, they still couldn't finish the first chapter on the first day, which made the E Rank Players who were doing Livestreams achieve a huge audience of people who were curious to know how the story would develop.
Unfortunately for many of the curious players, despite Chapter 01 having 2 to 3 hours of gameplay more than the Demo, nothing new had been added to the end of story after the Demo left off, cutting the story off on the same cliffhanger as the Demo - only this time time there was a new message for players who finished Chapter 01.
[Chapter 02 will be available in 45 Hours.]
Upon seeing the message, both the Streamers, the E Rank Players, and the thousands of people who were watching the livestreams were shocked.
"I can't believe it… I've waited so long, wanting to know what would happen inside the castle, only to find out that it won't be revealed until Chapter 02?!" a streamer said in frustration.
[I hate Cliffhangers!]
[Damn, now I have to wait 2 days to find out what happens next?!]
[Nooooooo!!!]
[That was so fun…]
In several homes across the city, families were sitting on sofas while watching the livestream on their living room televisions. In these families, both parents and children were talking excitedly about the very interesting story of this game. Not only were ordinary families talking about this game excitedly, but also reporters had seen how interesting this game was and soon understood that doing a story about this game would definitely earn them high praise from their bosses.
So in a short time, reports about Residual Devil: Village began to appear in the biggest news sites of Sandstone Bay, to the point that even the executives of Harrington University also became aware of the news in a short time and contacted Professor Brown to understand what was happening. Fortunately, the report that Professor Brown had passed along to the University Director had already been handed over to her, so this could be handled in the best possible way.
While Residual Devil was upsetting Rank E Players, Rank F Players, and even the common people of Sandstone Bay, the culprit in all of this, Gabe Howard, who had created this very interesting game, was currently at a hamburger joint eating a five-meat sandwich with a big smile on his face as he looked at his cell phone screen.
On Gabe's cell phone, it was possible to see the current game data:
[Residual Devil: Village]
[Downloads: 7.218]
[Average Play Time: 2.4 Hours.]
[Accumulated Mana: 17,323]
[Available for withdrawal: $4,191]
Available Mana: 15,687 [1,636 Spent in Chapter 01]
The total amount of downloads for the game was skyrocketing like an unstoppable rocket!
While Residual Devil was in the first position in the University of Game Developers contest with 7000 downloads, the second place had only 2800 downloads in total, and that was because some of the Residual Devil players had gotten curious about other games in the contest and decided to download it to see how it would be. But when they realized that the game was just another generic F-Rank game, unlike Residual Devil which was very creative, players abandoned it within minutes, returning to spend their Mana on Residual Devil.
Gabe, who previously didn't even have $100 in his bank account to survive the rest of the month, now had a big smile when he saw the more than $4,000 available for him to use whenever he wanted.
'This life as a Developer is very rewarding,' Gabe thought excitedly as he watched the numbers continue to rise continuously.
The most shocking thing for him was the Mana available in the game, which had already reached more than 17,000 Mana Units. That would be enough for him to develop at least 8 more chapters!
'I guess I don't even need to develop the 8 chapters directly with this Mana, and I can start absorbing this Mana for myself… Or maybe I should use the Mana for something else!' Gabe thought excitedly.
Thinking about converting 100 Mana Units from the game to become a single Mana Unit for him, using 10,000 Mana Units would be enough to double the total amount of Mana he currently had!
With that, not only could he get closer to becoming a Rank E Developer, but he could use that Mana to convert Residual Devil knowledge into something real and use it to get stronger!
While other Developers used Mana to absorb things like swordsmanship knowledge or to summon the weapons they created in the games into the real world, Gabe had another idea - in the Residual Devil world he was developing, there were powers!
The 4 main villains of the game had special powers: Karl had the power to control metal. Alcina had Regenerative Abilities, Biological Immortality, and Retractable Claws. Salvatore could manipulate enzymes, something Gabe felt was pretty disgusting. Finally, Donna could control dolls and plants.
Disregarding Salvatore, who had very useless powers, Karl, Alcina and Donna had very tempting and interesting powers for Gabe.
Among players, in order for them to be able to learn a power like that, they needed to be at least Rank E, in addition to spending dozens or even hundreds of Mana Units in a game with those powers for them to learn just one.
Gabe, as a Game Developer, could use his Mana to learn these powers.
But of course, this also had a limitation.
The amount of Mana needed for him to learn a power from a game of his was proportional to the strength that power had - that is, if he wanted to learn Karl's metal control, he would need to use a large amount of Mana Units to be able to learn it. And considering the amount of Mana Units that normal Developers received per game, this was practically something impossible for Rank F Developers to achieve, whereas even Rank E Developers would struggle. The biggest difficulty for the other Rank F and Rank E Developers was not only that they needed a large amount of Mana Units, but that they also needed to be able to develop the in-game character with such a power to begin with!
Having to develop monsters for the game was already very difficult for Rank F Developers. Even Spear Training was highly acclaimed by the players who had tested it earlier because the Developer who made that game managed to make a monster with the strength of Rank E! But even though the monster had the strength of Rank E, that was just the basic stats of the monster, which was just a stronger and faster fish than a Rank F fish.
Gabe was doing something different, with the Simulation System he had. He could make any monster he could imagine, as long as he had enough Mana for it! So as long as he could imagine a power for a monster, he could make it. Even if it was a Rank A monster, if he had enough Mana he could put that monster in his game's Seed!
Even when it came to the amount of mana the game yielded, Gabe was different. With the popularity of Residual Devil, even if Gabe used 50,000 Mana Units to be able to absorb Karl's metal controlling power, he still felt that there would be plenty of left over Mana.
'Not only can I learn Karl's metal controlling power, maybe I can even learn the powers of all 4 Villains!' Gabe got excited just thinking about it.
After planning everything out, Gabe was very enthusiastic and quickly returned home after finishing his meal. The first thing he did was test how much Mana he would need in order to learn Karl's power to control metal, but the amount was exactly as he had imagined.
When he started putting in Mana to learn the power, Gabe could feel that the total amount needed to learn it was around 50,000 Mana Units, which would be enough to increase his total amount of Mana by 500 Units. But Gabe soon understood a problem: To learn the game's skills, he would need to use his Mana instead of the game's Mana. That is, only his total Mana limit would be valid, the 100 total Mana Units he had. If he continued, it would greatly delay the development of the powers he wanted.
'I need to increase my Mana limit…' Gabe thought excitedly.
'I have to balance this development. Not only do I need to gather Mana to learn the powers, but I will also need Mana to be able to use each of the powers, since the more Mana I have, the more powerful the ability I will be able to learn. Besides, it's a given that I will be closer to becoming a Rank E Developer.' Gabe thought excitedly, despite the rather high price to learn the skill he was interested in.
Considering the monsters he was going to make for the next chapters, Gabe realized that this wouldn't be as cheap as making Chapter 01 anymore, as he would have to introduce many different monsters with different powers, which would also have a high mana expenditure.
'I think I'll need around 4 to 5k Mana Units to make a chapter with the best quality possible… If it were other Developers, they would probably say I'm crazy, but thinking about the reaction of the players, this could be a great option…'
As Gabe started to develop Chapter 02, a message arrived on his cell phone. Whoever sent the message was named [Professor Brown].
//NunuNote//
Mass Release Target XD:
Based on weekly powerstone rankings!
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