Chapter 29

'Looks like I've really hit the upper limit.'

'Although there are plenty of powerful mages in Phantom Lord and Fairy Tail who can contribute far more emotion points than ordinary people, the base number of people is still too small.'

Gazing at the system panel in his mind where the growth rate of emotion points had slowed to a crawl, Lin Cheng fell into thought.

This run of the script had gone even better than Lin Cheng had expected.

Originally Lin Cheng had figured harvesting around a million emotion points would be about right, but he hadn't expected to completely drain the emotion point cap of everyone present.

All in all, Lin Cheng had harvested close to one million seven hundred thousand emotion points.

If the emotion point cap of everyone present hadn't been roughly 1.7 million, Lin Cheng's current emotion points would probably have more than doubled—after all, Joseph, one of the Ten Holy Mages, had died.

'But if I've already hit the emotion point cap now, then the rest of the script has no profit at all?'

Lin Cheng suddenly felt that continuing to stage the rest of the script was a bit of a loss.

After all, the audience on site had almost no emotion points left to provide Lin Cheng.

What followed in Lin Cheng's plan was the full-scale clash between the two A-rank puppets, Ace and Sloth.

This was the debut show Lin Cheng had constructed for his two brand-new factions, the Bai Huzi Pirates and the Monu Sect.

'Ah well, no profit is no profit.'

'I have to see the script through properly so it's easier to start the next one.'

Lin Cheng felt a bit helpless.

There was nothing to be done about it.

Of course, although the first wave of the most intense emotion point gains had already hit the cap, if nothing unexpected happened, once the various newspapers reported today's events, Lin Cheng's gains wouldn't be low either.

In fact, Lin Cheng was already preparing to secretly spend money to hire some newspapers to go wild reporting that Joseph, chairman of Phantom Lord and one of the Ten Holy Mages, had been instantly killed by Ace.

By that time, Lin Cheng roughly estimated—

Putting it conservatively, two or three million emotion points probably wouldn't go far—after all, the population of the Kingdom of Fiore alone had reached eighteen million.

At least one third of them could get access to newspapers.

Even if only one in ten of those who saw the papers contributed emotion points to Lin Cheng, and each person only gave him one point, Lin Cheng's emotion point income would still reach six hundred thousand.

Thinking of this, Lin Cheng just smiled lightly, refocused his attention on Ace and Sloth, and prepared to begin the main business of the script—the slaughter between the officers of the Bai Huzi Pirates and the officers of the Monu Sect.

"How, how is that possible."

"That was, that was one of the Ten Holy Mages…"

Lucy, watching the scene of Joseph being instantly reduced to ash by Ace's attack, instinctively swallowed hard.

Such a scene completely exceeded the limits of Lucy's imagination.

Lucy had certainly been looking forward to the fight between Ace and Joseph. Ace had just blocked that terrifying Magic Convergent Cannon earlier, proving his strength, and it wasn't as if she hadn't considered that Ace might be able to defeat Joseph, one of the Ten Holy Mages.

But defeat was one thing—instant kill was truly terrifying.

At this moment, Lucy very much wanted to say something, but no matter how she tried, she couldn't get the words out.

"This, this, this guy really…"

It wasn't just Lucy alone who was speechless.

At this moment, looking at such a scene, even Natsu, who had just been clamoring to fight Ace one-on-one, was likewise unable to speak—Natsu wasn't some fool.

He naturally knew how fearsome Joseph was.

After all, the man was on the same level as his own old man, Makarov.

'Perhaps this guy is the real monster.'

Everyone in Fairy Tail arrived at exactly the same conclusion in perfect unison.

"Everyone should hurry up and leave now."

Looking at the surrounding Fairy Tail members who had been stunned into a daze, Ace just smiled slightly and said, "The ones coming up next are going to be a bit troublesome. I might not be able to keep everyone safe."

"I'll leave the commission to you, Miss Erza."

Saying so, Ace took out the portrait of 'Blackbeard' from his embrace and handed it to Erza beside him.

"Is it someone from the Monu Sect?"

"Even you would find it troublesome?"

Hearing Ace's words, Erza's brow furrowed sharply.