System: you have accepted the Epic quest "the lost souls of thunder city" by offering the lost soul help.
Quest Details: find the location of the fallen thunder city and find a way to enter, after entering find and free the souls that are trapped within the city. Do all of this without damaging a single soul that is trapped.
Quest Rewards: unknown
Quest failure penalties: some of the souls that are still amongst the living people will haunt you for eternity, fighting you once a day.
----------
James didn't waste any more time and immediately sent Olivia on her way, he then made his way toward the workshop Iron was working in.
"How's it going Iron"
Iron was a little startled, he was covered in sweat and was in extreme concentration, to James it looked like he had been working nonstop for the whole 40 hours they were out grinding. He couldn't help but smile, that was why he recruited Iron, after all, his devotion to foraging was unmatched.
"It's going well, I've almost used up all the materials I took from Merlin's forging room, and I managed to make a crap load of items. So much in fact that I managed to become an advanced Apprentice forger, only 1 step away from becoming a basic forger."
James was a little surprised when he heard that, you took what now? but he calmed down when he realized that he had probably gotten permission from Merlin, and even if he didn't, if he got out there with the materials that were a sign that he allowed it, Iron couldn't steal from him after all.
"Anyway, here is the location of the shop that I bought, you can go there with the lower end of your equipment, everything Bronze and below. Olivia is going to come by with a lot of foraging designs, priorities those if you get them, but before you start to make a truckload of 1 item make sure that everything in the guild had a decent set of armor and a good weapon. O, and all those weapons and armor should be ready in about 40 hours, that's when most of them are going to start their [Tier 1] promotion."
Iron looked everything over and just nodded, he did just like Olivia feel a little tired but his passion for foraging was just greater.
Now that James had finished all his business here, he went to various shops to buy potions and whatnot for his long journey.
The ruins of thunder city were located at the 'top of the world, the highest mountain located on the main continent. Although the top of the mountain was currently too dangerous for James, it is a level 120 leveling zone, the cave that led to the entrance of the city was located near the bottom, in a level 80 leveling zone, still not easy but doable for him.
And so, his journey began, it was an extremely long one taking 10 hours, and not an easy one at that. He had to cross multiple level 60-80 leveling zones on the way there, trying his hardest not to kill any monsters to not level up. If he leveled up now, he would get a total of 8 free Attribute Points, but if he did it after [Tier 1] that would increase to 16, in the grand scheme of things this doesn't sound like a lot, but James was trying to build the strongest possible player in gods Domain, if he couldn't even do something as simple as this then he wouldn't even have the right to proclaim his goals.
And in the end, he did exactly that, with his incredible Speed he could easily outrun the level 80 monsters, but this alone wasn't the key factor, the real reason for this to be possible was his physique, his physique was currently 200% higher than any other normal player. Normally a player would have to get to [Tier 3] to even get on this level, or [Tier 2] if they had an extremely strong class and some lucky opportunities to match. Physique increased James's stamina and Speed of perception, meaning that he could perceive the world around him much faster, normal people without an etiquette physique would be limited to the amount of Speed they could use in battle due to not being able to know what was going on if they did, the physique also helped to increase the upper limit to one's senses, to a beyond Domain Realm expert like James that was incredibly valuable.
Standing in the snow-filled level 80 leveling zone before the cave leading towards the collapsed thunder city, James just let the snow blow past him while excitingly staring at the entrance. This was the first part he was going to collect for his main weapon from now on, [Solomons Eternal night], but to get it he still had a long way to go. The blade was broken into many pieces, one being [Solomon's Sword], a legendary sword. Even when compared to other Legendary grade weapons this one still came out on top, it was even listed as one of Gods Domain's 10 great legendary weapons. The other part of [Solomons Eternal night] is the Fragmented-Legendary grade sword, [Winter of Eternal Night], while not being as strong as [Solomon's Sword], it was still one of the finest Fragmented-Legendary grade swords that had ever been made, in many aspects it could rival a Legendary grade sword.
The fragment James was now trying to acquire was not one of these 2 weapons, it was a part of the weapon [Solomon's Sword]. Legendary equipment wasn't something you could just find in Gods Domain, most of it was destroyed or scattered into many pieces, meaning that you would have to complete up to 10 Epic quests just to have a chance at getting 1 piece, but Epic quests weren't that easy to come by. Just look at Olivia, she had been given a list of most of the promising Epic quests throughout their whole Gods Domain by James, and in the end, she would at most be able to create 20 pieces of Legendary equipment, so a whole universes Gods domain could at most if the stars aligned and every available piece gets discovered produce 20-30 pieces. Just by that fact alone, you could imagen how rare they are by the fact that Apex powers in the greater Gods Domain had thousands of [Tier 6] players wanting to get their hands on them. This all assumes that the stars align, and people find out about these pieces of equipment though, most Gods Domains can at max produce 5 to 10 pieces of Legendary equipment.
The weapon James was going for at the moment, [Solomon's Sword], was divided into 5 Epic swords, all of them being regarded as the best in their grade, of course they would, the power may have been divided into 5 making them Epic grade, but the materials used to craft them were still of Legendary caliber. His current target, the blade that is located inside the large snow-covered mountain in front of him was the only blade he could equip and acquire right now, [Killing Ray], it also happened to be 1 of the 2 swords he could obtain himself, all others where first seen in auctions, held by guilds or NPC's. This was also the main reason James was trying so hard to make money and connections, he had to collect all pieces in those auctions otherwise it would become extremely difficult for him to get them, in his last life [Solomon's Sword] was never made, and the main reason was that all the swords seemed to have vanished the moment the secret regarding [Solomon's Sword] came out, they all became scared of losing their chance to a Legendary weapon and ended in a stalemate.
James, calming down his excitement and pushing his grand plans to the back of his mind for now stepped into the cave, immediately getting a notification.
System: You have discovered the ancient runes of the Thunder Empire, you are the first living being to have entered this land in almost a thousand years, as a reward for your grand achievement you have gotten 250 reputation points for Thunder city.
First James got rather excited seeing an unexpected reward but after reading it through he only found disappointment. Reputation points determent your status in a city. Barons, for example, the lowest rank nobles needed 500 reputation points to get that rank, something that was extremely useful, allowing you to not only recruit guards but also buy property in the city. All of these benefits were of no use in Thunder city though, it being a ruined city.
Nevertheless, James marched on, not finding any evidence of civilization no matter how far he went into the ever-darkening cave. Not only that it seemed to be getting less and less likely that there was something at the end of this dark tunnel, it only continuing to grow smaller and smaller, if James hadn't gotten the system message confirming that this was indeed Thunder city he would have long questioned that he was in the right place.
After an hour of walking in the long dark tunnel, James finally saw something hinting at civilization, two pairs of two eyes both glowing around 5 meters above the ground and 20 from each other. They didn't give off a lot of light but enough to see what they were. They were 2 gained mechanical robots standing on both sides of a withered yet elegant-looking gate, James honestly didn't know what they were but he could deduce one thing from their aura clearly, if he approached he would die.
James was franticly searching for ways to get past them, in his previous life the founder of [Killing Ray] didn't mention this part of the quest but he was sure that the guy was still below level 100 when completing it, so brute force wasn't the only option. It only took a few seconds of looking before James found something special, a lone skeleton dragging his feet along steadily walking around in front of the giant statues, only barely being visible through the light given off by their eyes.
[Invading Undead (Common) level 80]
500.000/500.000
"That's it."
James proclaimed while darting at the skeleton, the battle didn't last long as the undead race was extremely weak against the skill holy aura. James was also trying not to drag out the battle so that they wouldn't have any possibility of wandering in the range of the 2 guardians.
System: You have killed an [Invading Undead (Common) level 80], the members of Thunder city are very thankful that you killed one of its invaders, and they decided to reward you with 1 reputation point.
The moment the system message had stopped James was delighted, his plan could work. He had a theory before attacking the undead, that the giant statues weren't to obliterate anything in their sights, but would let members of the city through, this would mean that if he managed to become a citizen of higher status in thunder city these guards would let him through, and just now, when he received the extra reputation point, he could feel the pressure of the guards lift if only for a small amount. This indicated that as long as he could get the Baron title in thunder city by killing enough Invaders that he could come in without being attacked.
Now that he knew what to do James went to work, killing these skeletons would take some time and he would like to end this quest before his business with the dragon-phoenix pavilion.