ch80- Victory and Strategy

Back in his room at the City Lord's Mansion, Alex let out a long breath of relief. While he could have quickly ended the battles by equipping his full "Dragon God" set or using the "Phantom Violet Shadow" weapon, he enjoyed the thrill of close calls and challenging fights. 

After winning all three of today's matches, Alex's ranking had soared to the top 200,000. That secured him the first-tier rewards for now, but tomorrow's battles would be even fiercer. With another round eliminating 90% of the contestants, only the top 30,000 would remain. 

Compared to other participants, Alex had finished his battles remarkably quickly—less than 20 minutes total for all three matches. With time to spare, he logged into the city marketplace, only to be shocked by what he saw: the "Dragon God" and "Holy Angel" sets, except for the two four-piece set bonuses, had completely sold out! 

Even without those bonuses, over 50,000 pieces of gear had been snapped up in just one day. Alex felt fortunate that he'd bought the full set without waiting for discounts; otherwise, he might have missed his chance.

The marketplace still had plenty of the "Dragon God's Might" and "Holy Angel's Light" pieces available, but it was clear why: saving up 20 to 30 million points wasn't easy for most players. 

Around 9 p.m., the rest of Alex's classmates started returning to the city after completing their own occupation missions. The recent capture of seven more resource points had upgraded East Sea City from level two to level three.

Earlier in the day, in addition to the monster lair Alex's team had conquered, two other squads had taken down two more resource points, bringing East Sea City's total to 11. Then, with Alex and his team capturing eight more points and merging with seven others from nearby strongholds, the city now had control over 29 resource points. 

They were just one resource point short of upgrading the city to level four, and by tomorrow, they'd surely reach it. Upon completing the "Level 3 Novice City" quest, everyone in East Sea City was rewarded with 10,000 merit points and 10,000 regular points.

Based on the rewards from leveling up to a level two and three city, Alex estimated that if Novice Cities could reach level ten, the rewards for reaching the capital city level would grant everyone 100,000 merit points and 100,000 regular points.

This led Alex to speculate that the "Million Merit Pack," which had been sold out so quickly, was likely purchased by the people of the Imperial Capital. For players like Alex, with their insane point-earning abilities, 1 million points wasn't a huge deal. However, for most N-tier players, accumulating that many points wasn't easy.

Whatever the truth, East Sea City had now expanded significantly, and even the architecture in the city was undergoing visible upgrades, with more varied housing options available. The city's population capacity had also surged, with 29 resource points allowing it to house up to 870,000 people! 

The previous day, when the city was first founded, it had a capacity of just over 100,000, meaning many players who had died previously couldn't be revived. Now, with the increased capacity, all nearby deceased players had been revived, with room to spare. Most of the smaller strongholds that couldn't secure resource points on their own had merged into East Sea City.

Currently, there were no independent strongholds left near the city. All that remained outside were wild monster zones, lairs, resource points, and an ever-changing wilderness.

East Sea City had grown to nearly one-third the size of the original East Sea metropolis, with a population of over 600,000—about a quarter of the city's pre-apocalypse numbers. 

However, one thought weighed heavily on Alex's mind: his brother had not come looking for him. 

By now, Alex had become the Honorary City Lord of East Sea City, and his name had been making waves in the arena matches. If his brother had seen or heard of him, he would have definitely come to find him by now.

But he hadn't.

There were only two possible explanations: either Alex's brother had not been revived yet, or he wasn't in East Sea City at all. 

In either case, Alex knew what he had to do—capture every resource point in the city and rise to the top in the Global Arena. Alex was confident that if his name became well-known across the world, his brother would come looking for him.

While his classmates weren't aware of Alex's inner worries, they did know one thing—Alex's gains today had been nothing short of terrifying.

Each of his classmates had completed at least eight missions. While they didn't achieve the highest possible task evaluations like Alex, their C and B-level ratings still earned them thousands of points and 3 to 4 skill points per mission. Combined, their skill point gains were close to 30, and their growth rates had increased by 500-600%. 

Their merit points had also seen a massive increase. With each resource point equally split among 27 players, everyone had earned at least 10,000 merit points, totaling 80,000 for the day from the eight resource points. 

Although this was far less than the 900,000 merit points Alex had earned from a single resource point, it was still a significant sum compared to other players. 80,000 merit points had the purchasing power of 800,000 regular points, and each of Alex's classmates had gained at least 1 million points in total.

As for Alex, his haul far exceeded theirs. Even if the combined gains of all 20 classmates were added together, they still wouldn't equal half of Alex's total. After all, he had single-handedly taken down more than 70% of the monsters.

Even Alex couldn't help but marvel when he looked at the seven long mission completion messages. 

Of the eight resource points he'd captured that afternoon, seven were successful, one had failed, and he had also completed a task to capture a monster lair—making for a total of nine missions.

All nine missions were D-level, and Alex had achieved the highest possible SSS rating for eight of them, with the remaining one earning an S rating. 

His total rewards were staggering: 190,000 points, 104 skill points, 25 super skill points, and 1220% growth. 

And the merit point total was even more jaw-dropping. With each resource point yielding around 900,000 merit points on average, Alex had earned over 7.2 million from the resource points alone, and with an additional 1.7 million from capturing the monster lair, his total merit points for the day were close to 8.9 million!

The regular point total was more modest—just over 500,000—but if he factored in the mineral crystals obtained from the monster lair, the overall sum was far more substantial.