Chương 89: Chapter 90: Guild war

My health is five digits. 11, 200. I have 4025 MP and 4375 stamina. I'm not immortal, but I kind of feel like I am, especially after what I've just pulled off. I make it back to Elmspire around dawn, and make my way towards the newly constructed gate. The wall around the city is still only about eight feet high, with earthworks making up about half that height, the rest made of a palisade of spears and spiked wood. I don't know if it will hold against the army. I go find Ash first and foremost.

She's gained a few levels in the days I've been away, probably doing war prep. She's level 25 now. Strange that I'm ten levels higher than her in just a few days. But I've been engaging with the enemy directly – both of them. I've been in both camps, and I've got a lot of intelligence to provide. She lets out a whistle through her shark teeth when she sees me.

"Thirty five?" she says.

"What all did you do? I thought you were just going to set some traps." I nod.

"That was the plan, originally. But I had an idea that I had to test out, so I snuck into their camp and used Mab's Rage. That accounted for most of the levels."

"Well, it'll definitely be useful. I don't suppose you actually slowed down the orcs, did you?"

"I doubt it. I only killed about thirty of them. I can try to do it again when the battle starts and they can't just run out of the radius of the spell." She chuckles at that.

"We may need to do something that crazy," she says.

"I'm not getting much traction with the defense forces. Not being in a guild, they don't really seem to care about my opinions. They might if I was a higher level."

"But that's not fair," I say.

"You know what you're doing as well as anyone else." She shrugs.

"We'll be out own little unit when the fighting starts. Then we'll show them that they should listen to us."

"What's El doing?"

"She's been running around trying to level up. I think she made it to 28. But there's nothing worth fighting between us and the orcs at this point, so she should be back any minute."

"Okay. We've got a few hours before the enemy is at the gate, so I think I'm going to take a nap for a while." I yawn.

"I haven't been getting much sleep in the past few days."

"No, yeah. You should do that," she says.

"Don't worry about me. I'll be here, set up for the fight." I go find and inn and eat a full meal, something else I haven't done in a while. While I'm wolfing down my food, John comes and sits next to me. I'm kind of surprised he was able to find me, and even more surprised that he wanted to.

"You should join a guild," he says to me.

"Our guild, specifically." I let out a sigh.

"What's your guild?" I ask him.

"We're the Warlords," he says.

"If you join with us, you'll get a command position on the wall, I guarantee it." I look at him. He's level 40 now, and a Lancer, whatever that is. It sounds like mounted cavalry. I don't know how good I'd be at that. I've got eight levels of ride from flying around with Wrax, but I've never been on a horse, not even in my old life. They're big majestic creatures, and I have nothing against them. I've just never been on one. The only things I've ever ridden have been bikes and dragons.

And most of those bikes were the self propelled bicycle type things, not motorcycles. I've only ever been on a motorcycle once, and I wasn't driving it.

"What makes you think I want a command position?" I ask him.

"Command positions get the most experience and the most war renown," he says.

"Everyone wants a command position."

"And why are you offering it to me?"

"You're a high enough level," he says.

"Plus it's clear you've done some releving to have that many hit points. I've only seen one person with more hit points than you who wasn't an NPC."

"I think it's better to call them natives."

"Whatever," he says, dismissing my little jab.

"Point is, you've got a fuck load of health, which means you can stand in battle a lot longer than most, which means you can command better. So join the Warlords, and I'll put you in charge of a group of archers on the wall. You can probably have your own tower if you want." That is tempting. Like, really tempting. Having a group of archers at my side will mean raining death from above down onto the orcs, or onto the elves and dwarves. I know some of their tactics, so I can maybe adapt to them.

And being in a tower means we can shoot for as long as we want. Being on the wall will mean shooting for a little while but than reverting to melee fighting relatively quickly. Granted, my sword skill is almost as high as my bow skill, but I'd rather shoot than fight where people can hit me back. Ah, it's good to see that I still think that way. I'm not just eager to jump into melee and fight with everyone just because I have so many hit points.

I know that if I can limit the amount of damage I take to 2000 per minute, that means I can keep Shell up indefinitely, or at least until I run out of MP. And considering that I have that mana potion, and that there are probably more of them available in the city, that could be a really long time. But I'd still rather avoid the fighting altogether if I can. I'd rather stay at range. That's what I built myself for, even if melee combat is a close second.

"And what about after the war?" I ask.

"What happens then?"

"Then you stay in the guild, you do guild quests, get guild renown, and treat us like any other faction you're a part of."

"What's the price? Like, what's in it for you?"

"Well, if we go to war with another guild, you'd be expected to fight on our side. Of course. But that's it. We don't have guild dues or anything. Oh, the guild does take a percentage of the money you gain on guild quests and stuff, but that's no big deal." It's potentially a very big deal. Do I want to let the guild take a portion of my treasure when I go do things? I mean, it's kind of fair if the things I'm doing are quests that I get from the guild.

I can just look at that like I'm getting paid slightly less than advertised. I'm used to that kind of thing. Just look at it as if it were taxes. It'll probably still be less than taxes.

"I have friends in other guilds," I say.

"So do I!" John says with a smile.

"Lots of them. Most of my friends are in the Warlords, true, but I've got a good number spread out in the other guilds."

"So what happens if we go to war with a guild you have friends in?"

"Then we go to war, and hopefully it's a friendly enough rivalry that it doesn't hurt our friendship. The odds of us having to actually fight one another directly are pretty slim." Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. I think about if El ends up in a guild. If she's in a guild and I'm in a different guild, they are absolutely going to make us fight each other, if only for the hit point differential.

I don't know how much health John has, but I'm guessing he's below 100 vigor, which would put him at about 4, 000, maybe 8, 000 health. By the time I hit the same level, I'll have at least half again that much, and El will probably have double that amount. It would just make sense to put Ash, El, or I against one another. We're going to have such huge health pools. I mean, John is at eight thousand on the high end at level forty. Ash is fifteen levels lower than that and has 8750.

All three of us are just monsters in comparison to those who didn't go through Wrax's 'training'.

"I don't know," I say.

"I'm not sure I want to be in a guild."

"Then quit," John says.

"After the war is over, I mean. Just quit the guild. You'll lose all the guild renown you gained, but you'll still get a command position."

"What about my friends?"

"Bring them too!" He says, slapping me on the shoulder.

"We'll give all of you commands, or let you share one, if you'd prefer. How many friends are we talking about?"

"Just two," I say.

"But they both have hit points like mine." His eyes sparkle a little bit.

"Perfect!" he says.

"Just send me a message when you're ready to join up, and we'll do all the official things."

"Okay, John. I'll talk it over with my friends, see if they're down, and then I'll contact you." He pats me on the shoulder again.

"Sounds great, Caleb," he says.

"I'll leave you to your meal." Then he gets up and wanders off. El is back by the time I show up to where Ash is working on the palisades. El is helping out, hauling huge logs and slamming them into the ground, doing the work of at least two people all by herself. I hear people whispering about how insanely strong and tough she is as I walk up.

"So there's a guild that wants us to join," I say. Ash nods.

"Which one?"

"Warlords."

"Yeah, I've also had the offer from the Ebony Knighthood and the Ivory Syndicate." Ash sighs.

"Ebony Knighthood is the one that Gigi joined. What did the Warlords offer you?"

"I got an offer from the Sylvan Lords," El says, laughing at the very thought of it.

"I don't think they've put together that we slaughtered so many of their people. Or maybe they did, and that's why they're trying to recruit me."

"They offered a command position," I say.

"Either on the wall or in a tower." Ash lets out a whistle.

"That's a pretty good offer," she says.

"No one else can guarantee command positions. They're mostly trying to bribe us with equipment."

"The Sylvan Lords offered me a spell if I join," El says.

"It's pretty tempting."

"What's the benefit of us saying no to everyone?" I ask.

"What's the perk of us not joining a guild?"

"I honestly can't think of one," Ash says.

"Except that once they get their hooks into us, they may not want to let us go."

"Pfft," El scoffs.

"Let 'em try to stop us from leaving when we want. We'll just kill our way free." I don't like that idea or that image.

"If we don't reset our spawn location, we can always just die and go back to Wrax for another round of beefing up." El laughs at that.

"We'd be so ridiculous!" she says.

"I already have more hit points than just about everyone in Elmspire, natives included." I look at her. Sure enough, she has 12, 600 hit points. Seven levels lower than me, and she has more hit points than I do. Not by much, just fourteen hundred, but still.

"If we go through another round of that, we're going to have to look for something more dangerous to fight," I say.

"Something where our increased stats will actually be important. Like dragons."

"We can talk about that later," Ash says, bringing us back on track.

"Right now we have to decide if we're going to join a guild, and if so which one."

"I like the idea of joining the Sylvan Lords," El says.

"I think that would be funny. We'd probably run into the people that we slaughtered, and they'd have to apologize to us for trying to stop us from hunting in their territory. Plus, we'd be allowed to do it now." I roll my eyes.

"The command position sounds like the best bet," I say.

"Commanders get the most war renown and the most experience. That's what really matters, right?"

"The Ebony Knights will max out all of our equipment levels," Ash says.

"Plus we'd be in Gigi's guild." That is tempting. Sorely tempting.

"Can Gigi get us a command position?" Ash shakes her head.

"The Ebony Knighthood is mostly infantry, with a contingent of heavy cavalry. They've got their command already in place. We'd just be rank and file."

"Ew," El says.

"I'm not joining a guild that doesn't see me as a VIP."

"I have to say, I'm kind of with El," I say.

"I don't want to be rank and file. I want to be someone important. Otherwise, there's no point in joining the guild."

"Gigi is gonna be pissed," Ash says.

"Yeah, at you," El says.

"Me and Caleb aren't the types to join a knighthood. We won't fit in to that guild."

"There's truth to that," Ash agrees.

"You two fight in a very different style. You'd be as much a hindrance as a help to their style of fighting. Unless you suddenly decided to switch to sword and board style fighting." I do have ten levels of shield. I could do that. But that sounds so boring.

"Too boring," El says, slamming a log as thick as her thigh into the ground and then picking up a massive hammer and hammering it into place.

"What about the Ivory Syndicate? They sound like a mafia."

"They're a pretty evenly spread out guild, class wise," Ash says as she starts chopping at the log that El just put into place. She chops the tip of the log into a spike with quick, even strokes of her sword.

"Lots of different options for how to fight. Might get a command there, or at least be able to operate as a unit of our own."

"I wish Gigi and Vincent would just come join us, let us be a unit of our own like that," El says, a little bit of pout in her voice as she goes to collect another huge log. The trees immediately surrounding the wall have all been cut down, both to clear out any cover that the enemy might try to take and to extend our field of view from the towers in the trees that still ring the city. I look at Ash.

"We did work well together," I say.

"Could we form our own guild, just the five of us?" Ash shakes her head.

"Need fifty members to be a guild," she says.

"Okay. What are the other downsides to joining a guild? No way we've heard all of them." She shrugs.

"Maybe we'd be forced to listen to someone else's commands. We wouldn't be in charge of our own fate and what we do anymore. We'd have to do what the guild says. Not sure that's a bad thing in a war, though."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean the last thing we want on our side is chaos. The more organized and cohesive the defenders, the better off we'll be. Right? So it makes sense to want to let one person, or one group of people, tell us what to do. Someone who can see the whole battlefield, who knows how to spend us like the resource we are. I mean, just the three of us could be a devastatingly powerful unit in this war." I imagine the three of us up in a tree shooting down at the enemy.

I wonder how long it would take before El just jumped out of the tree, her two axes leading the way as she leaps into the throng of enemies. I'd give it five minutes. Maybe ten. Of course, we'd follow her. Then the three of us would out there, slaughtering orcs or dwarves left and right. We do enough damage to keep up with them pretty well, and we have the hit points to play that game. The three of us together are a brutal weapon.

And it makes sense that we should have the same person holding that weapon as is holding all the others. If we're a trump card, we need to be in the hand of the person playing the hand, not just out on the table somewhere.

"Do you think they'll let us leave after the war?"

"They'll try to convince us to stay," Ash says.

"No doubt about that. They'll give us leeway to do what we want to do anyway, and just suggest that we stay with the guild so that we can get guild quests. They won't exactly stop us from leaving, but they'll do everything they can to prevent it."

"Would that be so bad? I mean, are we really giving up that much freedom joining a guild?"

"What's that?" El asks, carrying another log over one shoulder, her arm unable to wrap all the way around it. Based on the size of the log, I'm guessing it weighs several hundred pounds, and she's carrying around with a casual ease. Not to say that she isn't straining with it, just that the strain doesn't seem to be too much, and she's doing alone what most people are doing in groups of two, three, or even four.

"I heard something about giving up freedom."

"We're still talking about joining a guild," I tell her.

"And how hard it might be to get out once we're in." She scoffs again.

"We'll leave when we want to leave," she says.

"That's the deal."

"Couldn't have put it more simply," I say. I look at Ash.

"What do you think?" I ask her.

"Warlords? Ebony Knighthood? Both?"

"How could we do both?" Ash asks.

"You go to the knighthood with Gigi, El comes to the Warlords with me."

"What about the Ivory Syndicate?" El asks.

"We never ruled them out." There's just something about that name that rubs me wrong. It's like El said; they sound like a mafia. And that's exactly what I don't want in a guild. It doesn't matter to me that they might upgrade all of our equipment, or might give us a new spell, or even might just straight out pay us money. There's something about them that rubs me the wrong way. I shake my head.

"Don't like the sound of them," I say.

"Plus the Warlords guaranteed us a position of command."

"I say we take them up on it," Ash says.

"Either we each command a small unit or we command a unit together. But something that gets us in on the planning would be good." She looks up at the sky.

"And we need to pick quickly; the orcs are going to be here in a manner of hours.