The moment the Origin Vanguard landed in Ptolemy's royal city, a player-led army was attacking the fortress of a rebel pharaoh at a border oasis in the southern Thousand-Year Sea of Sand.
Calling it a fortress was generous. It was really just a massive underworld pyramid surrounded by walls and bastions.
The pyramid belonged to the Sious family, the last of the seven rebellious pilgrim families. Of the other six, only the Dumat clan had spared its branches and the people of its oasis from war by wiping out its own direct family line. The remaining five great families and their vassals had been swept aside by the players like a raging sandstorm over the past half month.
Starting from the oasis of the Pilig family, the rebellion-suppression army commanded by Lord Qin had advanced along its planned route.
They had captured thirteen cities of various sizes, destroyed four military fortresses, and accepted the surrender of nine small oases. At last, they had punched through the sea of sand and reached the Sious family stronghold.
The players weren't the only ones pushing forward with the rebellion's suppression. General Kudel had also set out from another direction with a vanguard from Transia and a group of recruited mercenaries. Prince Khufu was leading an ever-growing rebellion-suppression army behind him.
But neither their pace nor the number of rebels they killed came anywhere close to the players' ferocity.
After eighteen days of fighting, some players were already too exhausted to keep throwing themselves into battle. But with the mission still unfinished and less than a week left before its deadline, Lord Qin overruled the objections and ordered the grueling forced march that had players grumbling in protest.
"Brothers! Take this underworld pyramid, and the Sious family's last resistance will be broken! That'll mean