We returned to the workshop at night.

After He Yi and Murong Mingyue returned and learned that Moonlight Stone and most of our high-level mages were seduced from the guild, He Yi fumed for five whole minutes until Beiming Xue and I promised to treat her to supper. We agreed to delay the follow-up quest of Land of Soul Suppression temporarily because one, we needed to steady everyone’s morale and two, we needed to remake our mage party.

……

After we ate supper, I logged into the game.

Swhoosh!

After I appeared in the Soul Suppressing Tower, I used a return scroll and I teleported back to the city right away. The Tiger Soul Essences in my bag had transformed into quest items, so they no longer imposed any sort of restriction penalty like before. I could delay the quest until I was done with this business.

After I appeared in Sky City, the first thing I did was to repair my equipment as usual. Next, I traveled to Air Force One and unloaded all the random but definitely top-tier items I had accumulated since my previous journey to the counter. Some of these items had been dropped by dread-rank mobs, and some, by enemy players. Regardless, they were all excellent goods that would fetch me 500+ RMB a piece. I wouldn’t have picked them up if they weren’t worth at least that much.

My shopkeeper, White Fox, wagged her tail as she stared at the pile of equipment atop the counter and asked me with a smile, "Master, are these the new goods we’re going to sell?"

I nodded. "Yeah. What do you think?"

"It’s amazing!" White Fox praised me without any hesitation. "These items are way better than the stuff we sold before, and it is exactly the kind of high-level goods the shop is lacking right now. I can’t believe you managed to collect so many precious pieces of equipment, master! You truly are a capable adventurer!"

"Haha, you praise me too much, lass…" I replied while blushing a bit.

After I gave White Fox a new set of business orders, I left the shop and traveled straight to Dark Moon City. If there was one place on the Heavenblessed Continent that counted as our headquarters, it would be there.

Swhoosh!

A flash of light later, I appeared at my Rank 9 Undead Castle. Dark Moon City was now a prosperous and well-guarded territory where countless players resupplied or did business here every day. In fact, there was a small crowd of people setting up stalls on the plaza at the southeast, creating a small shopping area. Our city afforded them the convenience of trading all the equipment they grinded at Dragonbone Mountain Range, Black Coast and Cyan Tiger Forest immediately.

Beep!

It was at this moment He Yi sent me a message: "Lu Chen, are we upgrading the guild to Rank 8?"

I checked the guild rank and noted that it was Rank 7 right now. A Rank 7 guild could fit 30000 players, whereas a Rank 8 guild could accommodate 50000. The increase in capacity was absolutely welcome because members of the main guild got to enjoy 100% of the boosts provided by the territory, and the 10% Attack boost from War Holy Temple. Now that Dark Moon City was a Rank 9 Castle, it boosted everyone’s Attack by 15%. This hidden stat boost was unknown to most people, but regardless, it was one of our greatest advantages in a guild war.

"It would take 400k Reputation at minimum to upgrade the guild to Rank 8, right?" I asked.

I could almost imagine He Yi smile as she replied to me, "It’s fine. I have 480k Reputation right now, so it’s well within my ability to afford, not to mention that none of my equipment has a Reputation Requirement. I can always grind it back up again once the upgrade is complete. It’ll just take a couple of boss kills."

"Mm, okay!"

"I’m doing it then!"

A while later, a system notice informed everyone in the guild that the main guild had been upgraded to Rank 8. We could now add another twenty thousand players into the guild for a total of fifty thousand.

……

For a time, the guild channel was rife with activity—

Chaos Moon: "Wow, we’ve finally become a Rank 8 guild. Guild leader sacrificed her Reputation for all of us…"

Xu Yang: "Fifty thousand capacity. Gold!"

Li Chengfeng: "Should we transfer the elites of the subguilds into the main guild now? The main guild is the core of our fighting forces, and we should always look for ways to strengthen it."

Me: "That’s right. We must strive to create a main guild that’s so strong that we can solo an entire enemy guild all by ourselves! Chengfeng, Chaos Moon, Xu Yang, I leave it to you three to get some new blood in our main guild. You are also free to recruit from other guilds as long as you don’t do it in a way that is considered inappropriate or questionable. Also, we’re only recruiting ten thousand players. The rest of the quota will be reserved for high-level mages that will form our ace mage party in the future!"

Everyone cheered and said, "Yeah, the vice leader is wise!"

I added, "Well, you guys keep doing what you need to do, and I’m going to post a mage recruitment thread. Don’t forget to show your support when it’s up, okay?"

"Sure~~"

……

Sitting atop my horse and waiting in front of the entrance to the territory hall, I brought up the official forums, logged into my account and spent a moment thinking what I wanted to post. A while later, I started with the title: "Sword or Magic, the Strong Reigns Supreme. Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls Recruiting All Kinds of Powerful Mages NOW!"

For the first paragraph, I wrote: "Since Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls rose to power, we have established a Rank 9 Undead Castle called Dark Moon City, and recruited high-level players such as Legendary Brave, Beiming Xue, Gui Guzi, From Water, Murong Mingyue, Chaos Moon, High Fighting Spirits, Lu Buyi and more. Would you like to fight side-by-side with these legendary experts? If that’s the case, then contact Chaos Moon and Hot Sun and join us now! Prove your strength, and we will pave the path to heroism for you!"

In the next paragraph, I wrote: "As for why you might want to join Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls, please check out some of the efforts I listed below. Let’s begin with our guild territory, shall we? A territory is a guild’s foundation, so you gotta choose the best location, hire the best fighters to defend it, and build the strongest walls, tier 1 city level, to protect it, right? Well we got all that and more. Not only does our teleportation formation teleport you directly to your desired locations, we have four of them across the entire city! Potion vendors, blacksmiths, stables, we got everything you could possibly imagine. Next to the territory hall is the Desolate Knight’s Grave, and next to the Desolate Knight’s Grave is the city’s barracks, the Blood Pond Cemetery. We have a hundred Ghost God Knights protecting this Blood Pond Cemetery—you know, the kind wielding spears and riding on skeletal horses?—and if any player passes by them, they will always greet you with their native knight’s accent by saying, "You are the pride of the Silver Moon Alliance, young adventurer." Feels good, doesn’t it?

Besides that, the guild territory also has gorgeous women tending to your every need 24/7, and they are all in the same class as Chaos Moon and Beiming Xue. Of course, their service is expensive as hell, and even a simple equipment repair will cost you 10000 gold or more! We usually welcome guild leaders like Warsky, Luo River God of the Capital, and Stranger of Three Lifetimes to be our customers, and while we don’t turn away people of lower status, let’s just say that Tempest Shadow would be too ashamed to even pass through the territory. Now, I’m sure you’re all thinking right now: How much do I have to pay to enter a territory like this? It’s gotta cost at least a hundred a month, right? Boy, you have no idea how wrong you are! Not only does it cost you nothing to enter our territory, I’ll be paying you 1000 RMB per month for your presence—provided that you are strong enough to join Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls! That’s right. As I’ve said from the beginning, prove us your strength and we will welcome you with open arms! So, what are you waiting for? Heavenblessed’s top guild, territory and comrades await you!"

……

Not gonna lie, I felt a bit nervous after I finished writing the whole thing. Did I go overboard? Bah, send first, regret later!

It didn’t take long for the thread to become popular. A lot of our supporters were CGL Hall of Famers too—

17th floor (Legendary Brave): Take my support, vice leader! By the way, feel free to contact me if you want to join Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls as a mage, but fair warning: if you ain’t a young, beautiful and sexy mage, don’t bother.

32th floor (Chaos Moon): Hehe, join us now, handsomes and pretties! If you’re strong enough, Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls will welcome you with open arms!

104th floor (Gui Guzi): Are you kidding me? I was only late by a few seconds, and I got booted out of the Top 100 already?

481th floor (Beiming Xue): Take my support, big bro! Love you~

1028th floor (Moonkiss): Aiyo, Lu Chen is recruiting personally? I’m so tempted to change classes and sign up for Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls right now!

1327th floor (Luo River God of the Capital): You dare? You are mine, Moonkiss...

2019th floor (Stranger of Three Lifetimes): Lu Chen, open your mouth. I refuse to believe you didn’t twist your tongue after all that nonsense you just spouted.

4192th floor (Warsky): So, Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls is finally going to strengthen their mage party, huh?

5182th floor (Stranger of Three Lifetimes): Pooh! Pretending like you don’t know anything, 4192? You were the one who stole their people in the first place! I can smell your hypocrisy all the way from here!

5592th floor (October Rain): Now now, calm down people. It’s perfectly normal for players to jump guilds, hehe.

10928th floor (Wind Fantasy): Poster, let’s have dinner together tomorrow.

11292th floor (From Water): ...

……

The merrymaking lasted the entire night, and on the surface it looked like nothing was happening. In reality though, Li Chengfeng and Chaos Moon had already set up recruitment points in front of our territory hall and were testing the sea of mages who had appeared.

I stood next to Li Chengfeng and watched him test the candidates.

A Level 157 mage with a bright scepter stepped up to him and asked, "I used to be a mage from Mad Dragon, but I want to turn over a new leaf. Is that okay?"

Li Chengfeng nodded. "Sure! Now, hit me with a Galaxy Storm. If you damage me for more than 3000, then you pass. Crits do not count, okay?"

"Okay!"

The mage backed a few steps and did as Li Chengfeng said. To the dragon warrior’s surprise, the attack actually dealt 4889 damage to him. All Divine Generals enjoyed hidden stat boosts, so it wasn’t actually easy to deal this much damage to him. Naturally, we recruited the guy right away.

On the other side, Chaos Moon was testing the players the same way, except that the damage threshold was increased to 5000. There were some exceptions, however. For starters, we didn’t recruit people with incredibly questionable morals. There were a couple of vulgar-looking mages who requested for Chaos Moon’s QQ number the moment it was their turn. Even if some of them passed the test, Chaos Moon ultimately decided to reject their application. Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls could do without people who only came for the girls.

At the back, Moon Dew was healing Li Chengfeng and Chaos Moon to prevent them from dying as a matter of course. The process went more or less smoothly, and we were able to recruit a ton of excellent mages. However, we didn’t encounter any first-rate mages so far.

I saw Northern Alliance mages who managed to hit Li Chengfeng for over 10k damage or even tens of thousands of damage before. Therefore, a mage who couldn’t deal more than 10k damage to the dragon warrior was qualified to become a staple of the guild, but a key member? Absolutely not. The kind of mage we were looking for was a mage who could deal 13k damage to Li Chengfeng with a single spell; a Moonlight Stone at the minimum!

The recruitment process lasted most of the night, and in the end over 7000 mages were added to the guild. Although the quality was a bit questionable, it did make up for the massive gap we were left with somewhat.

After I logged out of the game, I lay on the bed and fell asleep in no time. However, even in my sleep I was dreaming of a super magus joining our ranks and leading the guild!

Sigh. Ever since Moonlight Stone left, Ancient Sword Dreaming Souls was wanting a mage that could carry the banner like a thirsty man in a desert!