The Almighty Ring

Before Jiang Fei could even greet Isabella, a chain of system notifications blared.

“Ding! The Faction Region has been open to the world!”

“Ding! All players can access the Faction Maps via the Teleportation Circle in each Main City.”

“Ding! Please set your Faction affiliation before entering the Faction Maps. Players who choose the Light Faction will be sent to the Divine Light Fortress. Players who choose the Shadow Faction will be sent to the Demon Flame Fortress. Players who choose the Neutral Faction will be sent to the City of Sinners.”

The system notification was repeated but Jiang Fei had already known about it. Hence, he ignored the notifications and chatted with Isabella for a bit before heading to the Demon Flame Fortress. When he arrived, there were already players roaming around the place. More and more players were constantly coming out of the Teleportation Circle.

In Faction Region, the concept of players belonging to a city was removed. Instead, the entire player base was divided into three; the Light, the Shadow, and the Neutral. Players from all cities over the world were gathered in this Demon Flame Fortress. Since they belonged to the same Faction, they were not enemies but allies. Hence, their name tags were all green.

Each player that arrived in the Demon Flame Fortress would be given a choice to follow an NPC guide. It was completely optional to join the induction program. However, it was best to follow since the NPC had done a great job in explaining the concept of the Faction Region as well as the marvels of the Demon Flame Fortress.

Two hours into the game, another system notification popped.

“Ding! The Nephilim King Augustus of the Shadow Faction has declared war on the Light Faction!”

That was the notification that Jiang Fei saw. The players in the Light Faction would also receive a notification but in their perspective, the leader of the Light Faction was the one that declared war on the Shadow Faction.

“It’s finally time!” said Jiang Fei to himself. All of the players, including Jiang Fei, had their characters locked as the system took control. The game was now in cutscene mode.

TOOOOOT!

The horns of war were blown from the top of the Fortress. Concurrently, the same thing happened in the Divine Light Fortress.

Jiang Fei’s vision was taken over by the system. Like watching a movie, Jiang Fei’s perspective cut over to the front of the Demon Flame Fortress.

Bang Bang Bang!

Tens of thousands of soldiers were seen marching out of the gates of the Demon Flame Fortress. After several more tens of thousands of soldier marched out of the fortress, they formed a neat formation and marched on.

From the corner of the Demon Fortress, a Demon Ranger was seen shooting out a whistling arrow that made a loud blaring noise as it flew into the clouds. It was the signal to let the Aerial Knights know it was their time. One squadron at a time, the Aerial Knights flew upwards and joined the rest of the ground troops to the battlefield.

The perspective changed once more this time, everyone was fixed to see Knight’s Commander Heinz, riding on his Skeletal Horse while waving his sword as he gave his speech.

“Today! Shall be the day! The day when we will take down and destroy the hypocrites and deceivers of the Light! Today, we shall bring the hammer of justice down upon them! O, brave soldiers! We march to fight the enemy! We march for glory! WE MARCH FOR VICTORY!”

Right after Heinz roared out the last phrase of his speech, everyone in the demon army cheered on and marched their way to the Light Faction’s fortress with fervor. The cutscene ended after that and all players were given control of their character.

“Phew! That made my blood boil!” said Jiang Fei to himself. During the cutscene, Jiang Fei had taken note that there was at least 30 corps of soldiers. Each corp had at least 10,000 soldiers! By the looks of it, the war between the Light and Shadow would be spectacular!

“Oh my god. Did you guys see that as well? It’s so cool!”

“Come on! What are we waiting for! There’s got to be some loot to pick in the front lines!”

“Wait for me!”

“Geez… I wonder if I could be as swol as the soldiers.”

Many of the pub gamers started to make their way to the middle of the battlefield. While they were busy getting themselves shot in the face by stray attacks, players that were in guilds waited for orders from their guild officers.

“How are you going to take things now?” said Jiang Fei in the guild’s officer chat group.

“Gather players and start farming levels. The coordinates that you had sent? Turns out there’s no one there yet. There’s good monster spawn rate and we are currently grinding there right now,” said Lady Casanova.

“That’s a good idea. Leveling comes first,” said Billy Boy.

“Alright. Persuade more players of the guild to join you. Split up if the map gets too crowded.”

Jiang Fei ended the chat satisfyingly. He had feared that members of Empyreal Dragon were like the pub gamers; getting all hyped up for no reason and rushing to the battlefield.

Jiang Fei cannot deny that the cutscene was good but it was merely the introduction of the Faction Region. This new patch content if it was not permanent, it would be for a long term event. Hence, there was no reason to charge into the battlefield at Level 50. There was literally nothing for them besides getting themselves killed.

Jiang Fei opened up the Level Ranking Board and saw a few changes to it. First of all, since they were in the Faction Region, the Level Ranking Board combined all players from all four major cities and sorted them out. The City where they came from did not matter anymore.

Jiang Fei was holding on to the first spot at Level 69. The second place was taken by Seven Star Warrior as he had been very diligent in taking players of the guild into dungeon crawling repeatedly. He was at Level 50 by then. The third and fourth place were Level 49 players. Jiang Fei was not familiar with their names as they were from another city. As such, only Jiang Fei and Seven Star Warrior were the only two players of Empyreal Dragon that had taken a spot on the Level Ranking Board.

The current average level of all players combined in the Shadow Faction was Level 45, while the Light Faction had Level 47 as their average player level. There was a good reason behind this.

When Jiang Fei defeated Cosmic Dragon, he did it in the form of the Nephilim while Cosmic Dragon was in his Celestial form. During Faction affiliation, more player had chosen to join the Shadow Faction. Those that joined the Light Faction were loyal fans and allies of Cosmic Dragon. There were some that preferred to affiliate themselves to the light purely because of personal preference. Nevertheless, there were many strong players that were in the Light Faction.

As many players had only joined the Shadow Faction so as to hop on the hype train, the number soared and since there were more heads to factor in, the average level dragged down the bell curve.

However, having a lower average level did not mean that the Faction’s combat power was weak. To be honest, the Shadow Faction was so much stronger than the Light Faction due to sheer numbers. Hence, to balance it out, the system had arranged for NPC soldiers to fill in the gaps.

All the NPC soldiers that were filled in were Level 70. If players wanted to participate in the battle and not be overwhelmed by the NPCs, they would have to raise their level to Level 62 in order to cancel out the Level Suppression system. Due to this simple reason, guilds with smarter guild masters had forbidden their members from joining the battle. If they wanted to have a fair fight, they would need to increase their current level. Like Empyreal Dragon, many of them got together to form a party and started grinding levels in hot spots. The monsters’ experience points in the Faction map were so high that grinding in the Faction region was at least 5 times faster than in the main city!

Jiang Fei had basically explored all the regions around the Demon Flame Fortress. Hence, he chose to do nothing but fly around with Isabella. At the same time, he was on the lookout for potential grinding spots for his guild. The current map that Jiang Fei had informed Lady Casanova about was tens of kilometers around the Demon Dragon Fortress. Within these few days, it should be the playground reserved specifically for members of the Empyreal Dragon!