Chapter 159: The Secret of the Numbers

The second message was about the recent Dark Creature attack. Su You extracted the key information: “Because the attack was repelled without any injuries, a territory aura has been granted.”

This was actually within her expectations. In the previous game, there was also such an aura, obtained in the same way—by repelling a Dark Creature attack with zero casualties.

It absolutely had to be flawless; any casualties at all would disqualify you.

Seeing this, Su You opened the territory information panel to check the effects and duration of this aura—

[Renowned I]: While this aura is active, the territory’s reputation will steadily increase, attracting many visitors. In addition, all social system success rates are boosted, including but not limited to recruitment, trading, bounty tasks, merchant transactions, territory diplomacy, etc. (Duration: 71 hours, 55 minutes, 8 seconds)

Simply put, this is a three-day “promotion aura” and “social aura.” The former continuously raises the territory’s reputation, letting more people know about Sunset Territory and drawing them here. The latter increases the success rate of various social activities.

In short, this is an aura that’s extremely helpful for territory development in the early stages.

It was precisely because she knew about this aura that Su You was willing to give up a bow made from the tendons of a Black-striped Tiger Beast, just to have Yun Li help promote the territory.

Advertising with nothing to promote is indeed useless, but now that the Dark Creature attack was over, Sunset Territory finally had something worth advertising.

And with this aura in effect, Yun Li’s promotional efforts would be much more effective.

...

After checking out the aura, Su You also looked over some other territory information.

[Sunset Territory]

Lord: Su You

Territory Level: Advanced Camp (Can be upgraded to Small Village when population reaches 50 and prosperity reaches 500)

Territory Status: Open (Open territories can attract visitors from everywhere)

Territory Security: 98 (Max 100. The lower the value, the worse the security, and the higher the risk of riots. Stronger combat and defense, and higher resident loyalty, increase security; more unfamiliar visitors and lower loyalty decrease it.)

Territory Social: None

Territory Happiness: Good (From worst to best: Terrible → Poor → Average → Good → Satisfied → Excellent)

Territory Prosperity: 91

Territory Reputation: 23

Territory Population: 11/13

Territory Aura: [Renowned I]

Territory Events:

I: [They have sensed the strength here. Their fear of power has made them retreat. The battle record of this place will intimidate them, and for a while, they will avoid disturbing this place out of fear. But they will never give up. Next time, they will only come back stronger...]

II: [The plants are restless, the beasts agitated. The whole forest has fallen into a strange, gloomy mood. Every night, a mysterious energy radiates from a tall tower, and the area shrouded in this energy seems to be affected in some way...]

...

It was obvious that three new pieces of information had appeared on the panel: [Territory Status], [Territory Security], [Territory Social], and [Territory Happiness].

Territory Status needs no further explanation; it’s just “Open” or “Closed,” as mentioned before.

Territory Security and Territory Social only appear when the territory is set to “Open.”

As for Territory Happiness, this is a special value. It’s determined by the average happiness index of the residents and has a significant impact on their behavior.

When happiness is too low, residents are gloomy every day, and the whole territory falls under a cloud. In this state, all productivity, activity, and efficiency are reduced.

Conversely, if happiness is high, residents are cheerful and get along harmoniously, creating a warm and pleasant environment, which naturally boosts productivity and efficiency.

In a way, this is also to prevent players from recruiting a large number of people at once while ignoring basic development, thinking they can solve everything with sheer numbers.

The more people you have, the harder it is to raise happiness. So for steady development, you have to gradually increase the population, making sure everyone feels happy and has a sense of belonging, rather than recklessly recruiting a dozen, dozens, or even hundreds at a time.

Doing so would just cause the territory’s happiness to collapse completely, and... well, that would be the end of the territory.

There are six happiness levels in total. Normally, most territories are at “Average” or “Good.” These two levels have neither positive nor negative effects—they’re the most balanced state.

If happiness drops to “Terrible” or “Poor,” you get the aforementioned drop in efficiency. If it rises to “Satisfied” or “Excellent,” efficiency increases.

...

Since all this information was the same as before, Su You accepted it easily, quickly reading through everything before focusing on the last, more important piece of information—the rankings.

Before checking the rankings, Su You stared at the code “A1-16” several times.

This wasn’t the first time she’d seen this code. She could guess it belonged to her; the system assigned a code to every human who entered the digital world.

As for what the code was based on, or whether it had any special meaning, that was still unknown.

But Su You believed she’d find out one day...

“Time Ranking, Kill Ranking, Loss Ranking, Comprehensive Ranking.” Su You wanted to open the rankings, but found that she could only see her own ranking and information. All other players were hidden—she could only see their codes, which were very similar to her own “A1-16.”

For example—

[Kill Ranking]