Chapter 2087 — The Foundation of Experts?

As the bells of the auction arena rang out, the entire White River City fell into silence. Nearly every resident held their breath, staring intently at the magic water mirrors that had materialized along the streets, terrified they might miss a single moment of this clash of titans.

Those players who weren't in White River City logged into the Star Moon Kingdom's official forums one after another, watching live streams relayed by players on the scene.

You could say the whole of the Star Moon Kingdom had gone quiet over this competition.

Among the arena's spectators — representatives of various major powers and independent experts alike — tension had reached its peak as they gazed up at the enormous magic water sphere that had suddenly appeared above the arena floor.

The qualification rules were displayed on the massive sphere, and they were completely different from the previous contests held at the Auction House.

In the past, when players at the Auction House competed in matches or wager duels, the prizes were fairly mediocre, so only a handful of players bothered to participate. Anyone could join. But now that the stake was control of White River City's Auction House — a matter of tremendous importance — and with a flood of participants eager to compete, the system had set up a qualification round.

Only players who passed the qualification round would be eligible to contest the Auction House. If you didn't meet the standard, no amount of resources would matter.

"Just a qualification round, and the entry fee is this steep?"

Everyone on the scene stared at the system-mandated participation cost — a single Epic-grade material — and drew a sharp breath.

Epic-grade materials were extraordinarily rare for the major guilds at this point. An ordinary guild being able to hoard twenty or thirty was already impressive, and even the larger ones had only a few dozen at best. After all, the drop rate for these materials in difficult-mode hundred-player team dungeons was abysmally low; only the first kill offered a decent chance of obtaining one.

Moreover, to prevent players from simply farming low-level team dungeons, the system ensured that Epic-grade materials would not drop at all if the player's level exceeded the dungeon's designated cap.

And equipping top-tier gear on freshly leveled altars to blitz through those low-level dungeons didn't work either — team dungeons demanded genuine collective skill from the group, not just good equipment. Meanwhile, skilled players naturally wouldn't stay at low levels, because in the Divine Realm, the higher your level, the more opportunities arose. Stagnating at a low level purely to farm Epic-grade materials simply wasn't worth it.

For these two reasons, the major powers' stockpiles of Epic-grade materials were painfully small.

Now the system was charging one Epic-grade material per participant, and even the smallest faction entering the competition had dozens of representatives. That meant the qualification round alone would consume every Epic-grade material a major guild possessed…

Though everyone agreed the fee was outrageously steep — guilds of ordinary means literally couldn't afford to play — the number of factions that actually signed up still exceeded a hundred.

It was particularly staggering to see the Star Ring Guild send over four hundred players in one go, shelling out more than four hundred Epic-grade materials in a single stroke. The representatives of every other major faction on the scene felt their hearts tremble at the sight.

And for the masses of free players watching from outside the Auction House, it was even more jaw-dropping.

Everyone had always known that the superpowers were untouchable colossi, their financial depth incomparable to even first-rate guilds. But actually seeing the scale of participation in this competition still exceeded anything they had imagined.

And this was just one city. Keep in mind that these superpowers weren't fighting over a single city alone.

They really could crush people with sheer wealth alone!

"Is this what a superpower looks like?" Qinyin stared at the Star Ring contingent competing in the tournament, and her despair deepened.

Setting aside the question of how skilled those superpower experts actually were, the ability to deploy over four hundred players in one breath — that alone was enough to thoroughly crush the hopes of a guild like hers, which was merely on par with a first-rate outfit.

The Auction House conflict wasn't ordinary PvP. Players would be distributed at random across five vast outdoor battlefields. They would fight each other on these fields, competing to seize Energy Crystal Spheres that dropped randomly from the sky. Whichever faction collected the most Energy Crystal Spheres would win control of the Auction House.

On the battlefield, players couldn't use magical items, nor could they cast large-scale magic spells. It was a pure test of each faction's comprehensive strength, leaving no room for tricks or shortcuts.

Although Zero Wing had also dispatched a full 112 players — more than top first-rate guilds like Saint's Reincarnation or the Blood Bath Family — the Star Ring's ability to send over four hundred in one go was an advantage simply too enormous to overcome.

And beyond Star Ring, there was King's Return with over three hundred, Black Water with over two hundred, the Pantheon with over two hundred — each a force not to be taken lightly. As for the other superpowers, most had come merely to spectate; they had no real intention of contesting White River City.

Just as everyone was marveling at the sheer depth of the superpowers' resources, the next scene on the arena floor left them all stunned.

Every participating player was teleported into an isolated space. Inside each space waited a dozen or more trolls. The weakest among them were Lords, while the strongest were Great Lords — three in total. The system-set levels for these trolls were slightly above the average level of all participating players: level sixty-five each.