After the proper measures had been taken to defend against memetic entities, the days began to pass rather calmly. While I did my training in the instanced world core that Aurivy gave me, the others were all working on their own projects. Chelsea was studying the creation of a new world, while Ashley was working on her next game.

  The game that she had chosen to produce this time could be called more of a sandbox, akin to the game that Dana had designed a long time ago, or World Seed. In this game, there would be no NPCs, and the development of the world was left entirely to the players. However, there was one system that Ashley wanted for the game that caught me by surprise.

  The game that she was creating used a cultivation system, but one that was integrated into the game’s main level system. The system was called Skill Master, and awarded participants skill points as they leveled up or trained themselves. They could spend these skill points towards a domain of their choice, designing the skills that they wanted so that the system could assign a price according to the compatibility with the skill tree and its complexity. Once they had spent a certain number of skills in a single ‘skill tree’, they would unlock a skill option called ‘Apotheosis’. Buying this skill would allow them to become a deity with their skill tree as their domain.

  When Ashley told me about the system, I had habitually looked it up, noticing that its price was a full ten thousand points. Ashley assured me that it was fine, because aside from this system, the only other system that she would be purchasing for the game was a dungeon system to provide players with ample targets. Moreover, the dungeon system was only one thousand points.

  Taking into account the ‘packaging fees’, that brought the estimated price game to a total of fifteen thousand. This was vastly cheaper than Fragments of Acidia, which had gone for almost ninety thousand points in total. I asked her if she had a good enough crafting system and other supplementary systems to help flesh out the game, and she assured me that she had taken care of that.

  By packaging the item files of Digital Conversion as crafting recipes, following the crafting add-on that they had previously installed, they wrote a much weaker version of this system. Like this, they were able to save on the cost of getting a new crafting system from the market. Once they had all of the code put together, the game would be ready to publish. Unlike World Seed, this was a game that held the capacity to produce gods. At least, when combined with the technology to synchronize the real user with their game account.

  After Ashley explained the concept of the game to me, as well as the systems involved, I briefly returned to the Admin Room and opened up my chat. Sarah and the others had all been a big help when it came to advertising my last game. It was likely thanks to them that a total of thirty Keepers had bought World Seed so far, giving Ashley enough points to begin production of another title.

  When I saw that message, my eyes went wide in surprise. I had never spoken with Corona before, and only knew that she was a female Keeper that had been forced to reset at one point. She was only at the first rank when I joined the guild. But, sure enough, she was no longer listed as a member of the guild.

  My eyes shot wide once again at the size of that bounty. One million points, combined with whatever the Keeper would get from defeating the enemy Keeper, was an incredible sum. I could see many people tempted to act on this bounty. If I had the power to do so, I’d even want to get in on it.

  I blinked in surprise, not remembering seeing a system like that. Was it one that required a certain rank to purchase, or had I just overlooked it? Given that there were millions of items on the market, either one was entirely possible. Pulling up the market, I saw that it was only worth five hundred points, so I immediately decided to purchase it. This would let me stay in touch with the guild more often, without needing to return to the Admin Room regularly.

  I nodded my head in understanding when I heard that. Honestly, the fact that working on another domain was possible was surprising already. I made sure to pass this information along to Ashley while asking my main question.

  My brow twitched when I heard that. Certainly, putting yourself as an NPC in the game would be horrifying, because it would give anyone the ability to analyze your skills. In a world where anyone could be out to get you, there was a greater need to ensure secrecy.

  Still… I was surprised to hear the name Savage again, after so long. And the fact that they had defeated a member of my guild. Though, in doing so, they had incurred the wrath of a rich Keeper with many friends… so I didn’t envy them in the slightest.