A week had gone by with Jin busy on the sidelines and most of the seasoned Pandarens had already cleared the Nian Raid due to its all new progression system. When the first clear had been over, most of the Pandarens had decided to take it easy to explore and enjoy the view. There was even a 'Game Complete' version where the Pandarens were able to revisit the Mysterious Nian Island where they could interact with the locals and buy the items over there.
Unlike the start of the mission where they had to sail towards the location, afterwards, the island would require only a teleport confirmation from the Pandamonium App. It only took a moment for a portal to appear in front of the Pandarens within the Store Instance and they would be teleported in a jiffy. At that point, the Pandarens could visit the village with the villagers to complete whatever remaining side quests they had yet to do.
They could take their time to explore the wonders of Nian Island and earn exploration achievement points. It was a time filler that Jin had blatantly copied from most games to keep the more active Pandarens occupied. In fact, if one were to clear all the side quests and complete all exploratory achievements, there would be a hidden reward that was created specifically for the Virtual Reality Network phase.
There were enough completionists among his customers and eventually one had managed to explore all the nooks and cranks of the area, getting all the exploratory achievements and finishing all the sidequests. Unfortunately, what he earnt was a mere ticket voucher that was locked when he tried to access it in the Pandamonium App.
Unable to access it, he posted it into the forums and people were starting to speculate whether this particular voucher was a precursor to the next upcoming raids. Even some of the Pandawans had shared their opinions since they too had received a voucher stating that it would be a ticket to the elusive Gentlebear Dungeon Instance, yet the colour and type of their rewarded ticket seemed totally different from his.
The Pandaren who had completed everything had a symbol of Nian on the voucher and the paper was coated in glossy red. It was not until the developer of the dungeon instances chimed in, stating that it will be a fairly valuable item in the future. At the same time, because its feature had not yet been implemented, Jin decided to change the coding a little and provide the lucky explorer with a lump sum of 300 Panda Bronze Coins to those who had completed the achievements and got the voucher. However, he did indicate that when the feature had been implemented, that additional 300 Panda Coins reward would be removed from the achievement rewards.
Upon hearing that there was a free 300 Panda Coins to be earnt, this news spread like wildfire. It was uncommon for Jin to be generous to give free coins since this was after all a business to be made. So most of the Pandarens agreed that such a feature had to be abused as quickly as possible. Even the Pandawans wanted the coins (although for the case for Xiong Da, he wanted the achievements.) and decided to band together to clear these exploratory achievements.
What they did not expect was that the achievement actually differed for the groups that entered and there was a permutation of five different sets of tasks, ranging from assisting the NPCs in the Nian Island Village to the top of the volcano island without any chi. While the former might sound like minor side quests, they were actually a mini game to 'improve the relationship' between the islanders and the Pandawans. It was like a dating simulation game where they had to earn the hearts of the NPCs so that they would gift them an item that would count for the exploratory achievement. So even as most people wished to quickly clear the achievements and get those 300 coins they ended up vastly underestimating the amount of hard work they had to put in.
As for that completionist Pandaren, he had initially wanted to keep quiet about the requirement for achieving those exploratory achievements, but faced with the allure of a monetary donation from a well known Pandawan, he decided to put out all the information he could as best as he could.
As people realised that the tasks were random to a certain portion, his input amounted to only one tenth of an actual completion guide. (Quite ironic for a completionist!) Still, some groups benefited since those advice that he wrote was useful to those who received the same tasks as him.
And because of this particular revisit to this dungeon, Jin once again saw an increase in the number of Pandarens joining the Nian Islands, both new and old customers, buying him some time to prepare for the Demopolis City Raids. While he was going to break Demopolis City into pieces with a hard reset, it meant that it was a showdown against those who opposed the current government. Going forward, rumours had been spread by Tsu and Kai's internal affairs department claiming that there would be a major crackdown against the mafias. This caused the mafia to hunker down further after the confirmation had been made that no one was allowed to leave the borders.
This, unfortunately, caused panic to the entire city population until an official royal decree had been sent that the Demon Citizens who were clear of their 'sins' would be moved to the Pandapolis as a temporary measure to avoid the fights. Shelters, food and even compensation would be given to those who would comply with the order.
In addition, those who confessed their sins on the spot would be given two choices. To serve their time to make up for the sins they did and be compensated when they were done or return to the city for the ultimate showdown. As most of the citizens had already seen how the King had managed to get the truth out of his corrupted politicians, they knew better than to try and get away with anything and understood the severity of this deep cleansing of the city.
To ensure they would be taken seriously Kraft had taken the initiative to construct a special statue and had placed it in the middle of the city. It was reminiscent of Atlas who was carrying the burden of the world on his shoulders, only that it looked awfully similar to a certain Mafia Boss. Additionally, the round sphere acted as a large countdown timer until the raid would start.
Some of the Mafia Bosses had not bothered to wait and had already started terrorising the police stations, which in turn became a boon to the current government. The terror attacks were widely advertised and this instilled fear in the citizens as they saw the patrol officers had been shaped up to capture those mafia members who had caused trouble. This indeed spurred the good serving citizens to head for the border immigration where it was now the heaviest guarded area in case of surprise attacks. But with the System around, most of these wannabe perpetrators were captured before anything bad could happen.
While Demopolis was spiralling down into chaos, other cities were cautiously looking at them and the biggest spectator of them all was the Church of the Afterlife. They were extremely curious and delighted that those people that could cause trouble to them were killing themselves inside out.
They even cautioned the surrounding cities to not interfere with their meddling and once their Dungeon Core got switched to a new owner, they were welcome to feast upon it. However, those were merely some… words of advice. Those cities could do whatever they want and some of the greedy city leaders mistook this for a perfect time to wipe the demon capital out from the face of their map.
After the countless times Demopolis had raided the human cities for loot and resources, who could blame them for looking forward to their neighbours' downfall?.
Yet in hindsight, those Church Agents would realise that their actions were the snowball that would get out of control and bury everything underneath. For this turn of events could be the mark of the new Demopolis, and one of the cities that would cause the biggest threat to the Church in the near future…
