"It's starting! The battle finally begins!"
"Holy crap! This is the spectator area? This is insane!"
……
As players took their seats one after another, those who had come to watch the matches were absolutely electric. Every one of them stared at the surroundings in disbelief, marveling with excitement.
At this moment, everyone was suspended high in the firmament, as if an enormous ancient Roman colosseum had been erected above all the islands. The entire arena resembled a game board, while the islands were like smaller boards within it, and the competing players were the pieces.
Nineteen lines across and down, the whole world is mine!
Spectators could freely select which island to watch from their seats and even zoom in for a closer look. The entire battlefield of each island was laid bare before them. The only downside was that the zoom was limited — thirty meters above the island at most, so truly detailed observation wasn't possible.
If you wanted a truly immersive viewing experience, you had to be in the VIP spectator rooms. The VIP rooms even had combat alerts that let you catch the action the moment it started, so you wouldn't miss any thrilling fights simply because the battlefield was too vast.
While the spectators above the arena screamed and gasped, the major guilds that had been randomly assigned to the eighteen islands immediately sprang into action.
"Whether our guild can rise to become a Divine Realm powerhouse all comes down to this battle. Anyone who stands out in this tournament will receive focused development from the guild afterward."
"Listen up — our thousand-man squad has only two objectives. First, secure a mid-tier or higher resource node as quickly as possible. Second, hold it at all costs."
"We've got decent luck. On this island, our guild has five three-hundred-man squads. Command has ordered us to grab a top-five score on this island. As long as we hit that target, everyone gets two thousand guild contribution points!"
……
In an instant, the major guilds across the island went into a frenzy of activity. The tension was so thick that even the spectators overhead couldn't help but get hyped up.
Meanwhile, inside a VIP battle room.
"The Five Great Super Guilds really are something else. Their depth of resources blows every other guild out of the water." Mu Lingsha gazed at the eighteen islands displayed before her, every data point laid out at a glance, and felt a rush of indescribable admiration.
The smallest of the five super guilds fielded at least fifty-three squads, while the largest had sixty-one. Each guild had six or more hundred-man squads, and every hundred-man squad leader was a legendary figure known throughout the virtual gaming world.
Compared to other guilds, the gap wasn't just a little — it was staggering.
In truth, just from the opening distribution, most other guilds had already lost their chance.
There were eighteen islands in total, and ordinary guilds typically had players on only five or six of them. The super guilds had a minimum of eleven, and some even had thirteen. From the very start, the other guilds were already half a step behind.
Of course, there were a few particularly lucky guilds that had managed to land on eight or nine islands. But when your numbers on each island were barely enough to survive, let alone secure resource nodes, it was practically a pipe dream.
The Five Great Super Guilds, on the other hand, had their forces spread relatively evenly. Even on one or two islands where a guild didn't have many people, it didn't matter much in the grand scheme of things, because on the majority of islands, each super guild had enough members to comfortably place in the top five for guild score.
The Five Great Super Guilds securing spots among the Twelve Reserve Guilds was now a foregone conclusion.
"Right now, just looking at the distribution, God's Miracle and the Sacred Law Temple have the best shot at claiming the sixth seat. Both guilds have people on nine islands, and they're spread fairly evenly. The other guilds are clearly a tier below," Bumie Zhanxin analyzed.
"No!" Mu Lingsha glanced at Frost Heaven's Sword, which Zero Wing was assisting, and showed a flicker of surprise. "Frost Heaven's Sword is doing quite well too — they actually have people on seven islands."