Chapter 416: The Man Behind Blaze Phoenix
"Trash."
"More trash."
"Seriously, nothing but trash."
Marcus clicked his tongue in disappointment while sorting through the pile of equipment scattered across the battlefield. These Shadowfall players had acted like some untouchable powerhouse guild from the moment they appeared, throwing around their reputation and talking endlessly about their strength.
’What a joke.’
For a supposedly elite guild, the gear they dropped was embarrassing.
Aside from Shadowfall_One’s blue-grade armor and the golden bow Shadowfall_Four had been carrying, almost everything else was junk meant for vendor shops. Even the bow itself was only low-tier gold equipment. It looked flashy enough, but compared to what Marcus currently had, it wasn’t even worth equipping.
Without much interest, he tossed the golden bow into his inventory. Selling it later would at least bring in some decent gold.
After that, he walked over to the large tree where Shadowfall_Four’s corpse was still pinned in place and pulled out the Bat Dragon Cloud Sword. The black blade slid free with a metallic scrape before Marcus turned back toward the Guild Creation Token lying on the ground nearby.
The Yellow-Tusk Boar King’s loot had finally become unclaimed. And honestly, the drops were pretty good.
Besides the Guild Creation Token itself, the boss had also dropped a Level 40 gold-grade weapon called the Yellow-Tusk Boar Blade. The weapon had a strange design, curved like an enormous boar tusk with a yellowish sheen running along the edge. It looked unique enough, though after identifying it, Marcus quickly lost interest.
The attack stats were decent by normal standards, but nowhere near the level of his Corpse Demon Dark Soul Sword.
Another item for the sell pile.
In addition to that, there were two Dreamland Gems and three pieces of blue-grade equipment mixed into the loot.
Once he finished collecting everything, Marcus crouched beside the Yellow-Tusk Boar King’s massive corpse and activated Gathering. A moment later, he successfully harvested two intermediate-grade crafting materials: a Yellow Boar Tusk used for forging weapons and a patch of Yellow Boar Hide suitable for armor crafting.
’Not bad at all.’
Marcus couldn’t help chuckling to himself.
If Shadowfall_Two were standing here right now looking at these drops, he’d probably cough up blood from sheer frustration.
After gathering the last materials, Marcus swept his eyes across the battlefield one final time to make sure nothing had been missed.
Only then did he pull the Guild Creation Token from his inventory.
"Another one..."
Even he found it a little ridiculous.
Without wasting time, Marcus immediately opened the Guild Leaderboard.
—
Guild Leaderboard
1. Black Dragon Guild – Leader: Demonic Dragon
2. Violet Thunder Guild – Leader: Hexium
3. Inferno Clan – Leader: InfernoRider001
4. Soulfire Guild – Leader: SoulfireBlade
5. Threeleaf Clan – Leader: ThreeleafAxe69
6. Merchant Alliance Guild – Leader: CryptoWarlord
7. Slayer Guild – Leader: Slayer#Apex
8. Rose Society – Leader: VioletNova
9. Blaze Phoenix Guild – Leader: Blaze Phoenix
—
Marcus stared at the rankings for a moment in surprise.
He had spent nearly twenty days trapped inside the Mystic Turtle’s Tomb, yet the top ten guild rankings still weren’t full. Guild Creation Tokens were even rarer than he’d originally expected.
Thinking about it carefully, Marcus glanced down at the Token in his hand again.
Including this one, he alone had obtained three Guild Creation Tokens.
Three.
That meant three guilds in Dominion existed because of him. If he told other players that, most of them would think he was lying through his teeth.
A freak was a freak. There was really no other explanation anymore.
The thought left Marcus feeling absurdly satisfied with himself.
At the same time, though, the leaderboard also reminded him just how quickly Dominion’s major powers were beginning to rise. Every guild leader listed there was a genuine heavyweight player with influence, resources, or terrifying personal skill.
The Dreamland Continent was about to become a lot more chaotic. Several guilds caught his attention almost immediately.
The first was the Merchant Alliance Guild in sixth place. Marcus recognized the name CryptoWarlord instantly. The man wasn’t just famous on the rankings either. His Merchant Alliance Auction House already had a massive reputation across several beginner cities.
Now that he had established a top-ten guild as well, his influence would only continue growing.
"That guy’s ambitious," Marcus muttered.
The guild and auction house would strengthen each other perfectly. One controlled players, the other controlled resources and trade. Together, they had terrifying growth potential.
Then there was the Rose Society in eighth place.
An all-female guild.
Marcus had heard of them before. Their reputation was surprisingly high, supposedly rivaling even Black Dragon Guild in popularity. Whether it was because of their strength or because countless male players were desperate to join them, Marcus honestly wasn’t sure.
Still, the guild that interested him the most wasn’t Black Dragon Guild, nor his old enemies in Threeleaf Clan, nor even Inferno Clan, the guild belonging to the Furious Three he still planned to deal with eventually.
No. The one that truly caught his attention was the guild sitting at number nine.
Blaze Phoenix Guild.
Marcus narrowed his eyes slightly as memories resurfaced.
Back when he auctioned off the very first Guild Creation Token, Blaze Phoenix had appeared out of nowhere with overwhelming determination to obtain it. The man had spent money recklessly, forcing the bidding war higher and higher like he didn’t care about the cost at all.
For a single piece of gold equipment, he had casually thrown out astronomical prices just to pressure everyone else.
Yet strangely enough, when Marcus sold the second Guild Creation Token, Blaze Phoenix had simply watched InfernoRider001 buy it without putting up much resistance.
That made no sense.
The same man who had once seemed desperate to become the first guild founder in Dominion had somehow ended up ranked ninth instead.
"Why?"
Marcus genuinely couldn’t figure it out.
Was Blaze Phoenix simply unlucky enough to never find another Token afterward? Based on the absurd amount of money the man had shown during the auction, that explanation felt hard to believe.
"Who exactly is this Blaze Phoenix guy...?"
The more Marcus thought about it, the more curious he became.
Still unable to make sense of it, he stored the dark-colored Guild Creation Token back into his inventory before opening the other rankings.
Not much had changed overall.
He still completely dominated the Reputation Leaderboard, Pet Leaderboard, Mount Leaderboard, and Divine Artifact Leaderboard. Nobody else was even remotely close.
And thanks to the nonstop grinding inside the Mystic Turtle’s Tomb, his lead on the Level Leaderboard had become even more ridiculous.
RogueTheory, the player ranked second, still hadn’t reached Level 45.
Third place and below had only just entered Level 43.
Even if Marcus stopped leveling entirely for the next ten days, there was a good chance nobody would catch him anytime soon.
But compared to everything else, the biggest change by far was on the Wealth Leaderboard.
Before entering the Mystic Turtle’s Tomb, Marcus had occupied first place himself after selling the Guild Creation Token to InfernoRider001 for over four hundred million gold.
Now? The player in first place possessed more than 8.5 billion gold.
Marcus froze for a second after seeing the number. Converted into real-world currency, that amount was equivalent to roughly 850 million dollars.
An absolutely insane fortune.
For a moment, Marcus genuinely wondered if he had read it wrong. He reopened the Wealth Leaderboard just to confirm it.
First Place: Name Hidden
Gold: 8.5 Billion
Even with the hidden name, Marcus already knew exactly who it was.
Blaze.
The owner of Dominion’s rapidly rising Nightmare Auction House.
More specifically, the same Blaze who had been broadcasting Marcus’s combat recordings at the auction house while he remained trapped inside the Mystic Turtle’s Tomb.
Over the past several days, Nightmare Auction House had already released three of those recordings. According to Drunkard and Invincible Strong, the first two recordings alone had cost fifty gold per viewing and attracted over eighty million players.
Each video had generated more than four billion gold in revenue.
And judging from player reactions, the later recordings were becoming even more popular.
Since Marcus had remained stuck inside the Mystic Turtle’s Tomb and couldn’t personally return to settle accounts through the system, all the earnings temporarily sat under Blaze’s name instead.
Even now, Marcus still found it difficult to process. He had spent just over ten days buried inside an ancient tomb grinding monsters nonstop.
And somehow, by the time he came back out... He had become a billionaire.
