"Get set, go." A bright burst of light flashed in the air as Sen fire a small spark from her wand.

Cassius immediately using one of his skills he warped sending him a hundred feet closer to the goal. Zooming in on one of the shadows cast by the many small shrubs, he immediately used another skill that blinked his body sending it zigzagging from one shadow to another. With a few steps, he made it to the end point touching the tree with the tips of his fingers. Turning around he prepared his next set of skills to make it back towards the finish line making sure to put Aladay in her place.

Another set of sparks erupted as Sen walked over to Aladay. "Winner, Aladay."

"How the hell did you make it back so fast?" Cassius said casually walking back to the starting line.

“You may have a bunch of blinks, but I can multi-dash."

"Yeah, but last time I checked dashes can only take you fifty feet. How the hell did you manage to be twice as fast as me."

"C'mon, you can't expect me to give away all my secrets. I won fair and square and Sen is her to vouch for me."

"Fine, fine, but I'm getting my title back," Cassius said opening his UI screen. Pulling up a notebook of names he scrolled down to his name and removed a hundred guild points, going next to Aladay's name he added the point with a slow and head shaking movement."

"Hell yeah," Aladay said. "So how many points do you have left?"

"Three," Cassius said begrudgingly.

"What are guild points?" I whispered over to Sen.

"They are an arbitrary point system set up by guild to claim item drops. You gain them by running guild raids or guild events."

"But how do they work?"

"Mmm, let's say you have a raid with two healers. At the end of the raid, a rare healing staff drops. Only one of the healer can claim it, so they bid on the drop with their points."

"Ahh, that's pretty cool, what happens if none bids on it?"

"It depends on the guild, for mine we put it up for a guild-wide bid, if by the end of forty-eight hours and no one has bid on it, we sell it and split the amount evenly amongst the original raid members."

"What if someone bids one point to claim an item so they get all the money?"

"It's possible, but keep in mind that guild points are finite.”

Grabbing the last remaining bowl on the counter, I place them in the sink. “Meeting in ten minutes,” I told Rachel as I walked past her.

“Did Melina get back?”

“Yeah, She logged back in about half an hour ago and has been chatting with Kain and Cassius. Harriet and Don are getting the meeting room ready and said they had a couple of ideas to present.”

“Yo, they are starting it early,” Kyle said opening the door to the kitchen.

With a shrug, I made a quick motion over to Rach who was still washing the remaining bowl.

“Take a seat,” Harriet motion, pulling out a few documents. “Good to see everyone back after that fiasco.”

“Please don't remind me, the wife had me go to seven checkups even though I told her I was fine,” Kain said.

“When’s the last time you ate something that was not spewing blood?” Cassius remarked.

“Save the chatter for later, I have a lot of information to go through,” Harriet said with a stern look. “The biggest problem we have right now is the inn. Sid has about one more week before it goes up for auction.”

“I don’t see what the problem is?” Kain said. “I can just buy it.”

“How much do you think this place cost?”

“Cheap as dirt, there has been no development and Sid said he paid four large for it so with inflation my guess is forty mil.”

“Melina, can you share the information you recently acquired?” Harriet asked.

Taking a stand, Melina opened a large blackboard that appeared on the wall behind her. Typing out a few buttons, a slew of numbers appeared on the board along with several complicated math equations.

“To get to the gist of it, your partially right. Using the standard economic model the price for this building should be forty million. I say should, but the actual amount is way off.”

“By how much?”

“Six hundred and forty-four million.”

The room fell quiet as everyone looked about the room. Kain opened his mouth to say something but immediately stopped himself. Placing his hands under his chin, he rubbed it contemplating the number that was presented to him.

“What?” Don let out.

“Yo, your pad be hella poppin,” Kyle said, his head halfway through the meeting room door.

If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

“Myre, please escort Mr. Kyle out of the room.” The girl with the cat ear appeared behind Kyle as she grasped the back of his tunic and dragged him out of the room.

“Oh, hey sexy… oww, ow, ok, ok oww fucking ow.”

Turning back to Melina, Kain stared at the equation on the board. After several attempts to do the math in his head, he felt a twinge of a headache forming as the numbers all floated in a giant twister of confusion.

“I have a question,” Sen said, giving her hand a slight raise. “I see two anomalies in the question, the first one is about the amount of tax Sid has to pay.”

“I already know where you're getting at,” Melinda answered. “And yes the rate is locked for him at the time of purchase.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“According to the current tax rates in the game the amount you would need to pay to own this inn should be around seven million a month, but the game has not adjusted your monthly tax like we previously thought.”

“Then I keep getting the same number and it’s completely wrong,” Sen replied.

Taking her finger, Melina drew a number on the board. With her other hand, she hid the number looking over to Sen. “What’s the number?”

“Um… Seventeen twenty-one.”

Removing her hand, Melina showed that exact number.

“What happened during seventeen twenty-one?” Kain asked, whispering over to Don.

“Hell if I know, history was my worst subject.”

“It’s not a date, it’s a multiplier,” Melinda said. “This multiplier has two implication if Sen and I have both come to the same conclusion.”

“Uh.. and that is?” Kain replied.

“There is something dangerous lurking in these waters.”

“I’m still not following.”

“How did you get to your forty million estimates.”

“Easy, Sid said he paid four hundred for this place, with inflation that comes to about four million. Taking the average level of this place, I’m guessing a hundred or so, I added a ten ex multiplier.”

“You're actually really close, but there is one outlier in that equation. In your head your thinking that the average monster level is one hundred, but if you work back from my given estimate you will get a completely different number.”

Blinking a few times Kain pulled down a calculator app from his UI screen. Taking the large number he plugged it in. Working back from the large number he came to the same number Sen and Melina had both gotten. Crossing his arms he leaned back onto the chair. “Huh...”

“I so fucking out of the loop, what the hell is everyone staring at?” Cassius remarked.

“Melina please break down the equation for everyone at the table,” Harriet said.

“Part one is fairly simple. Take the base that was paid, four hundred thousand, and adjust it for inflation so four million. The second part is a lot harder and requires a bit more work so I'm going to just dumb it down. Cassius how many unique monsters have we encountered in this area.”

Opening his UI screen, Cassius opens a log book and began counting down the list. “I have thirty-two counting the reaper.”

“That’s within our margin so far. Most region will have about seventy to a hundred unique monster, but since we have yet to explore any of the dungeons, we will round it to eighty-five. At this point, it’s a bit of a guess but we can say that most monster in the dungeon is around level five hundred not including the bosses. With the bosses, we will say they have an average level of a thousand.”

“Holy shit,” Cassius let out.

“We're not even getting to the good part yet,” Melina replied. “So if you add them all together you should have maybe an average level of this place being about four hundred, divide that by ten and you get the area level multiplier which if our math is correct should give us a hundred and sixty million.”

“Okay, I'm following, where the other half a billion coming from?”

“It’s coming from the same level multiplier. What would you say if I told you that there was one or maybe several monsters that are five to ten time stronger than the reaper.”

“How much stronger?”

“More than four thousand levels higher than the reaper.”

“Do we know what it is?”

“No, and at this point its a discussion we have to talk about in the future because that’s not our main priority of this meeting,” Harriet said.

“Then what is it?” Cassius said.

“Unless anyone has half a billion lying around, we can’t let this building go into default. Our main goal today is to find a way to get a hundred thousand.”

“That’s easy, lets just mule across the amount we need,” Kain answered.

“It’s doable, but that going to be very costly long term. I currently have two options, one, get more guilds to join us, or two, we go public with the area.”

“I don't like either of those plans,” Kain said.

“At the end of the day, Sid gets the final vote.”

The room grew quiet as they all looked at me waiting for me to say anything.

“Well… um… Honestly, I’m not too sure. Our biggest problem right now is the Leviathan. If we kill it, that would make resource transportation a lot easier. But as we all know, that thing is scary as fuck. If we were to get more guilds to join us, how many do you think it would take to kill it?”

“I was actually thinking about this,” Cassius chimed in. “It would take maybe the top twenty or so guild, but that’s only if the monster has no tricks. We could just spam it with enough damage to kill it.”

“Are you counting the corp guilds?” Sen asked.

“No, they are too inconsistent.”

“What’s a corp guild?” I asked.

“It’s short for a corporate guild,” Kain answered. “They are large guild made up of mostly low-level employees. What they lack in power they have in quantity and funds. They usually have the same plan for every fight, throw enough people at it until it dies.”

“Isn’t that the same idea Cassius just suggested.”

“Kinda,” he said. “But we're going to be more organized.”

“Why are we not going public?” Rachel said. “I don’t see what the downside to that would be.”

“We would have every guild including the corporate one invading the area,” Kain answered.

“Yeah, but your missing one big thing.”

“And what is that.”

“Even if they kill the Leviathan, there is no way they could stay in this area for more than a few hours before they run out of resources. They would either die to one of the larger creatures or they would need to head back to the mainland. Sid is the one holding all the cards.”

“She’s got a very good point,” Don said.

“I’m lost again.”

“You own the inn, so that means you can set up a restriction of who can enter. And the best part is that you also own the waypoint. No one can bind themselves to this place unless you permit them too.”

“I think Rachel just solved his money problems,” Harriet added. “You could charge very highly to rent out room here and you can even add a binding fee to use the waypoint.”

“What can I charge?”

“That’s up to you.”

“Okay, I like this idea. Is there anything else we need to cover?”

“How do we plan to go public with this idea?” Sen asked.

“Why don't we just put out a video,” Don answered.

“Or, better idea,” Melina said. “Why don't we make all the news channels bid for it.