Furthermore, after the hundredth day, no new regional starter villages would be created.
All of them would be starter villages formed through mergers.
Whether a country was powerful or not was closely tied to its number of players and the number of players protecting its starter villages.
If a city did not have enough people, it would be destroyed.
This time, Thorn City’s player levels and population were actually not far behind what was needed for the city defense battle.
That was right—not far behind at all.
The Thorn Guild alone had eighteen thousand level-30 players, to say nothing of the entire Thorn City.
Before it was upgraded, Thorn Town had been a town-level starter village capable of accommodating one hundred thousand newcomers.
Since everyone leveled so quickly, anyone above level 10 no longer counted as a beginner.
New players could apply to enter.
The player population was increasing by nearly ten thousand beginners every day.
By now, Thorn City had a population of two hundred and fifty thousand.
Earlier, when they had sent reinforcements to Guguan Town, Chu Fu had led a full one hundred and twenty thousand players from Thorn Town there.
The level-one players had all become level-25 players.
So Thorn City had at least one hundred and twenty thousand players above level 25.
That was no different from a city that had developed for a hundred days.
Not to mention that they had around five hundred S-rank players and at least fifty thousand sets of Dark Gold equipment.
The Undead Legion was coming to attack the city.
Were they sure they weren’t just here to deliver free loot?
Actually, Chu Fu had originally planned to close the gates and defend the city on her own, but the system had opened a reinforcement mission, leaving her no choice but to accept it.
Now that things had turned out this way, she did not even need to come up with an excuse.
She could simply say that the teleportation array had been destroyed by the Sacred Wolf Club.
Let them take the blame!
As for the benefits, the players of Thorn City would keep them for themselves.
“Stop crowding around here. Go do your missions!”
Chu Fu gave the order.
She then casually issued a batch of missions.
[Mission: Passing Down Experience—Each level-30 player must bring five players below level 10 in their party. Experience gained increases by 5%.]
[Mission: Sweep Out the Traitors—Find the traitors who have infiltrated the city. Find one and receive a piece of Dark Gold equipment.]
[Mission: Evacuate the NPCs—Persuade NPCs to travel to the Thorn Guild headquarters and temporarily evacuate to a safe area.]
[Mission: Protect the NPCs—If an NPC cannot be evacuated, remain by their side and protect them until the ninth wave of monsters. Reward: one piece of Dark Gold equipment.]
As soon as the missions were issued, every player in the city sprang into action.
“Looking for beginners! Anyone below level 10, join our party and get a free Silver-tier weapon!”
“Silver-tier? What trash! Join us and we’ll give you Gold-tier equipment!”
“Where are all the beginner babies? Come join our party! We’ve got handsome hunks with eight-pack abs!”
“Waaah, so this is the legendary player utopia, Thorn Town? I arrived at just the right time! Beginner looking for a party!”
In an instant, countless beginner players were fought over.
Thorn Town was simply too wealthy.
With so many players, clearing dungeons was easy. The Silver-tier equipment that players received after graduating from other starter villages was considered trash in Thorn Town. Besides, starter villages and towns did not have auction houses, so they could not get rid of all their equipment. Once there was too much of it, it naturally became worthless.
Giving it to beginners was just a way to clear out the junk.
Gold-tier equipment was no longer priced in gold coins. It sold for only a few hundred silver coins.
There was also the daily event, “Goblin City Counter-Invasion,” which dropped large quantities of level-11-to-20 Gold-tier equipment.
This was heaven for beginner players.
As everyone went off to keep busy, Chu Fu’s group also arrived at the scene.
They looked at the more than one hundred werewolves lying on the ground.
The group was still shouting.
“Enough already. Send a priest over to revive us.
“You dragged everyone away because you wanted to do this, didn’t you? You were afraid of losing face.
“Since you’ve shown some sense, we’ll only ask for one million gold coins!”
Xie Lin rolled his eyes. “What kind of daydream are you having? Haven’t you woken up yet?”
“Hmph! You’ll regret offending the Sacred Wolf Club. Even now, none of you from the Thorn Guild dare to go to the future maps. Isn’t that because the future maps are connected by teleportation arrays?
“Now that the cities don’t have interconnected teleportation arrays, your cowardly, peace-loving Chinese players are being protected.
“If you don’t pay up today, then after we return, we’ll massacre the Linjiang City shelter. Every player there will be buried with us because of your stubbornness.”
Jiaojiao Bu Jiao brought her hammer down on the head of one of the corpses. That particular head had the most words floating above it.
“You’re already dead, and you still dare threaten us? Your mouth is the only thing that’s tough about you.”
Even more words continued to float above the werewolf’s head.
“By the Beast God, are our mouths really tough, or do you simply have no idea how terrifying the Beast God is?
“We’re lying here because, once your city defense battle begins, the Beast God’s emissary will teleport us away and revive us!
“By then, we’ll be even stronger, and Thorn City will be completely destroyed.
“Don’t you Chinese have a saying about spending money to avert disaster? Do you really want disaster to descend upon you?”
Chu Fu laughed.
As the Seed of Calamity, was there any reason for her to fear disaster?
She found these werewolves’ naivety somewhat amusing.
She had ordered everyone nearby to disperse, not because she was afraid of the Sacred Wolf Club or wanted to negotiate with them. It was because the level of their Impostor Masks seemed rather high, and the monsters that emerged when the masks were removed appeared to be quite powerful.
She did not want any other players to be accidentally injured.
“Is my intelligence outdated, or is yours? Don’t you know that I have a way to turn you into useless trash?”
These people had seen the Thorn Guild’s announcement, but they did not know what Chu Fu was capable of.
They assumed that, just like with the game system, they would have to agree before they could be converted to the normal faction.
If they refused, they would remain part of the werewolf faction.
Moreover, even if they were forcibly converted, so what? After they died, they could still run wild in the starter villages.
And the attributes they had accumulated beforehand would not disappear. Only their levels would drop.
Within the werewolf faction, levels were fundamentally unimportant.
The werewolves looked at Chu Fu and began hurling verbal abuse at her.
“So you’re the Plantman! You look like an underage girl. You’re pretty, though. If you knelt down and ****—”
The instant the player’s words appeared, Shen Chi’s body transformed into metal.
He became a twenty-five-meter-tall mecha and crushed the player beneath his foot.
His enormous leg blocked the view, completely covering the rest of the player’s words.
Then he abruptly yanked the player’s head off.
The scene was horrifically bloody.
In his hand, the head looked like a glass marble.
He squeezed the marble, and a series of cracking sounds came from it.
Because of the system’s rules, the player’s head could not be destroyed. However, the Impostor Mask was crushed.
A vast force of evil god power rapidly condensed into a monster.
“Move faster! The town defense battle starts in less than fifty minutes!”
Chu Fu raised her staff and cast Calamity of Soul Annihilation.
In an instant, darkness enveloped all the werewolves. Their souls rose from their dead bodies, and masks were forcibly torn from their faces.
The attributes they had accumulated began to plummet, rapidly vanishing.
Everything became nourishment for the mask monsters, causing them to swell into enormous, hideous creatures.
Perhaps one day, these monsters will be claimed by the Evil God, and the players on the werewolf faction will be nothing more than well-raised ingredients!
