Shi Feng heard the system notification, but was stunned for a good long while.
He hadn't expected that this was how one could obtain a high-grade title.
Getting a common title was already difficult enough, and obtaining a high-grade title was a stroke of extraordinary luck. Now, for a mere 1,400 gold, he had not only dealt with the red-named players plaguing the city but also earned a high-grade title on top of it.
If he told anyone about this, they probably wouldn't believe him.
In his previous life, so many major guilds had been willing to spend upward of ten thousand gold just for an accurate lead on how to get a high-grade title. They would have fought tooth and nail for the chance and still not gotten in line.
"City Defender" — Shi Feng was fairly familiar with common titles, but high-grade titles were another matter entirely. After all, the effects of a high-grade title were far from ordinary, and no one would carelessly reveal the details, much like the stats and skills of top-tier weapons and equipment.
City Defender, high-grade title. A hero who protects a city from harm under the corruption of dark forces. The player who holds this title enjoys the待遇 of a great noble in any human city. Additionally, once per week, the player can pick up an Epic-level quest from the Adventurer's Guild for their assigned guards, and the success rate of those assigned guards completing quests increases by 5%.
"Truly worthy of a high-grade title — it can actually secure an Epic-level quest for assigned guards every single week," Shi Feng muttered in astonishment.
If assigned guards wanted to level up quickly, it all depended on what quests they took from the Adventurer's Guild. The higher the quest rank, the more experience points and better equipment they could earn upon completion.
However, the assigned-guard quests available in the Adventurer's Guild didn't offer much variety. Even Dark Gold–level quests were rare — encountering one in a given week was already lucky. As for Epic-level quests, getting even one per month was an incredible stroke of fortune.
If he could run his assigned guards through an Epic-level quest every week, their growth rate would be beyond imagination — and that was before factoring in the 5% boost to the success rate.
Even for Dark Gold–level guards like Kate and Anna, the success rate on a Dark Gold–level quest was only 50%. With excellent weapons and equipment, it might climb to 80%, but it could never reach 100% — let alone on an Epic-level quest.
As far as Shi Feng knew, even a Dark Gold–level guard decked out in top-tier gear had only a 30% chance of completing an Epic-level quest. A normal Dark Gold guard sat at 20%. As for the lower-tier Gold-grade guards, even in full best-in-slot equipment, a 10% success rate would be considered heaven-defying.
So a high-grade title that could boost quest success rates by 5% was an incredibly powerful thing.
With that thought, Shi Feng swapped out his Spirit Slayer title for the City Defender title and summoned Kate and Anna over.
It had been a while since he last saw them, and the two had leveled up considerably — climbing from level 60 to level 65.
Standing nearby, Shuise Qiangwei and Huo Wu laid eyes on Kate and Anna, and both were struck with shock.
"How can their strength be this high?" Shuise Qiangwei exclaimed in disbelief.
She had long since become a baroness of White River City and was entitled to recruit her own assigned guards. Yet even with the full resources of the guild at her disposal, along with Shi Feng's guidance, it had taken enormous effort to recruit a single Gold-grade guard from the Star Moon Kingdom — and that guard happened to be a Guardian Knight, perfectly suited to complement her class. She had been absolutely thrilled at the time.
Under her dedicated cultivation and through taking on all manner of high-level quests, that guard had only just barely reached level 60. How many more quests it would take to hit level 65 was anyone's guess — but even so, this level was already astonishing. The assigned guards recruited by the upper echelons of other guilds typically sat around level 55 to 58, and their strength fell far short of what Shuise Qiangwei's guard possessed.
Yet Shi Feng's two assigned guards were both level 65, and the aura they gave off felt less like facing ordinary level-65 guards and more like standing before two level-65 Great overlords — a suffocating pressure that made it hard to breathe.