Chapter 8: The Seven-Stringed Lyre of the God of Magic

Zong Mi felt like he was being followed.

But honestly, this kind of thing was practically routine for him.

Back when he flew across the Dragon Clan Canyon, he had even played aerial hide-and-seek with countless dragons and still managed to escape successfully. Compared to that, merely being tailed on the ground was hardly intimidating.

At this hour, night had already settled deeply over Gazi.

Most shops on both sides of the streets had long closed for the day, leaving only a thin crescent moon hanging in the dark sky, casting cold silver light over the city.

Zong Mi tugged lightly at his cloak, turned sharply, and slipped into a silent alleyway.

Using the cover of darkness, he pulled a murky potion from his robes, uncorked it casually, and drank it in one gulp.

“I say, let the night walk beside me.”

【Level 4 True Word Spell / Judgment Successful】
【Level 5 Dark Magic — Shadow Art / Activated】

The potion tasted awful.

Zong Mi frowned deeply as the bitterness rolled across his tongue.

Shadow Art was originally a mid-level shadow spell within dark magic, but Zong Mi used it in reverse—submerging himself into the shadows and manipulating them fluidly.

It was a high-level fifth-tier spell.

With Zong Mi’s current Level 4 True Word Spell ability, casting it was extremely difficult. That was why he had consumed an enhancement potion beforehand, barely managing to activate the spell successfully.

In the blink of an eye, the blond bard vanished from where he stood, transforming into a black shadow that melted seamlessly into the darkness on the ground.

The alley appeared completely empty.

Only the shadows cast by the tall rooftops remained.

An assassin leapt down from above beneath the moonlight. After repeatedly confirming the area, his expression grew grave as he quietly sent out a secret incantation.

Zong Mi had not actually left.

In truth, he still stood there, pressed tightly against the wall, silently observing.

Only after the assassin finished transmitting the message did he curl his lips into a faint smile and move silently along the edge of the shadows toward northern Gazi.

Night shrouded the northern district beneath the glow of magical lamps, leaving the scenery dim and hazy.

Eric definitely had problems.

Zong Mi thought lazily to himself while leaping and running agilely through the nighttime city. He looked more like a dexterity-based class than the physically fragile mage he supposedly was.

Truthfully, the result did not surprise him much.

Zong Mi had never underestimated either time or the unpredictability of the human heart.

He did not head toward Gazi’s teleportation array immediately.

Gazi was the Assassin Temple’s headquarters.

Going there now would basically be delivering himself straight into their hands, and Zong Mi was not stupid.

The blond man twisted through several streets before finally jumping steadily from the edge of a clocktower rooftop.

After canceling the Shadow Art spell, he pushed open another ordinary-looking door in northern Gazi.

The door itself was not hidden.

But not everyone could perceive it.

At the very least, NPCs could not.

It was a human-player gathering zone created through holographic technology operating within the allowed rules of Descending. Such places existed in nearly every city and town and were marked clearly on players’ map systems.

The moment the door opened, the scenery behind it transformed entirely.

Rows upon rows of crowded shops stretched out before him.

Human players also squatted casually along the roadside selling goods from makeshift stalls, simply propping up wooden signs and shouting advertisements.

At the far end of the street stood a pale moon-white building crowned with a light-blue dome.

Its architecture clashed sharply with Gazi’s main city style, but spatial magic concealed it within this district.

Because of the heavy crowd, the central road was extremely narrow—barely enough for several people to walk side by side.

Yet despite the cramped space, it lost none of its liveliness or prosperity.

The atmosphere strongly resembled Diagon Alley from Harry Potter, full of excitement and energy, forming a sharp contrast with the empty streets outside.

Players in the game did not need sleep.

Many bosses and dungeons even opened exclusively at midnight.

Humans on Earth treated Descending as a second world and threw themselves into it with overwhelming enthusiasm—expanding territory, grinding levels frantically, all in hopes of one day acquiring a City-Building Token and establishing a human kingdom of their own.

As soon as Zong Mi entered, he sensed several subtle gazes land upon him.

He raised an eyebrow but ignored them, weaving through the bustling crowd toward the large building at the end of the street.

Most roadside vendors were players unwilling to pay transaction fees, so they simply sold items independently.

The building at the end, however, was an official exchange hall.

Not only did it display bounties posted by players, but NPC organizations and individuals also posted commissions there.

Additionally, it contained an official marketplace interface shared across every human player settlement on the continent.

As long as one paid the transaction fee, any item could be listed on the marketplace.

Zong Mi intended to browse recent commissions worth paying attention to.

Many players believed NPC quests posted within player exchanges were stingy, low-profit tasks with little value.

But in reality, some NPC quests were extremely useful.

They could serve as prerequisites for hidden missions or lead into secret events.

Completing the full quest chain often yielded generous rewards.

Before Zong Mi had established connections with powerful NPCs, he had climbed upward precisely through gathering firsthand information from the exchange hall.

Though now things were more “developed”—

Actually, perhaps that wasn’t accurate.

After all, with the expansion update, everything had practically reset overnight, forcing Zong Mi to personally handle everything again.

That aside, there truly were not many people inside the exchange hall tonight.

Zong Mi casually selected an empty terminal and activated the floating projection screen before beginning to browse the day’s quests.

【The Missing Oak Tree of Nige Village】
【The Mystery of Why Dogg Town’s Fountain Stopped Flowing】
【The Lost Hammer of Gazi’s Blacksmith】
……

Zong Mi scanned through them.

Every single task looked trivial and mundane.

Patiently, he scrolled from top to bottom, examining every listing carefully.

Then suddenly—

When his gaze landed upon a particular quest entry, the familiar heat ignited around his eyes again.

It’s here.

He narrowed his eyes and focused on the quest.

【Visitor to the Holy City of Dawn】
Publisher: NPC
Quest Details: Representatives from the Skaman Empire of the Southern Continent are traveling to the Holy City for an audience. The ceremonial staff appears insufficient.
Quest Requirement: Arrive at the Holy City within the designated time after accepting the quest. Further details may be obtained from the Skaman Empire’s stationed minister within the Holy City.

At first glance, this quest seemed no different from the other miscellaneous errands above it.

At most, it simply looked vague and directionless.

Players had accepted these kinds of quests before, and forum posts still existed documenting how badly such quests could trick players—usually amounting to NPCs lacking manpower and dragging players in as temporary labor.

But this quest’s location happened to be the Holy City of Dawn as well.

Zong Mi paused briefly before immediately accepting it.

After all, he was already planning to travel there anyway.

Clearly, the conditions for fully observing the future were still insufficient.

Even after accepting the quest, no future vision appeared before his eyes.

Still, for some reason, Zong Mi felt this quest was suspicious.

Now that all his legendary quests had activated, there was a strong possibility this was an entry point into the continent’s main storyline.

Lost in thought, he pulled his cloak tighter, closed the floating interface, and prepared to leave.

Then he overheard two nearby players whispering.

“Come on, let’s run a dungeon. What’re you looking at?”

“Browsing the forums.”

“Forums? Any fresh drama lately?”

“No, no. I’m reading the post after the update. Didn’t you see it? A player with the ID Zong Mi suddenly shot to Rank #1 on the Ladder Rankings after the expansion update and directly pushed Baili Kong down. The forums are searching everywhere for this guy now.”

“Why’re they looking for him?”

“No clue. But some high-level players leaked that the Alliance received a fragmented continental main quest. Apparently it involves an insanely difficult dungeon in the Undead Territory. Basically all top ten Ladder players have responded to the dungeon call. They’re hoping that if they can recruit the new Rank #1, their odds will improve.”

“And besides—”

The player deliberately dragged out his tone.

“That fragmented main quest might be connected to obtaining a City-Building Token. If players can get one earlier, humanity can establish a foothold in Descending much faster.”

“That does make sense…”

Pretending to continue browsing the interface, Zong Mi listened carefully to every word.

The moment his own name appeared, alarm bells rang in his head.

He immediately opened the system’s Ladder Rankings panel.

【Ladder Rankings】
【Rank #1 — Zong Mi】

Zong Mi: ……

A miscalculation.

A huge miscalculation.

He had actually forgotten about this.

The Ladder Rankings evaluated overall combat strength.

Previously, Zong Mi had been far too busy traveling across the continent searching for old allies to think about such things.

Still, he already had a rough guess as to why he had suddenly become Rank #1.

Right before the expansion update, Zong Mi had completed a legendary quest.

Not only had it granted him enormous experience—instantly boosting him nearly twenty levels—but it had also rewarded him with a legendary piece of equipment.

Most likely, that legendary equipment alone had pushed him directly onto the throne of the rankings.

That piece of equipment lay quietly within Zong Mi’s inventory.

【Seven-Stringed Lyre of the God of Magic】
Equipment Quality: Legendary
Attack Power: ???
Standard Bonus: All Attributes +10%
Set Bonus: Not Activated (Collect all seven pieces to activate the set effect)
(Currently Possessed: 2 Pieces)

The only issue was—

The method through which Zong Mi obtained this equipment had not been particularly honorable.

He had tricked it away from the world’s strongest dark sorcerer—a man who had imprisoned himself within a forest and sworn never to leave it.

But now that the expansion update had advanced the timeline by ten years, no matter how guilty Zong Mi felt, there was no way he would return equipment already in his possession.

Thinking about it that way somehow made him feel much more justified again.