NOVEL NEXT Chapter 80: Blood Gorge Erupts
There was a colossal difference between a Level 19 player and a Level 20 player. Crossing that threshold unlocked the third tier of talents—skills so powerful they could redefine a playstyle.
Ryan knew this firsthand. His enchanted weapon, Command, came from his Retribution build and had completely changed the way he played. The skill's sheer power made him almost untouchable at his current stage. Its damage and utility were so overwhelming that he had abandoned every other enchanted weapon he'd ever obtained. Even those he picked up later couldn't compare to the might of Command.
It was the same for other classes. A Protection Paladin who reached Level 20 gained a new talent that drastically boosted their survivability. That single step into the next tier of play made them feel like an entirely different character.
And what applied to players applied to monsters as well.
Level 19 players could usually handle monsters of the same level with ease, but a Level 20 monster was an entirely different story. Not only were their damage and defenses heightened, but many possessed unique skills—skills players envied but could never obtain for themselves.
This was exactly why Ryan had no interest in challenging the Level 20 Guardian. Even if he went now, he wouldn't be able to withstand her level suppression. The only possible outcome would be a party wipe.
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"Guild Leader, are you really not going? Maybe we'll get lucky like last time and snag some loot?" Moonlight Beauty persisted, hope shining in her voice.
Ryan didn't even hesitate. "No."
Moonlight Beauty sighed when she saw his expression. His refusal was absolute. "Alright… we'll go check it out ourselves, then." She gave a little wave and led the others toward the central area.
Ryan turned to the only one still standing beside him. "You're not going?" he asked with a small smile at Archress Mageress.
"The Level 20 talents are ridiculously strong," she said, glancing up at him. "It wouldn't make sense if monsters stayed the same while players got stronger. That's just not how games work."
Ryan chuckled and gave her a thumbs-up. She offered a faint smile, then jogged after the group. Watching her leave, he pulled out his Hearthstone and warped back to Astral City.
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As usual, Ryan's first stop was the Wandering Merchant. He scanned the wares and, finding nothing worth his gold, moved on to his daily routine: practicing his professional skills.
Jewelcrafting was the most profitable profession in the game, and when it had first been introduced, it singlehandedly crashed the market for high-end gems. The reason was simple: Jewelcrafting came with a decomposition skill that allowed players to extract gems directly from raw ore.
The math was absurdly in his favor. A single gem sold for about the same price as three stacks of ore, yet Ryan could break down one stack and reliably pull three gems out of it.
He mailed the extracted gems to his alt characters, who sold them on the market and bought more ore to feed back into the cycle. It was a self-sustaining loop that both leveled his Jewelcrafting and generated a staggering profit.
At this point, Ryan's Jewelcrafting skill was high enough to craft rings, necklaces, and trinkets suited for around Level 20. These early-game accessories were rare and valuable, so he mailed them to his storage alt to wait for the market to catch up. Once players started hitting Level 20 in droves, he would flood the auction house and rake in a fortune.
His storage alt's personal bank was fully expanded, a luxury that had cost nearly ten thousand gold to unlock all the slots. Over a thousand storage spaces were now almost completely full. If it weren't such a time sink to level another mule character, Ryan would have done it in a heartbeat.
The alt he was leveling now was also a Paladin. He spent a little over an hour each day repeating a cycle of accepting and abandoning timed quests to maximize his leveling efficiency. Then came the grueling part—over an hour of corpse runs, inching the low-level character into Stormhold Fortress.
But the effort paid off.
Within the Human faction, even though he was only Level 5, the alt had become a minor celebrity—a grand merchant who controlled a vast gem collection and had an appetite for high-value items. Almost everything rare passed through his hands eventually. Even items other players overlooked would skyrocket in price the moment he started buying them.
One could say that Ryan, with his alt character, was on the verge of completely disrupting the Human faction's economy.
But he knew his influence wouldn't last forever.
Soon, players would hit Level 20, and the racial integration update would trigger. The auction house would no longer be faction-specific—it would merge into a single cross-faction market. Items listed in the Human faction would then be visible and tradable to the Night Elves and Dwarves as well.
Once all three races shared the same economy, the waves Ryan was making now would shrink to ripples.
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After spending two hours polishing his professional skills, Ryan took another quick stroll by the Wandering Merchant, then logged off to prepare dinner.
His younger sisters were buzzing with energy, enjoying their first days in the comfortable, spacious house they'd just moved into. He could hear them humming nonsense songs, sprawled out lazily and chatting away.
To his surprise, Molly was also online in the game, a virtual headset on her head. But she hadn't reached out to him—probably just playing casually on her own.
Ryan went downstairs, bought some cooked food and fresh vegetables, and then, for the first time in ages, picked up a kitchen knife. He set to work in the kitchen.
When Molly and Mia finally remembered it was dinner time, they came out to find Ryan lounging in the living room with his legs propped up, grinning smugly. The dining table was already packed with a steaming feast.
After enduring the two sisters' gleeful teasing and pestering, Ryan slipped back into the game for the evening.
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The moment he logged in, the guild channel was exploding. Lines of messages blurred together, scrolling faster than he could read. And this was only his small guild of a few dozen members.
Ryan scrolled through the chat from top to bottom and quickly pieced together what had happened.
The Alliance of Light and the Dark Horde had erupted into an all-out, server-wide brawl.
It started with a dispute between the Human and Orc factions over the Guardian spawn. Soon after, other maps confirmed the appearance of a second Guardian. Language barriers, combined with each faction's desperate desire for exclusive ownership, turned the contested zones into full-scale battlefields.
This was nothing like the small fights Ryan, Moonlight Beauty, and Riverbank Grass had stumbled into during the Level 15 Guardian fight. This was a war.
The conflict swept up nearly every player in the contested regions. Even the game's official forums were on fire with reports, trash talk, and frantic updates.
Players in the safe heartland cities watched the chaos with mixed emotions—some envious, some jealous, others quietly relieved they weren't involved.
The fighting drew in countless Level 10 players who had just cleared their first official dungeon. Responding to guild calls and forum rallies, they poured into the contested zones, swelling the frontlines with sheer numbers.
But numbers weren't enough.
Perhaps the Dark Horde's racial traits were just better suited to PvP, because across every contested map, the Alliance of Light was being crushed. Human players in particular were suffering the most.
The elite guilds had already relocated to the heartlands after clearing early dungeons. The weaker players left behind simply couldn't stand against the opposing faction's veterans. Human players were even being pushed out of the forward regions entirely.
Three-quarters of the Blood Gorge was now under Orc control. If the Human faction didn't rally soon, their level progression would lag far behind the Horde's.
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Ryan logged in just as his guild, Flowing Light, was in an uproar, with members alternately panicking and boasting.
He didn't hesitate. He typed into the guild chat:
"Everyone get ready! Head back to Gantai Encampment. We're forming a raid group and launching a counterattack!"