Li Yada had originally thought that Mr. Pei would show off his superb skills by running circles around the monsters. However, the scene she imagined didn’t unfold.

She only saw Mr. Pei confidently increase the monster’s attack power! Mr. Pei confidently grabbed a weapon! Mr. Pei confidently charged forward! Mr. Pei fell…

As if everything had been arranged in advance, the monster’s pitchfork was perfectly timed with the cooldown of the dodge, piercing Pei Qian the moment the dodge ended.

All that fancy maneuvering, only to be killed by the first small monster—how impressive!

Pei Qian’s face broke into a smile.

Not bad, didn’t disappoint me!

This is exactly the feeling I wanted!

The so-called “do everything possible to deter players” naturally meant achieving this kind of effect!

Li Yada, seeing the smile on Mr. Pei’s face, was a bit surprised.

Mr. Pei’s psychological resilience was indeed extraordinary!

If it were an ordinary player who was dispatched by a small monster’s double thrust, they would either be dumbfounded or angry. Yet Mr. Pei was happy?

Was it because Mr. Pei was finally going to get serious and show 100% of his ability?

Soon, Pei Qian respawned.

He raised his cleaver high and charged toward the villager with the pitchfork once more.

Five seconds later, the screen went black again.

“Hehehehehe…”

The pitchfork villager’s gloomy laughter was still as mocking as ever.

Pei Qian thought for a moment, opened the editor backend, and asked, “Which one is the small monster attack power value?”

Li Yada quickly pointed it out on the screen: “This entire column of values. If you want to adjust the value of a specific monster, you can directly input numbers. If you want to adjust all values in this column according to a formula, you need to click here…”

Following Li Yada’s guidance, Pei Qian clicked to adjust the attack power formula for all monsters.

“I guess I was overthinking it. Mr. Pei should be lowering the attack values now, right?” Li Yada secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

She had almost truly believed that Mr. Pei was a gaming expert.

However, Pei Qian opened this column of values and multiplied all the values by a factor of 1.3.

After making the adjustments, Pei Qian nodded.

Hmm, that should be about right!

Originally, one hit would take away about 60% of the health, after the change, one hit would take away 80% of the health.

Since it was still dead in two hits, there wasn’t much difference.

Li Yada was a bit dizzy; even through her thick glasses, she still couldn’t understand Mr. Pei’s actions.

“Alright, I’m going to experience it seriously now. You can go out first,” Pei Qian said.

Li Yada nodded: “Yes, Mr. Pei. Please feel free to ask me if you have any questions.”

After Li Yada left, Pei Qian entered the game again.

“Good, let’s challenge it at this difficulty level!”

Pei Qian wasn’t overestimating himself.

The key was, if he wasn’t tough on himself, how could he deter players?

So, Pei Qian began his journey of suffering.

After dying more than a dozen times in the village, Pei Qian felt that he had somewhat adapted to this rhythm.

Although Pei Qian was required to deter players as much as possible, he eventually discovered that similar high-difficulty games all reached the same destination by different routes.

The foundation left by Lü Mingliang and Bao Xu, further perfected by Li Yada on this basis—it had a bit of that Dark Souls flavor!

This wasn’t deliberately done, but naturally evolved to be this way.

For so-called high-difficulty games, the specific criteria for whether they are “difficult” or “not difficult” can be broken down into the following dimensions:

The first is numerical values.

It’s simple to increase difficulty through numerical values; just infinitely increase the monster’s attack power so that players die from a single touch.

But if the numerical difficulty is too high, it would directly lead to Pei Qian himself being unable to complete the game. The game would become deadlocked, not even qualifying as a complete game. Everyone would think it was a bug, that the game was half-finished.

So, numerical difficulty had its limits and couldn’t be manipulated recklessly.

The second is operation.

For example, players must execute a series of specific operations, using skills in a certain order and rhythm to defeat a specific enemy.

The third is reaction speed.

Monsters would use an especially fast skill; if players could react in time, they could dodge it. If not, they’d be smashed to death.

The fourth is specificity.

For instance, using specific attributes or counters in the game to defeat corresponding enemies.

The fifth is unexpected events.

For example, a player is walking along the edge of a cliff when suddenly a monster jumps out and pushes them off.

The difficulty of most games is measured across these five dimensions.

However, Pei Qian had to ensure that he could also pass the levels, so the dimensions of numerical values, operation, and reaction speed could only be maintained at a level acceptable to normal people.

If it were just about increasing numerical values—say, a boss with one million health points, and players dealing 1 point of damage per hit—this would indeed deter the vast majority of players, but Pei Qian himself wouldn’t be able to persevere either.

Similarly, overly difficult operations or excessively short reaction times might be effective deterrents, but Pei Qian himself couldn’t handle them either.

Therefore, the difficulty in terms of numerical values, operation, and reaction speed could only be increased to Pei Qian’s limit, which was the limit of an ordinary person.

To further increase the difficulty, he could only work on the aspects of specificity and unexpected events.

For example, certain monsters would be more efficiently defeated only with specific weapons; in some areas, small monsters would ambush players, requiring them to be dealt with in advance using special items or lured out with ranged weapons.

These aspects, Pei Qian could completely solve based on his understanding of the game (peeking at the design plans).

As for numerical values, operation, and reaction speed, they could only be maintained at a level acceptable to normal people.

So after all the modifications, it still returned to that Soul-like game flavor.

Pei Qian wasn’t exactly a fan of Soul-like games, basically the type who would drop them after defeating three or four bosses.

But handling a few small monsters at the beginning wasn’t a problem.

So, after being tormented by this pitchfork villager a few times, Pei Qian quickly recaptured that feeling from before, able to defeat these few small monsters without taking damage through his abilities.

Then came the more important matter:

Secretly added an exclusive weapon for himself.

Pei Qian had access to the editor backend, and what he needed to do was simple:

Pick any weapon model from the art resources and add it to the item table.

Copy data from a similar weapon, modify a few attributes, such as the weapon’s attack power, attack speed, etc..

Create a special quest for this weapon, setting special acquisition conditions.

In short, hide it in places no one would think of.

Pei Qian opened the weapon list in the game and took a look. The weapons here were indeed diverse, with numerous types and complex data.

But which weapon to modify still required careful consideration.

If he chose a ranged weapon, it would significantly reduce the game’s difficulty.

But the problem was that this was an action game, so there weren’t many ranged weapons in the game. There were bows, hand crossbows, etc., but like in “Dark Souls,” these couldn’t be used as main weapons, only as auxiliaries.

This was a balance issue between melee and ranged weapons. In this type of action game, if a ranged weapon had long range, high damage, and low cost, it would crush all other melee weapons in terms of cost-effectiveness, thus destroying the fun of the game.

So, according to Lü Mingliang and Bao Xu’s original design, whether it was a bow or a hand crossbow, the damage was very low, and the attack interval was very long, mainly used for players to pull monsters.

If it were turned into a one-hit kill or machine gun, directly eliminating all monsters through numerical values, it would not pass the system’s review.

Therefore, even if Pei Qian secretly smuggled in a weapon, he couldn’t make it excessively overpowered.