Chapter 119 - Campaign System
Translator: TeamTWO
Editor: Levs
While Ouyang Shuo was racking his brains about the future development of Beihai Town, a system announcement popped out among those in the China region.
“System Notice : China has successfully promoted 100 town level territories, triggering the campaign system. The first battle - The War of Zhuo Lu, will officially commence after 3 days. Friendly tips : The War of Zhuo Lu is a non-mandatory campaign task, and only those with a town level territory are eligible.”
This notice caused an uproar among the players, as they were not aware of the campaign system. There was also not a single detail about it on the official website. Even Di Chen and the others had no prior knowledge about the campaign system as well.
As compared to the previous territorial defence missions, this campaign’s battle was on a much smaller scale, but the attractive and exciting features it contained were definitely on par with the former. Due to the restrictions made by the system, only the top 100 players with town level territories were eligible for the campaign.
As for those who were still struggling with a village level territory, they could only voice out their useless dissatisfaction and protests while those who were qualified were preparing themselves for the campaign. However, there were also some of them who were not qualified and not satisfied trying to see if they could raise their territory level to a town level territory in order to be eligible.
Compared to those who were still lost, Ouyang Shuo had a clear mind. Earth Online’s most unique feature ---- campaign map, was finally going to be launched. In his previous life, lord-type players described the campaign map as a dimensional war. With this description, it could be justified how exciting a campaign war could get.
This so-called campaign scenario was similar to a scenario mission. The system would generate a temporary dimensional map based on a historical battle. Those who were eligible were able to lead their armies and pick a faction to join through a teleportation formation.
In the campaign scenario, many famous figures were generated. A player could follow them and participate in the selected historical war. The player could even change the history if his or her presence was strong enough to affect the tides of war. This immense feeling where a player participated in an epic scenario like this was undoubtedly very attractive.
In general, there will only be at most one historical war for every dynasty. As soon as the campaign scenario of a dynasty ends, the historical figures of the dynasty will start to appear in the game, awaiting capable players to recruit them.
Therefore, as the game progressed into the late game, there will be a huge amount of historical figures from different dynasties in the game to be recruited. With this, the chances of players to recruit mighty warrior figures or powerful strategist figures will be increased drastically.
Another advantage of the campaign scenario was, of course, the merit points. The later the game was, the harder the requirements to raise the player’s title. Using Ouyang Shuo as an example, he was now a second rank count, which was the highest title among the players for now. However, for him to promote into a first rank count, the difficulty was still very high, not to mention the title of marquis that was one rank higher as the required merit points were simply absurdly high.
The campaign scenario provided players an opportunity to obtain more merit points. In each arc and every scenario, the system were to rank the players’ ranking based on their contribution. The higher the rank was, the better the merit points awarded to the players. For the top ten players, they were to be awarded with some special rewards too.
The most appealing part of the scenarios were not only these. For lord type players, famous generals and strategists were what they desired the most. In scenarios, players will have the chances to trigger quests on recruiting these famous figures, only by completing these quests will the players be able to recruit them and bring them back to their own base.
Bai Qi The Human Butcher, Xiang Yu The Overlord Of Western Chu, Zhao Yun The God Of Martial Arts, Li Jing The Military God and other figures who were well known will all appear in these campaign scenarios one by one, just thinking about them would make one fired up completely.
At the current state of the game, everyone knew that it was very rare to get a famous figure. Even with the conditions and wealthiness of Shanhai Town, other than Shi Wan Sui who was awarded for building the village, there were only two king class figures which were Fan Zhong Yan and Tian Wen Jing. Based on this, the rarity of every single famous figures could be seen.
After the system announcement, every lord type player had received the notification, including Ouyang Shuo of course.
“System notification: In order to ease the opening of the campaign scenario, the system will set up a teleportation formation at your territory, no cost will be charged. Please choose the location for the portal to be set up wisely. Gentle reminder: this teleportation formation will be permanent, it can also be used for travelling within the territory, please think twice before confirming the location.”
A blue light flashed across the screen, and a holographic map of Shanhai Town appeared in front of Ouyang Shuo.
The choosing of the teleportation formation should be very particular. First of all, the portal could not be built indoors. Therefore, it should be built at an open space. Other than that, for convenience purposes, the space allocated should be very spacious to prevent people crowding at one place.
However, the portal cannot be built outside of the town as the portal can be destroyed. If it was placed outside of the town, it would be very vulnerable to enemies’ attack and reinforcement will not be able to teleport here if the portal is destroyed.
Finally, Ouyang Shuo decided to place the portal at the east side of the town square as the place wasot only wide, it was also very close to the military area, therefore, the safety of the portal will be ensured.
“System notification: Location for teleportation formation is confirmed, the portal is now being generated.”
“System notification : Teleportation formation is generated. Player can now view it at own will.”
Walking out of the town hall, Ouyang Shuo could see a gigantic teleportation formation standing at the east side of the town square.
The entire teleportation formation was in the shape of a disc, around 10 meters in diameter. It was made with a material that looked neither like rocks nor jade, and it appears to be very simple. At the core of the portal, there was the iconic black and white Tai Chi symbol, rotating non-stop slowly in the clockwise direction. The center of the core was the pattern of Bagua and the outermost area was the sexagenary cycle.
At the four cardinal directions of the portal stood four bronze statues. They were the Azure Dragon of the East, the White Tiger of the West, the Vermilion Bird of the South and the Black Tortoise of the North, the four celestial guardians. Using the four celestial guardians statues, a surrounding barrier was formed around the portal, blocking those who have no permission to enter the portal.
Ouyang Shuo walked towards the portal and placed his right hand on the barrier to adjust the settings of the portal.
“System notification : Please select which player to be authorized for using the portal.”
As there was only one player in the entire Shanhai Town, Ouyang Shuo set the portal authorization to only himself.
“System notification : Please select the mode of territory teleportation, you may choose one from the following three: free teleportation, permitted teleportation only or war-time limited teleportation only.”
Other than that, the portal’s barrier was only one-way. That said, it can stop people from entering the portal but it can’t stop someone from walking out of the portal.
Therefore, for the sake of the territory’s safety, there must be a restriction on the portal transmission mode.
Free teleportation mode had the least restriction. It meant that anyone from the ally’s side could access the portal at anytime without authorization. Therefore, no lord really used this mode unless your ally was someone who you really can entrust your territory’s safety to. This was because no one can guarantee that each and every ally one had was actually reliable.
If someone in his allies have been bribed by his enemies, the enemies could easily access his portal from the portal of that particular ally. If the enemies were cautious enough, he will not even feel anything. This was undoubtedly dangerous, with the cautious personality of Ouyang Shuo, he will definitely not choose this mode.
In order to prevent this kind of possible infiltration, the second kind of teleportation mode was introduced. This was the permitted teleportation only mode. In this mode, whoever that wishes to access the portal in your territory will have to be authorized first. While they’re waiting to be authorized, the owner of the portal could see who was asking for the authorization and the time they wished to access it. With these information, as long as the owner has some precaution measures, the enemies will be unable to cause any troubles easily.
Of course, if you are even more of a cautious character, you can also pick the third mode ― war-time limited teleportation only. In this mode, only when there is territory war and you need reinforcements will the allies receive your permission and teleport here and it will not be available to them when there was no war.
This mode was suitable for those allies who he didn’t really trusted very much as there was still some risk even in the mode of permitted teleportation only.
Similarly, those who were allies because of sole military purposes were also suitable for the war-time limited teleportation too. This was due to both of the parties becoming allies on the basis of only helping each other in war but not in aspects like economy and so on.
“Select permitted teleportation only!” said Ouyang Shuo.
Although the members of Shanhai Alliance have yet to establish a high level of mutual trust, Ouyang Shuo was confident that he was capable of minimizing the risk to a level he could control. After all, the Military Intelligence Division and Security Division was not just for show. If an ally had betrayed the alliance, under the circumstances of an early alert, Ouyang Shuo believed that the other side could not deliver much of a problem. The final mode of teleportation seemed like one was trying to isolate his own territory after all.
“System notification: Would you like to open the teleportation formation?”
No matter which it was, the three mentioned modes of teleportation had a prerequisite, which was the teleportation among the allies. If one did not form an alliance with another, a player will never be able to teleport around each other’s territory.
However, if a friend or an officer he wished to recruit was need to be teleported over into his base, what should he do? At this aspect, the system was still very user-friendly. Other than the three aforementioned modes, it had also designed a special teleportation mode.
This so-called name-adding special mode was that every lord had a list of permitted people in using the portal, all the lord needed to do was just add in the name of the person he wants to authorize and the people will then be able to teleport to his base through any teleportation formation.
“Open the teleportation formation!” said Ouyang Shuo with no hesitation.