Chapter 1010: The Situation At Hand
｢Boundless System-wide Announcement
The Power Faction (named by those within) is recruiting Immortal Adventurers to fight the Supreme Faction (named by the world). All players who sign up for the Power Faction will receive the rewards listed by the faction!｣
｢Reward Scheme for the Power Faction
- Upon joining, each player will receive one Uncommon item, ten Uncommon consumables for recovery, berserk and escape, as well as one scroll of penalty negation.
- Merit during war will be calculated in the form of points, which will be given for completing objectives as well as any lives taken. The lowest point gain is for killing a member of Umbra, which is worth 1 point. <Click here to see the full list!>
- Merit during the war can be accumulated and spent in many ways. One can exchange to attain rare and unique items, places within any of the many power within the faction, as well as unique favors! <Click here to see the full list!>
- Players who perform well in espionage and manage to capture key information about Vita Kingdom and umbra will be rewarded with 100 merits points right from the get go!
- Players who are part of Umbra can abandon the guild and join the power faction, receiving 10,000 merit points and a core position in any power he chooses!｣
｢Boundless System-wide Announcement
The criteria for recruitment for the Power Faction is as follows;
- Players must be, at least, level 10 to qualify.
- Players with combat classes must be able to solo a Private Rank monster of the same Rank (but can be of a lower level)
- Players must be willing to move to the garrisons of the various powers with tin the faction and be deployed from there during the period of the war.｣
The moment players around the world saw this, their fingers that were excitedly about to join Umbra's side, which was the Supreme Faction, immediately paused involuntarily.
Looking at the rewards, their eyes were dazzled and their breathing became hurried, Such rewards were enough to change their lives forever!
However, the prestige of Umbra was strong in the hearts of players, especially older ones. While the newlings did not have as much reverence and respect, they still felt that this was was not something they should rashly join.
Looking at the provisions of the World Quest, it was obvious that they could benefit from the rewards of the quest and these individual rewards together, and both would be doubled at the end!
So many fellows decided to wait and see if Umbra would announce their criteria for recruitment and their rewards.
...
However, nothing came after a whole month of waiting. The players were getting impatient as many had joined the Power Faction and had exchanged for useful rewards, strengthening themselves for the coming fight.
Eventually, Umbra did give a response but it was not what they expected. The administrator of Vita Kingdom, Sublime Notion, wore a pair of spectacles and stood on a bunch of Legendary items to reach the top of the podium and made an announcement.
Half of the time, the players and NPCs listening were drolling at the power legendary items that were treated like trash, becoming steeping stones for this loli to combat her height issue and speak to them that they missed her words.
However, no one missed the conclusion.
"... so basically, neither Umbra nor Vita has the intention to contract players using cheap methods. We did it once during the war of expansions for shits and giggles, and then again during the Vita Tournament because we were bloated with resources - and kinda still are."
"However, this war is personal, one of extinction and revenge for the slaughter of our families and friends. We want to dig the eyes out of those who harmed us ourselves and bathe in their blood, so we don't want anyone to help us."
"Of course, well wishers and allies can still join our faction, but we'd prefer to do the action ourselves and you can relax and reap the rewards if you want."
When the old players heard this, their hearts felt a chill. Don't forget, not everyone was around when Draco slaughtered the Rank 7 fellow and banished the whole group, so they didn't know Draco had a way to kill them all.
Most players in the city had been smashed into meatpaste and Hikari only revived them AFTER the Rank 7 fellows were scattered away. So to the players, going up against Rank 7 factions alone was suicide and arrogance!
Of course, the old players didn't see it that way. They knew enough about Umbra that these fellows were despicable, bullying the weak and fearing the strong. If they were bold enough to say this, it meant they absolutely had the means to end these fellows.
And logic also supported since why didn't these factions just educate Umbra at once? Why use a war and recruit players? What do you need us Rank 2 and 3 players for when you have almighty and unkillable Rank 7 fellows?
Oh wait, you're no longer unkillable, isn't it? Wasn't there just a world announcement about Umbra killed a World boss on their own? He, wasn't that what even kickstarted the whole thing?
Simple critical thinking and a bit of logic would make anyone realize that there was something wrong here and full picture was actually more complicated than it seemed.
But when had the general public ever been good at thinking for themselves when they had others to think for them?
In the minds of the middle to new players, Umbra was overestimating themselves and being greedy. They didn't care if Umbra members lost friend and family or were being unfairly bullied.
What did it have to do with them? It wasn't their friends and families suffering so who cared? All they wanted to see was the big bucks you were going to pay them for helping you.
By stating that they wouldn't contract players, many even took it the wrong way and thought Umbra was scorning them. Others felt like it was dumb to choose Umbra because they would get double rewards from the other faction compared to single rewards from Umbra.
Besides, even if Umbra won, so what? It wasn't that hard to score some points and kill a few weak Umbra members or their various NPCs and cashout from the faction rewards.
As for what umbra would do agate, what did they care? Umbra couldn't chase after all of them, there were millions of them. And besides, what assured anyone that Umbra would survive the coming storm on them?
As such, the membership quotas for the Power Faction grew wantonly. Players rejoiced as they got useful items to strengthen themselves and increasingly felt like they had made a great choice.
Very few noticed that the NPCs of the factions were always fretting and looked partially and, bringing out items that they would not even show during the Great War out to give them as possible rewards.
Also, why did the NPCs look at then with pity and guilt, like they had tied them down on about of failure and were only grasping at straws? It couldn't be these Rank 7 fellows actually thought they would lose right?
Besides, even if they lost, it wasn't like they, the players would lose anything permanent like their accounts or something. To do that, one would need to have Destruction Energy, and the only ones who had that were the truly powerful NPCs.
Unfortunately, due to Draco claiming the Paradise Lands and taking the Nshaw Tribe as his own people, the invention of the Evil bead never occurred and NPCs did not have easy ways to deal with players.
So both players and NPCs were largely unaware of methods to permanently get rid of players, which also lead to players being rampant and arrogant as they rose in Rank collectively.
However, older players still grit their teeth and chose to join Umbra, much to the mocking and disdain of newer players.
'I thought you old farts were more skilled and knowledgeable, but it turns out you're stuck in your thinking due to past glory and past trauma. The future is now old man.'
However, the older players stubbornly stuck to their decision.
The entire situation was just like how young whippersnappers thought that communism would work under their hands because it was never done properly before, while the older generation who had lived it hated it to the core and never wanted to see it again.
Something you had witnessed with your own eyes will always be more trustworthy to you, and these old players had witnessed Umbra slaughter everything to get to where they are now.
While this heated exchange was going on, the supreme Faction remained silent. True to Draco's speech, Umbra would only attack in 3 months, but the Power Faction fellows were impatient and wanted to strike right away.
As for the NPCs in their factions, they were shockingly hardly available, most of them doing things on their bucketlists in a rush as if they only had 3 months left to live.
However, soon the penalties for choosing the wrong side began to show. Since players named were listed in the factions, such players were banned from visiting Vita Kingdom or using any facilities of Umbra.
This included the Rank 7 Shop and the Rank 7 Bank for example, which caused egregious harm to many players. Some items could only be bought in the Rank 7 Shop, and the Rank 7 bank's savings and investments rates were godly high.
So having their money sent back without a chance to sue the facilities, and for those who owned loans to be forced to pay them back by the system asap caused them to regret it endlessly.
They also lost access to the Player Auction which was where they could get quality things for good prices, and this caused their growth to stagnate.
The players were furious, utilizing Umbra for being small-minded and petty. Just because they chose to be on the other side of them in a war of extinction didn't mean that they should cut them off completely!
In fact, Umbra was being short-sighted! They brought business, wealth and value to Umbra by patronizing them! Cutting them off was cutting of Umbra's own legs, and they would suffer for it later!
What kind of guild was this?
Many of the newer players even felt that this affirmed their decision that Umbra only got to where it was by being early. If they had started when the game came out, perhaps they would be the ones on top!
As for Umbra's notorious history and even the notification they JUST received that umbra killed a Rank 7 that STARTED this whole war, was conveniently ignored by them.
You know how outrage culture works.
As for Umbra, when they eventually received this news, they were first stunned. The members of Umbra opened the rewards the Power Faction was offering and looked through.
Plenty of Uncommon items, a good amount of Rare, a few Epics, and a smidgen of Legendary items.
Then they looked at Umbra's Guild Shop which had officially banned all items below Epic, with the shop swarmed with Epic items of all kinds and types, with hundreds and hundreds of Legendary items and even some Divine items put up that were useless to the Evil Duo.
In fact, many of the members selling the Epic items had put them in package deals to sell because it simply wasn't moving! The price was 0.1% of the market price, but no one was willing to buy in Umbra because almost everyone had Legendary items.
They were also so rich that they didn't need to buy and resell, and they disdained strengthening others rather than their own people.
So looking and comparing the two, and seeing that the Power Faction event wanted to poach them, the members of Umbra just stood there stupidly.
They were utterly and truly speechless.