“You’re going to the Vuzgal Auction?” Yi Yin asked.
“Of course, I wouldn’t want to miss it,” Gu Chen said.
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to go to the Blue Lotus Auction at the end of the competition?”
“The Blue Lotus is the Blue Lotus, they will always have interesting items for people to bid on. With the Vuzgal auction, well, they might not be the Blue Lotus, but this is their city – they have a reputation to uphold. Also, they have plenty of crafters here, it is one of the few places where one can get peak Journeyman and Expert level items. All of us have mostly low Journeyman gear with a good collection of mid Journeyman gear. Getting high, or peak Journeyman gear would be a great advantage to us and there are plenty of crafters here that are just a half step away from becoming an expert.”
“Sometimes you don’t need to buy the best of the best, just gear that is better than what you have,” Yi Yin said, seeing to the heart of what Gu Chen was saying.
Gu Chen left with some of the other Silver Dragons and headed off into the late afternoon. already there was a large crowd gathering at the newly-upgraded Vuzgal auction house that had increased in size just for this competition.
***
“How are we looking?” Elan asked Niemm and Roska who were watching the matches intensely with the rest of the special teams. They were watching the fights with the recruits.
As the matches came to an end they started to relax, talking amongst one another and making notes.
After their training, they would be joining the special teams. This was a way for them to learn about them ahead of time.
Nothing escaped their eyes.
“We have eleven of the special team recruits remaining, eight of the Adventurer’s Guild got through as well,” Roska said.
“They’re doing well,” Niemm said. “After this, it's practical training in the field right?”
“Yeah, scouting other cities that are around us, looking to locate any hidden dungeons; clear those and take the dungeon cores. Once we’ve completed that and verified their skills then we will have groups scouting out the Willful Institute positions in the different realms. They will put what they’ve learned about realm insertion, information gathering, and operating without any support from Alva, to the test.” Roska said.
Elan opened his mouth and then closed it.
“Something on your mind?” Roska asked.
“Well, they’ve had so much training up to this point, shouldn’t they be placing higher? Isn’t the Adventurer’s Guild without all the support they received doing better?” Elan asked.
“In a way,” Roska smiled. “Though the special teams have strong members, working together makes us stronger. We are trained with rifles and grenades primarily. In the outside world we have to use melee weapons, bows and magic staffs. Like now, all of them are wearing weakening formations so that their body and greater mana cultivation doesn’t come into effect. They also aren’t allowed to use fighting techniques.”
“Why?”
“This hamstrings them, things are easier for them, they have powerful cultivation, powerful weapons. To be better you need to struggle. You need to fight with a hundred and ten percent every time. They have to draw out everything they have in these fights.
“If they used their techniques, could they win the competition?”
“I don’t think so, there are a number of people that are holding their trump cards back,” Niemm said, looking to Roska for confirmation.
“I don’t think so either, but if they were operating as part of a unit with their normal weapons I think that they would be able to take on most of the people here. Remember up to this point we have nearly always been the weaker group in terms of numbers and levels.”
She looked to the two men who agreed with nods.
“We have used every damn trick that we have to increase our strength: we created powerful weapons and armor, we created weapons that use combinations of formations, alchemy, smithing, spells, and poison, layering those on one another so that even if we are level ten we could defeat someone that is level Twenty. We have tempered our bodies, opened our mana gates. These are things that people pass by, looking to increase their power with levels, or temper their bodies only to finish the quest and not fully purge their body, gaining titles and breaking through their own bottlenecks. Every small way that we can gain power we’ve held onto and we’ve strangled out every damn stat point, title or effect we can get. We came from nothing, so we take everything: mana and body cultivation, levels, weapons, armor, techniques, and crafting. We never had it before so we’re hungry for it all. Still, our levels are lower than most of the people we face, but it doesn’t matter as we will do everything we can to grind through and become stronger.”
“Well said,” Elan said.
If a person has been hungry before or not been able to eat food, would they throw away food later, or would they make sure to never waste any food that they find in front of them? Even if that food were just scraps?
Chapter: Rapid Expansion
Taran started laughing in his smithy as he stared at the breastplate in front of him. He was laughing and crying at the same time as he held up the breastplate as if it were his newborn child.
I never thought in my life, no in seven lifetimes...
He sat down, his laughter turning tired and filled with fatigue. One only needed to look at his eyes, his worn out body and the layer of soot that covered him to see how tirelessly he had worked to create this one breastplate.
He opened his notifications and a glow appeared above his hand. Experience flooded through the smithy and poured into Taran’s body like life-giving water.
He closed his eyes with a feeling of deep satisfaction filling his bones. He opened his eyes and felt the weight there as his expert smithing reward was delivered.
“A compendium of Expert level blueprints. Rugrat would be pissed if he knew I had beaten him to Expert smith. Well actually, he might have reached it already.”
Taran held the breastplate in one hand and his blueprint book in the other. He felt a bit sad, he wanted to run out and bug his friends, but most of them were in other places.
With a wave of his hand, he put away the book and breastplate.
“I’ll go to Vuzgal and see Tan Xue. It’ll be a research trip, totally not going to brag about reaching Expert level in smithing.”
He chuckled to himself and stood up, a light appearing in his eyes. What was achieving one’s goals if you can't share it with your friends?
***
Jia Feng was sitting in her office as her assistant came in.
“So what are the numbers?” Jia Feng asked as she sat back.
“Taran escaped to Vuzgal to see Tan Xue, he reached Expert Smith. There are four scribes that have reached Expert, Zhou Heng the Tailor department head reached Expert as well. Shi Wanshu was able to raise two more woodworking experts. There are three people other than you that are close to making a breakthrough to Expert in cooking.”
“Seems like there are experts coming out from all over the place,” Jia Feng said.
“Everyone was close to the brink. With the influx of information and competing with one another to see how fast they could get through the crafter trial, they were able to take the final step. The librarians are recording down their different theories and compiling them with the older works. As time goes on, with the wealth of information we gather we won’t be searching in the dark, we will be able to expand on what was previously learned and advance it. Proving theories and expanding on them,” Jia Feng’s assistant, Velia said eagerly.
“That will be one hell of a thing,” Jia Feng smiled.
“With the different soldiers from the army getting their bodies tempered, the healers have had a rise in levels as they are able to practice their skills. More of them are going off into the realms to heal people to gain a greater understanding of healing. The military complex takes up a large portion of our budget.”
<
br /> “We need a strong military to support us,” Jia Feng said.
“Some people are wondering why we’re not spending that on academics instead of the military. They feel that because they are not fighting that they do not need those resources that could nurture more experts,” Velia said.
Jia Feng’s smile crumpled and there was a dark expression on her face.
“Do they forget where we live? Do they forget that we are in the Ten Realms, that we are having a proxy war with the Willful Institute, that we waged a fight in the outposts above us to control the Beast Mountain Range? That we have a city that has wolves staring at it from across the Fourth Realm? Do they have so much free time that they care about politics and not their own studies? Are we not helping them with their schooling costs? Without the military on the walls then we will soon fall to chaos. Help me send a message to those that are wasting their time with idle gossip. We are crafters, not fighters and unless they want the military to start questioning the money and support we give our crafters they should shut the hell up or else I’ll send them to have a discussion with Commander Glosil,” Jia Feng could barely hold in her anger.
“I understand Head Jia,” Velia said, bowing her head slightly.
Jia Feng let out a breath and looked at the window of her office.
“In the end aren’t most of the military members our students as well? Short-sighted idiots.”
***
“What do you mean you no longer need our services?” Willful Institute Elder Hui asked. With his position as a recruiter in the Willful Institute, his position was only lower than the guild branch head he was under in the Second Realm.
“Someone else has already taken the contract and has been working with us for a few weeks now; we have no more jobs for you, I am sorry,” the trader said.
“Are you sure that you want to cross us?” Hui asked in a low voice.
“Are you sure that you can threaten anyone anymore? After all, you are looking to get ‘low level’ contracts. I thought you had forgotten about my small little trade emporium,” the trader shot back.
“You will come to regret this,” Elder Hui said in a huff.
He flicked his sleeves and stood, leaving the room.
“Find out who is taking the contract and report to me immediately!” He hissed to one of his subordinates as soon as they were out of earshot.
That trader is right, normally I would never have to make a personal visit to see him. Recently all of our missions have started to be pulled by the people making them. Traders we work with have found new protection and they have found cheaper goods while they are charging us more for products. Something is going on.
He got onto his tamed beast and they rode towards the Willful Institute’s headquarters.
“I found out the names of the people that took the contract from us, tehya re from the Adventurer’s Guild./ They ahve come in and taken a number of different contracts.
“Get them removed from the city immediately!”
“Sir, the traders and others have been contacted in other cities, they have several nearby branches.”
“Just because they have a few locations they think that they can take jobs from our mouth? Report it to the higher ups!”
***
Jasper looked over the latest reports, there was a knock at the door to his office, interrupting him. He put the report away in his storage ring.
“Come in,” he said.
The door opened a woman with a hood pulled down against the wind walked in. Jasper’s eyes moved to her buckle that looked like a tower spewing mana into the air.
Alvan.
The door closed behind her and a formation activated closing off any sensing magic from entering the room.
The woman pulled back her hood and bowed deeply.
“Vice Guild leader Jasper,” she said to the floor.
“Seems that I meet with more of Elan’s operatives than anyone else these days,” Jasper laughed, “take a seat please, what do you have for me?”
She took out a book and passed it to Jasper.
Jasper opened it, it was an information book, accepted it and light shot between his brows as he closed his eyes. The book dissolved as he opened his eyes.
“Very good, the Willful Institute is starting to feel the pinch on their purse strings as we’ve taken away a full third of their contracts and have a quarter of their trade routes.”
“Those that commissioned jobs from the sect always had to go there pleading for them to carry out the tasks, with the Adventurer’s Guild searching them out and completing the tasks as soon as possible, you’re winning over a lot of people. Using our links to the Alva traders and their associates, we are cutting into their protection jobs and their supply jobs. It has created several new trading routes. I hear that recruitment within the guild has increased.”
“How is the Willful Institute reacting?”
“There are many factions within the Institute. None of them want to look weak so they have been pushing the issues away. They’ll attack if they have the opportunity but in the dark unless it reaches a stage where they need to make an open display of their power.”
“Very good. If we attack them over time in small ways it will pile up just like a large attack but they won’t realize it, too focused on wining against one another.” Jasper sent a sound transmission. There was a knock at his door.
“Come in!”
The door opened to reveal a man who quickly entered and closed the door, nodding to Elan’s information operative and looking to Jasper.
“Send a message to Glosil, tell him that we will be moving into the second phase of the plan soon.” Jasper looked at both people. “A great and powerful beast can be defeated in a thousand small cuts.”
Chapter: Top 100
Vuzgal was abuzz. With the prizes being announced, people that had been interested before now came over in droves. While they couldn’t compete and could only watch, they found out that the rumors of the items for sale in Vuzgal were not exaggerations. There were high-level goods that would be hard to find anywhere under the Sixth Realm available in large quantities. People were coming into just trade.
One hundred people had made it through the first four elimination rounds and after a day of rest, the real competition began. The one hundred people were broken down into groups of ten, from each group there would be a victor, this victor would go on to fight the others for the position of the strongest.
Among these one hundred, all of them had received offers from different powers looking to hire them.
“I heard that Vuzgal hasn’t extended any invitations to the competitors in the matches,” Klaus said absently as he sat next to Hiao Xen.
Hiao Xen looked over to the Fighter’s Association branch head.
“Are you asking something?”
“Would Vuzgal mind if we asked the people of the competition to join our ranks?” Klaus had a relaxed air but his eyes were locked on Hiao Xen.
Hiao Xen smiled.
“We want soldiers, we don’t need people who are just strong in fighting one-on-one. If they are interested in joining Vuzgal one needs to apply, we won’t search them out,” Hiao Xen said.
“Thank you Hiao Xen,” Klaus said with a nod. “Coming to Vuzgal has been a great boon to the Fighter’s Association. I was even able to get a few sets of Journeyman armor from your crafters, truly your academy is producing great things!”
“Ah, I am just the manager, I am as impressed with the crafters as you are.”
Klaus smiled, looked around and noticed that people were talking to one another, realizing that they hadn’t asked for permission to talk to the people in the competition. Hearing that the Fighter’s Association was showing interest, a number of them would try to lock down the people that had impressed them.
Klaus send a sound transmission to his people. Not all of the competitors had caught his eyes but still, a few more members would increase the branch’s strength.
> The day’s fight started out, people clashed on the different stages. People started to reveal their trump cards as they struggled to reach higher.
There were fifty matches on the first day. It was based on a point system: two points for a win, one point for a tie.
Klaus watched the people from the Silver Dragon adventuring team and the Adventurer’s Guild. The Silver Dragons are a strong group, these aren’t their peak experts but they’re still putting on a good show, most of them won’t make it into the top ten. The Adventurer’s Guild, unless they have some deep secrets, then I don’t see any of them making it through to the top twenty.
***
Roska and the others were all hiding in the secret lounge again, watching the different fights. A group of the special team trainees was in a separate room, watching the matches as well, reflecting on their failures.
More of them were being eliminated as they were unable to use most of their trump cards and they were wearing gear that would stop them from employing the power of their open mana gates, higher mana cultivation, and body cultivation.
The second day started, there were another fifty matches, but the bottom twenty fighters would be eliminated.
Derrick stepped forward. He was against one of the dark horses, someone that kept their identity hidden. The woman was using a spear and looking at the two of them, Derrick was at a disadvantage. He was using two blades, focusing on flexibility and speed, while she had a spear to keep him at range and use her strength against him.
Derrick stepped onto the stage, the two of them shook hands and stepped back.
They drew their weapons and the referee started the match.
Derrick used a foot technique from the start, looking to close with her before she had time to interpose that spear between them. Her spear shot out in a blur, he dodged it but was forced to retreat, his swords flashed out, meeting the spear again and again. He kept trying to press forward but her spear closed off his path of advance and kept him pinned in place.
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