290 Chapter 236: Relaxing before getting things in Motion

[Congratulations on being the first explorers to find out about 'Territorial Guardians'. For being the first group to discover territorial guardians a certain amount of system points will be given to everyone involved.]

Everyone read the small message with a bit of wonder and understanding that they had breached new grounds when it came to the system. These types of things rarely happened considering the fact that the system tended to explain things ahead of time for explorers thus making true large discoveries such as this a rare occurrence. It made everyone in the group even more intrigued by what exactly territorial guardians could be. That's when the system went on to explain the idea for them.

[A territorial guardian is a defender of territories that have been taken control of by humanity. These territorial guardians are powerful entities that can be replicated with the right materials to defend the town or city. Depending on the level of the town or city, the strength of the guardian will also change. There can only be one territorial guardian per a territory. The territorial guardian that you have discovered the blue prints for is called seven faced beast. A powerful beast that is very aggressive. More territorial guardians can be found from blue prints, but they are quite rare.]

Joshua thought back on the final boss they had faced in the dungeon and realized that the territorial guardian would most likely be based off of that creature. Having something like that defending the town would be a large boost to any sort of base especially if it grew stronger with the town or city. "Well it looks like we'll have a new means to defend our territories. It'll make taking the large town even more fulfilling since it will be easier to protect." Joshua said with everyone agreeing.

"The materials for the town guardian all seem to come from the final boss of the dungeon's core, but the amount is more than we probably currently have based off of the size of the final boss's core. We might have to clear the place a couple more times before we can create this territorial guardian." Isabella said with a small frown as she examined the blue print.

"I suggest we all take a break for a couple of days." Laura said with a thoughtful look. "We'll be having our meeting to discuss the large town subjugation at the end of the week so we can plan things out a bit and decide how we're going to handle the expedition"

"In the meantime Naomi and I are going to be busy examining these blue prints and putting together the best gear we can from it. Hopefully sometime next week we'll have it all finished. That way you can all get your gear before you head out on the expedition." Nathan explained with an excited look that he shared with his sister. They could all tell that the pair truly wished to head back to their shop and get started.

"Well then I guess you can all go ahead and take the next few days off. Don't get in to any trouble over the break though." Joshua said with a small smile as most of the group started to disperse. The only people that remained were Joshua, Laura, Madalyn, Isabella, and Henry since they wanted to discuss something else before they went their separate ways. Amy had already ran off with Naomi and Nathan so Joshua was certain she'd probably spend most of the rest of the day with the twins.

"So what did you want us all to stay behind for?" Madalyn asked as she turned to look at Joshua. He had sent a message to all of them to stay back for a bit since they were either the leaders of the guilds in the alliance or the more information inclined members of the group.

"I wanted to ask you guys about the two new guilds I saw on the way here. I figured you'd be the best people to ask about it since you've probably interacted with them on some level." Joshua asked as he thought back on the Hunter's Guild and the Mercenary Guild. "They seemed to pop up recently and I wanted to know if they'd have an effect on our upcoming expedition or our eventual town defense."

Isabella seemed to be the one that had the best idea of what Joshua wanted to know so she was the first one to respond. "When it comes to the Hunter's Guild they won't be much of a problem for us at all. In fact they're only a big help." She said while fixing her glasses.

"Yeah from what I can tell of the Hunter's Guild they're a pretty big help to just about all guilds as long as the guild isn't underhanded. In the past the big guilds would sell off meat and other supplies gained from beast to the restaurants and markets in bulk, but some guilds would get turned down by the market because of…well let's just say shady reasons. I'm sure the world government guild has been in the pockets of some of the more prominent restaurants and markets." Henry explained while frowning.

"Exactly. Because of this behavior a lot of guilds have been forced to sell their materials at a lower rate to the system. Considering the fact that system points aren't too hard to come by for explorers it isn't all that big of a deal when it comes to the bigger guilds, but the smaller ones can collapse if they don't have the means to sell their materials in the markets." Laura said while sighing. "The Hunter's Guild basically came into being just to fix this specific problem and has quickly grown into one of the bigger guilds since it has the support of most of the other guilds."

"They stay out of our way and focus on hunting specific beast for the markets and restaurants. Of course the world government guild doesn't hunt a large variety of beast in comparison to the Hunter's Guild so it's impossible for them to try to cut off the link between the Hunter's Guild and the markets or restaurants. "Madalyn explained with a smirk. "It helps out other guilds since they can just sell their materials over to the Hunter's Guild who sells them to the market. It makes things run smoother and saves a lot of time and effort from all of the other guilds."

"Sounds like a good way to create a link between the explorers and the regular citizens that stay in the hub city. I have to admit the bacon I had this morning was amazing so I'll have to praise their efforts." Joshua said with a smile. "What about the Mercenary Guild?"

"That one's more of a mixed bag I'm afraid." Isabella responded. "The Mercenary Guild is rather neutral which can be a problem in its own. They take just about any contract that doesn't involve causing trouble in the hub city as long as the pay is large enough. This means guilds can bring in a few mercenaries to help out with a dungeon run, or someone could hire a group of mercenaries to try to hunt another group down in the wild."

"What makes matters worse is the fact that they often use the loop hole of how their guild is run to get involved in territory match ups. They don't make it a rule for their guild that you have to be signed up to the mercenary guild to be considered a member. This allows them to take jobs that involve territory wars since they could join the ranks of that guild for the time being without any issues." Henry explained. It was clear to Joshua that this new group could cause a lot of problems in the future considering how quickly they were growing.

"I'm guessing they don't care who they work for either right?" Joshua asked.

"That's the problem. They take as many jobs for the world government guild as they do for any other guild. It just spreads the conflict even more which is exactly what we don't need at the moment." Madalyn said leaving some tension in the air, but with her next words it disappeared. "Though in the end it doesn't matter at this point. They're members are to dysfunctional to truly cause any trouble for us. Most mercenaries tend to like taking jobs alone or in small groups so against guilds of our size they're nothing more than ants."

"Well I guess that's good to know for now. I just wanted a little bit more information on them before I went out to relax." Joshua said with a small smile before he started heading to the door himself. "Make sure to take a good break I know you all tend to get caught up in your own things a lot of the time. Especially you Madalyn."

They all nodded with Madalyn smirking a bit at the fact she could try out some of the new materials they had gotten from the dungeon in her experiments. Joshua just shook his head at the clearly plotting look he could see from Madalyn before leaving the place and heading out to explore the hub city for a while. He spent the day visiting different parts of the city such as the market area or the skill auction to see if there was anything interesting that he'd want to purchase. He also went to check up on his guild building just to make sure everything was in order. He loved the area it was in since it was a good distance away from all of the hustle and bustle of the center of the hub city.

The guild building looked pretty much set and ready for activity at this point, but Joshua was still planning to wait until after the large guild subjugation and the start of his territory becoming targetable. If he brought in a bunch of new members and they all got to many merits for the guild by the time the territory was open for invasion, then mid-size guilds would end up taking a look at the area early on and that wasn't something Joshua wanted to deal with right out of the gates. He figured it would be better to take on small guilds with all of the protective measures that were already in place for the first time around.

After a while Joshua found a nice little restaurant to pick up some food for lunch. He made sure to get two meals so that he could take one to his mother at the hospital since he knew she tended to skip out on lunch while working if she wasn't reminded. His visit to the hospital proved to him that it was a great idea for them to set the place up so early on. The amount of patients that were coming in and out of the hospital at this point was far more than he was expecting. He could already tell that most of the patients were there because of powerful poisons that lower level healers just couldn't handle well enough.

He brought his mother her meal, but she seemed a bit too busy for them to have to long of a conversation. So they only shared a few words before separating as she went back to running things and Joshua went off to finish exploring the hub city. It didn't take long for night time to start to approach. Joshua decided to head home to meet up with his family as he planned to get an early rest for the night, before getting back into the routine of training his body. He had a lot of levels to stabilize and he also wanted to figure out what that weird ability he had gained from his aura was.