As Jules looked for portals, the first thing that popped up was the use of portals.
The more common portals, like red portals, could give subclasses to hundreds of rulers. In contrast, only 1 to 3 rulers could use the most rare violet portal.
Once a portal reached the used limit, it disappeared from the planet, and a new portal of the same grade randomly appeared around the planet.
As for the exact number, he found this list on a popular gaming channel. According to them, there could be 1000+ red portals on the planet, in between 500 and 1000 orange portals. Then there were around 250 to 300 yellow portals, with 100 to 125 green and 50 to 70 blue portals.
While there were 25–35 special indigo portals and only 10–15 violet portals, finding these portals was not a one-in-a-million chance, but you had to be quick, as there were 1000 other rulers on the planet.
The frustrating thing was that NPCs built these combined institutes all over the planet around the most high-level portals.
It was not like those games where you just needed to find a portal and then you could challenge it. No, in Universal Online, NPCs were smart enough to understand the importance of high-level portals for rulers, so they built some buildings around the portals to take control over them.
He still remembered in his last life when he encountered these royal institutes that hid violet portals in them.
Now a ruler needed to join these institutes just to even have a chance to attempt the portal challenge. These organizations also used rulers for their dirty work in the name of finding the best candidate, and rulers were helpless in that situation.
For rulers, the pressure was that if they did not work, then someone else would, and nobody wanted that.
To get more concrete information, he opened that storyteller's channel.
There he found these videos about all the known top-level portals that guy discovered while he was on the planet. Well, finding these top-level old portals was not that hard, as NPCs themselves promote them to incite more rulers to join them.
Just like players, even NPCs placed special value on violet and indigo portals. They knew how to use these portals strategically. The only downside for them was the limited use of these portals.
This was a reason that outside research helped players more. Unlike the players that came and went, these planets hardly experienced any major change.
So learning information from those who had already played there was always helpful. He found a 10-minute-long summary video that was posted around four months ago.
It was not up-to-date, but despite that, it was better than nothing. He went through the video as he rubbed his chin.
Not to his surprise, both empires had two violet portals each, while there was one portal in the 6th region of islands, one under the control of both old kingdoms of the north, and one in the volcanic region of the south.
Everyone knew about half of the violet portals on planet Nex.
He wasn't an expert on these portals, but his first thought was that there must be more portals within those two empires.
He knew violet portals did not appear out of the blue. They appeared in a region filled with hidden history.
As for the Indigo portals, surprisingly, there were already 27 known portals. 4 in each region, except the center region with 6 and the east forest region with 5 portals.
He was not sure if these indigo portals also connected to the place or not, but it was bad news for him.
It was great for those with the support of the gang. He was sure that the gang would have different arrangements for those under them.
It was common for every bigger player organization to have deeper connections with one of the big NPC powerhouses on the planet.
What was interesting was another 30-minute video titled "All the Possible Locations for Hidden High-Level Portals."
He did not play the video and instead stuffed all the food on his plate into his mouth first.
He looked around the canteen, and it did not seem like anyone was going to disturb him. It was quite different in his last life.
As he was expendable, almost everyone in the group used to give orders to him. Right now, he could see a few who were glancing at him from time to time, but none of them were ordering him.
This was weird, as most of these guys used to start their days by cursing him. After so long, it became an ingrained routine for them.
There was no way they would change so much just because he was B-rank. It was most likely the boss or the vice leader who gave them command.
But then again, why did those guys care so much about the high grade?
As he thought for a few seconds, he slapped his forehead. "Shit, how did this simple detail skip past my mind?" With all these recent changes, from Boss's reaction after the trial to the start of the early conflict between them, he realized it was him—no, more specifically, his action of initiating that quest in the trial.
There was no doubt in his mind that right now, their group's average grade rating was far higher than any other new group in the building.
Now, would the Eagle Gang treat them the same as last life? Ah, there were few chances. If nothing else, he was sure that someone from the gang contacted Boss and the Vice Leader even outside the game.
This all explained the sudden shift and urgency in their behavior. He only saw something like this in the third to fourth attempts of his last life. Well, whatever, it was beneficial for him if others around him knew a little more than they were supposed to know.
He sighed and stuffed all the leftover food into his mouth. Done eating, he immersed himself back in his mobile and clicked on the video.
[ "Yo, what up, everyone?" A lean-built man in a colorful Hawaiian shirt appeared on the screen with a straw hat on his head, along with a pair of reading glasses dangling from his neck.
"I'm sure everyone here is interested in uncovering today's mysteries. Well, I'm not going to repeat those things; you know what to do if you like the videos." With that, the guy pulled out a whiteboard with Planet Nex's overall map on it, along with all the known violet and indigo locations marked on it.]