Second World

Outside, the coalition forces were having sour faces.

"I didn't expect there was such a high-level officer with the army that came. How the hell did they get such assistance anyway?" Manager Steelhand asked.

"You have asked that several times already, nobody here knows," Scarface replied with irritation.

"I know, I just can't get that into my head. Damn it!"

"It's a real pity the army was still largely intact in strength, we can't resume our attack if they continued to linger there," Queen Magenta said. "How long do you think they will remain there?"

"I don't know!" Scarface said with a clear annoyance in his voice.

"Anyway, we should remain here. I don't believe the army will continue to stay here.. Once they did, we should resume our attack. We lost quite a number, but they lost even more. They won't be able to retrain those native units within a day or two. We should have a higher chance of winning if we attack again."

"I agree with Magenta," Manager Steelhand said.

"We still have that Storm Wind to deal with," Scarface reminded them.

"He is only one person. He will cause us trouble, but without those native units, they won't be able to block our charge. All we have to do is just to storm into the Guild Hall and destroy their Guild Core."

"That's true."

"That guild of them no longer just have one expert, there is another one," Scarface said. He then turned to Red Death who was standing by the side. "How strong is that other expert compared to Storm Wind?"

When Red Death did not reply, Scarface called again with a louder voice, "Red! How strong is that other expert?"

Red death turned to Scarface. She seemed lost for a bit, before she answered, "I don't know about his gaming skill, but in terms of martial arts, he is much more skillful than me."

Scarface frowned. He had never seen her in a daze like this before. Was the expert truly that strong? Or were there some other reasons?

---------------

"How long is the army stand guard outside?" John asked Jack. The two were with Jeanny, Domon, Silverwing, and Bluedaze inside the Guild Hall. Before this, they wouldn't have allowed Silverwing and Bluedaze into the hall. But after today, they had proven to be loyal allies, so the two were invited to discuss the current situation.

Jeanny and John had finished tallying the loss. The others were repairing their equipment in the blacksmith workshop inside Heavenly Citadel, restocking the potions at the alchemist workshop, or re-buying the Amulet of Rebirth in the capital. Out of the 495 members, not all were battle types. Some just focused on their auxiliary skills, so they stayed behind in the workshops and took care of the repairing and potion-making.

"Less than three hours, give or take," Jack replied.

"We should prepare for another attack. Can you request the army to extend their stay?" John asked.

"Can't. The feature had a four weeks cooldown and I also don't have enough Merit points to make another request," Jack answered.

"Do you think they will attack again?" Jeanny asked.

"I'm certain they will," John replied.

"Then I guess we will have to use this item," Jeanny took out the High Lich Summoning Crystal for everyone to see.

"With a High Lich guarding this place, I don't think they will dare to approach," Silverwing chuckled.

"But this will only buy us three hours. They can just retreat again and wait for the duration to expire before attacking," John said. "I don't think they will believe that we can summon such a high-level monster repeatedly."

"What about the traps that you mentioned last time? I saw that we already built a Blacksmith Workshop," Jack asked.

"To produce the traps, we need to upgrade the Blacksmith Workshop to level 2 first, and then we still need time to do research, which will take a few days. Apart from that, the production of traps also required high-level blacksmiths. Currently, our members with sufficient blacksmith levels are only a handful. Traps were not a solution for our current situation."

As everyone was lamenting the situation, they heard Peniel's voice, "they won't be able to attack again for some time." She had come out of her hidden dimension after the battle was over and was just sitting on Jack's shoulder.

"Oh? Why is that?" Jeanny asked.

"Check your guild page. You should see the headquarter is under protection status," Peniel said.

"Really?" The three of them hurriedly open their Guild status window, while Domon, Silverwing, and Bluedaze watched in silence.

Silverwing turned to Domon and asked, "you are not opening your guild page?" Unlike the three, Domon did not act like he was checking things. Domon replied, "I have no idea what a guild page is."

"It really is!" Jeanny exclaimed. "It said here the protection status will last for another six days twenty-three hours and six minutes."

"Yes, after a successful defense, a Guild Headquarters enters a one-week protection status," Peniel informed. "Otherwise, no one will be able to survive getting attacked non-stop. The number of Guild Headquarters available is very limited, hence every guild will be targeting it. This is a system implemented to allow the defending guild a reasonable time to recuperate."

"Hooray for the system!" Jack exclaimed. "But then shouldn't we be able to exploit it? Silverwing, a week from now, send your members to do a mock attack! This way, we can continue getting protection status, hehe."

"Mock-attack your head!" Peniel scolded. "You think the system is so dumb to get cheated like that. To be eligible for protection status. You will need to suffer a loss of at least 50% of your guild power. This loss of guild power is calculated from the number of your trained native units who die, as with the number of death from the defending outworlders, or any structures that are destroyed. You didn't suffer any structural loss this time, but the number of native units and players dying had passed the 50% threshold, hence you are given this protection status. The same thing also applied to victory rewards. If you didn't lose anything as a defending guild, you won't get any reputation or resources from the victory."

"Oh…," was the only response Jack gave.

"Anyway, we should still prepare for their attack next week," Jeanny said. "We will have a lot to prepare for that."

"Actually, after the coalition knows you are getting protection status, I don't think they will be so eager to attack again," Silverwing said. "I believe that disaster item is the only one they have. Without that item, with Storm and master Domon defending added with the native units you re-train, they will suffer another defeat again. They have used the Disaster Item today because they realized that they can't win."

"I don't attack other human beings unless it is self-defense," Domon commented.

"I agree with Silverwing. By the way, Storm's real name is Jack," John said.

"Hey! My name in this world is Storm Wind!" Jack exclaimed. "And gramps, how about you just stand at the opening of the wall and whoop anyone that comes at you, that should scare everyone from trying to enter. Just like Zhang Fei in ChangBan bridge. Ain't that cool? That can be considered as self-defense, right?"

Domon didn't entertain his grandson with a reply. The others, though, were more preoccupied with the other thing. "Your name is Jack?" Silverwing asked.

"No, my name is Storm Wind!"

"His name is Jack Fei," Domon said. "I am his grandfather. That was the name his parents gave him when he was born. Don't listen to that whatever Wind bullshit."

"Oh! So it's Jack's grandpa! Let me express my courtesy. I'm Silverwing, Jack's good friend," Silverwing said.

'Ugh,' Jack felt defeated. He guessed he could say goodbye to his alias now.

Jeanny giggled, she then said, "let's get back to the main topic. Even if the coalition tries to attack again next week. We can beat them back again using this High Lich Summoning Crystal. That should teach them. I don't think they will continue to attack blindly after suffering continuous defeat."

"But those coalition people are pretty greedy," Bluedaze said. "Two within their guilds already got a Guild Headquarters, another one is joining soon. But they still try to get another one."

"They have?" Jack asked. "Who? Where?"

"Death Associates and Corporate United," Bluedaze answered. "They just got them a few days ago. After they find out that defeating an outpost can get them a headquarters, they have been sending scouts everywhere to search for one. Death Associates' headquarters is in a region where the city Theneward is located."

"Ain't that where the guy called White Death is?" John said.

"Yes. As for Corporate United, their Guild Headquarters is in the region where a city called Thebrington is located. The other one I mentioned is Wicked Witch, they have members going to a Bandit Outpost as we speak. I have not yet got info about where that outpost is, they keep it a secret to prevent other guilds from getting there before them."

"So the force that has attacked us is still not their full force?" Jeanny asked with worry.

"It is impossible to have all of them concentrate in one place. Such a huge guild will have multiple priorities in process at one time. Although the lure of having a second Guild Headquarters should have them pulled the majority of their forces here, we can safely assume their force just now should be roughly the maximum number they could muster for one operation," John said.

"One guild can only have one Guild Headquarters," Peniel interrupted. Everyone turned to her at once.