Does anyone know where the launch-day players came from? (2,312 replies)
Shi Lezhi: No need to mention the obvious ones like Qian Peng and Brother Dao.
Sorted by popularity:
Heheyo: Anyway, "I Don't Want to Pay the Breach Penalty" is definitely Baron, the strongest active(?) mechanic. He's the most talented team glue guy I've ever seen. Fuck, STAR Team specially built a Galactic Battleship around him this year and had their sights set on the world championship, but then this guy's account vanished.
She Said She Was Bathing: Rumor, so don't take it as fact, but Baron seems to be hiding out in some internet café, trying to disappear off the face of the earth. The club people have gone crazy looking for him.
Being 3 Is Better Than Being 0 or 1: "Sakurajima Mai" is the king of randoms in the arena. Her strength only ranks in the top ten among Assassin Players, but when it comes to being a total scumbag, she's unquestionably number one.
Magical Girl Lu Zhishen: I bought equipment from "Li Yuan" before. She was a professional merchant with decent credibility. Never expected her to actually be a girl.
Glory Guildmaster: "Level 8 Great Gale" commanded our guild in a raid before. He's a professional commander, and he's insanely good. I still have his contact info.
Ice Cream Lover: Over the past ten years of Expedition, there have been 137 World Bosses, and 13 were solo-killed. Leg Lord alone killed seven of them. Just not sure whether "Lost a Leg" is really Leg Lord.
Sated: "Golden Wind" is probably someone from the Chinese server's number one guild, Golden Wind. Those bastards are fucking disgusting. Not only do they monopolize tons of in-game resources, they've also hoarded quite a few hidden quests.
Sour Cola: "I Am a Cheat" and "Green Player" are playing together, right? No one knows where these two came from. Getting selected at the same time... they didn't really use cheats, did they?
Watching the post he had made spark heated discussion on the forum, Li Li put away the mirror, rubbed his aching brow, and considered his next course of action.
Three players currently lay in his warehouse: "Amulet Owl," "I Am a Cheat," and "Green Player."
After grinding their way to Level 10, the three of them had completed their class changes through him and advanced into Brass Rank Transcendents. They had all logged off to rest.
This world had a universally recognized system for distinguishing the strength of Transcendents.
It was the rank system:
Brass Rank: lv10-lv30 Silver Rank: lv30-lv60 Gold Rank: lv60-lv90 Legendary: lv90-lv120 Heroic: lv120-lv150 Demigod: lv150-lv???
It was a little like the realms in cultivation novels. Within the same rank, individual strength gaps still mattered, but a difference of one major realm was a dimensionality-reducing level of suppression.
However, with the advancement of technology, the gap in strength before Gold Rank had gradually become less distinct.
Among Silver Rank Transcendents, at least a considerable number could not take a bullet head-on, let alone shells and explosives with even greater destructive power.
So, until the players he summoned reached Silver Rank, they were basically useless.
From discussions on the forum, he had learned that the monsters in Broken Sword Valley were all Silver Rank. Aer had confirmed it as well.
Therefore, if these players wanted to level up, they had to "kill enemies above their rank."
Li Li did the math.
For a player to rise from Level 1 to Level 10, they needed a total of 16,456 Experience Points.
That was 1.6 units of faith.
Meanwhile, creating a body required at least 10 units of faith. If one of those players died even once, reviving them would cost him 100,000 Experience Points.
Of course, if they could bring the corpse back, the cost would be reduced to between ten and fifty percent depending on how intact it was.
After all, those bodies had no souls. What Li Li performed was not the miracle of resurrecting the dead, but merely restoring a lifeless body to the state of a Living Dead.
Summoning ten players had cost him 100 points of faith. Extracting an ember for Amulet Owl had used up the 1,378 points of faith he had kept in reserve.
Extracting a single ember cost roughly 3,000 points of faith, or 30 million Experience Points.
The missing 1,622 points of faith had naturally been drawn from Li Li's origin.
This was not a savings account where he could simply borrow and repay the same amount. It was more like drinking his own blood to quench his thirst. Restoring his origin to its previous state would require several times as much faith.
Yet after all these days, only four players had reached Level 10 and picked up a few skills, earning Li Li a mere 21.45 points of faith.
In short, Li Li had spent a fortune investing in these players.
And before his investment targets reached Level 30, they had almost no ability to pay him back. At any moment, he could lose everything.
The only consolation was that all ten players could be called "talents." Not one had died so far, and they were actually thriving despite this brutally difficult start.
Take I Am a Cheat and Green Player, one human and one elf. They had gone to the slaughterhouse and worked under the table for a few days, earning enough Experience Points to reach Level 10.
It was just that the poultry they killed seemed to have developed some issues with their flavor.
Though the slaughterhouse had not yet suspected them, it had temporarily shut down after receiving a huge number of returns.
"So the problem now is that if I want to recoup my investment, I need to create a stable path that lets players reach Lv30. The players I summon later can't all be high-level experts like them."
Li Li closed his eyes and recalled the monster distribution map for Despair Expedition OL that he had obtained from the forum.
If the two worlds were the same, then this world still had quite a few low-level zones. Players who joined Despair Expedition OL later could choose to spawn there, but those places were some distance from the Thirteen City Alliance.
As the summoner, Li Li could not leave the God Banning Barrier due to the corruption, making the alliance the players' only Novice Village.
Perhaps once the world's corruption weakened, he would be able to leave the God Banning Barrier.
But if he was no longer affected by corruption, then what the hell would he need players for?
Okay, dead end.
Then his precious saint would just have to suffer for now.
Li Li's current plan was the same as his original one.
He would have Aer lead the players to the designated stronghold outside the city to kill monsters.
Originally, he had planned to raise the players to Level 10, then stop babysitting them once they became Brass Rank Transcendents.
But given the situation outside the city, he would probably have to train them to Level 30. Not to mention that a few of them looked down on the advancement offered by the Divine Legion and planned to seek their own opportunities to advance.
Going from Level 1 to Level 30 required 1,054,568 Experience Points. Including the fifty percent tax he would collect, that meant 210 points of faith per person.
Hopefully, these guys won't disappoint me in the future...
Li Li once again mobilized the power of the Divine Legion, spending 10 points of faith to create a panda subspecies Beast-Ear Race hero unit.
After thinking for a moment, he gave this Beast-Ear Race member the ID "Lost His Mind."
Alright, this guy is the lucky player who earned testing access through the forum discussion event.
Li Li took out the mirror again and projected part of his soul projection into his own world, sealing it within the Beast-Ear Race body.
He tried controlling it. Lost His Mind stood up and began hopping around curiously, finding the sensation extremely novel.
Alt completed!
He withdrew from Lost His Mind's perspective and returned to his main body. Holding the mirror for Exit Game, he planned to fleece the Blue Star forum for a leveling guide suitable for "himself."
Just as he was about to reach out and make a post, he spotted a new thread by Amulet Owl in the "Speak Freely" section.
It had been posted less than half an hour ago, yet it had already drawn a huge amount of discussion and replies.
What do you think? Based on the intelligence gathered so far, how exactly was the Thirteen City Alliance destroyed? (212 replies)
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