After that, Lamia ca to Netherworld Village every day to practice hunting with her Charge Blade.
Although the absurdly powerful Impact Phial Charge Blade Carl had given her was essentially a crutch weapon, she still needed the right build and a certain amount of practice to get the results she wanted.
Carl also used this ti to fine-tune the Charge Blade's chanics, adjusting it until the weapon perford exactly as he intended for its official release.
Throughout Version 1.5, Lamia focused on Low-Rank Hunts around the City of Glory, sharpening her combat skills against monsters that were not especially dangerous.
At the sa ti, the progression loop kept her motivation to grind at an all-ti high.
She could carve materials from defeated monsters and use them to forge armor imbued with their power. She could also incorporate monster parts into her weapons to strengthen them.
Every day, Lamia would finish her promotional livestream for Oath, return to Netherworld Village at night, and imdiately begin hunting.
Once she started, she often kept going until dawn.
The imperial princess was in no hurry to bring her Charge Blade back to the main Oath servers.
The monster invasions around the Imperial Holy Capital had recently begun to weaken. Whether this was due to Madam Calamity's intervention or because the monsters had realized there was nothing worth eating in the Saviors' open-world instances was unclear.
In any case, after the multiplayer event launched, the situation around the Imperial Holy Capital gradually stabilized.
The native Oath monsters slowly reclaid part of their ecosystem.
And even when players encountered monsters from Monster Hunter, they were generally weak enough to defeat with their current combat strength.
So Lamia waited eagerly for the players on the main Oath servers to finish clearing the monsters near the Imperial Holy Capital.
After that, they would naturally venture deeper into the Plague Torrent in search of stronger enemies and clash with the truly powerful monsters from Monster Hunter.
Then she would descend from the sky like a hero and make a spectacular entrance.
Unfortunately, Oath soon ruined her expectations.
"I can only say that this is perfectly in line with mobile ga design."
Carl and Anan stood atop the walls of the City of Glory as usual, but this ti, the imperial princess was with them.
"What does mobile ga design have to do with this?"
Lamia only knew that the Oath players had shown no interest in venturing deeper into the Plague Torrent. They kept lingering around its outer edges instead.
"There's no reason to challenge difficult content when it gives no rewards," Carl said, summing up the players' current mindset.
He then opened the event interface for Joint Hunt, the major event of Oath's current Version 1.5.
"Is there... sothing wrong with it?" Lamia could not see any obvious problem.
Joint Hunt was a multiplayer monster-farming event. The mode itself was fine.
The problem was how players earned rewards.
Carl showed Lamia the room nas currently being used in the Joint Hunt lobby.
The mont she saw them, she understood.
"Fla Sword Dragon speed farm for rewards! 3/4, one slot left!"
"Three-minute Fla Sword Dragon runs!"
The Fla Sword Dragon was one of Oath's most frequently reused monsters.
Its strength was neither especially high nor especially low, placing it squarely in the middle of the ecosystem.
As a result, even after the arrival of the Monster Hunter creatures, the Fla Sword Dragon had sohow managed to hold on to its territory in the wilderness surrounding the Imperial Holy Capital.
That was where the problem began.
The Contract Stone rewards from Joint Hunt were extrely generous. The event had essentially evolved from Imperial Glory and replaced the old Trial of Glory mode.
It was also intended to serve as the flagship event for both Version 1.5 and Version 2.0.
So how did players earn Contract Stones?
They simply had to repeatedly defeat any monster above a certain difficulty threshold.
There were no additional requirents.
When Carl first saw the reward structure, he nearly shouted in disbelief.
What kind of design was this?
In a normal large-scale monster-hunting event, so rewards would be tied to specific monsters, encouraging players to fight a wide variety of creatures.
Instead, this system rewarded the most efficient possible farm.
The players quickly developed an assembly-line hunting strategy.
Form a team. Farm Fla Sword Dragon. Even free-to-play players using only a base copy and a signature weapon could clear it in three minutes.
Then repeat until the rewards were exhausted.
Carl had no idea whether the players were on the verge of hunting the entire Fla Sword Dragon species into extinction, but the process was undeniably mobile-ga-like.
At least in Monster Hunter, the endga only beca available after players defeated the highest-difficulty monsters.
In Oath, there was no reason to challenge powerful enemies at all.
Players could simply farm the sa easy monster until they were sick of looking at it.
Carl did not believe the Oath designers were foolish enough to create such a reward structure by accident.
It had to be intentional.
"The Academy deliberately encouraged the Saviors to do this? Why?" Lamia asked. "The Fla Sword Dragon only inhabits the outer reaches of the Plague Torrent!"
"If they refuse to venture deeper and eliminate the truly dangerous creatures, especially the Elder Dragons, then the Plague Torrent can never be purified!"
Even the princess could not understand the Academy Head's intentions.
"What if I told you they've given up on purifying it?" Carl asked.
He had already guessed what the Oath officials were planning.
"Given up? If the Plague Torrent isn't purified, both the City of Glory and the Imperial Holy Capital will be destroyed."
Lamia imdiately objected. She could not imagine any reason for the Empire to abandon its own capital.
"Your Highness, the Version 2.0 strategy eting is about to begin. Why not return and ask them yourself?"
Carl could not be completely certain that the Oath officials would resort to sothing so close to mutual destruction simply to eliminate him and Netherworld Village.
Then again, from Oath's perspective, it might actually be the most cost-effective option.
"Ask them... Very well. I shall take my leave."
Realizing how serious the situation might be, the princess vanished from Carl's sight as she switched out of her villager form.
Because Madam Calamity would also attend the Version 2.0 strategy eting, Carl could no longer infiltrate it in the form of a sparrow.
However, Mio could still use the livestream function on her internal account to broadcast the entire eting to him.
Lamia returned to the throne room of the Imperial Holy Capital.
High-ranking officials from the Holy Capital, commanders of the knightly orders, and representatives of the Academy Head had already gathered there.
What first alerted Lamia was that no one from the Academy was discussing how to purify the Plague Torrent.
Instead...
"We have completed preparations for the regional data reset. We truly must thank the Saviors for drawing Plague Torrents from across the world toward this location. Now, at the cost of only two cities..."
"No. Once the reset is complete, those two cities will be restored as well, and developnt can continue as usual. This is the fastest way to eliminate the Plague Torrent."
At that mont, the Academy Head announced a decision that chilled Lamia to the bone.
They had decided to completely abandon the existing servers hosting the City of Glory and the Imperial Holy Capital.
Then they would reset the region and relaunch Oath.
"So a reset is the Academy's final answer?" Migard, commander of the Hunter Knights, spoke up. "I know I may not be the proper person to ask this, but what exactly is the price?"
"If every Plague Torrent can be resolved through a reset..."
"Then what aning did all our past sacrifices have?"
Migard usually remained on the sidelines, but the Hunter Knights had originally been a rcenary force dedicated to fighting the Plague Torrent.
"The Academy will, of course, suffer severe losses," the Academy Head replied. "Recovering from them will require an astronomical amount of funding."
The decision clearly pained him as well.
Rebuilding such a massive server infrastructure would consu an almost unimaginable quantity of resources.
"I didn't ask about your losses!" Migard snapped. "I asked what we will lose. If the regions containing two entire cities are reset, surely the Empire and the Holy Nation won't erge completely unscathed."
Her voice gradually turned cold.
When the matter had nothing to do with the Plague Torrent, Migard was content to be a lazy bystander.
But once the Plague Torrent was involved, things were different.
The comrades who had died in her past would never allow her to ignore it.
"The losses are insignificant," the Academy Head said. "Those already infected will simply be erased along with the rest of the regional data. To the Empire and the Holy Nation, the infected are nothing more than a burden anyway, are they not?"
His gaze swept across the assembled Imperial officials.
"If anything, you should be thanking us for spending such an enormous sum to solve several of your problems at once."
"Of course, soone of your stature will not be affected, Madam Calamity. You may rest assured."
After the Academy Head finished speaking, silence descended over the entire Version 2.0 strategy eting.
Carl fell silent as well.
"Is... is that true?" he asked Anan.
"Yes," Anan replied. "Those infected refugees can already be considered part of the Plague Torrent. In the past, we first had to suppress the Plague Torrent before we could transport the infected to Netherworld Village."
She briefly explained how such outbreaks had been handled before.
"And now the Oath officials would rather relaunch the entire ga just to kill ?" Carl asked. "They couldn't possibly think I'm infected with the Calamity Plague too, could they?"
Carl did not need to ask whether Elysium would allow sothing like this.
He already knew the answer.
For the survival of the world.
If the Plague Torrent could not be stopped, Elysium would permit the region to be reset, even if that ant abandoning everyone infected by the plague.
That was one of the most fundantal laws governing this world.
And yet the Saviors of Oath, the very people supposedly responsible for saving the world, had no interest in challenging the most dangerous regions of the Plague Torrent.
The Oath officials had given them no reason to do so.
There were no Contract Stones waiting in the depths.
There probably was not even an avatar fra.
Carl could already imagine the developers adding a series of infuriating chanics later, such as massively inflated health pools and rigid team restrictions, all designed to discourage the few players who genuinely wanted to challenge the hardest monsters.
(To be continued.)
◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)
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