Modern Cultivation : The Strongest Couple Bonded by Vampire System-Chapter 583 - 583: Competition

Darius sat stiffly across from him, wiping sweat from his brow, trying to steady his breathing.
Through the talk with Darius, Alex learned many things about how everything had turned into chaos.
Darius also revealed something more important.
His communication with Avalanche was only one way.
They would send someone to him randomly to acquire information.
Unfortunately, he didn't know when.
"We don't have a fixed schedule," Darius said.
"Last time was five months ago, so I don't know when we will meet again."
"I see..." Alex replied.
He tapped his finger on the small cabin desk, thinking about what else he could ask.
Then he asked the method on how Darius farmed life force in his city.
The answer was simple.
"Same method, more or less. Every city must put humans inside tubes.
The only difference is the type of virtual world they live in."
Some city lords felt gracious enough to let their people live in paradise worlds.
Others used game-like worlds, just like what Aira did.
Alex listened quietly.
The more he heard, the clearer the pattern became.
He could use this information to filter out which city lords he could cooperate with.
The type of virtual world was a reflection of the owner's mindset.
If a city used a game world like Aira's, it meant two possible things.
Either the owner wanted to prepare their people in case an opportunity arose to fight back.
Or they simply looked at humans as entertainment.
But the second one is very inefficient.
Only a true psychopath would choose to spend a lot of resources building a game world just to enjoy watching people kill each other.
The more complicated the game, the more computing resources it needed.
That translated to higher life force consumption.
It made gathering enough to fill the quota harder.
Just like what happened in the Warforge world.
The world was too complex.
Too many classes, systems, events, and gods.
The comparison was obvious.
Managing many simple single-player offline games was one thing.
Managing a massive online world where hundreds of millions of players interacted on the same server was another.
The resource consumption was insane.
It was many times more expensive.
This mean if someone is really psychopath, it's more plausible they just took a few people to play with.
Or they buy some virtual reality system to do whatever they want.
Alex leaned back, "how about conflict between city lord?"
This is part where Alex don't know the most.
Faerith and Haid mostly spend time researching inside their own city, so he doesn't know what other city lord do in their free time.
He doesn't believe they don't have any fight.
"Mostly done in silent."
Darius then explained to Alex that city lords often go outside and scavenge resources or artifacts from ruined cities.
But there was no big confrontation most of the time, because despite their title, their real control was limited.
They couldn't use the city's resources to create their own army.
The only force that could truly count as "theirs" were the slaves they bought.
On top of that, they had to follow many rules that made building private power almost impossible.
For example, they couldn't build any large facility, so even if they acquired slave species that could breed fast, they still couldn't set up a proper nest to grow their numbers openly.
But as there was a will, people would find a way.
So they started looking for areas that were still rich in natural resources and far enough from strict oversight.
Even if they couldn't build facilities, they could still order their slaves to create hidden nests inside forests using what was already available.
These nests were crude, but they were enough to slowly expand a private force.
That was where the real conflict came from.
Finding good territory like this was extremely hard, and once a city lord marked a region, another city lord might want it too.
So the quiet struggle for these rare zones became one of the few ways city lords could clash without directly breaking Mechalyte rules.
"That's interesting, could give me list of this teritory?"
"I only know one, it's the dark bear forest.
In the past you may know it as one of the red zone."
Darius than explain how he manage the area with few other city lord.
They cooperate to grow their own small army, and protect the area.
As place like this is rare, people choose to hide their location as best as they can.
Even if they're in conflict trying to snatch it form other, they will still hide it, as letting other know is just the same as adding more competitor.
As Alex listened to Darius's information, he opened the world map and began to update it.
He also wrote an algorithm to predict which zones were being used as other hidden territories.
'Now I just need to run the algorithm after I get a more detailed list of all the city lords and the virtual worlds they run.' He planned to get this information from the Mechalyte.
Alex looked through the window and saw a tall mountain with a flat surface.
"That should be enough information for now.
Keep growing your army and prepare yourself.
Soon I will need your help to take care of other city lords."
Darius's gaze turned excited.
He didn't know much about Alex, but he had confidence in his strength.
"When will this happen?"
"Calm down.
It will happen soon, but I don't know if it's one week, one month, or even one day.
Just wait for the opportunity."
Alex then took out a flash drive that he had customized to interface with Mechalyte technology.
"Put this in your terminal."
Darius had some idea what Alex wanted.
He nodded while asking, "Will it be safe?"
"Yes. If you don't believe me, then you can choose not to.
I will just put you on the list of city lords to be removed."
Darius gulped.
The plane then started descending under Alex's control, landing on top of the cliff.
"In that case, I will wait for your good news then, Alex."
Darius said while standing up, knowing Alex wanted to go down there.
"Not yet, Darius. You should come down too. I need to know how strong you are."
Darius wanted to reject, but he knew from Alex's cold gaze that he had no other option.