'... I Was The Guy Going In With Only A Little Over Ten People...'

Mr. Thirteen had a lot to say when we showed him the same light armor suits I sold to Duality, mostly questions about their crafting methods and make-up. I told him quite honestly that it was giant spider silk suits made through magical means with simple textile reagents and enchantments, the rest would be up to his people to figure out how to use if they were of a mind to copy me.

When they were given the ten-layer twenty-pound blessed bastard swords, he had a few remarks about the damage rating but otherwise no complaints as he started wearing a sword across his back then and there. After receiving my payments of five hundred and forty thousand gold, of course. He was only allowed to look at things up until that point.

Since I had already gotten an ass load of money while dealing with the bygones, I handed the money I was given to Go and told him to divvy it up among himself and the others. Whatever we got back from the credit deal I made with Duality would go straight into the clan.

After Thirteen exchanged some small talk with old acquaintances, he and his two escorts went off after making remarks for us to keep our eye on the raid reports in a few hours after they had time to do some cooking. I was glad to see them go because it meant that my team and I could get back to work.

The first thing I did was make everybody finish their projects from last night before finally getting everyone together in the forge. It was time to finally make our own weapons.

While the others only had to simply scrap their weapons and add a few pieces of extra materials, I had to first transmute mine to remove some of its iron content that was causing an imbalance for the ancient steel, then I had to scrap it to pieces and add a few samples of the alloy components to make up for adding more weight and whatever burns out in the furnace.

Thankfully, everybody were my divine assistants and thus could be responsible for making their own weapons. However, Stonewall still required the rest of us to help his magic stunted character when it came to fueling the crafting process as well as casting the different enchantments. Luckier still, I had thought ahead and blessed everybody's steel in the furnace.

With this, there should not be any reasons why the rest of us would need to replace our weapons again for a long time to come.

Remaking Hauntings was a fairly quick and simple process at this point, using mana to keep the temperature of the blade as well as control the distortions from each strike of my hammer. This time, though, I had played with enough twenty-pound fuller sword to feel comfortable crafting an even larger behemoth of a sword. This time I made a thirty-pound sword.

The length of the blade's body was a full three feet before nine inches of a point section slowly tapered out. Each flat of the sword was three fingers wide and the spine of the sword was two inches thick all the way down. Each of the sword's twelve fullers were at least half an inch in depth at the middle of the sword and deepened further to a full inch in depth at nearing the point.

This time there was a great deal more steel in the guard than usual, so instead of a curling crosspiece I hammered out the four corners of the guard area and made concentric curves that angled down toward the tang like a basket hilt. The tang itself was a whopping fifteen inches in length with a three-pound spike of steel for a pommel. This bastard sword was officially a two-handed weapon, but my base Strength was two-sixty-four. From kilos to pounds, that was almost six hundred pounds.

While reach and certain close combat techniques would be lost, I was now fast and strong enough to be able to rely on my unarmed attacks for close quarters. Wielding this giant sword with one hand would only take a little getting used to. But it was worth it just by looking at the name.

In legendary gold, the name read out, 'Ancient Tragedy's Two-Handed Bastard Haunting'. The physical damage of this weapon that would only be useful in a video game was a whopping one-fifty points on the dot with three hundred MATK right underneath. As well, it had a second innate perk under Conductivity called One-Two that reduced PATK by ten percent when used with one hand but raised it by ten percent when wielded properly.

As for blessings, my sword ADDED thirty percent of the weapon's PATK to damage against the undead which was honestly somewhat confusing when I tried to work out the math as compared to the regular anti-undead blessing. I honestly felt cheated despite the fact that the sword still had two blessing perks. The second one was a random stat, Endurance, boosted by eleven points and the third was a passive one-percent regen of health and mana every ten seconds while wielding the sword.

The healing effect of my legendary weapon was downright negligible considering how much damage I alone could do in ten seconds, but just having the extra regen on top of my natural regeneration and regen products would have a great deal of benefits. Even now I could regenerate about thirty mana every few seconds outside of combat and half of that in combat.

While Stonewall's shield came out to an unsurprising one thousand of both attack ratings but one five hundred defense, The others also gained a great deal of damage benefits. From their heavy primary weapons Papi and Go were blessed with one-forty and one-fifty physical damage with varying magical attacks and even Stonewall's giant skull mace Oleander made for his did more than one-twenty.

Everybody else' swords, axes, or spear had physical damages ranging between one-ten and one-thirty. Their blessings, as it turned out, were the same as my own. A random stat was boosted and everybody got the same one-percent recovery buff from using their weapons. Conansson, Skooma, and Go lucked out because their primary, or Go's secondary axes, weapons were made in pairs and stacked the effects.

Just to check, I crafted a fifteen-pound fuller sword that was half the weight of Hauntings and the usual specs but its regen would not stack with Hauntings as a two-handed and one-handed weapon. Conan even used a sword and ax together and they stacked, but I seemed cursed to be unable to do so.

Some of the others actual made weapon changes, such as Agnes and Ivana who usually wielded alchemy weapons for the knockback bonuses. Instead, they both made for themselves a pair of proper single-edged swords that each did one hundred and twelve physical damage and two-ten magical. Unlike the rest of us, though, they, Oleander, and Merch intentionally played on the passive fire enchantment from thermal regulation while crafting.

While the rest of our weapons still burned for a range of thirty to fifty damage, all of theirs did more than seventy burn damage apiece. I was almost mad enough to scrap my sword again and show them how it was done. However, I stopped myself from wasting time now that everybody else had already made all of their weapons.

For now we did not yet have enough materials or desirable cores to start remaking our armor, but after finally giving this raid a try we should hopefully have enough troll parts to make what we needed to. After a quick equipment check to make sure we all had a sufficient stock of items and our armor was quickly transmuted for its one free restoration, we all finally left the camp while eating sandwiches and drinking special herb smoothies to stack buffs.

The smoothies only lasted for an hour, but their regen effects alone were three percent of health and mana every three seconds for that hour. Then add ice resistances, stat buffs, and even magic buffs. Then add the Signature Smoothie's buffs to the Signature Sandwich and my team was almost unstoppable for the next hour.

Even our familiars and mounts were fed and watered with the stuff, making us equal to the average private fantasy army.

Once we actually arrived at the lane a hundred yards ahead of our camp, the entire world suddenly stopped and a set of notifications started appearing while the terrain itself went through a brief but drastic shift. The land was once open to the world with a few dozen clusters of primitive stone structures stretching out for about a mile with one massive leaning rubble 'structure' in the middle.

Now, two massive stone walls suddenly rose up to our left and right to create the actual lane with a few hundred yards of space between each wall. As well, the terrain became one long stretch of broken and stone while the clusters of structures randomly appeared in the middle of each lane in a single file row. Each of them was more than a hundred yards apart but were exactly the same distance apart every time.

That main rubble castle was still in the middle of the lane but now it was smack dab in the center of everything.

Instead of private notifications, we were presented with one large window that hovered in the air ten yards ahead of us while a digital stopwatch that showed three minutes suddenly appeared under my compass bar.

In the beginning, the message window talked about how this territory raid was the first raid completed in the closed beta for the game despite having several servers opened and they had decided to recreate the beta raid in its exact location. Then it gave a few short notices about the raid itself. First of all, this was the same race raid I had thought it was were we had to clear our lane as fast as possible and were only given one attempt per day.

For the sake of simplicity, if someone wanted to quit the raid without dying so they did not get booted from the territory all they had to do was run away. Once one of the raiders went back behind the starting line- or the fort in the second half- the raid attempt was over and the last cleared outpost would be our checkpoint.

If we were unable to clear the next outpost after another checkpoint, though, we would have to start from the first outpost and clear our way forward once again.

If we experience a troll siege, our own siege attempt would be refreshed and we could go twice in one day. In the raid itself, each 'outpost' was one hundred meters apart and the entire lane was two kilometers long and each outpost would send out one hundred trolls and add ten trolls every time we clear and outpost. Every three minutes, the 'fort' in the middle of the lane would send out reinforcements of one hundred trolls plus the bonus trolls from each outpost we cleared.

Essentially, we had to get passed ten outposts for a maximum of two hundred trolls in one fight while at risk of a maximum two hundred trolls popping up in our faces. After passing the fort, each outpost will only contain two hundred trolls but the fort will continue to send out reinforcements numbering at three hundred.

DESPITE ALL OF THAT, ONLY THIRTY PLAYERS PER CLAN COULD FORM A SIEGE PARTY.

Of course, we were allowed to use all pets and summons at our disposal while NPC mercenaries were disqualified from entering the territory in general, but who the hell and why the hell would pit numbers like those against player numbers like this?!

Then again, I was the guy going in with only a little over ten people and a couple dozen familiars.

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