Chapter 496: Raging Storm, New Game Era (Two in One)

After a minute, Feng Luo got on a silver hovercraft.

Lately, Storm City’s transportation capacity, that had always been sufficient, had suddenly become busy due to the sudden increase in humans.

However, as a high-tech megacity, the entire airs.p.a.ce of the city could be used for transport. It was enough to ensure that the city’s transportation system would still be able to function properly even if the number of people increased by a few times.

Seated within the hovercraft, Feng Luo spent the few minutes he had in the vehicle to browse the player forum after setting the destination of the route number one on the hovercraft’s AI system.

The hot topics in the Storm City forum that contained 15 million players were something that could not be used to compare against Silvermoon City’s forum.

Data, images, and all sorts of videos streamed through the forum almost every second. Many posts and threads rose up to the top quickly before sinking into the bottom just as quickly.

However, placed at the top of the recommended posts on the home page were the two most popular threads. Both were the only constant that remained stable throughout.

No. 2 – Current popularity: 277 million.

“Silvermoon City players’ failed counterattack. The military base at the edge of the battlefield is soon to fall into the hands of the rebel army camp. A shocking inside look at the power of capital manipulating the game progress?”

The length of the second most popular thread’s t.i.tle was enough to catch people’s attention.

The content of the thread was about the start of the dual-storyline development of the Biohazard Crisis and the war in Silvermoon City.

“Yesterday at 12 noon, guilds of the Federation allied and organized a large-scale counterattack that involved over 300,000 remaining players of Silvermoon City. The counterattack started smoothly at the beginning. With their numerical advantage, they were steadily pus.h.i.+ng the rebel army back to their main camp. However, there was a surprising development. As they had obtained an absolute advantage, the situation reversed suddenly and many of the Federation camp players suddenly held a coup and attacked their allies… After a day of battle, the remaining players belonging to the Federation camp is less than 10,000. According to the author’s investigation, the reason this happened was due to a surprising insider development…”

In the following segments of the post content, the player proceeds to describe the happenings over the past few days since the Biohazard Crisis began and the subsequent chain of events that followed in Silvermoon City in detail.

These included the start of the Biohazard Crisis, Roaring Dragon Mercenary Group’s methods throughout the entire incident, Veterans Tribe’s guild alliance response and reactions, etc. Images and text complemented each other. Among them, there were also battle scenes that were recorded using player terminals.

The post even mentioned a “mysterious expert sniper” who completely messed up an important plan of the Roaring Dragon Mercenary Group that caused them to fall into a disadvantageous situation.

This forced the group to employ their last resort that completely reversed the situation in Silvermoon City.

The Rui Conglomerate that had just announced that they had acquired shares of Roaring Dragon Mercenary Group, in just two hours following the incident, continuously announced over a hundred acquisitions and investment contracts, as well as a strategic cash injection of billions into Roaring Dragon Mercenary Group.

“Based on calculations, in two short hours, the Rui Conglomerate spent over 50 billion star coins, and then…”

As a result, the Federation camp players, who had an absolute advantage, crumbled internally almost instantly.

Among them, almost 30% of the players changed their allegiance and joined the rebel army camp, simply because the offer from the Rui Conglomerate was just too good to refuse.

The power of star coins was more p.r.o.nounced than at any other time.

“More stunning was Rui Conglomerate’s move to spend so much capital on a war in the game.”

“This is not 50 billion credits, it is star coins!”

“This is equivalent to all the capital and a.s.sets of a medium-sized enterprise, and the Rui Conglomerate actually used it all to ensure victory in a virtual war inside a game.”

“Just who is the Rui Conglomerate? How are they so rich, and why are they so generous?”

As the post reached this segment, the post also provided info about the Rui Conglomerate to educate the reader.

The Rui Conglomerate was one of the three mega family-conglomerates with their headquarters located on the 17th Administrative Planet. The total a.s.set of the organization made public was five trillion.

Even though it was the Star Galaxy Era, financial groups with a.s.sets worth trillions were also considered “top dogs.” As for the human resources and talent pool of such a large-scale family-centric financial conglomerate, one could say that they had a larger pool than most smaller countries.

Considering the skills of the elites in the Rui Conglomerate’s best investment department in the Federation, the billions of capital investment were definitely not just the group messing about. The huge capital investment meant that the powerful Rui Conglomerate was preparing to enter War. They were starting to set the stage and they fancied Roaring Dragon Mercenary Group’s advantage of being the first organization to join the rebel army camp.

“Although many insightful financial groups and guilds entered the game since War started, most organizations were quite cautious in terms of their investments. Before War appeared, hundreds of millions of investments would have been considered a huge amount in virtual reality games. However, this time, the Rui Conglomerate had spent 50 billion in just one war. Although the money was mostly used to acquire organizations and on partnering contracts, even including the 10 billion investment on Roaring Dragon Mercenary Group, rather than direct investments in War itself, they will definitely continue to invest more in the future… From this large-scale war, we can clearly see the impact of the capital of large-scale financial groups within the game. In the future, the price of gears, materials and human resources are likely to change due to this… Since the Rui Conglomerate has started a trend of spending large amounts in the game. Many large-scale financial groups will likely not back down and follow suit. War will definitely enter an era of raging storms. The value of Legendary Grade items, Expert Level life professions, and top-cla.s.s players will also likely become a lot more expensive… However, what I am worried about most is whether incidents like those in Silvermoon City ever happen again the future. As more large financial groups enter the game, normal players are faced with the very real problem of being crushed by huge capital. Would the small amount of wealth and material basis that players gained after many years of hards.h.i.+ps and hard work be easily destroyed by the huge amount of credits? How will the rights and benefits of ordinary players be protected? Moreover, the author has been constantly wondering about one question. The exchange rate between the official game currency of War, the credits, and star coins have always been fixed. They are not constantly adjusted depending on the situation like other games. This is, without a doubt, going against the common sense of currency knowledge. This has also caused the author to become slightly suspicious of whether the government-operated game company known as Star Gaming is capable of operating the game…” The latter part of the post changed the topic quickly. The author of the post started talking about finance and sociology…

Naturally, many of his views and opinions garnered positive reactions from many of the players.

After all, although it was quite fun to watch the “show” unfold in Silvermoon City, no one would ever hope something like that to befall themselves.

In particular, hundreds of thousands of players of Silvermoon City who were still in the Federation camp had not only lost a level, and dropped their items, but more importantly, they had lost the capital and a.s.sets that they had been working hard for in Silvermoon City over the past year.

Houses, shop lots, and unfinished missions… There were also connections with NPCs…

Many high-level NPCs were among those who were infected with the T-virus and turned into zombies. The approval ratings that many players worked incredibly hard for after multiple missions had suddenly turned into nothing in an instant.

While many players agreed with the views of the poster, many also argued against it.

Under the post in the voice message reply zone, some players were laughing at many of the players being poor.

In particular, many of the players who were younger and liked to boast were showing off their full sets of Rare Grade gears despite being teenagers. Additionally, they also said that they were already prepared to buy Legendary Grade items, Boss Grade pets, and opined that games were only fun when they had money to burn…

Of course, Feng Luo simply skimmed through these.

With Feng Luo’s reading speed, it only took him around one minute to read through the entire thread. He noticed that the post also mentioned the founder of Roaring Dragon Mercenary Group at the end. “Silvermoon City’s Number One Expert,” Roaring Dragon Invincible, had led a group of veteran players elsewhere as they had decided not to join the rebel army camp, and their current whereabouts are currently unknown.

However, the slight mention did not cause any uproar or a lot of attention.

After all, to the players of Storm City, Roaring Dragon Invincible, who was the number one expert of a small city that housed only a few hundred thousand players, was not someone worthy of their attention.

This was the psychological advantage of players of main cities as compared to players from peripheral or small cities. It was similar to the psychological advantage that whales had over normal players. This was the case even when most of the players were far weaker than Roaring Dragon Invincible.

However, compared to the second most popular thread, most players focused their attention on the number one popular thread on top.

No. One – Current Popularity: 500 million.

“The Rise of G.o.d! Storm City player Invikill has become the first person to awaken the Force in War; completely dominates Thousand Miles, aka Ghost Eye, who is among the top ten masters and has the same profession, in a PK match. As countless superstar players have boasted that they will work hard to become the first person to awaken the Force in the game, it looks like the person who achieved the feat was an unexpected person. Just now, an unknown Sniper player was revealed to have awakened the Force. The person who exposed this news also attached a battle video of the person defeating one of the top ten masters (Current Overall Superstar Player Ranking: 818) of Storm City, Thousand Miles easily.”

The thread was not posted only on the Storm City forum. It maintained its top spot as the most popular thread due to the number of clicks from all the forums of War. As such, in a short amount of time, the thread easily acc.u.mulated over 500 million views.

The thread was so popular and reached the headlines of all the servers of the game directly because of the t.i.tle of the thread including the phrase “First person to awaken the Force.”

As for the content of the thread, there was a PK video attached of a battle between two Snipers.

One of the Snipers was the player who had been maintaining his place among the Storm City top ten masters ranking – Thousand Miles.

As for the result of the battle, it was as the t.i.tle said, Thousand Miles had lost.

However, it was a battle between the two that intrigued, piqued the interest, and caused confusion among countless players.

The unknown Sniper player succeeded in sneaking behind Thousand Miles, the person who had the S-Cla.s.s talent “Ghost Eye,” and used a military knife to kill the renowned “Top Ten Masters of Storm City.” And it was done right under his nose.

It was a one-sided battle. However, it still kept the eyes of many players glued to their screen. Some even continued to replay a scene in the middle of the recording, as they noticed something incredibly odd.

It was when the two began the battle, as the Sniper player sneaked toward the last 100 meters towards Thousand Miles, he suddenly vanished into thin air. It was as if he had turned invisible along with all his gears.

This was also the reason why Thousand Miles failed to detect him in time. By the time the unknown Sniper player appeared, he was right behind Thousand Miles. As a Sniper, even though Thousand Miles was alert at the last moment, his heart was still punctured by the opponent before he could even unsheathe his military knife.

One hit and the number that appeared above Thousand Miles’ head was a Fatal Damage of over 7,000 damage.

Even with a full set of Level 50 top-cla.s.s Rare Grade items, Thousand Miles HP bar was instantly emptied. It could definitely be considered a complete and utter defeat.

“How is that possible? G.o.d Thousand Miles lost?” There were many Thousand Miles fans within Storm City. They could not believe that their idol was so utterly defeated in a duel between Snipers.

However, those who weren’t Thousand Miles’ fans were able to objectively look at the problem in front of them.

They discovered that apart from the odd “disappearing” ability of the Sniper player, the eye-catching stiletto he held in his hand was highly likely to be a perfectly evaluated Legendary Grade weapon. Theoretically, it should be the only Legendary Grade military knife type weapon in War at the moment.

Moreover, it definitely had an amazing skill attached to it.

It was highly likely that’s why Thousand Miles, a player equipped with a full set of Level 50 Rare Grade gears, could be killed in one hit.

After the profound research and investigations of some people in the comment section, these players found that the Sniper player was not that unknown after all.

In fact, he was quite famous in his own guild, the September Guild.

The fame came from his diligence in training.

According to the players who provided the news, the Sniper player was not all that amazing at the beginning.

Initially, he was only at the level of an ordinary player. However, his hard work helped him get selected into the elite team of the September Guild. After that, he received a lot of help from the resources available at the September Guild as well as the guidance of several Sniper experts in the guild.

As for the player himself, he trained over a dozen hours every day. His diligence, hard work, and the guild’s resources gradually developed him, causing his strength to rise bit by bit every day.

The Sniper player who had an average talent became the captain of the Sniper squad of the September Guild. The battle today was a PK match that he specifically arranged with Thousand Miles after he became the captain of the Sniper squad.

However, prior to the battle, no one would have known that he had actually already awakened the Force.

It was only after he used the Force and used the skill attached to the Legendary Grade stiletto that the guild provided him that everyone knew he had the Force.

“That’s why I want to thank our guild. I thank the guild for helping a dumb player like me grow without caring much about the resources I had consumed. Also, I’d like to also thank Old Z, my captain who kept encouraging me, Brother White… I also want to thank…” On the video attached to the forum post, the Sniper player was seen giving his thank-you speech with a very sincere expression.

The first person to awaken the Force; odd but powerful “invisible” ability’ Legendary Grade weapon; successfully becoming a top-cla.s.s expert player after working hard for a long time; defeating the superstar player with the same profession who was famous for his eyesight…

Combining all the above information together, the player with the ID Invikill had become the third most searched term by the players of the game in a short period of time.

It was a phenomenon much like when War’s number one Gunner, Death Roar, became the first player to reach Level 50.

Due to the replies and likes of the thread coming from the “expose,” September Guild’s popularity also soared. According to the data of guilds on the forum, one could see that the September Guild, which was initially ranked outside the top 100, was now closing in on the 100th rank.

They were on the verge of transforming from being a first-cla.s.s guild into a top-cla.s.s guild.

Their popularity was rising so fast was due to the last part of the video. The hard-working type player touted as the “First player to awaken the Force,” exposed the fact that the September Guild had just received a huge investment of 15 billion star coins, and they were recruiting battle elites above Level 50 or high-level life profession players with great benefits attached.”

“Everyone, as long as you fit the requirements, please apply to join us. Once you’ve joined us, the guild will provide you with the best resources… This may even include Legendary Grade items. I believe that under our guild’s structure, resources will continue to pour in and players who surpa.s.ses me in the Force will appear…”

The video ended with a gentle smile on the player’s face.