MMORPG: The Almighty Ring

After he was done with Ou Yezi, Jiang Fei returned to the mortal realm. There and then, he quickly checked his status to see what had changed. To receive the title "Heaven's Trailblazer" was not just any achievement a person could earn. There should be other benefits that came along with it.

First and foremost, Jiang Fei had that title. Next, he was bestowed with a new set of armor that glowed with the shiniest golden luster. It was different from before.

High Human Trailblazer's Armament (Set Equipment 8/8, Holy)

Physical Defense +15,000

Magic Defense +15,000

Vitality: +4,000

Agility: +4,000

Strength: +4,000

Intelligence: +4,000

Spirit: +4,000

Equip: Grants the skill, Wilful Shield. Increased 500% Defense and grants debuff immunity for 15 seconds.

Equip: Grants the passive skill, Immortality. Triggers a shield to protect you when you receive damage more than 50% of your maximum Health Points within 5 seconds. Shield strength is equal to your current maximum Health Points. When Shield is up, gain a 100% Attack increase. Shield lasts for 10 seconds and will not trigger again for 60 seconds.

Equip: Grants 5% Chaos attribute in all of your attacks.

Equip: Reduce all incoming physical attacks by 20%.

Equip: Reduce all incoming magical attacks by 10%.

Set Effect 1: Grants the skill, Summon Strawman. Summons a physical clone to assist you in battle. Clone does not have any attack capabilities. Clone has 200% Health Points and 300% Defense stats. Cast Taunt to all nearby targets every 2 seconds. Clone lasts for 30 seconds.

Set Effect 2: Grants the skill, Hidden Strike. Becomes invisible and teleports to a target's back. Your next attack will have a 300% Attack boost.

Set Effect 3: Grants the skill, Life or Luck. Frantically attacks a target. Sacrifices 50% Health Points and deals 500% physical attack. Inflicts 300% additional Chaos damage for each Health Points lost. If the said target dies by this skill, fully recover Health Points. If the said target survives this skill, temporarily lose 50% maximum Health Points for 30 seconds.

Set Effect 4: Grants the Aura skill, Glory of Humanity. Increases 30% to all stats to all Human race. Range of effect: 1,000 meters.

Note: You are the one and only spark that will light the fire to bring hope to all humanity.

At this point, Jiang Fei was not surprised to see so many skills. However, the stats granted by the set equipment was truly a shock. The skills itself were strong as well. Jiang Fei was contented to see that most of the skills granted by the set equipment had an attack boost effect. That should help him in fighting any Celestial tier boss.

The defensive factor of the set equipment was also helpful. Summon Strawman was especially helpful since it could help Jiang Fei take a large amount of damage in his stead. Immortality was a life-saving skill that would surely save his life in dire situations. Unfortunately, it was an unreliable skill since the cooldown was a minute long.

The last skill, Glory of Humanity, was an Aura skill that greatly increased other player's overall stats. A 30% increase in all stats was a boost that anyone would kill for!

Right now, instead of charging straight into the realms of the Primordial Celestials, Jiang Fei would want to prepare himself to light up the Godflame. At this moment, he was alone and weak. The best way to go for it was to wait until the average player level increased further.

When he decided to spare some time to farm experience points, Jiang Fei read through all the new patch contents. Jiang Fei did not manage to go through the patch notes since he was immediately pulled by Ou Yezi the moment he logged in.

When players logged in after the patch, they were greeted with a one-touch-80 button. With a certain amount of cash, depending on the country and currency, players would be able to reach Level 80. This paywall helped new players that wanted to catch up to the rest of the veteran players. Those that wanted to restart and remake their character from scratch would not have to worry about spending so much time to grind their way back to Level 80.

One thing that Jiang Fei did not understand was the fact that that function even existed. The game was created by China's military force to facilitate the research on artificial intelligence. The game was not created to earn money. However, what Jiang Fei did not know was that the military needed extra funding. They had reached a point where the research on artificial intelligence had reached a breaking point. Attracting new players aside, they needed extra money to fund their research. To save time and method, the programmers of the game had inserted this level-buying option to help collect extra funds. This quirky function helped many players to instantly gain access to Faction map. With more players coming in, the researchers would be gaining more test subjects to help them cultivate artificial souls.

Besides the level-buying service, the game had granted a boost to all players in Faction maps. A 50% increase in experience points was granted to all players training in Faction maps. It was packaged as one of the "unlockable achievements" from the new War of the Heaven's patch. With this boon, players would be able to quickly farm experience points in order to proceed into the next region, the realm of the Primordial Celestial. One of the attractions in the Primordial Celestial realm was the penalty during death. In that realm, players would not lose experience points when they die there.

Another key update in the new patch was new dungeons. A small dungeon and a large dungeon was released after the patch. The small dungeon was designed for regular-sized parties. Players would be able to farm Fine tier equipment and one to two Epic tier equipment upon completion. The large dungeon was designed for 100-men parties and its difficulty level was increased. The rewards were just as lucrative as there were drops starting from Epic tier. Elite difficulty and Heroic difficulty would have much better rewards.

Jiang Fei was not in a hurry to lead his guild members to raid the dungeon. He wanted to take things slow, starting by forming an elite party to tackle the small dungeons first, one difficulty at a time. After plotting the course out, he had Lady Casanova to lead other members of the guild. When members of his party were accustomed to the dungeon's mechanics, he then made his attempt with the big dungeon.

Even with explosive boost in experience points, Jiang Fei was still unable to rake up his level fast since he was already Level 95. It would take an enormous amount of time and effort, three days at best, to push through Level 96.

After he was done for the day, Jiang Fei woke up and spent his morning with the family. Just as he was relaxing in the living room with everyone, he felt a powerful surge of energy blasted through the entire city. The energy was merely like a signal, a wave made by someone extremely strong.

"What's that…?" Jiang Fei gasped.

"Someone has just reached Level 5," Isabella explained calmly.

"Level 5?"

"Correct. If I'm right, the person should be in the capital."

"You mean… China?!" said Jiang Fei, astonished.

"Correct," said Isabella, rolling her eyes as if the news of someone reaching Level 5 was nothing but old news.