The following week was as hectic as Finn had expected it to be.
A lot of players wanted to join the guild, but every guild had a player limit.
This player limit depended on the guild headquarters. For example, other guilds that had a wooden shack had a maximum of 100 players.
But the mansion Finn and Sophie owned had a player limit of 3000, which was undoubtedly a lot more, but it was still not enough.
Finn expected a lot of people wanting to join, but the amount of people that messaged him to join was way above his estimated amount.
The same day that his post went viral, he received around 300 thousand messages. There were some trolls, but the amount was still staggering, so after debating with Sophie what they should do, they decided to change their plan accordingly.
By changing the join fee to five gold coins, a lot of players gave up on joining because they simply didn't have enough.
Finn and Sophie then cherry-picked the best players from the remaining amount. But first they hired five hundred non-combat players.
Most of them would work in administration, making sure the guild was running smoothly, but there were also chefs, blacksmiths, armorers, and other important roles that had to be filled so that the guild would work without any problems.
By first hiring the people that worked as administrators, Sophie gave them their first job of checking the backgrounds of all the people that wanted to join and giving her a list of who they recommended as the best pick.
This way, the guild soon filled up and the guild member limit reached its maximum amount.
The people that didn't get in were disappointed, but when Finn told them that they planned on upgrading the mansion, which would enable them to hire more people, they became stoked to try again once that happened.
When the hiring was finished, Finn had around 15000 gold coins, which he took and went to visit Blue Whale, where he bought multiple buildings in the city.
Some were smaller and some larger, but none were as prestigious as his mansion.
The next part of his plan was to post on the Second Life website again, writing about how he had a lot of buildings that he was willing to rent out to people that wanted to create a guild or move their guild headquarters into a better building.
His post immediately exploded and became the number one on the trending page again.
Finn was slowly starting to think that the SL website had become his personal blog, where whatever he posted would be instantly catapulted to the top.
The guild masters who were badmouthing Finn out of jealousy over his new guild changed their opinions of him and began bootlicking him. Even the previous top guilds, like the White Tigers, all dropped their pride and wrote a message to Finn.
Finn wasn't dumb, so he used this opportunity to use a feature on the Second Life website, and it was the auction feature that could make him the most money possible.
This would normally be used to auction an item that the player found, and he could auction it for real money to get rich in real life.
Players could also sell their in-game money for real-life cash, but because the players weren't that rich yet, the exchange rate was disadvantageous for the people who wanted to buy gold coins for real-life money.
One gold coin was currently going for a thousand dollars, which Finn found funny because in his previous life before the game shut down, it went for a single dollar.
Finn could abuse this and sell all his gold coins for profit, but his family was happy with what they had.
Besides, he already had a rich girlfriend, so he would rather invest his coins to get more coins.
And when Finn auctioned the buildings, he didn't sell them because that would be stupid to do.
Instead, he offered a starting rent of a gold coin per day, which was more than doable for a guild, and the guilds that joined the auction slowly raised this price in hopes of getting the building.
Some of the large buildings that had prebuilt facilities went for as much as 20 gold coins per day.
The guilds that paid this much money were the strongest ones at the time, excluding Finn's guild, of course.
What they hoped for was that if they bought a huge building, they would see a lot more people join and, in turn, get the money for the rent.
After the auction, Finn calculated the amount and found out that his guild would be getting 500 gold coins per day, and just like that, Forsaken Rebels became not only the biggest guild but a guild that pretty much owned every other powerful guild as well.
That is to say, most of the guilds that were currently renting Finn's buildings would either buy them from him in the future or buy a different building and move there.
But Finn didn't really care because he had other plans that would give him passive income, so he was more than satisfied with the money.
Of course, if he were to grab all the coins for himself, then his guild would soon fall behind and become trash, so he split it up accordingly.
Every day his guild would get 250 gold coins for wages, upgrades, new gear, repairs, food, and other things. The remaining 250 gold coins would be split between him and Sophie.
Both of them were the founders of the guild, and Finn wouldn't be a selfish dick to scam money from his own girlfriend, so they agreed to split the earnings.
---
"Sophie, I have a confession to make."
Finn was currently standing in the main office of the mansion, and in front of him was a huge wooden desk where Sophie was dealing with some holographic documents.
The guild information was in the system, so she regularly checked it via the holograms.
She was in the process of checking their supplies when Finn entered, so she closed the hologram and looked at him.
"Yes?"
Sophie was wearing thin circular glasses that gave her a charm that was different from what she usually looked like, and as soon as Finn saw her, he fell in love again while forgetting what he came there to do.
"I love you."
"…"
She looked at him expressionlessly, but Finn could see a faint blush on her face, and his lips couldn't help but curve up.
He spent a lot of time with her this week, and he could see how she was slowly opening herself up to him.
When Sophie saw Finn's smile, she thought he was teasing her again, so she ignored him and opened the hologram back up.
"If you have time for jokes, go help Leo, who is training your guildmates."
Sophie said with a flat tone and continued looking at the hologram, writing something down from time to time.
As Sophie had said, Leo had become something of an instructor, and he began teaching the guild members martial arts.
He was actually a lot more popular than Finn because all Finn was doing was either teasing Sophie or helping her deal with the guild's internal affairs, which didn't really give him much exposure to his guildmates.
"Oh! I remember why I came here now."
Suddenly exclaiming, Finn's face brightened up like he had remembered something, so Sophie turned the hologram off and looked at him.
"You remember how I bought a lot of buildings and then rented them out to the other guilds, right?"
Finn smiled at Sophie.
"Yes?"
She nodded.
"Well, the truth is, I didn't rent them all out. I kept one!"
"I see. Well, if we rent it out now, we might sell it for a little bit more because a lot of people are looking for a bui-"
"Stop!"
Sophie's brain instantly went into merchant mode, so Finn had to stop her.
"The reason I kept it was because it had a garden in the backyard, and I gave it to my parents so that they could create a restaurant there."
"…That is very nice of you, Finn, but I don't see the reason why you had the need to tell me this."
Sophie asked as she began tapping her index finger on the wooden desk.
"The reason is… My parents agreed to meet you tonight, and they will cook for us, so it will be a dinner date!"
"…"
Sophie's finger froze midair and she became speechless. Looking at Finn, her eyebrows rose up in surprise because this was the first time she had heard about this.
She did plan to meet Finn's parents someday, and she did plan to have a first date with him, but doing both in one day was a little scary for her.
"Do I have a say in this?"
After calming down a little, she looked at Finn again.
"Of course! If you don't like it, I will message my parents and tell them to cancel it."
He smiled at her, but the way he said it made her feel bad.
She didn't know if Finn's parents were kind or not. So, what if she canceled the meeting and they forbade him from ever meeting her again.
"…When, where, and how well should I dress?"
Deciding to just take the risk and accept, Sophie began asking the important questions so that she knew how she could prepare herself for their date.
"So, is that a yes? Sophie, I love you!"
Finn tried to jump on her, but his face was blocked by Sophie's palm.
"Answer the questions."
She pushed his face away and glared at him. Sophie was taking this meeting very seriously, but he was here goofing around.
"Just wear something casual, and I will pick you up here at around six. I have already rented a carriage so that we can ride there together."
Standing back up again, Finn grinned in happiness because he wasn't sure if Sophie would accept having a date with him.
"You rented a carriage without even knowing if I would agree? And don't tell me you used the guild funds again…"
Sophie's voice turned chilly as she remembered that Finn enjoyed buying gifts for her and then writing them up as guild expenditure.
"W- Well, I will see you at six."
Finn nervously looked to the side and started retreating towards the door.
"Finn! Come back here!"
Sophie stood up and shouted at him, but he was already running out the door.
"…Haaaaa…"
So with a sigh, she sat back down.
It was currently 4 p.m., so she still had two hours, and she wanted to finish the small amount of work she had for today.
After hiring the players that helped sort out the documents for a wage that if they turned into real cash on the website would bring them ten times more money than the wage they had in real life, Sophie's work became almost nonexistent.
She only had to check some documents here and there, but soon even that would be done by those players.
Checking the document, Sophie suddenly felt pressure in her chest.
'Is this nervousness? Am I nervous?'
Whenever Sophie would write an important exam or participate in a championship, she would never get nervous, but now that she was about to meet Finn's parents, she suddenly became nervous.
Quickly turning the hologram off, she began browsing her inventory.
She used the money she received from Finn's rent project to buy new clothes.
Sophie was still a girl, and she liked to dress well, so she enjoyed buying stylish clothes that accentuated her beauty.
Upon opening her inventory, a wide variety of dresses, casual wear, skirts, t-shirts, and even different types of armor appeared.
Finn did say that she should just wear casual wear, but if she was going to meet his parents for the first time, then she planned to go all out.
Meanwhile, Finn was also picking his outfit.
There were a lot of tailors in his guild, and they started to make clothes from Earth, so he was currently choosing between black sweatpants and gray ones.
'I hope Sophie wears something casual like I told her to. Otherwise, I will look like a clown…'
---
Soon it was six in the evening, and Finn went to pick Sophie up with the carriage already waiting in front of the mansion.
Most of the guildmates were outside doing quests or having dinner, so nobody noticed Finn there.
Finn wanted to go to the main office of the mansion, which was now called Sophie's office by everyone because she was the only person who used it, but he was forced to stop himself in the entrance hall when he saw Sophie walking down the stairs.
Her figure slowly descended while holding the stair railing, and Finn was looking at her with a face filled with shock.
"You said to wear something casual, and I did just that."
Sophie opened her mouth while locking her eyes with Finn's, and she might not have been smiling, but the corners of her mouth kept twitching, indicating that she was excited to finally tease Finn back.
Finn looked at what he was wearing and then at Sophie's perfectly handpicked clothes. Opening his mouth, his face still showed that he was in disbelief.
" How is that casual…?"