Chapter 15: Dark Empire
The Ice Crystal Necklace was a quest item, which meant it was a guaranteed drop each time. The Frost Pearl was a guaranteed drop as well, so the only item that was not guaranteed was the Frost Arrow Rare Book…
“F*ck, am I really that unlucky?”
Li Yi was at a complete loss for words.
In his past life, Li Yi was a famous Trash Hand, and here he thought that everything would change after the reset. He never expected the halo of the Trash Hand King to still follow him here…
Notification: [Someone is looking for you. Please log out of the game and check it out.]
Notification: [Someone is looking for you. Please log out of the game and check it out.]
Two lines of red words appeared before him, causing Li Yi to pause slightly before immediately logging out of the game.
Li Yi took off his helmet and saw Chu Nan standing at the door.
“Hehe, the Virtual Helmet’s alarm system is way too impressive.” Chu Nan pushed his glasses.
“Why are you…”
Li Yi was extremely surprised. Although the Virtual Helmet he wore now was a gift from Chu Nan, the two of them were neither friends nor enemies. In other words, their relationship was neither good nor bad. They did meet in school quite often, but other than that, he and Chu Nan barely had any private interactions at all.
“What, am I not welcome?” said Chu Nan.
Li Yi said with a laugh, “How could I not welcome a personal visit from Young Master Chu?”
Although no one in school knew about Chu Nan’s family situation, he probably came from a very good background because he never lacked funds and was generous to boot. Things like giving Li Yi a helmet was nothing to him.
“Haha, I came here to discuss a matter with you.”
“What matter?”
The two of them exchanged some pleasantries, and then Chu Nan told him the secret behind this home visit.
Chu Nan had given away the helmets, but not just to Li Yi alone. In fact, he had distributed more than 100 helmets in total around the school.
“You know that I’m not very interested in games, and I don’t really know what’s going on in the game either. It’s just that my older brother made a guild in the game and he needs a lot of people to join him, that’s why he made me distribute helmets around the school.”
“That guild of my brother’s is really big, I guess it has more than 500 members. I hear that in the game, numbers equal to strength, so if you want to join my brother’s guild, I can put in a word for you.”
“A guild with 500 members? What’s your brother’s name? I mean in-game.”
“His guild’s called something like Dark Empire, I think. His name is Chu Tiange.” 1
‘Dark Empire, Chu Tiange.’
‘How familiar…’
The boss of the Dark Empire guild was the Dark Wizard God, Chu Tiange. His playing skills were average, but he was quite willing to splash the cash, wearing the ultimate Guardian Goddess Equipment Set with +8 Damage Reduction. Even in the past life, when Li Yi—a Cyclone Thief wearing a +7 Midnight Equipment Set—ambushed him from behind, all he could take was half of Chu Tiange’s HP, instead of killing him instantly.
In the previous life, Li Yi had no friends in the game, and he was especially bitter enemies with Chu Tiange. Speaking of which, the bad blood between the two of them had quite the origin story.
In the previous life, not long after Li Yi first entered the game, a female Wizard joined his party when he was running the Frost Labyrinth dungeon. The female Wizard did not know how to play the game and just kept triggering monsters everywhere. As a result, the whole party was decimated three times.
If this went on, the party would fall apart, so Li Yi kicked the female Wizard out of the party. In the end, it turned out he had kicked the bees’ hive.
The female Wizard roped in her friend, and her friend roped in members of the Dark Empire Guild. Together, they kept Li Yi trapped in the Frost Labyrinth Dungeon. Every time they saw him leave the dungeon, they would just kill him…
Li Yi was forced to farm in the Frost Labyrinth dungeon until he reached Level 25. He had to obtain a Stealth Skill Tome and learn the skill before he could finally get escape from the pursuit of Dark Empire.
Li Yi was the type to get payback where it was due, so he would find a way to get his revenge even if it was beyond his abilities. The Dark Empire guild already had more than 500 members in the early stages, so by the time it got to the later days, they had reached 1000 members. It was one of King of Pantheon’s mid-sized guilds.
If he went straight up against them, there was no way he could wind, so Li Yi came up with a plan. He joined a guild that was at odds with Dark Empire and used the power of that guild to fight against Dark Empire. This move was quick and effective, because within no time at all, the two guilds launched an all-out war against each other. Not long after that, internal conflicts rose within Dark Empire, and the party disbanded.
“Loads of people in our school’s joined it. This is Dark Empire’s group number, so if you wanna join, just register in this group.”
“Sure thing. If I wanna join, I’ll be there in a sec.”
Li Yi noted down the group number. He did not promise Chu Nan anything immediately, because he was still deciding on whether or not he should join a guild.
Joining a guild had its pros and cons.
The pros were obvious. There was strength in numbers, so when you were running a dungeon or doing a quest, you just had to give the guild a holler and someone would immediately come running to your aid. There were cons as well. Take guild activities for example—you could opt out of them once or twice, but could you sit out every time? This was even more so in the beginning phase, where you could die and KO infinite times without any losses. It was extremely common to get stuck at a boss for ten days or even half a month because there was no choice. Everyone had to strengthen their equipment together. It was not like joining a casual party, where you could decide not to go if you noticed that the other player had bad equipment.
“Yeah, it’s up to you. I won’t force you, you’re completely free to do as you like. If you wanna go, go ahead, but if you don’t want to, it’s fine too. I’m just helping my brother pass on the word.”
Chu Nan left, and Li Yi sat in his room, mulling over it for a long time.
When he logged into the Dark Empire group, he found that it was divided into many different channels. There was a channel for exploring dungeons, one for fixed 10-person parties, as well as a channel for private chats, and one for messy relationship business.
“Good day, I’m the receptionist for Dark Empire, Lil Fish. May I ask what business you have with us today?” said a sweet female voice through the receptionist channel.
“I want to join the guild, I have a recommendation from Chu Nan.” Li Yi went straight to the point.
“May I know your name?”
“Li Yi, IGN Dark Wing.”
After a moment, the receptionist Lil Fish said, “Authentication passed. I’ve given you an ID, now you can jump to the other channels.”
After a round of authentication, Li Yi nabbed himself a blue ID. He could now jump to the other channels.
King of Pantheon just opened its servers, so the guild system was not officially up and running yet. However, many of the most famous large guilds had already started recruiting members before the game even started. Dark Empire was just another one of these.
Just when Li Yi was looking through the guild rules out of boredom, an admin member 2 named Citation pulled him into a channel called United Front.
“Those who aren’t in the game now, pay attention. Log in and go to the back of the mountain behind Novice Village No. 253 to defeat the Wild Boar King. The Guild Master has said that all who join will get 1 point, and anyone who kills the Wild Boar King gets 10.”
Many large-sized guilds used a point system to manage their members, and the Dark Empire was no exception. However, they were different from other guilds in the fact that the membership points accumulated in the Dark Empire guild could be directly exchanged for cash.
As soon as Chu Tiange entered King of Pantheon, he showed off his great wealth from the very start. When it came to leveling up, he hired someone to protect him. When he came to equipment, he bought it with money. He even added an extra condition to the guild’s point system, stating that 1 point could be exchanged for 100 yuan 3 . Anyone who had 10 points could go to him and exchange them for cash.
The number one Wizard in the God Creator guild, Confused Fox, once described Chu Tiange perfectly in one sentence.
‘He’s dumb and rich, come quick…’
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