"Damn, I never thought that following this little scammer would bring such a stroke of amazing luck."
Two men were standing at the back of the group and overseeing the painful fight that was currently taking place in the mecha goblin valley.
This was the guild leader and the guild vice-leader of the Assasin guild.
Despite their unexpected windfall, there was still a frown on their faces as the little gnomes turned out to be extremely problematic.
When their health dropped low, the few gnomes clustered together and self-destructed, blasting into oblivion and taking a couple of their guild members along with them.
"Tsk. Tsk. If things continue like this… we are not going to last long. How are the preparations coming along? Is the support party ready?" Abraki sighed.
Hearing his words, the man standing next to him, Elias, immediately responded back. "I already sent a word and confirmed it twice."
"We are bringing along 30 more players this time. In total, all 60 of our Assasin guild's elite members will be assembled here in the next hour."
"Hmph. After that, we will see how these gnomes are still putting up a fight!"
"No matter what this place has, we can raid it from start to finish and amass all the treasures within."
"Yes, we will." Abraki nodded in agreement.
As the guild leader, he had absolute faith in his guild. He knew that no matter what the obstacle was, they would shatter it and come out on top!
"Our guild has consistently been one of the top guilds in the server for the past decade."
"Every year there is a new video game released and it topples the old one, but our guild has still continued to persist."
"Evolution Online… This game as well we will be the ones coming out on the top."
Elias smiled. "We have managed to already overcome the biggest hurdle. These things are nothing, Abraki."
The guild's vice-leader chuckled as he thought back to their plight at the beginning of the game.
Unlike the other games, 'Evolution Online' had a 100% image and character sync with real life. Of course, this aspect of the new and mysterious game affected a lot of things.
But being a NEET and pro-gamers only guild, their team took a big blow.
Almost 75% of their heavy hitters were also heavy in the real life.
So their Assasin guild which typically had sleek and slender ninja like characters in every other game, suddenly ended up being filled with fat potatoes in this game.
How could they still continue playing as assassins?
Some of the newer members were more flexible and readily converted their playing style to another class.
But the oldest members of their guild all had their own pride. They did not want to give up and change their identity so quickly.
So every single one of them trained their bodies from day to dusk.
In just a month, they became lean and muscular in the real world, thereby forcefully retaining their former character structure in this game also.
This was precisely why their top-tier guild had been keeping a low profile for so long.
While others grinded in the game non-stop, their guild members were busy exercising and running laps around playgrounds.
And with this update to the game, everyone was able to enter again, instantly rising their guild's power and strength exponentially.
Moreover, some of their guild members who logged in for the first time after the update also received unexpected gift boxes which had contained several surprises.
All in all, they were bulldozing forward with huge momentum, and this mecha gnome area was going to be their next stepping stone!
Abraki stared ahead at his team of elite players struggling with the gnomes.
The more difficult a task was, the more the reward would be!
He pensively stared at the marvelous engineering that went into making each of these gnomes and mumbled.
"Do you think that there are manufacturing designs of the gnomes inside?"
"Something like that would be insane…" Elias licked his lips in anticipation.
These sort of bots were undoubtedly invaluable when raiding tricky dungeons or even tackling elite bosses and overlord bosses.
Especially when they had that last bit of health in them and decide to go berserk, these tiny things could be commanded to rush forward and finish the fight with some bombing.
They can be used as guild base guards or scouts or to fight in rough unfriendly terrain. Their applications were endless.
"Heh. Then, we should really thank that informant." Abraki chuckled.
"Guild leader, that woman was from the 'Heavenly Retribution' guild. That guild is getting a lot of attention these days and its members are also boasted to be extraordinary."
"Even this informant's skills should be exceptional considering how they managed to find out such key information."
"Should I try to rope her in?" Elias seriously asked. He did not know why he didn't think of this idea sooner.
"This person clearly works for money or is in desperate need of money. So it will be very easy to pull." He added.
But Abraki simply chuckled and shook his head. "Forget about it. No matter how talented this player is, we don't need her."
"She could have sold this same information to her own guild but instead she betrayed them and sold it to us for more money."
"Doesn't this show that person's character?"
"These kinds of people are nothing but worms. They will slowly chew and damage our guild from the inside out."
"It is even okay for us to accept dull duds but not this sort of backstabbers."
"Ah. I didn't think about that. You are absolutely right." Elias did not argue further and quickly agreed.
The two of them cringed as they silently continued watching the carnage in front of them and a minute later, the last couple of their guild members as well folded, falling down lifeless.
"Ok. It looks like this is a wrap. Let's silently revive the players who are on the edges and then wait for the backup team."
Elias nodded and took out a scroll from his inventory.
As he chanted the words in the scroll, it lit up and bright dots of light dispersed from the scroll to some of the fallen players, those that were close to them, instantly reviving them.
And more importantly, their figures materialized next to the guild leader and the guild vice-leader who were standing farther away, thereby avoiding the detection of the gnomes and triggering another disastrous chain reaction.
The group then silently hid in the exterior of the valley, behind the rocks, not daring to enter the war zone again.
"Leader, what the hell is this place?"
Everyone who had fought just now looked utterly dazed even after dying once and reviving.
"Hmmm." Abraki sighed. "It looks like this is some sort of a secret place. Don't worry about the party wipe. We can deal with this easily when the backup team arrives."
"We are bringing in more people?" The person who had asked previously gulped.
"Yes." Abraki replied.
However, this did not make the person feel relieved at all. Instead, it made him all the more nervous. Coming here or rather teleporting here was not cheap.
They had used a huge chunk of their guild's wealth to get here and now they are using some more?
This meant that they would literally be betting their guild's development in this game in this single zone. Would it really be worth it?
Moreover, they had also irrevocably cut ties with their main target by attacking him sneakily!
Thinking about that person, the player quickly asked, "Boss, would he have revived by now?"
"Who knows?" Abraki wryly chuckled. Their main intention was to use negotiations and if not brute force to make this person join their guild.
But after coming here, they obviously went for the better reward.
Elias looked around as if he was checking the landscape for Liam and then muttered. "It is better if he revives."
"He did something to those gnomes that made them docile. We need his trick."
"Then maybe we can even recruit him and also include him in this group. If he has any misgivings about our earlier interference, we can always compensate him."
"Ah. Yes. I am sure if he knows who we are, he would be more than happy to join us." Some of the others agreed.
Most of them had first been at odds with each other in one way or the other before joining the guild. So they could relate.
But there were a few players who did not think the same
"Ha… If we didn't intervene, that person would have died anyway. No need to recruit random people just to get our hands on one potion."
"He couldn't even sense the presence of an entire guild nearby. Just how good could his skills be? He absolutely has no sense of perception whatsoever."
"That person is probably the worst kind of trash player who stepped on one pile of luck after another."
"Kek. The look on his face when shit started exploding was simply priceless!"
"What did he think? He could solo all of this? Idiot!"
The bunch of players began to laugh and even the usually composed Abraki let out a chuckle. "Very naive indeed. Sometimes people do stupid things out of greed."
Once again another round of laughter echoed.
However… unfortunately… none of them noticed a person standing just a few feet away, listening to every single word of their conversations from start to finish.