The system announcement echoed across the entire world.
[System Announcement: The Undead Reaper has dispatched an army of undead, launching an all-out war to annihilate humanity’s cities!]
[System Announcement: The current number of servers that have fully initiated the City Defense War is 8,838.]
[System Announcement: As of today, all beginner villages have been opened. From now on, players who die or newly register may only create characters and log in through existing servers, joining the battle against the monster invasion.]
[System Announcement: Since the City Defense War is taking place worldwide at the same time, a global ranking has been added. The top ten players on the ranking will receive Divine Power Fragments belonging to themselves.]
Divine Power Fragments for the global top ten?
Although no one knew what they were for, they clearly seemed extraordinary.
Only those who had killed Werewolf Tuge and ranked highly in contribution knew just how precious these things were.
They were the foundation for becoming a pseudo-god.
They were far too important.
What were they waiting for?
“The situation differs from our original plan. We’ll adjust it immediately!” Feng Huimin said at once.
They had anticipated that the City Defense War would take place on the same day.
What they had not anticipated was that the Primordial Gate could also reward Divine Power Fragments.
Still, the changes to their plan were not substantial.
Feng Huimin quickly selected nine people from among them whom she believed had the potential to become gods.
As for why there were nine, it was naturally because Chu Feng would also be competing. He wanted to farm contribution points, and the members of the Thorn Guild might not be able to outcompete him.
Feng Huimin quickly settled on the remaining nine.
Chu Fu, Shen Chi, and Xie Lin.
Jiaojiao Bu Jiao, Suture Saint, and Shafu Liangu.
Bitter Melon King, Dream King, and Holy Healing Angel.
They could farm monsters in groups, possessed the highest attributes, and had the strongest combat power.
Although Holy Healing Angel was a priest, with the rise of second talents and second classes, she had become a Light Forbidden Curse Mage and had tremendous potential.
Several of them had originally been assigned to lead teams in supporting weaker cities.
Now, they were simply freed from those duties and allowed to farm monsters independently, competing for the top ten positions.
“All other plans remain unchanged. Players who still want additional attribute points should wait for the Guild Leader to issue an announcement within one minute. The Thorn Passage will be opened for three minutes. After clearing the dungeon, exit on your own and repeat the process.”
“Yes!”
Everyone shouted in perfect unison.
Immediately afterward, the five teleportation arrays within Thorn City erupted with countless beams of white light.
Chu Fu also began to act.
She had been assigned several smaller cities as well.
Her first destination was Icefield City.
Located near the pole, the city had only ten thousand players. There was no way they could defend Icefield City on their own.
At that moment, the players in Icefield City stood atop the city wall, their faces as pale as the surrounding snow.
“There are only so many of us. Can we really hold the city?”
“We already submitted a request for assistance. Why haven’t the people from the Thorn Group arrived yet?”
Just as they were thinking this, the teleportation array erupted with white light.
“They’re here! They’re here!”
“Huh? Why is there only one person?”
“My God! It’s Plant Human! One person should be enough, right?”
There was only one thought in everyone’s mind.
Chu Fu stood where she was without even taking a step.
Because of its small population, Icefield City was only slightly larger than an ordinary village.
Chu Fu raised her staff. Immediately, a dense black poison spewed from it and surged into the sky, forming a colossal mass resembling a dark cloud.
Then the energy continued to churn and spread, until the entire small city seemed to have been covered by a gigantic black bowl.
This did not look like a city defense battle.
It looked more like the destruction of a city.
Most importantly, Chu Fu vanished from the teleportation array in an instant.
She had left.
Yet the black protective barrier she had created did not disappear.
“What… what is this? Why did she leave just like that? Doesn’t she think that a single barrier will be enough to defend the city?”
The players in the small city were extremely uneasy. Even though Chu Fu was famous, they did not completely trust her.
But when the monsters truly arrived an hour later, every monster that approached the black mist died instantly.
Whether they flew through the sky or crawled across the ground, every direction was protected without a single blind spot. Not one monster was allowed to enter.
And Chu Fu was still creating more barriers like this.
In one breath, she created ten.
Her contribution points soared wildly.
Shen Chi followed closely behind.
After all, he currently had an army of two hundred thousand mechs.
Shen Chi had been assigned one thousand cities to defend. He sent two hundred mechs to each city and left them to defend on their own.
The other players competing for the top ten had also been assigned different areas by Feng Huimin.
As for how many contribution points they could farm in the end, that would depend entirely on their own abilities.
Chu Fu constantly traveled through the arrays, unleashing her skills and enveloping all the monsters assigned to her outside the protective barriers formed by Soul-Annihilating Calamity.
Her overwhelming power resulted in instant kills and total domination without question.
Not a single player inside the cities suffered even the slightest injury.
Although two hundred mechs were numerous, players still competed with Shen Chi for monsters.
The mechs’ intelligence was still somewhat lacking. Their movements were rigid and methodical, so their efficiency was naturally inferior to Chu Fu’s comprehensive isolation and annihilation.
Chu Fu’s skills had also activated the power of calamity, producing astonishing results.
Basically, every city she passed through was completely sealed off. No one else needed to lift a finger.
Feng Huimin assigned each of them 880 cities. Some had larger populations, while others had smaller ones. This was done to make it easier for them to compete for contribution points without interfering with one another.
Of course, how many cities they could actually secure depended on their own abilities.
If a city had a large number of players and its contribution points were difficult to seize, they would enter a spatial rift after the first wave and clear a Primordial-level dungeon.
At a time like this, Chu Fu no longer cared about anyone else’s life or death.
They had to secure the rewards firmly in their own hands.
…
At the same time,
in a higher-dimensional plane,
the Undead Reaper returned once more.
Not only him—even the other gods began returning.
Then the Undead Reaper let out an angry roar.
“What happened? Where is the divine power I invested? How did I lose so much?”
During the wager, every god had placed divine power on the table as their stake.
The Primordial-level dungeon was the battlefield where divine power was hunted.
When a Primordial-level dungeon was cleared, divine power was plundered, and the divine power the Undead Reaper had previously wagered there would disappear.
Now, a full tenth of it had vanished.
More importantly, since he had lost, someone else had naturally won. This would affect the entire game.
He looked toward the Mechanical God.
“You’ve been here the whole time. Didn’t you notice anything strange?”
The Mechanical God’s metallic voice remained completely emotionless.
“Without access to your rifts, I can’t observe anything. How would I know?”
In truth, the Mechanical God had noticed Shen Chi’s strange actions, as well as the fact that Shen Chi’s strength was increasing.
But this was not a bad thing for him.
An increase in strength meant that Shen Chi would become more confident and would be more likely to enter the rifts.
The conspiracy targeting them would then be triggered.
When that happened, the one who emerged victorious would be him. As for whether the Undead Reaper suffered losses, what did that have to do with him, the Mechanical God?
The Undead Reaper, meanwhile, felt more and more that something was wrong.
Every city was resisting the undead army. None of them had been annihilated as he had expected.
Instead, countless troops were being wiped out.
All the players from the Flower Country had finished the city-defense battles ahead of schedule, becoming a freely deployable force that could support armies anywhere at any time.
They had already been assigned to reinforce various regions.
Not to mention members of the Thorn Guild like Chu Fu—each one of them could defend an entire city alone.
At this rate, they probably wouldn’t be able to capture even a single city in the defense campaign.
Worst of all, if another Origin-level dungeon were breached, he would suffer a devastating loss.
“No, this won’t do. I need to condense divine power and summon new apostles!”
