— — — — — —
After boosting her Desert Eagle to Amplification +3, Gwen could clearly feel its divine attribute had risen to 133.1% of its original strength.
Not the raw but the divine attribute.
"So these ten percent boosts… they apply to anything we put through either machine?"
Shiroyasha's eyes gleamed with excitement.
If that was true, she could already imagine just how much these two machines would shake up their increasingly dull Little Garden.
As for Veyron's real reason for releasing these machines?
One word: Entertainment.
The higher the level of Enhancement or amplification, the greater the boost each time — and the lower the success rate.
Just watching others despair while trying to reach +10 or even more would make for a good show.
"At least until you hit the peak of two-digits," Veyron explained, "which is basically the equivalent of countless universes — the full multiverse. That's the cap I built in with my soul light."
"I'm giving it a go!"
Merlin pulled out a flintlock pistol covered in delicate, intricate runes.
It was her very first lucky draw reward after the chat group's upgrade unlocked the Group Gacha feature — a weapon that never ran out of bullets.
[Ding!]
[Ding!]
[Ding!]
[Ding!]
[Pooof]
Four cheerful chimes rang out, each signaling a successful enhancement — followed by a dull poof that announced Merlin as the first official failed Enhancement attempt since the machines had been activated.
Merlin: "…"
Luckily, they were using Veyron's special no-cost, infinite-resource GM edition, so she didn't feel even a shred of pain from the failure. She simply paused for a moment, then started hammering the button again, re-enhancing her Infinite Flintlock from +2 back to +3, then +4, +5… only for it to drop again to +2, +3, +1…
The cheerful ding-ding-poofs kept ringing for several minutes until the machine's interface displayed a new warning:
[Enhancement failure will now result in the item shattering completely.]
"Hss—" Chika Fujiwara sucked in a breath. "Isn't that punishment way too harsh?"
"Harsh? Really?"
Veyron looked genuinely offended. "At +6, you're already getting a 77.15% boost beyond the base stats. If you actually make it to +7, that bonus jumps to nearly 95%! And you want no risk?"
…Hard to argue with that.
In games, Enhancement was just numbers. But here, every boost directly translated into real combat power — a tangible edge.
"What about lucky items?"
Merlin poked Veyron's shoulder while holding her now +6 flintlock.
"You've got two options," Veyron said. "You can sacrifice other items with at least +3 enhancement as fodder — the higher their level, the more bonus success chance they give your main item. Or, if you don't want to burn gear, I sell fixed-value Luck Stones — each one gives +5% success chance. Amplification and Enhancement work the same way."
"Got it. Load me up with protection and luck."
Veyron handed her three storage pouches. The first held 10,000 Enhancement Protection Stones, the second 10,000 Amplification Protection Stones, and the third a whopping 1,000,000 Luck Stones.
EPS and APS protected the item after failure, while Luck Stones boosted the success chance.
That's the power of a GM hack — pure luxury.
Merlin returned to the machine, determined to push further.
With her relentless testing, everyone got a clear picture of the success rates:
• +1: 100%
• +2: 90%
• +3: 70%
• +4: 50%
• +5: 30%
• +6: 10%
• +7: 5%
• +8: 3%
• +9: 2%
• +10: 1%
Of course, thanks to Luck Stones — four slots per attempt, each giving +5% — the true minimum success rate never dropped below 21%.
And since they had tens of thousands of Protection Stones on hand, failure was nothing more than a minor inconvenience.
So it wasn't long before Merlin's Infinite Flintlock gleamed with a new glow: +10 achieved.
"Huh? Why can't I put in any more Luck Stones?"
She tried to insert more out of habit, but the slots refused to accept them. Confused, she looked over at Veyron.
"+10 already gives you nearly 160% extra stats," he said, rolling his eyes. "If you actually succeed at +11, that's nearly 180.5%! I think letting you use Protection Stones this far is already me being generous."
He smirked. "Do the math yourself. If I let you go all the way to +20, you'd be looking at a 450.6% boost. +30 would be nearly 1100%. +40? 2400% your base stats. Should I start banning Protection Stones after +20 just to keep things fair?"
"…I can guess the low success rate for +11. But what about +21?" Selina asked, raising a hand.
"Oh, nothing too crazy. Just 0.0001% — one in a hundred thousand. If you actually succeed, you get more than a 67% boost compared to no enhancement at all. Not too much, right?"
Veyron tapped the machine, and its screen displayed a full list of success rates.
"Oh, and while Luck Stones are banned after +10, you can still use fodder items to boost your odds. Even a +10 fodder item can give you +0.1% toward a +20 attempt."
"O-One in a hundred thousand…"
The catgirl's mouth twitched. "You call that not crazy?"
"Trust me, that's reasonable."
Shiroyasha jumped in to back him up. "In the Little Garden, even four- and five-digit class gods would go insane trying to push gear that high. And with Protection Stones available, they'd keep trying until they got it. If you banned protection, sure — most would stop at +20. But since you didn't…"
"Then we keep them," Veyron said with a shrug. "It's just a suggestion anyway."
After all, with the success curve he'd designed, even using four maxed-out fodder items, the chance past +20 would barely hit 12%. One failure meant starting over from scratch.
"Are these machines hard to make? Need me to lend a hand?"
Shiroyasha asked curiously. Veyron had once mentioned he planned to place them in "Thousand Eyes" shops across the outer gates, so they clearly weren't meant to be one-of-a-kind.
"Not at all."
Veyron simply waved his hand, and the two machines multiplied before everyone's eyes — one became two, two became four, four became eight, until the room was lined with them.
"Oh, and here's a thought — should I add a live feed on the screen showing any Enhancement or amplification successes and failures above +7 within a certain area?"
Shiroyasha shook her head. "With how big the Little Garden is, if you don't limit the flow of Protection and Luck Stones, pretty much every god-level being will push their gear to +10 eventually. The message feed will be nonstop. Might want to add a 'highlight' option for +10 and up."
"Good idea," Veyron said with a grin. "For +10 successes, I'll broadcast an announcement at the top of every machine's screen. For failures, I'll pin them in the ticker for a while, depending on the level."
.
.
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