As every officer of the guild went their separate ways, to either prepare more or rest, Athena had already set some players on watch on the walls. She had warned them to stay low, since they knew there would be long-range shooters waiting for the occasion to take a pre-emptive kill.
Phoenix had read up on the rules of guild wars, whenever she had some time, and noticed one important function that she thought it good of activating before the fighting started.
There was a delay Exp function, where she could forcefully send any Exp made during the guild war into the guild inventory, and redistribute it at the end. This gave her an idea.
She quickly sent a message in the guild messaging tab.
'I will activate the delayed Exp function in a few moments. For anyone that dies and loses a level during the guild war, we will return your Exp at the end from the pool we gather from defending. Make sure you send a screenshot of your levels in the guild chat before the fighting starts, so we can know what level you are. Those who don't send a screenshot will forgo getting their levels back.'
As soon as she sent that, she taped the delay Exp icon, toggling it on. Messages started coming in the guild chat, with clear names and levels.
Phoenix smiled.
'At least the players we have can follow simple instructions.'
But the next moment, she received a message from Khalor.
'Phoenix. I did not agree with this. You will stunt my levels by doing this. Turn it off.'
The woman smirked before answering back.
'Khalor. I don't have to pass any decision through you. You may be a guild officer, but I'm the vice leader. If you aren't happy, leave the guild and join the forces invading us. We will get to see who is stronger between you and the guild guardian.'
She stood in place, awaiting his answer. After a minute, and what she thought was a distant scream, Khalor's answer came.
'Fine! But you better not cheat me out of my fair share of Exp!'
Phoenix giggled.
'Of course not. Don't forget to send a screenshot of your name and level in the guild chat, so we can cover your loss if you die.'
No reply came this time, and neither did Khalor send the required screenshot. Phoenix shrugged him off.
It was his problem if he died. If he refused to follow the instructions, then he would have to make do with the Exp they gave him at the end.
She started walking again, heading to her's and Astaroth's room in the palace, wanting to rest a bit before the fight. But another private message interrupted her.
This one was from Silent Light.
'Phoenix. I have found a cathedral on the base. It has a graveyard attached to it, but it seems inactive.'
'Is there a question that goes with that statement?'
'Ahh, yes. I don't think we have enough time to rebuild the cathedral before the fighting starts, but I could start re-consecrating the graveyard.'
Phoenix became slightly confused.
'Is that necessary?'
'Well, not really. But the guild has no respawn points as of right now. If we die when the fighting starts, the players who die get teleported to the nearest graveyard. And that is outside the walls.'
Phoenix finally understood why he wanted to re-consecrate the graveyard. The idea was great, but if she had known this before, they would have prioritized that sooner.
Brushing the small discontent away, Phoenix gave her answer to Silent.
'How long will this take, and can someone else do it?'
'I believe it shouldn't take over four hours. The issue is, I'm the only priest in the guild yet. The other healers in the guild are druids or shamans, as well as other less common classes. So I don't think they can do it.'
Phoenix frowned. She understood the implications here.
If Silent was busy when the fighting started, they would be missing one powerful healer. But if they pushed this issue to after the war, they would bleed players on every death, sending them outside the walls, where they would be slaughtered.
Phoenix decided it was better to lack a healer for a few hours than to lose players during the fight.
'You can ?proceed. As soon as it is done, you will need to rush to your assigned position.'
'Yes, Ma'am!'
Phoenix opened up the guild base tab, waiting a few seconds, before a new tab popped up.
*Graveyard re-consecration*
*Estimated time: 4h 31m 54 seconds*
She nodded, closing the interface. It was a bit more time than Silent had estimated, but not much more.
'Let's just hope the fighting doesn't start too soon,' she thought, heading to her room.
Over the next hours, reports kept coming her way, as most officers knew she would handle them better than Astaroth, and defaulted to her opinion over his for now.
Questions about defensive structures were asked and answered. Reports about more and more guilds and players arriving outside their walls.
Tension was slowly mounting, making everyone in the Bastion nervous. Even the crafting players were feeling pressured, as their work was getting more and more important.
One crafter, in particular, kept getting pestered by Gulnur, who was in charge of this part of the defences. The crafter's name was Malador.
Gulnur was the one that recruited him, as they were from the same race, and hanged in the same city a lot. He was a crafter that was specific to the Dwarven race.
Malador was an Engraver.
In the Dwarven cities, they revered Engravers as much as blacksmiths. The reason for that was that Engravers were the ones carving the runes into their equipment, making them magical.
Engravers could carve runes into any surface, giving it the ability to channel natural mana, allowing whatever the runes were carved into, to act as a catalyst to magic.
And right now, Gulnur was working Malador to the bone. Recruiting Malador had been easy since the man had a foul temper and many guilds turned him down.
The man kept demanding a safe place to practice his trade and not be disturbed. When Gulnur recruited him, the Dwarf thought he had struck gold.
He promised Malador a safe work environment, as well as peace. But that was dashed mere hours after he joined the guild when Paragons went into guild war mode.
It was too late to leave now, though. Malador was stuck inside the base already.
'I should have known a non-merchant guild would do this…' the Dwarf grumbled, while he engraved sigils into a part of the outer wall.
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