To Kill Gods or Die Trying

Chapter 10-Birth of the Salvation Army

May 8th, 2301

Well, I guess you could say I became King? President? Prime Minister of the land? I was unofficially placed in charge of how we were gonna do this. Everyone looked up to me and all the Gem-ranks—mostly me though because I cut that dragon's head off, but that's beside the point (not really, I was a total badass). The fall of the first demigod gave so many people hope, and skeptics were ready to listen.

The first thing I did was liquidize my group's combined assets from the years' worth of Obsidian boss gold rewards and legendary loot. We bought a guild house for 10 million gold, exclusively for Gem-rank and rising Obsidian-rank players. It was placed in the desert section of the Wildlands so we could go to Yulgir, or the Capital easily. There were hundreds of rooms—not only 500 dorms, but also kitchens, a huge training courtyard, beast stables, and meeting/planning rooms.

As they say, "with great power comes great responsibility," so I was to structure how this giant operation was to be carried out—casualties being my biggest problem. With that, we Gem-ranks collaborated in the "Gem Garrison" about how to just kill the demigods. The 12 Gods were an entirely different challenge down the road.

After hours upon hours... upon hours of math and the limited knowledge of military structure, we came to an agreement.

Starting with our chain of command: Me—Commander in Chief
God Killers officers—Senior Gem Generals
Gem-ranks—Junior Gem Generals
Obsidian-ranks—Colonels
Turquoise-ranks—Captains
Gold-ranks—Lieutenants
Silver-ranks—Sergeants
Copper-ranks—Corporals
Wood-ranks—Privates

Next, we made the structure of our army. Every rank must do nine quests and one raid quest to move up to the next rank set of quests. This means that in one trail on a continent, there are 10 Wood-rank quests, 10 Copper-rank quests, 10 Silver quests, 10 Gold, Turquoise, Obsidian, and one Gem-rank quest at the end. Keep in mind that there are five trails per continent and six continents in total.

In D-pop's case, they blew through the 25 miles of quests to the Ice Dragon so fast because they had Obsidian-rank players doing Wood-rank quests. The lower-rank players would stay behind due to battle restrictions, but higher-ranks would move forward until the Obsidian- ranks beat the Blind Ice Man.

There are 29 more trails to clear, connected to the 29 demigods we still have to defeat. The plan, going forward, will be to have the lower- ranks be led by a higher tier-rank mentor/guidance figure because those individuals have the experience and can tell the newbies below them what to do and what not to do. The effect: minimal casualties. Also, every quest gets a different group, unless they choose to volunteer for repeats. The best players of that rank around will finish the raid quest. The higher the rank quests, the more people needed to balance the rigor.

For the best quality warriors, we will keep all of our Obsidian players fighting. At the moment, we don't have enough of them for every continent, like our plan suggests we should; we only have enough teams for one continent, so the Obsidian-rank teams will rotate continentally.

Except for Obsidian and Gem, we will have every rank on every continent at the same time. With one quest a day, we're looking at a sum of 186 days to beat the 30 demigods.

It'll take 50 days for all of the 29 remaining trails that D-Pop's sacrificial troops never finished, up to Turquoise-rank quests to be beaten. Then Obsidian-rank players will take 10 days for quests and raids. It'll take us a day to get to a demigod and we'll rest for a day. We'll hunt down each demigod in that continent, skipping trails and taking shortcuts to reach all five of them. This will take 10 days. In between continents, we will get a two week break for the Obsidian guys to clear the next continent for us. Meanwhile, newer Obsidian-rank players should keep training and complete dungeon quests to rank up.

The real challenge will be getting Obsidian-rank players to Gem. We'll have to wait to finish the entire demigod campaign before we start leveling—well, OK, we're basically gonna boost the Obsidian guys.

With all the seriousness taken into consideration, however, I will encourage everyone, whenever they're not fighting or training, to enjoy the game. Swim in a lake, frolic in the fields, get a 10-course dinner, make friends, learn a new skill, keep a journal, join a guild, explore your interests, get into a relationship. We're in here for a long while, so it's best to make the most out of a shitty situation. This game has so much to offer that can't really be done in real life.

Some of the best moment I've had with these guys weren't in the dungeons or in the campaign quests, but in taverns, restaurants, games, shows, parties—there is more to do than just sit here, fight, and wallow in our own despair.