Jiang Qiao came to a fairly spacious living room and took out his phone to open the latest version of the game app.
This version of the app was unique to Jiang Qiao—other players' apps only had a login function…
But on Jiang Qiao's app, a whole bunch of new functions appeared—new features fabricated by the Creator, Jiang Qiao.
The most important of these functions was "Abyssal Rift."
Jiang Qiao clicked on the Abyssal Rift option, and immediately a map of Jiang City, the city where Jiang Qiao was located, appeared. The map, however, was completely empty.
When a time-space rift of an invading dimension opened on Blue Star and monsters began invading the city, the map would then display the locations of those rifts.
This marked the arrival of the core gameplay — Abyssal Hunting!
"Ocean Blue, open my spirit descent restrictions," Jiang Qiao said.
"Already enabled a long time ago, and the current world barrier of Blue Star is still very stable. Summoning your character here will consume a huge amount of energy," Ocean Blue warned while coming out of Jiang Qiao's kitchen carrying a basket full of strawberries, eating some as she spoke.
"How much energy will it cost?" Jiang Qiao glanced at his phone screen.
Under the Abyssal Rift interface, the only "Spirit Descent" option changed from gray to yellow, indicating Jiang Qiao could use it now.
"Around 300 points of energy — enough energy to build a city in my own world," Ocean Blue said with a tone of regret, though she kept stuffing strawberries into her mouth, making her words a bit muffled.
Jiang Qiao felt sorry watching her nearly finish the big bag of strawberries he had just bought, but what he felt most sorry about was…
"Three hundred? Why don't you just steal it? Wait… why doesn't Blue Star steal it?"
Jiang Qiao had experienced the Creator's state, so he knew what 300 energy points could create.
The game's daily maintenance only cost about 50 energy points, the biggest maintenance cost was refreshing monsters and equipment daily.
Currently, tens of thousands of monsters were active on the 240 square kilometer map of the whole world; each monster cost only about 0.00001 energy.
Energy was only heavily consumed when creating new monsters, new equipment, or new cities.
"Because your character uses magic! Blue Star has no magic! Once the invading dimension tears the world's barrier here, summoning the game character near the rift won't cost nearly as much energy," Ocean Blue explained.
"So this is a rift-limited function? Let me try it first. I need to make sure nothing goes wrong."
Jiang Qiao sat down on the sofa and directly tapped the Spirit Descent option.
He felt his consciousness instantly separated.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw 'himself' sitting on the sofa.
"Although I was mentally prepared, it's still incredible to be truly summoned…"
Jiang Qiao stared at his hands in disbelief, and saw he was wearing the Radiant Gloves dropped by the Wild Boar King.
To further confirm, Jiang Qiao walked over to a floor-to-ceiling mirror in the living room and took a good look at his current form—the summoner who had previously controlled the Water Spirit and Fire Spirit to beat the Wild Boar King.
The pale blue robe bore mysterious inscriptions that faintly glowed; his hooded face looked more delicate and softer than Jiang Qiao's real-world appearance, and his hair was a dark gray.
The game interface was still visible in Jiang Qiao's vision—health, mana, experience, inventory—all were there, except for mail and some social features which were grayed out.
Meanwhile, Jiang Qiao could feel a special power flowing inside him—this must be the so-called magic power.
Water Spirit Summon!
Jiang Qiao's left hand displayed complex runes, and after about five seconds of chanting, a bright blue liquid gathered beside him, floating in midair with two eyes staring blankly at Jiang Qiao.
"This feeling is really… awesome."
Jiang Qiao smiled at the floating Water Spirit, which blew a bubble and smiled back like him.
At this moment, Jiang Qiao felt a faint connection with this elemental creation.
If this was in the game world, Jiang Qiao wouldn't feel much—but possessing the magic power of the game world while in the real world was an experience every player probably longed for.
This made Jiang Qiao quite attached to the 'Summoner' form, so he sat back on the sofa in this guise, next to his real-world body. He casually put his staff aside and picked up a bottle of cola from the table, opening it.
"Three hundred points of energy only pays for ten minutes of existence in the real world," Ocean Blue suddenly appeared in front of Jiang Qiao, snatched the cola from his hand, and said, "If you stay longer, it'll cost more than that!"
"I'm here to keep improving this feature, and those strawberries you're eating aren't cheap," Jiang Qiao retorted.
Jiang Qiao signaled to the Water Spirit beside him, which reached out a tentacle and snatched back the cola from Ocean Blue's hand.
When Ocean Blue heard the word "strawberries," she felt a bit guilty and stuffed a few more into her mouth, no longer complaining.
"First, we need to make sure the game characters can't touch objects in the real world," Jiang Qiao said, shaking the cola bottle but not drinking. Game characters had no taste since they were 'spirits' created to purify evil creatures.
"Why do we have to do that?" Ocean Blue asked.
"Not all players controlling game characters are good people, and it's easy to lose oneself if suddenly granted this kind of power in the real world."
Jiang Qiao summoned a Fire Spirit with a wave of his hand but quickly retracted it, thinking if it caused a fire, he'd have nowhere to live.
To have such powerful abilities in the real world without revealing identity could let any player turn MMORPGs into robbery games.
Many player skills were AoE; if ordinary people got hurt, the social consequences would be severe.
"We should be able to do that. Change the character's attacks and offensive skills so only monsters from invading dimensions are affected. But what about healing skills?" Ocean Blue asked, putting down the empty strawberry basket on the table.
"Healing works too?" Jiang Qiao instantly realized the impact this game could have on modern society.
Maybe the era of everyone cultivating immortality—or rather, everyone leveling up—was coming.
"Yes, but don't think resurrection will work on real-world people. I don't have enough energy to modify Blue Star's reincarnation rules yet, though it might be possible on other world fragments," Ocean Blue said.
"Normal healing is enough! Healing effects don't need to be changed! Also, if players want to use their characters to save people… that will need a complex judgment system. I'll just modify it with Creator mode."
After discussing, Jiang Qiao ended this spirit descent.
When Jiang Qiao's consciousness returned to his original body, the summoned summoner disappeared, and the Water Spirit became a puddle of ordinary water on the floor.
(End of Chapter)