The next few days were filled with convincing people to join his guild. While most people were happy once he explained the benefits, there were a few that took some convincing. Some felt it was unnecessary since they were already in a safe zone and had enough food and water. Some just preferred to be alone.
But by the end of the week, the roughly 50 people–they'd gained a few more as people came looking for safety—were all part of the guild. They had room for over 200 more at their current level, so new survivors could be easily integrated later on.
The biggest critique, however, was the name and the guild leader. While most people thought he did an okay job, it turns out that people like a say in calling the shots. Even though the system was the one that designated him as guild leader, it still bothered some people. More importantly, the melee and civilian classes were bothered by the name.
They worried that the "mage" part was an attack on their choice of class—or something like that. Honestly, Jay was tired of everyone complaining and he'd tuned out half of it, while Sarah dutifully wrote everything down. He was far more eager to gain more cores and meat, and he still needed to outline the corners of their guild territory.
The cores and meat could wait a bit, though, so Jay went with Pete and Kyle on one of their perimeter walks.
"So, have you guys actually seen anything around here? Or is it still mostly quiet? Is there anything we need to watch out for?" Jay wasn't great at small talk, so he focused on asking his friends about their self-assigned job.
"Nothing too crazy. I had to stop Pete from chasing down a wicked-looking snake, though. Apparently, his class makes him want to fight everything and everything." Jay could hear the amusement in Kyle's voice. Clearly, there was no real danger, but Pete's attempts to fight everything must have been quite funny.
"That's good then. I was thinking of trying to hit the next floor soon. We seem to get better cores the lower we go, so that's probably the best way to strengthen everyone up. I also want to start sending parties into the earlier floors on their own. They need to learn to fight properly."
The training sessions were good, but the mages were at the point where they needed real combat to improve. The fighters looked to be in a similar position, although Jay wasn't positive about that. He'd never been much of a fighter, after all.
"Let's let Sarah know when we get back, then. She seems to be running the place anyway. Oh, and don't forget about those dungeon bonuses. Don't you need to set those up soon?"
And it was true. Jay had initially been excited to pick up some bonuses, but he was overwhelmed when he first opened the menu. He'd been going through it slowly, but there were hundreds of options.
Some options improved local dungeons and monsters, making them easier to kill or drop better things. Some gave buffs to players, and those were split further into solo and party buffs. Some just increased the number of monsters or let you change what type of monsters spawned. There were just so many.
The best ones that Jay had found seemed to be two that gave a passive healing and armor boost, and one that gave him partial control over what spawned in a dungeon within the guild's safe zone. The first two were good for obvious reasons, but Jay felt it would be great to be able to farm different types of cores.
As far as Jay could tell, dungeons had a theme. If the dungeon names were anything to go by, they were influenced by the local terrain. The tunnel in the city had metal creatures and looked fairly urban, and the rewards reflected that. Here, they'd encountered a few kinds of cores, but they all seem related in one way or another.
In their current dungeon, the monsters were mostly based off forest or jungle animals and the cores related to either water or—on their deeper floors—shadow elements. If Jay could modify the earlier levels to give them different cores, then everyone could use different elements.
The earth cores had already proven their worth, the water mages were improving rapidly, and their remaining healer was invaluable. Jay also couldn't help but think people would be more willing to heal if they knew they had offensive and defensive magic, too. Utility saves lives, and Jay was out to save as many people as he could.
Once he'd finished putting down the last land claim stake, Jay got a notification saying the guild territory had been created. Satisfied, the trio headed back to town to sit down with Sarah and discuss dungeon delving parties.
"Can't we at least send down one of us with them? It'd be so much safer and they can still get experience. With a safe zone, we don't need to rush them. None of the monsters can attack us." Sarah really didn't want to send groups down alone.
It made sense, sort of. They'd had issues even when Jay was busy clearing a path for people, so it was possible people could get badly hurt. But they also needed more cores and levels if they wanted to protect themselves.
"The notification I got said that we were safe except in the case of a guild war. If we can do it, so can other people. And there's no guarantee they're as nice as we are. For all we know, monsters might even be able to start a guild war. We need to be stronger." Jay wouldn't compromise on their need to improve. Supervising a little at the start might be possible, but their group needed to improve and hit the lower floors, too.
"Well can we at least supervise the first week? We lost one of the only healers in our last dive. Yes, we've managed to get a few more, but it's still dangerous. We brought these people together. We have a duty to protect them."
Jay knew she was right, and he eventually conceded the point. As badly as he wanted to get stronger, these people needed them. They were scared and some of them were still little kids. To be fair, he was definitely NOT going to let the kids in any time soon, though. It was way too dangerous.
Finally, the conversation turned to guild bonuses. They'd formed a sort of impromptu council comprised of Jay, Andrew, Sarah, Pete, Kyle, George, and Eve. In this way, all the main parties were represented. Jay and Kyle represented the mages. Pete and George represented the physical classes. Sarah and Eve represented the non-combatants, and Andrew was kind of in his own group at the moment, since nobody else used pets to fight.
Sarah seemed to be quite happy with the defensive buffs Jay had pointed out. Her biggest worry seemed to be protecting people, and Jay wholeheartedly agreed with her reasoning. Eve was really pushing for improving materials, especially metals from the dungeon. Pete and George were especially supportive of the defense and healing buffs, which made sense. And Jay and Kyle were hoping to increase the types of cores they got from the dungeon.
Ideally, Jay would have agreed with everyone and chosen all of those buffs, but their guild was only level 1 and would take a while to grow bigger. Right now, they could only have 2 buffs active at a time. Which meant someone had to get disappointed.
It was only then that Jay remembered the ore he'd received from their last delve.
"Eve, do you think you could do something with this?" Jay pulled out the nightsteel ore. As soon as he did, Eve's eyes lit up.
"Why didn't you bring me this earlier? I can tell this is stronger than anything we've encountered just by looking at it. If I formed it into some armor, we wouldn't even need those defense buffs. Heck, I could probably outfit a full party with this much!"
"Great! Then we can take that off the list for now. Since we can change what buffs we have active, we could increase the chance of this stuff spawning and still have the regen buff. When we have enough for everyone to have armor, we can switch it to the cores. That way, everyone wins."
Jay had to admit, Sarah's logic seemed flawless. He'd have to give up on getting some more offensive magic for now, but it'd be totally worth it if this armor was half as good as Eve said it was. With everything decided, Jay selected their choices and went to prepare himself for a week of dungeoneering. He had some mining to do.