Chapter 187: The Second Recruitment Drive

"And so let me introduce you. This is IceMaiden, former leader of Ice Palace." Ryu stood next to a blue haired girl with horns on her head. Hanging off his arm was Chi, who was staring daggers at IceMaiden.

"Can you not make it sound like I am a defeated foe? And Chi was it? Can you relax a bit with the staring? I am not trying to take your little husband." IceMaiden 

"Humph! So you do know your place." Chi's attitude was not uncalled for. Earlier, when IceMaiden had appeared, she walked over and hugged Ryu and even gave a mocking smile to Chi, who went into a flying rage. If not for Margie holding Chi back, things would have become quite bloody in the main hall of the guild. No one even questioned how Margie was able to hold back Chi when she was supposed to be stronger than him. 

"Yes, yes, sorry, I teased you a little too much. But trust me when I say I have no intentions towards your man." IceMaiden only wanted to joke a little, but she never expected Chi to be a yandere. 

"Alright enough. Let's get back to what is at hand. Now that we are a clan, we have room for many more players. We will once again begin recruiting. But this time we will hold a tournament. The top one hundred will be allowed to join the guild." Ryu had decided to just make things simple this time. They already had a lot of crafters, and with how the game was pushing more towards the player versus player side of things, it would be best to have as many powerful fighters as they could get. "IceMaiden and Number Six will hold a prelim in the west, and Margie and Number Eight will hold a prelim here. I am thinking of cutting the numbers down to five hundred before having the main stage. We will do it as a month long event. Prelims will take up most of the time. If it is anything like our last recruitment drive, then there will be a mass of people. And now that we are adding in the west side of the continent, we can expect even more."

"How will we handle the venue?" GreenHat asked.

"I was thinking we could get Serenity Construction and those good with earth magic to build stages. We can set up a large temporary stadium in the Great Fordon Plains just outside Roland. Well, I guess it is Serenity City now… Anyway, this will give easy access to those of all levels to come and watch. I was even thinking we could even set up stalls outside and rent spaces out to other crafters to help bolster the clan funds. As for the west area…" Ryu looked over at IceMaiden. 

"I know a place we can set up at. Just leave the west to me and Number Six. I promise to fill our coffers..." IceMaiden licked her lips. Just the thought of making money excited her. 

Ryu chuckled and nodded his head. "Then I will leave it to you. Just let me know when everything is set up so we can start advertising the event. Now to other topics. FingerSandwhich what is the status of the city? Are we ready to begin renting space to outside companies?" 

"We have a few spots, and many companies are already vying for them. I also added on in the contract that we will be taking five percent of profits along with the monthly rental price. This made some of the smaller companies drop out, but the bigger companies are what we are aiming for anyway. 

"We should be seeing a profit of around one hundred thousand silver a month in a few months time. Once the city is complete and space becomes hard to get, we can up the prices. Unless you have plans to continue expanding the city beyond Roland?" FingerSandwich asked. He would prefer to keep expanding since they had the force and complete funding to handle it all. There was no lack of funds, and everything they took in would be profit.

Ryu tapped his finger on his chin and leaned back in his chair. If he were to really continue expanding the city, it would end up changing the game map altogether. "Hmm… if we keep building, we will need to keep certain areas as leveling zones. So large walls would be needed around areas with monsters. For now, let's get the city finished to Roland, and we will go from there. If we do end up expanding past that, we will need to begin creating districts. Splitting the city up into different sections. " 

"I have noticed that monster spawn points do not change at all, so we really do not need to make leveling areas. We can use the mercenary guild as a means of handling monster spawns within the city and as a way to give players better rewards." WhiteLotus suggested.

"Hmmm… Alright, we will see how it goes. If not, we will need to figure out another method. I figured expanding the city would stop monsters spawning inside of it, but if the monsters are still spawning on the streets, that is fine. What about buildings? Have they been spawning inside them?" Ryu was worried about NPCs getting killed in their sleep if monsters suddenly spawn in their bedrooms.

"Not that we have noticed as of yet. What if I have our R&D team look into some kind of monster killing defense for inside homes?" 

"Yeah, do that. It is better to be safe than sorry." With things flowing in motion Ryu was excited to see just how this city would turn out. 

---

In another part of the game, in a deep dark cave, Beauty sat upon a throne made of skulls looking down at the undead army in front of her. "How is it?"

"We have checked, and those who you have turned seemed to have slipped into comas. Over a thousand cases have been reported of the fifteen hundred you have here." A man in black answered.

"Hmmm… Keep an eye on things especially those who have yet to be reported. Do not let the people of Soul Fusion Online know they have a major bug in their game. I do not want them to ruin my fun."