The Almighty Ring

By the time Jiang Fei arrived at the borders of the Suppression Region, the soldiers of the High Human’s Heavenly Court had already started engaging in battle with monsters from the Celestial Realm. However, despite the heated battle, there seemed to be very few casualties. Clearly, this was part of the game’s basic setting when a new map is unlocked. It was unlikely for players to be killed before they even figured out how things worked.

As more players entered the Celestial Realm, the soldiers began retreating so that players could take over the defense at the borders. After players had formed their groups, they began engaging the Celestial Realm monsters in battle.

Unlike before when Jiang Fei first entered the Celestial Realm, the map was now officially unlocked. The items dropped by the Overlord monsters were now of a much higher quality. Now, players were able to acquire Experience points and items in a much more relaxed manner.

“Seven Stars Warrior, you and the rest can form a group to fight against these monsters!” Jiang Fei said after glancing around.

Right then, although the borders were surrounded by Celestial Realm monsters, the monsters attacked at a very slow pace. They did not seem to be organized in any way. Unlike the formations of the Cultist army, these monsters behaved in an individualistic manner. Therefore, groups of players could easily pick off the ones which strayed away.

As such, although the monsters were at the Overlord tier, players were still able to kill them to acquire Experience points and items. Moreover, players could choose to continue attacking or exit from the battle at any time without the concern of being chased after by the monsters.

“Alright!” Seven Stars Warrior and Lady Casanova were both eager to begin the attack. Almost instantly, they started forming groups with players from Empyreal Dragon to begin hunting down monsters. In particular, the players who had obtained the Heart of Nature became the core members of these groups. Consequently, groups of players from Empyreal Dragon were much more efficient than other guilds at hunting down the Overlord monsters.

Thereafter, in order to speed up the leveling rate of players, Jiang Fei issued several open-ended quests so that players could obtain additional Experience points and equipment as rewards for killing Celestial Realm monsters.

Over the next five days, players in the Celestial Realm were able to progress without any obstruction. It was almost as if the Ancient Gods had solemnly accepted the fact that humans had invaded their land.

After five days had passed, Jiang Fei’s body had recovered somewhat. However, he was still unable to get out of bed and walk on his own. Meanwhile, Bella’s treatment had gone smoothly and she was able to enter the second phase of her body’s recovery.

By now, the Core of Life had already been fused with Bella’s body. However, as her body was previously severely damaged by the Power of Berserk, it would take some time for her to fully recover.

Meanwhile, Ariel had not left Jiang Fei out of her sight as she took on the duty as his caretaker. Even when Si Tuying and Shang Guanqi requested to take turns in looking after Jiang Fei, Ariel refused.

On one hand, Ariel had chosen to stay next to Jiang Fei so that she could take care of him since he could not move around on his own. However, more importantly, she was there to keep an eye on 0542 which had been behaving suspiciously.

Under Ariel’s strict surveillance, 0542 was much less prone to bad behavior. As an Intelligent Assistance System, it could not intentionally want to harm the captain. Otherwise, its programming would be instantly demolished as the strictest form of punishment. Therefore, even if something was off about 0542, it could only go as far as to send messages externally or to provide misleading information to Jiang Fei on the basis of not being dishonest. In other words, 0542 was more like a spy and could not directly harm Jiang Fei.

In the game, the players had managed to expand their territory by at least three times after five days of hard work. The players had also discovered a valuable piece of information.

They discovered that the Celestial Realm monsters would drop a kind of crystal which was not of any value to players. However, as a quest item, it could be sacrificed at the sacrificial altar which would then expand the Suppression Region.

Consequently, Jiang Fei immediately issued a quest for players to collect the crystal. In fact, he even set the highest amount of rewards for quest completion. As such, the players were highly motivated to take on the quest.

Over the next five days, the Suppression Region had expanded nearly twice in size. However, as an increasingly large number of players entered the Celestial Realm, the monsters within the Suppression Region were no longer able to satisfy the players’ hunting needs. Many of the groups from the bigger guilds even charged out of the Suppression Region to hunt after monsters.

However, Jiang Fei felt very confused by the behavior of the Ancient Gods. Although the players had already entered the Celestial Realm for five days, they had yet to bump into any of the Ancient Gods.

Although bumping into an Ancient God would mean instant death for most of the normal players without the protection of the Suppression Region, it was highly abnormal for them not to even see a single one after being in the Celestial Realm for such a long time.

“What’s going on? Have we come too late?” Jiang Fei thought to himself as he frowned.

From the message left behind by 0541, as well as other sources of information, the Celestial tier NPCs in Dawnlight were the Unknowns’ backup soldiers. They would need to extract these man-made souls to control their Supreme Androids.

Therefore, 0541 had left a message behind so that Jiang Fei could kill as many of these NPCs as possible. This would allow Jiang Fei to cut off the Unknowns’ supply of soldiers. However, Jiang Fei could not even find a single Ancient God in the Celestial Realm. Could it be that these Ancient Gods have already been extracted by the Unknowns?

“This is very weird. We have already been in the Celestial Realm for five days. The Ancient Gods must have detected our presence. Why haven’t they shown up yet?” Jiang Fei felt very disturbed as he continued to observe the players who were still engaged in battles against the monsters.

To Jiang Fei, Dawnlight as a game was no longer of any value. As for other players who did not know about the truth, this was merely a game for them to gain pleasure from. However, for Jiang Fei, this was a second battlefield. After losing Bella’s absolute advantage against her opponents, Jiang Fei needed to weaken his enemies as much as possible so that he would not be defeated by them instead.

Boom!

Just as Jiang Fei was deep in thought, a loud explosion could suddenly be heard from afar.

“Ehh?!” Jiang Fei immediately jerked his head up. All of a sudden, he could see that over 20,000 members of Empyreal Dragon were killed by a cloud of flames.

“Celestial tier!” Jiang Fei was overjoyed.

Although members of his own guild had just been killed, Jiang Fei was glad that an Ancient God finally appeared. It at least proved that his hypothesis was wrong. Since the Ancient Gods had not been completely extracted from the game, there was still an opportunity for Jiang Fei to weaken the forces of the Unknowns.

“Retreat! Retreat!”

“An Ancient God is here! Everyone, back into the Suppression Region!”

Shuffle.

Beams of light flashed as Return Scrolls were activated. Similarly, other players who were hunting outside the Suppression Region also started teleporting back to safety. Although they were very far away from where the Ancient God appeared, the Celestial tier being was capable of instant teleportation. Nobody in the right frame of mind would want to be killed instantly.