Chapter 344: Preparations

Despite feeling suspicious about Shane's offer, the city lord decided to request his help. 

The only arduous task was to completely demolish and build a new city wall. 

The old one had lost all its strength to be repaired, and it was better to avoid doing a shabby job to save on time or resources.

Shane had told Deux's city lord that paying for the resources would be the lowest he could do. The city was not large, given a population of less than 40,000, and constructing the entire wall would only take around a day.

There was not even the need for every craftsman of the Astral Artisans to work, because most of them had certain skills, allowing them to visualize the learned blueprints in their mind.

Additionally, it was possible to summon objects at an accurate position from one's spatial ring. As such, by focusing, one could build a wall without any flaws by accessing the spatial ring.

This took lots of effort, but Shane found it important to work efficiently which was the reason for him to make this ability a must-have during the nurturement of new craftsmen.

The city lord of the Karn, Myn, and Har kingdom didn't have the same currency as the system, and Shane knew this.

With that in mind, they had to reach a common consensus, otherwise, it would be difficult to figure out the correct conversion rate of gold coins to the Karn kingdom's currency.

Shane knew that he didn't really need their currency and explained that other means to repay were fine too. 

He could somehow feel that this was the best decision he could take. Despite being a small kingdom with less than 2 million citizens, Shane knew that one couldn't take anything in the dungeon's third floor lightly.

Because of that, he made a simple offer.

"I will give every guard a mana-sphere crossbow and enough bolts to take care of an entire army. At the same time, my people will rebuild the wall too. In the end, I will allow Sir to repay me whatever way he deems fit. Does that sound fair to you, Sir?"

The city lord didn't expect such a generous offer that involved trust! If he wanted to, handing Shane a grain of sand might as well be the payment for rescuing their entire race.

This might sever every relationship with them, but the city lord knew that this was not where their priorities lay.

Both sides knew that their relationship was temporary, thus it didn't make any sense for Shane to trust the Karn kingdom, let alone Deux's city lord.

'What is his plan??' It didn't make sense, but there was not a trace of anger, trickery, or anything like that in Shane's eyes, words, or demeanor.

Thus, the city lord simply nodded his head, not sure how else to answer as Shane added,

"However, please bear in mind that I'm from a different race. It would be great if there were different rewards from which I could choose one. 

But that is not a necessity!"

The city lord took a moment to process his words and did not respond immediately. He seemed to be deep in thoughts before his dark-purple eyes widened as he quickly said,

"When can your people arrive here? I received a transmitted message that the Ara kingdom is mobilizing its army. It might take a few days, but we don't have much time! The worst-case scenario is occurring!" 

Shane only smiled, unfazed by the news, "They can be here anytime, and I only want to wait to receive Sir's permission. It would be bad if my people were to be suddenly attacked because of a misunderstanding!"

Despite being astonished, the city lord went back to mulling over Shane's words again, where he was most likely relaying transmitted thoughts to others that were further away.

"Deux's guards now know about the craftsmen of another race coming over!" 

Shane thought that everything went way too smoothly. However, after giving it a second thought, he realised that they were merely on the dungeon's third floor! 

It shouldn't have been an overly difficult mission from the beginning. There were only a few points of the mission that were created to be more difficult than the rest.

As long as one took the right path, it wasn't necessarily a difficult task.

In the end, Shane's standard of a difficult task was different from others.

While others were unable to utilize the Primordial shop, let alone have an entire Artisan group consisting of more than 2500 members that resided inside their personal soul bound world, Shane had all of that.

There was not even a need to talk about the difference in combat prowess.

Shane had the Starlight guild which he could employ if it was necessary.

However, he didn't want to distract them from the missions they were currently doing.

It was easier for the Astral artisans to stop working on their current products, but that may not be the case with certain system missions.

Some system missions had a time limit, while others forced someone to travel around for days, if not months.

As such, contrary to his Astral artisans that were always inside the Hidden Paradise, or the nurturing ground on Neptua Ladra, the members of the Starlight guild were rarely seen in the guildhouse, Shane had ordered his craftsman to build.

Thus, he wanted to rely on his own combat prowess, while using the great additional reinforcements his Astral Artisans could deliver.

Every mana-sphere crossbow could kill one to half a dozen foes of the opposing army, and the number of mana-sphere crossbows they had stored was almost ten thousand!

Other than that, Shane thought that using ballistae, boiling oil and other defensive measures might be the best way to go against the demon blood addict Ara army.

While thinking about their addiction, he realised that it was even more important to prevent even a single demon beast, let alone a demon to be killed!

While Shane was deep in thoughts about the defensive measurements, he had already explained to Talia and his Artisans what exactly was going on.

Thus, they had either finished building their product or simply left the unfinished product to prepare for the construction of a shelter.

Meanwhile, Shane had already handed out every single crossbow before he told the city lord that the fittest citizens should use the crossbows too!

Out of a total of 40,000 citizens, only one thousand were soldiers, which was already a lot. However, considering that Deux was the first city that shared its borders with two other races, this was understandable.

Nevertheless, defeating an army that possibly had 200,000 addicted Aras that were more or less trained was not possible with only 1000 soldiers.

Shane had already perceived the average combat prowess of the soldiers after all!

There was not much to be glad about, and Shane's earlier thought that the mission might be easier than he believed had already dispersed.

Despite the advantages Shane and Ilya had, there were too many problems a simple third-floor task should have.

'Maybe the dungeon never planned to let the Deux city survive the upcoming warfare?'

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