"It seems that building a large player force is a multi-beneficial affair. It can both handle errands and troubles, and also harvest destiny feedback in bulk."
Pale and slender fingers toyed with an Ice Crystal Rose. Anvis’s gaze lingered on the rose’s translucent and lifelike petals, while his mind contemplated the next course of action.
Originally, he had formed the player force just to obtain a tool to disrupt enemy Prophets’ prophecies and arrangements and to deal with troublesome matters that were inconvenient for him to handle personally.
What he didn’t expect was that the players could actually bring him an abundance of destiny feedback, which resulted in a significant increase in the importance and priority of developing the players.
After some testing over a period of time, Anvis noticed a detail:
All players who joined the Secret Ceremony Society provided him with a faint force of destiny feedback while performing tasks.
As for those who did not join, except for special cases like Xia Ye Yinghuo, others could hardly provide any destiny feedback.
"However, in the upcoming version update, the system will add more features, including guild functions, which may slightly affect the player force I have established."
Casually tearing off a transparent ice petal and pondering for a moment, Anvis denied this possibility himself.
"It’s not necessarily the case. It’s just an ’NPC’ camp after all, and does not conflict with player guilds. Besides, I’ve never restricted their freedom or their right to join other factions.
In any case, since I can harvest destiny feedback steadily from the players, I can fully commit more materials and manpower to the development of the player force.
"The more players that join the Secret Ceremony Society, the more destiny feedback I will receive, and the faster my strength will improve.
As my strength increases, my say will become greater, and I’ll be able to mobilize more resources. It’s a virtuous cycle."
Tearing off another petal, Anvis finally made up his mind, deciding to shift the focus of the original plan slightly.
Resources originally allocated to other areas could now be reallocated to the development of the Secret Ceremony Society.
Attracting more players is simple, just update the Secret Ceremony Society’s store exchange list with more exchangeable rare resources.
Like all role-playing games, in the world of Mysterious Era, many items cannot be found at regular merchants and have to be bought from specialized black market dealers or mysterious merchants.
That means many players are unclear about the origins of the game’s special materials, potions, and other rare resources.
This is not only real but also troublesome.
You might have triggered some rare hidden task, but just can’t find the task items for the life of you.
The source locations of these rare resources, those that can fetch real money, are precious information.
Many individuals and guilds openly offer a price on the forum’s buying section for certain items or information on their sources, with rewards paid according to the seller’s demands either in in-game currency or real money.
If these rare resources could be found in the store of the Secret Ceremony Society, there would be no shortage of players wishing to join.
In fact, it could be said that players would be scrambling to join.
After much contemplation, Anvis looked out the window at the nearly evening sky and glanced at the calendar on the desk.
On the pale golden page, the symbol representing the Frost Fall Month, which is October 18th, was circled with a faintly glowing bright red line.
And today is the 17th of Frost Fall Month, with only half a day left until the circled date.
As a Fifth Rank Prophet, he too had felt the oscillations of the Net of Destiny, and he was very clear about the two most probable reasons for this tremor.
Game version update, or...
At that moment, his fingertips suddenly trembled slightly, and the lifelike form of the Ice Crystal Rose momentarily blurred before returning to its original clarity.
"My strength has increased a bit more, but it’s still a bit too slow..."
Sensing that his Spiritual Synchronization had again improved by one percent, Anvis gently shook his head.
This one percent increase had taken him the better part of a month.
"Eleven percent Spiritual Synchronization, it’s quite difficult to synchronize with such an enormous base..."
Compared to the joy of rapidly increasing in strength when initially absorbing the Mysterious Pitch-Black Sealing power from the Ancient Secret Scripture.
The current pace of enhancement in Spiritual Synchronization was excruciatingly slow by comparison, even with his daily use of various rare assistive treasures.
In fact, Anvis was well aware that even within Pamir Academy, his current rate of improvement would make over ninety percent of the people blush with shame.
Not to mention his exaggerated all Attributes and pseudo Seventh Rank spiritual power, just the speed of improving one percent Synchronization in less than a month far surpasses the vast majority of Professionals.
Many Professionals, even with the use of rare Cultivation Resources, need to measure their Synchronization improvement in months, slowly achieving it through persistent and painstaking efforts.
And for those without enough Cultivation Resources, the rate of Synchronization can easily be calculated in terms of years.
After all, breaking through fifty percent in Spiritual Synchronization signifies a Sixth Rank Professional. And achieving one hundred percent means being promoted to Seventh Rank, officially entering the ranks of High Rank Professionals.
Many Professionals, after reaching Fifth or Sixth Rank, may spend decades trying to reach a bottleneck; it’s not uncommon.
But for Anvis, the current rate of strength improvement was still too slow.
Time waits for no one, and the era is on the verge of a turning point. He must find ways to accelerate even further.
Throughout this half-year, he similarly sought after various ancient Alien Powers, hoping to see if the Ancient Secret Scripture could absorb them.
But the results were somewhat disappointing. Since absorbing the power of the Sealing that transcended Ninth Rank, the Ancient Secret Scripture seems to have become picky, showing no reaction to other powers.
Putting those thoughts aside, Anvis slowly stood up from his study room, simultaneously releasing the rose formed by his control over the Ice Element, letting it disintegrate into fine particles in mid-air.
"That’s why I say, this will definitely be a genius research idea!"
The next day, when a day’s lessons had ended, a green-haired boy, brimming with enthusiasm, was leaving the classroom with Anvis, while ceaselessly chattering to him about his own ideas.
"We all know that male Giant Dragons have virtually no Race isolation in their reproductive cells, and are able to breed dragonized creatures with most other life forms.
And Slimes can reproduce themselves using female creatures of other species, but the offspring produced are still Slimes."
"But Anvis, you know that Giant Dragons are almost extinct on the Continent now, whereas Slimes are everywhere, just like my little Bessie."
The boy spoke with such fervor that saliva flew, and on his shoulder, a half-translucent Slime of the same colour as his hair was twisting elastically, eagerly trying to pounce onto his head.
It was his pet, a Crystal Slime. This kind of special mini Slime is harmless to humans and has traits similar to those of a kitten, often attempting to jump onto their owner.
"Therefore, I want to try combining the two, to obtain a type of Slime that possesses Giant Dragon characteristics!
It can breed using the mother body of other creatures and then give birth to an entirely new species with the characteristics of both the Slime and the mother creature!"