Second World

Earmouth who was watching from afar was completely dazed by what he witnessed. They had seen the army assaulting the bandit outpost. They originally planned on looking for a chance to kill-steal the outpost core, but with the hordes of the army all over the outpost, they did not dare to show themselves.

They have been wondering non-stop how Jack managed to gain the assistance of this army to raid the outpost, then suddenly the fighting stopped. Not long after, the entire outpost disappeared, leaving only a single building, and Jackʼs team was seen again.

As he was still in much bewilderment, he suddenly received a message from Scarface, ”what did that Everlasting Heavenly Legends do? You are watching them, right?”

”Huh? What do you mean?” Earmouth replied. Why did Scarface suddenly ask about this guild?

”Their guild just jumped to the top of the guild chart!” Scarface sent a reply.

Inside the Guilds Association, there was a board that showed the chart of top guilds. The guilds were ranked by their reputation points. All this time, the top ten were always held by most of the top guilds. Several from the guilds in the coalition, especially the top three founding guilds, Death Associates, Corporate United, and Wicked Witches. Then other prominent guilds such as White Scarfs, Saint Edge, Black Cloak.

These few had always competed and the ranks continued to shift one day over another. Death Associates, White Scarfs, and Saint Edge were the three that had held the top three most of the time. Death Associates had even almost reached level 2 for their guild, they only need a few more days to complete some more quests. But today, a fledgling guild nobody knew, who never had been seen before on the list of this chart, as it only listed the top fifty guilds. Suddenly, this unknown guild shot up directly to the first place, completely baffling every guild member who happened to be in front of the chart.

They immediately contacted the superiors in their guild, reporting this shocking phenomenon. Some even went to the association counters and reported that there was an error on the chart. Which the staff replied to each one that no such thing had occurred.

Inside the Heavenly Citadel, Jack and the others came upon a very spacious grand hall. The ceiling was as high as a gothic cathedralʼs ceiling, while the size was larger than a soccer field. The ones who entered were so awed by the space that they had completely forgotten that they rushed in to scold John.

In the center of this hall was a large but low and round platform. John was at the edge of this platform working on something. Suddenly a hologram image came up on top of the platform. Everyone immediately went over to crowd around the image.

”Whatʼs that?” Someone asked.

”Itʼs the image of the landscape surrounding this headquarter,” Peniel informed them. ”This will be the territory owned by the guild.”

After hearing Penielʼs information and looked closely, they could now recognize the image. At the center of the image was a small building in which they were in. Looking from a bird-view perspective compared to the eye elevation was completely different.

”We owned all this land?” Viral Cora asked, dazed.

”Yes, and you should start to work on this land and secure a strong foothold if you want to keep it as yours,” Peniel said.

”Work it? How to work it?” Jack asked.

”That, my friend. If you have listened to our meeting with your fairy companion here, you wouldnʼt have been so clueless now,” John said. He typed in something on an interface beside the platform. Some additional images came up, floating above the landscape image. There are words accompanying these images.

Existing structures:

Guild Hall, level 1

Lodging Quarter, level 1

Worker Quarter, level 1

Mana Cell, level 1

Warehouse, level 1

Power Crystal, level 1

Teleportation Chamber

Jail

Buildable structures:

Farm - required: 20 lumber, 10 mineral, 40 gold coins, workers needed: 3, construction time: 2 days.

Mine - required: 15 lumber, 20 mineral, 70 gold coins, workers needed: 5, construction time: 3 days

Lumberyard - required: 20 lumber, 15 mineral, 60 gold coins, workers needed: 5, construction time: 3 days

Fishery - required: 15 lumber, 15 mineral, 50 gold coins, workers needed: 3, construction time: 2 days

Blacksmith Workshop - required: 25 lumber, 40 mineral, 100 gold coins, workers needed: 5, construction time: 5 days

Alchemist Workshop - required: 30 lumber, 30 mineral, 90 gold coins, workers needed: 5, construction time: 4 days

Kitchen - required: 25 lumber, 35 mineral, 80 gold coins, workers needed: 5, construction time: 4 days

Scrollmaking Workshop - required: 25 lumber, 25 mineral, 100 gold coins, workers needed: 5, construction time: 5 days

Watchtower - required: 20 lumber, 20 mineral, 20 gold coins, workers needed: 2, construction time: 1 day

Wall - required: 15 lumber, 35 mineral, 30 gold coins, workers needed: 4, construction time: 3 days

Barrack - required: 50 lumber, 50 mineral, 200 gold coins, workers needed: 8, construction time: 7 days

Upgradable structures:

Lodging Quarter, level 2 - required: 30 lumber, 30 mineral, 50 gold coins, workers needed: 4, construction time: 2 days

Worker Quarter, level 2 - required: 30 lumber, 30 mineral, 40 gold coins, workers needed: 4, construction time: 2 days

Warehouse, level 2 - required: 40 lumber, 40 mineral, 80 gold coins, workers needed: 6, construction time: 2 days

Power Crystal, level 2 - required: 100 lumber, 100 mineral, 200 gold coins, workers needed: 6, construction time: 3 days

”Are we in a building SIM now?” Giant Steve asked.

”No, friend. We are entering the RTS era now!” John exclaimed.

Jeanny chuckled. She then explained, ”As you can see, with a building headquarter, we can now build structures to further develop our headquarter. Each of these structures has its own function. You can interface with the image to read its function. For example, this Guild Hall level 1 is the room we are standing in at the moment. Lodging quarter is over here.”

Jeanny touched the large landscape image and made some hand gestures. Jeanny motioned so the image of the headquarter building was zoomed in. The layout of the building became visible. They could see it consisted of several sections. Jeanny pointed at the section where they could see many bunk beds inside the room.

”Us players can sleep in here. It functioned the same as the inn. So you donʼt need to go back to the city or make camp to stay the night. At its current level, it had 300 beds. More than enough for us now, but wonʼt be enough later if we reach full members. Still, itʼs not like all members will come and sleep here at the same time. The lodging quarter, however, can be upgraded. The size will increase once upgraded and more beds will be available.”

”This here is the Worker Quarter,” Jeanny panned to a small room nearby.”

”Only ten beds?” Bowler asked.

”Itʼs not for us. Itʼs for the NPCs.”

”You mean natives,” Peniel protested.

”I apologize. Yes, natives,” Jeanny corrected. ”they are the ones that will do all the menial work here. Like constructing a new structure, mining the mines, and such.”

”Are they here now?”

”You have to hire them first from the Guilds Association,” Peniel said. ”Each worker will have a weekly wage and daily requirement of food. So you have to pay attention to never have those coins and food empty, or else the workers will leave the guild. If that happened, you will have to pay their starting fees again to rehire them.”

”I assume the farm will be where we get the food. What about gold coins?” Trinity Dawn asked.

”From you outworlders. You can give your personal coins to the guild as a donation, you will then be given guild contribution points in return. You should have found this contribution point inside your status page. You should have already gotten these guild contribution points when you did guild quests.”

”I havenʼt. I only got it just now for taking down the outpost,” Jack said. He had not yet done any guild quest.

Peniel ignored him. ”These guild contribution points are the currency you used when you want to use the guildʼs services.”

”What services?” Bowler asked.

”For now there are only the Power Crystal and the warehouse. There will be more once more structures are constructed. You can find out yourselves.”

”Taking the warehouse as an example,” Jeanny continued her explanation, ”You can donate your unneeded equipment into this warehouse and get guild contribution points. Other players can use their guild contribution points to get the equipment or item from the warehouse.”

Everyone started playing with the interface to read the descriptions of each structure. After a while, someone blurted out, ”barrack? It says here we can train footsoldier unit. Does this mean we can have our own personal NPC army?”

”Army is a big word. But in time, a small garrison of troops is possible,” Jeanny replied.

”This troop can only guard the territory your guild owned though,” Peniel clarified. ”Do not expect you can take this troop everywhere you like. And please note that territory is different than region. The capital is included within your region, but for your territory, that is roughly only around thirty kilometers square with this headquarter as its epicenter.”

”Oh…” A hint of disappointment on everyoneʼs face.

”Thatʼs for Guild Hall level 1. Once you upgrade this structure, your territory size will increase,” Peniel added.

”Oh…” Same remark from everybody but with a hopeful tone this time.

Jack came to Jeannyʼs and Johnʼs side. ”So, what should we build first?”

”You will need to go to the Guilds Association and hired our ten workers,” John said.

”Why me?”

”Duh, arenʼt you the richest amongst us?”

😉