"We won!"
"We won!"
Mu Xin and the other Frost Heaven's Sword members stared at the massive screen, every one of them overcome with emotion — some buzzing with excitement, some filled with joy, and quite a few screaming in elation at this moment of victory.
"That was way too close." Shi Feng let out a quiet breath of relief.
In the end, their score had been only 30 points ahead of God's Miracle — a margin equivalent to just one hour of points from a high-tier resource zone. If the other guilds hadn't given up on contesting and launching sneak attacks at the last moment, the winners might well have been God's Miracle.
It had to be said that God's Miracle's foundations were more formidable than those of quite a few super guilds.
"At least everything went according to plan. Frost Heaven's Sword secured the seat, which means we now have both the upper district quota and the privilege to establish ourselves in a kingdom city."
Shi Feng watched as the guild rankings began to populate on the screen. Frost Heaven's Sword's score officially placed them sixth, and his mind naturally turned to the next phase of his plan.
In his previous life, after Divine Realm underwent its massive system upgrade, the entire landscape of the world had been completely reshaped. With the addition of third-party NPC factions, the major superpowers were no longer competing solely against player organizations — NPC forces had entered the fray as well.
And those NPC forces were no small matter.
Before the system upgrade, the number of NPCs in Divine Realm hadn't been particularly large. But once the upgrade was complete, the NPC population had exploded.
Factions that had previously existed only in books or in passing NPC dialogue suddenly materialized in the flesh.
In just a few more days, every major power would discover a terrifying truth: that the so-called vast player population was, in fact, a minority in this world.
That's right. The current player base of tens of billions amounted to nothing more than a small fraction of Divine Realm's total population.
A single kingdom in Divine Realm had a population exceeding two billion. The tens of billions of players, in terms of sheer numbers, were equivalent to perhaps five or six kingdoms — roughly on the level of a single empire.
But the players were scattered across every kingdom and empire on the Divine Realm continent, and even across numerous plane worlds…
The true powerhouses were the native factions of each kingdom and empire.
And there was another critical issue that came with the upgrade: the player protection system was removed.
This protection system hadn't made much difference during normal gameplay, since all it did was prevent NPCs from proactively targeting players. Most players had never even realized the system existed, taking it for granted as the natural state of things.
But the Divine Realm after the upgrade was a different story entirely. Once a player stepped outside the major cities, that protective clause no longer applied.
What did that mean?
An ordinary player would have a hard time imagining it, but for the player guilds that had grown powerful by then, it was nothing short of a catastrophe.
NPCs could now initiate attacks on players at will — bandit ambushes along the road, sneak attacks while grinding mobs, or simply being struck down on sight if someone took a dislike to you. All of it was perfectly normal.
In his previous life, he'd been robbed by fourth-tier NPCs more times than he could count…
Of course, those powerful NPCs didn't rob just anyone. They targeted those carrying extremely valuable items — ordinary goods wouldn't catch their interest.
This rule was going to be particularly troublesome for him now, since he was holding far too many high-value items. Under the old protection system, he'd had nothing to worry about when traveling outside. But now that the rules had changed, he would need to exercise far more caution.
Still, that wasn't the most pressing concern.
After the upgrade, the management of guild towns would be the real killer.
With NPC factions getting involved, things would be manageable at first during the early stages of the upgrade. But once those native NPC factions had completed their thorough investigations, they would begin moving against player guild towns.
If a guild town didn't have enough powerful forces to defend it, losing the entire town would be considered perfectly normal.
This was one of the reasons why, in his previous life, all the major super powers had eventually dissolved in Divine Realm.
The current situation was even more dire. During the previous upgrade, the super powers had at least had fourth-tier Class holders stationed in their guild towns. But now, forget fourth-tier — even third-tier powerhouses among the major super guilds were few and far between. Trying to hold on to existing guild towns would be nothing short of a nightmare.
The impending collapse of power structures was already foreseeable, and it would be far more devastating than in his previous life.