Laura set in a familiar room that she had gotten use to meeting close friends and fellow alliance members in during her free time. This time around she had Madalyn, Isabella, and Natalie come along and they were only waiting for Joshua to show up as they comfortably drank some coffee or tea. It had been a while since the last time they had gotten together to discuss things and she was thinking about having another alliance meeting as soon as everyone was around to join up. It wouldn"t be anything serious or ground breaking, but it would be good to get all caught up with one another. At the moment Joshua wanted to talk with them about some things so they had decided have a break together now that they were all available. One of the main things Laura noticed about the people in the room was the fact that Madalyn had black rings under her eyes even if she was lively and acting like her usual self. Apparently she had just succeeded in one of her experiments and was currently riding the high of that success and just pushing through the day. By the way Isabella kept glancing over to Madalyn it was clear that she was keeping an eye on her to make sure she didn"t pa.s.s out right in front of them. It was apparently a usual thing at this point since Isabella just seemed so used to it.
Natalie on the other hand was tired, but didn"t seem to be trying to pep herself up in anyway like Madalyn. Natalie had just gotten back from leading an expedition along with the Ca.r.s.en brothers and her effort over the expedition was clearly catching up to her. She used her telepathic powers to make it easy for the group to work well in tandem together. Unlike with party chat where all you could do was give a command, Natalie had reached the point where her telepathic abilities allowed everyone that was linked together to feel each other"s emotions. This made it so they could sense when someone was in trouble or needed help. It was a great ability, but it wasn"t the only thing that Natalie was able to do with her soul beast abilities, but it was the one thing that made her a great leader on the battle field.
At the moment everyone in the room was at a high level and considered the elites of the explorer portion of humanity. Both Laura and Madalyn had reached level sixty-three which put them at the head of all the guilds in America. Natalie was trailing a little bit behind at level sixty-one since she was held up by her time spent with the World Government Guild. It was yet another reason she pushed herself so much to catch up with the rest of the group. Isabella was the lowest level in the room at the moment she was still level fifty-nine, but she had come a long way considering that she didn"t start exploring until a good half a year or so after them. THe fact that she handled a lot of the more day to day stuff with the guild made her ability to keep pace in level even more remarkable.
Now that they were all aiming to level at this point they were making great strides forward with the elite members of their alliance and were hoping to be able to take on the larger town in seven months or so. They wanted to be able to get it done before the meeting between all the major guilds that would be coming at the end of the year in December and if they could get things done in late October or early November then they"d be in the perfect position. Plus they"d have six months after that to set up the large town with defenses to protect from any other groups that would attempt to take it over. Guilds couldn"t work together to take over a territory because that would make things unfair, at the same time the defending guild would always have the advantage. If you wanted to take over someone else"s territory then you had to be stronger, smarter, and just better than them without being a bigger guild.
If they succeeded it would also force the World Government Guild to try to force itself while catching up. They might bite off more than they could chew and end up giving them an even bigger lead in the end. All in all the plan was good, but they would have to train these next seven months to live up to that hope. Just as Laura was starting to frown over those thoughts a knock on the door happened before they all turned to see Joshua walking into the room.
"Hey guys haven"t seen you in a while. Hope things are going good for you." Joshua said with a big grin. They were all happy to see him, but they also realized the changes that were starting to happen to him. He actually looked a bit slimmer even if his muscles looked more defined. They imagined if he didn"t have on the shirt they would see a perfect body without any unnecessary muscle underneath like before. The other obvious change was his hair which looked even more unruly and far longer than he had ever had it in the past. It had strands of silver in it and reached down to his shoulders while also puffing up a bit at the top. A pair of bangs fell down to cover up his forehead and get in the way of his eyes when looking down. It was obvious that he had tried to cut it back, but it just kept growing.
"What took you so long, we"ve all been waiting on you for half an hour?" Madalyn asked trying to seem as though she was angry, but the grin on her face said otherwise.
"Yeah, nothing bad happened right." Natalie said with a frown as Joshua came over and set in one of the empty chairs at the table. There was all sorts of snacks laid out for them so he grabbed a couple and poured himself some tea as well.
"Nothing too bad, my sister was just being a poor loser and kept trying to fight me over and over this morning. That put me behind and I lost track of time." Joshua said with a small anxious smile.
"You act like you two aren"t similar. The fact that you kept indulging her tells me more than enough. You probably wanted to keep sparring just as much as she did in the end." Laura said with a fake cold tone while glaring at him. "Where is she anyways, I haven"t seen her since she came back from the expedition.
"Well she kind of threw a bit of a fit over the fact that Lilly and I are catching up to her in levels so quickly. She kind of forced her way into training alongside us during our next expedition." Joshua said with a sigh. "I just wanted to let you guys know about it since you probably had plans for her and all. She"s never actually been the type to stick to a plan or anything even if mom hates that."
"That"s fine. At this point we"re all just grinding for levels anyways. It won"t matter if she grinds with us or with your group. It might just help her out in the end anyways." Laura said before sipping at her tea.
"So I guess that means you guys are on track for the plan then?" Joshua asked.
"So far everything"s going well Joshua." Isabella said calmly before pulling up a clipboard with some notes written on it. It seemed like she was keeping track of things that had been happening for everyone. "There aren"t any unforeseen circ.u.mstances at this point and all of our territories are well defended. We won"t have to worry about any other guilds provoking us for the time being."
"Well after what Madalyn did the last time that happened I highly doubt anyone would be willing to cause trouble with us at the moment. They"d be more worried about protecting their own territories from other similar guilds. I get the feeling that things will get a bit crazy in the coming years." Natalie said with a frown.
"What do you mean?" Joshua asked.
"For the moment things are quiet since there are enough territories to go around, but that won"t be the case for much longer. As leveling becomes harder the types of territories that people can take over will shrink. Eventually it will be hard to come by small towns and the only areas left available will be bigger towns or even cities. There is no way smaller guilds can handle that at this point when even large guilds like us will have to struggle for a large town let alone a city. So the supply for territories will shrink even if the demand continues to grow as more guilds are created." Natalie explained.
"It"s why we don"t plan on spreading ourselves to thin with too many territories. Sure we could take over more small territories, but having to constantly defend them will take away from the other things we need to do while also causing unnecessary conflict." Madalyn said before smirking. "Of course after the way I completely annihilated the last guild that tried to take over one of my territories I highly doubt anyone is willing to get involved with us unless they are either strong enough which is unlikely at this point or they"re foolish."
"Well I guess I"m glad I got a territory then. I wouldn"t want to have to deal with all the conflict later on." Joshua said with a small smile.
"Oh so you finally got a territory, I"ve been wondering how long it would take, but I"d thought it would take a lot longer than this. At least another few months." Isabella said while writing something down on the clip board. "Does this mean that you will be creating a guild soon?"
"Probably. I"ve already started building the defenses for the town so I"m going to have to start up a guild to help back it up soon. Nothing too big for now since I"m still mostly focused on leveling. The area we got has a lot of places for training nearby so that"s what we"ll be up to for the coming months." Joshua said. He then went on to tell them all about his territory and the things surrounding it so they had a good idea of what it was like. He would let them come visit the place after he had it set up properly, but for now just about all of them were busy dealing with something else at the moment.
"Would you like us to send over one of the architects we have that is now part of Nathaniel"s guild?" Isabella asked, but Joshua just waived it off.
"No thanks, I"m sure Henry is excited at finally having the opportunity to build his own town. He"s always loved that kind of stuff in games now he gets to do it in real life." Joshua said politely. Even though they were in a relaxed setting Joshua knew that Isabella liked to always try to keep things professional even when just about all the people she worked under were the exact opposite.
"There is one other thing I"d like to ask for." Isabella said surprising everyone else. For the most part she was relatively quiet and usually just listened in on these types of conversation while keeping tabs of things, but this time around she seemed far more proactive.
"Sure what is it?"
"I"d like to be able to use the blue prints for the range increase on turrets. It would make it easier for us to defend all of our territories. The bigger the turret range the less people we need to have around to protect the town. Also the less likelihood anyone would be willing to challenge any of our territories. It would also be nice if we all worked to find the components for the portable solar powered generator. It could be helpful in the future for long expeditions which are sure to occur in a few years."
Joshua thought about it for a moment before agreeing under a certain condition. "Sure, as long as no one outside of the alliance knows about how to make the two blue prints then it is fine. I"ve got no problem sharing blue prints among friends." After that they spent the rest of the little break catching up on other things and at the end of it they were all about to head out to do their own schedules for the day. Before Isabella left she handed over a stack of ten blue prints to Joshua with a small smile. Madalyn seemed to find it funny and Joshua knew exactly what it was about. Now everyone was going to treat him like the lucky dice roller of the group and make him handle all blue prints going forward. He just sighed and left once again making his way to the blue print shop.