Chapter 652: The Veteran Knows How Dominion Works

[Attention, players. Dragon’s Roar Town will officially open at noon. Ticket vendors in all major cities are now accepting pre-orders for teleport passes. Purchase your tickets as soon as possible. Dragon’s Roar Town can accommodate a maximum of 450,000 tourists per day.

Dragon’s Roar Town is located within the vast and seemingly endless archipelago of Twin Wing Island, offering players a unique tropical rainforest experience. Enjoy the cool azure waters, ride the crashing waves, relax on pristine golden beaches, explore vibrant coral reefs, experience the thrill of alpine skiing, soak in luxurious hot springs, brave exhilarating rapids, and even catch a variety of sea fish with your own hands. If you’re lucky, you may even discover one of the giant fish habitats and obtain Mythic-grade cooking ingredients capable of permanently increasing your attributes.]

Ding!

[Once again, we remind all players to purchase their tickets as soon as possible. Dragon’s Roar Town can accommodate only 450,000 tourists per day. However, players who are unable to obtain a teleport pass can still travel to the teleportation array on the outskirts of Dragon’s Roar Town through the teleportation points in any major city for a fee of 20 gold coins. From there, you can explore the surrounding islands and hunt monsters. The more than one hundred unique islands that make up Twin Wing Island are home to monsters level 50 and above, guaranteeing an unforgettable adventure...]

The renovation of Dragon’s Roar Town was finally nearing completion, and it would officially open to the public in two days. As the thunderous announcement echoed throughout the US Region, Marcus and the others listened with anticipation and confidence.

The promotional footage they had commissioned, featuring models posing against the breathtaking scenery of Twin Wing Island, had already been broadcast through the Nightmare Auction House. Players had gotten their first glimpse of the island’s beauty and unique attractions, but the official announcement sent the excitement to an entirely different level. It was like a massive stone dropped into a calm lake, sending waves racing outward in every direction.

"Go buy tickets!"

Countless players immediately rushed toward the ticket vendors in every major city. By the time they arrived, however, long lines were already winding through the streets.

"Hey, man, how did you guys get here so fast?"

"The early bird gets the worm. We’ve been waiting in line for ages."

"Hurry up! Each player can only buy five teleport passes. There are 450,000 tickets available, so there’s still a chance!"

"Right, move it!"

Players hurried toward the ends of the lines, only to discover that they were growing longer by the second. As everyone waited impatiently, conversations naturally broke out among the players around them.

"Hey, buddy, have you heard about this? Apparently, the person who opened Twin Wing Island isn’t the system or the Dragon Dynasty. It’s actually a player, just like us."

"A player? You mean an ordinary player?"

A young assassin who had only recently started playing Dominion and clearly knew very little about the game stared at the others in disbelief.

"Wait a second. Players can actually own system resources and control system environments? They can even collect gold by selling tickets?"

"You’re new here, aren’t you?"

A veteran player glanced at the assassin’s flimsy level-10 equipment and immediately understood.

"This is one of the things that makes Dominion special. If you’re strong enough and meet the right conditions, you can obtain system resources and even entire territories. It’s not just guilds that can benefit from the system."

He pointed toward the distance as he continued explaining.

"Take Black Dragon Guild, the strongest of the Ten Great Guilds. Their territory contains a unique mine whose ore can increase a weapon’s attack by 20 to 50 points. Then there’s Inferno Clan. Their territory has a special herb garden where they cultivate an ingredient called Golden Sunbloom. Once processed, it can improve a Large Health Potion from restoring 200 HP per second to restoring 300 or even 400."

"And all those resources belong to them? Privately?"

The assassin’s eyes widened.

"What did you think? That they’d hand everything out for free?" The veteran laughed. "Those territories were purchased with their own money, and the resources within their territory belong to the guild that owns it. The major guilds were also among the first to acquire territories, so naturally they took many of the best locations. Even using their teleportation arrays costs money. Five gold coins per use."

"Yeah, that’s right."

An archer standing nearby joined the conversation.

"And don’t forget Violet Thunder Guild. The territory they purchased ten days ago happened to contain a system Hunter NPC. Originally, any player above level 50 could bring the required quest item and pay the Hunter ten gold coins to enter a dungeon trial. Complete the trial, and the Hunter would reward you with five free attribute points."

The archer shook his head with a mixture of amusement and resignation.

"But now that Violet Thunder Guild owns the territory, things have changed. They helped the Hunter complete a special quest, and the price for the same trial was raised to fifteen gold coins. That extra five gold coins goes directly into Violet Thunder Guild’s pockets."

"Whoa!"

The assassin was even more astonished.

"Boss, isn’t that a little too easy? If it’s that simple to make money, wouldn’t that cause problems? Dominion’s gold can be exchanged for real-world currency, right? Wouldn’t everyone just keep making money until the whole economy collapsed?"

"Making money is easy enough," the veteran admitted. "An ordinary player can earn thirty or forty gold coins a day without too much trouble. If you happen to find a valuable gemstone or something similar, you can make considerably more."

He paused before giving the assassin a knowing look.

"But earning money isn’t the problem. Spending it is."

The veteran spread his hands.

"There are too many things in Dominion that cost money. Low-level players don’t have much to spend on, so they might not notice it, but the higher your level goes, the more expensive everything becomes."

"There’s no way around it. Skynet is simply too good at balancing the economy. After this latest update, they even added equipment repair costs. I’ve heard that repairing a single Mythic-grade artifact can cost several times more than repairing an entire set of Golden equipment."

"Exactly," another player said. "The higher your level, the easier it becomes to earn gold, but your daily expenses increase right along with your income. The system makes sure the two sides balance each other out."

"Look at the major guilds. Sure, they earn a fortune, but look at what they have to spend. A guild has to develop from a village to a township, then to a town, county, district, and finally a city. And even cities are divided into low, middle, and high tiers. Add the cost of purchasing territory, maintaining it, developing buildings, paying workers, and competing with other guilds, and they’re pouring gold into the game almost as quickly as they earn it."

"I haven’t heard of a single major guild actually withdrawing its profits into real-world currency."

"Exactly."

Another warrior nodded.

"And now that the update has introduced guild life-or-death wars, it won’t be long before someone declares one. Once that happens, potions, equipment, resources, repairs, and everything else will cost money. When a major guild goes to war, gold disappears like water."

The assassin finally understood.

Dominion gave players plenty of freedom. Someone could play casually, enjoy the scenery, complete quests, and spend an hour or two relaxing after work. Someone else could devote everything they had to becoming powerful, building a guild, acquiring territory, and competing for control of the world.

There was room for both.

But one question still bothered him.

"Boss, everything you’ve mentioned so far belongs to guilds. What about this Twin Wing Island? How can players like Drunkard and Invincible Strong own something that huge? They’re not even a guild, are they? And there’s a system town on the island too, Dragon’s Roar Town. How can a system town end up belonging to players?"

"You really don’t understand Dominion at all, do you?"

The veteran sighed, though there was no real impatience in his voice. He seemed to have encountered plenty of new players with the same misunderstanding.

"Kid, Dominion is incredibly diverse, and that’s exactly what makes it different from ordinary games. There’s a huge amount of freedom, and more importantly, there are opportunities everywhere, just like in the real world. If you meet the conditions, you can receive the corresponding reward."

He pointed toward several luxurious buildings in the distance.

"See those mansions? If you’ve got enough gold, you can buy one. Take the famous Old Vine Auction House. That wasn’t purchased by some ordinary player. It was a system reward given to a player who completed a hidden condition."

"And just a few days ago, another player helped the Dragon Dynasty complete a hidden quest. The Dynasty rewarded him with a mansion."

"So if a player fulfills some hidden condition or completes a special quest and receives land, a title, or even a position managing territory on behalf of the Dragon Dynasty, there’s nothing strange about it. Those rewards are part of the system."

The assassin still looked bewildered, so the veteran decided to make the point as simple as possible.

"Think about it this way, kid. If a player guild develops all the way to the advanced city stage, it can declare independence and challenge the Dragon Dynasty. If it survives and succeeds, its Guild Master can become a king."

He paused, then added the part that made the assassin’s jaw drop.

"And if that power becomes strong enough, it can even overthrow the Dragon Dynasty and rule the entire Dreamland Continent."

"Whoa!"

The assassin’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

Players could actually rule the entire Dreamland Continent?

He had never even imagined such a thing was possible.

If players could eventually establish kingdoms and rule the world, then a player meeting certain conditions, completing a special quest, and receiving a piece of territory from the Dragon Dynasty suddenly didn’t seem nearly as strange.

Dominion was completely different from the games he had played before.

The sheer scale of it left him speechless.

"Boss, I’m deleting my character and starting over!"

The assassin suddenly shouted.

"My dream is to become a lord! I want to command armies and rule territory! I’m going to reroll as a Warrior or Knight!"

He immediately prepared to log out, but the veteran reached out and grabbed him by the shoulder.

"Wait, kid. You don’t know about the character creation restriction?"

"What restriction?"

"You have to wait one month after creating your first character before you can create a second one. If you want to create a third character, you have to wait another two months after creating the second."

"What?!"

The assassin froze. He had clearly never heard of this.

"My character is only three days old..."

"..."

The veteran stared at him for several seconds before finally letting out a helpless sigh.

"Kid, pay more attention to the official website. At least read the basic game rules before making decisions."

Still, despite his words, the veteran could not help feeling a little envious when he thought about Twin Wing Island.

A territory like that could only have come from an extraordinarily difficult and exceptionally rare hidden quest.

And someone had actually completed it. That was enough to make him jealous.

Especially after seeing the promotional footage of Twin Wing Island, with its breathtaking scenery and luxurious attractions, he could not help imagining how much money a place like that could generate.

The veteran almost felt sorry for Dragonfly Corp.

Of course, Dragonfly Corp itself was not nearly as amused.

Inside the company’s headquarters, the executives were watching the system announcement from the US Region, and their expressions were anything but pleasant.

A territory as valuable as Twin Wing Island had fallen directly into the hands of a player.

From a business perspective, it was an enormous missed opportunity.

Unfortunately, there was nothing they could do about it.

Everything had been generated and managed automatically by Skynet. Dragonfly Corp did not possess the authority to alter the system’s decisions, and even if they had, Twin Wing Island had been awarded according to Dominion’s established rules.

With international supervisors monitoring the game and the system operating independently, Dragonfly Corp had no legitimate way to interfere.

All they could do was watch as a player took possession of one of the most valuable territories in Dominion and accept the result.