Chương 104: Reborn as the Dragon — Chapter 104 - Exposure Level

Day eight of the Blue Planet's invasion. Sakura Island No. 6 Starter Village. Clear skies. Northwest wind, level three. Temperature: 4, 500 degrees Celsius. The whole village was full of familiar faces. Su Nian had been breathing dragon's breath over Sakura Island No. 6 Starter Village for just over two hours straight. Well, not continuously — even dragon's breath had a cooldown. Condensing it burned through his body's energy, too.

So he'd breathe for a while, then fly out to the plains or the ocean to gorge on something, then come back and do it again. The ground across the entire village had crystallized. The sky was choked with dense smoke, mushroom clouds blooming upward and spreading wide, bleeding into a canopy of black-green overcast. Su Nian circled within it, a dark shape that appeared and vanished between the clouds. Below, the players of Sakura Island No. 6 Starter Village had entered a death loop.

The whole village was buried under cyan lava. Every time a Sakura player revived, they materialized directly on top of it and were incinerated before they could take a single step. Su Nian watched from the sky in silence. The revival rate was slowing. The intervals between spawns stretched longer and longer. Then, at a certain moment, it stopped entirely. Every last player in Sakura Island No. 6 Starter Village entered revival wait. A system prompt blinked into existence before his eyes. [Congratulations, Host! You have annihilated a Starter Village.] [Sakura Island No. 6 Starter Village has been erased from the map.] [Congratulations, Host! You have obtained: Novice Village Core Fragment x1.] [All players from Sakura Island No. 6 Starter Village will revive randomly at other Starter Villages. Locating...]"Wait," Su Nian said.

"These Sakura players can still revive?"

"And I just got told I destroyed the village?" He blinked, puzzling it out, and was just about to fly down and take a closer look when a soft cough came from behind him. Anna. Probably the smoke — the air here reeked of it. The village was already a ruin. There was no reason to stay. Anna's health mattered more than whatever was down there. He didn't linger. He turned and flew, carrying his questions with him, putting distance between them and the ash. [Ding! Location complete. Players from Sakura Island No. 6 Starter Village will revive at: Sakura Island No. 1 Starter Village.] Su Nian went quiet for a moment. Should he call these Sakura players lucky? Or unlucky? Out of every village they could have been scattered to, the random assignment sent them straight to number one. He chewed on the notification as he flew, and the picture gradually came together. Putting all the players into revival wait wasn't enough on its own, that much was obvious now. The system's location report filled in the rest.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. [To completely annihilate a player settlement, village, town, city, or nation, two conditions must be met.] [Condition One: Every structure within the settlement is fully destroyed.] [Condition Two: Within a 5-kilometer radius, no player belonging to that settlement is left alive.] Su Nian turned this over in his mind. On the surface, the conditions sounded simple. In practice, they were brutal.

The buildings alone were the first problem. He was a fourth-tier dragon, and it still took him a solid hour just to burn the structures of a single basic Starter Village to nothing. A basic one. As players developed, they'd build towns, then cities. Whatever defensive ratings those structures would carry was almost frightening to consider. The second condition was the real trap. Every player in the settlement had to die within range, simultaneously. Players weren't idiots.

They wouldn't stand around in their own territory waiting to be wiped. Catching all of them at once was nearly impossible. Whoever had digitized this world clearly had a soft spot for the players. Both conditions were designed to protect Starter Villages. A protection racket written into the laws of the world. But maybe that wasn't entirely a bad thing. If a Starter Village stayed intact, players kept reviving there. They didn't scatter to other villages like they had today. That meant a steady, concentrated crop.

Much easier to farm. The frustration he'd been sitting with dissolved immediately. He was one of the System's biggest point consumers. Players freely respawning in one place for him to harvest. That was a good deal, not a bad one. Something else occurred to him. Destroying the village had dropped a special item.

"System. What exactly is a Novice Village Core Fragment? What does it do?" [Collecting four Novice Village Core Fragments allows the Host to condense a Pure Village Establishment Token. The Host may use it to found their own faction.]"That's it?" Su Nian almost laughed out loud. He had master-builder Kobolds under his command. They reproduced at an alarming rate and could throw up structures faster than most people breathed. He had zero use for a Village Establishment Token.

The thing wasn't even worth keeping as a souvenir. [Host, please do not dismiss the Village Establishment Token.] [As the Host has witnessed firsthand, the defensive strength of player Starter Village structures is exceptional.] [This is because they contain a trace of Rule Power.] [With a Village Establishment Token, the Host could construct buildings of equivalent durability.] [Buildings raised under the Token's influence also carry special properties, easier relocation, accelerated construction, and more.] [Furthermore, as the settlement's level increases, the Host will unlock additional permissions.] The System went on. And on. Like an aunt trying to sell insurance at a family dinner, laying out feature after feature, stopping just short of putting "only an idiot would say no" directly in his face. There was an urgency to the tone that bordered on plaintive. Su Nian scratched his chin. He was starting to suspect that the Novice Village Core Fragment wasn't just a random drop.

The System had probably done real work to pull it out. The word pure in "Pure Village Establishment Token" was a tell, it meant the power had been extracted and separated from the player side of things. Refined. Processed. No wonder only one fragment dropped per village. No wonder the System sounded like it was on the edge of a breakdown. Its efforts had gone completely unappreciated by the host. Of course it was anxious.

"Alright, System-chan, what are we waiting for?" Su Nian pulled up his map.

"Let's hit a few more villages today and grind out my monster village." He was already scanning for the nearest targets when the System cut him off. [Host, this System does not recommend that course of action.] [Consecutively destroying Starter Villages will significantly raise the Host's Exposure Level. If the Exposure Level becomes too high, the Host will be flagged as a World Boss, coordinates and level made public. At the Host's current strength, surviving the attention of thousands upon thousands of players would be... difficult.] Su Nian closed the map immediately. He wasn't scared. That wasn't it. He simply had no interest in becoming a World Boss. The Exposure Level mechanic made sense when he thought about it. Dragons, once grown, naturally spread their influence, raiding hoards, expanding territory, picking wars. The evil chromatic varieties would go further, razing entire cities. Their names spread. Their infamy grew.

And then the dragon slayers came. In this world, human adventurers had their own name for that kind of notoriety. Reputation. Legend Level. Su Nian wasn't ready to be at war with every player in existence. Not yet. And the World Boss label was the last thing he wanted stamped on his forehead. He didn't even need to think hard about what happened after coordinates got exposed. Those lunatics who attacked anything with a red health bar would march across a continent to reach his lair.

Every last one of them, coming to pick a fight. Release a Grey Wolf— ➤ Next: Celestine