System: Congratulations, player. You have completed the subjugation quest of the Ice Dragon Hisweet. Rewards: Lord Token, player level +1, Star Moon Kingdom Reputation +300, Guild Reputation +10,000.
System: Congratulations, player. You have become the first Lord in the Divine Realm. Reward: Lord Reputation +100.
System: Congratulations. Lord Reputation has reached 100 points. You have been automatically promoted to One-Star Lord.
……
The system notifications chimed three times in succession, and Shi Feng's level rose to 102. But the announcements left him momentarily stunned.
"Becoming the first Lord instantly maxes out the reputation to one star?" Shi Feng stared at the system notifications, barely able to believe what he was reading.
For players at this stage, the very concept of a player-Lord was still unfamiliar enough, let alone Lord Reputation. One hundred points of reputation was practically nothing compared to the major powers that frantically farmed Guild Reputation—after all, advancing a guild's rank required tens or even hundreds of thousands of reputation points.
But a Lord was different. Guild Reputation applied to a group, whereas Lord Reputation was tied to a single individual player.
And for a player-Lord in the Divine Realm, recruiting NPCs and assembling a personal Knight Order was no easy task. The process was no different from a player seeking out their own direct bodyguards. A full Knight Order had five thousand slots, and gathering five thousand knights of decent caliber was an enormous challenge for any individual player.
The only fast and efficient way to do it was to raise Lord Reputation.
The higher a Lord's reputation in the Divine Realm, the easier it became to recruit NPCs, and the more talented those NPCs were drawn to become. But raising Lord Reputation was extremely difficult—it wasn't something you could accomplish by simply running quests. Only certain special quests awarded Lord Reputation, and even then, completing them only netted a few points at a time.
Reaching one hundred points of reputation required an enormous investment of time and effort.
Every one hundred points of Lord Reputation marked a watershed. At one hundred points, a player became a One-Star Lord and no longer had to travel to various NPC cities to hunt for recruits. Instead, they could simply issue a recruitment decree through the Adventurer's Association.
The NPCs recruited this way might be of mixed quality, but there was no shortage of reasonably promising candidates—and with good luck, one might even recruit a Mythril-ranked bodyguard.
Naturally, the caliber of knights available through recruitment would also improve as Lord Reputation increased.
Shi Feng had originally been wondering how he would raise his Lord Reputation to one hundred points later on. Without it, recruiting his Knight Order would have been an exhausting ordeal that would take at least several months. Now, he had saved himself a great deal of time.
"Deacon Roland, I'd like to recruit Knight Order members through the Association," Shi Feng said, holding up the Lord Token and looking at the beautiful elf deacon.
"Certainly, but the cost of issuing a recruitment decree varies depending on the scope. Typically, a town costs ten gold coins per week, a city costs one hundred gold coins per week, a royal capital costs three hundred gold coins per week, and an imperial capital costs one thousand gold coins per week. Which locations would you like to recruit from?" Roland explained.
"That's not cheap at all," Shi Feng thought with a quiet click of his tongue. "No wonder the Adventurer's Association is known as the fourth most profitable power in the Divine Realm."
In his previous life, the concept of a Lord had been completely out of reach for second- and third-rate guilds, monopolized entirely by the great superpowers and the stronger first-rate guilds. They wouldn't even leave scraps for anyone else.
Now that he had become a Lord, he hadn't expected that recruiting a Knight Order alone would be so expensive.
Recruitment was fundamentally a matter of luck—issuing a decree through the Adventurer's Association didn't guarantee that any NPCs would come. To recruit five thousand capable Knight Order members across just a few dozen cities would take an absurd amount of time. Generally speaking, recruitment was only effective when casting a net across several hundred cities. Recruiting across just over a hundred cities—roughly the number in a single Kingdom—cost ten to twenty thousand gold per week, which was a significant burden even for a first-rate guild. If one tried to accelerate recruitment across four or five Kingdoms simultaneously, it would be enough to make a first-rate guild hemorrhage gold. Truly, the Lord system was something no ordinary power could afford to play with.
"Then I'll recruit from these cities."
After a moment's thought, Shi Feng rapidly selected the most prosperous cities across various Kingdoms and Empires, including the royal capitals and imperial capitals—a total of over four hundred cities. The single recruitment cost came to 44,500 gold, enough to cripple any current first-rate guild. After all, the top players of every major guild were frantically pushing toward Level 100, draining guild coffers and leaving very little cash on hand.
Zero Wing was in a comparatively comfortable position, with several towns and the Candlelight Trading Company generating enormous revenue—its income was not inferior to that of ordinary superpowers. However, since Zero Wing also had to support its headquarters and the Tiandou Training Hall, the guild wasn't exactly flush with wealth either.
"I need to find a way to increase guild income," Shi Feng mused after paying the gold. "At the current rate, there's no way to sustain a five-thousand-strong Knight Order."
A five-thousand-member knight guard force was undeniably impressive, but the upkeep was astronomical. This was nothing like the NPC guards recruited directly in a guild town, who only required a modest stipend.
A Knight Order belonged to the Lord as a personal fighting force—it wasn't like city NPC guards who served under the Kingdom or Empire and received subsidies from those governments. Every coin came out of the player's own pocket. Maintaining a single knight in the Order was extremely expensive, and the price varied wildly depending on potential.
Even a Bronze-ranked Tier 2 knight required at least fifty gold per week in training fees and wages. For five thousand knights, that was two hundred and fifty thousand gold per week—and that wasn't even factoring in weapons and equipment…
Just thinking about it made Shi Feng feel a renewed respect for those first-rate guilds from his previous life that had possessed territories.
With the Lord Token in hand, Shi Feng promptly left the Adventurer's Association and headed straight for the Candlelight Trading Company, ready to begin work on the Red Dragon Airship.
After reaching Level 100, the skies were the foundation of development. Whoever held air superiority held the top spot. Maps beyond Level 100 featured vast distances and treacherous environments—the gap between those with aerial mobility and those without would only continue to widen.
For the major powers, with their vast numbers and abundant resources, obtaining flying mounts was far easier than for ordinary guilds. That was why the divide between the major powers and smaller factions grew ever wider as time went on.
Flying mounts were things that came by luck and could not be forced. Even with all of Shi Feng's experience, the flying mounts he could acquire were extremely limited. He might be able to maintain a lead over the superpowers in the early game, but those superpowers controlled far too many territories and commanded far too many experts. Their flying mount numbers would inevitably catch up—it was only a matter of time, and not something he alone could change.
If he truly wanted Zero Wing to endure for the long haul, then airships were indispensable.