Cold Spring Valley, Stone Forest City.
On the commercial street outside the City Lord's Mansion, Yuan Tiexin and Ziqiong were being received by Water Blue Rose as they approached the mansion's main entrance. Just as the two were about to enter, a group of freshly arrived Level 100 newcomers who had recently settled in Stone Forest City were chatting animatedly on the street in front of the City Lord's Mansion, their eyes filled with shock and awe.
"Are there always this many Tier 3 experts on a regular street?" a female Elementalist who had reached Level 100 exclaimed as she watched the players walking about. "Stone Forest City is insane!"
Tier 3 experts were currently the pinnacle of combat power. Even a first-rate guild that could dominate a kingdom would consider itself impressive with a dozen or so Tier 3 experts. And how many did a first-rate guild in an entire kingdom or empire have?
Those experts were spread across various NPC cities. Running into even one on a normal day was considered lucky. Even on the main boulevard of an imperial capital, encountering a handful was considered a good day. Yet here on any random street in Stone Forest City, there were fifteen to twenty of them — it was simply absurd.
For the players who lived in Stone Forest City, however, this was nothing out of the ordinary. Everything seemed perfectly natural, and they went about their business without paying the slightest attention to these Tier 3 powerhouses.
"There's nothing to be surprised about. What do you think Stone Forest City is?" the team leader — a Level 102 Tier 3 Shield Warrior — shot a glance at the female newcomer and said in a low voice, "Listen up! From now on, you all need to be careful here. Even though our Hundred Blossoms Palace is a first-rate guild of the Dark Night Empire, we can't guarantee your safety here unless you reach Tier 3 yourselves."
As the only city on the Level 100 neutral map, Stone Forest City's appeal to players went without saying. However, aside from forces that cooperated with Zero Wing and had a limited number of entry slots, the only way to enter Stone Forest City was by renting private residences within the city.
Renting a private residence in Stone Forest City was both astronomically expensive and incredibly scarce. Of course, "incredibly scarce" was relative to the total player population across several kingdoms and empires. Only the wealthy and powerful could afford to rent a private residence here.
It could be said that every player living in Stone Forest City either belonged to a formidable force or possessed extraordinary personal strength. Ordinary expert players couldn't get in even if they wanted to.
Because of this, none of the players who lived in Stone Forest City were to be trifled with.
If you accidentally offended someone — especially a Tier 3 expert — it would be an absolute nightmare.
Inside Stone Forest City, things were somewhat better. The patrolling NPC guards provided a deterrent, and Zero Wing had its own experts maintaining order, including Tier 3 experts making rounds. The city's Tier 3 experts were somewhat restrained and wouldn't act recklessly. But outside Stone Forest City? That was a completely different story.
That was the domain of Tier 3 Classes. The name of a first-rate guild meant nothing there.
After the Level 102 Tier 3 Shield Warrior finished speaking, the dozen or so talented newcomers from Hundred Blossoms Palace nodded repeatedly, not daring to say another word.
At this moment, they could clearly feel gazes and auras pressing in from every direction. The Tier 3 experts in particular even carried a hint of killing intent, as though they were eyeing prey.
If it weren't for the Level 115+ Tier 2 NPC knights on patrol, the presence of various Zero Wing and Heavenly Secrets Pavilion experts maintaining city security, and the fact that their team leader was a Tier 3 Shield Warrior, they had no doubt that these Tier 3 experts would find an opportunity to eliminate them and seize the top-grade Level 100 weapons and equipment their guild had prepared for them.
"It seems things are getting more and more unstable inside Stone Forest City too." Yuan Tiexin glanced at the several Tier 3 free agents and big-faction Tier 3 experts on the street, and his already grim expression grew even more serious.
He felt he had been somewhat too underestimate Stone Forest City's rate of development and the difficulty of managing it.
Although Zero Wing had over fifty Tier 3 experts — enough in number to rival ordinary superpowers — when compared to the total Tier 3 expert count across the various kingdoms and empires, Zero Wing's numbers were far too small.
Moreover, the Tier 3 expert populations of those kingdoms and empires would only continue to grow, at a pace that far outstripped Zero Wing's ability to expand. Just like Stone Forest City itself — previously, Zero Wing's twenty-some Tier 3 experts had been enough to dominate all other Tier 3 players in the city. But now…
Without exaggeration, Zero Wing's current Tier 3 expert count was not even a fraction of the permanent Tier 3 player population in Stone Forest City, and this gap would only grow more extreme. After all, Stone Forest City was a paradise for development in the Cold Spring Great Forest, and more and more Tier 3 experts would gather here, wanting to settle down and achieve greater growth.
And as the number of Tier 3 experts in Stone Forest City continued to climb, security would become an enormous problem.
With the city's current several hundred Tier 3 experts, Zero Wing's present Tier 3 expert count, supplemented by the Tier 2 NPCs, could barely maintain Stone Forest City's safety. But going forward, as Tier 3 experts grew ever more numerous, even if the Heavenly Secrets Pavilion dispatched a sizable number of Tier 3 experts to help, it would likely be very difficult to keep the city secure.
After all, once a player became a Tier 3 expert, they were a powerhouse no matter where they went. In large NPC cities, they could forcibly act and escape. What was a guild city compared to that?
Just like now, those Tier 3 experts in Stone Forest City had already stopped concealing their killing intent. They knew that Zero Wing could no longer keep everything under control. Without the absolute authority and martial dominance it once held in the city, it was only a matter of time before people began secretly making their moves.
And yet Shi Feng, of all people — instead of thinking about how to stabilize Stone Forest City's security and quietly develop — had chosen to try and restrict the various superpowers, practically forcing them to join forces and destroy Zero Wing…
Now that things had reached this point, even if the Heavenly Secrets Pavilion stepped in, it would be very difficult for Zero Wing to withdraw safely. These superpowers normally never joined hands, but when even multiple superpowers banded together, there was nothing to be done — they could only watch helplessly as Zero Wing drank wine and ate meat, growing ever stronger.