The system's regional announcement broadcasted three consecutive times across the Star Valley region. Though the system's cold, mechanical voice was not loud, in that moment it seemed as though the entirety of Starfall Bastion had fallen deathly silent, as if time itself had frozen. Every last person wore an expression of utter disbelief.
"What just happened?"
"Starfall Bastion has been conquered?"
The members of the Silver Lion Legion felt as though their minds simply could not keep up.
The walls of Starfall Bastion clearly hadn't been breached. Not a single soul had entered the fortress. How could it possibly have been conquered by players?
At that moment, not only were the countless experts of the Silver Lion Legion left in a daze, but even Macafray, who had been commanding the battle, was completely stunned.
"What on earth happened at Starfall Bastion?" Macafray couldn't help but stare at the fortress over a thousand yards away, his eyes full of confusion. "Could someone have snuck inside and killed the final guardian boss?"
Though the thought crossed his mind, he quickly dismissed the possibility.
A bastion was not like any other location. While it was under lockdown, unless the main gate was broken or the walls were demolished, players simply had no way of getting inside.
Now, with both the walls and the main gate of Starfall Bastion still perfectly intact, how could any player have entered?
Even if someone could get in, the fortress still harbored several hundred thousand elemental monsters inside — all of them level 110 or above, with the weakest at the Lord rank. Forget a hundred-man Tier 3 team; even a thousand-man Tier 3 legion would be unable to challenge the guardian Legendary Boss under such conditions.
Moreover, even if some heaven-defying player had managed to get in and challenge the guardian Legendary Boss, a fight against a Legendary Boss would typically create an enormous commotion. Yet they had been keeping their eyes on Starfall Bastion the entire time and had detected no activity whatsoever within.
The only peculiar thing was that when they had attacked the bastion's walls, the fortress had swarmed out with forty to fifty thousand monsters — far more than the roughly ten thousand one would normally expect — with over a hundred High Great Lords among them. Even the Legendary Boss, which should never have left the interior, had come charging out.
"Could it be…?"
A sudden thought struck Macafray, and his gaze involuntarily turned to Shi Feng, who was in the rear collecting dropped items. His heart surged with shock.
In all their siege experience within the Divine Realm, no final guardian boss had ever charged out of a fortress like that. However, the Starlight Behemoth had been no ordinary foe.
After all, most weak World Bosses were roughly at the Domain Lord level — an existence that was essentially a nightmare for current players.
And a Domain Lord leading an army of forty to fifty thousand monsters into battle was exponentially harder to deal with than slaying one alone. One could even say it was several times more difficult than clearing out all the minor monsters inside the fortress and then taking on the guardian Boss.
After all, those High Great Lords under the Domain Lord's command were only slightly weaker than Legendary monsters — far beyond what ordinary Tier 3 players could hope to contend with. Sending over a hundred of them in together? As if sieging a fortress were as simple as pushing a pile of dirt.
If Shi Feng hadn't brought out the Ring of Gospel to counter the Starlight Behemoth's Domain earlier, Macafray would have already been bracing for losses of more than half his forces.
At that moment, from within the sinkhole, Shi Feng was holding a dark-gold token that radiated dense magic power — the very proof of a bastion's conquest.
A Lord's Token!
And it wasn't just Macafray who had realized what had happened. The Scarlet Witch and the others had also turned to look at Shi Feng shortly after.
"Is that it?" The Scarlet Witch's beautiful eyes went wide as she saw the Lord's Token in Shi Feng's hand.
Although she had already recognized that the chances of Shi Feng's group conquering Starfall Bastion were extremely high, the fact that he now held the Lord's Token — what was the meaning of this?
This was a bastion within Star Valley, one of the Forbidden Lands of the Divine Realm!
A Forbidden Land bastion that every major superpower in the Divine Realm had yearned for yet could never reach!
And now it had simply fallen just like that? If word got out, not even a ghost would believe it!
At that moment, setting aside the Scarlet Witch and her companions being dumbstruck, the entirety of the Silver Lion Legion had been rendered completely stupefied.