The party took the tokens that were provided and thanked the guard for the entry into the city. As they had entered through the Eastern Gate, the party was walking through the wide cobblestone road wedged between large commercial buildings. The layout of the city was separated into four quadrants, the eastern was the business sector that housed shops of all kinds including but not limited to tailors, tanneries, blacksmith forges, and inns and pubs of all kinds. The southern quadrant was a residential sector for the peasants and farmers. This was the most dense section of the city that housed nearly 80% of the city and took up roughly two thirds of the city.
To the western quadrant was an educational quadrant that held training halls for the players, Adventurer's Hall for contracts, school facilities for the NPCs, Large churches dedicated to their patron Gods, as well as included the University that players could use to promote their class to the next tier. There was an interior wall separating the eastern, southern, and western quadrants from the northern quadrant which was home to the Government Buildings of Sterling City, held the large manors for the Nobles in the city and the Imperial Palace of the Human Kingdom, where the Human King resided.
Everyone was taking in the sights as they had approached the center of the city, which held a grand plaza with a massive fountain in the center. There were 12 angels of varying design of the Gods worshipped in The World surrounding the fountain The party approached as the fountain was spouting water out the top and inside the basin was a multitude of copper coins.
"This is the fountain of the Gods. They say that if you make a wish to one of the Gods at this fountain, and give an offering, your wish may be answered." Marcus said as he took out a coin and closed his eyes and held it against his chest as he whispered a short wish and flipped the coin into the well as the water began to illuminate before dimming back to it's normal pristine form.
Seeing this the remaining three did the same and the fountain illuminated again similar fashion to when Marcus did it. Afterwards the group separated but stayed in the party to go explore the city on their own, or together in the case of Mawu and Lisa.
Marcus immediately headed towards the pub he frequented the most before his regression and took a seat at one of the tables. Shortly afterwards a short woman approached wearing a white dress underneath a brown apron holding a serving tray and set down a wide pint glass containing the local ale of the pub. "That's 2 copper, a meal is 3, want some from the kitchen hun?" She asked with a smile.
Marcus took out 5 coppers and placed it on her tray "Yes, please" he replied. She nodded and disappeared as quickly as she appeared. Marcus took a big swig, he began to reminisce about all the hours he had spent and shook his head. "What an idiot..." he muttered under his breath. He had opened his Social Tab as he had quite a few new entries in his Friend's List, he had roughly 20 people he was friends with.
He knew most of these people were all the top rankers when they had played but it would still take time for them to get to Sterling due to some choosing Elves, Dwarves, the different Beast-Men tribes, Fae, and as you ventured further away from the cities, the difficulties of the monsters would increase and as you neared the borders between the different kingdoms, the difficulty would be even higher.
Despite the challenges, he had sent a message to all of them stating his intention to create a guild in Sterling City and if they were interested, to make the journey. Most of them had expressed interest and asked how to get to Sterling from their respective regions and Marcus provided them with the safest routes and advised them of the potential dangers. Others declined as they had expressed their interest in creating their own guilds in their respective regions.
It wouldn't take too terribly long for the Teleportation Arrays between the cities to be opened, but they were locked for the time being to prevent players from exploring too much too fast. Marcus had begun sending friend requests to more people from his prior life and it didn't take long for his friend's list to be increased from 20 to 100 as he began increasing his recruitment efforts. Unfortunately, even less people expressed interest as he knew most of these people would all go to create powerhouse guilds all over The World.
Marcus was annoyed, he had wanted DewDrop to not create Royal Rose this time around and be part of the Main Expedition Force and lead the guild in clearing the Main Story. "S***..." He muttered. Marcus decided to send her a congratulations for beating him to the punch.
"Congratulations! I am here in Sterling and was working on finding my 5th member to create a guild! Finding someone is proving harder than I thought, I'm in the pub at..."
It didn't take long for DewDrop to enter the pub and locate Marcus. She smiled and waved over as she took a seat. Another female was following her, she was covered in a hooded cloak so her features couldn't be deciphered.
"Hey, glad you made it to the City! Two insanity dungeons already, you're on a roll! You know all the requirements to create a guild yeah, I can't believe it cost a whole gold coin for a guild..." Dew asked.
"Yeah, it gets more expensive the higher your guild rank is," Marcus nodded "what kind of token did you get?" he asked.
"Just a Silver one, can't figure out how to get a Gold token. How much does it cost? Got any ideas?" She asked in return
"Yeah, it's 10 gold... I can tell you where you can get the easiest Gold token near Sterling. After I logged out today I was planning on uploading Volume 2 of my guide which includes all the locations..." Marcus replied.
"10 gold!?!? Ugh guess I'll have to start requesting more donations... Anyways, that's great! How can I get it?" Dew asked once more. Marcus began explaining the quest chain she needed to do in order to get the golden guild creation token.
After he had finished explaining the quest he continued "So... who's this?" Marcus asked pointing towards the hooded lady. DewDrop smiled and jumped up "She's the answer to your problems! She wants to join your guild! Unfortunately, Royal Rose ran out of space so until we can promote to Gold tier, we can't accept anyone. To make matters worse, she's actually a friend IRL so I figured since you were making a guild, she could join you and we could ally ourselves! What ya think?"
Marcus nodded looking at the hooded woman deep in thought before he began asking questions and she replied in turn. She was another Wizard, she had received holy attribute spells and didn't have any offensive abilities and that caused her to have trouble leveling as most people didn't need healers at the lower levels, I mean they had cleared an insanity level dungeon with only a heal over time... But at the higher levels, they were mandatory! She had leveled up and just barely hit level 20. She was quite lower than the rest of the guild but that could easily be fixed.
DewDrop had excused herself as she needed to round up some of the members of the Royal Rose guild in order to get working on upgrading their guild to the Gold tier.
"Well I don't think we'll have any problems with you joining us, just know that we are all a little quirky in our own ways but we're a good bunch. If Dew is recommending you, I don't think there will be any problems, so what's your name?" Marcus asked once last time.
"Raia." She replied taking her hood off as her long fiery red hair fell down the back of the chair reaching the seat. Marcus took a gulp as if he had seen an angel, her dark olive skin complimenting her long red hair and was a stark contrast to her deep emerald green eyes. She smiled sweetly that immediately caused heart palpitations within Marcus. "Pleasure to meet you!"
Marcus had a difficult time regaining his composure before reaching out and taking her hand "Nobody, the pleasure is all mine." he said as smoothly as he could. "Let's get everyone together and go make our guild!" He smiled and sent her a party invitation.
[Raia joined the party: Level 20 Adventurer]