MMORPG: The Almighty Ring

After resting for a night, Jiang Fei found his thoughts occupied by 0541’s energy crisis issue, rather than school.

In fact, Jiang Fei did not dare to nonchalantly bring potions or other items out of the game anymore. After all, doing so would cost him the remaining energy stored in 0541. If the items he brought out were subpar, it would only be a waste.

In all honesty, Jiang Fei had earned hundreds of millions of dollars from Han Tianyu’s previous payment. Although he only sold thirty bottles of potions to Han Tianyu and the Zhang household, the price of each bottle was far higher than what the military could afford to pay. Therefore, the amount of money he received was overwhelming. If Jiang Fei spent this money purchasing non-weaponized nuclear fuel from the black market, he could perhaps replenish 0541’s energy, somewhat. However, as Jiang Fei had only recently been exposed to the more intricate complexities of the world, he was still unaware of many things. As such, he also did not know that he could purchase nuclear fuel from the black market.

After returning home from school, Jiang Fei stared at the ring on his hand blankly. This was the last day of the game’s maintenance. He still could not log in to the game. Jiang Fei was not even aware that he had fallen asleep after some time. Despite that, he still had not figured out a way to obtain nuclear fuel!

After the day had passed, Jiang Fei gave Zhang Yangxu a call. He wanted to explore more ways of producing nuclear energy. Based on the current prospects, this was the only source of energy that he could obtain!

“What? You have used up all three thousand rounds of bullets?”

Zhang Yangxu was stunned. After all, these weapons had been designed to outlast any other weapon in terms of ammunition.

“Hehe, I was toying around with it. I was not really paying attention until it went all empty!” Jiang Fei said as he laughed.

“Fine. I will send over more bullet clips to you tonight. However, bear in mind that depleted uranium is still highly toxic. Please do not disassemble it recklessly. If you have no way of disposing of it, I can do it for you!” Zhang Yangxu warned him.

Giving Jiang Fei a few more nuclear batteries would not hurt. These battery packs were not exactly cheap, but if it kept him on Jiang Fei’s good side, it was worth it. Even better if it allowed him to purchase potions from Jiang Fei.

Last time, he had bought thirty bottles of potion. In less than half an hour, the potions had all been distributed amongst the big fellows in each household. In the eyes of these people, no amount of money could match the value of life. If not for Chen Kaiyin’s great efforts, these people would have poked their fingers into the affairs of the military.

“Alright. I will wait for you at the same junction after school!” Jiang Fei said and nodded.

After school was over in the afternoon, Zhang Yangxu was indeed waiting for Jiang Fei at the quiet and deserted alley.

“Here you go! These five nuclear batteries can be used to discharge ten thousand shots. Be careful when playing with them. Adjust the power to the lowest level so that you don’t hurt anyone!” Zhang Yangxu laughed as he handed the nuclear batteries over to Jiang Fei.

“Alright!” Jiang Fei nodded. He was finally able to feed the mysterious ring with some energy, although the little bit of energy would never satisfy 0541.

However, it would at least allow 0541 to remain conscious and not get cut off when answering Jiang Fei’s questions.

“Oh yeah, do you need me to take care of those empty clips?” Zhang Yangxu asked almost too politely. He had actually hoped to recycle the used nuclear batteries.

“Why would I bring that to school? Once I’m done with these, I’ll return them to you together with the rest!”

Jiang Fei obviously would not tell Zhang Yangxu that he had disassembled the batteries himself!

“That’s true!” Zhang Yangxu laughed and shook his head, no longer pursuing the matter.

After parting ways with Zhang Yangxu, Jiang Fei went to a corner where no one was looking. He then used the ring on his hand to slice open the five nuclear batteries. The ring immediately started absorbing the energy released from the batteries. Although the radiation was practically in Jiang Fei’s face, he was not even affected in the slightest!

The energy was hardly enough for 0541. Therefore, 0541’s main program did not immediately activate and remained in Sleep mode. A non-intelligent backup program was still controlling the internal settings of the ring.

Once he returned home, Jiang Fei had dinner and went into his room. The game’s maintenance should have concluded, and Jiang Fei would be able to enter the game at night to experience the new content.

At 10 o’clock, Jiang Fei immediately logged into the game.

Right away, he noticed a major change in the city.

Firstly, the city area had been expanded rather extensively. The streets were much wider, and there were several new shops. There was also the addition of a large number of service type merchants and also, two new buildings in Dawnlight City!

Intercity Teleport Portal! (Locked!)

This was one of the new buildings. As its name suggested, the teleport portal was where the four main cities in the game met. However, for the time being, the teleport portal was still in a locked state. It would take some quests to gain its access.

Apart from the Intercity Teleport Portal, there was a vast PVP Arena in the middle of Dawnlight City! This was where players could fight each other to test their skills or to resolve conflicts. There were options of selecting between individual or team PVP. Although dying in the arena would not result in any xp or material losses, the PVP arena did feature a betting function of sorts.

After selecting the mode, both parties, regardless of individuals or teams, would need to hand over their stakes to the depository in the arena. There were three modes of battling for victory, namely best two out of three, best three out of five, and single combat.

Players were free to select their desired modes. Once either side won based on the selected mode, the stakes would immediately go to the winning individual or team!

Of course, the betting was not limited to the involved parties. Other players could also observe the PVP fights and place their bets. However, observers were only allowed to bet with gold coins. The system would also charge a part of the bet amount as commission to keep some of the gold coins in circulation while still entertaining players. The rationale behind this was to avoid unregulated inflation of the gold coins when the amount of currency dropped by monsters at higher Levels increased.

The changes in the monsters outside of the city were even more drastic. There were hardly any lone monsters out in the wild. Most monsters now roamed in packs, with each individual member experiencing a rather significant power boost.

The new version of the game evidently placed an even greater importance on forming teams and collaboration. Apart from a minority of unusually strong players, most players could no longer train or hunt for treasures alone!

“Level 29 Sprint Team! We will train at the eastern gate area. One Healer is needed! We will leave immediately!”

“Level 30 Rapid Levelling Team. We need an Attacker!”

“Monster Killing Team for Second Job Classes. Leveling and treasure hunting. Those who have not advanced to the Second Job Class, do not bother requesting!”

“Small Accounts Happy Levelling Team. First come first serve. We have pretty girls to chat with you so that Levelling would be fast and not one bit dull!”

…

The four city gates of Dawnlight City were now much livelier than before. Clearly, players had realized that attempting to train alone was futile unless they teamed up. Therefore, a lot of shouting could be heard at the city gates!

Apart from changes to the small monsters, the difficulty of Leaders had also been decreased to grant standard pub players an opportunity to experience the fun of killing monsters in the wild. However, the difficulty or Lords were increased significantly. What was once the level of difficulty for military groups was now the level for standard groups. However, those changes did not really affect most players. After all, the players were mostly only around Level 30. The Lords started appearing at Level 50. Apart from Jiang Fei who had the ridiculous capability of single-handedly fighting Lords, it barely mattered to anyone else.