"Ach, ye shall all do me the honor of feasting with me tonight! As an additional reward, the Guild shall be given land to build a new home here!" The king declared. We were then escorted out of the throne room.

"Oathshield, take the chest and find us a new base. Then we will start to figure out a way to get the rest of the guild here," I told him, and he nodded.

"Honestly, boy, thank ye for all ye've done for our Guild," Oathshield said emotionally. "Without ye, we'd never be here now."

"While that is true, you would eventually have made it here, I'm sure."

"Eventually, but that would probably have been about ten years from now. What can we do for you?"

"Well, it would be extremely rude if I asked you to build a shrine to me using the Core. What I want you to do is use the Core to build the Guild House, and put a small shrine to me in the basement, since I am a minor god, and the son of Luck and Death. I'll try to do my best to help all of you."

"It will be as you have requested. With the Core, we will have a Castle as our Guild home!" That statement was met with the other three members cheering.

***

We arrived at the location the King had granted us to build what we would. I took the Summoning Core, and with permissions granted by Oathshield, I brought up the Guild Interface, and selected Constructions. I designed a glorious castle, with golem guards, workshops, hundreds of player bedrooms, dozens of storage and vaults. I also purchased hundreds of NPCs, spending well over a hundred Mythril on the castle in addition to the Core.

Afterwards, I went to the primary vault and emptied my Bag of Holding into it, along with all my coins, and all but $500,000 of my personal funds. I summoned ten of the NPC servants I had summoned, and ordered them to sort the loot and distribute the crafting materials to the various appropriate workshop storages before heading up to check out the bedroom I had assigned to myself. I laid down and closed my eyes, falling deep asleep.

***

When I opened my eyes, I was inside the Afterlife Casino again, and Luck and Death were both there to greet me for my success. I blinked in shock as I recognized the Ilithid behind them, who toasted me with a goblet. "Welcome, son! You have done what everyone hoped you would. Sadly, the omniverse is starting to run low on Chaos energy to be converted. I've got a request for you, boy. You'll know what to do when the time comes, but here, take this," Death stated as he pulled off his own cloak and put it around my shoulders, revealing a pale but handsome man. "I'm sorry, but we've gotta send you back to your body for your celebration. Don't be angry with us, okay?"

The world went dark again.

***

At the Feast, the Dwarven King decreed a chapel to be built in my honor, which I tried to decline, and settled on allowing him to make it a church. The story of my defeat of the Ilithid deity was told twice before the main course, a giant roasted boar, was served. There were countless nobles and smiths at the feast, along with the warriors, knights, and priests.

A bard started singing about an ancient war between the dwarves and the drow. As I listened, I felt myself shudder as I realized that letting those two drow ladies go may not have been the best thing for my future. I just sighed and shook my head. "Nothing is ever easy, is it?"

*Why should life be easy?* a soft, sensuous and feminine voice whispers into his mind.

"Who are you?"

*Why should I answer that?*

"Because you obviously have a message for me, or you wouldn't have contacted me."

*My mistress informed me that it is only appropriate to say 'thank you' after you've robbed someone's vaults while they weren't home.*

I jumped to my feet and snarled at my Guild, "We've just been robbed!"

*Awww is the baby god angry? Good. The Spider Queen wishes to speak with you! Chase me, and meet with her.*

I froze in shock. "Oh, fuck no! I am not having anything to do with that crazy drow goddess! They can take the loot, it can easily be replaced!"

A long burbling laugh echoed in his mind before fading off while he slumped back into the chair sighing depressively.

I pulled up the Guild menu and inspected it. All the guardians were to respawn in an hour, as well as all of the NPCs. The crafting warehouses were all still stocked with their materials, but the Vault door is marked as needing repairs and the Vault reads as Empty.

"Damn it... We had so much money stored in there..."

"What happened?" Oathshield asked.

"We were just robbed by the Drow," I responded sadly. "They tried to get me to rush off after them, but there's no way in hell I want anything to do with their evil goddess who sent them to steal from us."

"I see... Well, what was taken was primarily your money. If you wish our help getting it back, we will help, but if you want to drop it, we'll ignore it," Oathshield stated.

***

When we got back Guild Hall, the servant and guards had finished respawning and were starting to clean up the place. For the most part, the place wasn't damaged, just bloodstains and shattered golems, along with the damaged vault doors. In the center of the Vault was a summoning circle made with the blood of the NPC servants along with the majority of their bodies, which were torn asunder and spread out to increase the gore factor.

The members of the guild swore softly as they saw the damage done to the vault door and the horror their servants had been put through. Rockenroll looked at me. "We need to pay them back for this, even if you are fine with them having stolen your money," he growled.

"What do you want to do? They're going to be a lot tougher than the goblins, and I refuse to talk to their Godddess," I responded.

"We'll gather the guild, and you'll help us increase our levels to the point where we can stand against them!"

"Rockenroll, are you honestly serious? Their generic troops are probably closer to level 80 in stats, even if they are level 50!"

Rockenroll paled slightly and shook his head. "We can't let them get away with attacking us and there not being a reprisal..."

Oathshield stepped up to them and nodded. "I agree with Rockenroll. I would appreciate all the aide you are willing to give us, Hidden. You don't need to fight them, but we will need your help to increase our levels..."

"As you wish, Oathshield," I bowed my head. "I agree, they crossed the line with this display..."

AN: Okay, so for those of you who read my other fiction, From Paladin to Pawn, you know that I have put that story into Hiatus while I finish up Volume 1 of this story and then Flesh it out for the updated Amazon release.

Right now, I'm struggling to actually write the last few chapters of this volume, since I've been absorbed in working out the Game and World System for Volume 2 and beyond. Volume 2 will be the story of a modern-day style Earth planet changing with the introduction of the Game System. Volume 3 will probably focus upon The First Wave, and will likely have the same MC as Volume 2.

For those of you who are steadily following this story, it's only got a few more chapters remaining until the epilogue, which I've already written, unless something makes me change the way it comes through.

Thank you very much for reading my work,

Justin "Johnist" Johanson

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