Level Leaderboard Announced!

Si Weiwei stood beside a river valley of the [ Badlands ] dungeon together with her brother, Si Luo. They were engaged in a serious discussion regarding the latest system updates.

Both of their expressions were very serious at this moment. Even Si Luo who usually had a cheery attitude looked unbelievably grim at this moment.

After all, this was a matter that concerned their family and their company.

Usually, when it came to company operations, the siblings will take their parents' words as law. However, for matters pertaining to [ Ark ] specifically, the siblings were usually the ones who called the shots. After all, this was the only field where their knowledge trumped their parents. 

"Si Luo, now that the system has released the level leaderboard and announced the level-60 sprint event, I believe most players who are above the level 50 mark will fully divert their attention into leveling up."

Si Weiwei opened the leaderboard as she spoke.

[ Ark Level Leaderboard (Hualong Server) ]

[ 1st place: Si Weiwei, level 57 Long Swordsman, Current experience 86% ]

[ 2nd place: Duan Lei, Level 56 Double Shield Warrior, Current experience 21% ]

[ 3rd place: Kong Qiu, Level 55 Heavy Swordsman, Current experience 97% ]

[ 4th place: Lu Jiayi, Level 55 Ice Mage, Current experience 89% ]

[ 5th place: Chen Shi, Level 55 Bowman, Current experience 76% ]

[ 6th place: Si Luo, level 53 Bowman, Current experience 32% ]

[ 7th place: Bai Xingjian... ]

"If I were a low-level player, I would've given up on forming parties to grind up my levels and instead, I would start farming Bosses or quests. By doing so, I'd at least be able to obtain the Map Fragments and locate the spawn points of the Guardians."

"After all, the number of low-level players is gargantuan, to say the least. I'm sure the competition will be cutthroat."

"In our case, however, since there aren't many players whose levels are above 50, we won't be facing the same problem. We can split the 11 Guardians equally amongst ourselves. As such, I believe that the developers introduced the level sprint just to keep us occupied."

Hearing this, Si Luo frowned and commented on his sister's thoughts.

"Sister, so what you mean is that [ Ark ] has laid out two paths for us to choose from. We either collect Map Fragments to locate the Guardians, or we should try and speed up our leveling process to reach level 60."

"If we were to focus solely on the leveling aspect, we might miss out on the Holy Guardian Beast, and we would only manage to obtain an Elite Guardian. However, I'm sure that there's a significant difference in stats between the Holy Guardian Beast and the Elite Guardians."

As soon as Si Luo had finished speaking, Si Weiwei nodded and elaborated,

"Indeed, this is the assumption that I've made while I came up with my plan. Moreover, the main reason that we're able to carry out this plan in the first place is due to the fact that both of us are above level 50."

"There are only 10 players who are above level 50 at this moment. However, there are 11 Guardians. I believe that everyone is vying for the Holy Guardian Beast as it holds great potential and might possibly be strong enough to transcend the concept of levels."

"Should someone manage to obtain the Holy Guardian Beast for themselves, the rest of us will be stuck with Elite Guardians instead. However, what I intend to do is to shatter this notion."

"Which notion, you might ask, Well, the notion I'm referring to is that all of us would at least obtain a single Guardian for ourselves."

Upon hearing this, a hint of doubt flashed across Si Luo's eyes. "How will we disrupt it, sis? The number of Guardians exceed the number of players in our bracket!"

"So what? Although the system stipulates that each player can only use one Guardian at a time, there's nothing barring us from having more than one Guardian Egg. Once we obtain the full map via the Map Fragments, we'll camp the spawn point and take the Guardians for ourselves. After all, the worth of Guardians lies beyond just money for us high level players."

"Right now, there are four players above level 50 who have the backing of large corporations. They are Duan Lei, Kong Qiu, and the both of us. As for the rest, they have only the support of small companies and are not worth worrying over."

"For the next few in-game days, I'd like you to pause your leveling progress and start hunting Bosses in the [ Ancient Town ] dungeon to farm Map Fragments. Aside from that, I'd also like you to recruit the rest of the top rankers besides Duan Lei and Kong Qiu and form an alliance with them."

Si Luo was a little surprised. "An alliance? Albeit small, they're still backed by companies of their own, and there's more than enough Guardians to go around. I'm sure they wouldn't form an alliance with us, right?"

"No, they will definitely form an alliance with us!" Si Weiwei answered with certainty.

"The level 60 Guardians aren't foes that one could take on alone. Moreover, based on their classes, I'm sure that their previous party members are level 40 players. Since those players will exist in a separate bracket, they won't be able to form their usual parties, and thus, they'll have no choice but to come to us."

"Tell them that as long as they form an alliance with us, we'll guarantee that each of them will get an Elite Guardian. At the same time, promise them we'll pay them 20 million Gold Coins as remuneration."

Si Weiwei then added, "There's no reason for them not to decline our offer. Moreover, we're definitely not the only ones who are thinking about snatching the Guardians. I'm sure Duan Lei and Kong Qiu share the same line of thought as well."

"Therefore, in the upcoming days, I'll return to the [ Ancient Town ] dungeon and hire a bunch of level 40+ players. Following this, I'll have them help me round up monsters and reduce the monsters' HP as much as possible without killing them. They'll then let me land the killing blow, and through this non-HP sharing method of gaining experience, I'm sure I'll be the first to make it to level 60. With this, our preparations of starting a guild will finally fall in place."

"Right now, my Reputation score is 800+. With the reward from the system, I'll hit 1,000, giving me just enough Reputation points to fulfill the guild creation criteria."

Si Weiwei stood up.

Si Luo also stood up and nodded. "Alright, I'll stop leveling up for now and try to talk to the other level 50 players. After that, I'll go and recruit some level 40 players and hunt level 50 Bosses. I'll try my best and farm up the Map Fragments."

"Seeing as there are only a handful of level 50 players, I'm sure the drop rate will be pretty high compared to the other brackets."

Si Weiwei and Si Luo walked to the [ Dungeon Portal ] at the side.

"Also, tell the other employees of all levels in the company to organize themselves and farm up their own Map Fragments."

"Once the upcoming batch of Guardians have been captured, I believe there's a chance where players will sell off their duplicate Guardians. While I doubt that this will happen, it's best to be prepared. Tell father and mother to prepare the funds to purchase those Guardians."

"Also, have we determined who the player with the full compatibility score is yet? Had we identified them in advance, we probably could've power-leveled them and they should've reached level 10 by now. We could've let them join the level 10-20 bracket of the Guardian event."

Following which, the voices of the two gradually disappeared from the [ Badlands ] dungeon.

"Oh yeah, Sis, I've managed to dig up some information about that Su Chen player. If we can manage to sign him on, I'm sure that he'll be of great use to us for the level 10-20 Guardian bracket."

"Then you'd better contact him as soon as possible..."

...

Fengwu Town.

Within Su Chen's room in an inn...

After seven failures in forging equipment, Su Chen checked the relevant changes of his [ Heaven Craftsman ] subclass' skill.

[ Heavenly Craftsman ] : Beginner Heavenly Creation, proficiency: 14/100;

Forging blueprints: 1, Enchantment blueprints: 0

(Times failed while forging white rank equipment: 7, White rank equipment enchantment success rate: 14%)

The beginner [ Heavenly Creation ] skill could only be used to forge white rank equipment, whereas intermediate could forge green, and advanced could forge orange rank equipment.

Aside from the line within parentheses, every other description were usual descriptions that every Heavenly Craftsman would have. However, it was that very same line within parentheses that Su Chen wanted to develop.

Things were going quite smoothly for Su Chen. He had already depleted all his materials, and his stamina had already fully recovered.

After returning all his tools into the storage bracelet, Su Chen then left the inn and headed to the trading alley and the quest pavilion within Fengwu Town.

The reason he headed to the trading alley was to replenish his stock of materials as well as liquor that would imbue one with additional effects.

As for the reason that he went to the quest pavilion, it was naturally because of the system's announcement.

Although the level 60 leaderboard had nothing to do with him, Su Chen felt that the Guardian event was something that was worth participating in.

Before long, under the guise of Fengwu Town's everlasting mist, Su Chen finally arrived at the trading alley.