“Adventurer code?”

“Dead Crazy Sword Girl.”

“Gender?”

“Male.”

The camp recorder paused, his expression unchanged. “Please read and confirm whether you comply with the ‘Adventurer Agreement 430’ and the ‘Secrecy Agreement’. Here is a printed copy…”

“Accepted.”

“Please present your adventurer badge.”

Asho, wearing a mask, took out a round badge and swiped it across the glass screen of the registration device. The screen lit up green. The recorder nodded. “Mission registration complete. Please proceed.”

With almost no obstacles, Asho easily entered Observation Point 53. A rough earthen wall, thirty meters high, separated the inside from the outside. In the center of the camp was a tall tower with a deep blue vortex at its top. That was Asho’s goal for this trip: Level 2 Virtual Realm Turbulent Passage.

All vegetation in the camp had been cleared, and rows of benches and stools were placed. Many adventurers gathered together, chatting and drinking from the bottles they carried, then popping a moon candy and convulsing with pleasure – drinking and eating candy, as if they were in heaven.

Occasionally, someone would shout loudly:

“Flame Squad, over here!”

“Wolf Pack, gather around me!”

“Where’s Falconer Falga, the coffin bearer?”

In addition to these noisy individuals, there were also many lone wolves like Asho, wearing standardized cloaks and masks, observing silently.

This chaos was the true face of the adventurers in the war zone.

When Asho found the information about adventurers on the curtain, he couldn’t help but applaud the Blood Moon Kingdom’s superior level of exploitation and oppression. Because in the social atmosphere of “human rights and freedom” and “racial equality,” the cost of conscription was simply too high. So the Blood Moon Kingdom simply decided not to have an army!

The Blood Moon Kingdom disbanded its army 300 years ago and completely transitioned to the Adventurer System.

The so-called Adventurer System was that the war zone provided missions, and adventurers received rewards for completing them. The relationship between the war zone and the adventurers was merely a commission. Adventurers were free to come and go, theoretically sharing some of the military functions.

The greatest advantage of the Adventurer System was naturally not having to provide training costs, not being responsible for logistics, and not having to provide compensation.

When adventurers died, it had nothing to do with the war zone. Adventurers could come and go as they pleased. In theory, they could share some of the military functions.

In the first year of implementing the Adventurer System, it saved 80% of the military budget.

And the most wonderful thing was that the transition from conscription to the Adventurer System had no negative impact on the Blood Moon Kingdom.

The reason was that the Blood Moon Kingdom did not have a rigid collective military demand for suppressing rebellions, defending borders, or disaster relief.

There were no rebellions to speak of, not to mention the “forbidden love education” implemented by the Blood Moon Kingdom. The neck chips of everyone alone made large-scale rebellions impossible.

The absence of natural disasters was also normal. The Meteorological Bureau had already solved everything before disasters occurred. As for the virtual realm disasters caused by sorcerers, they naturally had to be resolved by sorcerers. The military was of no help.

As for the borders, according to the information on the curtain, “The Blood Moon Sovereign has already helped us resist external enemies,” so there was no need for a military presence at the borders.

Matters such as maintaining public safety, apprehending criminals, and preventing heresy were the responsibilities of the Falconer Hall.

So the military only had two functions left: emergency response and suppressing abysses in various regions. These functions could be fully undertaken by adventurers. Therefore, although the efficiency did not increase after the transition from the military system to the Adventurer System, it did not decrease either. Adventurer groups also stepped onto the stage of history.

As a violent group, adventurers had a complex composition. There were combat sorcerers who were dedicated to protecting the Blood Moon and honing their own skills, as well as opportunists who sought war zone resources. There were even wanted criminals who came to the war zone to make a living.

Yes, the war zone was willing to accommodate wanted criminals, and the Falconer Hall would not come to the war zone to arrest people. For evildoers who had committed serious crimes in the city and had nowhere else to go, the war zone was almost their only refuge.

For example, Xilin’s Woodpecker Gang, controlled by Xilin, also had a branch in the Lakeview War Zone, specifically responsible for accommodating members who had caused trouble. If Ronald, the “Golden Mouth,” hadn’t been caught, he would most likely have gone to Lakeview to become an adventurer.

When Asho heard Igura talk about the Adventurer System in prison, he also asked if it was possible for them to make a living in the war zone after escaping, embarking on a grand adventure, earning merits, and clearing their names, bringing this bizarre heretical leader back onto the path of a fantastic journey.

But Igura coldly rejected his fantasy – the war zone didn’t care whether you were a heinous villain or a little stinker who committed racial discrimination because of bad breath, but the prerequisite was that you had to have a chip.

Without a chip, wanted criminals couldn’t even enter the “Safe Rest Area” provided by the war zone – just from the name, one could tell that this area would activate the “Attack Prohibition” in the adventurer’s chip, prohibiting attacks by anyone in the safe area.

Not to mention that Asho was unwilling to implant a chip in himself, even if he was willing, he couldn’t find a way. Implanting chips was a monopoly of the Church of Supreme Love. Even the underground black market only provided purification services and not implantation services.

Therefore, after removing the chips, the five escaped villains had no way back.Moreover, the life of an adventurer was not as wonderful as Asho had imagined. The war zone only accepted merit-based transactions, so no matter how much money you had, you couldn’t live comfortably there. You might even be exploited and bleed dry, eventually forced to accept missions, such as venturing into the sewer abyss to kill monsters for a living.

According to statistics, only 25% of new adventurers could survive in the war zone for a year. Even though most of them chose to flee back to the city to work because they couldn’t persist, this survival rate was still shockingly low.

To accommodate such a diverse group of adventurers, the war zone introduced the ‘Adventurer Merit’ system. All mission rewards were merits, and adventurers could exchange any rewards in the war zone with their merits, including but not limited to Sorcery Spirits, miraculous spells, faction knowledge, and so on.

The most ingenious part was that the merits were not registered on a chip, but on the adventurer’s badge that they carried with them.

The adventurer’s badge was anonymous.

As long as you could present an adventurer’s badge, the war zone would allow you to exchange merits, regardless of whether the badge was your own, found, or… obtained through murder.

When Asho discovered this mechanism, he fully understood the good intentions behind the adventurer system implemented by the Blood Moon Kingdom—just with this move, it was impossible for a large-scale violent group to form in the war zone. As long as the war zone could still provide merit exchange rewards, suspicion would always exist among adventurers.

How could the Blood Moon Kingdom, which even forbade the existence of families, allow the existence of violent groups like armies?

Although large groups did not exist, small adventure teams of five or six people were countless, with seven or eight just in this camp alone.

Seeing these ‘Flame Adventurers’, ‘Hungry Wolf Squad’, ‘Gale Brigade’, Asho couldn’t help but feel a lump in his throat—he also longed for this kind of fantasy adventure life, forming an adventure team with a few like-minded friends, embarking on an unknown journey, experiencing epic stories, and then retiring and getting married before the age of 35, retiring to the countryside.

Ideally, he hoped to meet a beautiful and sexy lover, a virtuous and considerate wife, a familiar and understanding confidante, and a lively and cute girlfriend.

And it would be even better if they never met each other.

That’s the essence of a fantasy story.

But now he was arrested → escaped from prison → fled the country, this was not a fantasy story, this was clearly a crime story!

He didn’t even need to cross over, he could experience this process just by embezzling public funds at his company!

Just as Asho was once again plunged into the melancholy of adulthood, there seemed to be a friction among the adventurers.

A cloaked adventurer claimed that he had lost his badge and suspected that it was stolen by the three people who had just passed by him. The three naturally denied it and even agreed to be searched by the cloaked adventurer.

As the cloaked adventurer searched the first person, the first person raised his hands, holding the adventurer’s badge in his right hand, and threw it to the second person out of the cloaked adventurer’s sight.

Everyone around saw this scene, but no one spoke, they all just watched the show. Even those with kind hearts would not lend a hand—if even an important badge could be stolen, it would be better to give up the adventurer’s life and obediently return to the city to be a cog in the machine.

When the cloaked adventurer went to search the second person, the second person also raised his hands and threw the badge to the third person. When the cloaked adventurer went to search the third person, the third person threw the badge to the first person.

The badge had essentially made a round in the hands of the three people, causing the onlookers to burst into laughter.

The three people were simply trying to make fun of the cloaked adventurer, who ended up with nothing and could only admit his bad luck and leave.

Just when Asho thought this was just an ordinary social beating, the three people suddenly screamed.

“Where’s my badge? How did my badge disappear?”

“Mine’s gone too! Damn, it must have been that goblin bastard just now!”

“Where did he go!? Find him quickly, my badge has the merits to buy a Sorcery Spirit!”

The three people were furiously looking around for the cloaked adventurer, but there were too many people wearing cloaks and masks here. The cloaked adventurer had blended into the crowd as soon as he dived in, how could they find him? They even glared at Asho, who fearlessly met their gaze.

“Hahaha, I’m dying of laughter, I saw him take your badges when he was searching you, but I didn’t say anything, hahaha!”

“What are you glaring at, you can’t even steal better than others, are you still here to lose face? Do you want to fight?”

“We’ve had enough laughs, you can leave now.”

The members of the nearby adventure teams laughed loudly, their laughter echoing around. The three people were so angry that their shoulders were shaking, and they were so wronged that they were about to cry. They could only mutter a few harsh words that no one could hear and slink off to the edge of the area.

At this time, a goblin dressed in formal attire walked onto the stage. He was tall and handsome, with a pair of silver-framed glasses on his nose and a top hat covering his hairless head, suddenly looking like a fluorescent green elf.

A mere goblin exuded an elegant aura (Asho was completely unaware of his racial prejudice), whether it was due to plastic surgery or natural birth—after all, the Blood Moon Kingdom’s genetic optimization technology was the best in the world.

“Good evening, adventurers, I am the secretary of this mission, Gibot Mantlas.” The goblin calmly said, “There are only 90 minutes left until midnight, the camp has been closed, and we are now entering the combat preparation stage.”

“Being responsible for the invasion of the outer domain, a task with no risk and a chance to gain political merit, it seems that this goblin is a candidate for the council.”

A familiar political commentary suddenly came from the side, Asho turned his head in confusion to look at the cloaked adventurers next to him, but couldn’t find who was speaking.