When, he delved back into the game, it was still night and the area was dark. "This would be perfect time to explore if I manage to get hold of some decent tools like night vision goggles," thought Balthazar. Sadly, such equipment wouldn't be able to be procured anytime soon. One needs to go to stage where they at least cross tier 2.
There are other options like creating light stones (magical artifact creation) or torches, torch lights (engineering). Magical artifact creation was similar to engineering but involves extensive usage of runes and magical language which specifically created by game designers for vita-nova.
He contacted Rudra who was still creating dynamites in the advanced workshop. Rudra just asked him to get back to the workshop. In the past four hours, Rudra had been working on making more minor dynamites and wanted him to help him create more. He bought more ingredients some time ago when Balthazar was logged out of the game.
Shadow continued creating dynamites and scopes till it was time for dawn. Dawn at the game would be at 11 p.m in real-life. It was the time when most of the people in major cities at the prime meridians of all the terraformed planets would be done with the work and go to sleep. This would make it the ideal time for most to start playing game if they go to sleep.
They had decided to wait till 10 minutes till the dawn in the game before they had the players who joined them moving. They had to make these players complete the quest to get to the city. They had about 50 players who reached level 10 and other 150 who didn't, ready to finish the quest.
The 50 who managed to cross level 10 were mostly trade profession players, who moved to the Blackrock town and signed contracts with their guild. Rudra made sure that these players wouldn't jump to other guilds once they reach the city by specifying that they have to stay in the guild in the contract or their account experience would be erased.
Though his condition was a bit over the top, it was still considered liberal as they didn't put any constraints on their communication with players not in the guild and nothing about them releasing the information about how they complete the quest. Rudra and others didn't care as they knew that others would end up knowing of it, even if they included it in contracts.
The 150 were mostly old players who Rudra and his team were familiar with and were a part of their guild in the previous games. These were good players, but the close resemblance of vita-nova to reality and the characters movements being dependent on the players thoughts brought varied performance to the characters of even these veteran players. They were still reliable and can face mental pressure of the fights as they were veterans and with a bit of practice show good improvement, if they aren't traumatized by the life like feeling of killing monsters and people. They have a better chance of developing well in the game than new players who were pulled in by the allure of somnium technology.
Rudra had them start from the gate in groups of 20 each with at the very least one or two players he strongly trusted in each group. He had also called all the members of the team led by Merlin in exchange for a few dynamites. It was a simple job which provided the team about 50 dynamites. So, Quiet Fire and Merlin immediately accepted it.
As soon as they started from the gate, few players from specific guilds came and attack in an attempt to stop they from advancing. These guilds wanted to block them from moving forward in the game and ruin their reputation. Rudra's move to take trade profession players and increase his guild's prestige pissed off quite a number of guilds, but they wouldn't send their best players to block him. Those would be trying to themselves finish the quest and enter a city.
The more experience and clever ones like Blue Dart didn't send anyone to directly oppose them and in fact stopped anyone in their guild who wanted to do so. They just sent a few assassin players who could stay in hiding and trail them and find out how they managed to complete the quest.
They were already aware that Shadow had somehow managed to get to a high level in the game and players like Blue Dart also knew him to be an accomplished forger as he sold his creations to them. So, they thought that there was a high chance that his level increased further during the nighttime in the city where he would have access to better materials or designs. The same can be considered of the other players who reached the city too. So, it would be a waste of manpower, if they try to block them at this stage and it would be a loss for both according to the few who chose to send spies.
But when they were observing the groups of Crimson Realm members, they noticed that the first group of players who were sent to block them were bombed by the players themselves and none of the team members who reached the city intervened. This was a surprise attack and it allowed them to easily decimate those who come to block them.
The dynamites in their hands shocked many that were following these groups. Even without the ones who managed to complete the quest beforehand, these groups were able to hold their own. This caused a sense of apprehension in few other groups who were waiting to ambush.
It was an effective method to reduce the fights as using only the strong players to fight these players who blocked them would give them an impression that they might be able to succeed with larger numbers. This is harmful to the Crimson Realm guild. Moreover, the guilds who want to block them have no idea about the availability of these previously unseen consumables. They simply have no idea of how many of these dynamites are there with the Crimson Realm guild members.
The thought of these new consumables also made quite a few guilds to reallocate their members in to completing their own quest than blocking the Crimson Realm members. It was obvious that more members working on it gave higher chances of completing the quest and getting these consumables.
The new dynamites that were used by them also brought another wave of posts in the game forums. They were asking details related to how these consumables can be bought. Many were asking to sell these in their shop which they opened. Some were even demanding that they would face their wrath if these consumables weren't sold.
Rudra had their shop opened at the same time that they started their ten groups to begin the completion of their quest. Over the night, he had a few blacksmiths learn the design for the level 10 spear that Shadow created and managed to produce a decent stock of them. He also had Slain and Roll to buy a few level 10 equipment and weapons from the shops, and he put them up at his shop.
Though he put up about 10 spears for sale directly. He put the rest of them on an auction system at the shop, so that players could bid on it. He also announced at the shop that the dynamites and weapon designs would be placed on auction once the weapons they have got sold out.
This had resulted in an increase in the popularity and has also diverted the attention of the leaders of the guild player in the Blackrock Town. It was more important for them to find own resources and armaments to develop further in the game, rather than waste time stopping other guilds. Thus, the announcement at the shop cause the priorities of these guilds to change and they had their members immediately collecting funds to buy from the shop. This also allowed them to sell these at twice their original cost providing Crimson Realm guild a decent profit.
Balthazar had Robert informing him of the developments in the forum as he was leading a group into the Blackrock hill area. "I was right in allowing him to have complete management rights over the guild. It was a good idea to use the shop to divert their attention," thought Balthazar as he was being told by Robert about the posts in the forums.
They separated into ten groups initially so that their opponents would be split, and they could use the dynamites to counter smaller numbers easily. But this wasn't feasible when they were completing the quest. It was always easier to take down the leaders of the monster groups in large numbers by focus fire of large number of players. It would also allow them to clear the quest faster.
With the 200 members united, they actually had Crimson Power and Shadow Tyrant lead a smaller batch of 10 players before the rest along the path. These were the scouts of the group. Shadow knew that the number of monsters encountered on the path would be proportional to the number of players in the team.
So, he formed a smaller team to track the location of the monster leader that would be spawned. Then, he could bring the entire group to that location and raid the lair as he did before. They also came in contact with a few lone monsters like the red fanged cougar, but with the numbers in the group these lone monsters hardly stood a chance. The only issue was that Shadow and the others who already finished the quest shouldn't have the last hit for it to be counted as the party's kill.
In this manner, they slowly cleared the quest till they managed to see the city walls. Only the final boss was left. With their large numbers and the dynamites and fireworks, the managed to reach this stage in just 2 hours. The main boss were ogres this time got killed much faster due to the use of dynamites and the large number of attacks from the 200 players. At this stage about 10 players got killed and lost their chance to complete the quest, but the rest had successfully registered at city portal.
So, with a ninety percent success rate, they finished their first mission of the day. About 30 players didn't manage to reach level 10 even after the quest and 150 new players got into the city.
This was quite an effective result as none of the other guilds managed to get into the city yet. But their trick was disclosed. Blue Dart was closely following them with his team to check on them with a scope he bought from their shop. They realized that killing the leader of monsters in the forest would enable them to escape the crazy fight at the end.
They immediately began their quest to reach the city with this idea in mind. But it still wouldn't be as easy as the Crimson Realm members did because, Shadow helped a lot in taking down of these monster leaders and they had a good supply of dynamites and fireworks.
Rudra immediately began assigning players in his guild various tasks to do. They had an advantage which would probably be lost within the day. So, they had to make good use of it. Rudra had immediately employed the 50 trade profession players beyond level 10. He sent them to workshops and their respective associations to start working on new equipment and items.
Apart from that, he had sent some to the Colosseum and the remaining immediately went on their own to try their luck with the quests that would be available. He put specific stress on few to enter the colosseum as the combat points would allow them to buy designs and other tools. He had noticed that goods sold by the shops in the outer region aren't good compared to the ones he saw at the Colosseum.
The players couldn't share or exchange combat points with each other nor did the system allow them to purchase more than 10 points with money. So, the best alternative he could think was for them to fight against one another, the final winner would have a larger number of combat points than the initial ten. This would allow some trade profession members to get good designs.
All this would cost him a lot of coins., but the thing that Rudra was least concerned about was coins. Due to him selling the halberds at the auction house and the opening of the shop where he auctioned dynamites, spears and other equipment, he had managed to collect a decent amount of gold from the other guilds and players.
Until now, he had only auctioned one of the spear designs which was bought by a guild for a cost of 10 gold. It was almost equivalent to the price of a small shop in a town. Rudra didn't inform that this was one of Shadow's creations and this led a majority of the players to believe that the shop was actually auctioning designs which the players worked extremely hard to procure.
He also announced that they would probably sell more designs of the same if they found them. The brought him a good amount of coin for the designs and also the good will of a number of players. His announcement suggested that there are ways at the city to get hold of designs continuously and also increased their fervor to get to the city quickly.