Chapter 203: Stopping the Darkness invasion With Their Lives
It was a sunny day.
William was lying on a beach chair. And beside the chair, two coconuts lay there, with straws made of green plants in them. This sort of simple yet practical thing was considered to be a waste of brainpower and labor costs by Odom.
But the prince was too lazy to care about that Dwarf who didn't know how to enjoy life and kept himself busy all day.
Likewise, Odom wanted to say that William didn't understand the joy of being an official. He was happy being a deputy city lord.
William just wanted to bask in the sun and admire the blue sea. He could enjoy the thunderstorms that could be seen in the far distance.
He decided to give himself two rest days every week in the future.
Even though he was a Lord, and everything he did was for the City of Dawn and himself, he didn't want to work 24 hours a day.
As a stellar transmigrator, in the past two years or so, every time he had a close encounter with death, he became stronger. However, now that the Darkness invasion was imminent, he suddenly got a little afraid.
William drank a mouth of coconut juice infused with magical power. He was wondering why the storms hadn't stopped yet. It was as if something was reinforcing the storms, keeping them going for thousands of years without stopping.
"What is it exactly? A treasure from a temple? Based on the sense of crisis that those treasures gave me previously, they're probably not enough to sustain the storms for so long." William raised his left hand and looked at his slender fingers. A flash of lightning could be seen in the Thunder ring on his middle finger.
"What else can it be?"
This question had been bothering him since his previous life, as the storms hadn't vanished too then.
After the prince pondered over this a while, he shook his head and stopped thinking about it. Anyway, he owned the temple, and others couldn't steal that away from him. Once he dug out everything in the temple, all the hidden secrets would surface naturally.
"Prince William, so free today?" Seven or eight players came to the beach for fishing and greeted William. They chose their positions happily and took out fishing gear of Gold quality, preparing to fish.
That was right.
Though some casual players had lousy quality battle equipment, even their basic necessities were of Gold or even Dark-Gold quality!
"Yeah, you guys came here to fish?" William glanced at these casual players who spent their entire day fishing. Actually, they weren't exactly casual players, since sometimes, they would participate in battles and go inside Instance Dungeons. Nonetheless, they would always find time for fishing. If they managed to catch any big fish, they could sell it for a hefty price.
"Yeah. Wow, I rarely see you around recently, Prince William. I thought you were very busy, but I guess there are times when you are lazy too." a player called Umekawa was carrying an Epic fish gear. He flung the fish hook hundreds of meters away in one motion!
He sat lazily on a stone and waited for a big fish to bite the bait.
It had been a year.
Players weren't sucking up to William as much as before.
Most of the time, when players saw an NPC, they would engage in normal conversation, even if that NPC was William.
The players had realized that Lord William would only disseminate specific missions to specific people. In other words, Lord William would only give you a mission that he thinks you are suitable for.
Otherwise, even if you suck up to him, the prince won't be bothered to talk to you. This applied to Changli Jiuge too.
Some players tried too hard to suck up to Lord William. Those players, Lord William killed them so many times that they quit the game.
However, if you didn't ask for rewards such as missions or equipment, and just casually chatted with Lord William, he might actually talk to you.
Of course, the conversation would only be a few sentences.
William didn't want to engage in too much conversation with them. He knew that loose lips sink ships.
William held a brief conversation with the few casual players before he yawned and left the beach.
By this time, the players had slowly adapted to 'Gods'. Everyone did what they liked, battling monsters, participating in rank competitions, picking up girls, et cetera. Some female players even wanted to sell sex services!
But it was a pity.
You could only engage in such activities when both parties had an affinity level of 1000. And to reach that level, players had to play for at least half a year.
This crushed the hopes of some ladies who wanted to earn money...
At the same time, this also helped avoid the situation of an unknown liquid appearing in a male player's gaming room.
William whistled while walking.
A commotion could be heard in the dense jungle.
After a while, three giant wild bears rushed out!
"Woah!" William saw that the bears were about to hug him with their sharp claws and stopped them immediately.
"Let's hit the road." William's three bears that looked small before, had now grown into enormous creatures. They were no longer naive and silly. As William was busy with the island work, these bears explored Stormy Island with a dirty appearance. They would return to Stormy Town from time to time, but their bodies would be covered in wounds sometimes.
These three bears knew that they had someone to back them up, so they went around challenging all sorts of lone magical beasts, and even gregarious magical beasts!
The three of them would attack together when they encountered a creature they could definitely win.
If they couldn't win a creature, they would still go and provoke them.
If they really got into trouble, they would just run back to the campsite to seek help.
But before you say anything,
Normally, professionals did not like to get involved in this sort of matter. At most, they would let Lord William's pets inside the camp. However, the players were different!
They would rush towards the wild beast enemies in a swarm and punch them.
The three bears weren't dumb. They knew that the chosen ones weren't very strong, so every time the players helped them defeat some magical beasts, they would share the battle loots with the players.
Therefore, these bears threw their weight around, and they brought Stormy Town players out to bully wild magical beasts all the time...
"Hit the road?"
Once the three bears heard this, their ears drooped. Nonetheless, they knew that the reason why their master William brought them to Stormy Island was to provide free labor for him...
William sat on Big Bear's huge body and proudly commanded the three bears to solidify the newly constructed roads with magic.
Big Bear was the only Advanced magical beast among these pets of his. The other two bears' potential was only average, but even so, all three bears were his pets. And even though William was strong now, it didn't mean that he could just chuck them aside.
He would take them out for a walk from time to time. He was a nostalgic master, after all...
The prince sat cross-legged on Big Bear and began musing on the bumpy ride.
Without a doubt, the Water Dragon's skeleton would make up the frame of the second Epic warship.
However, the second warship would not be as big as the first one in terms of size. At most, it would be a medium-sized warship that was a little over 60 meters long.
This was because the second warship wasn't meant to be a military warship, but it was intended to be a knockoff of a pirate ship. If the warship was smaller, it could move faster, and one need not worry that it couldn't outrun other warships during critical situations...
As for the high-quality blood of the water dragon's heart, it was only enough for the usage of 5 people. He hadn't used any of it.
And the remaining Dragon's blood, he distributed all of it to the Breaking Wave soldiers.
It resulted in him instantly gaining 130 more Dragon's blood warriors. Two of them even reached Epic while seven became Grandmasters. The rest also became Advanced warriors.
The main role of these warriors was to disguise as pirates.
Of course, that was something that would take place only after the Darkness invasion was settled. William was just making preparations beforehand.
There wasn't much free time left.
Version 2.0 was launching soon.
Many Devil's Dens suddenly surfaced on the grass plains. At the same time, more dark creatures had started to appear too.
The Massacre Battlefield had disappeared. The City of Dawn and Black Lava legions had retreated into the inner city area at the same time.
However, the players weren't afraid of death.
Many adventure teams and guilds had sent their people to kill dark creatures on the grass plains.
How valuable were the dark creatures?
Quite valuable.
The stronger the skeleton soldiers were, the harder their bones were. They could serve as various materials and could even be used in the making of weapons.
Darkness soldiers were even more valuable. The equipment they carried was very useful even though it belonged to the darkness attribute. As long as they were melted and built again, they were worth a lot of money.
As for other dark creatures?
For now, the players hadn't come into contact with other dark creatures. Nonetheless, the sudden influx of dark creatures served as a new and unique game feature.
Meanwhile, clerics and knights from the Temple of Light were suddenly in demand.
Even though they hadn't awakened their attribute, they were strong candidates in becoming the nemesis of dark creatures in the future.
Nobody wanted a situation in the future where they could not find someone with the light attribute to form a team. It was better to have a good relationship with clerics and knights now.
Therefore,
Once again, there was a craze to join the Sacred Palace in the City of Dawn.
The large-scale emergence of dark creatures was not exclusive to the Legendary continent. The players from other countries had also started to encounter this issue.
Hence, as long as the players had completed the main storyline missions, beginner's villages and Dukedoms in other continents had all started to lead their players to kill the dark creatures in the Devil's Dens.
As for the professionals in the Palace of Darkness?
That bunch had stayed quiet and didn't dare to do anything recklessly. They were afraid that others would misunderstand them as the dark creatures' comrades.
The weirdest thing was that out of the nine continents, only the beginner's village in the Legendary continent didn't take action. Even the Temple of Light NPC, who had a deep hatred for dark creatures, did not take any action!
"My lord, more and more dark creatures have appeared on the grass plains. In the short time span of a month, the few Devil's Dens from before have expanded into 30 Devil's Dens now. The number of dark creatures has reached 100,000. Are we really not going to attack first?" Odom stood at the edge of the cliff and asked with a puzzled look.
William placed both hands on the half-meter tall city wall and shook his head calmly. "We'll wait. Now is not the time yet."
"How long will we wait for?" Odom was confused.
"Until the number of those dark creatures reach a million."
"A million??" Odom's eyes instantly widened. He really wanted to ask if William was joking.
However, when he saw the expressionless look on Lord William's face and related it to the insane fortification works in the city recently, he understood what all those were for.
"That's right. A million." William looked at the grass plains. A few lone dark creatures had already found their way here.
Hellfire was semi-visible in the skeleton soldiers' skulls, giving people the chills.
However, the situation now was no big deal.
When millions of dark creatures came together, when green hellfire spread across the earth, and when red eyes appeared throughout the entire world.
They'll do something then.
For now, they would just wait for endless dark creatures to fill their world.
Just like a dark apocalyptic sea.
A million dark creatures would quickly gather in just two months.
How did the powerful Iron Dukedom fall in William's previous life?
Advanced Legendary warriors had fallen prey to the dark creature army. Did William really treat the Darkness invasion as a joke?
"What do we do now?" Odom swallowed his saliva. He didn't know what solution Lord William had in mind, but he believed that even if the sky fell, William would know what to do!
The prince looked in the north direction. It was as if his gaze could pierce through the void. "We wait. We will wait for the day that the King of Darkness appears. We will wait for the day Death comes."
"Counterattack?" Odom's eyes lit up.
"No, we defend. We will defend endlessly." William sighed and left.
As the Darkness invasion continued, the number of dark creatures that manifested on the Legendary continent had reached tens of millions.
Human kingdoms and empires didn't take action. They were existences too insignificant to come up with counterattacks.
What would they use to counterattack?
Their lives?
Their lives were all they had.