Chapter 1781: Tremendous Changes

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Star-Moon Kingdom, Zero Wing City:

When s.h.i.+ Feng entered the Guild Hall’s first-floor hall, he noticed that the main hall was crowded with Guild members either eagerly picking up a quest or exchanging for an item from the Guild Warehouse. With a glance, he noticed that the players present inside the hall were all Level 51 and above. Some Tier 2 players sporting Zero Wing’s core member emblem were forming Guild teams to raid Team Dungeons.

The entire first-floor hall bustled with prosperity. Things here were completely different from before he left for the Ice Crystal World.

After observing the situation in the Guild Hall for a short while, s.h.i.+ Feng hurried to the Candlelight Trading Firm.

As he rode through the streets of Zero Wing City on an advanced horse carriage, he noticed that there were many more players in the city than before, especially merchant players. In addition, he also saw quite a lot of leisure players wearing virtual clothing designed and made by real-world companies. It was obvious that players had started treating Zero Wing City as a place where they could enjoy life.

Aside from merchant players and leisure players, there was also a marked increase in expert players in the city.

Just within his field of vision alone right now, s.h.i.+ Feng already spotted several dozen Level 53 and above expert players and even two extremely rare Tier 2 players. This was a situation that could not be found even in Frozen City.

However, the greatest change to Zero Wing City was the horse carriages on the streets. Convoys of carriages frequently drove past s.h.i.+ Feng. These convoys mostly belonged to NPC merchant caravans, the presence of which also represented the prosperity of a city. And the more there were of such caravans inside a city, the more prosperous a city was.

After Zero Wing City’s prosperity reached a certain degree, so long as the city met certain safety requirements, it could get promoted from a Basic City to an Intermediate City.

In s.h.i.+ Feng’s opinion, Zero Wing City’s promotion was imminent

If a Guild wished to promote its Basic City to an Intermediate City, the city needed sufficient Popularity. The presence of NPC merchants on the streets was a good benchmark for a city’s Popularity—something which the various large Guilds in the past had discovered after collecting sample information from multiple Guild Cities. Normally, when half of the merchant caravans present in the city were made up of Advanced Transport Carriages, a Basic City already possessed sufficient Popularity to become an Intermediate City.

Meanwhile, roughly one-third of the merchant-owned carriages present inside Zero Wing City were Advanced Transport Carriages. The city was not far off from attaining the needed Popularity.

Zero Wing City’s development speed thoroughly exceeded s.h.i.+ Feng’s expectations.

What with the Four Towers of Elements in Zero Wing City, it already fulfilled the security requirements to become an Intermediate City. In other words, so long as Zero Wing City achieved sufficient Popularity, it could immediately be promoted to an Intermediate City.

It would be great if Silverwing Town and the Lost Town could get promoted as quickly. s.h.i.+ Feng could not help but sigh ruefully as he looked at the streets through his carriage’s window.

Being Star-Moon Kingdom’s first Guild City provided Zero Wing City with a ma.s.sive advantage. With the additional benefit of an Advanced Defensive Construction like the Four Towers of Elements, it was basically impossible to stop Zero Wing City from developing rapidly.

On the other hand, Silverwing Town and the Lost Town, which were both located in neutral maps, did not possess such an advantage.

After riding on the horse carriage for about ten minutes, s.h.i.+ Feng arrived before the Candlelight Trading Firm, which was as lively as ever. Quite a number of Lifestyle Players were lined up on one side of the Shop waiting to apply to join Candlelight

“Guild Leader, you’re back!” Melancholic Smile, who was currently busy handling recruitment procedures on the second- floor hall, was pleasantly surprised to see s.h.i.+ Feng.

“Mhm. What’s the situation in Zero Wing City and Candlelight right now?” s.h.i.+ Feng asked when he saw Melancholic Smile approaching him. When he noticed the Master Forger’s Insignia pinned on her chest, he could not help his surprise, asking, “You got promoted to Master already?”

“I became a Master Forger just yesterday. It is all thanks to the rare materials you had Solitary Nine and the others deliver. Those materials allowed me to carry out many experiments. In the end, I managed to create an entirely new piece of equipment,” Melancholic Smile said. However, despite her humble words, Melancholic Smile still felt a little proud of herself. After all, the threshold of Master was a huge one to cross. At this point in time, tons of Lifestyle players were still stuck at the Advanced rank, nowhere close to creating a new item.

“Since you’ve already been promoted to a Master Forger, I’ll hand over these designs to you,” s.h.i.+ Feng said, taking out a few designs from his bag.

He had obtained these designs from the Snow Ruin. One of these designs was for the Level 50 Dark-Gold Weapon Sockham’s Blade, one was for Level 50 Fine-Gold ranked plate armor armguards, and one was for Level 50 Dark-Gold ranked cloth armor robes.

Upon taking a closer look at these designs, Melancholic Smile immediately fell into a daze, her hands gripping the designs for Sockham’s Blade and the Fine-Gold ranked armguards tightly.

“Guild Leader, can I really learn these?” she asked excitedly.

If these were merely Secret-Silver ranked forging designs, she wouldn’t have batted an eye at them. However, it was a different story for Level 50 Fine-Gold and Dark-Gold ranked designs because forging items of such quality required completely different techniques and the proper matching of materials to unleash the full potential of the materials used.

In short, the rank of a forged weapon or equipment was determined by a forger’s capability to utilize the materials involved.

If a forger was capable of forging only Bronze and Mysterious-Iron ranked weapons and equipment, then their ability to unleash the potential of raw materials was only at a rudimentary level. Weapons and equipment at the Dark-Gold rank, on the other hand, could be considered works of art. At this rank, the matching of materials was practically at a perfect level.

Meanwhile, if players wished to create such works of art of their own, they needed to keep learning Level 50-plus Fine-Gold and Dark-Gold ranked forging designs.

However, designs of such rank were extremely rare and difficult to obtain. Thus far, aside from the Fine-Gold rank and above designs from the Holy City of t.i.tan, the Candlelight Trading Firm did not possess any other high-ranking designs.

“Of course. If Candlelight has a tailor who has reached the Master rank, then that robe design will be theirs,” s.h.i.+ Feng said, chuckling. This situation made him realize that, aside from various rare materials, he could also get high-ranking designs for Lifestyle players from the Ice Crystal World. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have Solitary Nine transfer some of the high- ranking designs they acquired at the Ice Crystal World.

“Thank you, Guild Leader! I’ll make sure to produce weapons and equipment that will be to your satisfaction very quickly!” Melancholic Smile was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with joy as she stored the designs.

Afterward, she started reporting on Zero Wing’s current affairs to s.h.i.+ Feng.

Thanks to Zero Wing City and Silverwing Town, Zero Wing’s development was zooming along. The Guild already had over 240,000 elite members and 7,000 expert members. Those numbers could already rival those of first-rate Guilds.

With Zero Wing City’s player population having exceeded 5,000,000 during this period, it was close to catching up to White River City. Just the entrance fees collected daily provided ma.s.sive income to the Guild.

Only, as the Guild’s member count increased, the Guild’s expenditures likewise increased. Moreover, the Zero Wing members developing over at Silverwing Town were constantly ambushed and hara.s.sed by the Evil G.o.d’s Temple and Dark Players. This forced the Guild to construct more defensive structures in Silverwing Town, as well as pay compensation to members that got killed in battle. Right now, the Guild was basically investing every Coin it earned back into itself. As a result, it was just barely running properly right now.

However, it was also thanks to Silverwing Town that Zero Wing was gaining a bountiful harvest from the Primordial Divine Ruin. The Guild was now sending many more players into the ruin.

After hearing Melancholic Smile’s report, s.h.i.+ Feng, who had been cudgeling his brain over the collection of Fire Resistance equipment, relaxed considerably.

Now that the Guild had so many experts, having a portion of them focus specifically on collecting Fire Resistance equipment would not hamper the Guild’s operation. At the very least, it would not affect the main force’s development

As for funding, that was not a problem at all. Afterward, s.h.i.+ Feng emptied the rare materials inside his bag and stacked them up into miniature mountains inside Candlelight’s warehouse.

The sight of the materials s.h.i.+ Feng took out rendered Melancholic Smile speechless. The amount of materials greatly exceeded the total amount that Solitary Nine’s group had brought over in two trips.

With so many rare materials, they could earn a fortune just by selling the materials directly. If they turned these materials into products and sold them, they would earn even more. After all, many of these materials were suitable for producing Level 50 weapons and equipment at the Secret-Silver rank and above. If they made these weapons and equipment and sold them, they would rake in a ridiculous amount of money.

“Right, Guild Leader, I have an item here that the Secret Pavilion sent over. Originally, the Secret Pavilion’s representatives stated that they had to hand it over to you in person. However, since you weren’t around, after they made several visits, they ended up giving up and pa.s.sed it to me for safekeeping, instead,” Melancholic Smile said. She then took out a pitch-black gift box from her bag and handed it to s.h.i.+ Feng.

“An item from the Secret Pavilion?” After receiving the gift box, s.h.i.+ Feng immediately opened it out of curiosity.