MMORPG: The Almighty Ring

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Jiang Fei took a gander at the beautiful succubus before striking the boss once to kill him. As he slowly paced through the equipment and stored them in his inventory, Jiang Fei turned to Akatziris, who was gazing at him the entire time and said, "It's not what you think. You have served me well and I would want you to continue to do so. It's just… the current status… I do not feel that it's fair for you."

"Is that so…" Akatziris sighed.

The two of them headed out of the dungeon after Jiang Fei had cleared it. Outside, Akatziris showed a different emotion. This time, she was worried. The subtle arch of her luscious eyebrow was a clear indication that she was worried that her master would discard her like used goods.

"Am I no longer useful to you, master?" Akatziris was worried.

"Akatziris, where did that come from? When did I say-" before Jiang Fei could finish his sentence, a flash of flame-colored light burst from behind. Sharaz walked out of it and leaped to hug Jiang Fei.

"Handsome little one! Did you miss me?" said Sharaz as she buried her face into Jiang Fei's neck. Her eyes were filled with the desire to devour Jiang Fei.

Unlike the other girls that Jiang Fei managed to infatuate, Sharaz was not in any way below Jiang Fei. The Naga Priestess, for example, treated Jiang Fei as if he was their spiritual leader. Sharaz treated Jiang Fei just like a potential partner. That was why her manner of expressing her desire was… direct and shameless.

"W-Wha… Why are you here?" Jiang Fei stammered.

"Oh, my dearest. I am here because I've missed you, silly!" said Sharaz as she traced her fingers from his neck to his jaw before reaching his lips.

"Urgh…" Jiang Fei grunted.

Sharaz had the courage to toy with Jiang Fei openly. At this point, Jiang Fei could do nothing but laugh awkwardly. To be honest, he did not like the way how Sharaz treating him. However, she was potentially a key character in 0541's plan. 0541 even broke the laws of artificial intelligence and was locked away just by giving Jiang Fei hints about the quest. Sharaz's character should be important as she could be playing a role so much larger than helping Jiang Fei with the War of Shadow and Light.

As a result, Jiang Fei made sure to keep Sharaz in the loop, maintaining his relationship with her. He could not afford to treat her like the Naga Priestess—neglected and thrown into a corner.

Because of Sharaz's importance, Jiang Fei forgot to finish his conversation with Akatziris. Instead, he was fully engrossed in keeping Sharaz happy. He was completely oblivious to how Akatziris reacted. The poor girl was so bitter and sad that if Jiang Fei could just glance at her, he could immediately realize how sad she was.

Sharaz alone took away the entire day of Jiang Fei's gaming session. It was only when the server was about to shut down that she left Jiang Fei alone. At this point, Akatziris was emotionless. Her expression and the look in her eyes reflected nothing.

While Akatziris was hiding her pain and sorrow, she made sure that her expression did not express what she thought of Jiang Fei. Jiang Fei, on the other hand, was sympathetic. Although he was oblivious to how the girl felt, he could still understand how she would feel as she was treated as nothing but a slave by her own father. The Princess of the Royal Nephilim was cast away to Jiang Fei simply because her father wanted to please Jiang Fei. He was sympathetic, nothing more, nothing less. As she came into his life right after Isabella was gone, there was hardly any relationship building between the two. He had closed his heart when it was a crucial time to cultivate emotions between Akataziris and him. Hence, at this moment, he could not bring himself to see Akatziris as anything more than just a combat partner.

Morning came and Jiang Fei still had not heard of any news regarding the Main Engine room. He tried contacting the martial artist alliance but failed to acquire any information regarding yesterday's evolution incident.

"Sigh… Well, we'll cross that bridge when I come to it," said Jiang Fei disappointingly. The current status between Jiang Fei and the alliance was only slightly above neutral. From his point of view, the alliance was somewhat like an extended family but if they chose not to reveal any secrets to him, there was nothing he could do.

When noon came, all the lights and electrical appliances turned off abruptly while the entire family was having boxed lunch in the living room.

"What the—" cried Jiang Fei, jumping from his seat.

"Calm down. It's just a blackout," said Shang Guanqi, laughing as she did.

"Oh… Hahaha…" Jiang Fei laughed awkwardly and shrugged it off. Having no electricity was a little awkward but everyone could still carry on with their lives. Although they could still finish their lunch, having no entertainment during noon was a little boring. Everyone was so dependent on electricity nowadays that once they were cut off, life became dull and drab.

"That's odd…"

Jiang Fei was not nervous. It was just an interruption in electrical supply. There could be many reasons for the blackout but at this age, electrical supply was almost perfected. Unless someone dropped an EMP bomb in China, there was hardly any reason for the electrical supply to be disrupted. There was not even any notification from the government about the electric disturbance and hence, it was odd for it to happen that day.

With the power outage in progress, Jiang Fei wanted to ask around for the reason. His usual guy to get to was now in the Winter Islands. Han Tianyu had become a man that was hard to reach. Even though the Zhang family was now in cooperation with Jiang Fei, they could be fully trusted.

An hour later, power returned and when Jiang Fei could finally watch television and turned on the air-conditioner, all the oddity was tossed aside to the corner of his head.

"Perhaps it's just a faulty transformer…"

It was only an hour before power was restored to the entire block. Outage at this scale was odd but nothing to be alarmed about. However, what he did not expect was power outage became a daily thing. There would be three to four power outages occurring on a daily basis.

At this point, Jiang Fei began to scout around. What he realized was, the first power outage affected not just his block but the entire city where he lived. That happened only during the day and never at night. One or twice was odd but believable. Thrice a day and only during the day was something that Jiang Fei felt wrong. The root of the problem could not just be a faulty transformer. Something was going on!

When there was power, television broadcast aired and the news informed that there were many nuclear power plants all around the state that had failed to produce a stable current. Jiang Fei knew better than to believe what the media was telling the public. After what he had seen and been through, he learned that it could not be something as simple as that. The present human technology was still far behind but not too far that they could fail to produce proper electricity to the public!

As much as he wanted to investigate, there was literally zero leads for him to start with. Then again, he was also too lazy to question those that might have relations to the nuclear power plant. Fortunately, when Jiang Fei was too lazy to get out of the house, the military made the first move and contacted Jiang Fei.

"Mr. Jiang Fei. It's nice to see you again," said Qin Tian, standing at Jiang Fei's doorstep. It seemed highly likely that the problem this time had something to do with Metahumans. Or else, Qin Tian would never meet him face to face.

"What are you doing here?" Jiang Fei asked, crossing his arms and arching his eyebrows.

"Now, now. No need to be so hostile. I'm here representing the nation's military to discuss the recent power outage," said Qin Tian with a straight face.

"Mhm. So it seems that even the military had something to do with it."

"Not quite but here we are."

"Let's change the location. We'll talk somewhere else," said Jiang Fei before he shut the door behind him. As much as he hated it, Qin Tian should have called him about coming to his house. He would not want to have the military involved with his family.

"Very well."

Jiang Fei lead Qin Tian and took him down to the ground level where he found a large, unpopulated cafe and sat there.

"What do you have for me?" Jiang Fei asked.

"Currently, we do not have much to go on. From what we have gathered, we know that there is a mysterious beast, currently drawing power from the grid," said Qin Tian sternly.

"A beast?"

The first thing that came to his mind was Doomsday but that was highly unlikely.

0541 had mentioned that Earth would never house any large beast. There were only two alien beasts that had escaped from Braveheart; Void Manta and Doomsday. They were both unrelated to electricity so what could that "beast" that Qin Tian mention be?