When it was the scheduled time to meet up, Richest Asian was already there waiting along with my friends. We did not bother with the formalities anymore and instead went on our way.
It was only us four, but he told us he would be joining our party to hunt for the rest of the day. He will be carrying us to higher level monsters we can find near our village.
But before we left, we saw some commotion happening near the gate.
"Hey, did you see all the NPC gathering here? It seems like they're going for an expedition."
"No, they're bringing construction materials. This occurs when a guild rebuilds its territory."
"Oh~ Thank you, random stranger… I wonder what guild is it. I want to join."
I can hear a bunch of players gossiping but did not care about it since I know the reason anyway. We just passed by these people and headed first to the same direction these NPC should be going.
"LadyQueen have told me that you were checking for more things to build in the village. Just to be sure, how much did everything I ask you to purchase?"
"152,000g."
"Hmm. It is unusually lot cheaper than I thought. I thought it would cost at least 50,000 more than what I gave, so I gathered more gold."
"You have more gold?! Since you have a lot, we can keep the chan-"
She would be straying the important subject in hand, so I stopped Aria saying her unreasonable request.
"I think I know the reason why it does not cost much."
This was a good time to explain to them the history of Estro Village since we were only running anyway. An hour would be enough to share everything including the recent quest that I just got.
I made sure to tell them every detail about the devil and not to explicitly give out this information to people. Especially the NPCs because it seems like this was a taboo topic for the residents of Twilight City.
Each gave me a different reaction when I finished my story.
Aria was excited about the rewards for finding this devil, Michelle got scared of the possibility of fighting a devil soon, while Richest Asian has the same poker face he got. I expected Aria to have the same reaction as Michelle, but I guess the possible rewards were too good to not notice.
"That's something worth remembering, but this village should be fine right?"
"Yes, based on the words of the Lord. Aside from the history of Estro village, there should be no problem right now except having residents live and work in our village."
"As long as the rules of this game are fair, residents should not be a problem even if it takes a little longer to gather them."
"Is Estro a bad village to occupy, Guild Leader?"
Michelle seems to worry that the place we founded was not ideal after hearing his concern.
"I'll decide when I see the village later. There's always a possibility to improve the village, but the best territories would be the ones that have the best location. Locations with topographies that would be difficult to invade when we begin waging wars are better"
"That guy in the Stargazer Tower told us that we are the second to have a territory near Twilight City. Should we go at it and become the only guild in Twilight to have territories?"
"Unless we have a Flag of Declaration, it would be impossible to start a war. There haven't been any drops of it in the whole New World-- That and it would be foolish to think we can defeat the number one guild in Twilight City. The best course of action for our guild will be to look for as many non-occupied villages and towns as many as possible, and then we can…"
There it is. Richest Asian continues with his long sermon. No one in our group has the attention span to listen to everything he was saying.
Aria tried to look like she was paying attention, but I could see all his words were just passing by her other ear. On the other hand, Michelle gave up and just watched videos on her screen.
'At least turn down the volume a little bit.'
Good thing Richest Asian ignore all of this and let it pass by. Although I am afraid that he would be giving us another quiz for our position in this guild later.
"We're here."
While he was basically talking to himself, we reached Clouded Marsh.
"The location is quite decent. It's camouflage with all this grass while it can also be used to our advantage. The only problem would be transportation from here to the city. Although NPC from our city should solve this on their own."
"Let's roam around the village while we wait for the construction group. They should be here soon to begin rebuilding this village."
We guided Richest Asian to all parts of this village including the place where we found the book and doll that begun the quest. I made sure to remember to tell him to leave the book in a safe place since it seems to be cursed.
"This place is smaller than I expected, and all buildings are run down. Maybe that is why this place is so cheap-- I have also checked the village information already."
He should be talking about the system window that Guild leaders only have when they have a territory. Territory management tab is given to them to let the leaders handle territorial matters easier.
"Maintenance cost is 3200g per month and projected income for this village is 8000g per week. It's less than other villages that I know of, but this location should be its selling point. This won't be a profitable village in terms of gold"
"So it's a bad place overall?"
"Not really. We can earn more gold later on in better locations, but the most important thing right now is levelling up. Having a checkpoint here for our guild is the best feature. We can save an hour of travelling from the city and use it to hunt monsters instead. We might be coming back to the city sometimes since we only have a Basic General Shop and a Basic Blacksmith for now. But overall, it will help the guild's growth.
As expected of a guild leader. He knows and understands everything that is needed for his guild to get stronger. The average level of players in Gold Paradise is still 20 to 21 that is why we are quite low in the City Guild rankings despite being the second guild to have a territory.
The monsters near here start at Level 26. This should be a good place for our other members to start catching up in levels. But first, we should ourselves since we are also quite delayed in terms of our levels except for our Guild Leader.