As soon as Shi Feng finished activating the Sacred Source Crystal, the crystal released countless streams of light that plunged into the Ring of Gospel. Fueled by the Sacred Source Crystal's power, the divine runes and magic arrays inside the Ring of Gospel began to perfect themselves.
After several seconds, a ring of purple-gold radiance materialized before Shi Feng's eyes, emanating a pressure that made his heart tremble. The surrounding space seemed to freeze solid in that instant.
"What incredible pressure!" Shi Feng stared at the Ring of Gospel, which hovered in midair and shimmered brilliantly. This pressure surpassed that of ordinary Legendary monsters by a wide margin. Even he felt somewhat uncomfortable facing it.
As one of the Divine Realm's extremely rare domain-type items, the Ring of Gospel was immensely helpful to both players and guilds. However, as an Epic-grade item, its drawback was severe — it consumed twenty thousand Magic Crystals every seven days, a cost most guilds simply couldn't bear. For Zero Wing's current situation, even with the Origin Iron ore vein, it was still a considerable burden.
That was exactly why he had chosen to upgrade the Ring of Gospel. Leaving it as-is would have remained a troublesome burden regardless.
It was only after the Ring of Gospel gradually released the frozen space around it that Shi Feng regained the ability to move. The ring then returned to his hand, but holding it now felt completely different.
There was a tremendous sense of weight — not from the ring's physical mass, but from the perpetual spatial pressure pressing in from all sides. At minimum, it suppressed his combat power by a full fifty percent, something that had never happened before.
"Did the upgrade go wrong?" Shi Feng eyed the Ring of Gospel with concern and quickly opened its interface to check.
Generally, when any item's quality was enhanced, its effects would strengthen. However, some items occasionally deviated during the upgrade process, developing entirely different effects or even undergoing fundamental changes. While such occurrences were extremely rare, they were not unheard of — and it was the last thing any player wanted to see.
Ring of Gospel — Legendary Item Fragment. Crafted by the Black Witch King using the Source of the World, it contained a micro world within. Now, having been perfected by the Sacred Source Crystal, the internal space could suppress an entire area, granting absolute dominion over it.
Skill One — Micro World: Freezes all space within a 5,000-yard radius. Non-friendly units within the range cannot use teleportation items or teleportation-type skills, cannot communicate with the outside world, and cannot enter or exit. Constitution is reduced by 30%, basic attributes by 30%, movement speed by 50%, and reaction speed by 30%. Each activation consumes five thousand Magic Crystals and lasts for ten minutes. No cooldown.
Skill Two — Ring of Radiance: Effective within a 2,000-yard radius. All friendly units within the range receive a 20% boost to Constitution and basic attributes. Magic density within the range increases by 100%. Each activation consumes two thousand Magic Crystals and lasts for thirty minutes. No cooldown.
Because the Ring of Gospel contained a world within, it was rejected by the outside world. Classes below Tier 4 suffered spatial suppression when using it. The higher one's tier, the less suppression one experienced.
"No deviation?" Shi Feng studied the Ring of Gospel's attributes and breathed a quiet sigh of relief.
Though the upgrade had raised the usage requirements, the Ring of Gospel's capabilities had received a massive boost. What had once been spatial lockdown was now spatial freeze. The ring's power had effectively jumped from the level of a mid-tier magic array to that of a high-tier one — and it was even more formidable than a high-tier domain magic array, being a fusion of a domain magic array and a barrier magic array. The Magic Crystal consumption remained terrifying, but the seven-day, twenty-thousand-crystal limitation was gone.
Whether fighting bosses or battling in the open field, this was now a minor divine artifact.
After finishing the upgrade, Shi Feng stored the Ring of Gospel and walked directly to the teleportation array inscribed at the center of the altar. He transformed into a streak of white light and vanished from the altar. As soon as he departed, the altar within the void began to collapse, dissolving into the emptiness.
When Shi Feng opened his eyes once more, he found himself in a grand teleportation hall.
"Is this… Thunder Axe City?" Shi Feng surveyed the hall and its 200-plus-level NPC guards — towering figures over four meters tall, clad in armor and gripping massive axes. He couldn't help but feel a jolt of surprise.
He had expected the teleportation array to deposit him outside the Icefire Mountain Range, not directly inside Thunder Axe City.
Under normal circumstances, reaching Thunder Axe City required players to first unlock the outer teleportation array in the Icefire Mountain Range. To unlock that array, one needed a Magic Cube obtained through exploration quests, then use the cube to activate the outer teleportation array, teleport into Thunder Axe City, and finally hand the cube to the Grand Elder of the City's Giant Clan to fully unlock Thunder Axe City.
Now he had been sent straight inside, saving him a great deal of trouble.
The moment Shi Feng stepped out of the teleportation array, he noticed several new messages from Waterless Rose and Hei Zi in his system panel.
"All these messages — did something happen?" Shi Feng stared at the messages in surprise.
Inside the cavern, he had been completely cut off from the outside world. However, he had been logging out each night to rest and checking in with Waterless Rose and Hei Zi for updates on Zero Wing and the Divine Realm. When he had logged in tonight, neither of them had reported any issues. Yet now, in just half a day, they had sent over ten messages.
Shi Feng immediately contacted Waterless Rose.
"Guild Leader, are you done with your quest?" Waterless Rose asked.
"Mm, more or less." Shi Feng nodded. "I see both you and Hei Zi sent quite a few messages. Did something happen outside?"
The guild's upper echelon all knew that his high-tier quests cut off communication with the outside world. They wouldn't contact him without good reason. Only truly urgent matters warranted reaching him in the real world — after all, his quests were dangerous, and a careless failure meant starting all over again. He simply couldn't afford interruptions.
"Today started like any other — our guild members were clashing with various guilds in the Witch's Hill area, though nothing escalated into large-scale battles of a thousand or more. But three hours ago, a batch of players who could transform into monsters suddenly appeared among those guilds. Their combat power was terrifying. Each one had stats on par with a high-tier lord monster of the same level, and some even reached grand-lord-tier attributes. On top of that, these players all had expert-level skill. Even our Tier 2 experts were being slaughtered."
"Our guild members stood absolutely no chance. Over several thousand have been killed so far, and our people can't even level up in the Witch's Hill anymore," Waterless Rose said helplessly.
Although they had managed to kill some of the monster-transforming players, the casualty ratio was staggeringly lopsided. So far, the total number of monster players killed by all the guilds combined hadn't even reached five hundred, while their side had already lost over five thousand. The only reason they had managed to kill any of those monsters at all was largely thanks to the Anti-Magic Crossbows and the basic combat magic equipment. But there simply weren't enough of those items to contend with the monster players.
"Transforming into monsters?" Shi Feng's brow furrowed slightly upon hearing this. "They really are willing to pay the price."
He knew a bit about monster transformations. Obtaining certain special inheritances or items could indeed make it possible — similar to the Evil God Temple's inheritance. The Evil God Temple's Evil Dragon Transformation was a top-tier inheritance, but transforming into monsters always came at the cost of sacrificing large numbers of players. For a legitimate guild, the trade-off simply wasn't worth it.
Shi Feng immediately instructed Waterless Rose to notify all Zero Wing members to temporarily abandon leveling in the Witch's Hill and relocate elsewhere. Continuing to fight head-on was not a viable solution.
As for himself, he picked up his pace and headed straight for the mansion where the Grand Elder of the Giant Clan resided.