17 17 - Another Residual Devil Explosion

Gabe hadn't even woken up yet, but Residual Devil was exploding in popularity among Rank F and Rank E Players again! After a few hours of livestreaming from other Rank F players, the timid players felt confident again, as they realized that it might be possible to actually kill the zombies now and maybe even complete Chapter 01!

Then, from the thousands of players who had downloaded Residual Devil and had given up on playing the game, another fever to play it arose.

"Come on! Today I have to kill at least one Zombie, that's my goal!" an 18 year old boy who just awakened his Mana said with a little confidence in his voice.

The boy's parents had been very worried when they saw that their son was quite scared and sad after becoming a Player and they complained to the city government, asking if there was something wrong. But today was different. After their son decided to try training in a game one more time, when he logged out his whole person had changed. From the previous shy and downcast boy, now a passionate and confident young man had emerged from that room.

His mother asked in surprise what had happened, and he replied with great enthusiasm that he had managed to kill a zombie! Although the Player Profession was quite famous in the world, not everyone was so knowledgeable about it, and that included the boy's mother, who didn't quite understand how everything about her son's situation worked, but seeing the enthusiasm and confidence that her son was demonstrating for the first time, it made her heart warm and she decided to make a very hearty and delicious meal to celebrate her son's success.

Of course, while she was cooking she called the city government and thanked them from the bottom of her heart for what they had done, as in her mind, the government had done something with the games that made her son better like magic.

She knew that the Player profession was very dangerous, but it was also a very rewarding profession, with a Rank E Player being able to receive a much higher salary than many other professions people could get. Despite the money, she wasn't so confident about letting her son pursue this profession and intended to discourage him so that he would live a more secure life, but seeing the confidence he was showing now, her heart underwent a little softening as she was actually a little proud to see how her son was acting for the first time.

Seeing that his mother didn't understand very well how the games he played worked, today the boy decided that he would meditate all day to recover part of the Mana he spent playing and he would broadcast his game to the television in the living room so that she and his father could better understand what he did, and mainly, for them to see how cool he was killing zombies as scary as the ones in Residual Devil.

Since he had awakened his Mana just a short while ago, he could only play for a maximum of 40 minutes, but since he was already past the game's introduction where he only needed to walk and adventure through the forest a few days ago, since that wasn't scary, now he was ready to take on the village and could show real action for his mother.

This scene where Players were showing off the game to their family was not only happening in this boy's house, but also in several homes in Sandstone Bay, where shy young people who had been scared by the game were now confident as they managed to kill the scary zombies and wanted to show what they were doing to their families, since showing off Residual Devil was much cooler than showing off a game where they were trying to kill fish with spears, like in the second-place ranking game at Harrington University.

Not only were novice players excited about Residual Devil again, but a new trend emerged among veteran players.

"Haha, check it out! I managed to complete Chapter 01 in 3 hours and 12 minutes!" a Rank E player said excitedly on the livestream.

[Woah, I didn't even think that was possible!]

[Holy crap, I've already played for 5 hours and I still can't complete Chapter 01…]

[Couldn't you complete it even faster?!]

"I think I can actually complete this even faster, but now I'm out of Mana… We'll have to try tomorrow…" The young Rank E streamer said, a little tired, but with a satisfied smile on his face.

[Damn Daniel, Jacob just completed Residual Devil in 3 hours and 8 minutes on his livestream!]

[My God! Did he manage to finish it even faster?!]

When Daniel, the streamer who had just finished chapter 01 in 3 hours and 12 minutes, read that comment, all the satisfaction he felt at being able to finish the chapter quickly disappeared, replaced by a willpower to win. He soon opened Jacob's livestream video and started watching his entire process live, trying to see what the other streamer had done to save time, and of course, relying on the help of the chat to pay attention to things he wouldn't notice.

The community that was emerging among the veteran players was called SpeedRun, something that when Gabe saw it, he would soon recognize as something very common in his other world, but in this world this was the first time that something like this had appeared, and the players were fascinated with how much fun it looked.

[Damn, it took him 3 hours to finish Chapter 01… I think I'll need at least 5 or 6 hours to finish this… I can't even compete.]

[Me too… I'm just a Rank F player, for me it's really hard to kill the zombies, since I still miss some shots.]

[Miss a few shots? I'm a sword player, so I play Residual Devil using only the knife... with the time it's taking me to kill the Zombies, I might need almost 7 hours to complete the chapter...]

[I'm also a sword user. How about we have a contest only with sword users? We can make a rule that it is forbidden to use ranged weapons, so to participate in the competition you can only use a knife throughout the game!]

[What a cool idea! Since we are Rank F, we can have a competition for Rank F players only!]

[This idea sounds cool… even though I'm Rank E, maybe I can organize a competition for my Rank E player friends too… just using a knife, that sounds like so much fun!]

[Who knew games that games Developers make could be so much fun?!]

[Yes! I wouldn't believe it either if anyone had told me before!]

[People in other cities will probably die of envy when they find out that we can play Residual Devil and they can't haha!]

[Oh def lol!]

With the development of SpeedRuns, Residual Devil's popularity started to explode even more. Since this was something very recent, players still didn't have much of a sense of how to classify this very well.

The other games were always just focused on increasing strength, and that was very boring and repetitive, so players just considered the games as a means to train, but now that Residual Devil had presented these different difficulties, everything had become much more fun. Even players who were starting to play the game in casual mode felt that they should improve as soon as possible to participate in SpeedRuns in 'Insane' mode, which indirectly was a way to encourage players to improve, which in the long run would greatly improve the power of Sandstone Bay.

But when Gabe woke up and found that there were players developing SpeedRuns to play Residual Devil, he thought it would be interesting to also add an option that would time players while they were playing, something that would only work in 'Insane' mode, to encourage improvement of players and further increase the game's performance with the attention it was getting.

When he looked at the amount of players and Mana the game yielded, Gabe was shocked.

[Residual Devil: Village]

[Downloads: 8,718]

[Average Play Time: 2.9 Hours.]

[Accumulated Mana: 25,282]

[Available for withdrawal: $4,191]

Mana Available: 22,646 [2,636 Units of Mana Spent]

"The game received over a thousand downloads just while I was sleeping!" Gabe was shocked as he looked at the data on his cell phone.

Another thing that left him shocked was that although the amount of downloads had increased, the average playing time had also increased, that is, the players who were playing increased the average so much that despite more than a thousand people downloading the game and playing for a short time the average still increased!

[Chapter 02 will be available in 19 hours!]

But despite being excited, when Gabe saw that he had promised to release Chapter 02 the next day, he quickly woke up, cooked another delicious meal and went back to developing the game.

In the next few hours, his focus would be to finish developing Chapter 02 so he could make players who had already completed the game play again, earn more Mana for him, and further increase the game's word-of-mouth.

Considering the amount of Sandstone Bay's Rank F players, Gabe knew he was already reaching the download limit of the people in the city, but that didn't mean he couldn't attract other players, especially Rank E players, to try the game, thus still yielding more Mana for him in the future!

'With the development of new chapters I can practically guarantee the attention of all Rank F players in the city, and thus be able to become a Rank E Developer quickly…' Gabe was thinking, as he built the new terrain of the game. 'When I finish developing Chapter 02, all the remaining Mana that is available I will absorb. I want to see if this will make any difference for me…'

//NunuNote//

Mass Release Target XD:

Based on weekly powerstone rankings!

Top30 = 1 Bonus Chapter

Top20 = 2 Bonus Chapter

Top10 = 3 Bonus Chapter

Top5 = ? Bonus Chapter

...

Bonus Chapters will be released on Sunday, based on preceding performance of the novel. Don't forget to vote for more chapters!

Current Rank: 8!!

(With your Power Stones I think that Sunday I'll have to release 4 chapters!!)