Star Moon Kingdom, White River City.
Shi Feng and his team had been fighting in the Starfall Secret Realm for eight straight days. They were thoroughly sick of grinding monsters by now, and when they finally returned to the White River City guild residence, each of them felt as though they had come back to life.
But before anyone could get any rest, they sensed the oppressive atmosphere blanketing the entire guild residence.
"Guild Leader, you're finally back!" You Lan, who had been managing affairs in the main hall, saw Shi Feng return, and a hint of excitement surfaced on her exhausted face.
If Shi Feng and the others hadn't come back soon, she probably would have reached her breaking point.
"How's the guild doing right now?" Shi Feng asked.
"Overall, things are very bad. The guild has taken in quite a few players and adventurer teams recently, and our finances were already tight. Then Star Ring suddenly launched attacks on the neutral maps, and we lost over fifty thousand members. Just the death compensations nearly emptied our coffers. Fortunately, the War Soul guild chipped in with some funding, or we wouldn't have been able to keep the guild running at all." You Lan smiled bitterly. "But if this keeps up, the guild's funds will be completely drained in no time."
"Moreover, funding isn't the main issue right now. The weapons and equipment in the guild warehouse have been mostly depleted. If we don't resupply soon, the guild won't even be able to function normally."
"How did it get that bad? Didn't I tell everyone to pull back and restrict our activity range?" Shi Feng was astonished by the guild's death toll.
Star Ring had only started targeting them not long ago—at most half a day had passed. Losing over fifty thousand people in just half a day seemed nearly impossible. Even a full-scale guild war wouldn't normally result in that many casualties.
"At first it wasn't that many—only about twenty thousand or so. After that, our people all went back to operating around Silverwing Town. But Star Ring didn't let up. They charged straight into our guild's territory and kept launching raids. Our people couldn't stomach it and took squads out to hunt them down."
"But the results were far from ideal. Their strength was generally very high, especially a group of elites among the Star Ring forces. They managed to wipe out over ten thousand of our people with just a single hundred-man squad. Over four hundred members of the Black God Legion were killed, and two Hell Chariots were even destroyed."
"After that, I ordered everyone to hold their ground inside Silverwing Town. The death toll dropped after that, but now Star Ring's people are camped outside Silverwing Town, taunting us day and night. The morale in the guild is terrible. This can't go on indefinitely."
You Lan felt quite helpless. The recent battles had given her yet another sobering reminder of just how powerful a superpower truly was. Zero Wing and Star Ring were simply on different dimensions when it came to the quantity and quality of their experts. If not for the fact that players' levels and tiers were still somewhat low, even Silverwing Town probably wouldn't have been able to hold back Star Ring's advance.
"I see." Upon hearing this, Shi Feng grasped the situation.
He wasn't surprised by Zero Wing's current state. In the past, Zero Wing had been able to challenge the major superpowers—and even win quite a few major battles—entirely because of superior weapons and equipment, or because of the tier advantage from advancing to Tier 2 early. Now that Tier 2 classes had become widespread, the equipment gap had narrowed considerably. On top of that, the auction arena's emergence had allowed the major superpowers to cement their control over their territories, removing many of their reservations and letting them deploy their experts freely.
The gap between guilds had naturally become apparent.
"Fire Dance, take a team to Silverwing Town right now and drive those people away. Zero Wing's territory is not a place for them to swagger around!" Shi Feng immediately turned to Fire Dance beside him.
Having their front door blocked like this was humiliating, and if it went on for too long, morale would crumble.
"Leave it to me," Fire Dance said with a smile and a nod. She had been grinding monsters in the Starfall Secret Realm this whole time and was thoroughly sick of it. Now was the perfect chance to stretch her legs.
With that, Fire Dance gathered Ziyan Liuyun, Jian Ying, Fei Ying, Banxia Qingcheng, Ke Le, and others, then used a guild teleportation scroll to warp directly to the guild residence in Silverwing Town.
"Guild Leader, those people are all exceptionally strong, and there are a great many of them. It won't be easy to deal with them." You Lan noticed that only Fire Dance and a dozen or so others were heading to Silverwing Town and couldn't help but voice her concern.