Inside Iron Wall City.
Li Li toyed with the Black Mud in his hand while staring at the Lv. 8 Slag Element inside the cage, caught in a deadlock.
He was studying how to turn this Black Mud into low-level monsters.
Not long ago, he had learned from the players that this Black Mud, known as corruption, seemed capable of "enhancing" living creatures.
But its enhancement efficiency seemed rather poor.
Li Li guessed that the reason for Black Mud's low efficiency lay in the "soul."
He had the players, a group of free thugs, so he did not need to create "pilots" for the shells. He only needed to build the "machines."
But no matter how much Black Mud economized, it still had to pay a cost to alter souls.
—It was the same type of substitute as His method of strengthening players with faith.
Putting himself in their shoes, if Li Li controlled the Black Mud, he could directly use it to strengthen creatures that already possessed souls, thereby reducing the cost spent on souls.
But he would not do that.
Just as the players' core traits were their ability to revive at a low cost and plunder faith through slaughter.
Black Mud's most fundamental trait, aside from being able to twist gods, was its terrifying ability to create monsters at an extremely low cost.
If Black Mud corrupted an area, it was like establishing a "barracks" there, capable of summoning powerful monsters with very little energy.
A quick calculation made it obvious. Black Mud only needed around 4,000 Experience Points' worth of energy—Li Li swallowed half of it, so the players saw it as 2,000—to summon a Silver Rank monster.
But with normal enhancement, reaching level 30 required 1.05 million Experience Points.
The value for money was absurd.