Thanks to the system announcements aftear clearing a few dungeons, many players started applying to join the guild. While a mayority of them left in disappoinment, it didn't stop them from trying their luck.
Old Pat and his team of investors were hands full at managing the guild, altough the guild was created at Star-Moon Kingdom, they didn't put all the eggs on the same basket but started to develop small branches on other places.
Since its foundation the guild had 1,400 players. A hundred were in charge of managing the guild, the resources distribution and logistics were all planned by them.
Over 600 hundred players were all lifestyle players, while some where contacts from other places, most of them were hired and recruited. At least 300 players were members that gathered information from various cities and neighbour empires and kingdoms. Only 400 players would focus on clearing dungeons and grinding resources.
As for why other players could only leave in disappointment? It was because Leroy would not recruit anyone under Refinement Realm.
The conditions that the guild offered were much better than what any other guild in the kingdom had to offer, the players also had much less restrictions while those who managed to reach higher ranks would have more and more benefits, this inmediatly caught the attention of many expert players.
Moreover, the guild contract would also protect them from any kind of unfair treatment from the upper echelon. Players would be given a higher degree of freedom than most guilds.
Like these, the guild estructure felt more like a gathering of different adventure teams if one compared it to other guilds. Just in the first day of recruiting, they managed to recruit an adventure team of six refinement real experts. It was something that no other guild could boast about in Star-Moon Kingdom.
According to Leroy's intentions, they would set the bar high at first as to increase their reputation and acquiring the best resources. This would naturally attract top players, at that time, he would lower the bar and allow groups of ten players who at least had one Refinement Realm experts among them. Like these altough some players would not be as powerfull as the other experts, they would attract more powerful Adventure Teams to join.
Altough creating an Adventure Team would provide some benefits, it would be nowhere comparable to the ones that a large guild could offer.
Raven Sanctuary offered conditions very similar to Adventure Teams which started attracting them.
Sometimes Adventure Teams would be lacking members to open dungeons and would have to colaborate with on another, sharing the same Guild with equal experts would be much more convenient to them.
Of course the amount of Adventure Teams that would meet the standart would still be low, this was the reason to let join other players so long a Refinement Realm expert joined along, these other players would be very helpful in gathering common resources and completing guild quests to increase the Guild Reputation and popularity.
Old Pat and Ford tried to express their disagreement before, others who also invested in the guild tought it was better to hire high amounts of players and tried to interfere on the management on the guild.
This raised a red flag on Leroy. He was the Guild Master but in truth he didn't care much about the guild, he knew that Old Pat and the investors only needed him for a period of time before taking full control of the guild.
The only reason why he still founded the guild and helped it develop was because he owed Old Pat a favor, but he would not be enslaved because of this. Old Pat was also aware of what Leroy tought, this kid would be the same in the past too...
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"...also you have to increase your reputation and become and become a mayor noble so we can have our guild residence and buy commercial lands, Louis has started gathering information about quests rewarding reputation already" Uncle Pat and Louis met Leroy at a restaurant close to the heart of the city.
"I understand, I'll focus on that, uncles" Leroy said and the meeting came to an end. They have talked about the guild development and information reports by some time now. Walking out of the door, he was met by the bustling city.
Adventurer's Association, the lobby was filled with players as usual. Leroy entered the building and checked the quests availables to him.
At his level, more quests were available to him, which other players couldn't compete for.
He picked three quests up and left. One of them was to gather some materials which he already had, while the others were to kill a thousand Level 22 monsters each.
He already got some reputation by getting the First Clear of the Hell Mode Dungeon and killing some bosses but was still not enough to become a noble.
Autumn Forest
It was a level 20-25 location with various monsters and quite rich in rare herbs, this was the location that Leroy was sent to by his first quest, the target was a local spider monster. Leroy was followed by a team of four, it was Uncle Pan and Louis, acompannied by Felicity which choose to be an elementalist and by BadHalo, a ranger in the high ranks of Louis intelligence team.
On their way here, they couldn't help but look at Leroy in admiration, specially Louis and BadHalo who knew well the strength of the top members of other guilds, they saying that were the top players in the kingdom were nothing more than a joke compared to Leroy, just like a firefly competing with the Moon.
Finally they found Leroy's objetive. It was a spider with orange colors and half a man in size.
Autumn Spider (Common Rank)
Level: 22
HP: 12,000/12,000
They weren't a strong monster, but there were many of them and their poison attacks would stack, if a player got poisoned by many of them only death awaited.
"Dark Fireball" Leroy casted and inmediatly dark mana conecentrated to form a black fireball the size of his upper body, compared to the previous fireball, after upgrading Tier this one was much bigger and gave of a much stronger aura making others feel suffocated.
Blooom!
-28,215
-17,235
The Dark Fireball impacted against the spider and devoured it fully while fire started spreading around in an area of two meters, hiting another spider nearby. The damage dealt by the upgraded Dark Fireball was leagues above the previous one, even though Leroy didn't have impressive stats for someone of his Level, the bonuses from his equipment and Tier of his skills were enough to deal huges amount of damage.
The spiders dropped Autumn Spider Eyeballs which was the quest item he needed with 100% of probability, and also had a chance to drop Poison Sack which was a usefull material in alchemy and poison crafing.
He then called out the wolves and sent them around the area to gather spiders, while 10 skeletons stood in front with other 5 guarding the rear. Leroy used his technique to release webs of mana and sensed no monsters that could ambush the party.
After 30 seconds, the wolfs gathered with a large amount of spiders behind them.
"Hell Fire" "Dark Rain"
-4,124
-3,890
-13,250
His Hell Fire was a Fire Element skill, as he didn't have many bonuses for such an element, it's damage paled in comparison to the Dark Arrows from the Dark Rain skill.
"It would be great if I can find more dark element AOE spells" He mutered
"Guild Leader, we'll put someone at the Auction House and contact some guilds, see what we can get" BlackHalo said while seeing his experience bar skyrocket.
"Alright" Leroy nodded.
Pat and Felicity just sat there, sending messages and managing the guild, casually leeching off the experience. Louis was doing the same, receiving reports and sending out orders, while BlackHalo would write the information about the forest's resources, monsters, drops and others things, enriching the Guild's database.
After six hours, he was finally done with killing monsters, taking some items from the bank he went to turn in the quests at the Adventurer's Association. Actually traveling to the monsters location was what consumed most of his time, even when using Speed Scrolls.
The amount of experience the quests provided were average at best but they did give a good amount of reputation points.
This was the only way he had to increase his reputation at the moment, while Louis and his team were searching for different quests, not only in Star-Moon City but in other cities of the kingdom as well. Having high reputation allowed others to buy lands and have access to more quests, they were already starting to colaborate with guilds from other cities, helping them increase their reputation, once they did it, they would buy lands at their city an sell them over to Raven Sanctuary.
You needed to be a noble to buy lands, and a noble of the city in order to buy it from the npcs. While buying it fom other players only required one to be a noble in the kingdom.
He continued doing this for an entire day, always bringing along some members that would see their Level skyrocket. Those that went along with Leroy were now only one level below the first ranked in Star-Moon City while some even surpassed that.
Poison sacks, claws, leathers, herbs, ores, feathers... wherever he went to hunt monsters, large amount of items were collected by the party members. His necklace attributes shined, specially with monster's drops.
This made Louis and Pat also find a new way for getting good items, they started buying treasure chests from the market and let Leroy open them. However, high ranking treasure chest were hard to find and those who sold them would only be seeing as fools.
Even after an entire day of completing quests, the amount of reputation points was quite low, it seemed harder to earn reputation in the capital city.
At this moment, he also received a message.
"Guild Leader, we managed to get information about Tier 1 Skills, yet no good skill books were in the market, guilds wouldn't be willing to sell them either. Tier 1 Skills can be learned from Class instructors for a fee, you may want to visit one" BadHalo reported to him.
"Alright, I'll go now, thanks" Leroy gave his thanks and moved to the Cursemancer Class instructor. His was a hidden class but he should be capable of acquiring Tier 1 Cursemancer skills, right?
"So... you really have reached Tier 1, that is really fast compared to the others. Yes, I can teach you some skills, but I must warn you that they are not cheap" Selier, a Tier 3 NPC instructor directed his words to Leroy.
"I understand, I some money on me" Leroy replied and took out 50 Gold Coins. Seeing this, the npc nodded in satisfaction.
"Alrigth, take a look at the spells here" Then he passed a book with a summary of the spells he could teach.
Magic Synergy (Tier 1 Skill)
Increase efficiency of spell effects and reduce cast time by 30%
Duration: 15 seconds
Cooldown: 3 minutes
Seeing the skill description, Leroy facepalmed, if he knew earlier he would've rushed here to learn the skills, they were much stronger than those at Tier 0. Increasing efficiency by 30% was an overall improvement for a spell, it increased its damage, duration, range, area and all aspects by 30% while even decreasing the mana consumption.
Curse of the elements (Tier 1 Skill)
Curses the targets in an area of 30 meters.
Reducing their Max Hp by 15%
Reducing their Recovery rate by 25%
Reducing their Defenses by 30%
Reducing their movement speed by 40%
Duration: 10 seconds
Cooldown: 20 minutes
A very powerfull curse skill, even if he didn't really used curses and debuffs in battle.
"This is what I can teach you, I can feel that the other skills are not suitable for you" Selier said while looking at him with interest and a puzzled expression.
Leroy understood the reason for why he felt like that, It must be because of the Sage of Darkness class, Vlaric had said it came along with limits.
"Alright, I wish to learn these two skills" He said and payed, none of these skills were cheap even amongst other Tier 1 Skills.
Leaving the building, he went to meet his uncles at the restaurant near the city heart.
"Our lifestyle players started producing items now, they have also acquired a good amount of recipes for common and advanced whetstones.
Other potions including the Basic Frost Resistance Potion that you gave them are also being produced now. Elise has reached Intermediate-Apprentice in Tailoring already." Felicity gave her report
"We have managed to recruit ten members since the establishment of our Guild, it seems Star-Moon Kingdom doesn't have many experts.
We currently aren't lacking any special resource, but if we could find some items to aid lifestyle classes, that would be great.
The amount of coins to buy the best land was brought from the Virtual Trade Center by me and the investors already, the guild will soon have enough for buying some land in the best locations of the city." Old Pat also said what he had to say.
"Cooperation with other guilds from different cities has started. We also traded high quality equipment and resources for information from independant players about a quest that should give a good amount of Reputation Points in Star-Moon City as it is linked to a noble.
Also, there are some reports of other guilds trying to attack our players.
And Leroy, that guild is currently having conflicts with a guild called Darkstar, they seemed to be backed by a mercenary group" Louis also said his part.
"The average level of our guild members will soon catch up to those of first-rate guilds main forces, some have even surpassed that. They are capable of acquiring high level equipment on their own now, altough they hadn't completely adapted to God's Domain.
Dealing with some troublemakers shouldn't be a problem for our guild.
As for that Darkstar, if that person can't deal with them, then it is not worth paying attention to.
I'll establish the Guild Residence as soon as posible" Leroy stated.
Soon after discussing some details, the meet ended.
You can support this through:
Paypal.me/Misfune
Your Power Stones are always welcomed