“What is she planning?”

“I honestly have no idea.”

Jiang Qiao and Ocean Blue followed behind EverlastingBlackHair in GM mode, unable to be seen by any NPC or player.

Xia Shan had no idea she was being stalked by two GM ghosts.

Today, seventy-two players joined Sacred Souls, and a majority of these players were on the grind, killing slimes, and doing the newbie quests outside Lionheart City. They were completely focused on raising their levels and obtaining better equipment, then advancing their class to learn better skills…

Which was what any regular player should be thinking about, anyway.

But there would always be players that never follow the path set out for them, and they would always search for different ways and loopholes to play the game in methods unintended by the creators of the game. Jiang Qiao liked to call this the evil or unorthodox way.

Back when he played games on the computer, Jiang Qiao himself loved finding unorthodox methods to play his beloved games, such as clearing levels with map bugs, killing monsters by getting them stuck in walls and looking for other loopholes and bugs in the game.

From the looks of it, Xia Shan was about to attempt something of the same effect.

Jiang Qiao floated behind Xia Shan as she reached out to touch the walls of Lionheart City experimentally, before knocking at a wooden crate nearby with a finger.

“There’s no use, map bugs don’t exist in Sacred Souls.” Jiang Qiao sat in midair as he observed her actions, spinning around in the air without being bound by gravity.

Xia Shan, of course, couldn’t hear Jiang Qiao’s gripes, and after feeling different textures from the wall and the crate, she saw an extravagant building that made her expression light up.

It was the Subclass Guild.

“Does she want to be an architect?” Ocean Blue couldn’t understand what Xia Shan wanted to do.

“There isn’t an architect subclass in Sacred Souls, but there is a manor system though.” Jiang Qiao floated into the subclass guild before Xia Shan could enter, and looked at the few important NPCs in the guild.

Subclass Mentor Gritte.

In Jiang Qiao’s design, players could choose their subclasses even when they are only Level 1, which was in itself another expansive system with two main groups based on gathering and crafting. Pharmacists, Tailors, Chefs, Blacksmiths, Enchanters, Alchemic Engineer, Miners, Fishers and more…

Crafting and gathering subclasses had different ways to be played, and of course it wouldn’t be as complex as they would be in real life, and the way he designed it the crafting process was more like minigames.

Jiang Qiao saw that Xia Shan was about to enter the Subclass Guild, so he immediately possessed Gritte.

Gritte was an old man with a long, white beard, and he looked somewhat like Gandalf the Gray from the Lord of the Rings series.

The players now were busy with leveling up, so the only person who came to this guild was Xia Shan.

Xia Shan looked around the guild, and came in front of Jiang Qiao who was acting as the subclass Mentor.

Under his explanation, a semi-transparent window appeared in front of Xia Shan.

There were four options on the window: to understand subclasses, to experience a certain subclass, to pick a subclass, and to leave.

Xia Shan reached out and pointed at the choice to understand what subclasses were.

“Young sacred soul, how can I help you?” Jiang Qiao acted like an NPC who had been activated by Xia Shan.

If another player wanted to talk to the NPC at this point, they would see another image of this NPC talking to them.

“Hello, I want to experience a subclass.” Xia Shan spoke out her request, and the VR technology was already advanced enough that options could be chosen by speech.

“Which subclass would you like to choose?” Jiang Qiao asked, and a window with a bunch of choices appeared in front of Xia Shan.

“Alchemic Engineer.”

Xia Shan seemed to have already made a choice, and after she saw a similar choice to the one she had in mind, she made her choice immediately.

“Alchemic Engineers are skilled artisans who create automatons and other curious inventions, a good choice. Young sacred soul, please enter this transportation gate and experience the charm of this subclass.”

Jiang Qiao waved his hand to a side, and a bright blue transportation gate appeared along with a message for Xia Shan.

‘Do you want to experience the subclass Alchemic Engineer?’

Xia Shan immediately pressed on the confirm button, and the next moment Xia Shan disappeared in front of Jiang Qiao, with the latter following behind her. In his place, another subclass mentor appeared in his place.

On the other side of the transportation gate was an alchemy workshop and not an independent space. If she wanted to, she could push the door and leave.

The alchemy workshop was filled with a few tools and materials required for basic alchemy.

Jiang Qiao acted as an NPC and waited dutifully at the doorway for Xia Shan to finish her experience.

Xia Shan started looking around the workshop, and the tools that she picked up weren’t the screwdriver and mechanical template that were the basic tools of the subclass, but instead a charcoal stove, a small kettle and a metal windmill.

Xia Shan lit up the stove and filled the kettle with water, and after that she started boiling the water on the stove.

“Why doesn’t she return to the real world if she wants to have warm water?” Ocean Blue followed behind Jiang Qiao invisibly, while the latter was already shocked beyond belief.

“Woah…This girl doesn’t want water, she wants to bring about the first industrial revolution!”

“W-What’s that…?” Ocean Blue asked in confusion.

“You don’t need to understand.”

Jiang Qiao stared at the girl who was already looking expectantly at the boiling kettle, feeling a little caught off guard.

She was indeed a player that had the uncanny ability to create and think out of the box.

Jiang Qiao had already thought of this under Maker Mode, and Sacred Souls was a game that was both realistic yet game-like.

Xia Shan continued to look at this tool that had been duly renamed as ‘Kettle Filled with Water’ in excitement.

The regular player would probably only be so excited had they seen a legendary or epic equipment, but Xia Shan was different. It was only because of a certain piece of data under the kettle.

[Temperature of fluid in kettle: 62 °C]

As this data continued to rise, the water in the kettle started to boil in half a minute, and when Xia Shan saw steam piping out of the mouth of the kettle and made the miniature windmill spin, she was so excited that she jumped up!

Sacred Souls even successfully emulated the physics of steam and heat! This wasn’t anything that could be achieved by any VR game on the planet, not even War. In War, there wasn’t even an option to heat things up, and the flames in that game were only used as projectiles!

This game had great potential! In creating new methods to play!

As Xia Shan was having this thought, the flames in the stove suddenly went out, and the steam disappeared immediately.

It went out? But why? Wasn’t there still fuel in the stove…”

Xia Shan looked at the system notifications in confusion, and she saw a whole bunch of messages on her dashboard.

[You ignited a small source of fire. 1 MP required per second.]

[You have lost 1 MP.]

[You have lost 1 MP.’]

The basic MP that players had at Level 1 was only a hundred, and their MP recovery was only in the decimal points per second, so after a hundred seconds Xia Shan received another message.’

[Your MP has been exhausted, the source of fire has gone out.]

“What’s the deal with this setting!” Xia Shan looked at the steam that had disappeared, and she could see her grand vision gone with the dust.