Chapter 163: Adding Income, Controlling Outflow (2/2)

Additionally, the Players were just a dozen levels away from reaching Level 60, but since EXP requirements increased at higher levels, the remaining gap needed much time and effort on the Players’ part. Either way, it was time Xi Wei really gave it some thought.

Ultimately, the Players’ ability must develop as the situation needed if they were to improve beyond Level 60.

As long as Xi Wei was willing to spend his divine power as a deity, he definitely could have the Players improve even if he had to drag them along, kicking and screaming. Still, that would beg another question: it was fine if it were a handful of Players, but should every other Player subsequently rise beyond Level 60, Xi Wei’s divine energy was not going to be enough and he would face bankruptcy.

In fact, his divine energy was barely breaking even right now instead of the great profit he first envisioned.

And the reason for that was simple: he had underestimated the cost of the skills in the System would have on divine power. Whenever each Player would learn any technique the System recognized as skills, they just had to spend skill points to immediately learn it, and investing more points would in turn improve the skill’s effect.

The process itself had a stair-shaped cost on Xi Wei’s divine power: learning one skill would not consume much divine power, but the cost of raising a Level 8 skill up to Level 9 would be frightening.

Xi Wei never expected such a situation at all, and as such had to spend considerable divine power to keep the Skill System from collapsing.

If he could load a save file and have this book return to Chapter One, he wouldn’t hesitate to establish a different setting: skill points are only invested for learning skills, whereas skill level would be improved through proficiency…

“I’ll be in the red sooner or later like this. If I don’t want to become a shriveled ball, I’ll have to plan the expense of my divine power from now on…”

With that train of thought, Xi Wei would naturally have to persist on the traditional solution of adding incomes and controlling outflow.

That said, controlling outflow would be the harder part since the Church of Games still had much that awaits, and places where divine energy should be invested could not be spared. In fact, it would be putting the cart before the horse if Xi Wei delayed his own development just to save on some expenses.

In that respect, Xi Wei expected to put in ‘awakening quests’ or something similar to restrain the Players, having them pass trials that would provide him with more divine energy before leveling up—in the process, he would choose Players worth investing up to the next level.

On the other hand, adding income was much easier.

Incidentally, the conclusion of a recent event meant that the Players were turning up less on the forums to brag. In addition, the Players were complaining over the forums that it was too boring to be unable to do anything except watering plants in the little black hut where they wait for their resurrection.

It appeared the time had come to add some other functions for the forums.

“As the great God of Games, doesn’t it only make sense to add some arcade games on the forums?”

Xi Wei turned towards the three deconstructed edition of games that he had fiddled with for some time, but only replicate in his mind after much difficulty.

A Gabe Newell smile showed up on his ball face then.