Chapter 161: Xi Weis Plans for Development (1/2)

The end of winter was great news for the common folk, since that meant no more snow and warmer weather, which was also a vital time for seeding.

But that wasn’t the case for Xi Wei and the Church of Games.

As the snow melted, contact between cities would become frequent, and the Church of Games would expose themselves if they did not stay discreet—although Lancaster Players were already skirting over the edge of exposure.

Should the Church of Games be noticed—or worse, having news of Tierra’s revival going public—all the Players who had yet to mature would undoubtedly be targeted by the numerous orthodox religions within the Empire.

Even though the Valla Emprire’s main military force had been held back by a year of war, it was not impossible to dispose of every Player. After all, all they had to do was spare a few more personnel, or simply issuing decrees to have regional nobles mobilize their private army to cull them.

“It seems that we have been too relaxed. The Players’ ability needs continued improving.” Xi Wei muttered thoughtfully, using a tentacle to touch what was supposed to be his chin. “That said, there aren’t many spots to actually improve on…”

In the end, he was a third-rate god who had provided his believers with every form of welfare he could afford. Therefore, since the Players had also worked diligently, to have them grow at the fast pace before would be too difficult.

“Maybe I should consider this from a different angle…”

Xi Wei attempted to change his perspective.

If he considered all the Players a single collective and expressed it with a formula, it would be: the collective ability of all Players would be the average ability of the individual Player multiplied by the total number of Players.

Since the objective was to improve collective ability, Xi Wei could simply increase the number of Players substantially if he had no solution to swiftly improve individual Player ability.

His first thought would be to indiscriminately accept every single refugee camp outside Cromwell, to establish a neutral faction that does not discriminate between religious roots as demonstrated in the Investiture of the Gods. After all, most of the refugees outside Cromwell were former citizens of Lovinia, the capital of the fallen empire of Tierra.

Still, that was actually very ineffective if one considered it carefully: Not everyone holds gratitude (or would be easily conned), and that was the same for actual former believers of the God of Games, who would agree to take up their former unorthodox faith once again just because they were given food.

It was not realistic to have the Players adopt a one-on-one endorsing structure either. Other factors aside, even the three children Mufasa took in could not go further than shallow believers to become true believers…

Moreover, a majority of the refugees were surviving by exploiting and taking away the rations of weaker refugees. Having experienced the sweetness of bullying the weak, those people would never hesitate to slay women and children even if they joined the Church of Games solely to gain EXP.

Even if he would ban or label them, Xi Wei thought that it was no different from picking up a rock and dropping it over his own toes.

In comparison, it would actually be more convenient to try his luck in villages where the people had stronger rapport. If a solution could be acquired to strategically take in an important figure there, it was likely that they would convert the entire village as well. Moreover, law-abiding villagers would be much more obedient towards the rules all Players share compared to the unrestrained thugs amongst the refugees.