MMORPG: The Almighty Ring

Jiang Fei obtained a piece of Drake’s meat that was required and left the place. He opened up the map and saw that the Snow Mountains that he was supposed to summon the Yeti King was very far away. With the time that was left, there was no way he could make it to the Snow Mountains before the server kicks him out.

“Meh, might as well take a detour for a bit since there’s no time limit for the Title Challenge Quest. Isabella, let’s go to the City of Sinners and unlock the Teleportation Circle there,” said Jiang Fei. Isabella replied with a simple “hm” and followed Jiang Fei to ride the Skygliding Dragon.

The Draconian Territory was located at the border of the Neutral Faction’s map. The City of Sinners was situated in the middle of the entire Faction.

Technically speaking, the entire Faction Region was divided into three areas. The first area was called the Combat Area where both the Light and the Shadow Faction reigned. In this area, players from the opposing Faction could kill each other for their own reasons. Here, NPCs would assist players in battle. Naturally, if players entered a Faction territory that they do not belong to, the NPC soldiers would attack them.

Besides the Combat Area, which took up almost more than half of the entire Faction Region, there was the Neutral Faction which was located up North. It was often called the Chaos Region as there was no rule. As long as no one disturbed an NPC, one would be on their way as they pleased. Even if you fought another player and broke his skull in front of an NPC, no one would interfere with you, even if the player you defeated belonged to the Neutral Faction.

The last region was where the Seafolk reigned, the Endless Seas. Since there were no players were Seafolk races, they could do quests in the beach, just like Jiang Fei did and gathered abilities to dive down into the deep seas where the Merfolk and Naga could be found.

Most players had chosen to side with either the Light or the Shadow. Only less than 10% of the entire player base of the game picked the Neutral Faction. Even though freedom was guaranteed, there was no Quest for war. As a result, their equipment and leveling progression would be severely impacted. For better or worse, with peace, there would be no war. If there was no war, there would not be loot for them.

Since the City of Sinners was not too far away, Jiang Fei only took less than half an hour to reach the gates.

As expected of the Neutral zone, all NPCs had their reputation level set to Neutral mandatorily at default. No matter how many quests you fulfill, there was no way you could increase the Reputation level.

Even Jiang Fei’s Romeo title was not in effect as the system had set it that way. Even though it was not too good for male players to court around, it was extremely relaxing for Jiang Fei since he would not be accidentally courting female NPCs just by walking close to them. Alas, not everyone’s dream was to have girls flocking to them.

First, Jiang Fei headed to the Teleportation Circle to unlock it for future usage.

Since Jiang Fei was not of the Neutral Faction, there was no NPC coming to his side to guide him around the region. He was on his own to do whatever he wanted to do.

“So this is the City of Sinners… It was as the legends had stated…”

Isabella was amazed by the city’s sights.

“What legends are you talking about?” asked Jiang Fei.

“There is a story that I had heard. Somewhere in the world, there exists a city where anyone could do anything they want. There was no rule. No restrictions. The phrase, survival of the fittest was the only one rule here. As long as you can fend for yourself, you would be safe. That is why there would be fights here and there,” said Isabela.

Coincidentally, as if the system was demonstrating what Isabella had just explained, Jiang Fei spotted a fight right after Isabella was done explaining.

In the previous region, the main city, players were not allowed to fight each other. They could but NPC guards would immediately catch and throw them into the jail as a penalty. In the City of Sinners, there was no such NPC. Hence, when players had found out that there were no restrictions to forbid them from fighting, all hell broke loose.

Naturally, dying would still have their penalty but it was too small to even care. Even though all of a player’s equipped gears would drop on death, items in the inventory drop at an extremely low rate. For better or worse, dying in this region would not deduct experience points. Hence, if an impasse was not resolved, players would easily resort to violence.

Besides fights and petty squabbles, the City of Sinners was the gathering point for Bandits and Thieves. In the main cities, the bandits would find it extremely hard to do what they do best. Even in the wild, players would choose a map with NPC patrolling to prevent themselves from being killed by the Bandits or Thief class players. In the Neutral map, killing had become the norm. Hence, the name City of Sinners.

“The best part of this city is still the auction center! If you’re lucky, you can get rare items there,” said Isabella as she jumped and clapped around like a little girl getting excited to go to Disneyland.

The auction was the only method of selling off stolen items. Even NPCs would sell their stuff there and as Isabella had said, if one was lucky enough, there would be priceless items up for sale.

“That’s interesting. Let’s go and see,” said Jiang Fei. He was excited about it as well. He had just obtained 200,000 gold coins as a reward from the Beyond Legendary Hidden Quest. If there was a place to spend it all, it would be in the auction house!

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” cried Isabella. The little Nephilim princess was too easy to understand sometimes. Judging from how Isabella had reacted to the auction, Jiang Fei knew that she had wanted to see the auction. Even though she was a princess, it was her first time coming into the City of Sinners that she had heard so much about.

Thankfully, Jiang Fei did not run into any problems as he asked NPC for the location of the auction. It was a Neutral zone after all.

The auction house here, in the City of Sinners, was different from the ones in the main city. Like a hotel room, a player would be separated from the rest of the individuals, like a dungeon.

“Hm, it’s so private!” said Jiang Fei after he entered the auction house. The room he was in, there was no buyer or seller. There were merely items on a window as the name of the seller was not displayed.

“It’s for the protection of both sides of the transaction,” said Isabella as she puffed out her chest proudly.

“Haha, thank you very much for explaining!” said Jiang Fei to play along with her cute little act.

Hiding the name of the seller and the buyer was a good idea since 90% of all the items sold there were obtained illegitimately. No one wants trouble for it.

Jiang Fei scrolled through the item list and found a few good items out of the mountain of trash. Most of the good items were artifacts that only NPCs would be interested in. They were just ETC items and could not be used for anything besides taking up space in a player’s inventory. Besides quests, there was no reason to keep them.

After scrolling for some time, Jiang Fei scoffed disgruntledly as there was nothing that he wanted. Then again, there were so many players in the Neutral Faction, to begin with. It would not be odd if others had already gotten them before Jiang Fei.