Chapter 1283: 414. Don’t mind making a big fuss
“I bet this is definitely a wrongful block! Anyone who opposes me, dare you bet with me? If I lose, my whole family will ascend to heaven. If you lose, I won’t ask for much, just an apology will do!”
Needless to say, this reply came from the Dark Disciple.
As soon as Mason Gray saw someone come to his aid, he immediately teamed up with the Dark Disciple and fiercely attacked the players who claimed he was an alternate account.
The same scenario played out on various floors of the thread.
Unknowingly, dozens of players had joined the Dark Disciple’s camp, beginning to unleash their firepower on other players.
Mason Gray quickly understood the situation.
...
All the players who were helping the Dark Disciple must have, like him, received a task from the Dark Divine Cult!
Sure enough, before long, the Dark Disciple pulled the players, including Mason Gray, into a group chat and said bluntly:
“It must be those selfish bastards from the ‘Gold Dragon’ guild that don’t want us loose players surpassing them, so they collectively reported our accounts! Brothers, I have a plan that can get us revenge!”
Everyone who joined the group had received the task, so naturally, there was no opposition.
They discussed it among themselves.
Half an hour later, including Mason Gray, the players ended the group chat, each created a character, and entered the game.
Some applied to join the “Gold Dragon” guild, while others spread out and joined other large guilds.
Great Guilds have their own schemes for absorbing new players.
They categorize new players into four ranks.
Fourth-rank players have no money, no time, no experience.
Third-rank players have time, but no money, no experience.
Second-rank players have time, experience, but no money.
First-rank players have time, experience, and money.
Third- and fourth-rank new players are directly rejected when applying to join Great Guilds.
Second-rank players can become official members after a probationary period.
First-rank players are exempt from the review and probationary period, and can participate in guild tasks upon paying their membership fee.
Above first-rank, there are special-rank players who have money, but no experience, no time.
That’s the big boss, responsible only for funding, occasionally logging in to enjoy the fruits of professional players’ labor.
The path the Dark Disciple led everyone down was that of a first-rank player.
There were 48 of them in total.
10 people joined the “Gold Dragon” guild, and the remaining 38 joined the “Eternal Club,” “Star Cluster Will,” and “Arrogant Fantasy” – three other large guilds.
They had already agreed on a plan.
The 10 members who joined the “Gold Dragon” guild would look for opportunities to initiate disputes with the other three guilds, ideally creating incidents involving player casualties and damaged ships.
In this process, some players acted overtly, while others guided public opinion in the shadows, exacerbating the issue and suppressing any voice that was favorable to resolving the dispute.
To sum it up in one sentence, they’d do whatever could get people riled up and blowing their tops.
If possible, it would be best to use honey-traps to corrode a few guild admins, making it easier to manipulate guild mechanisms and ignite conflicts.
It must be said that the Dark Disciple and his people had chosen a good time.
Right now was the crucial stage of developing the new expansion, and the last thing the Great Guilds wanted was outsiders holding them back.
Take, for example, the process Noland Lee had set up for registering as a Wizard Apprentice.
Considering the players contaminated by the Dark Divine Cult, and the possibility that it might extend to regular players who had never had their accounts deleted, Noland Lee decided to conduct regular checks on all players joining the Academy.
The method for regular checks was simple: encourage players to get into the habit of carrying out “Training Tasks.”
Noland Lee added the “Sparring with Magic Puppets” training task to the daily task list for Wizard Apprentices, offering substantial experience and item rewards.
After logging in, players would automatically pick up the daily task and head to the training grounds to engage in combat training with magic puppets.
During this time, Noland Lee’s Passive Deconstruction would trigger normally, thereby updating the basic information of the players daily.
This precautionary measure, amid the rush of players joining the Academy, instead became a point of exacerbating player conflicts.
Only because the training ground was limited in size, it could accommodate a maximum of 1,000 players for training tasks simultaneously.
Even though the training lasted only about 5 minutes, it still caused players to line up in long queues outside the training ground.
Noland Lee finished his meeting with Captain Leighton and two others, and when he returned to the Academy, he discovered that the queuing was severe.
He immediately commanded the Little Elves to build a new training ground.
But as more and more players learned about the situation at the Black Hole, the number of players at the Magic Academy soared rapidly.
Just as Noland completed the second training ground, the number of players had tripled, and the queue time had become even longer than before.
Noland straightforwardly built ten new training grounds in one go, seizing the opportunity to showcase the infrastructure capabilities of magical creatures to the players.
However, no matter what, short-term player disputes were inevitable, especially when someone was stirring the pot behind the scenes.
Members of the Dark Disciple and others seized the moment to cause trouble for the Gold Dragon in the Sky guild, publicly accusing them of intentionally delaying training time and hindering other players from completing tasks.
In the region outside the Black Hole, a few malicious members of the “Gold Dragon” guild activated their PK mode and, using the ships distributed by the guild, began to clear out escape pods that had warp-jumped near the Black Hole.
This behavior, known in-game as “egging,” was the most despised by players, and its maliciousness was no less than that of slashing at defenseless old men, women, and children.
The ones whose escape pods were destroyed were Mason Gray and others.
After their pods were destroyed by the “Gold Dragon” guild members, instead of reporting the issue to their own guild’s administrators, they chose to edit the video and post it on the game forums, with a clear attitude of not fearing the consequences.
In this era, the speed of information dissemination is too rapid.
Before the Dark Disciples and others could share the video, many media outputs had already spread the news, with some extremely eye-catching headlines:
“Shocking! To monopolize task rewards, the Gold Dragon guild actually did this!”
“See the true face of the great guilds! Does anyone still want to join such a guild?”
“Guild wars approaching! Gold Dragon guild takes the lead in attacking!”
“On the first day of the new expansion, Gold Dragon declares, ‘I’m the boss!'”
By the time the “Gold Dragon” guild reacted, it was already too late.
The major guild administrators bought off by the Dark Disciple and others, organized a Star Fleet without a second word, and began attacking the “Gold Dragon” guild members who had destroyed the escape pods outside the Black Hole.
Originally, only the players aboard the escape pods, which were provided free of charge by space stations as a humanitarian obligation, were harmed.
Now, however, the conflict had escalated, and the damage extended to the “Gold Dragon” guild’s escort ships and battle cruisers.
Even if it was just to save face for the guild, the “Gold Dragon” guild had to bite the bullet and seek an explanation from other guilds.
Seated in the Magic Academy, Noland Lee had a full view of everything happening both inside and outside the Black Hole.
He not only witnessed the full process of the “Gold Dragon” guild destroying the escape pods, but also noticed a few sneaky figures.
When those players who instigated the trouble were being attacked by other guilds, Noland secretly used magic on them from a distance, successfully triggering Passive Deconstruction.
The results of Passive Deconstruction were eye-opening for Noland.
It was the Dark Divine Cult behind it!
These players had also been tainted by the Dark Divine Cult!
Seeing that the guild fleets outside the Black Hole were on the brink of war, Noland hastily hit the emergency pause button.
He went to the academic records desk, selected the player IDs on the records, and launched the fifth phase of the Expansion Plot’s storyline task.
The first four phases of the task guided players to join the Magic Academy, and this fifth phase was related to the decimation of Angel Enterprise Alliance.
All the players assembled outside the Black Hole simultaneously received the task information.
[You have obtained the fifth phase task of the “Sweep the Ancient Evils” series of tasks.]
[Task Name: Take Down the Angel Enterprises Alliance]
[Task Details:]
[The mysterious entity of the Black Hole Magic Academy has reached a preliminary cooperation with the United Bureau. The United Bureau will open the Star Gate leading to the Angel Enterprises Alliance territory to all players. From now on, you will be able to pass through the Star Gate and reach the territory of Angel Enterprise Alliance.] noveldrama
[Mandatory Task: Scout the territory of the Angel Enterprise Alliance, collect information related to Resource Planets, Space Stations, Star Gates, Fleets, and more.]
[Optional Tasks: Capture Artificial Angels, completely transport production and Scientific Research equipment of the Angel Enterprises Alliance, defeat key members of the Alliance groups, etc.]
[Task Rewards: Experience, Academic Points, etc.]