Chapter 158: Base Defense War (1)
Jinook’s message came immediately after a couple seconds since Ian sent his message.
• Lee Jinook: Yes, Jinsung. As a matter of fact, I was planning on contacting you.
• Ian: Yes, Professor, is the training ground now on the final stage?
• Lee Jinook: The upgrade finished yesterday afternoon. Starting today, we can now take in customers.
The thing that Ian had requested from Jinook was none other than an upgrade on the Domain’s training ground.
At the end of several months since the training ground was first built, it had finally been upgraded to the final stage.
‘The training ground could truly become an amazing bonanza at this point. Now, it seems even information related to Potential has slowly been releasing, and the time has come.’
The training ground was a unique place that could quickly raise the Potential of a Familiar.
That is, if Ian’s special skill, ‘Training’, was excluded.
‘I don’t know how much of a ripple effect it will have, but at least amongst Summoners, it won’t be able to help but become the greatest issue.’
To Summoners, the ‘evolution’ of a Familia was an incredibly important part.
Because of that, in order to solve the secret related to the evolution of a Familiar, a dispute occurred periodically on the Familiar bulletin board.
However, there hasn’t been a person that knew about the relations.h.i.+p between Potential and evolution almost as exactly as Ian did yet.
It could be that there was a user that found out, but hasn’t released the information like Ian, but at least in the community, the information had not yet been released.
At this time, when there was almost no one that knew about the correlation between Potential and evolution, if the role of the training ground also became known, a truly enormous wave would rise.
• Ian: Then, how many Familiars can be accommodated in the training ground right now, Professor?
• Lee Jinook: Hmm… It looks like a total of 50 large Familiars, and for medium and small Familiars, 100 each could be accommodated. I expanded it completely using all of the allotted land you gave me.
• Ian: Oh, the number of accommodatable Familiars is larger than expected. Thank you for your efforts.
• Lee Jinook: Then, are you planning on now releasing the information outside starting today?
• Ian: Yes, Professor. I think it is the right time now. Users that have almost found out the secret of Potential will probably already exist, and soon, the information will also be released in the community. We will release the information before then and dominate the market in advance. There probably won’t be a Domain that possesses a training ground that has been upgraded to the maximum level anywhere in Kailan.
Ian’s calculations were simple.
If he released the information into the community that within the correlation of Potential and a Familiar’s evolution, the higher the Potential, the higher the range that the Familiar’s abilities grew to, almost all Familiars within Kailan would gather at the Lotus Domain.
If that was the case, naturally, with the Lotus Domain as the centre, there will be an explosive economic growth, and there will also be Familiars that will begin to just put their roots down and settle in the Domain.
As the level of the monsters around the Domain were 70 at the lowest and 100 at the highest, the hunting ground would be charming enough to Summoners in the mid-level range as well.
• Lee Jinook: Alright, student Jinsung. Then, how are you planning on going with the promotions?
Ian, who thought for a moment, sent a short response.
• Ian: I will take care of it, Professor. Just thoroughly prepare to take in customers.
* * *
Jinsung, who finished his conversation with Professor Lee Jinook, logged out of the game for now and came out of his capsule.
He was planning on not logging on for about a quarter of a day now.
‘Let’s think that I’m writing an attack piece for the first time in a while and write something as diligently as possible.’
Ian, who first opened up his internet browser, began to sc.r.a.pe together information related to his Familiars.
Gathering large amounts of information on evolved individuals that Ian didn’t know, yet the information has been released for, was first priority.
‘It is most important to write it so that it looks as good as possible, and also for it to be easily readable.’
Of course, it was no mistake that even if he wrote the information that when Potential was 100 after other evolution requirements are met, they would evolve and that they needed to raise their level when their Potential is high in order for their abilities to grow up to a higher range in a condensed form, it would be an incredible amount of information, but he couldn’t be pleased with just that.
He wanted to write something like a Summoner’s bible, something that if you were a Summoner, you needed to read at least once.
Ian was planning on a.n.a.lyzing all Familiars and their evolutions, and organizing everything he could from their ranks, the maximum and minimum rate of growth based on each rank’s abilities, so that it was easy to look at.
‘I’ll promote the bulletin board link by posting it up at the end of the video that Sojin will be uploading, and since my ID also has become quite famous, if I sell my name a little, the number of hits will probably go up in an instant.’
Ian, who sat in front of the computer, began to be absorbed like crazy into it.
* * *
The Lotus Base in the Central Continent.
In the barracks of the centre of the base, Fiolan and Herz were sharing a conversation with serious expressions.
“What? We’re already building several buildings right now, but we’re going to raise more on top of this?”
“Yes, Fiolan. This is something I just discussed with Ian about. With the defense tower as the main, we decided to build everything we could that could go around it.”
At Herz’s words, Fiolan wore an incredibly fl.u.s.tered expression.
“No, there’s no big problem in starting construction now, but if we go on like this, are you sure we won’t be able to complete anything and just hit the bottom with our resources? If that’s the case, we really won’t be able to do anything, and just fail…”
The process of building a building in Kailan was incredibly similar to the real one.
For example, just because a building worth 5 million gold was being built, it didn’t mean that 5 million gold just went in straight from the beginning.
If just the basic construction costs were there, then the construction could begin whenever, and for any additional costs, as long as they were covered then, the building was continuously built.
As the Lotus Guild had quite a bit of resources, it was possible to begin building all defense buildings at the same time just like Ian’s plan, but because it wasn’t to the point that they could continuously pour in resources until it was completed, Fiolan was worried.
At her words, Herz nodded his head as he replied.
“I’m also quite worried. However, after hearing what Ian said, it doesn’t seem like it’s completely impossible.”
Fiolan rejoiced as she asked back.
“Really?”
“Yes, firstly, we have the War Trading Post. Starting around tomorrow, we’ll be able to produce desert foot soldiers, and once we start producing soldiers, we will be able to supply a large amount of Specialty Points to the point it will be incomparable.”
“Hmm, I feel like it will still be lacking even with that… But for now, since we’ve never suffered a loss following Ian’s words, let’s proceed with it.”
As there were not many parts that made sense commonsensically amongst Ian’s events, Fiolan agreed with it just like that.
And Herz, who saw her do so, smirked as he nodded his head.
“Okay, then let’s start raising the buildings immediately.”
However, Fiolan, of course, but even Herz wasn’t even able to guess the large-scale business(?) that Ian was thinking of with the northern domain as the foundation.
“But where is Ian at this important time?”
At Fiolan’s question, Herz scratched the back of his head as he shook his head.
“I, I’m not too sure. He just told me that he’s going to go make money.”
“…?”
Like that, while the two people were extending the defense buildings of the base diligently with the guild members.
Ian was diligently sitting in front of his computer and pounding his keyboard.
* * *
“Loren, have you seen the community?”
Loren was the user currently ranking 1st place in the Summoner level rankings.
She wasn’t affiliated with any guild, but she was affiliated with a small-scale ‘team’ that was made up of just Summoner users.
The name of the team was the ‘Golden Summoners’, which was incredibly famous in the Summoner community.
The Golden Summoners was a team made up of a total of about twenty Summoner members, and they were people that didn’t proceed with PVP or quests, but mainly just PVE or even actively in capturing monsters.
Every single one of them were exceptional in their skills and their ranks were also high, so it was to the point that many Summoners wanted to get into this Golden Summoners team, but there was one person who they had as their idol.
That was an obvious, but this was Ian.
“Millian, what is it?”
At Loren’s question, the lad called Millian responded quickly.
Million was also one of the top-rankers in the Summoner rankings that was close to lv 120.
“The community is in complete chaos right now. It’s to the point that the amount of people logging onto the Summoner bulletin board is so high that the server is down.”
At his words, Loren’s already two large eyes widened even more.
“What, an incident must have occurred, I a.s.sume?”
Millian nodded his head as he replied.
“An incident it is. Since Ian has uploaded an attack piece onto the Summoner bulletin board.”
“…!”
At those words, Loren stood up abruptly.
“Ian has uploaded an attack piece? Have you read the content?”
“I just read it and came here. I wasn’t able to read all of it. That is, because it was so long. I read a little, but thought that it would be better to read it after letting you know first, Loren… I glanced over it roughly, but the quality alone was the best. As expected of Ian!”
At Millian’s words, Loren smiled brightly as she responded.
“Thank you so much, Millian. I’m going to go out right now and come back after I read the piece on the community!”
“Go ahea…”
Before Millian even finished responding, Loren seemed to have logged off as she disappeared into thin air.
While looking at her, Millian shook his head.
“As expected of the president. I’m also a fan of Ian, but I can’t keep up with Loren.”
Ian had no idea, but about a month ago, so about the time that Ian’s videos regularly began to be spread on YouCast, Ian’s fan club was created.
And the president of that fan club was none other than Loren.
Loren directly contacted Sojin, the uploader that is in full charge of Ian’s videos and uploads them, and she made the existence of Ian’s fan café known, and was directly receiving the videos as well.
For Sojin, the fact that there was a fandom being created for Ian was an incredible gain for her business-wise, so she willingly supported it, and the number of members in Ian’s fan club was increasing exponentially.
At this current moment, the number of members in the fan club was close to 150 thousand people.
Truthfully, if the fact that even the fan club of Ilahan, the Guild Master of the DarkRuna Guild who was known as the 1st place ranker in the combined rankings, was not quite at 200 thousand members, this was an incredible number.
“I should also quickly log off and put up the address of the attack piece on the bulletin board of LoveLeeAn. Would someone have already put it up?”
LoveLeeAn was the name of Ian’s fan club.
In English it was LoveLeeAn.
It was the naming sense of Loren.
“Speaking of which, then does that mean the hunting schedule for today is automatically cancelled?”
Millian opened up the party chatroom and checked the number of people logged on.
He felt that the others had already heard the word that Ian’s attack piece had gone up on the community from somewhere and logged off.
As every member in the Golden Summoners were huge fans of Ian, this was truthfully an obvious sequence of moves.
After uploading an announcement in the chatroom, where there was no one, Million logged off.
• Announcement: Today’s hunting schedule will be postponed until the next day. Everybody, carefully read Ian’s attack piece ten times by tomorrow and a.n.a.lyze it for sharing.