advance/early chapters : p atreon.com/Ritesh_Jadhav0869
Two new things happened in the gaming world today.
The first was that Chun-Li got a new outfit. The outfit's name was "Lady Jadeblossom." The moment the old perverts saw this name, they immediately started to imagine things—after all, that book was quite famous, on par with "The Scullery Maid's Secret," which was suspected to have been written by the Holy Emperor.
Upon checking the game or the Forum, it was indeed Lady Jadeblossom. What else was there to say? Those with a bit of spare money naturally bought this outfit without a second thought, as it only cost thirty gold crowns. And for those who felt they didn't have much spare money—a single console session cost 50-100 gold crowns per hour, so what was wrong with spending 30 on an outfit?
It was a tribute to their former dream girl.
Looking at the data, over a thousand copies were sold in a short time. Quite good.
The second thing was even more noteworthy for many people, because "the seventeenth person," which had been rumored for over twenty days, was finally defeated today. Everyone flocked to the Forum or the game to see who this person was and what the conditions for their appearance were.
Super Street Fighter:
Expert Difficulty: Flame Queen (nickname) — Phoenix Empire
Nightmare Difficulty: Garlos's Holy Sword — Lion Kingdom
The Seventeenth Person: Dark Ice Tornado — Frostpeak Empire
First Clear Akuma: None (Limited to Nightmare Difficulty)
Akuma(Master of the Fist): Born in the Land of Chaos, Gouken's biological younger brother, and also Ryu and Ken's martial uncle. A fighter who wields the power of the Satsui no Hado. Due to his excessive pursuit of power, he inadvertently awakened the "Satsui no Hado" within him, killing his master and disappearing—continually falling into the Path of Asura.
Due to the character's overpowered performance in this game, Akuma is not a selectable character.
First Encounter Condition: In Nightmare Difficulty, do not lose any round and defeat opponents at least 6 times without taking damage. Akuma will then interrupt the fight against Balrog, becoming the player's final opponent.
Akuma's Interruption Condition (Updated): In any difficulty, if you do not lose a round and defeat opponents three times without taking damage, Akuma will inevitably interrupt the fight.
Akuma's high-definition portrait and in-game model were also displayed to players. Looking at this demon-like character with no eyebrows and sharp fangs, everyone's first impression was: this guy is not to be trifled with.
Dark deeply understood this.
Previously, when he was in excellent condition and felt great, fighting Illusionist characters felt like an absolute crushing. But against this Akuma, it became a one-sided crushing for him.
Akuma's attack style was similar to Ryu and Ken's, with the same Hadoken, Cyclone Kick, and Shoryuken. However, this guy's attacks were faster and more ruthless, and he moved with extreme agility—darting back and forth. After two rounds, Dark, who didn't understand Akuma's mechanics, couldn't even touch him once.
What was even more disgusting was that this guy could launch Hadoken in the air. Although everyone had complained before that these so-called "strongest" characters in the game couldn't even float and couldn't use ranged magic attacks in the air, everyone had gotten used to it because all characters were like that.
As a result, this seventeenth person could launch Hadoken in the air, and his Cyclone Kick had variations. This made Dark feel numb just thinking about it.
Fortunately, he made it onto the First Clear Hero List, which was a permanent honor. This made Dark feel very satisfied and slowly regained his confidence.
Currently, the Illusionist hadn't created any unsolvable enemies. Just like the "Ultimate Shredder," once touted as the most difficult enemy—wasn't his mechanism also a crushing-level challenge for five Fierce Tortoise Warriors? In the end, wasn't his weakness found and he was defeated?
Well, that's right. As long as there are enough matches, his weakness can definitely be found.
So, let's start by training in Expert Difficulty and get familiar with his moves first.
Not only Dark, but many Street Fighter masters began to rub their fists, preparing to study this new character.
Garlos was also very concerned at this moment. After reading the introduction of the seventeenth character, Akuma, on the Forum, even he, who was usually calm, couldn't help but start an Expert Difficulty game. He quickly met the conditions for Akuma's interruption, and then—he was quickly defeated by Akuma's storm of attacks, almost without any resistance. Only in the second round did he chip away a little of Akuma's health with a Cyclone Kick; all other attacks were fruitless.
If he's so strong even in Expert Difficulty, what about Nightmare Difficulty?
For a moment, Garlos felt that Akuma was extremely difficult to deal with.
Should I try Normal Difficulty?
Garlos didn't notice that as the first-place winner of the Street Fighter competition, he was being watched by many people. Many were actually watching his matches. Seeing how difficult it was for the Street Fighter fighting champion to fight Akuma in Expert Difficulty, everyone was discussing it.
In fact, someone on the Forum had already listed a difficulty ranking for all current games.
Before, the undisputed first place was Shredder in Chronicle of Fierce Tortoise Warriors, and the second place was Balrog in Nightmare Difficulty. Now it seemed that Akuma in Expert Difficulty might even surpass Balrog in Nightmare Difficulty.
Everyone discussed on the Forum, expressing their opinions summarized from watching the game.
Caelan had no time to deal with the ups and downs of the Forum at this moment. A lot of cut and arranged runestones had accumulated in the factory, and now they were just waiting for Caelan to inject meteorite powder.
In order to live in a bigger and better house in the future, Caelan had to continue to work hard.
Arriving at the factory, the factory manager handed over the list for the past week. Caelan flipped through it, then carefully calculated it in his mind palace, finding no errors. So he nodded and entered the workshop.
There were twenty-two workers in the workshop now. Besides the two managers—a chief and a deputy—the others were ordinary workers who helped with grinding edges, transporting, and packaging.
Excluding some given away, over 1,200 Deluxe Edition consoles had been sold so far, and there was a long queue of pre-orders. It seemed there were indeed many wealthy players. The ordinary Elite Edition consoles had also sold over 30,000 units, and the number of registered users was already close to 500,000—increasing by tens of thousands every day.
With the growth of his magic power and the increase in his proficiency, Caelan now worked eight hours a day. With other tasks handled by others and he only needing to focus on injecting meteorite powder into the runestones, Caelan could produce nearly two thousand Elite Edition consoles in eight hours. Although the Deluxe Edition had the highest profit, it took longer and was more expensive. Caelan currently still hoped to increase the number of players, ideally reaching a situation where everyone had one.
With such a sufficiently large base of consoles as a foundation, even the weakest magic power feedback, accumulated in tens of thousands of instances every moment, would allow Caelan's magic power to grow far beyond everyone else's.
However, this was currently just a luxury. The injection of meteorite powder couldn't be replaced by others, nor by other Illusionists, as only in this way could his mental imprint be left—achieving an effect similar to the internet.
The road is long and arduous. He would slowly and diligently make consoles.
Having determined the path he needed to take, Caelan felt that his future was bright.