Chapter 472: Consolidation
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
The battle was dramatic and unpredictable. Vampire City and Knight’s Glory were invited by Baili Xuanyuan as reinforcements, but they were instead convinced to join Lin Jie’s side at the last moment and even pointed their swords towards the Xuanyuan Alliance.
“Good, you’re ruthless enough! I like working with ruthless people.” Lin Jie let out a hearty laugh as he stuck his thumb up.
As the saying went, “Even couples are like birds of the same groove that fly in different directions during imminent disaster1.” Not to mention they were just normal cooperators. However… even if they valued interest first, the speed at which they changed sides was too fast! They were Baili Xuanyuan’s allies at first, but in the next second, they raised their swords against Baili Xuanyuan! Lin Jie was already extremely on guard in his heart, he definitely needed to be careful of them in the future.
After the two core members, Baili Xuanyuan and Character Z, were killed, the Xuanyuan Alliance, which was already at a disadvantage, was completely defeated with the addition of the Vampire City and Knight’s Glory changing sides. In less than an hour, the people from the Xuanyuan Alliance had already been cleared. Layers of equipment acquired were placed on the ground, and everywhere was filled with the light from the equipment shining.
The large-scale open auction, which Baili Xuanyuan had held to achieve instant fame, was destroyed completely.
Underneath the Dominating Icicle, Very Fat and Dark Earl were happily counting the loots they had obtained, completely ignoring Lin Jie, who stood at the side. They only noticed him after quite a while.
Very Fat smiled and said, “Leader Lone Wolf, our Knight’s Glory has picked up a total of 1,200 Silver equipment, but the number of Gold equipment was much lower, only 300 of them, these will count as my gift for entering the City of Light.”
“I hope Vampire City and Knight’s Glory could compete peacefully in the City of Light,” said Dark Earl as he smiled, revealing his sharp canine teeth. Then his expression changed, and he looked uncomfortable. “I forgot to bring blood packs this time. I feel nervous about not sucking blood, so I have to return.”
“Guild leaders, it’s best if you come a week later as the system will most likely update the map in the City of Light.” Lin Jie thought and reminded them with goodwill. “If you come early, which results in your loss, then that will not be good.”
Although the two were surprised at what Lin Jie had said, they nodded and left with their armies.
“These two are a real piece of work, don’t be deceived by them,” said Baili Changcheng hurriedly after they left. Then he added, “Also, Lone Wolf, I know you are angry, but such words like ‘Brotherhood doesn’t accept people who wag their tails and beg’, will definitely be used and cause an issue by people with intentions. Such a matter, now we should—”
“Baili, how’s Supreme Tribe developing?” Lin Jie suddenly asked.
“Uh… Still okay, I think. The Xuanyuan Alliance has been suppressed, so it won’t be long for my guild to recover to its peak like before…” Baili Xuanyuan’s voice became softer and softer as he spoke without confidence.
His guild’s development was indeed not very good, and in addition, numerous members had been lost from facing the Xuanyuan Alliance head-on, weakening the guild even further. Since he was not as wealthy as Baili Xuanyuan, he did not have money, so it was inconvenient handling matters; that was a fact.
“Supreme Tribe should prepare to rise in power.” Lin Jie took a deep breath and said, “I have thought about it. Our Brotherhood is indeed a Mercenary Association, but this organization is too multifarious. In the past, it was still small, so I could control it, but now, even if I wanted to, I don’t have the strength to control it anymore. Therefore, I’ve decided to reduce the members where only loyal brothers can join. Like before, they will be freer in the Brotherhood than guilds as there aren’t any fixed restrictions, but now there is a condition for entering.
“Meanwhile, these groups of multifarious people, I will rely on the City of Light Central Auction House to create a Trading Alliance. So from now on, the auction can also have employment missions for delivery of items. After completing a certain number of orders, one could choose to join the Supreme Tribe or Brotherhood. Your guild should temporarily stop accepting people as solo players are not reliable. If not careful, they could become bad apples.
“You must raise the benefits for being in Supreme Tribe. From now on, all those who prefer to be safe and enjoy the benefits would enter your Supreme Tribe, those who advocate freedom and dislike restraints would join Brotherhood. Brotherhood will become a legend, a legendary Mercenary Association!”
Lin Jie explained his plan in detail, after such a matter, the deadly weakness of Brotherhood had been completely exposed. Fence-sitters, who would be easily swayed, were simply the bad apples in the organization and had to be removed! To allow the Brotherhood to become more united, he had to take some measures.
“Let our comrades tidy up the spoils, we’ll go to Sakura’s and discuss what we will do next. I have many things to discuss with all of you,” said Lin Jie as he waved his hand. Everyone returned to the city and went to Sakura’s bar.
Sakura sat at the bar counter alone, shaking her round and long legs that were almost to perfection. She looked at everyone that walked into the bar and pouted.
Baili Xuanyuan had wanted Sakura to enter the Xuanyuan Alliance to provide him the information on Savage Blade’s team members, but Sakura had rejected him. Since then, Sakura’s bar had been harassed with all kinds of methods, so Sakura’s bar had gone out of business. There were even people from the Xuanyuan Alliance coming to disrupt business on a daily, and they had all been using alternate accounts, so it was fine even if they were caught by NPCs.
“Long time, no see.” Sakura pouted, and even her twin tails drooped down without energy. She pointed at the private room. “Call me anytime you want anything to drink.”
“Sakura…”
Baili Changcheng felt a little sorry for her, but when he was about to talk, he heard Zheng Ziliang’s forthright voice, “20 bottles of Desert Dew.”
“You’re too dumb, the secret to chasing girls is to suit her fancy. It can’t be that you want to comfort the owner of Sakura’s bar to let her accept the fact that her business isn’t good? Actions speak louder than words, you should just help her increase her revenue,” said Zheng Ziliang smilingly as he poked Baili Changcheng’s chest.
After entering the familiar room, they did not even rest, but immediately started discussing their plan for the future.
Dumb Fox said, “The videos of our battle this time have all been uploaded to the official website. Once again, you have gained prestige once, while on the other hand, Baili Xuanyuan’s image has plummeted. This is a good thing, however, many people have made use of what you said to make an issue out of it and impugn Brotherhood. They said that you relied on them to develop, but now you have kept all the benefits and chased people out. What do you think?”
As expected, countless people had uploaded posts on the official website. Some said the Brotherhood had escaped with the money as many mercenaries had been kicked out before their commissions were paid. Some said that there was a problem of distributing benefits within the Brotherhood. Some others also scolded the Brotherhood for being actuated by mercenary views and being impersonal. All kinds of posts were flooding the forum!
“We’ll talk about it later, it’s just a bunch of noisy bugs.” Lin Jie waved his hand and raised his head to look at everyone. He smiled and said, “What I’m more interested in is that, how much have you improved?”
Netherblue, who was in charge of compiling all kinds of data, cleared her throat and said, “All members of Savage Blade have successfully completed the Job-Advancement Mission and obtained their respective Dark Gold Mystic Skill Book. Domestic Fat Cattle and Dejected Night have learned the Combination Skill Frostfire Arrow. Bu Yi has obtained a Sub-Legendary Assisting Accessory with a hidden chain of missions, that was where Holy Nova was learned from.
“Mixed Breathless and The Heavenly Shield entered the Checkmate Canyon. The Heavenly Shield received the Job-Changing Mission of a hidden job. Lost Camel and Childe went to Phoenix Nest, they did not obtain anything, but they raised their levels by one. Star Kill snuck into the secret tribe of Shadow Worshiper and stole a scroll…”
Netherblue’s compiling ability was quite strong, with each word and sentence, she had concisely summarized everyone’s miraculous encounter. Besides Lost Camel and Childe, these two Hunters that failed to steal the Phoenix Egg, the others all had their own miraculous adventures. However, no one came in contact with the Nine Great Techniques. Indeed such a thing was a rare existence.
Lin Jie calculated carefully and murmured, “If we try to attack the City Leader’s Mansion with such a strength…”
At that moment, the door was pushed open, and Sakura walked in carefully while holding 20 luxurious and exquisite bottles. She said softly, “Desert Dew.”
“Thank you.” Lin Jie took the drinks over. As the name suggested, Desert Dew was made by gathering the extremely sparse Water Elements in the desert to form dew. It was the purest within all the drinks, and its price was 50 gold coins, also… each bottle only had one drop.
Naturally, the dew in deserts would be little!
Lin Jie did not care about the price and directly swallowed the Desert Dew. He said, “I always did not understand, watered alcohol and Wuliangye1 are all alcoholic beverages. So why would those idiots be so willing to spend so much money to drink expensive alcohol? Now I know why—they are all dumb idiots.”
Everyone: “…”
“We seem to have met with some trouble.” Heaven Plume frowned and added, “Baili Xuanyuan is throwing big bucks to increase his support rate in preparation to obtain the city! Also, the Xuanyuan Alliance is growing at an extremely fearsome speed, those traitors have already all entered the Xuanyuan Alliance. Damn it, we should not have chased them away, even if they were bad apples, piling many of those rotten apples together would still be disgusting.”
“Oh? Increasing his support rate?” Lin Jie’s eyes lit up.
The so-called increasing support from the civilians was to use money to exchange for gold coins and use gold coins to buy the items the NPCs liked to obtain favorability.
For example, if a village had 50 NPCs when the NPCs’ favorability towards you reached the maximum, then one could choose to deplete favorability to increase a certain amount of support rate. Then afterward, one would need to continue giving presents to increase their support rate until 100%.
Baili Xuanyuan, who originally wanted to forcibly seize the city, had also changed his plan and planned to directly spend big bucks! He also understood that with Lin Jie, it was impossible for him to snatch the city successfully.
Lin Jie could not help but exclaim, “He’s so rich, the money needed for such an act would at least be in the hundreds of millions.” Money would make the world go round. That was the fact in all games and of course reality. With money, one could save much time struggling in the bottom.
Baili Changcheng said in a deep voice, “That damned bast*rd, he is daring and courageous. As long as he fails this time, it would be digging his own grave! Our family would not tolerate such a huge expenditure of funds, Fu Sheng, we must…”
“Increasing support rate to obtain the city… Oh?” Lin Jie carefully spoke each word, then he suddenly stopped. “Great, great! Baili, Bu Yi, Ziliang, the three of you wait for a while and then follow me to the Land of Dusk! I was just worried about not being able to obtain the city, hahaha…”