Chapter 89 - An expedition to the city (1/2)

When, he delved back into the game, it was still night and the area was dark. ”This would be perfect time to explore if I manage to get hold of some decent tools like night vision goggles,” thought Balthazar. Sadly, such equipment wouldn't be able to be procured anytime soon. One needs to go to stage where they at least cross tier 2.

There are other options like creating light stones (magical artifact creation) or torches, torch lights (engineering). Magical artifact creation was similar to engineering but involves extensive usage of runes and magical language which specifically created by game designers for vita-nova.

He contacted Rudra who was still creating dynamites in the advanced workshop. Rudra just asked him to get back to the workshop. In the past four hours, Rudra had been working on making more minor dynamites and wanted him to help him create more. He bought more ingredients some time ago when Balthazar was logged out of the game.

Shadow continued creating dynamites and scopes till it was time for dawn. Dawn at the game would be at 11 p.m in real-life. It was the time when most of the people in major cities at the prime meridians of all the terraformed planets would be done with the work and go to sleep. This would make it the ideal time for most to start playing game if they go to sleep.

They had decided to wait till 10 minutes till the dawn in the game before they had the players who joined them moving. They had to make these players complete the quest to get to the city. They had about 50 players who reached level 10 and other 150 who didn't, ready to finish the quest.

The 50 who managed to cross level 10 were mostly trade profession players, who moved to the Blackrock town and signed contracts with their guild. Rudra made sure that these players wouldn't jump to other guilds once they reach the city by specifying that they have to stay in the guild in the contract or their account experience would be erased.

Though his condition was a bit over the top, it was still considered liberal as they didn't put any constraints on their communication with players not in the guild and nothing about them releasing the information about how they complete the quest. Rudra and others didn't care as they knew that others would end up knowing of it, even if they included it in contracts.

The 150 were mostly old players who Rudra and his team were familiar with and were a part of their guild in the previous games. These were good players, but the close resemblance of vita-nova to reality and the characters movements being dependent on the players thoughts brought varied performance to the characters of even these veteran players. They were still reliable and can face mental pressure of the fights as they were veterans and with a bit of practice show good improvement, if they aren't traumatized by the life like feeling of killing monsters and people. They have a better chance of developing well in the game than new players who were pulled in by the allure of somnium technology.

Rudra had them start from the gate in groups of 20 each with at the very least one or two players he strongly trusted in each group. He had also called all the members of the team led by Merlin in exchange for a few dynamites. It was a simple job which provided the team about 50 dynamites. So, Quiet Fire and Merlin immediately accepted it.

As soon as they started from the gate, few players from specific guilds came and attack in an attempt to stop they from advancing. These guilds wanted to block them from moving forward in the game and ruin their reputation. Rudra's move to take trade profession players and increase his guild's prestige pissed off quite a number of guilds, but they wouldn't send their best players to block him. Those would be trying to themselves finish the quest and enter a city.

The more experience and clever ones like Blue Dart didn't send anyone to directly oppose them and in fact stopped anyone in their guild who wanted to do so. They just sent a few assassin players who could stay in hiding and trail them and find out how they managed to complete the quest.

They were already aware that Shadow had somehow managed to get to a high level in the game and players like Blue Dart also knew him to be an accomplished forger as he sold his creations to them. So, they thought that there was a high chance that his level increased further during the nighttime in the city where he would have access to better materials or designs. The same can be considered of the other players who reached the city too. So, it would be a waste of manpower, if they try to block them at this stage and it would be a loss for both according to the few who chose to send spies.

But when they were observing the groups of Crimson Realm members, they noticed that the first group of players who were sent to block them were bombed by the players themselves and none of the team members who reached the city intervened. This was a surprise attack and it allowed them to easily decimate those who come to block them.

The dynamites in their hands shocked many that were following these groups. Even without the ones who managed to complete the quest beforehand, these groups were able to hold their own. This caused a sense of apprehension in few other groups who were waiting to ambush.

It was an effective method to reduce the fights as using only the strong players to fight these players who blocked them would give them an impression that they might be able to succeed with larger numbers. This is harmful to the Crimson Realm guild. Moreover, the guilds who want to block them have no idea about the availability of these previously unseen consumables. They simply have no idea of how many of these dynamites are there with the Crimson Realm guild members.

The thought of these new consumables also made quite a few guilds to reallocate their members in to completing their own quest than blocking the Crimson Realm members. It was obvious that more members working on it gave higher chances of completing the quest and getting these consumables.

The new dynamites that were used by them also brought another wave of posts in the game forums. They were asking details related to how these consumables can be bought. Many were asking to sell these in their shop which they opened. Some were even demanding that they would face their wrath if these consumables weren't sold.