Panel

After acquiring a guild base, Higashino Makoto shut down communications once more and chose to begin building his guild.

First, he maxed out the NPC points with cash.

The base 2,450 points, plus the 300 purchased points, brought him to 2,750—exactly equal to Nazarick without any cash investment.

He linked the interface to the portable cloud drive he had brought back earlier, selected twenty-four powerful level-100 job builds, and copied them directly.

Leaving 350 points behind, Higashino Makoto planned to use them for experiments after crossing over, to see what exactly happened when creating beings in the New World. Maybe he could exploit some bugs and create especially powerful NPCs.

Besides being sufficiently powerful, these jobs had all been carefully selected by Higashino Makoto. They either included heteromorphic racial levels or special jobs such as "Immortal," ensuring the NPCs would not be limited by lifespan.

As for their appearances, he used AI software to draw them based on anime characters from memories of his previous life.

There were all sorts, from lolis and young girls to mature beauty types.

To put it bluntly, as a horny bastard, building a harem was one of his dreams!

And since he was terrible at naming things, he could not even be bothered to come up with names himself and simply borrowed them.

The settings were simple. Aside from personalities basically following the original anime characters' settings, he piled on an entire series of excellent traits regardless of whether they were useful: "absolute loyalty, loves Amon Nicola," "Amon Nicola's interests take top priority," "genius," "fast learner," "peerless beauty," "master of all arts," "harmonious relationship with Novas Aetir's other NPCs," "Fortune," "beloved by the world," "proficient in New World knowledge," "high growth potential"... and so on!

He then began swiftly arranging the guild according to the information in the cloud drive.

Each island extravagantly housed two "siege-class Grems" as the first line of defense, followed by monster mercenaries, with two NPCs assigned as commanders.

Then came all kinds of buildings: "bedchambers," "treasury," "hall," "barracks," "prison," "restaurant"...

Unexpectedly, even following the blueprint, it still took Higashino Makoto a full five hours to roughly complete the deployment.

He would arrange the rest after arriving in the New World. It would also be a good chance to see whether the "genius" and "master of all arts" settings he had given the NPCs were actually useful.

Next came the guild weapon. With so many rare materials and data crystals, Higashino Makoto could naturally build it to the highest standards, but he needed to consider its specialization. Ideally, it should complement his own strengths and weaknesses.

Opening the system, Higashino Makoto checked his panel.

"Amon Nicola

Title: Eternal Ruler of the Floating City

Gender: Male

Race: Human

Level: Lv93

Justice Value: 50

Alignment: Neutral

Residence: Private Bedroom, Seventh Floor, Floating City Novas Aetir

Job Classification: Special-Type Annihilation Magic Caster (Caster: Other)

Jobs: Taoist--LV15

Immortal--LV10

Corpse-Liberated Immortal--LV5

Battle Mage--LV15

Spirit Devourer--LV10

Demon Spirit Martial Saint--LV5

Priest--LV15

Radiant Archbishop--LV10

Creator of Light--LV5

World Calamity--LV1

Inverted God--LV2"

After clearing Novas Aetir earlier, Higashino Makoto had gained a level and reached Lv93.

Due to the passive effect of the Inverted God job, he belonged to the Caster: Other category.

In other words, it was the collective term for magic casters who did not gain spellcasting abilities through mana, faith, or spirit.

The reason he had chosen the Corpse-Liberated Immortal line for his spiritual magic job was simple. Besides the most important benefit of immortality, the Immortal passive, "Immortal Bearing," provided extensive resistance to attributes.

It also granted a crowd-control-breaking skill called "Carefree."

Corpse-Liberated Immortal possessed a skill called "Corpse Liberation." After Higashino Makoto's HP bar was emptied, it could consume one "holy relic-class" piece of equipment to prevent other Items from dropping, then revive him in the guild with only 1 HP and MP remaining.

If his HP had not been emptied, it could instead consume one "relic" Item to forcibly disengage from battle and return him to the guild.

One had to know that in YGGDRASIL, Item grades were divided into "lowest grade" (levels 1-10)

"lower grade" (levels 11-20)

"middle grade" (levels 21-30)

"upper grade" (levels 31-40)

"highest grade" (levels 41-50)

"relic grade" (levels 51-60)

"holy relic grade" (levels 61-70)

"legendary grade" (levels 71-80)

"divine grade" (levels 81-90)

"guild weapons" (levels 91-100)

Many max-level players did not even possess a single divine-grade Item. Legendary-grade Items were already considered high-end, while holy relic-grade Items were the mainstream.

To avoid losing equipment while exploring dungeons, it was common for players to use highest-grade Items or even lower-grade ones during the process.

Most players would feel heartbroken for a long time after losing even one relic-grade Item.

More troublesome still, he would have only 1 MP left after revival.

HP could still be restored with Items, but in YGGDRASIL, where no mana-restoring Items existed, recovering full MP would take nearly six hours.

That meant he would lose the qualifications to explore dungeons for the next hour or two.

Though it was unpopular in the game, in the real world, coupled with the three HP bars provided by Trinity and the ability to clear abnormal statuses whenever a bar broke...

Based on the information he had learned in his previous life, so long as he did not deliberately court death, almost no one would be able to kill him.

It did not matter if his attack power was a little lacking. Otherwise, what were twenty-four max-level NPCs, large numbers of high-level monster mercenaries, and World Items for?

Staying alive was what mattered most!

There was not much to say about his faith-based jobs. They merely followed the skills of the Lord of Hosts, specializing in summoning to further improve the attributes and duration of angel-type monsters.

If he had to mention something, Higashino Makoto had deliberately avoided jobs with the "summoning" tag. Instead, he chose the cash-shop job Creator of Light, whose skill descriptions contained terms such as "creation" and "modification."

If he was not mistaken, the angels summoned after crossing over would be able to persist long-term, just like Old Bone's Death Knights.

As for mana-based jobs, Battle Mage provided some melee capability, and its passive, "Battle Instinct," should grant him some talent for close combat?

Spirit Devourer and Demon Spirit Martial Saint were both unmistakably cash-shop jobs. Besides granting boosts to both mana and melee combat, their most important effects were increasing mana recovery speed and allowing him to gain mana after killing enemies.

After all, World Calamity's job penalty increased mana consumption, while Inverted God's job penalty reduced MP recovery speed to one-third.

His burst damage was indeed high, but he simply could not sustain it!

If he went all out, after stacking his buffs, he could open with Great Catastrophe, follow it with a super-tier spell, cast another Great Catastrophe, throw out two tenth-tier skills, use Great Catastrophe again, restore mana with Sin Silver Coin, then fire off one more Great Catastrophe—and he would be completely out of mana!

After that, he would have to wait nearly twenty hours before his MP was fully restored again!