Chapter 66: You Look Prettier When You Smile

Chapter 66: You Look Prettier When You Smile

To truly motivate free-to-play players, aside from monetary and reputational incentives, the key lies in giving them a fighting chance against pay-to-win players.

Yu Sheng'an understood the terror of pay-to-win all too well.

What took free-to-play players countless sleepless nights to grind for—a high-tier puppet—could be effortlessly bought by pay-to-win players with a swipe of their credit cards. Infuriating, wasn’t it?

Even worse, once free-to-play players obtained high-tier puppets, they might lose their competitive edge and degenerate into mere gold farming groups.

Why?

Fear of death!

The Conquest of Subdomains wasn’t some virtual game. Death here didn’t just mean losing levels, gear, or experience—it meant losing everything.

That, in essence, was the core of the Fourth Calamity.

The Conquest of Subdomains was a real game. Death meant all those sleepless nights of grinding would vanish into thin air, resetting players back to square one.

Pay-to-win players, on the other hand? If they died, they’d just buy another puppet. No big deal.

Thus, maintaining the drive and creativity of free-to-play players was crucial.

After a brief contemplation, Yu Sheng'an had an idea.

He decided to establish kill leaderboards categorized by puppet tiers—for example, Tier 1 Puppet Kill Leaderboard, Tier 2 Puppet Kill Leaderboard, Tier 3 Puppet Kill Leaderboard, and so on.

Top performers on each leaderboard would be rewarded with puppets of corresponding tiers.

The leaderboards would refresh weekly or monthly.

This way, free-to-play and pay-to-win players could compete on different tiers, each battling opponents of similar strength.

As long as they ranked high, they could instantly turn the tables, obtaining high-tier puppets and ascending to high-level player status.

Even if they died by accident, it wouldn’t matter.

At worst, they could just compete again in the next cycle on a lower-tier leaderboard.

Given their skills, high-level players would still have a good chance of reclaiming their rewards.

Most importantly, since the leaderboards were based on kill counts, they wouldn’t interfere with players’ control over their merit points. Monetary incentives would remain intact, allowing free-to-play players to save up for weapons and items.

Additionally, the kill leaderboards would also serve as motivation for pay-to-win players.

Yu Sheng'an could set the top prize of the highest-tier leaderboard as a non-purchasable top-tier puppet—the most powerful puppet in the Conquest of Subdomains, and the ultimate symbol of glory.

He refused to believe that wouldn’t pique the interest of pay-to-win players.

Pleased with himself, Yu Sheng'an mentally patted himself on the back and eagerly began drafting the specifics of each leaderboard.

Just then, Aphnora sought out his god's projection, Ajef.

Yu Sheng'an’s heart stirred. Closing his eyes, he shifted his consciousness back to the projection.

...

Duofei City · Temple

Beneath the towering arches of the grand corridor, Aphnora strode forward like a gust of wind, heading straight for Yu Sheng'an’s chambers.

Her delicate face was frosty.

The sharp click-clack of her footsteps reminded Yu Sheng'an of an office lady’s high heels.

Bang!

Before she even reached the door, Aphnora raised a hand, and the three-meter-tall gilded doors swung open with a gust of wind.

“Ajef.”

The sound of gritted teeth made Yu Sheng'an scramble to his feet, his face breaking into an ingratiating smile. “Beautiful Miss Aphnora, are you here to fulfill our bet?”

"Shut up! I'm asking you, what's going on with the drastic depletion of the mana pool?" Aphnora glared at Yu Sheng'an's grinning face, wishing she could tear it apart.

"Mana pool? What mana pool?" Seeing Aphnora on the verge of evolving into a Battle Tyrannosaur, Yu Sheng'an quickly admitted, "Oh, oh, you mean the puppet mana pool, right? Well, with more players, consumption naturally speeds up a bit."

"More players?" Aphnora raised her voice. "How come I heard you enabled the cross-border purchase feature in the Keville Empire?"

"Well... that was also to strengthen the players' power! Look, aren’t the beastmen already showing signs of retreat outside?"

"You—" Aphnora was left speechless.

"I get it, don’t worry. You’ll get a cut of the profits—how about a fifty-fifty split? I’ll have the Keville Empire ship the gold coins to Vias right away!"

"Shut up! What do I need gold coins for?" Aphnora was furious. Vias was a small, sparsely populated nation—flooding it with gold coins would just leave them rotting in the treasury, utterly useless.

"You don’t want gold coins? Even better—"

"Ajef!" Aphnora snapped. "Stop playing dumb with me! I don’t care if you use my mana pool to make gold coins, but do you even realize it’s about to run dry? Before the beastmen retreat, my Magic Towers will become nothing but decorations!"

"I am helping you fend off the beastmen!" Yu Sheng'an muttered.

"Helping me? Isn’t this for your sake? Look at Duofei City—it’s all your Believers now!" Aphnora angrily pointed outside.

And it was true. Ever since players from the Keville Empire flooded in, the residents of Duofei City finally learned who the mysterious man beside their goddess was.

He turned out to be a great deity as well!

"The prayer leak was the players’ fault, not mine. Don’t blame me," Yu Sheng'an said, lacking conviction.

Aphnora took one look at his pitiful, wronged expression and was so angry she laughed.

"Nothing to do with you? Then why does their internet form its own isolated domain? Why can’t they connect to the Keville Empire?"

"I was just trying to save face for you!"

Indeed, Yu Sheng'an’s internet had spread throughout Duofei City.

However, to spare Aphnora’s dignity, he had deliberately configured the internet access in the Dofi domain as a local area network (LAN).

In other words, while fully functional, users logging into the internet from the Dofi domain couldn’t see the Keville Empire’s forums or communicate with Keville players.

Of course, they had their own forums—and could even log into the [Conquest of Subdomains] to fight for their homeland!

"Hah, so I should be grateful to you, is that it?" Aphnora sneered sarcastically.

"No need to thank me! We’re allies—it’s only right." Yu Sheng'an waved his hand dismissively.

Aphnora stared at him in stunned disbelief... How could a god be this shameless?

Yu Sheng'an grew uneasy under her gaze, realizing he had pushed the goddess too far. Any more, and she might explode on the spot.

"I can share half of the Source Essence from Dofi domain users with you. Don’t look at the percentage—it’s not high, but the quantity is massive, really. To be honest, your Source Essence absorption efficiency is quite low. Praying just once a week? How much Source Essence can you even gather that way? Look at my internet—almost no one goes to sleep without exhausting their Source Essence first."

Aphnora said nothing, staring coldly at Yu Sheng'an with a mocking smile.

Is it just because I didn’t proactively offer tribute? Is she really this angry over that?

"Still not satisfied? Fine—how about this? I’ll have the Keville Empire send mages to build Magic Towers and expand the mana pool. What do you think? I guarantee at least ten thousand mages—enough to lift the siege on Duofei City immediately."

Aphnora remained silent... This bastard still doesn’t grasp the true severity of the situation!

This little vixen really needs a daily beating—otherwise, she’ll tear the roof off!

"You know, I’ve noticed that when a person is beautiful, even their anger looks lovely. Of course, you’re even prettier when you smile."