Cooperation

Starfall Town, Black Dragon Empire.

Leroy looked at the state of the team satisfied, the member count reached 10,000.

The team stopped recruiting after this and focused solely on grinding high difficulty dungeons.

The plan was to wait for the members to get top equipment before opening the recruitment again.

The team even obtained quite a few extra stable designs.

Now that the team was consolidating its strength, it was time to expand influence in other guilds and the empire.

The competition in an empire could not be compared with the competition of in a kingdom.

A major city in a kingdom would have 3 or 4 large guilds fighting for power.

In the major city of an empire, however, there were at least 7 guilds competing against each other.

The Dream Chaser Team was mostly developing in Starfall town, but that wouldn't be enough. To develop further, the best way was to invest in other guilds, either second or first-rate guilds would be a good target.

The team didn't lack coins and even had a few valuable items to offer.

Rather than selling stable designs, it was better to use it in a guild under the team.

He then took a look at the state of the Golden Dream Shop.

The shop was the link between the Dream Chaser Team and Golden Hands Guilds.

The selling volume was relatively large now, considering that the shop only sold the best available items. Even equipment was at least of gold rank.

The revenue was around five thousand per day. In some occasions that revenue would jump to ten to fifteen thousand gold.

For example when players discovered the use for a certain material and it's price jumped.

The shop didn't sell raw materials but accumulated instead, only Zero Wing could buy some materials but it was far from being much. The shop didn't offer the guild any discount but only priority.

It was probably one of the most profitable shops in the game.

Some shops may sell much more items and earn more but they had to expend much more in raw materials than the Golden Dream Shop.

The money from other shops would be spent in a much larger amount of players while the Dream Chaser Team and Golden Hands Guilds had about 20,000 members.

For a guild that specialized in crafting items, it was a very low amount, one had to consider that an empire had a population of tens of millions.

Leroy would collaborate with any guild so long it was worth it.

The core members of the team knew this and would help to clear dungeons or in very difficult quests.

So far there was not a single conflict with guilds, only Zero Wing had them but Leroy was no babysitter.

Leroy then contacted Elise, he knew the state of the guild as he was constantly with Felicity while not in God's Domain.

Elise has also cooperated with different guilds and teams, whenever an important event happened in the empire, like a war or a new regional dungeon discovered, they would most definitely require items from the shop.

She took this chance to improve relationships while maintaining a neutral position.

Leroy contacted her because her guild received a proposal to help to capture a town with a Mythril Ore vein below.

Mythril was not an especially rare material but it was essential in the crafting of most items.

For the Golden Hands Guild, it would be absolutely necessary to get their hands on ore veins.

More and more towns appeared from time to time, some of them close or above ore veins.

Elise sent him a list of guilds that required help capturing town and mines.

Naturally, no town or mine could be captured without fighting against other large guilds.

With the state of the Dragon Phoenix Pavilion branch in the empire, there were many more guilds competing for resources.

Even after the pavilion branch recovered its strength the harm was already done and the different guilds grew strong enough to compete against it when they allied.

Because of this, the previously overbearing pavilion had to lower itself to negotiate in order to not take a loss.

It was not unthinkable for a few first-rate guilds to band together and assault one of their towns.

There were currently eight towns near mines in the empire.

If the dream chaser we're to try and capture them, they may have a chance in capturing most. But defending them with their manpower was another story.

This was the reason to help another guild capturing it, they would obtain a share while leaving said guild to take care of the town and mines.

Leroy asked Mark to lead a team and help with the capture of the town.

He not only contacted Mark but also told the rest of the core members to collaborate with town captures.

If a first-rate guild offered a low amount of shares, the team could simply contact a competitor.

After settling the conditions for cooperation and having the team now focus on helping to capture towns and mines, he decided to walk around the town as usual while waiting for more information.

He noticed three players following him around, stopping at a player stall, he bought a drink and walked to a nearby bench.

Sitting there, he slowly released mana until it formed small tendrils around the three players.

They could clearly sense the tendrils around their body and couldn't help but sweat.

Leroy dispersed the mana and tapped at his side in the bench, signaling them to sit.

The trio went there quickly, although they were curious about what happened, they had come here with a task.

After the three players sat next to him, Leroy finally spoke without looking at them. "I wonder what business brings such a dark guild to me"

"As expected, you noticed us immediately after you came out" One of them said.

"No, he did it before walking out of the building" A second one corrected.

It was the third player that answered the question. "We found a town with a very special mine, but we need help to capture it"

Leroy wasn't surprised to hear that, there were new mines being discovered almost daily.

"What is your offer?" Leroy casually asked while drinking.

"We need your team's help to defeat the strongest monster in town and protect it while we build the defenses. We offer you 30% of the mine's raw materials. If you invest 20,000 in the town defenses, we'll increase it to 35%" The dark player said.

"20,000 for 5%? It must be a very special town..." Leroy commented but didn't say more.

"We'll need to expend a few treasures breaking the array protecting the town and then defeating the monsters protecting. It is said that the mines have Mythril, Gold and Silver ores inside" The man responded.

"No wonder..." Leroy was surprised, depending on the size, it was probably the richest mine found so far.

"Alright, just defeating the strongest monster right? Let us sign the contract, Guild Master Bloodfang" Leroy said.

Bloodfang sighed helplessly and took out the contract.

After signing the paper, Leroy received the location and time of the assault. The trio left immediately.

Bloodfang left smiling, not only did he obtain the help of a powerful group, he even obtained an investment.

"Guild Master, don't you think that he is underestimating the power of the final boss? He accepted without even asking"

"Sensations... he isn't underestimating it at all" Bloodfang answered.

"Indeed, he could understand our strength from the first moment but he didn't consider us a threat. He probably knows how strong a boss that even we can't deal with is" The second man said.

"Coming here was the right choice after all" Bloodfang said before they left the town.

-

Leroy still waited while checking more information for a while before standing up.

"Felicity, can you buy some epic equipment to upgrade mine at Black Wing City?" Leroy sent her girl a message.

He previously didn't care much about epic equipment as dark gold equipment was good enough. But now, Mythic rank monsters were coming into play and using dark gold items wouldn't be enough

Even if the attributes of the epic items in Black Wing City was not as good as the ones dropped by monsters, one only needed money to buy them.

He could increase his attributes even more if he replaced the Tyche's set of equipment, but the loot from mythic monsters too valuable.

At this point, he didn't care about grand lord monsters.

"Of course, the monthly auction will be held in two days" Felicity responded.

"Great, I'll be waiting for you tonight" He said.

With that settled, he decided to go out to grind levels.

Not only would he need to help to capture a town but he did not forget about the Fallen Angels.

He traveled through many maps in order to reach a level 70 map.

There he released all of his summoned and started leveling up quickly.

High-level maps were mostly unexplored by players, he managed to open quite a few treasure chests but didn't really obtain anything extraordinary due to the treasures chest's rank.

Two and a half days passed until he returned to Starfall Town.

At level 55, he was almost ten levels higher than the player in the first place of the rankings.

"Here, I managed to obtain a chest piece and boots that increase mana" Felicity said and passed him the items.

For epic items, they were certainly not very strong but that was still good. His main obstacle when fighting powerful monsters was mana.

After changing equipment, his mana increased by 300%.

Any player would probably curse at him for expending money on such equipment, after all, players never had a problem of insufficient mana.

After that, he decided to craft items for the shop.

With him around, the volume of crafted items increased greatly, he spent two days until the date for the town capture arrived.

At the teleportation hall, he met with seven people.

Olympus, Kaydara and five priests.

This team was enough to deal even with mythic, at least with Leroy as the damage dealer.

After learning the secret technique, the team's priests had become famous in the empire.

There were even more techniques than Katakuri and the rest managed to obtain, although they were basic to intermediate techniques.

"Since the preparations are done, let's go" Leroy said.

"Yes! I really hope there is a mythic monster there, I haven't seen one after the Abyss Battlefield" Olympus said excitedly.

"Can we defeat one tough? Maybe we should wait for the rest" Kaydara voiced her opinion.

"The others are busy, and yes we should be capable of dealing with one" Leroy said and was the first one to teleport away.

Olympus followed immediately after followed by the rest.

-

It took them quite some time to arrive at their destination, they saw the town from afar.

Around ten thousand players waited outside the town, they haven't even killed the monsters outside.

Leroy was surprised, this town was conquered by beasts but it still had a magic array protecting it.

He also praised Raven's ambitions to try capturing a town guarded by level 70 monsters.

As they approached, most of Raven members were confused, they expected an army of players to help them but only a handful had arrived.

Seeing the team led by Leroy actually earned a smile from Bloodfang.

He understood that some monsters couldn't be defeated by numbers alone, this was certainly the case.