The guild leaders left in high spirits, each carrying a Queen's Crystal gifted by Lila.
They had barely stepped out when a massive wave of Level 30 players flooded in. These were the allied members who had unlocked cross-city teleportation but were still a long way from Level 35, dispatched by their leaders to grind quests for Crimson Bloom. The Territory, designed for a few thousand players, suddenly swelled with over twenty thousand, completely mobbing the Guild Steward.
Realizing the three new buffs on their status bars came from this very Territory—and that completing quests could upgrade those buffs—morale skyrocketed. The visitors threw themselves into the grind with manic enthusiasm. The infectious energy caught on. The Crimson Bloom members who had been idling or chatting stopped gossiping and joined the frenzy, crowding the Steward for their own daily quests.
For the individual players, the rewards were identical regardless of their guild tag. But on the backend, the mechanics differed. If a Crimson Bloom member turned in 10 Wood for a resource quest, the guild storage gained 10 Wood. If an Allied Guild member turned in the same quest, Crimson Bloom received 5 Wood, and the allied player's home guild received the other 5. Relic Offering quests worked the same way, granting Crimson Bloom only half a point per allied completion.
Even with the split revenue, the sheer volume of players meant Crimson Bloom's construction progressed at lightning speed.
Within half a day, the Apothecary was finished. A new NPC spawned by the entrance to the basic storefront, which already had options for further upgrades. Lila checked the vendor's inventory and smiled. The potions weren't sold for coins; they required Guild Contribution Points. Better yet, the stock included specialty items no standard NPC offered: temporary experience buffs, gold drop rate boosters, and even elixirs that permanently increased base stats. Naturally, these premium items came with strict purchase limits and non-stacking restrictions.
Looking at the inventory list, Lila was deeply satisfied. This was a real guild shop. She immediately queued up the construction tasks for the remaining buildings.
The player base was loving the grind. Guild quests were entirely soloable. Even support classes had nothing to worry about, as the system automatically assigned them low-difficulty, non-combat tasks. Without the hassle of forming parties, time efficiency was through the roof. Players could pick up or drop quests whenever they wanted. The experience and gold yields rivaled running dungeons, with one massive advantage: dungeon loot was tied to RNG, but guild quests offered guaranteed Contribution Points. If not for the daily quest caps, the players would have never left the Territory.
Lila didn't linger. She handed oversight of the construction to her Vice Guild Master, Silvana—her real-life secretary, who had recently been helping Ms. Albright manage the Whitmore family assets—and headed out to grind dungeons.
For the next few days, the server went completely quiet. Kael didn't show his face, Crimson Bloom stayed out of the system announcements, and all the major guilds kept their heads down, focusing entirely on leveling.
The only action was the constant bickering in the global chat between Crimson Bloom supporters and their rivals.
"Weren't some people talking a lot of trash recently?" a Crimson Bloom player mocked. "Crimson Bloom is already Level 2. Where's that other guild?"
"What was their name again? I forgot."
"Serpent's Coil, right?"
"Oh, right! The guys with the Sunfire Bell. The 2.5 billion credit bell. Awfully quiet lately. Did they break it?"
"Who are you insulting? It was 2.6 billion, actually."
"Yeah, don't forget the extra 100 million they paid for the instruction manual!"
"Haha! Must be nice to have more money than brains."
The Serpent's Coil supporters remained dead silent.
A day later, a short video surfaced on the forums.
It was combat footage: five Level 45 bosses absolutely trashing an Elite mob named Hornsnapper in the Satyr's Head zone. Floating clearly above all five bosses was a summoner tag: Lila.
The clip was barely ten seconds long and heavily edited. No other players were in the frame, making it impossible to identify who recorded it. But those ten seconds were enough to blow the community wide open.
"Holy shit. Five Level 45 bosses?!"
"No wonder Crimson Bloom cleared the upgrade quest so fast."
"That's straight-up hacking."
"Wait, doesn't that anteater look familiar? Isn't that the boss Dawnbreaker fought in Thaloria?"
"Yeah, I saw the clips from Thaloria. That's Norlun."
"But the name tag says Strengthened Norlun..."
"She must have upgraded her summoning item!"
"Is... is it a one-time use item?"
"If that thing isn't a consumable, I'll eat my own keyboard on stream!"
"Bro, don't make promises you can't keep."
Inside Crimson Bloom, the members were furious. The guild chat exploded.
"Who did this?! Who leaked the Guild Master's secret?"
"Someone must have uploaded it by mistake."
"Mistake, my ass. They cropped everyone else out so we wouldn't know who recorded it. It was deliberate."
"Exactly. The GM explicitly told everyone to keep this under wraps. Now there's video proof."
"We have a rat. A traitor in the guild!"
"If I find out who it is, I'm going to ruin them!"
Lila watched the chat spiral, but she didn't panic. She calmly typed a response.
"Relax, girls. Someone probably just thought it looked cool and posted it for fun. I trust you all. There are no traitors here. Focus on leveling. The war is about to start."
The members were still seething, but Lila's words effectively shut down the witch hunt.
"Fine," one muttered in chat. "But when this is over, I'm finding them and giving them a piece of my mind."
The video remained the hottest topic on the global channels right up until the day before the siege on Starter Village 9139. Then, a server-wide announcement finally shifted the spotlight.
[System: Congratulations to Serpent's Coil! They are the second guild to reach Level 2. Rewarded: Common Relic x1.]
Miles away, Caleb Mordant let out a long exhale. Finally caught up.
But as he looked out over his newly acquired 130-acre Territory, his jaw locked, and he began grinding his teeth all over again.