Rain Falls position in Free Forest went up extremely fast!
As the only Full Fledged Member Player Character, she is now granted the position of Guild Leader candidate. Now players everywhere are rushing, they must gain points and contribute to fight for the position. If quests being somehow scarce made many feel confused, contributing was straightforward and granted the players some freedom.
Being a Guild Leader has many benefits, even though also many responsibilities and obligations. The position of the two big guilds is definitely not the same as those newly created player guilds.
Those two big commanders have a lot of prestige and power. Those two guilds have been there for a long time in Tales lore, had a foundation and many connections. Even if Free Forest’s treasure suffered from the loss of the Elite’s equipment, it can still be considered amazing for the recently joined players.
The Guild Leader can make war against other guilds, obtain their territory, resources or resources right. He has the City Lord’s support and the royal family support in the shadows!
Those guilds, they are the backbone and pillar of Red Clay. Guild Leader has the power to grant small rank nobility, pieces of land and titles. He can contribute higher, and after performing many merits, get the chance to become the new Red Clay City Lord!
Red Clay City, that is this kingdom of Vavell third biggest city, is a powerhouse, full of resources, power, and prestige. Skills and Talents are also many, the wealth is incomparable to those small and weak player created guilds. Those big guilds right now even have the power to tear to pieces the small ones at will without much difficulty!
Of course, as time passes, many guilds will rise and fall, be conquered and conquer. Those three big guilds, in time, may even be wiped out from Red Clay by growing player guilds.
In MMOs, hundreds of players will always band together to form powerful alliances and factions. Many are already used to playing together and will do everything in their power to make the guild strong!
Since Tales has a lot of freedom, strong players will decide the future of the entire game. To become a force for domination and unify all the lands. To become a force for justice and rule by wisdom. To wander about, absent aim. If you have enough power, all of those, who can oppose?
When this information about the Guild Leaders spreads around, it creates a huge stir!
Rain suddenly asks Yushin to join [Free Forest Guild], tells him they will strive together. Even if she is higher ranked right now she will support him, even give the dungeon. He will get a lot of contribution after donating it to the guild, surpassing her instantly!
Although Rain already got contribution points for the dungeon, that is only for having it and letting other members use it after a [Contract], is not because she donated it to the guild. She admires Yushin a lot, is even a little infatuated with him, thinks that person will definitely become a great Guild Leader, much better than her.
To any player, what kind of offer is this?
The same feeling as suddenly being offered a lot of wealth in one go!
However, to Yushin, that is nothing. He is not greedy for power, the City Lord position is not very attractive to him. Power and prestige, he will not turn away, but also will not be lured in by it easily.
His goal is to explore the world and play his own way. The principal reason he refuses is that he doesn’t want to continue what others started, but build his own empire and legend from the ground up!
Yet that doesn’t mean he is not aware of the benefits of such a great opportunity. Instead, he thinks that position fits Rain the best. She showed promise before, her decisions are smart and quick. She has the makings of a great leader, even the heart of one.
He might not want to be the City Lord, but that doesn’t mean letting someone unknown have that spot might be harmful in the long run. A greedy and dumb City Lord, how can it not affect them when compared to other cities and kingdoms?
Before Yushin is able to express his thoughts, Rain keeps going.
How huge is the City Lord’s position?
The City Lord receives exploration rewards, obtains priority on treasures found, receives lots of resources from guilds, farms, and mines. All noble clans and guilds have to seek his favor. He can start wars on other cities, turn them into puppets, use his [Sphere of Influence] to control forts, settlements and other structures.
Also has access to the [City Management Interface], can grow the city as he pleases, choose its focus, strategy, and industry, choose basic training, type of army, current laws, reward and punishment conditions.
The City Lord can choose who to benefit, nominates many powerful positions within the city. Who can set shop and who is going to be banished. He can command the city guard at a whim, is a [Ranked Noble] and can even fight for the [Country Guardian] position.
[High Ranked Nobles] are positions of prestige, are allowed to create Clans.
Clans, as Rain explains, are not made by Player Characters, but by a person’s own NPC entourage. They are considered their flesh and blood, like a clan or family in real life would be, and even allowed to have NPCs offspring in the game. In a [Clan or Family], the bond is strongest, is a [Blood Bond]. In a guild, it is a [Loyalty Bond]. System rules might be very different for the two of them, but that is all Rain knows so far.
About [Country Guardian], what kind of position is this?
Just one step below the [Royal Family], an entity that can someday become King of Vavell Kingdom.
The official positions inside Vavell are [Settlement or Village Chief], [Fort or Gate Commander], [City Lord], [Country Guardian] and [King]!
Among City Lords, those of small cities obviously have lower status than the ones in the three big cities. Country Guardians are responsible for defending the borders and are divided in four, one for each cardinal direction. Their influence can span several cities. Currently, there is none appointed in the Kingdom.
Country Guardians are bestowed the power to summon every City, Guilds, and Army under his influence to fight an external threat to the Kingdom, at his own discretion. He does not need to report to the King before acting!
Refusing the summon without justification will be considered treason to the Royal Family. Naturally, those guilds, mercenary corps or similar that are not bound to a specific kingdom will not suffer any penalties for not heeding the call in theory.
Above the [King], only those that can conquer many other kingdoms can be called [Emperor]!
All of this, compared to future player created kingdoms, right now, are much more alluring. If you were to build an empire, it would be much easier to start from a solid foundation than to build it from scratch!
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Of course, all this information, Rain obtains with her Full Fledged Member position. Right now, who can even enjoy such treatment in the entire Tales but a few lucky ones?
Yushin raised his brows. This news is indeed huge, waves and waves of changes will come fast.
Should he join Free Forest? Should he only support Rain from the outside?
He to Red Clay Guild there is no affection and to Golden Rose simply no relation at all. But, even if he wants to be free, also thinks those [Guild Wars] are going to be very interesting!
Rain is definitely the best candidate to lead Free Forest, compared to the ones he knows. Aurei would also be good if his confidence was a little higher. Bitter Cat is a no-no. He is too scared of her to even consider. The Kobold and Half-Orc didn’t seem special to him at all. Yushin smiles, suddenly makes his mind to support her all the way!
Now he also likes the Old Man and The Mage, thinks their trio can be good together. He wants to invite Aurei and Bitter Cat, forms a party, then find a healer, tries finding more dungeons and exploring dangerous places. Going deeper into the Faint Forest is a must.
In his mind also has the thought of creating a guild. It doesn’t need to be open like those three big guilds, but some form of Covert Ops, Shadow or Hidden Guild, capable of taking missions and running dungeons without attracting trouble. Bringing together talented people is necessary, all sorts of different skills to be able to enjoy any content and challenge any dungeon.
After creating it, he can cooperate with Rain and form a Contract with Free Forest, supports her in becoming [Free Forest Guild Leader]. After then, aims higher, strive to achieve the City Lord’s position!
At that time, having the support of the City Lord will be very helpful to his explorations.
He will keep adventuring. His end goal, maybe by then will find.
However, if he becomes City Lord instead, it will be much easier to win the bet, he might even become the Writer’s Group first after all!
“I’m sorry, I won’t join Free Forest,” Yushin told a disappointed Rain.
“Why? Are you going somewhere else? Don’t tell me… Red Clay?”
“How can that happen? I’ll make my own,” he told her truthfully. Before she could say anything he added, “I will support you to become Guild Leader at Free Forest and do everything I can to make it happen. It’s a promise.”
Rain couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed, but also understood that him joining was mostly her own wish after all. She shouldn’t push him too much and wasn’t sure herself why she wanted him to join so badly. They only partied together once, but the impression left behind was very deep.
“If you change your mind, I’ll be waiting,” she said a bit shyly.
Yushin smiled and thanked her, then asked about the contribution methods for the guild. He had a rough idea of how contribution points are earned. Aside from a few cases, like finding a dungeon and letting companions use it, what other methods are there?
Currently, he is affiliated with some crafting guilds but didn’t raise his rank enough to access that much info. Just being part of a guild won’t make you a full-fledged member. He silently reminds himself not to neglect the Engineer’s Guild, Hunter’s Lodge and Spellforce, as they work differently than those Three Big Guilds and didn’t limit his freedom, but also won’t give him many benefits if his member rank is not high enough.
Rain tells him there are many forms of contribution:
[Daily Contribution] is awarded when the player actively contributes to the guild that day, doing tasks, quests, selling or donating items, or participating in events, among others. It awards the lowest amount of points.
[Item Selling] contribution points are awarded when the guild buys something from the player. The number of points will change according to the price of the items.
[Item Donating] awards more points than item selling, but works the same.
[Skill Teaching] are points awarded when one member passes a skill onto another, free of charge.
[Skill Selling] is when a member sells a skill of his own creation to the guild or other members. It can be sold as [Restricted], [Free] or [Owner Exchange], with the [Owner Exchange] category being awarded the most points.
[Skill Donating] works the same as the above [Owner Exchange], except the guild or member becomes the owner of the skills and the player may no longer sell it to other sources or teach it. Of course, higher leveled skills with many modifiers are much more expensive.
[Guild Quests or Tasks] award points according to the difficulty.
[Guild Merit Points] are awarded when a member performs a meritorious action for the guild, like defending it in a battle or providing excellent info.
[Selling information] also awards points based on the member’s contribution, much like the Hunter’s Lodge.
[Dungeon Access and Donating] is the contribution form Yushin knows, and one that awards a lot of points.
Aside from those, there may be more specific contribution ways, but those are the ones Rain knows right now. Other Guilds have their own rules.
Yushin gasps, there are many ways to rise in a guild. Even with Rain’s lead, if a lot of people work together it will be possible to overtake her. One should not underestimate the power of some huge gaming guilds!
Guilds often moved from game to game, and even though Tales didn’t make it easy for them to start in the same place, it wasn’t impossible to restart until you spawned on the place you want either. Some hardcore players would even attempt the beginner’s dungeon until they complete it for better rewards!
Knowing this, Kingdom Corp limited the amount of character resets per account to 3. If that didn’t work they would need to buy another account…
After talking a bit more to Rain, Yushin was going to resume his journey back to Red Clay City but spotted a few figures lurking in the woods near the road.
At a single glance, Yushin knew they were up to no good, but did not know whether they were NPCs or players.
For players, walking on the roads didn’t make much difference speed-wise, and also made it much easier for other ill-intentioned players, NPCs, and beasts to spot them.
But, to merchants, it was a huge difference.
Roads gave movement speed bonus to caravans, horses, and other beasts while having speed reduction in open and uneven ground. Commerce was important to any city, but for those small settlements, villages, and forts, it was also their main way of survival. Few of them were self-sufficient. All those bandits needed to do was choose a nice ambush spot, check their caravan’s strength and attack. There is no way patrols can cover the entire kingdom!
This was also how those NPC bandits acted and the reason [Mercenary Bodyguards] were hired often. Yushin sneaked behind them. After trying his luck with those monsters on the Faint Forest, there is not a big chance a common player will be able to find him. He tailed a figure for a while and was now sure it was not an NPC, but a player instead.
The figure was cloaked and had a white mask, carrying a sword. It stopped every once in a while and stood in silence. Yushin knew that he was sending private messages over to his group, waiting for the next prey to arrive.
The way Tales worked, this group can attack whoever they want, and if no one gives away their identity, only taking off their cloaks would be enough so no one knows who they are. Without name tags above their heads, like in common MMOs, there is no easy way so far of spotting player identities.
Of course, Yushin could tag them with any random name, and if they meet again, it would still be tagged. But, after taking off their cloaks and masks, how can the system recognize them?
This system is very similar to a real life [Facial Recognition Tool].
Yushin went around in the woods tagging every enemy he could find, from “Bandit 01” to “Bandit 15”. There were fifteen of them in the end. If he somehow found any of their characteristics, he also added it as a tag. For the first bandit - Bandit 01 (Sword).
Two of them stayed close to each other and talked without using private messages, no worry about being caught. They couldn’t imagine someone would be able to sneak on them, especially so soon in the game.
From their talk, Yushin learned they are from a guild called [Red Leaf] and found it fun to play as bandits in Tales since the odds of being caught are low. They addressed each other by their igns, “Red Bird” and “Red Clown”, and even took their masks for a moment!
Big mistake!
Yushin grinned from ear to ear.
‘Remember, low odds are never zero. Today, you have the worst luck in the world since you met me!’’ He thought mischievously.