Volume 3, Chapter 5 – Change

Although Xiaomengyao had met Xiaobingxue before, and indeed knew her, it was precisely because of that familiarity that she now showed an odd trace of hostility toward the Xiaobingxue Tianyin had brought back. Even Xingyu Muxi was looking at Tianyin with eyes that clearly carried a hint of disapproval.

So why had things ended up like this? Tianyin was completely confused.

Still, despite the strange atmosphere, Tianyin managed to settle Xiaobingxue safely within Eden City.

After its upgrade, Eden City’s various limits had expanded greatly, and the population had already reached six digits. It had to be said that for such a short few weeks, this level of population growth was largely due to the city’s recent upgrade. Its special trait, Refugee Attraction, had been greatly enhanced when Eden advanced from Lv2 to Lv3.

In other words, the effect that attracted refugees to join the city had been dramatically increased. Previously, only a few thousand refugees joined each day. Now, over ten thousand people were joining daily.

Although accommodating and managing so many people should have been complex, to Tianyin’s surprise, Xingyu Muxi handled everything with ease. It didn’t even look like she was busy at all.

The rise in population also provided a solid foundation for expanding the army. However, something that made Tianyin a little unhappy was that, even though the army cap had reached five hundred thousand, the number of NPC soldiers trained per day was still limited to just five hundred. In other words, no matter how much Eden upgraded, only five hundred new soldiers could be trained each day.

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Because of that, despite the city’s massive population growth, the total number of NPC soldiers barely reached twenty thousand. According to Xingyu Muxi, with such a small force, Eden could only defend itself and had no capacity for offense.

But Tianyin wasn’t worried. She had no intention of exposing Eden to the world just yet, so that problem didn’t concern her at all.

Besides, in these past few days, Tianyin had been experimenting with the newest power she had obtained.

One of the Seven Deadly Sins: Greed.

Yes, Greed.

Unlike Samael, this manifestation of Greed had no tangible consciousness or form. To be precise, the power of Greed had originally been held by the Grand Duke Sargus. Tianyin didn’t know why she suddenly came to possess the Power of Greed, but notably, she had acquired it the day after the Grand Duke Sargus’ death.

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It must have been something Sargus arranged before his end. She didn’t know how, but for Tianyin, this newfound power of Greed undoubtedly made her much stronger in her “Seven Deadly Sins” state.

As for how much stronger, Tianyin could pat her flat chest and confidently say, “I can take on ten of my old selves at once now!”

Although life had become peaceful and stable since establishing Eden, Tianyin was well aware that once the Graveyard’s remaining undead were wiped out in the Main World, Eden’s existence would inevitably be exposed to everyone.

And it was worth mentioning that in this period, players had begun taking large-scale actions.

As the chaos in the Main World gradually subsided, many ruins, lands once occupied by the Graveyard’s undead, had new, small cities suddenly built upon them. The owners of these new cities were, without exception, players.

Every one of these players was backed by a powerful guild. After establishing their cities, they gathered guild members within them and began forming their own NPC armies.

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Unfortunately, because players were serving as lords, NPCs seemed disinterested in these newly built cities, and few chose to join. As a result, the armies of these player lords were composed mostly of other players from their own guilds.

Even so, the act of building their own cities caused a massive uproar among the player community. Up to this point, this Virtual Game had always seemed like a typical RPG to everyone. But now, players finally realized that the game wasn’t just an RPG wearing a disguise. It was, in truth, a large-scale multiplayer real-time strategy game!

With that revelation, excitement spread among players, and the existence of the Lord Token was soon exposed. Suddenly, everyone was rushing into Instances and Main World expeditions, hoping to obtain their own Lord Tokens.

But what the players didn’t realize was that, even in this game, control over limited resources was still confined to those with power and influence. For ordinary players, even knowing about the Lord Token meant little, they would never get one. The distribution of such key resources had long been decided.

Still, as players began building their own cities, they soon encountered a problem: without NPCs, they couldn’t form NPC armies. With no NPC citizens, no one was willing to handle the city’s basic labor or shop work. Few players wanted to take on those roles themselves, leaving their cities awkwardly half-functional.

However, this situation didn’t last long. Under the leadership of the largest player guild, the Pantheon, the player lords signed an agreement with the NPC factions.

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The terms were simple: the factions would provide troops to the player cities, and in return, the players would pay for them in gold as hired soldiers. The catch was that the player lords had to formally join a faction, becoming part of it. Even so, they were granted high autonomy, with the factions generally not interfering in their daily affairs. However, when a faction needed to launch a campaign, the players would be required to follow military orders.

At first glance, this agreement seemed perfectly reasonable. After all, the factions were granting players access to NPC troops and protection under their banners. Though some obligations came with it, for the player lords, this partnership appeared to be mutually beneficial.

It was, at least on paper, a win-win situation.

Thus, under that belief, most player lords chose to sign the agreement.