Chapter 135: Winter Swimming Event (1/2)

After seeing the Great Lion off, Xi Wei began to think up an item strengthening system.

First off, he wasn’t a demon and naturally wouldn’t set up low success rates like your usual game companies that cripple the players’ items.

Still, strengthening weapons and items was not really easy.

Although it was a craft that required blessings from the gods, the dwarven craftmasters had a chance for success and failure in the first place, and finer quality weapons would also have a lower chance of successful strengthening.

According to the Great Lion, that was the limit of Stoff’s Divine Grace relative to the world itself as the God of Craftsmanship and Fine Wine. It was the same as how the players could not stay in the air by bending the rules and stiffly manipulate enemies to die…

Otherwise, if any weapon could be strengthened without limit, the world would see each person wielding one beam-spamming Excalibur, with Xi Wei and the Players having no part to play.

Moreover, using an art that utilizes Divine Grace was good at first, but if one continued strengthening the weapon after multiple strengthening, it would definitely consume divine energy.

After all, Stoff was definitely not going to use his own divine energy over a few bottles of cola—Xi Wei would almost assuredly be the one paying from his own pocket.

He would end up as a shriveled-up ball if he didn’t enforce limits and allowed the Players to strengthen their weapons as much as they wished.

“When it comes to limiting, I guess I would have to enforce it through two aspects: game currency and strengthening materials.” The gaming companies back on earth had already determined a complete strengthening process for Xi Wei, although he did not have the need to create a strengthening system that holds an ulterior motive. “Each progressive level of strengthening would require exponential amounts of game currency and materials. Then, as for whether the item level drops or if the item breaks in the event of failed item strengthening, that’s up to the gods…”

Game currency was fine since Players only use it at the system shop, system diner, and hot springs, which was why most players were rather rich at the moment.

The key was strengthening materials.

Xi Wei had considered that question even when he thought about the possibility of having a strengthening system. Still, he left that problem hanging after realizing that he lacked the power to complete a strengthening system anyway, but Stoff’s help now had him re-examining that problem.

Out of dark comedic timing, Xi Wei would leave part of the monster corpses killed by the Players in the mortal realm as dropped items.

However, as the Players started to fight a variety of monsters including skeletons, zombies, giant spiders, some grotesque beast, or warped humans, the dropped items were completely random and followed no system at all.

“Tsk. Following it up from here is troublesome, it’ll be better to start from scratch.” Xi Wei coiled his tentacles over what was probably his brain. “Incidentally, I could use the item strengthening mechanism to motivate the Players into clearing the fishfolk island.”

At that very thought, Xi Wei lay out his tentacles as if he was stretching, and then started writing new documents into his Windows XP.

***

Meanwhile, it seems that the fishfolk island was not operating fully yet. At the very least, no fishmen were coming up the shores to attack the frogmen village.

The Players who were gathered at the Warty Tidal Flats were warned by Angora to keep a distance from the distant island for safety. Still, if the Players could hardly keep swimming over several miles at once, they might have gone off to explore what the heck was that thing that appeared over the sea’s surface…

Just as the skies darkened and everyone remaining confused about what happened, the Players received new System notifications.