When he opened the forums Jay was rather surprised. Only about half of the current popular posts were of him, a surprisingly small number given he was in the first 2 region announcement. Most of the posts were about Alexis instead, the person that came second. After having a general sense of the forums he looked at the top post.
'Who is the man that was quicker than Alexis?'
This Alexis person seemed to have gotten quite a reputation in the Main City, he was the strongest adventurer that kept looking for people who wanted to fight him. Despite this, he seemed to be rather well-liked by the community. He acted honorably and always stopped before doing any serious damage, even giving some pointers after beating someone.
On the other had Jay was completely unknown and nobody had even seen him before. In the end, the conclusion of the adventurers was that it must be the general of a strong Lord who managed to get somewhat lucky. They didn't seem to have much of an opinion of him which he saw as a good thing.
Meanwhile, on the Lord-only part of the forum, the lords were focused on where exactly he was. What made Jay really nervous was that they were nearly spot on. One of the Lords had gotten a map as a reward from a quest and using this the Lords worked together to find out where exactly Jay was. And well, when looking at the ideal location to build a city they arrived right where First City was located.
Some people seemed sure the light was more north but they were quickly shut down, there was no way a city in the Icelands would be able to produce a Tier one soldier. The few lords that were in the icelands confirmed that stating that they had only just gotten walls up and that there were barely any beasts to gain fighting experience against here, these few had only gotten their E-grade AI chip per chance.
The fact that they landed around the area of First City was problematic. As for how they thought of him it was very divided, some people decided not to mess with him and try to ally from the get-go while others wanted to form alliances to take him out as quickly as possible.
In the end, nobody really made the initiative to do anything though and it seemed to all be talk for now. Still, there were surely many other bases nearby. There were thousands of human settlements in the region and they were mostly focused on the grassy part rather than in the ice.
Right now, Jay had to change his strategy. He had to make sure nobody could actually confirm the location of First City. If someone did spies would soon follow and Jay didn't want to spend resources on that. Hence the solution he came up with was going on a warpath. The Lords he killed now would come back in a month as a level 1 adventurer so he just had to make sure that a month from now he was in a stable position.
If he didn't do this now they would infiltrate his town and each of his moves would be seen by his enemies. Whenever he got any kind of treasure his enemies would know, the same thing with the movement of troops. If he sent troops to Icy city, they would be more probably to attempt an attack on First City, hindering his progress.
On the other hand, if he were to attack them, they wouldn't be able to do anything for a full month. Additionally, he would take their stuff and some of their soldiers.
The decision was a rather simple one to make, but he did have a time limit. Within 2 weeks he would have to be back, so that at that point, he could once more prepare for the Iceborne.
For the following 2 days, Jay sat with General Green deciding how to handle everything. They would be taking out any base within a 50-kilometer radius of them. After this, using the tokens he would surely get, he would make multiple fortresses in order to stop any lords further away from attacking them.
Ideally, he would need 4 silver base tokens in order to make the ideal base. The following morning, Jay woke up due to a small string of notifications.
Congratulations user for having one of your underlings reach Tier 1 |
Region announcement: Congratulations to Grottle 'Pangea' Green for being the third human to reach Tier 1 |
Reward: 100 gold, F grade cultivation technique |
A golden light, rose to the skies once again, this time from the barracks on First City. It seemed that General Green had broken through in his sleep, something that was rather rare.
Jay couldn't help but smile at this situation. Since he became a Tier 1 while already possessing a seed of sword intent it shouldn't be too hard for him to learn how to use it now.
This would be the last region announcement about someone breaking through for a while. Tier 2 was still very, very far way away for everyone.
At this point, Jay didn't really mind the exposure this would bring him. The rumors about him being lucky in his breakthrough would surely fade away because of this though. He wasn't too worried anymore since they had figured out the solution anyways, they would get rid of any nearby base and built some fortresses in order to defend his territory. He also still firmly believed it was best to look stronger than you actually were.
In this world, you always wanted to be the one to attack. If you win when attacking you not only get those that surrender and their gear but you also get whatever the city/fortress has.
If you were the one to defend there was a decent chance you would still lose resources even after a victory, hence it was best to try and make others hesitant to attack and attack when you are ready, at least that was his personal belief
Right now First City had around 130 people, nearly all of these ready for battle. They were planning to take every warrior and mage in the city, even just the disciples. Only a very select few people would remain, this included old man Von Hauser, miss Evergreen, blacksmith Ariell, and a few others.
They would just be in charge of receiving the new citizens that would arrive in the following days. Additionally, they also had the 2 Giants and some stone golems to defend the base. The army of 120 men and women would split into 2. Half of them were to go with Jay to the south, passed the forest while General Green would take the other half west, across the bridge.
And so 2 armies left at the same time, planning to stomp over anyone in their way.