102: New rewards, double points for card renewal!

At this moment, Lin Ye was jogging on the treadmill in his cliffside villa, working up a sweat.

When he saw Kim Geun-seok's famous Black Hawk Fighter in the instance, he left the instance livestream.

There was simply no need to keep watching; the Black Hawk Fighter only had ground-attack capabilities and a tiny bit of anti-air capability.

The gap in military equipment was just too large. The range of the Su-57 was hundreds of times that of the Black Hawk Fighter; even if Kim Geun-seok pulled off every trick in the book, he could not win.

This further confirmed his previous deduction that the military level of Azure Star was equivalent to the Blue Star S1 era.

Even if there were discrepancies, they were only minor fluctuations and could not bridge the technological chasm.

In his eyes, this so-called top-tier air combat power from the South Goryeo Settlement was truly pathetic.

Instead of watching Kim Geun-seok get abused, he might as well jog and think about how to design the next instance, Great Wall Watch.

Winter is Coming had already been completed in one go, so he did not need to waste any more time correcting or updating it.

If he had time, he should consider the new instance, taking advantage of the temporary lull to lay more groundwork.

The map issue was easy to solve; the key was how to design the mechanics to make his beloved Great Wall Watch truly stunning...

[Sky Curtain Notification: Respected Instance Designer, the first run of your instance, Winter is Coming, has ended!]

The Sky Curtain's notification pulled Lin Ye's thoughts back.

"Whew."

"It actually ended so quickly."

Lin Ye glanced at his watch; it had only been three hours.

This had already broken the record for the fastest completion of his instances...

The shortest completion time for the previous Raging Sea was about three days.

However, this was exactly what he wanted; the sooner it ended, the sooner the next instance could begin.

[The first run of Winter is Coming had no clearers; your instance design has been highly recognized by the Sky Curtain!]

[This instance run harvested a total of 4.88 million points! This includes 4,000 people who surrendered directly, gaining 80,000 points, and 6,000 people who were defeated, gaining 4.8 million points!]

[For the portion of total points not exceeding 100 million, the Sky Curtain returns points to the Instance Designer at a rate of 1%.]

[For the portion exceeding 100 million but not exceeding 1 billion, the Sky Curtain returns points to the Instance Designer at a rate of 0.1%.]

[For the portion exceeding 1 billion but not exceeding 10 billion, the Sky Curtain returns points to the Instance Designer at a rate of 0.01%.]

[According to the Sky Curtain point return rules, you will receive 48,800 points from this run of Winter is Coming!]

[Additionally, Raging Sea has also finished Settlement today. All instance Challengers chose to surrender directly, totaling 100,000 people, and the instance harvested a total of 2 million points!]

[According to the Sky Curtain point return rules, you will receive 20,000 points from this run of Winter is Coming!]

[Because you possess the Points Multiplier Card gifted by the Sky Curtain, the points earned today will be doubled. You have earned a total of 138,000 points today!]

This time, the Winter is Coming instance did not earn Lin Ye massive amounts of points, which was understandable because Lin Ye had not designed a point-explosion mechanism in this instance like he had for Raging Sea.

However... that was only temporary.

Although Winter is Coming lacked the methods of relying on special events to implement rewards and punishments, it did not mean Winter is Coming lacked its own special mechanics, nor did it mean it would not harvest massive amounts of points.

Lin Ye revealed a slight smile.

All these settings were intentional. For the first run of Winter is Coming, he had not intended to bite off more than he could chew or scare people off immediately, which would only make them surrender and submit right away just like with Raging Sea.

As the saying goes, only by giving people hope first can you get them to take the bait later.

This feeling, if one had to describe it, was a bit like playing electronic cricket fighting.

Although he only earned 138,000 points today, Lin Ye was very satisfied because, in his view, points were like stocks; sometimes, you should not care about temporary fluctuations.

You have to cast a long line to catch a big fish.

At the moment, his total points had reached 4 million!

Lin Ye glanced at the Sky Curtain Hero Ranking at the top of the dome outside the window.

[NO.47 Gebhard von Blücher; Race: Teutonic; Level: lv3; Instance Works: "Battle of Waterloo"]

[NO.48 Lin Ye; Race: Great Xia Clan; Level: lv3; Instance Works: "Earth Online - The Fury of the Permanent Five", "Earth Online: The Five Constants: Winter is Coming"]

[NO.49 Singh; Race: Asan Clan; Level: lv3; Instance Works: "Clash Royale", "Glory of the Ganges"]

This increase of less than 140,000 points actually allowed him to improve his ranking, directly surpassing Prince Singh.

This could be considered a pleasant surprise.

It just showed that the point gap between the two of them had not been large to begin with.

Thinking about how Prince Singh still wanted to use points to buy technology from him, Lin Ye found it amusing.

If he really came to buy technology, Lin Ye would be happy to sell it to him—take the points first, then give him some weird weapons.

Anyway, as long as the logic held up, he could always design it.

Just like a martial arts manual written in reverse, it could still be practiced, though there was a risk of suffering from qi deviation.

And the weapons he sold to Singh might just as well misfire or go off accidentally.

Lin Ye took another look at the instance leaderboard.

The Winter is Coming instance had risen directly to the TOP 2 of instances.

This was about what he expected; given the combat power displayed in the instance now, Winter is Coming was certainly not as powerful as Raging Sea.

Furthermore, the number of eliminations in the instance and the point acquisition were certainly not as high as the complete version of Raging Sea.

But that was only compared to Raging Sea.

Compared to other instances on Azure Star, it was still a dimensionality reduction strike!

[Sky Curtain Notification: Congratulations to the Challenger for your instance, Winter is Coming, being promoted to TOP 2 on the leaderboard! You are the first Challenger on Azure Star to have two instances ranked in the top three of the leaderboard. To encourage the Challenger to create more brilliant instances in the future, the Sky Curtain hereby grants you a reward!]

[Your Points Multiplier Card will be extended for seven days!]

"Very good!"

Lin Ye's face showed joy; this reward was truly generous.

For him, the most important thing right now was points! Points were the foundation of everything!

After the hidden mechanics in Winter is Coming were unleashed, combined with the points multiplier, Lin Ye could not even imagine how massive the points would be.

It might even be a larger harvest of points than Raging Sea.

If that were the case, he was fully confident that he could promote to LV4 within these seven days!

While Lin Ye was rejoicing, the Sky Curtain's voice came again.

[Respected Challenger, the Sky Curtain has conducted a real-time audit of the difficulty of the instance Winter is Coming and has determined that the difficulty of Winter is Coming is too high. The initially set capacity of 10,000 Challengers is insufficient to clear the instance, and the Challenger capacity needs to be further expanded!]

[The capacity for the Winter is Coming instance is now adjusted to 50,000 people...]

Fine.

The Sky Curtain was really going to make changes again.

First give a date, then give a few big slaps.

In the end, it still had to use this method to lower the difficulty of the instance.

However, Lin Ye did not think this result was a bad thing at all.

He did not think the instance would be lowered just because the number of Challengers increased; on the contrary, the more people there were, the more points he could earn.

Without many people, the power of a steel torrent could not be demonstrated at all!

Otherwise, that expanse of snow, the burial ground specially designed for the Challengers, would be wasted.

"Sky Curtain! Audit away; I designed the instance to let the Challengers of Azure Star experience a more hearty and thrilling war."

"If more Challengers can participate, I will also feel gratified and honored."

After saying such shameless words to the Sky Curtain, Lin Ye prepared to issue a new statement to the world via video.

That little punk Kim Geun-seok had already lost the duel, so naturally, there had to be a statement about this matter.

The humiliation that was due still had to be delivered; this matter could absolutely not end yet.

Just as Lin Ye was about to pick up his phone, the ringtone rang.

He took a closer look and saw it was a call from Dayan Hao.

"Mr. Lin, Director Ding asked me to remind you to be more wary of Kim Geun-seok and those chaebols in the South Goryeo Settlement from now on."

"The Kim family has great influence, and the weapons and technology in their hands are not just limited to the Air Force. As far as we understand, the South Goryeo Settlement and the Teutonic Settlement have been cooperating for years, and the Kim family has bought many land combat units from the Teutonic side, including many tanks and armored vehicles..."

"By defeating Kim Geun-seok this time, you have invisibly shaken the Kim family's control in South Korea, and they certainly cannot accept such a result."

"This matter will not end like this..."

Then, Dayan Hao told Lin Ye in detail about many situations that the Research Institute had learned about over the years.

This included the major chaebols of the South Goryeo Settlement, the supreme leader Park Chengwan above the chaebols, and the ties between Park Chengwan and the Kim family.

Lin Ye shook his head helplessly, feeling a bit between laughter and tears, and replied directly:

"Um... interrupt for a moment, Assistant Bai."

"I thank Director Ding for the reminder first."

"I have my own judgment regarding the rest."

Having said that, Lin Ye hung up the phone directly.

Would he be afraid of Kim Geun-seok continuing to pester him?!

Wasn't this exactly what he was hoping for? The reason he set the rule of a deathmatch earlier was to keep Kim Geun-seok challenging him until this bastard was eliminated.

As long as Kim Geun-seok did not give up, everything else was easy to handle. What he was afraid of now was that this little punk would actually lose his nerve and refuse to play.

The real show was still to come; the real Winter is Coming was something that little punk had not even witnessed yet.

He absolutely could not drop the ball now.