After settling things at the administrative building, Liam headed out, walking on the streets of the busy city.
The entire place was abuzz with activity, and Liam was well aware that he was the reason for it.
"I wonder how many will stay and how many will leave?" He chuckled and jogged to the outskirts.
Liam then entered [Stealth] before leaving the city gates.
He looked around, hoping to run into some of the people who were camping and lying in wait for their guild members, but it seemed like the coast was clear for now.
"I guess they are all busy with the spatial rift… this should keep them occupied for a while."
He opened his system interface and shot a quick message to Alex. "You can ask everyone to leave now. It should be safe."
As soon as he sent the message, he received a reply immediately, almost as if Alex was waiting for him. "Congrats on all the achievements. Yes, I will inform them."
Liam looked at it and then closed the interface.
He was about to call for Talon so that they could leave to attend to the next business when suddenly a flock of black ravens appeared in the sky above him.
And before he could even realize their presence, these birds shot downward towards him like arrows and bullets.
"Hmmm?" Liam only had a second, but that was enough for him.
He quickly backed away several paces, leaving the raven darts aimed at him to strike the ground.
Their sharp beaks plunged deeply into the wet forest ground and were stuck amidst the dust and grime.
This was proof enough to show the power and tenacity with which they had attacked.
Moreover, there was a dozen of them. If Liam had not reacted in time, he might have really lost his life to a bunch of ravens.
"Huh? Where did these come from?" Liam was perplexed. He had a vaguely familiar feeling on seeing these birds, but he couldn't exactly place his finger on it.
He watched as the birds dislodged themselves from the ground and once again began attacking him, but now that he knew they were there, things were very different.
Liam casually moved, his feet tracking different patterns and his body bending at various angles. It was a child's play for him to evade these birds.
After playing around with them for a couple of seconds, he looked at the little fox, leisurely peeking out from his back.
"Luna, you know what to do."
Liam took out a big metallic cage from his inventory space and then tossed it out.
The little fox's eyes sparkled on seeing this, and she got to work quickly.
BOOM. BOOM. POW. POW.
In a few minutes, the ravens were all banged up and packed neatly inside the metal cage, not one of them dead or wasted.
Liam patted the little fox, genuinely impressed with her work.
The ravens were around Level 30 while Luna was only Level 11, and yet the little thing had made a quick work of them.
"Good girl. Good girl. Here have some more meatballs." Liam took out the last few meatballs from his inventory space and gave them to the fox.
"I need to ask Shen Yue for more."
His gaze shifted from the fox, who was grinning from ear to ear happily, to the cage full of ravens, all of them having a terrified expression.
"Time to practice forging."
Liam grabbed the cage, settled on an isolated spot, and started his daily training.
This time he did not even have to look for the ingredients. They had literally fallen out of the sky. He let out a lazy yawn and grabbed the first bird in his hand.
He used [Throat Grasp] to remove the remaining health and finish the bird off.
And as usual, the small soul bead popped out of the black raven.
Liam immediately manipulated the mana in the air around him to engulf the bead and started the forging process.
Compared to how he struggled to forge the demonic imps, this was extremely simple and easy.
He felt as if he could do this even if he were not focussing completely on the forging. It felt second nature to him to mold and refine the small soul bead.
His progress in this technique and how far he had come were very obvious. Liam's gaze flickered in excitement, but he still patiently continued the work.
DANG. DANG. DANG. DANG.
Dull sounds echoed as the soul bead was slowly refined.
…
…
…
Meanwhile… as Liam was calmly going about his business… the entire world, both inside and outside, descended into chaos.
At first, the flash headlines and online forums exploded with the news about the latest guild achievements of 'Crimson Abyss.'
Though these achievements were not a huge deal, the impact was explosive mainly because no one else had figured out a way to develop their guild residences to such an extent.
So everyone was curious as to how the residence would look, how everything would turn out, and what exclusive benefits they might receive.
Even the look of the building was highly anticipated as this was the first S-Rank guild throughout the entirety of the game, including multiple kingdoms and empires.
Because of this new development, another tide of players began lining up to join the guild.
The fact that other guild players were hunting down the Crimson Abyss guild members also seemed to slip everyone's minds conveniently.
With such an overwhelming incentive to join the guild, dying once or twice seemed trivial.
So everyone excitedly discussed the prospects of joining the guild and how much they would be able to gain if they did.
Not to mention, a guild residence took only a couple of hours to be fully constructed.
This made the excitement and fervor that much more exaggerated with even bets being placed as to where the location might be.
Surprisingly, this information was rather secretive as no one seemed to know the answer. Rather, the people who knew about this were busy doing something else.
And just like these players, there was also another set of players who were very busy and couldn't care less about the new guild residence being erected.
These were the players who belonged to six small no-name guilds in the Gresh Kingdom.
At the moment, these six guilds were all going all out in preparation for entering the spatial rift and for fighting against the demons.
They did not hold back as they sent in-game notifications and real-world emails to all their guild members, calling everyone to assemble.
Not only that but they also used all of their guild reserves, top-tier equipment, at least the ones they could afford, and prepared all sorts of things including potions and other consumables.
They pulled out all the stops and fired on all cylinders, not sparing a single expense.
They acted in a mad frenzy as if they were spurred from seeing the constant achievement notifications of the 'Crimson Abyss' guild.
Why should that guild alone hog all the achievements?
The world might not know but the hot and trending guild at the moment had actually come and fallen at their feet, begging for a truce.
If 'Crimson Abyss' can become so popular overnight because of a few achievements, their guilds could also become as popular!
With the fire to win and promote themselves, all the six guilds worked tirelessly.
They knew that they had only one chance to attempt this properly with their full force so the guilds took their time preparing.
Though they wanted to succeed at all costs, they did not want to act rashly and fail even with the answer ket to the question in their hands.
There would be nothing more shameful than this.
However, this was only the six small guilds.
The seventh guild, the Assassins guild, who had also received the information from Liam did not think along those lines.
Liam only mentioned it once, but Abraki was quick to catch the point.
He only made adequate preparations and started the spatial rift as soon as possible without delaying things.
They were also very hush-hush and silent about it, with Abraki ordering everyone to keep a tight lid on things so no one knew that they were already starting.
Only when a couple more hours passed by just like that uneventfully, suddenly an unexpected achievement popped out in front of everyone inside the game.
[DING. Kingdom Announcement: Congratulations. 'Assassins' guild has conquered a Spatial Rift.]
[As the second guild to conquer a spatial rift and defeat the demons, 1000 gold coins have been rewarded, and 1000 fame points have been awarded. This grand achievement will be etched in history.]
[DING. WORLD ANNOUNCEMENT: Congratulations. 'Assassins' guild has conquered a Spatial Rift.]
[As the second guild to conquer a spatial rift and defeat the demons, 1000 gold coins have been rewarded, and 1000 fame points have been awarded. This grand achievement will be etched in history.]