“Now, let us talk,” Villin said as he looked at the trio sitting around the table, he also dispelled the illusion on his face at this point, showing his scar. “First of all, what’s our monetary situation?”

Hearing his first question Kayley was the one to stand up. She took out a crystal holder and handed it to Villin, “These are all of our liquid assets, if ever required we also have a decent number of Blue Mythril armor sets we could sell.”

At first, Villin nodded before checking the crystal holder. He expected about half of the funds would be gone, this building no doubt cost a bunch, and to increase their stance and popularity in the third grade a large number of funds were probably used. If there were two-hundred-thousand crystals left, he’d be happy.

Yet when he looked at the crystal holder one of his eyes rose in surprise, there were nearly five-hundred thousand magic crystals within the crystal holder, eighty-thousand more than when he left.

“How come our funds increased instead of decreasing?” Villin questioned, looking at the surprising number.

Once more Kayley spoke up, she seemed to be in charge of the finances, “There were a number of small things giving us money but I’ll leave those aside for now. The first big thing is the share you have in the Blue-Mythril mine. We still got the funds for that after you disappeared and even though we occasionally requested some Blue Mythril instead of crystals, it still paid for a lot of the expenses. But, the biggest things were gifts.

“In the third grade, and especially in the school break after it, a very large number of guilds came to visit us. Many of them came bearing expensive gifts, wanting to get closer to us before we leave The Academy. We decided to transform the vast majority of those gifts into magic crystals, netting us a total of two-hundred thousand crystals. This is the cause of the increase of funds.”

Villin nodded at the satisfactory response, he would do an inventory check later to see how many stable assets they had as well.

“Alright then, how are we looking on members?” he now asked, trying to get a feel of how the situation was.

This time it was Rein that spoke up, “We became an extreme success in the third grade when the disappearance of The Runic Army and some of the smaller pill-making guilds became clear, many of their members gravitated towards us. That together with Amelia’s supreme reputation in the combat circles makes us quite well spread out across the areas we wanted to.

“With us, in the fourth grade, we have about fifty members, there might be a few dozen people here who will wish to join as well so getting to seventy within a few days won’t be a problem.”

This time, Villin disagreed “No, we will not be taking on new members. Anyone who wishes to join will have to go through a strict exam showing their skill. We need to have a large number of hardworking students who can challenge each other, not weaklings who will slow everyone down and tempt them with their laziness.”

Hearing this, the three commanders were in deep thought for a second before Amelia spoke up, “What about the members that are already here then? Even though most of them are decent, a large number of them are normal students.”

Villin simply shrugged at this point, “That’s fine as long as we actually begin enforcing progression. Students shouldn’t be allowed to just laze around all day and expect to remain within the guild. Give the hard workers a bigger share of the items they create as well, that’ll be a decent incentive.”

Villin paused for a moment as he looked at the three people before him, “For now, let’s have a good look at the fourth grade and get a feel for what’s going on. We’ll have some of our people create the enchantments on the tower and I’ll reinforce it with transfiguration.” He then looked at Rein as he commanded, “Create a basic blueprint for the tower and get the students to work on them, it has to be nice and sturdy, also make sure it can hold magic power, I’ll be enforcing it with reverto, that should keep attackers at bay.”

After this he looked over at Amelia, “We need to find out what guilds are for and against us. Even though a large number of guilds want to become friendly with us now, the disappearance of ‘The Runic Army’ has created a power vacuum and not everyone will be alright with having us take it. There may also be students here who will try to take us down without authorization from their superiors outside of The Academy.”

Finally, he looked over at Kayley, “We’ll be getting a massive number of guests the following week, if you could take care of that, that’d be great. And as for myself, since I have some decent temporary transportation, I’ll be exploring the surroundings for the following week. After that, I’ll come to fix any enchantments on the tower that are inadequate and create a magic array to help with defending this place.”

With those words, the meeting was adjourned and Amelia and Rein left. Kayley stayed behind though and turned to Villin. When he looked at her questioningly, she took a book out of her bag and handed it to him.

Somewhat curious, Villin grabbed the book and opened it, finding a bunch of scribbles. Villin flipped through a few more pages and continued seeing the chaotic lines filled with arrows, formulas, and references. After a few minutes, he knew what it was.

He looked at page after page finding it was completely written in until page five-hundred.

“It’s your welcome back present.” Kayley said with a kind smile as she saw Villin’s face turn from confusion to surprise to eagerness.

The book had all of the data she had gathered on the web on the previous year. It was a stunning amount of research.

After seeing Villin seemed happy with the gifts, she took out a bunch of wooden spell blueprints and put it down next to him, “Most of these spells are rather basic but their data is used in the research I gave you, they give a great understanding of some of the nodes involved.”

Hearing her words, Villin nodded, and soon, she left the room as well.

Villin wasn’t quite happy, but he still felt eager to go through all of this and increase his understanding of the web.

Just like this, he prepared to go out again, sadly he currently didn’t have a spatial bag, even though he found it likely there would be a spatial bag included in the items he would get from the research facility. Or at least something valuable enough to trade for one with The Academy.

He didn’t know when he would get those resources though, so he simply wanted to move out now. Having the main base in A1 simply wasn’t right. The further out a base was the harder it was to attack, this much was clear. It would also be a show of position and every guild member would, at the very least, want to make it to the proper base, putting a lot of effort into improving to that point.

It was because of this that Villin intended to go as far as he could and put the foundtions of a base there. Before this though, he checked out some of the storage spaces in the tower. They really had a bunch of stuff, a mass of materials used for pill-making and over a dozen sets of enchanted Blue Mythril armor.

He took one set and donned it, leaving behind the boots. Then he silently made his way out. As he moved so casually, none of the guild members even paid any attention to him. To Villin this was a security concern as he might as well have been a saboteur but he dropped it for now. This place wasn’t exactly suitable for defending as visitors would probably come all the time and once a magus is inside of a building there could always be sneaky ways for them to cast a spell or two for surveillance.

Once he was outside though, he couldn’t escape sight. There was a line of people outside of the tower waiting for someone to invite them in to talk. Since they had their eyes stuck on the door, they naturally saw Villin leave.

A few of the representatives immediately recognized him but before they could surround Villin and ask him a bunch of questions, the ground underneath his feet suddenly disappeared.

The representatives were extremely surprsed when they suddenly saw Villin drop through the ground as the hole closed up above him but they quickly figured out it should’ve been transfiguration.

Since one of their sidegoals was to find out the strength of the core members, this did give them some valuable information. Knowing that the guild leader seemed good at transfiguration was already of quite a bit of importance. His use of the art was useful as well.

Villin didn’t care if these people knew such a simple thing though. He used transfiguration and began walking underground, he had to walk rather slowly as he constantly had to move the earth in front of him but he soon found himself behind another building, letting him exit the ground and quickly make his way out of A1, back into the wilderness.