Three ways of development

After working for almost 4 hours nonstop in the space village, he finally closed the control panel with satisfaction.

Both of them lay in the center area, taking a break.

Lark asked him, "Boss, how strong is our species?"

Glitch smiled as he looked at Lark. "You heard of Shakhans."

Lark nodded his head. "They were two feat creatures with two small tentacles on their neck."

Glitch nodded, knowing all these assistants had basic knowledge about the species.

He said, "Well, we are going to start with them."

Lark frowned for a second, but then he said in a careful tone, "Boss, I think it will be difficult to develop them."

Glitch nodded in understanding. "Yeah, I know, it would be more so as there were 10 unique traits in the species."

At this, Lark jumped up and stared at him, his mouth wide open. "What!"

Glitch tilted his head. "What happened?"

Lark asked him while shaking, "Boss, 10 unique traits. Are you sure about that?" Lark was almost shouting in excitement at this point.

Glitch nodded his head. "Yeah, do you know anything about them?"

Lark shook his little head, "No, but I heard it was super tough to get more than 3 traits for Shakhans." He jumped up and down and asked with a shine in his eyes, "Boss, what grade did you get in the trial?"

Glitch said casually, "SS grade."

Silence. He saw Lark's jaw drop as he fell in shock. He landed with a soft thud.

It was funny to see, but he kinda expected a similar reaction. He was sure that if someone told him about this grade in his last life, the past him would have a more embarrassing reaction.

Glitch stretched his body as sat up. "It's time for some more work."

Lark looked at him with curious eyes. "Boss, are you going to summon them?"

Glitch shook his head. "Nah, we have to wait for the number of prey to increase in the forest."

Lark nodded in understanding. It was logical, as right now the total number of prey monsters was far lower compared to the total number of Shakhans.

Glitch was in no hurry to summon his species. Instead, he pulled out the blueprint of the Gene lab. Now the blueprint was a little different from terrain print.

Unlike the terrain print, which would instantly form the terrain in the space village, the blueprint required time, resources, and labor.

It was the same as the building blueprint created by architects in real life. Rulers with the path of hierarchy could even create blueprints on their own. 

To know the development requirement, he opened the control panel and placed the blueprint on top of the screen.

A red message popped up in front of him.

Ding!

[Error#### requirement does not meet.

Space village needs to have the main species.

Required master craftsmen.

Material requirement… Error###, Space village did not allow the transfer of minerals.

(Note: Upgrade your space village to level 2 to enable the function.)

]

He nodded his head. He kind of expected this, but he still double-checked, as there were rare cases where some conditions changed depending on the species rulers have.

Level 1 space village had a lot of limitations, but every time space village leveled up, new functions got unlocked.

He opened the space village status.

[<Shakhan Village>

Village level: 1.

Village capacity-> 0/∞.

Time difference: 1:10

Funds: 0

Essence: 0]

The same status popped in front of him. He tapped on the village level to check the upgrade requirement.

Ding!

[Village level 1->level 2 requirement:

Ruler needs to be level 10. Required 20 bronze coins for an upgrade. Completion of the Shakhan village by placing Shakhans in it. Complete at least one quest in the game world (done)]

None of the requirements were tough to meet. In the trial, he already completed the 4th requirement.

He could easily fulfill all of them in a day, but then he once again looked at gene lab creation requirements.

He did not see the material, but the cost of buying master craftsmen in the system shop was 50 silver coins.

Then, based on experience, as the gene lab was a special building, he roughly estimated that he would need 30-40 silver coins in raw materials.

This was only for the construction of the lab. It was common knowledge that for the ruler of the evolution path, to start the manual active evolution, he needed the gene lab for experiments and the evolution library for the knowledge base.

In terms of importance, the evolution library was even more important than the gene lab, as it also boosted passive development.

He would most likely get the evolution library blueprint as a reward for upgrading the space village.

Assuming the same raw material cost, he needed to earn more than one gold just to have bare basic in the space village. 

Glitch let out a long, weary sigh, as it would take days to earn that much. But it was not like he had no other way of development.

In Universal Online, a ruler had three ways of development. The easiest one was passive development, though slow, but was the most concrete way.

The second was manual development.

This required him to do experiments based on the stuff he learned from the library.

This was a boundless method with no limit. Rulers could do whatever they wanted.

For ruler, the last and most unpredictable method of development was by increasing their level.

Every time rulers leveled up, his hidden stats would increase and at every 5th level, the player got this evolution token as a reward.

Rulers could instantly give mutation to random creatures present in their species by using these tokens.

It was the fastest but most unpredictable method, which could have dire consequences from infighting to betrayal and massacre.

In the start, when a ruler had few species, it was easier to manage random mutation. But when the number of creatures increased, it became close to impossible to find them.

This method was like gambling, which could be good or worse.

The good and bad thing was that for rulers of the evolution path, the risks and rewards of this method were mid.

Not too crazy to cause much problem nor too great to change much.

For the other two paths, which were stuck with the same species, it could be huge.