While Maria and Gaia’s faction was getting ready to intercept any of the battles between the Celestial Order and the Pantheon, the other sides weren’t just stupidly going around and getting into random fights with one another.
After the threat of the Black Shadow was gone, the two factions dropped their previous truce and were now butting heads with each other. It didn’t help that the players guilds that had joined the factions also had some beef with each other. The second planet was basically a place where guild wars could happen at any time and they would be rewarded for it. Usually, guild wars were quite detrimental to a guild’s development as they would waste a lot of time and resources.
If a player died, they’d drop an item or two and if they had a Red Name, they could potentially lose all of their items in their inventory and even their equipped items. Of course, only bound items wouldn’t drop but most of the players in the guilds used items given to them by the guild which meant they wouldn’t be able to bind those items to themselves, otherwise, they wouldn’t be able to pass on those items to weaker players in the guild once they grew out of it.
Losing items wasn’t the only thing, they’d also lose EXP, skill proficiency, and even levels or skill ranks sometimes. Killing another player would grant quite a bit of EXP but still, it wasn’t worth it since there was a risk of having the tables turned along with the rise in PK value which would enhance the death penalty. Only the PKers found it a thrill to fight and kill other players because they were sick in the head and did it for amusement or it was because they were just roleplaying and doing it for the benefits from player killing.
Maria herself didn’t have an aversion to killing players, but she wouldn’t do it just for the fun of it like the PKers. Speaking about them, the PK guilds that were known in the game had joined opposing factions unlike what most people thought. Back on Planet Eur, the PK guilds were pretty tight-knit community so joining opposing sides on Gaia was odd. However, they had a reason and it was quite malicious. They didn’t help out at all with the mission progress but instead, they were constantly sowing chaos between the factions from the start as they always took the player hunting quests from the faction NPCs.
Those NPCs could only be accessed if one’s PK value was at a certain level and those PK guilds monopolized those NPCs. They didn’t allow any player outside of their circle access to the NPCs. The guilds had wanted to do something about those PKers but unfortunately, a clash with them wasn’t ideal, especially since it would hinder the progression of the Main Quest. It was more so now that one of the climax quests to the Main Story Quest was at hand and it was about going to war with the other faction so everything was very chaotic.
This quest would initiate the moment the forces of either faction clashed with the other and started using their summoning ability to bring the gods and astrals to Gaia. Due to this, neither side wanted to clash with each other just yet because they wanted to bide their time and wait for more players to exit the Void Sea Realm before they started the battle and initiate the quest. However, things weren’t going so well especially with the PK guilds interfering with this endeavor at every opportunity. The PKers would just attack any opposing side’s players and summon their astrals or gods the moment they got the chance to.
If it weren’t for Gaia’s Faction preventing the summonings from happening, the war quest would’ve happened already. In regards to the Goddess’s faction, it wasn’t good news at all since it only added more chaos to the current state of affairs. What’s more, the faction managed to rope in one of the biggest guilds from the Celestial Order, the Fallen Angels, over to their side. Thanks to this, the Celestial Order lost a large part of their fighting force and it greatly impacted their strength. There were many protests to this and people went to the forums to rant on the Fallen Angels’ betrayal but Lizzy didn’t respond to it at all.
After Lizzy had heard about Maria’s proposal from her friends, she didn’t even listen to the guild’s investors and arbitrarily took action on her own. She immediately ordered their strongest team to start focusing on the Goddess’s quests and after a few days, they changed sides despite many protests from within the guild.
Lizzy had her own motives and it was her guild. It didn’t matter what those investors said and besides, the largest investor was still Maria’s father and her family so even if she did lose a few other investors, it wouldn’t matter. Besides, if they waited a little while longer, they’ll soon see that her decision was for the best. Making an enemy of Maria was something Lizzy didn’t want to do because she was her best friend.
She was still a high schooler so she didn’t see things from an adult’s point of view. Being rational was great and all but for her, friendship was the most important rather than any benefits or profits. It wasn’t only the Fallen Angels, but even a few guilds from both the Pantheon and Celestial had also moved, especially those that had started late and wouldn’t be able to receive too many benefits on those established factions whose power structures were already solidified.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
They saw a better opportunity in Gaia’s faction so they naturally took it. Another thing of note was that the hidden ranked player, the Second Awakened Sky, was also part of Gaia’s faction. Her fame had spread pretty quickly after the IGC so her adventurer party that consisted of her and a few of her close friends were quite well-known now. They had been standing on the fence since the start of Gaia’s Main Story Quests but now, they had finally joined a faction, Gaia’s Faction.
Sky only joined this faction because her questline involved helping Gaia from the start. Also, she heard from the Goddess herself that Maria was part of her faction so she decided to join because she wanted the opportunity to meet Maria. Too bad though because the moment she exited the Void Sea Realm after contracting with a Primal, Maria had already gone off-planet and now that she had returned to Gaia, Sky was off on a mission. It was quite unfortunate for Sky since, at every opportunity, she would always miss her chance to meet with Maria.
******
A meeting was being held at the Celestial Orders’ Headquarters and the remaining Guildmasters still in the faction were gathered together to discuss their next plan of action. With the Fallen Angels betraying them, they needed to redistribute their forces on the Celestial Orders’ bases and do something about the PK guilds that are constantly harassing them.
When the Fallen Angels were still around, they bore a lot of the brunt from the PK guilds, and with their strength, they were able to always come out on top whenever the two sides clashed. Now that they weren’t here, the guilds weaker than them were having a hard time dealing with the PK guilds’ harassment. The Nine Hells were helping out whenever they can as usual but there was so much they could do on their own.
“Tsk, those PK guilds are being so active now that they’ve acquired this summoning power. We’re on the back foot right now because you, Guild Leader Eos, told us to hold off on using them!”
“I did, but it’s for the greater good. If we get into a fight now and trigger the Main Quest, we won’t be at our strongest! We still have players waiting to come out of the Void Sea Realm so we can’t just start the war yet.”
Another Guildmaster spoke up and agreed with Eos’s reasoning, “Guildmaster Eos’s reasoning is sound and even our opponents, the Pantheon, are seemingly thinking the same way.”
“That’s true. The spies I’ve planted there have reported to me that their side is also biding time.”
“So it’s only those PK guilds that are going around causing chaos and ruining our plans…”
“We have to do something about them but at the moment, we can’t. If we try to clash with them, we’ll be at a disadvantage since they’ll just use the summoning.”
Eos was glad everyone thought the same as he did. He only resented the fact that Lizzy and her guild switched sides all of a sudden. He turned towards the person he thought would’ve followed after Lizzy but didn’t, and asked, “What do you think about this, Guildmaster Gerald?”
Gerald, Maria’s brother, was still on the Celestial Order’s side and this puzzled many people, especially since they had found out that his little sister was actually the famous player, Maria, and she was part of the Goddess’s faction.
Gerald only chuckled and shrugged, “I have no thoughts on it. Our only problem is that we’re too weak on our own to deal with the PK guilds since they’re using their summons.”
“What are your thoughts on the Fallen Angels’ betrayal? I’m sure you were quite close with Lizzy, the Fallen Angels’ Guildmaster. You must’ve known that they’d change sides, why didn’t you tell us or at least try to stop them?”
“Oh, I knew.”
“What?”
“But I saw no reason to stop them and you guys didn’t ask.”
“You should’ve told us! We could’ve done something to stop them!”
Gerald laughed and said, “I’m not obligated to tell any of you people what my sister’s friend does.”
“Speaking about your sister, Maria, right? I heard she’s part of the Goddess’s faction, I’m surprised you haven’t betrayed us and joined them…” A Guildmaster said with derision.
“I have my own thoughts on this matter. I don’t necessarily have to follow what my sister does, do I? She’s powerful, that’s for sure, but I’m me and she’s her.”
“...You could also just be here to spy on us.”
Gerald didn’t deny it and even plainly said, “And so what if I am?”
“Y-You!”
“Be grateful that I’m still here to help out. My guild may not be as great as Lizzy’s and my power might not be as strong as my sister’s but at least I’m still part of the Celestial Order.”
“...”
Eos was quiet the entire time as he observed Gerald. He was suspicious of the young man because it was highly likely that he was going to leak their plans to the Goddess’s Faction but he couldn’t drive him out of the Celestial Order because they couldn’t lose any more forces.
Gerald’s guild may not be stronger than Lizzy’s but he had numbers to back him up. The number of players in his guild was the largest in the game because they gave a lot of benefits to both veterans and newbies. Thanks to the welfare Gerald’s guild provided, many players joined it at the start and the skill bar that was used as a cut-off to join the guild was set rather low so many people were still joining the guild which allowed it to become one of the largest guilds in the game with over 500,000 players in it.
Although a majority of that number was still stuck on the initial planet Eur, the number of players they had on Gaia made up at least a fifth of the players that were part of the Celestial Order. Losing a fifth of their forces all of a sudden would greatly diminish the Celestial Orders’ fighting strength. Quality was good, but quantity was also a factor that couldn’t be ignored and it wasn’t like the quality of Gerald’s guild members were bad.
With the Fallen Angels out of the Pantheon, Gerald’s guild was now ranked 3rd in terms of both overall power and contribution so this spoke a lot regarding the quality of the members of Gerald’s Guild, the Citadel.
“Whether you doubt me or not–I don’t care–but if you need my guild’s help, you only need to ask.”