The King's Avatar

The winter break for the Spring Festival passed by quickly. Guan Rongfei, who had missed his train due to being too absorbed in his research, decided to just forgo going home altogether, spending the Lunar New Year with Chen Guo, Ye Xiu and Su Mucheng. It was because of his presence that Chen Guo didn't manage to experience much of a celebratory air during their Lunar New Year's Eve feast.

Guan Rongfei focused on devouring his meal when he wasn't speaking, and when he spoke, he never deviated from business. Don't look at how Happy now had a full set of Silver Cleric equipment; their overall Silver equipment development was rather lacking. This topic was definitely a heavy one, especially when Guan Rongfei ran right back to his lab and retrieved a stack of documents to show Ye Xiu the materials they were in dire lack of. The entire atmosphere of their dinner simply sank.

With what Ye Xiu had accumulated through his efforts this past year and a half, plus Guan Rongfei's wealth of experience, Happy had already been able to take many shortcuts in developing Silver equipment. Apart from the upgrade of the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella, the development of their other equipment had cost them extremely few materials. Otherwise, it would've been impossible for them to develop so much Silver equipment with their foundations - or lack thereof - as a new team.

However, after this half a season, their stocks had been depleted. They were good with low level materials since Wu Chen, now in charge of the Guild Department, had brought them to a standing a club guild should have. Throughout the servers as well as the Heavenly Domain, they were continuously accumulating materials. Their profits from dungeons were very stable.

However, the rare materials only a wild boss could provide, faced with a battle of guilds, wasn't so easy to gain. Wu Chen clearly didn't have Ye Xiu's ability to submerge everything into chaos and benefit from it. Plus, with Happy's current standing, it wasn't the same as back then when Ye Xiu could charge into the fray on his own and create an uproar. Balance was something Happy had to research and attain.

What Happy had as an advantage was the passion in their guild.

As a new team with a new fanbase, they had achieved some outstanding results and the passion for helping their guild and playing a part in their team's improvement swelled amongst their fans. Their efforts and dedication allowed Happy to maintain their competitiveness.

However, the rare materials from wild bosses were, at their core, very different from what could be obtained through dungeoning. There were only so many each week, you'd have to see if you could manage to win them first, and even if you did win them, would those materials be what you needed? With that, Happy was at a disadvantage.

Happy was, after all, a new team. Their need for these materials was far greater than that of the other teams.

Seeing the materials on the list Guan Rongfei handed over, Ye Xiu knew that it would be impossible to suit everyone up like they had Little Cold Hands. Next, they had to have a plan, and decide which character to focus on first.

Among these, the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella was a huge burden. Its materials were very demanding in the first place, then, as a project in development, it incurred huge material costs. After looking over the materials Guan Rongfei had used on the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella's development, Ye Xiu's heartbeat had quickened. If it weren't for the necessity of the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella, how many pieces of Silver equipment could they have created from these materials?

"The Myriad Manifestations Umbrella…" Ye Xiu was a little hesitant. Since Guan Rongfei wanted to boost the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella directly to Level 80, there were many added variables to the research of this weapon. More variables meant a higher expense, and more importantly, this expense would continue.

"Should we give up on it for now…" Ye Xiu couldn't help but wonder, but… giving up now would mean wasting everything they had already poured into this. The research they had done on the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella had gotten to a point where it was difficult to stop. Even so, they couldn't just charge recklessly like this. When push came to shove, they'd have to make small scale sacrifices!

Ye Xiu took a deep breath, trying to force himself to calm down and consider this rationally. On the other hand, Guan Rongfei didn't consider so much. Seeing Ye Xiu looking over the materials required for the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella, he instead became rather exultant. "It's almost done. Right now, we just need one more part. Once we confirm this one material, I'm pretty sure we'll be good."

"Can this part be modified on its own?" Ye Xiu's heart thumped again. Whether the part could be modified in isolation or not made a huge difference. If it couldn't, then this situation would be rather terrible. As a piece of equipment, if a single part had anything wrong with it, the equipment would fail; they might lose all the materials put into the equipment's conception and have to start anew. If they could modify and test it in isolation, then just redoing the part would cost far less materials.

"It can't…" Guan Rongfei gave him a most disappointing answer.

Ye Xiu sighed heavily. The next step of the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella was made entirely out of Level 75 rare materials. The consequences of these materials going to waste was something happy couldn't afford. If these materials were used on other equipment, then it could greatly improve Happy's overall strength. Seeing the materials required for other pieces of equipment, Ye Xiu made a decision. The Myriad Manifestations Umbrella would have to be set aside for the moment!

Yet, he hadn't even made his decision known when Guan Rongfei continued, "We can only modify it locally, at a cost of about three rare materials."

"..." The solemn decision Ye Xiu had made immediately dispersed. Though the expense of three Level 75 rare materials was rather painful, it was far more acceptable than all the materials the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella would be using!

"Good luck!" He quickly swept away the heavy heart of having to abandon the progress of his weapon and changed to encouragement.

"When the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella is finished, should we push all the other equipment to Level 80?" Guan Rongfei said in a smug tone. His passion seemed to have extended from researching the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella to whether it was possible to upgrade the rest of their equipment to Level 80 under the current level limit.

"That's… a little too taxing on our materials. no?" Ye Xiu said.

"I'll do my best to get out a list," Guan Rongfei replied.

"Don't rush it," Ye Xiu hurriedly reminded him. "Let's go step by step according to the plan we had decided on!"

"But how cool would that be. All Level 80 equipment!" Chen Guo suddenly called out.

"Calm down!" Ye Xiu yelled. He hadn't expected this at all. Didn't they know what Level 80 meant? Didn't they know that Happy couldn't afford to undertake such a wide scale high level project like this? It was too irrational to push Guan Rongfei's passion in that direction at a time like this. Ye Xiu noticed Chen Guo's wine cup; was the boss drunk?

"The base stats of a piece of level 70 Silver equipment is equal to Level 75 Orange equipment. That means Level 75 Silver equipment is Level 80 Orange equipment. Conversely, doesn't that mean that Level 80 Orange equipment is equal to Level 75 Silver equipment? If we can find a way to improve our Level 75 Orange equipment and upgrade them to Level 80, then wouldn't they be like Level 75 Silver equipment? Though they won't be Level 80 Silver equipment, but being able to completely arm ourselves with Level 75 Silver equipment, that'll still make us very powerful at this stage!" Chen Guo exclaimed.

The room immediately quieted down. Ye Xiu glanced at Guan Rongfei and Guan Rongfei glanced at Ye Xiu. The two were already in deep contemplation. As for Su Mucheng, she was staring at Chen Guo in surprise. Though equipment editing wasn't her forte, she knew far more than Chen Guo would just through sheer exposure, and she definitely had a clearer understanding of the value of Chen Guo's sudden idea.

"Although this idea is a little cheap, but from a cost-efficiency perspective, this is a good idea," Guan Rongfei decided.

"Cheap!" Chen Guo's focus was always on the negative adjectives.

"Isn't that the basis of your idea? Using cheap equipment and resources to imitate more high-end equipment?" Ye Xiu retorted.

"How come it sounds so… bad coming from your mouth?" Chen Guo couldn't find any sort of rebuttal and simply sulked.

"Can Orange equipment be modified directly under the equipment editor....? This is something that's currently being researched, but I doubt anyone has figured it out completely. What the equipment editor can do is take equipment apart into parts, but there are too many unknowns regarding the variables and formulae that decide how the combined product of these parts is created. We aren't even all that clear on what materials make up some of the parts of dismantled Orange equipment. Currently, only the game developers can increase the stats and level of Orange equipment in their updates," Guan Rongfei mused.

"Orange equipment is just an example she brought up. In reality, we don't need to use the Orange equipment produced by the system, but create the Orange equipment from scratch using the equipment editor," Ye Xiu suggested.

"Using the equipment editor to create Orange equipment…" Guan Rongfei furrowed his brows.

"Then upgrade them to Level 80," Ye Xiu continued his train of thought.

"This idea is like, in a test, everyone is working hard to get that 100 percent. We can easily get a 90 percent, then do a bonus question that no one else knows of, thus boosting our score to 100, too," Su Mucheng drew an analogy.

"Of course, in the long term, getting 110 percent or a solid 100 percent would be best. However, in the short term, this is the quickest, most effective way to increase our strength," Ye Xiu concluded.

"Let's try it!" Guan Rongfei finally nodded. Ye Xiu was delighted because he knew that this guy didn't care much about things like team results or cost-efficiency or saving up. What really incited his passion and interest was the process of developing equipment itself. Thus, the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella was a very interesting project, as was creating Level 80 equipment. Crafting the highest intelligence and critical Cleric equipment was alright, too. Working on something you were interested in, passionate about would make you more dedicated and efficient; you'd do better. Currently, making Orange equipment instead of Silver equipment with the equipment editor was an entirely new idea that seemed to have motivated Guan Rongfei.

Of course, anything that came out of the equipment editor would have silver names, and was "Silver equipment" from this perspective.

However, if you didn't try to reach the high stat possibilities that Silver equipment would give you, but something only on the level of orange equipment, then the standards for materials would definitely be lowered. The only awkward thing was that they couldn't aim for the best for their Silver equipment, but had to make it a level below on purpose, that… was something Guan Rongfei really didn't have any leads in.

The chopsticks in his hands suspended in the air above the dishes, the gears in Guan Rongfei's head were already beginning to turn.