James decided to sleep and unwind for the 10 hour flight home, he had spend the last 2 days in-game doing a lot of stuff, and he would be challenging his Tier promotion quest next. At his level that quest could take well over 5 days, and he only had 1 shot to get the best possible rewards. Needless to say, he had to be rested for the next day.
While James was taking his well deserved rest, the rest of the team was franticly studying, except Iron of course, who was still crafting equipment. Everyone was more motivated than ever thanks to the fact that most of the big guilds where catching up to them, the game had been live for around 4 days by now, and most of the expert players of those guilds had made it too level 15 already, it would probably only take them another 3 or so days to catch up to them in level, and from what they had read in their information packets it would take them 3 days at the very minimum to complete their quest if they wanted the grade that James told them to get.
Getting back into the office late at night after a good rest, James proceeded to check up on all of his teams, most of the members where sound asleep, getting a final rest before they would take on their Tier promotion quests, a few of them where doing some final reading and where also prepared to head to bed. James on the other hand, now fully rested and ready logged into the game.
Login in James found himself in the lost ruins of the Thunder Empire, completely alone, everything that had shown a little bit of mana before had all crumbled, seemingly gone with the last of its people. James didn't pay too much mind to this and made his way out, he had no other business in this place and he didn't remember anything but this quest to be here.
His journey back was as painful and long as the one to the Empire, by the time he came back to the city most of his teammates had logged back on and where making their final preparations for their Tier up quest. James was doing the same, buying potions and other basic necessities, but he also needed to make one last stop by the shop and Irons workshop.
Firs going by the shop James requested the report from the NPC clerk he had hired, pretty much any piece of equipment that Iron had brought in had sold, even the higher grade ones that James had set as exclusive for their allies, it seemed that the dragon-phoenix pavilion had hurried to clean out the shop. In total the shop made over 2000 gold, an astonishing amount, most super guilds would probably have this as their whole capital at the moment, and they had thousands to millions of gold farmers, but James kind of expected this, currently everyone in the city wanted pieces of equipment from his store, he had the best of the best, and since he tasked to NPC to increase and decrease the price of equipment based on supply and demand, no wonder he had so much money. After looking at the report some more he also discovered that more than a 1000 gold had already been taken out by Iron, probably to get more materials, that would probably last him at least a month, if we don't include epic or legendary materials, so James found it reasonable.
Now done with his monetary business James walked over to the blacksmithing workshop Iron had rented, when he walked in he couldn't be more surprised, Iron seemed like a dead man walking, he was moving like a robot and looked like a zombie, James didn't need long to figure out what happened, Iron had not slept or logged out since he last saw him.
"You're not looking too good Iron, you can take a break you know."
Iron turned around and tried to focus on James with his sleepy eyes.
"yea, I know, I was going to take a break after this, here you go by the way."
Iron then tossed a 8 piece level 20 set equipment at James [armor of fortitude], when James inspected it he couldn't be more surprised, normally this should have been a Fine-Gold grade armor set, this was already one of the best equipment sets one could get right now, it being even slightly more powerful then wearing 8 pieces of Dark-Gold grade armor, but the armor James was just given was at the Dark-Gold grade, making it as good as 8 pieces of individual Epic-Grade armor.
"You got lucky hu Iron."
Iron just sighed.
"You can say that again, in all 12 sets I made for the guild I only managed to get the upgrade effect on 12 pieces, and luckily I got close to no duplicates."
[armor of fortitude] (Helmet, 1/8, Dark-Gold Rank)
Equipment Level: Level 20
Equipment Requirement: Strength 120, Agility 140
Defense +140
Strength +20, Agility +20, Endurance +20
Restricted to plate armor classes.
[armor of fortitude] (Shoulder guards, 2/8, Dark-Gold Rank)
Equipment Level: Level 20
Equipment Requirement: Strength 120, Agility 140
Defense +100
Strength +20, Agility +20, Endurance +20
Restricted to plate armor classes.
[armor of fortitude] (Arm guards, 3/8, Dark-Gold Rank)
Equipment Level: Level 20
Equipment Requirement: Strength 120, Agility 140
Defense +80
Strength +20, Agility +20, Endurance +20
Restricted to plate armor classes.
[armor of fortitude] (Counter, 4/8, Dark-Gold Rank)
Equipment Level: Level 20
Equipment Requirement: Strength 120, Agility 140
Defense +70
Strength +20, Agility +20, Endurance +20
Restricted to plate armor classes.
[armor of fortitude] (Breast plate, 5/8, Dark-Gold Rank)
Equipment Level: Level 20
Equipment Requirement: Strength 120, Agility 140
Defense +250
Strength +20, Agility +20, Endurance +20
Restricted to plate armor classes.
[armor of fortitude] (Pants, 6/8, Dark-Gold Rank)
Equipment Level: Level 20
Equipment Requirement: Strength 120, Agility 140
Defense +160
Strength +20, Agility +20, Endurance +20
Restricted to plate armor classes.
[armor of fortitude] (Greaves, 7/8, Dark-Gold Rank)
Equipment Level: Level 20
Equipment Requirement: Strength 120, Agility 140
Defense +20
Strength +20, Agility +20, Endurance +20
Restricted to plate armor classes.
[armor of fortitude] (Boots, 8/8, Dark-Gold Rank)
Equipment Level: Level 20
Equipment Requirement: Strength 120, Agility 140
Defense +30
Strength +20, Agility +20, Endurance +20
Restricted to plate armor classes.
Set equipment effects
[2/8]
Strength +75, Agility +50
[4/8]
Additional Passive Skill- Strength Through pain
For every 10% HP you are missing your Strength will increase by 5%, up to 25%.
[6/8]
Additional Active Skill- Fortify
For 1 second, multiplies your Defense value by 10.
Cooldown Time: 30 minutes.
[8/8]
Additional Passive skill- Together we are one
All armor pieces together makes it possible for you to exert a totally new level of strength. Increases your Strength by 20%.
-----------
James felt amazing with his new armor, it boosted his damage by a whole other level thanks to the skills mainly giving percentage-based increases. His normal 1 handed sword attack could already do close to 30.000 damage, without any skill of mystical flame activated, and thanks to his incredible physique, even players or monsters that had 1.5 times his stats probably couldn't touch him.
All of this wasn't the main reason James was so happy with this armor though, the biggest thing was that he had finally gained another life saving skill, he had parry, which was pretty nice, but it had its limitations of only being able to block a certain number of attacks. His new skill Fortify could give him way more value in that 1 second time frame, now he felt ready for his Tier 1 quest.
But before he set off, he needed some preparations, first of all he needed to instruct Iron to stay and not try to complete his Tier promotion quest for now, someone had to be active during the auction that would take place in about 3 days, and all of the other members sure as hell wouldn't be. There where 2 items James couldn't mis out on in the special auction that was held at the end of the first week of the game, the first was a unidentified stone. In his past life it sold for 300 gold, way below what its actual price was thanks to the fact that no one had an identification skill of the knowledge to know what this item was, if he managed to get his hands on it the guilds financial growth would increase extremely. The second item was even more important, it was the Epic sword, [Broken Steel]. This sword was another part of [Solomon's Sword] that James was desperately trying to get, this one would be way more costly to get. Every capital city was holding his own auction, and only 1 or 2 Epic graded items would appear in each of them, so naturally all the big guilds tried to monopolize them and did so successfully in his past life, that made the price of this 1 sword up to 1200 gold, close to all the money a super-first-rate guild would have on hand by the time the auctions started, and also a big part of the one guilds capital, but he didn't have a choice, if James missed out on this opportunity it would be close to impossible to get his hands on it.
He also needed to inform Iron about the big changes that where going to happen in Gods Domain after the auction took place, the announcement of the currency exchange would be made a few hours before the auction took place. This would make the whole world go crazy, most of the corporations that put their recourses in gods domain up until now where ones that had a history in investing in VR-games, even with the insane realness of the game and the fact that time was slowed down, only about 1 billion players had entered the game, of the possible 20 billion people that where eligible, this made most big titans of industry such as energy or health care companies wait it out to see if it wasn't just a fad, but after the announcement that any currency in the world would be exchangeable with gold, in combination with the fact that if you didn't do anything too intensive in game it could replace sleep for some part. Most normal people joined the game to look for a way to earn some more money or be able to actually be productive during the night without forgoing sleep. All of these factors combined made it so that 95% of the population logged into Gods domain at least 1 time a day, at that moment close to all corporations in the world started scrambling to invest or create guilds.
"Listen Iron, I need you to go to the auction that will be held in 3 days, the items you need to get are on a list I sent you. It doesn't matter how high the price goes, get them. In the meantime, try to make as much gold as possible, normally we shouldn't lose the auctions but just to be sure. I also want you to hold down in our real life office and deal with any unexpected visitors, there will be a lot of corporations coming by willing to invest, just sent them away, me and the other team members need our full concentration on our quest."
Iron just nodded with a little hesitation on his phase, he had grown confidence in martial arts and gaming over the last 2 years, but dealing with big corporations wasn't something in his ballpark.
"You sure it's okay if I manage that."
"Listen Iron, I don't think you realize how much of a force you are; you are one of 3 martial arts grandmasters in the world, including me, and the other one is on death's door to be honest. No one could ever threaten you, so chill."
James then left the foraging room to search for a private part in the wilderness to activate his watch given by Cronus, he sure as hell wasn't going to risk creating some sort of super phenomenon in the city, attracting all kinds of powerful NPC's.