It was an arduous half an hour of waiting, but the servers had finally reopened once more!

I was waiting at the login screen all this time. The moment the servers were up, I logged into the game immediately.

Swhoosh!

A beautiful figure ran out of my tent like lightning the second I logged into the game. Fuck, Beauty Lin is so fast!

I caught onto a corner of her battle robe right before she left my range completely and let her pull me out of the tent. Players were logging into the game from everywhere, and tents were disappearing by the millisecond. It only took a short while before the teleportation formation was completely jam-packed. There were just too many players in Floating Ice City!

Lin Yixin looked back at me and glared. "OMG, stop dragging me down you idiot…"

"Wait for me! Why are you in such a hurry anyway? It’s not like there’s meat waiting for you at Sky City!"

I selected "Talk" after the both of us had squeezed our way to the NPC mages responsible for operating the teleportation formation. The bearded old man started talking in a deep, distant voice, "The power of darkness has tried to conquer the Heavenblessed Continent again and again, forcing the humans, the elves, the succubi, the dwarves, the barbarians and more to form a pact in order to defend their right to live and the pride of their races. Today, that pact is known as the ‘Heavenblessed Alliance’. For hundreds of years, the allied races have built countless bastions at every corner of the continent!"

The old mage then looked at me and said, "Young warrior, you are an adventurer of Floating Ice City. Right now, we have enough magical energy to send you to these three cities—Sky City, Vanished God City, and Wind City. Please make your choice!"

I nodded and selected Sky City!

Ding~!

System Notice: Greetings, respected player. Please note that you can only teleport directly to Sky City if you are Level 80 or above. The cost is 2000 Reputation and 1000 gold. Are you sure you want to teleport?

……

My eyes widened into saucers for a moment. Goddamned sonuvabitch, did Eternal Moon Corporation lose their minds to greed recently? I couldn’t believe that it cost 1000 RMB to teleport to a super city! Moreover, the player must be Level 80 or above before they could even attempt to teleport, and there were only a hundred or so players in the entire Floating Ice City who even met that requirement!

This meant that a low-level player who wanted to teleport to a super city without using Floating Ice City’s teleportation formation would have to use an open teleportation point instead. At a glance, it would take at least 10 hours of running just to reach the borders of Sky City! The game company had played all of us like a fiddle!

Players were swearing all around us—

"Fuck this immoral game company! I haven’t slept a wink the entire night, and you’re telling me now that I don’t have the necessary level to teleport??"

"Yeah, and 1000 gold? What is this, an international flight?"

"I curse the producers and their wives to stay a virgin forever!"

……

But there were also plenty of players who quietly formed parties and ran out of the city after discovering that they didn’t meet the requirements to use the teleportation formation. Clearly, these people were going to run to Sky City on foot. Sometimes, there was no point complaining about the unfairness of the world. Only those who continuously strived to improve themselves could truly master their own fates. These were the kind of people who would have the last laugh during the latter stages of the game.

Lin Yixin had already vanished. She must’ve teleported to Sky City already!

I clicked the "Confirm" button and watched myself being dragged into the super space by several wisps of magical energy. A couple of seconds later, I had arrived inside a dense forest!

Ding~!

System Notice: You have entered the territory of Sky City!

……

"Fuck, the territory of Sky City? But where is Sky City…"

Slightly confused, I checked the map and noticed Sky City was straight ahead. I guessed that the teleportation formation teleported us into the territory of Sky City, but not directly into the city itself. Moreover, the location we appeared at was completely random. In the end, we still had to carry ourselves into the city with our two feet!

Shiing!

I pulled out the Purgatory Sword and started moving. After passing through a small section of the forest and parting the tree leaves blocking my vision, a sight unlike anything I had ever seen before stunned me into speechlessness!

Inside a vast valley, a couple of giant rocks could be seen floating above the ground. They formed a staircase that led visitors up to the sky where a magnificent city awaited!

Heavens! I wasn’t expecting Sky City to be a literal floating city!

"Gulp!"

I swallowed. The city looked supernaturally fine, almost as if it was an inspiration stolen from the heavens itself. The wall alone was at least dozens of kilometers long, and the whole structure was floating in midair. It looked exquisite to say the least!

According to my knowledge, each country got to design their own cities, meaning that Sky City was made by the Chinese programmers. The artisans of China were already legendary since ancient times, but it looked like the programmers of today were just as amazing. Who could say that Chinese were talentless after seeing something like this?

I had no doubt that Sky City’s design would stun the players of the world once it was globally accessible. I would even bet that it was the biggest, grandest and most defensible city in all the servers. It was because the city was literally floating in midair, meaning that any ground troops who wished to reach it would have to go through the floating staircase. There was no way in hell anyone could survive the arrow torrent that was sure to rain down and trespass into Sky City.

I continued forward and discovered that the floating staircases were more packed than I thought. There was a new floating rock every 10 meters or so, and each one was only about 2 meters wide, meaning that it could fit 2 or 3 players walking side by side at most. Moreover, I got a notice stating that the staircase wasn’t a safezone!

Very interesting. Assuming that we got into a guild battle, we could set up a blockade here and stop any reinforcement from reaching the enemy forces!

Not far away, I saw a couple of players running up a floating staircase. They were all Level 80 or above, and I didn’t recognize any of them even though I knew practically all the Level 80 players in Floating Ice City. They had to be players from other tier 2 cities!

I wordlessly ran up the floating rocks as well. The 4% movement speed boost from my Death Shade War Boots was no joke, so I was moving swiftly like a gust of wind!

Players started appearing all around Sky City. The floating rocks were covered by some sort of of azure magic, and they glowed brighter every time a player passed by them. It was incredibly vivid!

When I finally ran past all the staircases and arrived on solid land, I was once again stunned by the sight in front of me. The city had four gates in total, and the one in front of me, the eastern gate, was surrounded by a pair of giant silver statues. They were both female warriors with swords, and at the bottom of the statues was an inscription:

During the first year of Heavenblessed, the enemy invaded and humanity’s last hope, White Cloud City, was destroyed, and the two leaders of the human race, Annie and Fia, fought to their last breath to defend the last pure land of the human race. Before she died, Annie created a miracle by sacrificing her divine power and lifting a city to the sky, creating what we know today as the Sky City. Since then, the city has stood strong for tens of thousands of years, and it is now the humans and the elves’ final and strongest bastion against the powers of the dead.

……

I stared at Annie and Fia’s statues as a shiver ran down my body. I murmured, "Fia? I didn’t know that you’ve already passed away…"

Fia was the supreme commander of the human faction. We were acquaintances back in Spirit of Grief, but here in Heavenblessed she was nothing more but a mark in history. Now that she was gone, I wondered who was the current supreme commander of the human empire.

I walked past the city gates and was greeted by a scenery straight out of a painting. The city center was a temple where hymns could occasionally be heard from inside. The singing resounded unfadingly across the city as if praising and reminiscing the warriors who had fought to their deaths defending their loved ones.

……

Oh well, I can lament about the fates of the past warriors later. First, I want to know how many shops there are inside the city!

I arrived at the eastern plaza of Sky City. It was at least 5 times bigger than the plaza at Floating Ice City. I then ran all the way to the royal palace to request a meeting with the lord, mayor or the king. As a veteran, I knew that it was very difficult to apply for a private shop without getting a permit first.

I saw a group of soldiers riding on black warhorses galloping along the walls and patrolling. The leader of the group was pulling out his blade and shouting, "Eyes open, guards! I heard that those filthy undead assassins are skulking around again as of late, so it is up to us to secure our city and and protect our king from harm!"

The knights also pulled out their swords and responded in kind, "For glory!"

"Fuck, there are almost a thousand people in that one patrol alone. I guess super cities are called super cities for a reason…"

I muttered before trying to walk through the front gate. However, a group of high-level NPC guards suddenly blocked my way, and a man with a thick beard yelled at me, "I’ve never seen your face around here before, boy. Hmm? You have red eyes? Tell me, what is your business with the royal palace?"

I immediately put my city badge on display and said, "Sir, I am an adventurer from Floating Ice City. I am a good fighter, my hatred for Night Creatures runs deep and my loyalty to the empire is undying. Let me in, please? I would like to apply for land of my own and build a shop!"

The guard captain immediately broke into a grin. "Don’t even think about it, kid. The king isn’t someone you can meet just because you want to!"

I tried a different tactic. "I am the leader of an adventurer group, and I have several thousand troops at my beck and call. We are all willing to dirty our hands to fight for the survival of humanity, so let me in!"

"Not a chance!"

"I killed Wind Fury, the master of Skull Castle!"

"Still no. Like I said earlier, don’t you even think about it!"

"Karinshan is my older sister!"

"Aha, please come in, my dear warrior!"

"..."

I gaped at the NPC for a moment. Seriously? That worked? Man, these days you really couldn’t go anywhere without having some connections. I couldn’t believe that was all it took to get me into the royal palace!

The moment I passed through the door though, the guard captain’s eyes flashed as if he was checking something. I had no doubt that he was verifying my amity with Princess Karinshan!

The good news was that Karinshan and I were acquaintances. Hence, I was able to enter the royal palace safely and without trouble!

When I entered the hall where the king was, I saw two rows of armored generals lining the two sides of the hall. Atop the silver throne was an old man with black robes and a crown. He was none other than the ruler of Sky City!

I was a bit astonished, however. Sky City is one of the strongest empires on the continent, so why does their king look like a muddle-headed old man?