After Shi Feng gave his confirmation, Hei Zi briefly filled him in on Zero Wing's recent recruitment situation.
The appearance of Yixiao Qingcheng hadn't caused Zero Wing's recruitment to wither — quite the opposite. It had become even more popular, with more and more players signing up. Even players from other guilds were quitting their current affiliations to join Zero Wing.
The entrance to Zero Wing's headquarters was packed shoulder to shoulder, the scene having become a landmark of White River City.
Outsiders who didn't know any better assumed Zero Wing had already become the ruler of White River City, while those who did know secretly mocked the situation.
Zero Wing had originally been a guild of just over five thousand members. After two days of frenzied recruiting, that number had swelled to over ten thousand. If not for Yixiao Qingcheng's poaching scheme, Zero Wing's membership would have easily broken thirty thousand.
The reason was simple: many players would first pass Zero Wing's entrance test, then immediately run off to Yixiao Qingcheng, where the pay was triple — twelve times what other guilds offered. Who could resist such temptation?
"If this keeps up, it won't be good for Zero Wing either. We need to come up with a solution sooner rather than later." Shi Feng frowned slightly after hearing the report.
If Yixiao Qingcheng continued like this, they'd be hemorrhaging money like water, but every Zero Wing member they poached would further boost Yixiao Qingcheng's prestige and dramatically increase their power in White River City.
Others didn't know that the Underworld was backing Yixiao Qingcheng, but Shi Feng did. What's more, the four cities surrounding White River City were also under Underworld control. If a conflict ever broke out, Zero Wing would be caught on all sides.
After Hei Zi finished briefing him on Zero Wing's situation, he immediately headed back to the Zero Wing studio, while Shi Feng began his training.
The S-rank nutrition potion had finished absorbing, making it the perfect time to push his physical conditioning further.
However, compared to his previous intense training regimen, Shi Feng's current sessions focused more on adjustment and recovery. In the afternoon, he casually ordered takeout, ate, and logged back into the Divine Realm.
Facing Yixiao Qingcheng's current strategy of throwing money around, Shi Feng still hadn't come up with any good countermeasures. The only option was to strengthen himself.
The moment Shi Feng logged in, he resumed the monotonous cycle of hunting and killing monsters.
Over the past two days of searching, he'd roughly mapped out the spawn timers for the monsters around Sword Peak Mountain. If you wanted to know where monsters were most plentiful, Sword Peak Mountain was the answer.
But Shi Feng hadn't gone up the mountain. It wasn't that he didn't want to — he had a gut feeling that the Sacred Ten's inheritance wouldn't be easy to claim. Fighting Bone Giants and Blade Demons had already been difficult enough, but a Legendary-tier quest wouldn't be that simple.
If you had to name the most dangerous place in the Sword Domain of the Origin World, in Shi Feng's opinion, it was Sword Peak Mountain.
So he searched for monsters near the mountain's base, never stepping inside, quietly building up his strength.
In the Sword Domain of the Origin World, players couldn't earn experience points, and the only drops were fragments of Inheritance Chapters and Broken Steel Blueprints — nothing else. However, there was one advantage to the place.
Skill proficiency!
That's right. The monsters here were all Elite-type creatures of level 25 or higher. The Bone Giants and Blade Demons he primarily fought were even Leader-type mobs at level 30 — eight levels above him. Every time Shi Feng used a skill in combat, he received a proficiency bonus, gaining five or six points per use.
Out in the regular world, there were no endless high-level Leaders to farm. But in the Sword Domain of the Origin World, Shi Feng's skill levels climbed rapidly. Skills that would normally require enormous amounts of time to level up had, in just two days, all reached level 10 or above for his offensive abilities, with some even hitting level 11.
Once they broke through level 12, they would advance to Tier-One Skills.
Players had weapons and equipment that could raise skill levels, but such boosts didn't produce a qualitative change — they might push a skill from level 12 to 14 or higher, but couldn't advance it to Tier-One. That required the player to personally break through level 12 on their own.
Once he mastered a Tier-One Skill, Shi Feng's combat power would increase considerably. That was why he had the patience to keep grinding monsters outside of Sword Peak Mountain.