1 Lord of The Chaotic City

[Honorable City Lord, please hurry in building the defensive towers. The monster army has assembled and will attack in 60 minutes…]

The system's notification rang in his ears.

"Don't panic, don't panic!"

Li Hanqiang looked at his surroundings calmly.

As a Lord of the Chaotic City, Li Hanqiang knew that this was supposed to be his chaotic city. However, as he looked around, he wondered exactly where it was.

There was only a floating stone ball in Li Hanqiang's field of vision. It was gray and white in color, about one meter in diameter, and rotated slowly.

There were neither walls nor temples around. The ground was covered with rough stone slabs, and not a single plant nor soul could be seen.

Looking further away, there was no land, just an endless void. Stars were visible from every corner he could see that it was as if he was floating in a starry universe on a small piece of ruin.

At the same time, a huge black vortex could be seen in the distance.

Li Hanqiang shook his head. "Is this my chaotic city? It looks almost in ruins, and there are monsters still here to attack it!" 

It was the first day of the open beta testing for the super online game Endless World and Li Hanqiang had chosen the Lord of the Chaotic City profession.

Judging from the official news, every lord of a chaotic city was given a chaotic city at the start of the game. These chaotic cities would be isolated in the chaotic void and face waves of monster attacks. It was the job of the Chaotic City Lord to build defense towers, release missions to defend the city, and so on. All this was to showcase their individual strength in the chaotic void as they tried to strive in the Endless World.

To put it bluntly, the job of the Lord of the Chaotic City was to create defensive tower elements that were added on top of the traditional jobs done by the lord of the city. As such, the Lord's primary task was to build various defensive towers that would help them resist wave after wave of monster attacks.

It was through this that they would then be qualified to recruit armies and purchase horses1 in order to conquer the rest of the world2.

The player could trigger unpredictable events and rewards after successfully defending a city, and this included countless fantastical building blueprints and props that helped to ensure random trajectories of development for each Chaotic City.

It could be said that the starting point of every chaotic city was the same but over time, they would eventually develop into other things like an eccentric fantasy city, a magical city with swords and magic, or even a sci-fi city filled with steel machinery. Nobody could predict what the final outcome would be.

Li Hanqiang himself was an unemployed wanderer. After his parents passed away, he had inherited several properties. He lived by renting out these properties and therefore had lots of free time. Having had no other sustenance in life, he naturally became an online game enthusiast.

Before the open beta testing of Endless World, he had tried playing several other virtual online games. The characters he had chosen to play then were usually more adventurous jobs such as warriors or mages.

Although he had a competitive personality, it was a pity that he was not dexterous enough to keep up with the gaming skills required to play these characters. While his gaming experience over the years had given him plenty of benefits, he could only be considered a veteran when playing the job of an adventurer and would never be seen as an expert!

This had nothing to do with the use of Krypton gold3 or even a damaged liver4, this was a matter of his mentality!

The best words to describe a person like Li Hanqiang was someone who had a good attitude in a good game and would not give up when experiencing a bad game5.

There were also many different types of adventurer jobs in the Endless World. However, Li Hanqiang was completely aware of his predicament and dismissed those jobs in contempt, resolving in his choice to be a Chaotic City Lord and experience the pleasure of planning and conquering the world.

However, he did not expect that the beginnings of the Chaotic City would look like this.

"What kind of Chaotic City Lord am I? This is just a bare general6 situation. At this moment, I am just a Lord of Ruins." Li Hanqiang sighed, but quickly checked his attribute information.

—

Nickname: Li Hanqiang (Recognized as the player's real name by default. Player has one opportunity to modify nickname)

Occupation: Lord of Chaotic City (Owns Chaotic City No. 68)

Level: 1

HP7: 100

Talent: To be discovered

Skill Achieved: The Invincible Lord; Special skill, not upgradeable. The Chaotic City Lord is permanently invincible inside the Chaotic City, immune to any skills and damage. At the same time, The Chaotic City Lord cannot cause any damage to the invaders of the Chaotic City.

—

"The Invincible Lord! This is a good skill! I will not need to worry about being plotted against by others." Li Hanqiang sighed and then opened his inventory. There was only a single scroll in it, named the Basic Arrow Towers Construction Blueprint.

[Basic Arrow Towers Construction Blueprint: Exclusive item of the Chaotic City Lord. A basic arrow tower (first level defense tower) will be quickly built on the Chaotic Stone Slab after the item is used. Attack power: 35-40. Range of attack: 200M; two piercing crossbow arrows are released per second. The basic arrow tower has a huge upgrade potential (upgrade requires upgrading scrolls or unlocking related technologies).]

Li Hanqiang looked around while holding onto the construction blueprint.

The Basic Arrow Tower was to be built on the Chaotic Stone Slab, but what was a Chaotic Stone Slab? 

The game had just started and everything had to be explored. Li Hanqiang immediately started to walk and look around.

The first thing he noticed was a floating stone ball in front of him named the Chaos' Core.

—

Chaos' Core Level 1: The Chaotic City's core, where you can draw energy from the chaotic void and store it.

Current Chaotic Energy: 100/100

Energy harvesting speed: 1 point per hour

Description: Upgrade the Chaos' Core to increase the storage limit of Chaotic Energy. The next upgrade requires 1000 gold coins.

—

It was obvious that the Chaos' Core was very important.

Li Hanqiang understood internally that there was currently no actual city. How would you defend a city from monster attacks if there was nothing? All he had at the moment was guard this Chaos' Core.

Apart from the Chaos' Core, there were three other striking things that he noticed on this small ruin.

The first one was the black vortex that was standing some distance away. The words Space-Time Wormhole were written on top of it. This was understood to be where endless monsters would enter and attack the Chaotic City.

The second one was a stone-paved road of about two feet wide that was floating in the void. It extended from the Space-Time Wormhole all the way to the Chaos' Core.

This was the War Corridor.

Li Hanqiang visually observed the War Corridor. It was about one kilometer in length. 

There were also some square platforms with a light green sheen on the edge of the War Corridor. Those were the Chaotic Stone Slabs.

Li Hanqiang counted them, noting that there were only five Chaotic Stone Slabs distributed on one side of the War Corridor. They were all located at the midpoint of the War Corridor and were spaced only two or three meters apart that they were almost right next to one another. 

"Build a tower, build a tower!"

Li Hanqiang took action. He selected the Chaotic Stone Slab in the middle and took out the Basic Arrow Towers Construction Blueprint, throwing it onto the stone slab. A building over ten meters high immediately appeared and completely filled up the area of the stone slab.

The exterior of this building was similar to the ancient Chinese octagonal tower. It had three floors and was built quite high. On the top of the tower were the words 'Basic Arrow Tower' and a huge, fully-automated crossbow vehicle. The vehicle was already equipped with arrows as long as javelins and was moving around.

As a defensive tower, the Basic Arrow Tower did not require manual operation as it had an unlimited stock of arrows, coupled with an automated aiming and attack function.

[Ding! Congratulations to the player for successfully building the first defense tower. Now you can publish missions to recruit adventurer players to support you in defending your city.]

[System notification: Before each wave of monster attacks, the Chaotic City Lord is allowed to publish one city defense mission. This mission will appear in the mission panel located at the Chaos Temple for adventurer players to receive. The first mission published by the Chaotic City Lord will receive the benefit of a public announcement by the system.]

[System notification: Your Chaotic City currently owns 4 empty Chaotic Stone Slabs, which allows for up to 4 adventurer players to receive the city defense mission.]

[System notification: Adventurer players are required to be in possession of teleport tickets to receive the city defense mission. The price of the teleport ticket is 1 gold coin per ticket. After an adventurer player purchases a ticket, the Chaotic City Lord who issued it can receive 50 silver coins. (PS: 1 gold = 100 silver)]

[System notification: The player is requested to write a notice for the mission...]

Li Hanqiang touched his nose. This task of publishing city defense missions was very interesting. Every adventurer player who was interested in defending the city would have to buy a ticket!

Was that not the equivalent of a charged mission as adventurer players were technically required to spend money to defend the city?

The point was that for every ticket sold, the Chaotic City Lord would receive 50 silver coins. Was this a way to make money?

"No matter what, let's publish the mission first!"