Chapter 2931

Firewing Empire, Firewing Imperial Capital:

The afternoon sun glared from the heavens, basking the earth in its unrelenting presence. Hours of daylight were windless and blazing hot, while hours of darkness were cold and brought occasional sandstorms; neither featured any semblance of humidity - only drought.

Firewing Imperial Capital was an enormous city, besides having the status as the Empire's Capital City, it was also an Intermediate Main City with over hundred million inhabitants. The city was located in one of the many desert regions of the Firewing Empire.

Such environment would be maddening to deal with on earth; agriculture would wilt and drinkable water would vaporize. Drought came with nothing but hunger and thirst, and its consequent death.

In God's Domain, however, those trained in the arcane arts were able to manipulate the ambient mana to summon the rain, as a consequence, food and water were available in abundance within the city.

The Firewing Imperial Capital was the wealthiest city in the Firewing Empire, and this was thanks to this very unrelenting environment and its corresponding unique advantages.

The majority of monsters within the city region were fire type Elemental Beings, which had a slight chance to drop fire attribute weapons, fire resistance equipment, and fire-type consumables. Fire attribute items were extremely rare and high demand in the rest of God's Domain, as some specific Dungeons and Neutral Maps were impossible to survive without them.

Firewing Imperial Capital was also very popular for players. Since most monsters were of the fire attribute, players assembled parties exclusively armed with ice- and water-type weapons and fire-resistance equipment. Fire Elemental Beings would incur double damage from ice- and water-type attacks and dealt less damage against armour with fire-resistance. This allowed the players to grind their level quicker while also selling the fire-attribute drops for high price in the city.

Today, however, the city was even more busy than usual, streets were bursting with players and NPCs alike. The city had an atmosphere like a festival and on each side of the road were numerous stalls with players and NPC's hawking their wares.

"Flame Potion, 70 Silver each, five for 3 Gold!"

"Flame Crystals, 1 Gold per stack!"

"Basic, Intermediate and Advanced Fire Resistance Potions for sale! Also limited stock of Flame Protection Potions!"

"Engorging Hearthcinder Shield, 500 Gold!"

"What? That's a Level 170 Fine-Gold ranked Shield!"

"Fine, I'll buy it for 500 Gold!"

"No way, I bid 510 Gold!"

Millions of players and NPC were trading their wares along the streets; while it was much more convenient to sell their items in the Firewing Imperial Capital's Auction House, players preferred to sell their items in the streets because the city's Auction House would commission a 15% handling fee.

While second- and first-rate Guilds and Adventurer Teams within the Empire's top 100 had abundant wealth due to their investors and shareholders, more than 99% of the players made a living by exchanging their daily loot for Credits. The auction house's handling fee was too much of a burden on the daily revenue of the lower Tier players, thus they decided to peddle their loot in the streets.

While the handling fee of 15% may seem much, it was actually a strategic decision of the current Auction House managers since other imperial cities normally charged 20% commission. Hence, Firewing Imperial Capital's auction house became the main location for players to sell their items, causing the city to develop into a gigantic marketplace.

The influx of the population and fame had even triggered the city promotion from a Basic Main City to an Intermediate Main City, after only the short period of half a year.

In one of several dozens of Teleportation Halls, the Teleportation Gate to Whitequartz Town lit up with a bright mana ripple, revealing two cute women.

The slightly taller lassie had long red hair draped over her hips, while the shorter had half short blond hair; yet, despite her shorter hair, she beamed peerless femininity. However, as God's Domain crawled with lecherous frogs thirsting over the flesh of a swan, they donned themselves in black cloaks.

Even before the brightness died out, the young lass with long red hair jumped out of the Teleportation Portal Gate.

"Rue, wait up! I'll lose you in this crowd!" the young lady with half short blond hair shouted.

"Gaia, come, hurry up, the Auction Arena registration will be closing soon!"

It was especially busy in the city because today was the monthly Auction Arena System. These competitions were held in all NPC Cities at the same time to prevent the various superpowers, who had an absolute advantage in terms of resources and experts, from monopolizing the Auction Arena System in every NPC city.

Whoever won the Auction Arena would earn various rewards; however, the most important reward were the partial management rights of the Auction House of Firewing Imperial Capital. The Auction management rights could be secured by anyone, even solo players. After taking control, one would secure a certain percentage from all the Auction House transactions and could decide who was allowed to enter the Auction House.

Every month's rules and competition were different, and this month's competition was especially exciting for new players like Gaia and Rue.

Up to five players could sign up as a team and would face each other one by one until a single team was left standing. Every player would start off as Level 0, Tier 0, and their equipment would be temporarily reduced to Trash ranked equipment. Players could also bring their Tools and Consumables, but their effects were rendered useless inside the combat zone.

After each match, players received Auction Arena Points based on their performance and these could be exchanged for Levels, Tiers, but also equipment, tools and consumables which they could keep after the event!

"Rue, just wait for a second!" Gaia yelled as she hurriedly moved through the crowd out of the Teleportation Hall. The rowdy streets were crammed with experts and merchants.

"Fire Essence Stone! Almost sold out!"

"Tier 1 Scarlet Devil Flame, 600 Gold!"

"That is a Mysterious Flame? I'll buy it right now!"

Gaia and Rue wore their Guild Emblem over their left chest, a white four-pointed star. They were both members of Starwish, an unranked Guild.

Life in God's Domain wasn't pretty when you aren't strong nor had a guild's protection. The game was full of power abusers - players who misused their strength and numbers to threaten, blackmail, extort and harass weaker players. Threats of being killed back to Level 0 was day-to-day business. After all, the NPC Town Guards only responded to physical assault.

Players without any Guild Emblem were easy prey. For this reason, Rue and Gaia had joined Starwish because just wearing a Guild Emblem was already great deterrence against power abusers.

God's Domain counted millions of Guilds, it was impossible to be familiar with all of them, especially for poorly informed players who resided around towns. These third-rate and second-rate Guilds couldn't afford to inadvertently step on a snake's tail; it might cause their guild to be wiped off the face of God's Domain.

"Hey! Watch where you're going!" yelled a Level 178 Berserker to Gaia, after she accidentally bumped into him.

"S-Sorry!" Gaia stuttered as gave an apologizing bow. She gave the bear of a berserker an anxious glance, then gasped audibly from astonishment.

He was wearing a cloak and a gigantic battle-axe on his back, but the gleaming armour underneath the cloak had the characteristic glow of Secret-Silver rank. The mere sight of such high-ranked armour caught her breath as it was rarely seen in the town where she came from.

Gaia pulled the cloak over her face to cover her embarrassing fluster and quickly heading off, catching up with Rue.

God's Domain had developed to a stage where unrated Guilds were forced to develop in smaller NPC towns, and third-rate Guilds hardly survived in NPC cities. There was no place for a small Guild in the cities of God's Domain.

Likewise, Gaia and Rue were too weak to earn enough to afford the unreasonable payments of the city, such as entrance fees, teleportation fees, equipment and weapon maintenance, meals, potions, scrolls and other consumables. Not to mention, due to the higher demand, everything in cities was slightly more expensive than in towns.

As for equipment, Rue and Gaia could only afford Advanced Rank Equipment, and a few pieces of under-levelled Bronze Rank Equipment.

Bronze Rank had slightly better stats than Secret-Silver Rank with five levels lower and the maintenance costs of Bronze Rank were much lower than Secret-Silver ranked equipment. For these reasons, players tried to wear the highest-level equipment possible, consequently, catching sight of someone wearing Secret-Silver ranked equipment would mean their equipment was the maximum level they could wear.

"Watch your step dummy!" Rue criticised "We were lucky, that Guild Emblem was of Shadowsnake, a second-rate Guild! If we had caught his ire, not only would Starwish expel us without a second thought, we'd be better off creating a new accounts!"

"No, you should've waited for me to catch up!" Gaia scoffed displeased.

Rue heaved a deep sighed, involuntarily raising her shapely chest underneath her cloak "It doesn't matter; fortunately, nothing happened. Come on, the auction house is this way."

Unrated guilds couldn't afford to offend a third-rate Guild, let alone a second-rate Guild. Behind every rated Guild stood a Workshop that hired experts which average players like them couldn't compare to. They couldn't fathom how massive the difference was, all they knew was that third-rate, second-rate Guilds were tyrannical existences.

After running for several miles through the crowded streets, Rue and Gaia arrived before an enormous building which resembled a colosseum. "Here it is." Rue said as she was catching her breath.

"Mhm" Gaia hummed in response.

The Auction House was only six storeys tall, while the surrounding buildings had at least ten floors. However, its shortcomings in height were more than compensated by its size. It was a gigantic oval building covering several street blocks and its giant walls were covered with multiple giant hologram screens .

Players had formed a tightly packed crowd surrounding the auction house, they watched excitedly to the enormous holographic screens, witnessing the replays of the Auction Arena of the last several months.

The young women pressed through the crowd and found their way to the back of the registration queue. The young ladies gaped at the sight of a dozen of experts ahead of them, it wasn't because the queue was long but because of the experts' Level, Tier and equipment standards.

Gaia and Rue were classmates in the real world and started playing God's Domain only a month ago; yet, both were already Tier 2, Level 48. They had levelled up so fast because of the EXP Potion, introduction of the 'Return of the Survivors' expansion pack.

The potion would double the EXP of exclusively low levelled players for six hours and the effects disappear upon death. This allowed experts to be groomed at a faster rate, allowing many of the guilds and major corporations to develop rapidly.

However, these experts ahead of them were around level 180; moreover, they were Tier 3 and Tier 4 and armed with gold and purple glowing equipment, a glow they had never seen before!

Gaia and Rue made a nervous swallow as they silently took place in at the back of the line, they comforted themselves knowing that their opponents' Level, Tier and equipment would be suppressed during the Auction Arena competition.

However, when they were about to cross the entrance of the Auction House, they were stopped by an invisible wall.

"Huh? Why can't we enter?" Rue mumbled confused. The searingly hot weather combined with her anxiety formed small droplets of cold sweat on her smooth skin. She gave Gaia an anxious glance, hoping she had any idea.

Rue knew there were no Level, Tier or Equipment requirements to participate in the Auction Arena, so why couldn't they enter?

A Level 179 Tier 3 Swordsman, who was standing in front of them, inside the auction house, started laughing as he saw the women being rejected from the Auction House. "Guild Leader Spitfire, come look at these newbies, they didn't even bring the entrance fee."

Rue's pupils contracted as she saw the Guild Emblem of this Swordsman.

Terra Towers! Another second-rate Guild!