Purple Thorn Kingdom, Glory Stone Fortress.
Shi Feng stepped out of the teleportation hall. The entire town was built into the mountainside, surrounded on all sides by towering walls. Though it was merely a frontier outpost, its defensive capabilities rivaled those of a fortified stronghold.
"Huh? There are already this many players here?" Shi Feng looked in surprise at the thousand-odd players milling about outside the teleportation hall.
The monster levels around Glory Stone Fortress generally exceeded level 70, and the nearby neutral maps were even higher at level 80-plus. A level 60 player, let alone set foot in a neutral map, would struggle to survive even in the zone around Glory Stone Fortress. This was not a place current players could casually wander into.
Yet these players were all at least level 56, with the highest reaching level 59. Among them were over a hundred Second Order Class holders, and none of them wore guild emblems—meaning they were all free players.
Free players were generally inferior to guild members in both level and equipment. The major guilds had yet to set foot here, but free players had arrived first. How could Shi Feng not be surprised?
These people, for their part, showed no particular surprise at Shi Feng's appearance. Everyone went about their own business.
"Six-man team farming Wind Serpent monsters, need one more healer! Level 57 and above required!"
"Deep Cavern Black Bat quest—looking for two strong level 57+ damage dealers. Second Order Class holders preferred!"
……
One after another, players outside the teleportation hall were recruiting team members. Farming monsters, running quests—they all seemed to be doing perfectly ordinary things.
If any expert players from the Star Moon Kingdom were to come here, they would be utterly stunned.
Because whether it was the Wind Serpent monsters or the Black Bats, these monsters were all level 70 or above—at least ten levels higher than these players, giving them a clear level suppression advantage. Even level 60 Second Order players would find them troublesome to handle, to say nothing of First Order players. Yet these players treated it as if it were nothing.
In short order, the teams had assembled their members and were heading straight for the gates of Glory Stone Fortress, ready to farm monsters and run quests…
"Is this really the Purple Thorn Kingdom?" Shi Feng stared at the departing teams and momentarily blanked out.
If these were players unfamiliar with the situation around Glory Stone Fortress, that would be one thing, but he actually had a decent understanding of the area.
Though this was a frontier region, it was a human battleground—constantly on guard against monster incursions from the Thistle Plateau on the neutral map. Even Glory Stone Fortress itself was periodically subjected to monster sieges. It was an exceedingly dangerous place, one that typically only players around level 65 dared set foot in.
The Wind Serpents were level 72 Leader monsters. The Black Bats weren't Leader monsters, but they were special Elite monsters that traveled in packs, with the largest black bat at the front being a Leader.
These six-man teams or twenty-man raids might be able to handle a single Wind Serpent or one batch of Black Bats on their own, but it would be a tremendous struggle. One wrong move that drew the attention of additional monsters could easily result in a full team wipe—and that would be considered normal.
If they had been decked out in top-tier gear, that would be one thing. But these players had no such equipment—their gear was entirely ordinary. With equipment that plain, farming monsters would be excruciatingly slow. In fact, the level advantage from being underleveled would be completely negated. They would be better off killing level 60 monsters back home.
Moreover, as Shi Feng walked down the main street, he noticed that the players who had come to Glory Stone Fortress were not limited to those outside the teleportation hall. Other streets were similarly crowded with players, all level 56 or above. A rough estimate put the total at over thirty thousand people in Glory Stone Fortress, and every single one of them was at Elite level or higher.