Chapter 329: Getting some new Friends

As the Territory war was about to start Joshua and the rest of the group made their way to the wall to see how things would progress. They didn't want to be within sight of the invading force so they would all go to one of the small towers along the wall that held up the turrets. From there they could see everything that would happen with the upcoming confrontation and would be able to control things without a problem. They all reached the tower with a few minutes to spare and Henry sent the recon drones out to see if they could get a bird's eye look at the invading guild.

What they saw surprised all of them. The invading group was moving forward in a simple formation that involved having the tanks out front blocking for everyone else. They were basically turtling up and hoping to move all the way up to the wall without losing any members. "They probably went with this tactic to avoid being gunned down by the turrets on the way up to the entrance. Even so it's rather simple for an experienced raiding group so these guys are definitely new to territory wars." Henry said with a frown.

"Well let's not take them down right away then. Let's test out the town defenses against them first." Joshua said getting a nod from Henry as everyone watched to see what would happen. When the invading guild marched close enough to get within turret range the two closest turrets turned on the group and started firing away normal bullets. These bullets were strong enough to injure some of the armored insects from the nearby forest while also being powerful enough to scare off any flying creatures that passed by low enough in the area. They weren't designed to kill per say, but to injure and slow down enemies.

Joshua watched as the rain of bullets bounced off the groups shield wall at first. There were small cracks that were forming in the shield walls from what they could see through the recon drones that were observing from above, but the tanks were easily able to replenish the shields before they were going to break with their mana. "Looks like the normal bullets can't crack through their shield walls. That means more than likely higher level tanks will be able to push right through them without too much of a drain on their mana or aura pulls." Isabella said while taking notes on everything that was happening.

"Well they may not be breaking the shield walls, but they are drastically slowing down the movement of the tanks. That would give us plenty of time to set up other defenses or come up with better strategies during an actual difficult raid." Laura said with a small smile. Everyone was pleased with how well the turrets were working since they were installed at all of their bases at this point. The fact that the enemies movement speed had been slowed down to a snail's pace was just a bonus. Even a more experienced group would be slowed down quite a bit by the impact of the bullets.

"Well let's test out the upgraded explosive rounds and see how they work out." Joshua said getting a nod of acknowledgement from Joshua as he commanded the turrets to stop firing. He then had them switch over to explosive rounds and start firing again in shorter burst. They had plenty of ammo, but since they were just testing things out they didn't want to burn through a lot of it for no real reason.

When the explosive rounds started the results of the power became obvious for the entire group to see. The first few bullets caused major cracks all along the shield walls that would take a lot of time to fix with just mana, but the following rounds caused the barriers to shatter quickly. In such a situation the invaders started panicking since there was a brief period of time where they couldn't put back up their shield walls and the result was their forces getting bombarded with explosions.

Henry immediately cut of the firing since there were other things they wanted to test out and they didn't want to kill off all of the invaders right away. When the dust cleared from the explosion a little over thirty of the members of the invading force had been destroyed before they got their shield walls up again. With that alone it was clear that the explosive rounds would give them a huge advantage in any other territory wars. Although other guilds had gained some form of turrets at this point those turrets didn't have the upgrade to their range or explosive ammo shells that their alliance had.

"I would have liked to test out the piercing rounds, but I don't think that their guild would survive a round of that. They're probably already getting low on mana at this point." Henry explained.

"Well we don't want to show all of our cards at this point. I'm sure there are some other guilds around watching in on this territory war so let's not give away are trump cards."

"Well then how do you want to finish off things then?" Henry asked as they all watched the invading guild start to cautiously march forward again. It was clear that they were weary after what had just happened, but they at least didn't panic and break apart right away. It showed that they weren't cowards.

"Let's send in the robot force from the front and the dogs from behind. Have the dogs run around through the forest to take them by surprise. We'll save all of our other animal fighters to surprise the other groups in the future." Joshua explained. "Oh and make sure the robots only stick to the simple gun wielding ones and the basic close range fighters. We don't want to show off our higher geared robots for the moment."

As they leveled the town up the types of robots that they had access to changed. He was certain that other guilds probably had similar things, but some of the blue prints they had gained in the past had allowed them to build different types of robots. In fact one of the blue prints they had gained from building the large town had the design for a new robot that was specifically meant for tanking. It was heavily armored in a similar vein as people with the knight job. Another specialty robot they had gained was a camouflage robot that they called assassin classed robots. They were light weight so that they could move faster than others which also made them easier to destroy if struck. Their stealth skills made up for it however which was a huge advantage for the alliance.

When the robots started rushing down from the wall the dogs were released from the other side of the wall out of sight. They rushed towards the forest and snuck around the area so that they could rush in and attack the invading group from behind. When the invaders saw the robots heading their way the tanks tried to take the front line to defend the back rows while the spell casters started firing off all sorts of different attacks to damage the robots before they reached the group. The gun wielding robots stopped on the spot and stood just out of the range of the spells and started to focus fire tank by tank.

Before the close range robots even got to the frontline three of the tanks had been taken out by the heavy amount of bullets that tore their armor apart just from the sheer number of them. The close combat robots however where able to dodge the stronger spells while knocking aside the weaker ones. When they clashed with the tanks finally it was clear which side had the upper hand as the tanks were being knocked back and overpowered. Before the chaotic fighting could stabilize the pack of dogs came in from behind and tore through all of the spell casters and healers bringing an end to the resistance. Five minutes later the territory war had ended.

"Well that was rather anticlimactic." Amy said with a frown. It was clear that she was hoping that the invading guild would have at least forced some of them to come out and fight. Since they didn't even make it half way to the wall guarding the town there was no way that the territory war would have gotten to the point where any of them would have to get involved.

"You've got to remember that they are a regular small guild unlike our own. There was no way that they were going to put up much of a challenge." Joshua said while patting his sister on the shoulder. "We were able to test out a few things without giving to much information of our own capabilities away. That's more than we could have hoped to gain from our first territory war."

"Yep. It's good to know that even in their basic combat mode the robots are able to react and fight as intended. It'll be interesting to program formations and strategies for them in the upcoming fights. Though I'm guessing the next time we do one of these it'll be against a mid-sized guild at least." Henry said with a smile.

"Does that mean you guys are going to start recruiting new member's boss?" Jayce asked with his usual form of address. At this point Joshua just ignored the term and just responded normally.

"Yeah. I'll start recruitment next week. We'll have four weeks before the next territory war can be started so that'll give us time to recruit some decent members. Plus as our guild starts to expand we will be forced towards being a mid-sized guild. Hell if we clear one more dungeon that will happen anyways so we might as well start recruiting people." Joshua said as he watched Henry send off one of the recon drones. The drone flew over towards the forest in the direction of where the invading guild had initially come from. The group grew quiet as they watched the drone fly over to that area and start searching through the forest.

It didn't take long for the drone to find where the Heaven's Star guild had been sent to since it was just outside of the territory. They were in a decent sized clearing discussing something while joking with each other. It was clear to Joshua and the others that were watching that the Heaven's Star Guild members were being good sports about their loss. In fact they looked happy and excited instead of depressed.

"You're not thinking of recruiting them to the guild are you?" Adrian asked a little confused to why Joshua still seemed interested in them.

"I hope not. Having people running around representing us with names like Morning Star, Endless Night, and…Wood of the Early Sun would make it fairly hard to recruit other people." Henry said with a frown.

"That last one just has to be a lewd joke." Adrian said shaking his head. At first everyone thought he was being upright about it, but what he mumbled next just got them all to shake their heads. "I wish I came up with it. It's even a play-off of their guild leader's name."

"No I don't plan to recruit them in to our guild. They have a guild of their own after all and their level is a bit too low to get involved with the things we have to deal with. However making friends with them couldn't hurt." Joshua said with a shrug as he made his way down the wall with the rest of the group following after him. He left the town and headed in the direction where the drones had found Morning Star and the rest of his guild. When they reached the clearing they were met with a sight of several people turning to look at their approach. By the excited looks on most of their faces Joshua was certain that it was going to be an interesting conversation.