Chapter XLI - The Gap Widens

'Fencer...' Marcus thought to himself... 'Well that's not a very good passive for my current playstyle, but I guess I'll have to readjust...'

The Swordsman waved his arm as another doorway appeared between the two and he stepped through. Marcus sighed as he followed suit as he stepped through being whisked back into the runic tower of the Training Hall.

"Congratulations Baron, you are now a Swordsman! Please take this to better acquaint yourself within your new Tier and go forth and show the might of the path of the blade!" The Swordsman said holding out his hand containing a small Diamond tier chest!

Marcus bowed "Thank you master Swordsman!" he said as he reached out and took the chest. Opening it contained a [Unknown Attribute Pill] which upon consuming it, provided 100 skill points to be spread across his stats as well as two additional rewards...

[Spatial Key]

Restricted... Unknown Use... ???

Marcus was dumbfounded by this item, he had absolutely no idea what use it had. He added it into his inventory and observed the other item.

[Replica Weapon Upgrade Kit]

When combined with [Replica] increases rank and skills by one rank.

'Is there something I'm missing...' Marcus thought to himself, first this mysterious key and then despite Squire primarily promoting into Knight, how would Swordsman and Squire both provide him with this weapon and the means to upgrade it... 'Maybe it has something to do with Chaos difficulty...' Marcus thoughts were racing as he was trying to understand.

He took out Replica and brought the two items next to each other and the system chimed.

<Similar Items detected...>

<Would User like to combine items..?>

<Y/N>

"Yes!" Marcus replied to the AI.

<One moment...>

It didn't take long for the hunk of mysterious metal to begin brilliantly illuminating as [Replica] began to resonate with it. After a time, the metal began to liquify and began to mystically float towards the sword. Replica's form began to adjust as it's length was increased by a few cm and the shape of the blade began to adjust. It's form had been rebuilt in a unique form as the base was wide and began to thin out as it's length was formed and then adjust back to a slightly wider shape before coming to a point.

<Upgrade Complete! Incomplete Replica obtained>

<Incomplete Replica>

Rank: Green

Level 20

No Class Restriction

Slashing Damage

Slashing/Piercing Weapon

Durability: -/-

Upgradeable

An incomplete replica of a once might weapon wielded by a legend of yore. Weapon has been improved upon and will soon begin to emit it's once former glorious powers.

Skill 1: Phantom Blade

Create up to 3 mystic swords that follow the user's commands and engage the opponent telepathically. Costs 100 Mana to deploy and maintaining form depletes mana rapidly while active.

Skill 2: Locked

Skill 3: Locked

Marcus was ecstatic about the skill [Phantom Blade] as it would help him losing his offhand sword. He never heard of or seen this weapon before his regression and wondered what happened to it's previous owner in his past life for information regarding this weapon to never circulate around. Unfortunate for him despite unlocking the skill, it was yet another skill he could not use and would need to figure out a way to repair his Mana Circuit.

'Damn I really f***ed up my character by unlocking Mana Slash... Why did I have to push so hard to unlock it...?' He was thinking to himself. Marcus sighed dejectedly as he decided he would need to go visit the Royal Library and review records of Mana Circuits and how he can get his repaired.

Marcus once again bowed to the Swordsman and thanked him before taking his leave. As he was heading back to the Main Hall, he went ahead and allocated the extra points he received and increased his Strength, Agility, Endurance, Vitality by 20, and his Focus and Intelligence by 10 each. This caused the each of the aforementioned respective stats to reach 45+22 and 30+15.

Even though he couldn't really make sure of his Focus or Intelligence stats, based on his current build, he knew eventually he would need them. Marcus had returned to the Guild Hall and as everyone poured back in excitedly chatting amongst themselves about their new skills and power-up, Marcus greeted everyone and began speaking "Now that we have all received our Tier 1 classes, the game has expanded much beyond what we currently have experienced.

Some of you may have already seen what new adventures await us having traversed through the wilds from your home nations to reach Sterling City, but we still have another 70 or so people currently making that journey. As most of you have already guessed, we have unlocked a large number of dungeons that we can tackle and have plenty of people available to tackle all of those dungeons."

Everyone nodded and cheered at Marcus ready to get increased loot and rewards. Marcus began by continuing, "In addition to the 70 remaining players who are on their way here, we want to begin collecting players who don't wish to go out and raid and want to do less dangerous tasks, we have the best facilities in the game by far and to create a solidarity, we need people to take up these roles and start a unified guild set for players to wear and others to be envious of, so please if you know anyone or have any friends who aren't really interested in raising their levels and fighting the crazy monsters we are about to challenge, send them my way!"

Everyone nodded, they began talking about some people they knew who were casually playing the game doing gathering activities and others who were raising their levels by crafting. These Production Players would become high in demand but it wouldn't readily be apparent until Tier 2 classes were unlocked. Marcus was banking on getting as many of these people into The Phantoms early on and create a massive gap between the current player base and his guild, creating what people would soon begin calling 'The Enigma's Gap.'

Marcus knew exactly who he wanted to head his Research & Development Department of The Phantoms, he just had to convince him to start playing... He began by declaring "We are going to begin by recruiting at least 50 or so of these players to increase our member count to at least 200. We will have at least one Elder for this new department, so please recruit people you believe will at least be a viable candidate for this position."

Everyone was excited about the prospect of their candidate becoming an Elder in the Guild. Marcus continued his speech "We need to go and help return our remaining members to Sterling so they can take their Tier 1 promotional quest and then the tryouts for a few Elder positions will become available. These Elder positions are going to be the overseer of our new Assault Team, whose primary goal is to clear Insanity Difficulty dungeons and bring the rewards and glory back to the Guild. The Elders will have multiple direct subordinates who will become the leaders of the groups and each will have 5 players reporting to them to complete a full team. This will be the biggest bulk of our Guild."

Everyone cheered wanting to become part of the Assault Team and even more wanted to prove their worth and be a Team Leader or even better... An Elder.

Marcus smiled at everyone's enthusiasm and cleared his throat before raising his hand and everyone became silent once more as he continued, "Next we will have one Elder who will be in charge of three full parties and these members will be in charge of our Sovereign Team who will be focused on clearing and discovering every quest and completing them and relaying their rewards and their main objective is to complete the Main Scenario of The World.

They will have three team leaders and each will once again have 5 members. This is to spread the knowledge between everyone here and get the most out of the rewards without really needing to do a lot of the legwork, remember we're all a team here. This is one of the most important groups as the rewards that get spread among every member the fastest will grow our Guild higher than any other could even hope to reach."

Everyone once again nodded thinking that this was one of the hardest groups to be a part of and could be a decisive team that benefited the guild greatly.

Marcus decided to lay the final department out before closing his speech "Lastly, we shall have three Elders who will make up our Elite Guard group, with so many restrictions placed on guilds in each capital city, there is bound to become competition for positions and just because we were the first to get a Platinum Tier Guild, doesn't mean someone won't come gunning for us.

This group will be in charge of Guild Defense, Guild Defense, and most importantly... Espionage. The three Elders will have certain restrictions on what class can take position and they will be in charge of establishing orders and battlefield tactics in their respective departments."

Everyone gasped at what they heard, none of this information was available but as they thought about it, the idea of Guild Wars was totally inline with how the game was shaping up to be... Deafening roars from everyone rang throughout the Guild Hall as this was to become the most exciting teams to join!