Amoura was not prepared. The speed of the creature running towards her was very high. While she was still raising the pistol towards the monster, it had already reached her and dealt a big bite to her shoulder, causing liters of blood to start gushing out.
Feeling the pain numbing her head, Amoura felt her adrenaline pump even more, causing her hand to rise on instinct and unload the pistol clip into the Zombie's head!
Bang, Bang, Bang...
With its head destroyed by the weapon, the Zombie fell lifelessly to the side, now completely dead. Despite having killed the first monster in this game, Amoura did not rest, as her avatar's shoulder was causing her a lot of pain!
Remembering the medicine bottle she found in the house a few minutes ago, Amoura quickly uncapped it and poured the liquid on the wound, feeling the pain increase 10x more. But she knew Zombies. She knew that these monsters' bite was infectious. If she left the wound as it was, even if she didn't die from bleeding, she would still die from the infection caused by the monster's bite.
The alcohol in the medicine was eating away at her flesh, but it was also hopefully killing all the viruses and bacteria that came from the Zombie's mouth. In just 5 seconds the pain began to subside until the wound stopped bleeding and was just burning from the exposed flesh.
Amoura was excited to see how effective this medicine was. Thinking that it might be useful to use Mana to convert such a medicine to reality at some point, despite knowing how expensive it would be, the effectiveness of this medicine made her not worry about her wound anymore.
Using the experience of a veteran Rank F Player, Amoura noticed the footsteps of something else approaching and reloaded her pistol with the last clip she had.
This time she didn't care if it was human or zombie, she already had her gun ready as she pointed in the direction of the noise.
RAAAAAWWW
It was another Zombie, running at high speed while screaming and stretching his arms forward, wanting to grab her.
This time Amoura had no more medicine, so she would have to kill this monster without being attacked.
As the avatar of Ethan backed away, Amoura fired the first shot.
*Bang!*
The Zombie's speed was very high. In addition to the wheat blocking her vision, she missed that first shot, further increasing the tension in her heart.
*Bang!*
This time she managed to predict some of the monster's movement, hitting it in the shoulder, but unfortunately a shoulder shot wasn't enough to kill this zombie.
*Bang, bang!*
Amoura was getting desperate. The Zombie was still coming, so she shot twice. This time she was lucky. One of the shots hit the Zombie's chest while the other hit the head, making the monster a little disoriented and dizzy as he ran towards her.
Seeing the zombie's slow state, Amoura holstered her pistol and drew the knife she had on her waist as she ran towards the zombie.
*Pffsst*
The knife was stuck in the monster's brain, causing the creature to finally fall to the ground, allowing the area to return to calm.
Previously, Amoura had been quite distressed by the silence, but now, not hearing anything other than the wind rustling over the plants was considered a boon to her.
Looking closer at the Zombies she had killed, Amoura was shocked.
"Holy shit, I think that's the ugliest Zombie I've ever seen in a game..." She was thoroughly disgusted by what she saw.
[Who said the Developer couldn't make a good monster?!]
[I think this is the best Zombie ever made by an F Rank Developer!]
[Crap, I almost shit myself while watching this. The scare that the Zombie gave me when he jumped and bit Amoura's neck is giving me goosebumps even now!]
[This Developer is crazy! How did he manage to make a zombie so scary?! Look at that thing's hair! This game is so realistic that even Amoura's blood scared me.]
[Amoura, how does it feel to shoot a gun in this game?]
Seeing the last question, Amoura thought for a while as she looked at the pistol in her hand. "Honestly, it's quite realistic. I can't say much as I haven't shot that many times, but comparing it to other Rank F games, I would say that this one is perhaps the best, perhaps second only to Rank E shooting training games, since those games have a wider range of weapons. But the trade-off is the lack of the high mana consumption disadvantage of a Rank E game."
[Even the shooting feels good? Damn, this game was made by a genius!]
[He only took 3 weeks to make this game! Don't forget about that!]
[Is the game's Mana consumption low?]
Amoura felt her Mana and realized that 0.5 Mana Units had already been spent, and considering she had played for 25 minutes, it was a good ratio.
"The Mana consumption is at 1 unit per hour, which is already at the level of the best F-Rank games. Perhaps this Developer's next game will even reach E-Rank," she said excitedly, as she relaxed a bit. That was, until she heard a noise and felt her heart racing again.
Looking around alertly with the pistol in hand, Amoura saw that the noise was just a few bats flying through the sky, which made her give a slight laugh, thinking about how tense and scared she was.
Gabe was watching this with great interest. The reaction from Amoura and the viewers of her livestream was very good. When she had started playing 25 minutes ago, she had 270 viewers, but as the game's story developed, the amount had already risen to 340. Considering that this was still just the beginning of his demo, Gabe was excited.
Some people were even already downloading the game, also wanting to try it after seeing Amoura playing and not wanting to receive Spoilers for the story of the game that looked interesting and looked much more fun than the other games they used to train.
These people were mainly F Rank Players who trained with firearms. Usually the games they used for training were very simple, be it fixed targets, flying discs, or at most shooting ducks for hours, which might have seemed interesting at first, but after doing it for several hours each day over months, it became an extremely exhausting task.
Seeing that they could practice shooting in this game without spending anything extra, even if the efficiency was not as good since they don't shoot as much as in other games, it would be worth it. They could rest a little without the weight on their conscience for not training at all.
The amount of RD: Village downloads was already at 44, and considering that the game had just been released 30 minutes ago and had no publicity, Gabe imagined that the game would be a success!
The Spear Training he saw earlier, the game with the most other downloads, was only around 2,000 downloads, and that was because the game had been available for 1 and a half weeks, which was plenty of time to attract an audience.
Curious to see how it felt to control his Seed's Mana, Gabe shut down Amoura's livestream for a while and let his consciousness into the world of Village.
At that moment he had an aerial view. Below him it was possible to see several silhouettes, a total of 32, who were playing, while the other 12 who had downloaded the game were probably still watching the livestream of Amoura, leaving it to play later.
Watching those 32 people play, Gabe noticed different styles of gameplay. There were people more terrified than Amoura, who held the pistol with shaking hands and looked around endlessly, while there were also people acting entirely the opposite. These people weren't too scared and moved forward quickly even though they were a bit worried.
What Gabe found most interesting was that he could feel the level of improvement in these people, and surprisingly, the most fearful players were the ones who absorbed the most knowledge of firearms.
Gabe could see that a thin layer of Mana was coming out of the pistols and entering the players' heads, something they couldn't see, but he as the creator could see it perfectly. Since these games gave extra rewards proportional to the emotion the players were feeling, those people who were terrified were able to absorb mana from the pistol much more efficiently than people who weren't as scared.
With the Seed's control, Gabe could feel that the game had already absorbed 7 Mana Units from the players! This was already something he could use, both to be able to develop the game further, and he could absorb the Mana by 100 Units and make it his own.
Most Developers preferred to absorb Mana, as it would bring immediate return, and after getting stronger they could make other Rank F games until they managed to gather enough mana to nurture a Rank E Seed, thus earning even more money. But Gabe thought the opposite. Gabe's idea was to use this Mana to further develop this Seed, making the game much more complete and managing to attract more players, as well as making the experience scarier for the game to generate even more Mana for himself.
In the future, when the game was complete and yielding a lot of Mana, he could absorb some of it and use most of it to be able to do something that the teachers said was very rare. When an F Rank Developer managed to make a game that goes viral among F Rank Players, they recommended that the Developer use part of the surplus Mana in order to be able to evolve their Seed to E Rank. The amount of Mana required for this was monstrous, which would only be possible for viral games with thousands of players playing it simultaneously... but if the Developer could, when their game reached Rank E, it would have much more opportunity for creation and development, in addition to yielding much more Mana than a standard Rank E Seed.
Gabe's idea was to aim for this. Unlike the vast majority of Developers who intended to make several Rank F games and then buy a Rank E Seed, Gabe intended to develop RD: Village to become viral around the world and be able to transform this game's Seed into Rank E!
He had seen games that tried to do this and failed and he noticed something in common in those games: They were all pretty boring. The games had no story, their progression was dull, and the players had hardly any dopamine reaction. The only thing the Developers focused on with the Mana they received was making more monsters and making the game's graphics more realistic by adding more scenarios.
What was the use of having more scenarios if the player has no reason to explore them!? RD: Village had none of those drawbacks, and that's what made Gabe confident he could go that route.
The difficulties of doing it due to some of the limitations of the internet in this world were still many, but the advantages it could give him in the future would be unimaginable!
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