On the small hills outside Silver Wing Town, as the members of the Beast Legion used their Return Scrolls and vanished one by one, the entire town erupted into an uproar.
"No way! The Beast Legion actually got scared off!"
The players inside Silver Wing Town stared at the retreating figures of Yun Manshan and his people, unable to believe what they were seeing.
They had witnessed the Beast Legion's might firsthand. Every member had been like a monster, weaving through armies with ease. The Zero Wing members killed by the Beast Legion alone numbered over ten thousand, and among them were no shortage of expert players.
Yet such a terrifying Beast Legion had now retreated in the face of Zero Wing…
Of course, it wasn't incomprehensible. After all, the strength Fire Dance had displayed was simply too horrifying. She had slaughtered the Beast Legion's experts like dogs—it was practically like a god descending to the mortal world.
But no matter how powerful Fire Dance was, she was ultimately just one person, and her burst mode had a limited duration. All the Beast Legion really had to do was wait for it to expire, and they could engage Zero Wing once more. The Beast Legion's overall strength was formidable, backed by a large number of Star Ring Guild experts behind them. Against a single player, they could absolutely have dragged things out. Yet they had chosen to leave outright, and that was what left people baffled.
Just earlier, the Beast Legion had made bold proclamations about blockading Silver Wing Town's gates—declaring they would kill anyone who tried to leave. Now they had all fled, and that was a massive loss of face.
Only the expert players from the various major powers stationed in Silver Wing Town understood why the Beast Legion had chosen to withdraw so decisively.
The truth was that most people had no idea how terrifying it was to be able to kill an expert of Yu Mo's caliber in a single blow. In front of such a powerhouse, numbers became meaningless—they were nothing more than low-level mobs to be disposed of at will. And a powerhouse like that could move freely through armies, her destructive potential on the battlefield rivaling that of a strategic missile.
Even though Fire Dance was in burst mode with a limited duration, waiting for it to end would still result in horrifying casualties in the meantime. Worse still, Fire Dance could simply return to Silver Wing Town just before her burst mode expired, leaving the Beast Legion utterly unable to do anything about her. If the standoff continued, their losses would only mount.
This was precisely why the various major powers found themselves so helpless against peak experts.
The wisest course of action was to retreat and stop the bleeding.
After all, the penalty for dying once in the current state of the game was enormous. An ordinary expert player would need several days to recover, let alone someone of the peak expert caliber.
"Who would have thought Zero Wing was hiding such a trump card? Now it's going to be awfully hard for Star Ring to blockade Silver Wing Town."
"Exactly. Unless Star Ring can come up with some way to deal with Fire Dance, the gate blockade is just asking for trouble."
The various major powers were all shaken by the strength Fire Dance had displayed. Their original plans to carve out a piece of Zero Wing's pie while the opportunity arose quietly fizzled out.
Setting aside an invincible monster like Fire Dance, even Ke Le and the other core members of Zero Wing's main raid team were not people they could afford to provoke. Moreover, the major powers had gained a clearer understanding of just how important expert players truly were.
As long as your strength was great enough, a single person could genuinely defend an entire town. This was no longer the era of human-wave tactics.
Because of this incident, every major power began ramping up their efforts to cultivate expert players within their guilds. And the broader population of free players also gained a brand-new appreciation for what expert players were capable of, their perspective no longer confined to what they had believed before.
Previously, an expert player was merely someone who could hold off a thousand opponents—someone who could tip the scales in a small-scale skirmish, play a crucial role in tackling Dungeon bosses, and bring back better equipment and resources for their guild. But the expert players of today could determine the rise or fall of an entire town.
Walking behind Fire Dance, Yan Tianxing and the others were brimming with excitement.
This battle had not only restored confidence to everyone in Zero Wing, but it had also shattered Star Ring's blockade over Zero Wing in the neutral maps. They no longer had to worry about being surpassed by other powers.