Starting from Zero

Chapter 166: The True Iron Fortress [Vol 5 Chapter 17]

Translator: blackberrry Editor: blackberrry

"The sound isn't coming from the City but from the other direction." Su Mei pointed to the direction opposite of the City.

"Hey, you're right. It's not coming from the City! But why would there be a unit of troops from there?"

While we talked, the troops had already rushed over. There were not many of them, but from the looks of it, their quality were extremely high. Although their equipment were not the same, at least they rode on high-grade mounts without the appearance of the strange hogs or camels.

Su Mei and I moved to the side of the road. I had already kept the Companions, according to logic, we would not look to be suspicious characters at all!

The galloping sound came closer, an orderly formation that consisted of 4 columns charged forward. As we had thought, they were not looking for us, the formation charged past us without stopping, and did not even look at us. One of the riders at the side of the formation and was not within it suddenly stopped when he passed by us.

"Hello, I am . Captain of Demon Capital's Mercenaries."

"Hello, big brother!" Su Mei started to feign her angelic behavior in front of others again.

"Oh! What an adorable little sister!" Dark Lance Rider could not resist patting the little devil's head (Su Mei was still in my arms, it was not strange for Dark Lance Rider to be able to pat her head).

"Did the two of you come out of Sky City?"

"Yeah!" I nodded my head.

"That's great. I heard that a large scale collective PK had occurred outside of Sky City, I wonder if brother knows about it?"

"I know about it, but I didn't go there, it's extremely chaotic there, I'm with my sister here, it's inconvenient for us to go there!"

"That's true! Can I ask which City Gate is it held at? My brother is stuck inside there. He wants me to help him PK, but he only said the City entrance and didn't say which gate it was! But when we tried to contact him after, he never replied!"

We were currently located northeast of the City and was equidistant from either the east or north gates of the city, thus the man wanted to ask for its location. "The chaotic battle is at the north gates, but you should check clearly whether he is in the city or outside the city."

"Why?"

"Because the core of the chaos is at the City Gates, there are people inside and outside the City, the road was completely stuck, if you want to ride in, it's impossible to enter! If your friend is in the city, it'll be best for you to enter by another gate by taking a detour. It's impossible to enter from the outside!"

"That's bad news, we tried to contact him, but he never replied us, I reckon he is in a heated PK battle and has no time to look at the messages! I wonder if you have seen my friend? He is a warrior of the Demon Race called , he has two large horns on his head and is easily recognizable."

"Horns?" I thought for a moment. "I'm sorry, there were too many people, I didn't pay attention to such details!"

Su Mei suddenly cried out. "I saw him, that big brother looked so fun, there was two goat-like horns on his head. I thought he looked fun to play with, that's why I focused on him!"

"Then do you know the exact location?" Dark Lance Rider became so excited that he dismounted and came over to inquire.

"I think he was in the city, a distance away from leaving the City Gates."

"Alright, thank you, little sister, you're really adorable! See you!" Dark Lance Rider mounted back onto his mount and shouted: "We will take the south gates, we will move from inside the City!"

We watched as Dark Lance Rider and his unit rode into the distance. After they left, I summoned Nightmare and escaped, if they were to realize what had actually happened, it wouldn't turn out well for us! Su Mei rode in front of me and kept smiling along the way, she was truly a lively young lady!

"Big Brother? You have a Guild Emblem on you, do you have a Guild?"

"Of course! If I don't have a Guild, how can I have a Guild Emblem?"

"What Guild are you in? I haven't seemed to have come across your emblem before, is your guild very small?"

"Yeah! It's not very big." The current population of China was 1.5 billion, while the number of Players in [Zero]'s China region was about to break through 400 million, with an average of close to 90 million players, most of the guilds would hold 60 to 70 thousand players, on average one Guild would have close to 10 thousand Players. Compared to them, our Guild was truly low in numbers with only close to a few thousand players, that was far below average!

"What's your Guild name? Is it as big as our Hundred Flower Valley?"

"My Guild is called Blizzard Rose with only a few thousand Players, how many members does your Hundred Flower Valley?"

"I don't really know the exact number, but close to 10 thousand, I guess! Your Guild really has very few Players!" Su Mei suddenly extended out a finger. "Will you bring me to your Guild base to play? I have never seen how the Players of other Guilds look like!"

"About that….!" In truth, I was in a difficult spot, the plan to rebuild Demon Capital's Iron Fortress was temporarily stopped due to the issue on being approved by the Dark Shrine, which also meant that anyone could rush into the land and register it to themselves first, so the lesser the number of people knew about the place, the better for us. But since Su Mei wanted to take a look, how could I lie to her!

"Why? You don't have a base?"

"I guess you can say so?"

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"What do you mean by that? If you have one, you have one, if you don't have one, you don't have one, what do you mean by that?"

"I have the location for my Guild Base, but the City isn't considered built yet. But the City Walls are already there."

"Then that's fine, as long as you have the City Walls, basically it means the foundation of your City is there. I can even help you design the City layout and the style of the buildings."

"You?"

Little Su Mei feigned a fuming anger appearance: "What about me? I took civil engineering as an optional course in University, it isn't a mere trifle to help you design a City, alright!"

"Oh! I am just a lowly one without eyesight, I didn't know I have met an abled person!" I deliberately teased Su Mei, her acting like an adult was extremely adorable.

"That's more like it! Let's go, bring me there!"

The Iron Fortress was rather far and even with Night Shade's speed, it would take a few hours for us to run there, so I decided to teleport straight to a City close to the Iron Fortress and fly over on Lucky. Although the closest City was the Holy City that was under the Light Shrine, I truly did not wish to go there again, although I was not afraid of the Priests, I was bringing along Su Mei to have a look at the Base and did not want further troubles.

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Ultimately, we still chose to teleport to Holy City's Teleport Station and run out of there, there were no other ways, the other Cities were too far, and in the end, we would still have to detour around Holy City to enter the Illusion in the forest. From what I saw, Holy City was basically the sentry focused on watching the Iron Fortress placed by the Light Shrine. I figured that Holy City was not large and as long as I ran as fast as I could, I would not encounter the people that wanted to kill me!

After arriving in the Teleport Station, we did not stop to loiter but immediately summoned Night Shade and stormed out of the City Gates.

'Enemies on a narrow road', I did not know who created it, but it definitely held meaning. In this run, I encountered the group of Priests once again. But the situation was different this time. The 30 odd of them actually squeezed to the side, obviously, they were making a way for me. Of course, I accepted the gesture and immediately leaned towards the empty side and walked through.

Although they had chased after the Phantom Knights hard the last time, the Phantom Knights' volley of throws had killed 10 of the Priests down, and they were the ones to have suffered. So when they met me again, they were no longer as arrogant and aggressive. Actually, besides the Phantom Knights, Night Shade had helped as well, the last time while we were escaping, it was Scott who led us, but to suddenly appear with a large monster, it would truly be strange if they were not afraid!

After passing through the unique road, we quickly ran out of the City area. Upon leaving the City, I summoned Lucky to replace Night Shade. There were too many monsters inside the forest, flying over there was more practical! With the experience of the past, we passed through much faster this time, and easily got through the forest and entered the Iron Fortress' area.

Lucky performed a calm landing (The forest has a powerful gravitational force, don't forget). I jumped down first, then carried the stunned Su Mei down.

"Welcome to the future Demon Capital*, the paradise of the Dark faction!"

"Woah!" It was Su Mei's first time in a daze from shock, her mouth was in the form of an adorable O. "So huge?"

"Of course, it's the Demon Capital!" Although I was not the one to have built it, it would be my future City, so it could not be helped that I was proud of it.

"I had the image of a City resembling our Hundred Flower Valley! So it's actually so big? This….this...is practically a Capital!"

"It IS a Capital! Why do you think this place is called Demon Capital*? Isn't it because this is the Capital of the Dark Faction?"

"Powerful This City has almost the same size as the System's Three Main Cities! And it seems to be even bigger!"

"Of course, there are three Main Cities, there's only one Demon Capital if we don't make it big, won't we lose face?"

"Quick, bring me to go and take a look."

I hesitated for a moment. "All the grooves on the city walls are human skulls, you're not afraid?"

"So what? Aren't they a part of the human biology? What's there to be afraid of!"

God! Was she truly a young girl? I shook my head and brought her towards the side of the City. Right when we arrived at the wall, Little Su Mei jumped down from my arms and rushed to the wall. She stood at the wall, placed her hand on the wall and looked up. I walked over and looked up as well.

450 meters of height was equivalent to about a hundred floors, standing at the foot of the wall, the view looked as though the wall was stretched to the sky, the wall was slightly slanted, but not only did it not affect the entire feel of the wall but even made it more majestic.

We were currently situated at the entrance of the City, which was the passageway. From our position, the 30 meters wide passageway looked like a path straight to Heaven, but the huge lofty form of the structure made the passageway look extremely narrow, in truth, the City Gates of the 3 Main Cities were less than 16 meters wide, but this passageway was already close to twice its size.

Su Mei suddenly knocked on the wall, then extended a hand out to me. "Give me something sharp."

"What are you doing?"

"Forget it, you do it!" Su Mei pointed to the wall: "Smash this part right here!"

"Oh!" Although her actions were suspicious, I still listened to her and used the Dragon Lance onto the position that she had specified. With a 'clank', the Dragon Lance unleashed sparks but was ricocheted off. "F*ck! What's this made of, to be able to deflect an artifact grade equip.

Su Mei inspected the place which was struck, then used her finger to touch and licked it, then nodded her head. "Not too bad!"

"What's not too bad? You made me do manual labor, can you at least tell me what's going on?"

"Your city's location is really good!"

"Bullshit! You don't need to do that just to tell me that!"

"The entire wall and foundation of this city are formed from an entire crystallized rock which is extremely rare! When our Hundred Flower Valley was built, we spent a great deal of effort just to purchase many small crystallized rocks to build the discussion hall for our City, I never thought that your entire City to be built out of the crystallized rock! It's really unfair!"

"Is this rock very precious?" My side class was not a miner, so I had no knowledge of excavating or mining rocks.

"These crystallized rocks are definitely precious and valuable because it isn't sold anywhere. When Players build cities, they usually head to the NPC miners to purchase rocks to build their cities, but these Miners never sell such crystallized rocks. Our Crystallized Crystals were all purchased from Players. The output of this rock is extremely low, and every time it is found, there's only a bit of it, it is impossible to procure a large quantity of it at once, to be able to use it to build a discussion hall is already considered fortunate!"

"What advantage does it have to be rated so well?"

"It is extremely tough and has an extremely high defense, even if a Crystal Cannon were to shoot straight at it, it would only be able to destroy a small bit of the wall. To want to completely destroy an entire City made out of the rock, one needs to shoot the Crystal Cannon repeatedly over 10 times. For this wall of yours, I think that one cannon isn't enough for it to fall! I am afraid that even before the wall falls, the Crystal rock within the Crystal Cannon would already be used up!"

"Hehe! I never knew that my wall would be such a good thing!"

"The Iron Fortress does not have a moat, the city walls must be built like this for the sake of overcoming this weakness! Ok, bring me in, I want to take a look!"

I summoned Night Shade and carried Su Mei up. Although the passageway entrance was littered with rocks and boulders, the current Night Shade was much larger and could easily jump between them. After passing through with ease, we reached a flat pathway. Su Mei immediately noticed the Spirit Gathering Tower in the center. It was placed right at the center of the city, so it could be seen from the entrance.

"What's that?"

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"That's the Spirit Gathering Tower, the center of the City. Above it should have been the original Dark Shrine."

"Oh! This is a really good design!" Su Mei urged me to quicken our pace.

Upon reaching the end of the passageway, Su Mei immediately sensed the magnitude of the City, the colossus land was sufficient to call it a large-scale City. The land within the city was filled with rubble, although it was messy, we were able to take in the entire view of the City.

"Let's go, I'll bring you to the top of the tower."

"Wait!" Su Mei suddenly wanted to go down.

I could only bring her down, where Su Mei directly ran to the side of the streets and started to flip through the rubble. After a while, she turned back and shouted to me: "Help me to lift these things!"

I looked at the large debris and helped her lift it up. Although there were many pieces all around, the place where we were cleaning up was not huge, and we quickly cleared the area. Su Mei carefully researched the ground and even used her hands to grope about in the ditch.

I could no longer hold back, so I walked over and asked: "What are you trying to find?"

"A passageway!"

"Passageway?"

"The surface of this Iron Fortress has a good drainage system and an impervious layer, usually Cities would not need such things, the only possibility is that the City has an underground structure!"

"You're saying that the Iron Fortress has a City underneath?"

"I'm afraid it isn't as simple like that! My side class is an Architect close to Level 18, but even with this level, I'm actually unable to see through the entire design of this drainage system! Usually, with my level, I can easily make out all the designs and compositions of a City, but aside from the composition of the city walls of this city, I can't make out anything else!"

"It can't be that abstruse right? From the way you say it, I now feel as though we are looking for some mysterious Mayan Civilization!"

"You better not say such things, who knows if we truly find something like that below!"

"But there are no entrances here!"

"That is why I'm trying to look for it!" Su Mei started to probe about the ditch, she went along the road and probed until she reached the bottom of the Spirit Gathering Tower. The drainage system on the surface did not flow out of the city but converged at the bottom of the stage. We walked around the base for a few rounds but did not see anything strange, it was so flat that there was not even a crack that could possibly be an entrance!

Oh right, isn't Ling a Dark Goddess? She might know of the Demon Capital's composition!

I summoned Ling and Scott out, the two of them were figures that wielded authority in the Dark Faction and should be more knowledgeable. "Do the two of you know if the Iron Fortress has anything like an underground City of some sort?"

"Underground City? I'm not too sure about that, I'm not the Iron Fortress' guard!" Scott might not have been in a high position so he did not know about it!

But it was Ling's reply that exceeded my expectation. "You're asking about an underground City? Isn't the Iron Fortress an Underground City by itself?"

"What? The Iron Fortress is an underground City? Aside from the walls that are slightly higher, this place is no different from a normal City!" Su Mei questioned her in disbelief.

"This IS the underground City! We are currently standing on the Iron Fortress' roof, the real city is beneath the ground. This is just the original Dark Shrine's scope, the wall you see there is just the inner wall, we actually have an outer wall! The forest outside is actually part of the City."

It was truly explosive news! The giant Iron Fortress was actually just the tip of the iceberg, the entire City was beneath the ground!

"The City was already like that, or was it plunged into the ground?" Su Mei seemed to have grasped the crux of the question.

"The main bulk of the Iron Fortress was originally above the ground, but in the Holy War, the Light Shrine sacrificed 3 of their Light Main Gods and 3000 high-level Angels to activate a God Seal, resulting in the Iron Fortress submerging 500 meters into the ground, so the original city submerged below, and the Shrine was mistaken for the City instead!"

"F*ck, so drastic? According to what you have said, wouldn't that mean that the Iron Fortress size should be more than 10 times the current size?"

"To be accurate, it is 9 times more, and that is just the surface size. In fact, even if we were not submerged, the Iron Fortress itself already had an underground area. This is a dual surface City where the City consists of an identical city above ground and underground, just that the underground part was inverted! If you are able to lift the entire Iron Fortress up, you will be able to see that the Iron Fortress is, in fact, two cities placed upon each other."

"What a terrifying City!" Su Mei mumbled to herself.

"Is there a way to force the City to rise?" My hope was to be able to do something that would allow the City to rise, think about it, 9 times the size, two layers of walls, wouldn't that be the number one City in the world?

"I do have an idea, but it's troublesome!"

"What is it, tell me!"

"As long as you have the Light Star from the Light Shrine and the Dark Star from the Dark Shrine, it'll do!"

"What! It will be fine if it was just the Dark Shrine, but even the Light Shrine? Isn't that asking me to die?"

Su Mei suddenly screamed. "That day when you accompanied me to the Light Shrine and was mistaken by the Priest, wasn't there a mention about some Ring?"

"You're talking about the Ring of Light?"

"As long as you have the Ring of Light, you can enter the Light Shrine uprightly, wouldn't it be fine if you ask for the Light Star then?"

"You're really cunning to be able to think of that!"

"Then are we still going to take a look at the City?" I asked Su Mei.

"What else is there to see? The City's surface is 9 times the size, adding the underground City, that would be 18 times the size, what's the point of me looking now, we should quickly find a way to obtain those Stars. Oh right, I want to join your guild, invite me!"

"Join my guild? Don't you have your own Guild?"

"I will leave it now!" Su Mei immediately applied to leave the guild, then PM'ed Red Cloud to help her quit. Upon joining a guild, it would not be easy to leave, an application to leave could be submitted or a force quit could be initiated. The application would also require the Guild Leader and 50% of the Core Members to agree so that it would affect a person's stats. A force quit would not require going through the Core Members and the Player could leave directly, but that would result in a drop in level and even an increase in Evil Value!

"Alright, I have left, invite me!"

"Why do you want to join our Guild? Didn't you say your Hundred Flower Valley have more members than mine?"

"So what if they have more members? Our guild is so poor that we are on the verge of death, most of the money spent on building the City was barely scraped by everyone. It took so much effort, but in the end, our City was built there, it is no different from a county town, how can it compare to your City, this is basically a municipality, no, when the entire city gets raised, it will be even bigger than one in the future!"

"So in the end, you're joining us because of my City?"

"Humph, at this age, to have a beauty, one must need money, car, and home. I am after all a beauty, and you have all of it, of course, I have to follow you!"

I became confused from listening to her, how could a girl her age have thought about so much? "Since when did I have money, cars, and home?"

"When you brought me to Sky City to buy things, you always chose the product first before asking the price, and you never ever tried to bargain for it, this means that you are very rich!"

"Oh my god! I'm just like that, I'm a person who buys things and never liked bargaining, all men are like this!"

"You don't have to say it, in any case, you're not lacking in money, that's for sure! Along the way, you called that Night Shade your mount, in [Zero], it should already be considered a Ferrari, no one could ever catch up to us, so it is definitely considered a luxurious car! Furthermore, you have so many Dragons, they are all private planes!"

"You can even think of it as such? Night Shade just runs faster than the rest, even if it was considered a Ferrari, you mean to say that all mounts that can fly are considered private planes, then what about Aldeina and Ling? Private secretaries?"

"Who cares about them, isn't this Iron Fortress sort of considered as your City? How can I hesitate about such a big house, there will never be a house larger than yours!"

"F*ck!"

"I don't care, you have to let me join you! If not, I'll cry!"

"Ok ok ok, you mustn't cry, I can't handle your vicious method at all!"

I invited Su Mei to join the Guild to which she immediately accepted then happily jumped onto me. "Big Brother is the best, come here, I'll seal the deal for you!" With that, she kissed my cheek, she was truly a little devil in human skin! But the rather mature actions and thoughts coming from the 10-year-old Su Mei was truly too adorable, she was not like any other growing and pampered girls. A child prodigy was truly a child prodigy, after all, she was only 10 years old, her life experiences would never be that of an adult!

After the matter, I teleported the both of us to Lost City, our goal was the Dark Shrine, no matter what, we had to have the Shrine's approval for the City Building in our hands, otherwise, even if we had the Light Star or the Dark Star, they would be useless!

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(*) It turns out that despite being a name, the 都 du in Modu actually hints on it being a Capital. I'll change Modu to Demon Capital as of now. In the conversation when Ziri brings Su Mei to the city, it might seem a little strange in the context of English. But in Chinese, the term Capital (首都) is called (shǒu dū) (google it to listen to its pronunciation), while Modu, or the Demon Capital, 魔都 is (Mó dū), which is in fact a nickname for Shanghai. So the conversation went on about how Su Mei was shocked that the City was so huge, and stated that it resembled a capital to which Ziri replied her by confirming that it WAS a capital, and emphasized its name of 魔都(Mó dū). In the Chinese Language, the name can be seen as a noun or if the Mo and Du are separated, it becomes Demon Capital. So if you feel that the conversation went on weirdly, do understand that it is a play on the words.