White River City, the Adventurer Association.
The Adventurer Alliance, formed by a coalition of plane factions, had turned the Adventurer Association into an absolute hive of activity. Just by walking up to the main entrance, Shi Feng could see groups of team players streaming in and out. Plane-faction players accounted for nearly half of them — a dramatic increase from only a few days ago.
Moreover, these plane-faction players were all quite formidable. The lowest among them were Level 98, and the highest had already reached Level 99, putting them significantly above the average level of White River City's local guild players.
"So many people already? Has it started?" Shi Feng glanced at the teams coming and going at the entrance, feeling mildly surprised.
When it came to the various plane factions, the real challenge wasn't the factions themselves but the massive influx of players from the plane worlds.
In the early days after the plane worlds opened, only the major powers within those worlds had the means to venture out. But as the plane worlds became fully accessible, even the factions controlling the passages couldn't maintain their monopoly, allowing vast numbers of plane-world players to pour onto the Divine Realm's continent.
Competition for resources on the Divine Realm's continent was already fierce enough, and now a flood of capable plane-world players had arrived. The impact on the continent's major factions could well be imagined, especially when it came to the resources in the various NPC cities, which had become a mad scramble.
Take the current Adventurer Association missions, for example. There were only so many high-level missions available, and with more people, the per-capita share naturally shrank.
With fewer resources per player, every major guild's development speed took a serious hit. For guilds that already had little presence in neutral maps, this was practically a death sentence.
This was one of the reasons why the superpowers on the Divine Realm's continent were being swallowed up. As for the ordinary factions, their situation was even worse — even without the plane factions' direct interference, this wave of plane-world players alone was enough to stall a guild's development entirely.
Zero Wing currently had a fairly expansive reach, with its own bases in neutral maps, so it could hold its own for now. But over the long run, the effects would still be significant, especially with the plane world's major factions and Zero Wing's enemies lurking about. A moment of carelessness could result in devastating blows.
With these thoughts in mind, Shi Feng promptly entered the Adventurer Association.
In the VIP reception room on the second floor, Shi Feng watched as the beautiful elven steward walked in. "Steward Roland, I'd like to see the current recruitment status for the Knight Order."
Five thousand territorial knights were the cornerstone of managing a territory. Though he had spent heavily on recruitment before, he had never dared to come — not for any other reason, but simply because he had no money. Even if he had come, it would have been meaningless.
A Knight Order was nothing like a town's NPC guards. There were no subsidies from kingdoms or empires; every single knight had to be funded out of the player's own pocket, much like personal bodyguards. Without substantial capital, one simply couldn't afford to maintain one.
But with the massive sum of nine hundred thousand gold on him now, he at least had the financial standing to establish a Knight Order.
"Here is the current recruitment status you requested." Steward Roland smiled faintly and handed Shi Feng a thick stack of lists.
Shi Feng merely glanced at the rough figures on the list, and his jaw dropped.
"These recruitment numbers are insane!" Shi Feng stared at the summary data, hardly able to believe his eyes.
Through the city's recruitment drive, they had managed to recruit a total of 20,164 people. Among them were 13,664 Tier 2 Advanced Knights, 4,814 Tier 2 Bronze Rank Knights, 1,669 Tier 2 Iron Rank Knights, 15 Tier 2 Mythril Rank Knights, and 2 Tier 2 Gold-grade Knights.
He had originally thought that recruiting five thousand would be an excellent result. After all, this kind of recruitment was far from easy. Without a city-wide recruitment drive and relying on players to find knights on their own, two or three months would be the bare minimum — and that was being optimistic.
Yet now, not only had they recruited over twenty thousand, but the quality was shockingly high.
From what Shi Feng knew, the superpowers that had established knight orders typically fielded knights of Bronze Rank on average, with very few reaching Iron Rank — much like how a player's Iron Rank personal bodyguard was considered rare. As for Mythril Rank knights, those only came from knight orders that had been cultivated over a very long period. And Gold-grade knights? They were absolute treasures — things you simply couldn't hope to find no matter how hard you looked.