Sacred Souls: Genesis

Sacred Souls had finally begun its ascent in the forums, but Jiang Qiao never expected that it wasn’t the game itself that became popular, but a mere NPC.

In the VR online game sub-community, everyone was talking about Miss Doll.

The first post that Starlight Scribe had posted had already raked in more than 1200 replies, and because of this he started to focus on discovering more storylines and plots regarding Miss Doll, even using some items to tease her.

If it weren’t for the fact that Sacred Souls players were prohibited by the system to go too far with NPCs, these fellows might even turn Sacred Souls into an 18+ game.

With the continuing rise in popularity of Sacred Souls, the admins of the forum finally created its own sub-community for it.

Jiang Qiao had spent the whole night checking out the posts in this sub-community, whether it were complaints, strategies, or even random posts, Jiang Qiao checked each and every one out diligently.

This was the best way that Jiang Qiao could find the flaws in his game design and improve it.

The people that were rambling and complaining were mostly because there were too little activation passes, and so they couldn’t even play the game, but the strategies on this page increased too.

One of them was posted at eight in the morning, by an ID called SingingInTheRain.

The title was ‘[Jumping Nucleons Guild Original] About the stats of the new skins from the Faerie’s Closet collection, as well as the fastest way to farm for items in the new dungeon.’.

Jiang Qiao temporarily set aside the contents of the actual post itself, choosing to check the comments instead. The players in the forum were all well acquainted with the Jumping Nucleons Guild, as well as the person who posted this thread.

CommunityWarmth: ‘Boss SingingInTheRain posted a strategy? Is SC Nucleons going to start their conquest on Sacred Souls too?’

ShoelacePriest: ‘Is the guild accepting members in Sacred Souls now?’

The Jumping Nucleons Guild was one of the largest player guilds in Hua Nation, with its fingers in every VR game as well as a professional e-sports team to boot. They performed extremely well in War, but because of member changes in this year’s tournament, they couldn’t get into the world finals.

That being said, their popularity was still at the top of the bunch, with a large fanbase in the player community.

This sort of extension of popularity from the professional team to its guild was extremely common in the community, and there were seven to eight such guilds in Hua Nation. The most popular were the Kings Guild and the Jumping Nucleons Guild, and along with the Abyssal Shrine Guild they were the cream of the crop in the scene.

The name Abyssal Shrine itself seemed a little like what a teenager would have named it, but its professional prowess in War was even stronger than JC Kings, to the point where players jokingly called them an evil force to be reckoned with.

Now that the Jumping Nucleons Guild had posted a strategy regarding Sacred Souls, and with such a renowned member too, it gave everyone a hint as to what they were planning.

Firstly, that Jumping Nucleons was definitely going to sink its teeth into this game, and the second was no doubt a challenge letter to all its competitors.

Pioneering a game with high potential was important for clubs to get new blood, and once the other guilds saw the potential that Sacred Souls had, they would definitely not be able to sit still and let this chance slip by.

Jiang Qiao skimmed the replies under the thread, then focused on the contents of the post.

The thread described in detail the system to exchange equipment with the Faerie Merchant Lorenzo, saying that they could obtain magical stones by decomposing the equipment obtained in the Tower of Trials or by defeating monsters in the tower.

But using the two methods mentioned above, it would be way too slow. The average player would have to use one week to obtain enough for one piece. For the equipment with the highest rarity, the Rainbow Unicorn Head Accessory, they would half to use at least half a month, and that was if they were lucky.

And so came the focus of this post—By accepting quests from the NPCs outside the tower, or directly tricking them to obtain extra magical stones.

“This day came so quickly…” Jiang Qiao had anticipated that players would have done such a thing. The NPCs that SingingInTheRain referred to weren’t NPCs that Jiang Qiao set, but the natives of the Tower of Trials.

Jiang Qiao read this part carefully, wanting to see how they communicated with the natives.

‘Every once in a while, there will be a few NPCs spawning around the tower. This is completely random, and the NPCs are completely random, too, from their appearance to backstory. That being said, they all have the same goal—to clear the Tower of Trials and obtain a higher ranking.

Us players can attempt communication with these NPCs, and they might ask you to let them join your party with a certain amount of compensation. Some of the ones with more flimsy equipment will only request that you bring them to clear the level, while rarer ones will ask that you help leave their names behind on the stone slabs. They both give different amounts of magical stones as compensation, and the system doesn’t give us any detailed data, either. The higher the Charm and Eloquence you have, the higher the compensation that they would offer. Please note that there are NPCs that might trick you or take back their promises, don’t believe them easily.’

The players were already used to the fact that the natives had ‘extremely advanced artificial intelligence’, because every NPC in Sacred Souls was set like that. The players were already used to how NPCs were almost the same as a normal person.

Talent in Eloquence and Charm weren’t confined to Sacred Souls, with the two of these attributes having actual weight in real life.

“They really know how to play, huh?” Jiang Qiao looked at a few screenshots that SingingInTheRain attached, showing the natives’ reactions to the players—Some of them respectfully handed magical stones to the players, while the others had awkward expressions, and all in all they reacted in complex ways towards these strangers that seemingly came out of nowhere.

“Play?” Ocean Blue was looking at the screen next to Jiang Qiao, but she couldn’t really understand some parts of the post.

“There’s a new event coming. I should make a guild and get in on the fun myself!”

As a player himself, he wasn’t going to let this chance slip by. After all, the event to ‘help natives from a foreign world to clear the Tower of Trials’ wasn’t an event that he arranged himself, so he was quite intrigued too.

“Have you thought of a name for your guild?” Ocean Blue looked at him with hopeful eyes, seemingly set on the idea that Jiang Qiao should name his guild the Church of Ocean Blue.

“No Name. Since I can’t think of a name, let’s just advance this guild for pure entertainment…”

Jiang Qiao didn’t play Sacred Souls to compete with anyone, but purely to enjoy the game itself, even if it were a game he made himself, and now…There was a ‘system event’ that appeared without Jiang Qiao knowing, and so he definitely needed to join in on the fun.