Chapter 357: City Wall Plan

Furthermore, the Lord Domain could only absorb the free floating energy within the territory and convert it into experience points. The range it covered was determined by the building area. Therefore, if Joo Joowon chose to build city walls, he would be able to absorb far more experience points than other Level One territories.

Even if he had no use for all those experience points himself, he could still give them to Hwi, Gaemi, and the others.

When other buildings were converted into data by the game, only the buildings themselves would be covered. If several buildings were far apart, the areas between them wouldn’t be converted into data as well. They would have to wait until roads were laid to connect the buildings before those areas could be included.

City walls, however, were different. All the land enclosed within the walls would be recognized by the game as part of the covered area and converted into data together.

This method was essentially a way of exploiting the game for extra benefits. It was a trick discovered by lord players, one that could be considered a loophole, though not quite a genuine game bug.b

Of course, exploiting the game’s mechanics wasn’t that easy. Although the area covered by city walls could bring players certain benefits, it also increased the cost of maintaining the lord’s buildings.

As long as any section of the city walls was damaged, it could potentially affect the completion of subsequent assessment quests, even before the damage was reflected in the building’s durability.

However, before the assessment quest was completed, a lord could only inspect the buildings with the naked eye to determine whether anything was wrong. Unlike after the buildings had been converted into data, the lord couldn’t simply check their durability values to identify the damaged sections.

Therefore, this method had both advantages and disadvantages. It placed certain demands on the number of people available to the lord, and whether it was worthwhile ultimately depended on how each individual chose to weigh the risks and benefits.

Joo Joowon felt that the disadvantages were still acceptable.

After all, other military buildings wouldn’t do much to increase his strength in the short term anyway. Since that was the case, he might as well choose the option that would maximize his benefits.

Although using city walls to exploit this game mechanic was considered a publicly known trick on the lord forum, relatively few people actually put it into practice.

The first reason was that even a common-quality city wall blueprint cost more than one gold coin. When lords were just starting to establish their territories, they generally preferred to buy cheaper blueprints and develop their land gradually.

The second reason was that every time city walls were expanded, they would consume a large amount of materials. After calculating the overall costs, it was actually more economical to wait until the territory had grown into a village, a town, or another settlement of a certain size before building the walls. Doing so would allow the lord to save some materials.

After all, if city walls were built right from the beginning, it would be inconvenient to add other buildings inside them later. Every time Joo Joowon built a few more buildings, he would have to expand the city walls again. The cost would be far from insignificant, which would go against his original intention of exploiting the game’s mechanics for extra benefits.

However, if he made the area enclosed by the city walls too large from the start, the maintenance costs would become excessively high. Guards would need to be stationed along the walls at regular intervals, and this was an expense that a small lord simply couldn’t afford.

As a result, in the eyes of the lord players, this method of exploiting the game mechanics had practically become an exclusive privilege of the second-generation heirs.

Only they could afford to have enough manpower available right from the moment they became lords.

Furthermore, even if they didn’t have enough people, they could temporarily ask their parents to lend them some extra manpower.

The lord forum had explained everything so clearly, and Joo Joowon had even fewer people under his command than those players. Yet he still dared to use this method. Naturally, he hadn’t lost his mind. Rather, he had discovered that he might be able to exploit a loophole of his own.

City walls required soldiers to stand guard at regular intervals. If there were no units stationed there, the system wouldn’t recognize the walls as being in operation.

Joo Joowon certainly didn’t have that many people at his disposal, but he had Earthfire!

Unlike the vast majority of living creatures, which couldn’t be in several places at once, Earthfire could serve as as many pairs of eyes as necessary, provided it could distribute its flames.

Therefore, as long as Joo Joowon designated Earthfire as the unit responsible for occupying and guarding the walls, the problem of finding enough guards would be solved immediately.

Of course, considering Earthfire’s current favorability toward him, leaving it alone to guard the city gates without anyone watching over it would undoubtedly carry certain risks.

If Earthfire defected, all his efforts would go to waste.

Therefore, before releasing it, Joo Joowon would have to make some preparations to prevent it from defecting, or simply make sure it abandoned the idea altogether.

This problem could be solved by using a contract and a tracking mark.

The contract was witnessed by the system. Earthfire wasn’t capable of going against the game’s ultimate boss, unless it was tired of living.

As for the tracking mark, it would allow Joo Joowon to track Earthfire no matter where it tried to hide.

So this problem shouldn’t be too difficult to resolve.

What still worried Joo Joowon was that the only common-quality city wall blueprint available was made of wood.

Fire and wood were generally incompatible. However, Joo Joowon wasn’t sure whether Earthfire was compatible with all types of wood, or whether it had been able to coexist peacefully with the trees back then because those trees had been affected by the lightning struck tree that Seong Seungmin’s had dealt with.