"You haven't forgotten about meeting my family, have you?" While Peter was about to go out to meet Eric, Sicily reminded him again. "I know. Don't worry we still have time."
Eric has arranged a car for Peter to use. After a few minutes of driving., Peter reached back at his new office. Eric had remodelled the entire building to suit to peter's needs. The ground floor was left alone. The first and second floors were arranged to become a gaming hub. The third floor was converted into a functional office.
Eric was inside busy with paperwork inside when Peter knocked on the door. "Come in." He quickly shuffled all the papers to make space for Peter to sit. "We need to order in more cabins. So far u could only get approval for 10. There are regulations placed by Tango to prevent mass purchase." "But the workshops have a lot more. Sicily has at least 20 at the building or more." "Yeah, we need a workshop certification for that." "Can't we get one?" "That will take a lot of money and influence. We don't have either."
Peter kept looking at the document in hand. It was from Tango corporate, rejecting their request for multiple cabins under the company name. "Is there no way around it?" "We can make our players buy their cabins but they cannot be transferred to the company. Also, they will be coming as registered so no one else would be able to use them. I was going to suggest it. It doesn't look like we have any other option."
The 10 cabins that they received were all under the company name. Peter had one extra in his bedroom from before. Looking around, Eric had already started using one of the company cabins. "You started playing AM?" "Yes. I need to know the market to make this work. Can't go without the cabin. I have ordered for a personal one. I'm just using it temporarily."
"How is recruitment going? Everything is ready here, but we now need the players." Eric was excited to start running the office. With no one in the building, he started becoming bored and tired too fast. "Yes. I will start as soon as I get back online." "Ok, I still need to fix the reception area. The designers are coming tomorrow. It should be done by Wednesday." "Sweet."
*****
"What is going on? Why are you acting weird?" Sicily was sitting too close to Peter for his comfort. "Nothing, why do you not like sitting close to women?" "Tell me what's going on or I bail." Sicily let go of peters hand and stepped aside. "So, I told Alex that you are a friend of mine." "Ok. What's wrong with that?" "Well, I was a bit drunk and u might have mentioned that you are the Blackbeak."
Peter kept staring at Sicily. "I still don't see the issue here?" "Did I not tell you you are the best blacksmith that we know. My family wants to recruit you. So I told them you and I are dating to keep you at my place." "So you want me to act like a boyfriend. I'm not good at acting and by the looks of it, neither are you."
The rest of the journey was silent as Peter kept thinking about how to avoid these new issues while Sicily kept fidgeting her fingers nervously. "I still don't understand why you would bother using me. It's not like they could just kidnap me and shut me in." Sicily kept silent and Peter didn't bother asking more questions.
*****
"You must be Peter. Sicily speaks highly of you." Alex was much older than Sicily. He had a firm smile on her face. Peter took the extended hand, "Yeah, I'm just average. I don't know why she thinks so highly of me either." "Well, she could become a bit exaggerative sometimes. Wanna see the gaming den? We have two spare multi-user cabins. I can show you around our new guild territory." "You own a territory?"
Owning territories were harder compared to killing wild bosses in the open. Territories are always contested and the upkeep is extremely high. Only a Uber rich guild could obtain such a feat. Sustaining a territory is even harder. Alex proceeded to take Peter to the game room which to his surprise was filled with a large number of the game cabins.
The game recognised Peter as soon as he entered the cabin. With the cabins connected, Peter entered spectator mode to watch the territory. It was empty apart from the massive castle and the was farming land. There were a considerable number of retainers working in the fields. "What are you growing?" Peter was curious to see never seen plants. "I don't know. One of our managers takes care of all the maintenance work in the territory. Come, we made a crafting area as well." 'Is he trying to rope me in?' The crafting place was much more cramped than he expected. Due to being in spectator mode, only Alex could see Peter's character and the others were ignorant of his presence.
There were countless crafters in the area and most of them were busy crafting armour. A few were working on bows and staffs. He also noticed jewellers and enchanters at the corners. "Do you have all the crafters yet?" "We just need a few more blacksmiths. We also don't have any cooks or alchemists yet. We don't need cooks at the moment but alchemist is a must-have for any large guild to be successful.
"It's really hard to become an alchemist. I tried everywhere in the city but I couldn't find any master alchemists." Alex was spawned near the imperial city and he had one of the easiest access to most amenities in the game. The progress speed for the capital players was considerably faster compared to the ones in the boonies.
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"I met one before. She was a noble with very high status. I think you should check out the richer sections of the city. Alchemist might be filthy rich considering how rare they are." "No kidding. I just became a knight. I don't have access to the interior of the palace grounds. Even the guards are either barons or viscounts. Anyway, let's get back. They will miss me and I got want to get shouted at." Alex and Peter rejoined the party after a few minutes.
*****
"So, how was it?" Sicily was a lot more relaxed on their return home. "Your smile was scary." Teasing Sicily, Peter smiled at her. "You learn a few things when you are brought up in with rich. So how did it go with Alex?" "I think he wanted to invite me. He did give me some hints, but unfortunately, I have a decent place too." "I bet you do. Now that it's over I won't have to meet them for a few months." Sicily let out a sighing yawn. "It was indeed tiring. I need to go get some sleep."
Although the gaming cabins placed the players in a semi sleeping state, the brain was still functioning and it needed to sleep sometimes. It was recommended not to play the game when one was at extreme exhaustion.
*****
By the time peter woke up, it was already midnight. 'Time to go crafter hunting.' After completing a few chores, Peter entered the cabin. He was in his office and slowly got back up. Annie was in another room going through another batch of herbs from Summerbrook. Seeing that Peter got back Annie went ahead and entered the room. "Hi, do you need to establish a trading contract with the miner guild? It could help us save cost by a lot." "Try to get a good amount of rare or uncommon materials. We can get common materials anywhere. Also, only place orders for tier 2 and above materials."
Dismissing Annie, Peter started going through the inboxes to find more members for his to be established guild. Most of the ones with the fame were part of guilds but soon Peter was able to find a few promising players in the hay. A few of them asked if they could join Peters guild. After sending friend invites to the ones he found interesting, Peter went back to the crafting area to try and make a new sword. He put all notifications to silent through the process and focused solely on making the new weapon.
As Peter working on the sword, a few ideas popped into his head. he started modifying the molten metal to him unconscious desires. The bar slowly took shape. This time, the weapon was quite different from his regular creations. One side of the weapon gradually became sharp while the other side became thicker and harder. After a considerable time of reforging the weapon finally took its full shape. It became a half meter sword with one extremely sharp blade and one blunt edge capable of smashing one's head in.
'Congratulations on making a unique rare weapon. Blacksmith Fame +10.'
Blunted sharp sword(R) (#012bb000002)
Creator: Blackbeak
Item level: 30
Can be upgraded.
Strength: 100-400
Abilities:
Severe bleeding damage when hit with the sharp edge.
Severe bludgeoning damage when hit by the blunt edge.
Artisan bonus:
Full counter: 100% chance to inflict 10% hp damage to a player or player pet when target's attack successfully blocked.
'Please rename the unique weapon #012bb000002.'
"Fantom edge"
'Fantom edge unique blueprint created and soulbound to Blackbeak. '
'My second unique weapon. What's with the artisan bonus? It doesn't make much sense. A free stat I guess.'
Once the weapon was finished, Peter started going through the inbox again looking for any response from the others. A few of them returned positively but they were interested in meeting in person. So Peter decided to put out a regional announcement of the guild recruitment.
"REGIONAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Travellers of Alderriver forest, I have decided to officially form a crafters' guild based on Hedgesnow. If you are interested in joining together and forging ahead, come meet us at the town tavern on day 15 @10:00 hrs server time. Blackbeak"
The announcement sounded out in the regional chat and all party and group chats in the alderriver forest map. The regional chat was flooded with replies from crafters and fighters alike. Setting up something like a crafting guild was incredibly hard compared to the regular guilds and this required massive investments for recipes and blueprints. This was the main reason most crafters joined various super guilds. Soon, there was a huge crowd forming near the entrance of Hedgesnow town map. Some came to join, some came to see the fabled blacksmith while others just came to see the fuss even though there were still two more days for the meeting.
After the announcement, Peter contacted Eric to let him know of the progress. "Ok, I just announced the guild establishment. What else should we do?" "That's ok. I will deal with the rest. Just be there at the time. I'm only 4hrs from the town." "Thanks. See you later." Peter disconnected the connection and kept looking for the armour. A sudden call interrupted him.
"Peter, did you just announce a new guild?" It was Sicily. She must have worried that Peter might leave the guild. "Yeah, I was planning to make one. What's wrong?"
"You can only have one guild." Sicily was scared. "Well, I can make a guild under Blackbeak. It will be fine, I won't leave your guild." Even if peter wanted to, the one year contract prevented Peter from doing so. "Besides we are going to need protection since most of us will be crafters, I was hoping we could ally with the Rising Suns. I'm sure going to make lots of enemies after this." "I will tell Alex then. But I feel like he would try and force you into a merger." "I won't let that happen. I guess we should just wait and see then."
Since Peter and blackbeak were two different entities in the game world, it was impossible to force a contract with one to be enforced on the other. So Peter was still worried about any potential threats down the road and had already chosen to make Eric own the guild deed. That way Peter would only be one of the officers not causing too much damage to the contracts with the Rising Suns.
*****
Profile
Name: Vision
Title: Creative Artisan(R), Knight
LVL: 24
Gold: 11,295
Credit: 48,723,990
Available points: 9
STR: 25
VIT: 20
AGI: 10
AP: 2750
DF: 2600
HP: 200
Swordsman (C): T2 L14 (2855/7000)
Miner: T1 L10
Blacksmith: T2 L18 (2294/14,250)
Alchemist: T1 L10
Herbalist: T1 L1
World fame: 110
Blacksmith fame: 50
Swordsman fame: 10