Factions

Stepping out of the Thieves Guild, Rhode headed toward his next destination.

Rhode recalled that across the entire continent, the three most powerful organizations were the Thieves Guild, the Magic Guild, and the Free Professional Merchants Guild.

The Thieves Guild mainly dealt in gathering and selling information. From royal secrets to tavern gossip, nearly any kind of information could be bought from the guild. The more detailed the information, the higher the price. When buying information from the Thieves Guild, people generally had to analyze and assess it themselves to reduce their expenses.

The Thieves Guild also posted assassination missions. The targets varied in strength, and the rewards were generous. Those who accepted a mission could pay gold for detailed information on their target, or investigate the target themselves. For targets wanted by the Thieves Guild, the guild would provide all the information outright.

Rhode remembered that the Thieves Guild's practices had once made bounty hunters who specialized in assassination missions popular among players. However, gathering information cost time and money, and leveling up was too slow. In the end, bounty hunters fell into decline.

The Magic Guild, meanwhile, offered magical instruction and sold magical items, but its prices were exorbitant.

Based on what Rhode knew of the Magic Guild from his previous life, learning a third-tier spell cost over a thousand gold. The gold in his Space Ring might seem like a fortune, but if he spent it on lessons, it would only be enough to learn a few low-tier spells.

Unlike the Thieves Guild and the Free Professional Merchants Guild, which could be found in any town, the Magic Guild was only established in large towns because learning spells cost so much. Noble children in small towns who wanted to learn magic had no choice but to travel to a large town with a Magic Guild.

Unlike hero-level creatures and players, ordinary people needed both talent and years of study to cast spells. Special skills that players could learn instantly with Skill Points often took ordinary people years of accumulated study to acquire.

For this reason, the Magic Guild had once partnered with town lords to establish a special institution: the magic academy. It catered to noble children who wanted to study magic, had average talent, and possessed plenty of gold.

Besides players, heroes could also learn magic quickly. Or rather, the ability to quickly learn all kinds of skills was an innate quality of heroes. Players who had just entered the game all possessed dormant hero templates.

Heroes surpassed creatures of the same tier in every respect. Whether learning combat skills or magic, they could master them instantly. This was why hero-level creatures were so valuable: raising a hero to maturity brought enormous benefits.

The Free Professional Merchants Guild handled most of the continent's trade. From cheap food and exquisite goods to precious minerals and slaves, the guild dealt in all manner of things.

The Free Professional Merchants Guild was a platform open to all merchants. It contained a large number of trading companies, which organized the transport of goods themselves. The guild supplied the goods and provided sales channels, taking a commission in return.

Prices for the same product varied from region to region. Before transporting goods, trading companies had to gather information by various means and make their own assessments to decide what to ship and maximize their profits.

To ensure their cargo remained safe in transit, trading companies also hired professionals to accompany and protect them. This was a source of income for most low-tier professionals.

These three organizations covered nearly every aspect of life across the continent. Rhode had already gathered information from the Thieves Guild, and his next destination was the Free Professional Merchants Guild.

After confirming his current era with the Thieves Guild, Rhode had turned his thoughts to how he could quickly grow stronger and complete his soul mission.

If he weren't constrained by the soul mission, Rhode would have immediately headed to the most fiercely contested location in the first expansion: the battlefield in Tatalia. There, he could use his knowledge of the story from his previous life to reap the greatest rewards.

But with the soul mission hanging over him, Rhode couldn't do that. For one thing, the journey to Tatalia was extremely long. With transportation so inconvenient, his only option was to ride a horse. Just getting to Tatalia would take several months, and the soul mission gave him only a year. There was no way he could make it work.

Rhode had to choose another route: heading to Dya.

As Rhode remembered it, midway through the first expansion, a war broke out between Dya, the land of necromancers, and its neighbor on the border, the elven kingdom of Eri.

Rhode didn't know exactly what had caused the war, but he knew how it had unfolded.

Caught completely unprepared by the necromancers' massive assault, the elves along Eri's border died in droves and were all turned into Undead Creatures. In the end, the entire border fell.

When the necromancers tried to press their advantage and invade Eri proper, the kingdom's high-tier creatures, who had once preferred peace, finally joined the fight. The Dryad Warrior Rhode had seen earlier was among them.

At that point, the undead's lack of high-tier creatures became painfully clear. The gap in strength between tiers was enormous. Even hordes of Walking Corpses and Skeleton Soldiers couldn't stand against the Dryad Warrior Rhode had seen earlier.

Against high-tier creatures, low-tier undead became completely useless. They couldn't even hold their enemies back; the necromancers had to rely on their own spellcasting.

Eri's counterattack ultimately repelled Dya's invasion, and the necromancers suffered heavy losses.

Still, some necromancers profited from the war. As Rhode knew, Alot had made a name for himself in that battle in his previous life, laying the groundwork for the arrival of the second expansion.

Rhode believed that if Alot had managed to profit from the war without knowing how it would unfold, then he could do the same, with his knowledge of the battle's general course.

Now, the academy insignia of Alot was in Rhode's Space Ring. From what Rhode knew of the Necromancy Magic Academy, unlike formal magic academies elsewhere, it cared only about the insignia, not the person carrying it. He could use it to infiltrate the academy, then keep abreast of the battle through information available inside.

That was why Rhode had chosen to head to the Free Professional Merchants Guild and travel with a caravan to the City of Wailing in Dya.