On the first day the servers open, it is the golden period for development.
You definitely have to be ready to stay up all night.
So, after Lin Mo ordered a burger and cola and ate and drank his fill, he waited for exactly eight in the evening to arrive. At the very first moment Divine Oracle's servers opened, he put on the helmet and logged into the game.
Whoosh!
As a beam of white light fell, Lin Mo appeared in a quiet ancient town.
[Ding～ Welcome, player, to the world of Divine Oracle. As the 11,631,258th player to enter the game on the Dragon Nation server, you have been assigned by the system to Novice Village No. 116: Yunbian Town!]
"I already entered the game at the very first moment, and I still ended up ranked past ten million?"
"Tsk! In my previous life I didn't even realize this game was this popular," Lin Mo could not help sighing.
[Ding～ The system has detected that you did not create a character in advance. Please confirm your in-game nickname and choose your race.]
The world of Divine Oracle has three basic races. Aside from different appearances, they each have different traits:
[Human race: +10% attack and +10% speed]
[Beast race: +10% HP and +10% defense]
[Elf race: +10% skill strength and +10% mana]
Besides that, as far as Lin Mo knew, the Divine Oracle world also hid powerful secret races such as the Dragon race, Undead race, Angel race, Blood race, and so on, waiting for players to explore.
"Rulebound."
"Human race."
Lin Mo quickly made his choice.
Because this was also the choice he made in his previous life. Being familiar with all kinds of opportunities for Humans and handling them with ease would let him run even faster in this life.
[Ding～ The system has randomly drawn for you the E-tier talent · Defense!]
[Ding～ Newbie gift pack has been delivered. Area chat function has been unlocked. Yunbian Town Level Ranking Event has been activated. Enjoy the game!]
Exactly the same as in his previous life, no suspense at all.
However, it was fine. In this life, Lin Mo had a backup plan.
He impatiently opened the flashing mail.
His heart was pounding, his hands were trembling.
He extracted the attachment.
[Ding～ Congratulations on obtaining the only SSS-tier talent on the whole server · Soul Fire (the original E-tier talent Defense has been overwritten)!]
"It's here!"
Even though he had already mentally prepared himself, when this moment truly arrived, Lin Mo still could not help feeling wild joy.
Because this was the thing that could change his fate in this life and let him step onto the peak of Divine Oracle.
With a heart full of expectation, he opened the talent interface:
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[Soul Fire] (Only Sss-tier Talent · First Stage)
— Description: Burn the soul, release the Soul Fire, which can incinerate all things in the world and convert them into evolution power for the host to use.
— Special Effect 1: Equipment Incineration (by releasing Soul Fire to incinerate equipment, you can obtain corresponding equipment evolution points according to the equipment's level and grade, used to evolve equipment quality / equipment that has been evolved by evolution points will enter a bound state, cannot be dropped and cannot be traded)
— Special Effect 2: Locked (can be unlocked when Soul Fire reaches the second stage)
— Advancement requirement: 100 Reputation
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"Evolving equipment, huh?"
"Sounds kind of interesting, let me see how it works."
As he spoke, Lin Mo opened his backpack, took out the newbie gift pack the system had given him, and opened it to obtain the newbie three-piece set:
[Newbie Sword] (Tier 1 · white): +1 attack
[Newbie Clothes] (Tier 1 · white): +10 HP
[Newbie Pants] (Tier 1 · white): +1 defense
They were trash to the point of being hopeless.
But for newbie players, it was still better than nothing.
Lin Mo did not rush to equip the gear.
Instead, he picked up the Newbie Clothes and activated his talent.
"Soul Fire!"
BOOM!
A burst of golden flame suddenly flared up from Lin Mo's hand, and in an instant it incinerated the Newbie Clothes to nothing.
[Ding～ You have incinerated level 0 Tier 1 · white-quality equipment Newbie Clothes, equipment evolution points +1!]
At the same time, Lin Mo saw that on the attribute pages of the Newbie Sword and Newbie Pants, a "Can Evolve" prompt had appeared.
So, Lin Mo clicked to evolve the Newbie Sword.
[Ding～ Consumed 1 equipment evolution point, congratulations, your Newbie Sword's quality has evolved from Tier 1 · White to Tier 1 · Green!]
"So this is how you play it?", Looking at the Newbie Sword whose attack bonus had gone up from 1 point to 3 points after the quality evolution, Lin Mo was excited.
Because the evolution has no upper limit.
'Which means that...'
"I can use Soul Fire to evolve any white-quality trash equipment into golden top-tier divine gear."
"And to get evolution points, I just need to incinerate low-tier gear, which is easy to do."
For Lin Mo, who in his previous life had never even touched an orange piece of equipment, this was not a talent.
This was basically a cheat.
But…
"The system only gives a total of three pieces of gear. Even if I burn them all, that's only 3 evolution points. That's totally not enough."
Just as he was worrying, seeing newbie players being constantly teleported into the game from all directions, Lin Mo suddenly had a flash of inspiration
"Got it!"
As he spoke, Lin Mo opened the area chat channel and quickly edited and sent a message.
[[Rulebound]: "Buying newbie gear for one hundred yuan, direct mail, instant payment!"]
According to the system's real-time data, the total number of players in Yunbian Town had already reached the cap of one hundred thousand, and the current number online was as high as 98,632.
Once the message was sent, the chat window became especially lively.
[[Sweet Girl]: "Big bro, what are you collecting this for? You have your own set in your bag already!"]
[[Pig Is Read Backwards]: "The key point is, if you sell the newbie gear to the store it's only worth 1 copper coin, which at the system's 1:1 rate is just one yuan～ This guy is buying it for one hundred? Are you brain-dead or am I brain-dead?"]
[[Learn From Big Sis Handling Society]: "This guy, could he be trying to jam our gear in the mail, slow down our development, then be the early bird and grab the level ranking rewards? I see the first place on the ranking has a cash prize of one hundred thousand!"]
Even though there were all sorts of arguments.
It did not stop Lin Mo's mailbox from flashing nonstop just after he sent the message.
With a total of one hundred thousand people in a newbie town, there were definitely plenty of people who loved a small bargain.
Not to mention, the newbie gear only added such a tiny bit of stats. Even if they did not wear it, it would not make much difference for them.
So, filtering out more than half the mails that were scams or priced in the thousands or even a million, Lin Mo extracted some equipment mails priced at one hundred yuan.
He completed the transactions through the bank account bound to Divine Oracle.
Before long, Lin Mo had received a full 82 pieces of newbie gear.
As for the price, the more than eight thousand yuan left in Lin Mo's card was emptied.
Although it hurt, Lin Mo understood even more clearly the principle that if you can't bear to part with the child, you'll never catch the wolf.
"As long as I have enough power, money will be something I can get with a stretch of my hand."
Thinking this way, Lin Mo went to a place where there was no one around.
He activated the SSS-tier talent Soul Fire to incinerate the gear he had just bought.
[Ding～ You have incinerated level 0 Tier 1 · white-quality equipment Newbie Clothes, equipment evolution points +1!]
[Ding～ You have incinerated level 0 Tier 1 · white-quality equipment Newbie Pants, equipment evolution points +1!]
[Ding…]
"Looks like the incineration value of Tier 1 White equipment is fixed at 1 evolution point."
Next, Lin Mo used the 82 evolution points gained from incinerating 82 pieces of newbie gear to evolve the Newbie Sword.
[Ding～ Consumed 2 equipment evolution points, congratulations, your Newbie Sword's quality has evolved from Tier 1 · Green to Tier 1 · Blue!]
[Ding～ Consumed 4 equipment evolution points, congratulations, your Newbie Sword's quality has evolved from Tier 1 · Blue to Tier 1 · Purple!]
[Din...]
As the gear quality rose, the evolution points consumed with each evolution also increased.
After he poured in a total of 63 evolution points.
[Ding～ Consumed 32 equipment evolution points, congratulations, your Newbie Sword's quality has evolved from Tier 1 · Red to Tier 1 · Gold. The current gear quality has reached the highest, further evolution is not possible.]
[Ding～ The system is about to issue an area announcement. Please choose to show/hide your ID?]
After all, Lin Mo had just posted a message buying gear.
If he then immediately obtained golden gear, it would inevitably make people think he had a talent that could evolve trash gear into divine gear, a talent enough to stir people's envy and jealousy.
So, Lin Mo chose "Hide".
The next moment, a loud system announcement resounded throughout Yunbian Town:
[Announcement] (Yunbian Town): "Ding～ Congratulations to player **** for obtaining Tier 1 golden gear World-Shatter · Flowing Light Sword. As the first player in Novice Village No. 116 on the Dragon Nation server to obtain golden gear, you have achieved the feat [Golden Legend] and received rewards: Gold +1, Reputation +10, Title · Gold Gear War God!"]
Less than five minutes after Divine Oracle's servers opened, golden divine gear was born.
With this announcement, nearly one hundred thousand online players in all of Yunbian Town fell into madness.