Chapter 2: Lord from Among the Stars
【You have entered the Abyss!】
【You are under the protection of the Will of the Stars!】
【Your territory will not be actively attacked for seven days!】
Inside the crude hall of a stone house.
A crystal floated before him.
This object was the Lord Core, possessing dozens of functions such as recruitment, cultivation, construction, upgrading, storage, and more.
Furthermore, it served as a smart terminal connected to the Stars Database, providing information services.
When Hang Yu activated the Lord Core, a panel appeared before his eyes, with options like 【Territory Map】, 【Lord Information】, 【Territory Management】, and others.
He first opened the map.
The map looked strange.
It was a roughly 1000×1000 square grid.
Only the central grid was lit up.
Zooming in revealed the terrain within — precisely the location where Hang Yu currently stood.
As for the other grid areas, they remained in an unknown state.
According to the basic knowledge he had learned at the Lord Academy,
When a plane suffered Abyssal corruption, not only would its creatures and ecology be overturned, but even time and space could become distorted, or even experience dislocation and mutation.
The deeper it went,
The heavier the distortion became.
The spacetime of the Abyss World often appeared fragmented and incoherent.
This world had already sunk into the Evernight Layer, so spacetime distortion was a perfectly normal phenomenon.
Hence, such a strange grid-like map appeared — each grid representing a relatively independent map region.
At the start, there was only one grid.
Each grid had a Nightmare Core.
This core was usually possessed by the strongest being within the map.
Only by acquiring the core’s origin and meeting the occupation conditions could the next grid be unlocked.
The time and space of each map were not necessarily coherent. No one knew what might appear nearby.
For example, the timeline in the current grid might still be in the era of the Yellow Turban Rebellion, but the next grid could very well be located around the period of the Battle of Red Cliffs.
Therefore, every new map exploration was filled with unknowns and unpredictability.
Moreover, although every grid on the map looked like a neat square, the actual area and terrain within each small map varied — some were merely five to eight hundred square kilometers, while others spanned tens of thousands of square kilometers. Each small map’s internal structure was relatively complete and independent.
A 1000×1000 grid covered an area far larger than the total landmass of Blue Star!
Chaos! Disorder! Fragmentation! Madness!
This was the Abyss World!
The Lords of the Stars had to contend not only with creatures of the Abyss and corrupted, mutated beings, but also with Lords from other corners of the Stars.
If the new map Hang Yu opened happened to be a territory already occupied by another Lord, according to the laws of the Stars, war mode would automatically initiate.
There was no possibility of reconciliation!
Only one side could completely devour the other.
Victory or defeat, survival of the fittest — this was the destiny of the Lords of the Stars, and the survival law of the Abyss World!
Hang Yu clicked on the map to check the details.
Although he could view the general terrain of the area, most parts remained shrouded in mist, somewhat resembling the fog of war in a real-time strategy game.
Each map had a name.
This map was called "Luoshui Execution Ground."
Hang Yu had no idea why it bore such a strange name.
He closed the map.
Then he opened the second option.
The personal information panel appeared before his eyes.
————
Name: Hang Yu.
Level: 3.
Race: Human.
Territory Rank: First Rank.
Basic Attributes: HP 150, MP 150, Strength 15, Agility 15, Spirit 15, Will 15.
Lord Talents: Lord’s Aura (Not Activated), Pioneer’s Heart (Not Activated), Master of Calamity (Hidden Talent).
Other Skills: None.
Remaining Talent Points: 0
Vital Energy Value: 0/3000.
————
Hang Yu started directly at Level 3.
This was because after entering the Abyss World, the lord's physical body would be automatically initialized, appearing at the highest initial limit for their race.
For humans, the limit of initial strengthening was only Level 3.
Compared to the countless races among the Stars, this level of strength was undoubtedly very weak — one of the reasons why humans were so often looked down upon.
He closed the information panel.
Then opened the Territory Management option.
Several submenus such as 【Territory Recruitment】, 【Unit Advancement】, and 【Territory Construction】 appeared before him.
Among them, only Recruitment was currently available; the others remained locked.
Humans had four initial unit types:
【Abyss Warrior】: First-rank unit, recruitment cost 20 magic crystals, occupies 1 population unit. Description: One of the four basic units of the human race, endowed with a strength bonus talent, adept at using various melee and ranged weapons in combat.
【Abyss Ranger】: First-rank unit, recruitment cost 20 magic crystals, occupies 1 population unit. Description: One of the four basic units of the human race, endowed with an agility bonus talent, highly mobile and skilled at both close and long-range assassinations.
【Abyss Warlock】: First-rank unit, recruitment cost 20 magic crystals, occupies 1 population unit. Description: One of the four basic units of the human race, endowed with a spirit bonus talent, capable of a certain degree of spell-based combat.
【Abyss Monk】: First-rank unit, recruitment cost 20 magic crystals, occupies 1 population unit. Description: One of the four basic units of the human race, endowed with a will bonus talent, possessing a certain level of support combat ability.
【Current Territory Population: 0/100.】
Lords of different races
had different types of units available for recruitment.
These were the four basic units initially available to human lords.
Each unit summoned would start at Level 1 and could undergo an advancement once they reached Level 10.
Why were human lords so poorly regarded? Because humans themselves were inherently fragile, making their units equally fragile, with extremely low starting strength and levels, and almost no innate racial talents.
Of course,
everything had two sides.
Because human units were individually weak, their recruitment cost was cheap, allowing for the formation of large-scale armies.
If it were top-tier races, the cost of each initial unit would be at least several hundred to a thousand magic crystals, and each unit would occupy the population space equivalent to more than a dozen human units.
"Xiao Ba, come out!"
Hang Yu summoned his exclusive relic — the Heavenly Dao Cube.
Because the Heavenly Dao Cube was shaped like an octahedral cube, and had intelligence allowing for communication, it had been affectionately named Xiao Ba.
"Xiao Ba is currently binding with the lord’s Territory Core..." After being summoned, the Heavenly Dao Cube immediately activated the binding process, then announced, "Heavenly Dao Cube system binding successful. Player Recruitment Mode officially activated. Please check the details, master."
Excellent!
Hang Yu nodded in satisfaction.
This super-god-level relic was akin to a system-level golden finger.
Although it had no self-awareness, it possessed a remarkably high degree of intelligence.
Once the Heavenly Dao Cube successfully bound with the Territory Core, the lord's interface underwent a few changes, with many new operational options added.
For example, under 【Territory Recruitment】, two choices appeared: "Normal Recruitment" and "Player Recruitment."
————
【Normal Recruitment】, as the name implied, referred to the standard method of territory recruitment, summoning units with no soul, no self-awareness, and no extra talents, yet possessing absolute loyalty and obedience.
【Player Recruitment】, on the other hand, allowed the Heavenly Dao Cube to summon the souls of Blue Star players, descending into the Abyss as citizens of the territory. Their reincarnation cycles would be controlled by the Cube, granting them the innate abilities of immortality and infinite resurrection.
What did infinite resurrection mean?
A lord's high-tier units could not be summoned directly.
High-tier units must always be cultivated and advanced from lower-tier units.
This meant every unit had to be nurtured from Level 1. If a unit died during its growth phase, all investments would be wasted — the resource loss would be enormous.
Precisely because of this,
every unit was extremely precious to a lord, especially those painstakingly nurtured into high-tier units.
Any loss was unbearable.
But as the Fourth Calamity, players would not die!
This meant that during Hang Yu’s exploration of the Abyss, his trial-and-error cost would be almost zero.
During the outbreak of lord wars, he could leverage sheer numbers and a revolving-door advantage to expand and conquer at zero cost.
Of course, while player descent had many advantages, it did not render normal recruitment worthless.
Even though players were immortal and could be ruthlessly exploited, considering issues such as logging on and off, as well as obedience problems, there would still be a degree of uncontrollability.
Thus, the best approach was
to focus primarily on Fourth Calamity players, and supplement them with normal troops for a more stable structure.
【Current Pre-registered Players: 501!】
Hang Yu checked the number of current game pre-registrations.
Unexpectedly, there were already so many people signed up.
It seemed that he could summon the players at any time.