“I actually agree with him, I’m interested in the answer to his question,” a different voice sounded out. Everyone turned to the source and saw a middle-aged man with a sharp eye and a mustache. There was a hood covering a part of his head, giving him a mysterious bearing. However, everyone recognized the man.
Jack scanned him using his God-Eye monocle, and realized that he had seen the person before. He was Kill Order, the third rank winner during the tutorial period, and was also an elder to another prominent guild, Black Cloak. This guild was not lower in prestige if compared to Death Associates. Kill Order was a level 18 Rogue at the moment.
Because of him, Manager Steelhand was in a difficult place. He could still dismiss a nobody like John, but he could not treat Kill Order the same way.
John wore a very wide grin, “so, how are you going to regulate the monster grinding areas? Or do you still asking me to piss off?”
Manager Steelhand had a frown, before he gave a sigh, “we will surely come to this issue in our speech, but since this friend is so hasty. Fine, we will speak on this matter early. Our plan did indeed to form a scouting party that keeps an eye on the boundary. We will peacefully advise any players that come into the area to hunt elsewhere, or wait until our teams are done in the area.”
“What if they don’t comply?” John asked.
“We will try our best to persuade them to accede.”
“What if they still don’t comply?”
Manager Steelhand eyes twitched, he glanced at Queen Magenta beside him, who had a look that said, “now you know what it feels like.”
He gave his best cordial display, such childish debate was beneath him. In the past, he ate this kind of crap for breakfast. “Then we will persuade them harder, we might use some sort of intimidation to make them understand if we have to, but nothing too extreme. I’m sure they will get the message before things get out of hand.”
“You mean beat them up till they comply?” John uttered.
“You’re twisting my words,” Manager Steelhand said with annoyance. He took a deep breath before saying, “what I meant was we will deal with it like how a law enforcer would warn a would-be criminal.”
“But you are not a law enforcer. You have neither the training nor the legality. When a law officer faced a would-be criminal that is stubborn and insists on causing trouble, he would arrest the guy. So what would you do to these so-called trespassers? You can’t arrest them, can you?”
“We will do as what the law enforcer does. We might not be able to arrest them in this world, but we can apply a little bit of force to…”
“So you’re going to beat them up,” John interrupted him mercilessly.
Manager Steelhand expression was dark despite his mouth was still forcing the smile. It made him looked weird.
“So what if we beat them up! Anyone who doesn’t know their place needs to be taught a lesson,” The Real Man weighed in from his seat.
“That’s right, they can only blame their own weakness,” Boulder from Weary Wolf joined in to support the organizer guilds.
“Well, considering your two guild’s brusque reputations, I won’t be surprised if you kill everyone that says no to you,” John retorted to them.
“I think we better…”
“Another issue,” John cut Manager Steelhand mid-sentence again. “This monster grinding monopolization plan of yours…”
“I wouldn’t call it that. I call it Resource management plan.”
“Yes, certainly. Now, about this monster grinding monopolization plan of yours, currently around our capital, there are roughly seven areas with difficulty suitable to current mainstream players. Other areas would bring higher risk or grant lower experience yield. One area roughly can hold around five hundred players if considering everyone grinds on the monsters in those areas comfortably without excessive competition, and I must say this number had already considering you do two shifts in grinding. How many members are in your guild alone?
“The maximum number of members allowed in a level 1 guild is 500 members. Although you are not in your full condition yet, I would say you three guilds have at least 400 members, am I right? What about the rest of us here? We are also some of the best guilds currently in the capital of Thereath, not as good as the three of you, of course,” John then turned to where Kill Order was sitting before adding, “except for Black Cloak and Saint Edge obviously.
“I won’t say that we have as many members as yours, but we have at least half of your numbers, around 200, I say? How many of us guilds are here apart from you three? Thirty? More than thirty I think, but let’s just say thirty. Put all of us together, how much do we get? 7200 members. Seven areas accommodate around 3500 players if we are to grind efficiently. Which is less than half of our total numbers. So even when we are not considering chasing out outsiders, we are still competing between ourselves. Now, how are you going to apply priority? Will the members of Death Associates, Corporate United, and Wicked Witches get priority over the rest of us?”
Manager Steelhand chuckled, “you are blowing this out of proportion. There is no way we will all go grinding monsters at the same time. Some of us will be busy with other matters. In reality, I would say only half of us will most likely do grinding. We can still work around that way, right?”
“But you can’t deny that there will be a special time when most of us coincidentally choose the same time to grind, right? The question is still the same, who will get the priority then?”
“That will just be an isolated case, you can’t use such a case to judge the issue as a whole.”
“You are dodging the question, aren’t you?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are dodging it.”
Kill Order weighed in again as they were going back and forth, “I’m interested in the answer to the question as well. How would you apply priority when overpopulation amongst our members happens? Black Cloak also has close to 400 members. So I would say the number this brother here…”
“John,” John said.
“… Brother John here mentioned, can already be considered as underestimating our total numbers. I would say that if we all join hands. The matter of competition between our own selves will be a very real issue.”
Manager Steelhand made a small laugh to feign casualness, his eyes darted from John to Kill Order. Are these two cooperating to mess with us? He couldn’t help but have the thought.
“What is there to discuss? Of course, the strongest guilds will decide on the priority,” Scarface suddenly came out and said his piece. He must have run out of patience hearing these continuous arguments.
Manager Steelhand gave him a wave and a look indicating for him to calm down, but another voice came from his other side.
“That’s right, you should know your place! Who are you to keep blabbering in front of us? You should be honored that we even invited you to join our alliance!” Queen Magenta uttered fiercely.
Manager Steelhand looked at her with a glare. Seriously? You mad woman! He wanted to scream.
“Ah, so there you admit it. You meant for us to be nothing but your underlings?” John exclaimed. Others in the audience started to murmur.
Queen Magenta clearly didn’t see Steelhand’s glare, she continued with her heated remark, “Of course, weaker ones should know their places and listen to…”
“All right! All right! Everyone! How about we take a five minutes break?” Manager Steelhand said out loud, drowning the noises that had become louder. “I see that everyone is on edge. This is good. A discussion is supposed to go both ways. Let us stop for a while before we continue again. I’m sure we can find the best solution for this issue.”
He then forcefully dragged both Queen Magenta and Scarface back.
Jack was trying his best to stifle his laughter. John was really a troublemaker. Jack wanted to disrupt the meeting as well, but he couldn’t think of an effective plan, all he could manage to come up with was to record the meeting and gave it to White Scarfs for them to deal with it. But from the look of it, John alone might be able to turn this meeting into a mess all on his own. Though he was not sure what his reason for doing it, he was certainly in support of it.
Wait! A thought suddenly came up to him. He might have the thing that could stir up more trouble to this meeting.
