Town Builder - 90 - Losses

Chapter 90: First Losses

“It is an opportune time to attack us,” Mad Dog growled as the draconic invasion was pressing forward.

“What guild is it?” I pressed Danny.

“Give me a moment. Most of our players are here,” she said. That was true, as only Malcum would have a portal for the Invasion, so we had pooled our players.

“Eternal Legacy,” she spat. “Your vampire friend is leading them.”

“Grey Weasel?” Rage filled me as that charismatic bastard had been hampering the Duchy’s growth for weeks. “I will send reinforcements. Send me what battle reports you have.”

The players on the field below were waiting for the bunny girl’s magical assault to weaken the invading army before charging forward. It was the strategy we had used in the last two assaults. I hadn’t committed to using Bella yet, though. Tanguin, my general, was waiting for my signal to unleash her. “Be careful, mate,” Mad Dog said to me. “Eternal Legacy is a huge guild. They might be trying to distract you to attack Plainsrider or Phoenix’s Rest.”

I doubted it was the latter, as that would anger Disciples of the Horde, who had a contract with me for the scaling dungeon. As I prepared to move my NPCs around, I brought up my interface. Finally, Danny came back to me, “There are about five hundred players. They are kidnapping my engineers!”

“What? You can do that?” I asked astonished. “For ransom?”

“They are also attacking the drydock cradle. They are trying to steal my skyship!” Danny said angrily a moment later.

“How do they know about it?” I said, sharing her anger. Not that it mattered at the moment.

“I am taking my companion and going to stop them,” Danny said.

I paged through my interface and quickly assigned twenty heavy orc cavalry and fifty giantkin infantry, along with two angelkin captains, to accompany her to the portal stone. I added Medea, the level 152 High Priest, and Mira, the level 144 Farstrider, to join them. Mad Dog was sending one hundred outer guild members in support as well, but we couldn’t put Malcum at risk from the draconian army.

As they peeled off the walls and from the staging area inside the walls, I nodded to Tanguin, who grinned and ordered, “Bella, fry up some dragons for me!” The clouds darkened, and lightning began pouring down from the sky. She had gotten stronger in the last month of gaming. I checked her level; it had increased from 108 to 111, but I guessed she had also leveled up her spells some. I should have sent her with Mag Dog to clear the scaling dungeon. Mira had gained two levels; Bella could have gained more. I guess I was still thinking of the innocent bunny girl as a child and not as an NPC.

“The portal stone is not working!” a panicked Danny sent me in chat. I cursed and went into my interface, but I didn’t see a problem. Then, I switched to the Goatyah tab and found the portal stone blocked. I didn’t know you could do that.

“They’ve blocked the portal stone! Run!" I shouted, cursing and plotting my revenge. Goatyah wasn't too far, but even riding there took time in the game. Every minute felt like an eternity in this world. First Phoenix’s Rest, and now Goatyah—my Duchy was being picked apart by rival guilds. I still had to defend Malcum, but there was now a greater urgency to eliminate the draconian army to reinforce Goatyah, though I had my suspicions that this was more of a raid than an attempt to conquer the fledgling town.

Bella had exhausted her aether; the field was littered with the bodies of draconic men. However, she had not been nearly as effective as in the past, with less than a quarter of the infantry lying dead. The cavalry remained untouched, shielded by the riders.

“Sixteen hundred and twelve infantry and two hundred mage calvary remaining, Lord Tallis,” Tanguin informed me.

“What level is the blue dragon general?” I asked.

Tanguin studied the field and the large blue dragon. “Level one hundred and twenty-five, greater boss. Its title is Juvenile Sapphire Dragon Prince.”

How was that just a juvenile? I had seen truly monstrous dragons that ruled the world capital. “Fuck, really?!” A greater boss challenge rating was equal to 16 players of the same level. We didn’t have 16 players or NPCs at level 150.

Titus, my level 141 gnome hospitaller, was guarding Phoenix’s Rest. I had sent away my other two powerful NPCs to fend off Eternal Legacy. All my other high-level NPCs were in the crafter trade. This could get messy very quickly. At least I had a lot of cannon fodder in thousands of eager players, although they were the primary reason this encounter was happening.

“Send out the players,” I decided. Mad Dog ordered our teams of guild members to engage on the field. This sparked the hesitant members of the other guilds to do likewise, but they were most likely headed toward a slaughter of epic proportions. Fortunately, the Sapphire Dragon Prince, was content to hover over the field and direct his troops like pawns on a chess board.

The clash wasn’t as brutal as I had predicted. Almost everyone had figured out how to confront these invading armies. The dragonkin infantry were incredibly strong and heavily armored. Not only were they clad in metal armor, but they also had tough scales underneath that required a certain threshold of damage to injure them. The mage cavalry was bothersome, employing a range of elemental short-range attack spells and offering minor healing support for the infantry. Their draconic mounts made it challenging to engage the mages, as they attacked with powerful claws and bites. At least they lacked an area-of-effect breath weapon.

Speaking of breath weapons, a player was flying above the field and failed to notice the Prince swooping down. A quick breath of blue-black lightning fried the player, but his corpse didn’t have time to fall before the dragon snatched it out of the air. So, the dragon was acting as air support. I looked at Bella, who was recovering her mana, and said, “Conserve your mana for when the dragon attacks the walls. Tanguin, what are our defenses?”

“Twelve defensive mages at the gates and Galana’s city guard and mages will be able to support if they breach the gate,” he replied, studying the conflict. That was right, we had a large number of spawning guards in Malcum from buildings. They were prevented from leaving the city, but could attack any invader who entered the city.

Danny sent me a voice message and sounded upset. “They’re gone. They kidnapped five of our engineers and shipwrights. They also took the skyship!”

“What? How? It wasn’t finished and couldn’t fly,” I said, shocked.

“I don’t know, but they might have disassembled it and put it into dimensional bags. They took most of the parts, too. They got almost everything, Tallis.” She was fuming, but there was nothing we could do. The engineers she had worked so hard to obtain were the biggest loss. Everything else could be replaced in time.

I ground my teeth, distracted by the battle below. The players were slowly being pushed toward our walls. “Don’t worry. We will get our revenge in time. Switch production to a warship; they stole a transport, so we will build a warship and blow them out of the sky.”

“They also killed seven NPCs in Goatyah and most of the spawned guards. We only managed to take down twenty-nine of them, and their companions picked up the gear they dropped,” Danny said morosely. It would affect the morale of her town and the Duchy as a whole. We could recover those losses with a successful repelling of the Incursion, though.

“Where did they flee to if the portal stone was blocked?” I asked as the right flank of players started to crumble. Galana’s city guard archers were rushing to that part of the wall to engage.

“They came from the Endless Dark and then retreated there after,” she said.

“Don’t follow,” Mad Dog said in the voice chat. “They probably have an ambush waiting.” I hadn’t even realized Danny had invited him. He was extremely busy with moving the players in the guild on the field.

I commiserated for a short while longer before I cut the voice chat. What did Eternal Legacy want with our half-built skyship? Couldn’t they just build their own? Well, maybe not. It was a huge process and you needed a lot of support buildings. NPC skyships also only followed predetermined routes. You could hire an NPC skyship, but the destination was always an established city or town. I thought it out a little more.. A guild with a skyship could easily access difficult areas of the map. That is as long as there were no flying monsters in the areas, but you could always fly high enough to stay out of their aggro range.

I admitted that if we had Danny’s skyship, finding the lost city would have been easy. Who knows how many more such secrets could be easily accessed? The only solution was to rush and build our own, something much more powerful than the transport Danny was building.

I turned my focus to winning the battle. Not that I was playing a major role, other directing Tanguin to stop this or that. Maclum’s walls held as the draconian infantry reached them and we had enough players in the field to harass the mounted mages, so they couldn’t assist. Once the infantry at the wall thinned, the incursion army began to fall apart. That was when the Sapphire Dragon Prince took action.

The dragon dove from a height and sprayed the players with a much more powerful breath attack. Black lightning struck the ground, causing explosions and leaving black fire in its wake. Dozens of players died on every dive. It was too late to save its army, but it was getting a small amount of revenge. Mag Dog even sent me a message that anyone killed by the black void lighting and respawned faced a 72-hour debuff that prevented them from gaining any experience.

The dragon prince was smart enough not to get close to the walls. Bella had recovered, and she indicated it would be hard to target the dragon unless it slowed down a lot. We didn’t have any means of slowing or freezing it. When its army was nearly completely decimated, it turned in the air and headed for the incursion portal. I told Tanguin not to have the dusk elf scouts engage. They were only around level 41, and I didn’t want to lose any.

The dragon disappeared into the portal, and the players rushed forward to surround the remaining mages who were also trying to escape. Their large mounts weren't fast, and they were soon overwhelmed. When the last one fell, I received the notification that we had successfully defended, but didn’t receive bonuses for completely wiping out the invading army. My level increased to 24. Most of my guildmates had died at least once during the defense but still managed to gain enough experience for a level up.

Something new also popped up in my management tabs.

You have earned enmity with Prince Greighocrid, Juvenile Sapphire Dragon. Shit, they attacked us and I got enmity? I found out what Enmity did in the forums. Enmity was a special class of NPC that had to be earned. Every time that NPC killed me, it would gain a level. If I vanquished them, I got triple experience and a piece of epic gear specifically for my class or profession.

How was it fair that I got enmity with a level 125 greater boss dragon? Mad Dog was organizing the cleanup operation below, and I was soon heading to Goatyah. I found Danny and Ghostly Mermaid at the Eagle’s Nest Dry Dock. The empty scaffolding was a reminder of what she had lost. “How bad is it?” I asked.

“They got all the shipwrights and two of our engineers,” she said, and I winced. I checked, and yes, Laeron, my shipwright on loan to her, was missing from my NPC list. “It is going to take months to recover.”

Ghostly Mermaid was as depressed, “There is a way to get a quick turnaround. We could recruit players and power level the right skills. We would have to pay them a salary in the real world as they would need to be skilled engineers to quickly level the skills in game.” I had a blank expression. “Mad Dog would have to pay them. He has a fund but was trying to recruit some professional gamers to join the Guild. He already has fifty-eight new guild members on the payroll—what is another seven or eight,” she added with a smile.

“And you want me to convince him?” I said, rolling my eyes.

Mermaid patted my ass, “You do catch on quick.”

“I will do that, but find out how they knew what we were doing here,” I said. Although the Eagle’s Nest Dry Dock was not visible from the ground, all you needed to do was climb or fly higher in the mountains to see it. Did that mean I needed to draft more defenses? Maybe some alcoves on the side of the mountain?

It felt like we would never have enough defenses. The other option was to hide the cradle. That might be the easier route, but Eternal Legacy already knew what was there. Hollowing out a massive cave in the mountain? That seemed like a fantastic idea, since the mountain was enormous and we could keep enlarging it as our fleet grew. I chuckled. Fleet? We didn’t even have a single skyship.

I returned to Malcum to find the clean-up progressing. Mad Dog was enthusiastic about the harvest. The mage mounts provided tier three scaled hide, which could be crafted into excellent armor with elemental resistance. As with the last incursion, he was letting the other participating guilds take a fair share of the loot from the battlefield.

It ended up requiring much less effort than I had anticipated to persuade Mad Dog to hire a few engineers. He only cautioned me that we risked training them, and they might defect. We couldn’t enter a salary war for their services, so they would be recruited primarily based on their character. He assigned Chaotic Heart, Sunflower, and Golden Storm to recruit them in the real world.

I had a dozen messages from other guilds but none from Eternal Legacy to gloat about their raid. Mad Dog said they wouldn’t contact me, and this was a normal part of gameplay. “We are lucky they didn’t bring more members. They could have easily overwhelmed Goatyah and taken it. My guess is they don’t have the resources to spare to keep it. We are going to need allies, soon. I will work up a few guilds that might be trustworthy enough.”

“What about Disciples of the Horde?” I asked.

Mad Dog had a hearty laugh. “We are in a business agreement with them, mate. We might be able to persuade a few of their members to help us, but an alliance? No. Don’t worry, for the moment we are still in good shape.” He grinned, “Things can go to shit quickly, but for now we are doing better than most in the game.” Divine Deviants was a powerful guild that I had a relationship with, but Mad Dog had not thought of them as a job option with how many enemies they had.

I left Mad Dog to return to my Lord’s Manor. It had been a harrowing last few hours and highlighted just how vulnerable we were. That vulnerability would only increase as the players leveled. I sorted through and replied where required to administer the Duchy. I then turned to my drafting table. My only equalizer against guilds that outnumbered us with tens of thousands of more players.

If one of the top three guilds saw the value in the skyships, then maybe that is where I should focus my efforts. I was hesitant to stop the expansion of the Duchy and consolidate our defenses. Mad Dog thought if you were not constantly trying to grow, you were doomed in a game like this. I tapped my drafting pencil on the table. What could I draft that could put us one step ahead and be an equalizer for us?

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