Kelsey and Gwen were slowly walking up the large slope that the Revenant's mana bomb had created. “Who was he anyway? Amos, I mean.” Kelsey asked cautiously.

“He’s the one that killed my husband… There's more to the story… but I’d rather not talk about it right now. Let's just say, I always knew I'd have to kill him, I just didn't expect it to be so soon.” Gwen answered, her voice filled with a twinge of sorrow.

“I understand, if you ever do feel like talking, I’m here.” Kelsey said reassuringly.

Gwen smiled. "Any idea what that Revenant thing was? It was pretty strong for a level 300 monster."

"My best guess is that it was a class feature of his. What was his classe's name?" Kelsey asked.

Gwen's eyes grew distanced as she checked her notifications. "Immortal Sand Cutter - lvl 253, and Hand of Tribute - lvl 204."

As Gwen said the names of Amos' classes, Kelsey froze for a moment, but quickly recovered, trying to hide the fact that Gwen had surprised her at all.

Two classes were listed? Does that mean that Kaydeth actually had a True Class all along? No wonder he was so strong... He really was something of a prodigy.

Kelsey scratched her chin in thought, trying to hide the fact that Gwen had just surprised her. "Hand of Tribute sounds like some sort of sacrificial class. That must be why he didn't try to dodge or block your first attack. His class must have required him to sacrifice himself to summon that Revenant."

"Ahh... That makes sense. But why would he resort to something like that? He kept screaming about how we would be together; how could he manage that if we were both dead?" Gwen asked contemplatively.

Kelsey shrugged. "Hard to know. He clearly wasn't all there in the head. It's also possible that the skill does some sort of soul trapping, but I don't think that's even possible. The soul 'should' be all powerful, unable to be trapped."

Gwen hummed to herself in thought. "I guess it doesn't really matter now, but I have to admit, I'm curious."

Chuckling, Kelsey agreed. "Well, I will certainly let you know if I ever find anything else like it. Imbuing a crystal with a ton of mana and using it to create a creature to fight for you? Sounds like something that could be very, very useful."

"Especially for you." Gwen said cheekily.

As Gwen said that, they were cresting the hill and were now able to see the guild's compound and members standing before them.

Gwen grinned as she looked at the roughly 130 members of her guild staring at them slack-jawed. “We’ve got some important business to attend to. Think they’ll let me lead them after seeing that?” she asked jokingly.

“I think they might be able to be persuaded.” Kelsey said as she returned the grin.

The Guild's compound was utterly ruined. Over half of the buildings that had been standing proudly were now nothing more than rubble. Even the farm had been completely destroyed during the fight.

I guess it's a good thing we'll be leaving...

Gwen led the way as the pair walked back to the stunned guild members. “Alright everyone. I have some news. Kaydeth and Richard are both dead. So are all of the other Guild Members that left with them to attack my friend Kelsey here.” she said as she pointed at Kelsey.

The crowd before her was silently listening as she continued. “Kaydeth was a monster, we all knew that. He killed five of our members for refusing to attack us. Kelsey attempted to let Richard go, but Kaydeth saw him retreating and ended his life anyways.”

She paused briefly, letting her words sink in. “I will be taking over as leader of The Librarians. Effective immediately, all assassination contracts are canceled. We are going to go back to being the keepers of knowledge we were always supposed to be… If anyone has a problem with that, you can take it up with Kelsey, or leave the guild, I don’t care.”

As Gwen mentioned Kelsey’s name, Kelsey let some of her mana regeneration leak from her skin, causing the ground to shake slightly. She likely didn't need to, the Guild members had seen what she could do, but a little extra incentive was always good.

Kelsey and Gwen had no intention of harming anyone, but it may be unavoidable if some of Kaydeth's lackeys were still hanging around.

No one moved. Everyone was staring directly at Kelsey and Gwen.

“Is everyone alright with that? Anyone have any objections?” she asked loudly.

Still, no one moved.

“Raise your hand if you’re still interested in staying in the Guild if I’m the leader.” Gwen shouted so everyone could hear.

The moment she asked, nearly every hand in the crowd shot up excitedly. Gwen smiled and pointed at the four people who hadn’t raised their hands. “You four can leave if you want. I won't stop you, and I’ll even give you some gold to hold you over until you find another guild if you’d like.” she said gently.

The four people, three men and a woman, all stepped forward together. One of the men was in the front, and he spoke first. “The money from the assassination contracts was too good, I’m not passing that up.”

Gwen raised her eyebrows. “Oh? And how much were you making each year when doing those contracts?”

The man barked out a laugh, “over 150 gold every month since Kaydeth took over.”

Gwen smiled sweetly. “Well, that is a lot.” she said as she pulled eighty platinum coins from her pouch and handed twenty to each of the members who were leaving.

The four people stared at the platinum they were being handed in shock. They quickly began bowing and saying thank you before they started to walk away. Gwen simply nodded and gave them a small smile.

“Alright, everyone else who decided to stay. The pay for being in the Guild has just gone up! We will now be paying 500 gold per month, or 5 platinum, whichever you prefer!” she shouted loudly enough for the people she just dismissed to hear. "This guild's mission is an incredibly important one, and we are going to start compensating you for that work."

A series of gasps rippled through the crowd as they heard about how much money they would be making.

Gwen and Kelsey hadn't really discussed their plans with anyone else, and Kelsey hadn't even been able to talk with Gwen about the information she'd received from Alana.

Their goal had already been to use The Librarians to spread the Mageblood ritual, and all the information about magic and the system that Kelsey had learned. A goal that had become all the more important since Kelsey spoke with the Queen.

With The Inventor's influence on Anoura finally being contested, an organization with the ability to store and disseminate information to the population was going to be critical. Kelsey was sure that Alana and The Wardens were going to be an incredible resource, but The Librarians would hopefully be a force multiplier for the entire operation.

Not only that, but having The Librarians move to the Mageblood forest would give the entire area a population to start growing with. She needed to make a dungeon, and more than that, needed to create a place for her and her party to train at. A place away from the prying eyes of a large city.

It also didn't hurt that Kelsey would almost certainly be able to use the guild to find out new information on magic and the system. Information that a random bookstore in Neim wouldn't be stocking.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Gwen waited patiently for the murmurs and discussion about pay and purpose die down before she spoke again. “This is not simply charity. We will have to work hard this year, because as Guild Leader I am making an executive decision. We are going to be moving headquarters from Saldeya to Cardona!”

This statement sparked a brand-new series of murmurs, this time, they were significantly less energetic. Kelsey could tell that people were considering her words and their implications carefully.

“Don’t worry, you won’t have to do all of the traveling. My darling partner has the ability to teleport people! If any of you have loved ones living in Grasm, we would be happy to bring them too!” Gwen shouted in a placating tone.

“Now, if anyone else would like to leave. I wi–” Gwen was saying as she was cut off by a loud voice from behind.

The man that had bragged about how much he earned was back, and his face was furious. “You’re going to pay them 500 gold a month to sit around and read books!? How fu–”. This time, the man was cut off as Kelsey simply wrapped him in a bubble of mana and warped him 10 kilometers away, towards the city.

“Sorry about that, we should be good now!” Kelsey shouted after warping the man away. “Don’t worry, I just teleported him, he’s fine.” She added after she saw the looks of horror on some of the guild members faces.

Gwen gave Kelsey a wry smile before continuing. “As I was saying… I will understand if you want to leave! I won’t hold it against you, and I’d be happy to give you some money like I did with the others!”

Thankfully no one stepped forward. If anything, the people seemed almost excited at the prospect of leaving Saldeya. There was a constant hushed whisper coming from the crowd as they discussed what they were planning on doing.

“Great! Everyone get ready! We’ll be leaving in two days! If you need to get loved ones here from Grasm, do it quickly!” she shouted as she waved her hand across her chest, dismissing them with the strange gesture.

The Librarians instantly broke off into small groups and began preparing for the move.

Stepping to the side, Kelsey raised her hands and created a large circular platform with enough space for everyone to stand comfortably, even if they brought the entire compound with them.

The guild members were incredibly efficient and dedicated, not wasting a single moment as they worked. Gwen and Kelsey hung around for the rest of the day, directing people and telling them where to place boxes filled with books and other documents. Kelsey also had to step in frequently and help move the rubble and debris that was covering much of the compound.

The night wore on as people began gathering materials and supplies into large piles on the platform. As Kelsey saw the astronomical amount of stuff they were bringing, she started to do some quick mental math in her head and realized that it was likely going to cost several hundred million mana to teleport this many people and all of their belongings. She was going to need to channel her entire pool of mana regeneration for over an hour, potentially two. Her head already hurt thinking about it; she wasn’t even sure she would be able to do it without dying in the process.

There was also the issue of the Warp stability. Creating a mana bubble as large as the platform was going to be incredibly unstable. It was hard enough teleporting ten people, let alone one hundred and thirty along with all of their belongings. If worse came to worse, Kelsey could theoretically do the Warp in multiple trips, and she may end up being forced to. But she was going to try it the hard way first. No telling what kinds of things she could learn from something that difficult.

As things were winding down and the guild members were preparing to sleep. Kelsey and Gwen were wandering the halls of the guild headquarters, slowly exploring a place that would soon be destroyed.

“I’m going to miss this place… a little bit.” Gwen said wistfully. “I did have some great times here back when the old guild master was running things.”

“Well, hopefully you’ll be able to create some good times for people in your new guild. Plus, there will be less sand in the hallways in your new headquarters.” Kelsey said cheekily.

Gwen laughed softly. “That’s very true. Plus, less heat. Not that the heat really bothers people at our tier, but it's a problem for our lower-leveled members sometimes.” she paused before remembering something else. “Oh! And more food. Food is going to be so much easier to grow. It takes an incredible amount of effort to feed ourselves out here. In the forest, it won't even be a problem.” she finished excitedly.

Kelsey was thrilled that Gwen was so excited. She was very much looking forward to having her own little community where all of her friends and family could live at peace without dealing with all the problems that came with living in a city as an Immortal.

She figured that over time, more and more people would arrive in the area, and it would start to feel like a city anyways, but that was a problem for future Kelsey. For now, she was just going to focus on having a few decades of peace and quiet in her own little corner of the world.

The pair wandered the halls for a few hours, stopping to have conversations with anyone and everyone they saw. Gwen was doing her best to make sure that any concerns, questions, or complaints her guild members had were acknowledged, and dealt with if possible. During the evening, a handful of people came up to Gwen and explained that they would be leaving the guild instead of traveling. Gwen said that she understood and handed each of them a few platinum coins, sending them on their way.

There really were no hard feelings. Some of the guild members had family that lived in the area that, as it turned out, were unwilling to move, even for the insane amount of money Gwen was offering. It was disappointing, but completely understandable.

Eventually, everyone in the Guild was asleep, so Gwen and Kelsey retired to the guild master’s chambers and immediately went to bed. Gwen fell asleep almost the instant her head hit the pillow, but Kelsey wasn't so lucky. Kelsey, for the life of her, could not get the conversation with Alana out of her head, and try as she might, she was simply unable to fall asleep. So, she stayed in bed, thinking and preparing her next plans.

Between The Inventor and The Myrdon, Kelsey had a lot to worry about. None of it was impacting her right now, but she needed to be ready for when it did. Plus, there was this brewing war between Saldeya and El'thena. It wasn't likely to bother her overly much, but she would bet her house that The Wardens would be called in to solve some problem or another during the war. There was no way a war could happen without some issue that threatened the safety of Anoura.

The next two days went by quickly as the Guild members were all rushing around, preparing for departure. Gwen was incredibly busy, managing everything by herself. Kelsey wanted to help, but she didn’t really understand the system they were using for their organization, and it was too time consuming to teach her. So instead, Kelsey kept busy by being on people managing duty.

Whenever someone had a problem or conflict, Kelsey stepped in and solved it to the best of her ability. She also spent a lot of her time using her skills to ferry people to and from Grasm so they could go shopping or retrieve loved ones. One of the things she did while waiting for people to finish their business in Grasm was take a short trip to Neim to buy a storage ring for Gwen. Kelsey filled it with one hundred and fifty of the Mageblood potions and gave it to her later that night. She explained that she wanted Gwen to give one to every single member once they got to the forest and take note of any interesting new discoveries they made.

By the end of the third day, Kelsey was exhausted and worried that this teleport was going to do permanent damage to her.

She hadn’t heard of anything like that happening before, but she knew exactly how much mana overuse hurt, and she was already stretched quite thin. She had done some more specific calculations after getting more accurate numbers and estimations of what they would be taking and found that she would be spending around 430 million mana for the warp. Her original guess of an hour was was off... She would have to channel her entire mana pool for over two hours and ten minutes.

But she was ready. She was sitting down on a large stone platform she had built the night they had arrived. It was similar in size to the training area she had made in the Mageblood forest and figured that the platform would be the best location to warp the people and supplies to.

Kelsey was doing her best to calm her mind in preparation for what was to come. She knew that if she let her concentration slip, for even a moment, it could theoretically have catastrophic consequences.

Over the past few days, she had reconsidered doing multiple trips, but decided against it for a few reasons, chief among them being her next advancement. Channeling this much mana at one time at her level was likely something that would make it into the requirements section of her next advancement if she were to actually pull it off. Plus, she was doing it at level 251. If she could do something impressive early, it would likely be even more impactful.

Another reason was practice. She needed practice at controlling large amounts of mana. She had lost the ability to create from anywhere within her domain specifically because her control was lacking. If she did this, she would be one step closer to getting that ability back.

Despite how beneficial this practice would be, there was a big part of Kelsey that wished shoving people in her dimension and then warping would work. Sadly, from some testing with Bud during her isolation, she found that anyone, and anything in her storage required additional mana to teleport, as if she were teleporting with it naturally. The amount of mana something used didn't seem to be based entirely on weight like she would have assumed, in fact, she had very little clue how warp and greater teleport calculated mana usage. All people seemed to cost roughly the same mana, so it wasn't based on level or mana of the user. It wasn't based on weight due to her storage area being filled to the brim with thousands of tons of coin. There was a chance it was based on something significantly harder to pin down, like the soul. The soul could potentially be responsible for people expending so much more mana, but it was hard to know without detailed testing.

Eventually, the time came. Every single one of the remaining guild members were in a circle surrounding her. All of their food, water, books, and even their pets were all stationed uncomfortably on the stone platform. Her original estimate to the size needed for the platform had been somewhat off, and things were actually quite cramped.

Gwen was standing behind Kelsey, her hand resting in support on Kelsey’s shoulder. Gwen knew the toll that using this skill was going to take on Kelsey and was making sure Kelsey knew that she was there to support her.

Not wanting to waste any more time, Kelsey wrapped everyone, and everything in a bubble of mana and activated her Warp.