To Kill Gods or Die Trying

Chapter 40-New HQ

February 23rd, 2303

"Can I take it off now?" I shout through the violent roar of a waterfall.

The air here is misty and moist.

"Calm down, Ben, we're almost there," Essej replies.

"You guys have me anxious as hell right now," I grumble. I really do hate surprises, especially when you have to wait for them. I trust my friends as we walk across the ground, still going somewhere.

"It's been 30 minutes of darkness," I groan.

"Our intentions are pure. You needn't worry Ben," Cecelia reassures.

Well, Cece has never lied.

We continue walking until my shoulders are halted. "Can I look now?" I ask monotonously.

"Take it off," Alo says. I can hear the content in his voice.

I take off my blindfold and squint in reaction to the blinding sun.

Slowly my eyes readjust, then open wide, as well as my mouth. "Surprise!" hundreds of players yell.

My eyes gaze upon the cathedral/castle in front of me. I look down to see that we're all standing on a bridge on the edge of a waterfall passing through the building and connecting to both sides of the river bank. On the horizon, I can see the Capital's tiny silhouette in front of the bright, yellow setting sun. We must be on the fishing river dividing the forest of the Wildlands.

"Is this?" I ask.

"Our new guild house, broseph!" Sess screams in excitement.

Everyone begins cheering loudly and hyped. This is awesome!

"How the hell did you guys get this?" I ask.

"Since each demigod dropped 10 million gold, evenly distributed amongst our raid group of 30, we got everyone together, put our 290 million gold together, and spent 250 million on this sweet new guild house," Essej explains proudly.

Amazing. This is going to help so much.

"The real guild house is in the waterfall down below," Alo explains. "Teleportation pads on every floor to every floor, cause we've got rooms going down to hell. No exaggeration. No more triple, quadruple, or quintuple bunking. Everyone gets a room!"

The guild members cheer once again.

"Also," Margot continues, "as well as 10 thousand personal dorm rooms that we'll need in the future to accommodate the growth of the guild, we have a training facility for reflex, combat, and acrobatics, we have kitchens, beast stables for our Whisperers' mounts, taverns, meeting and planning rooms, our guild recreation hall, private storages, alchemy labs, blacksmith and production workshops, the mana lake for magic casters to replenish MP and strengthen magic while meditating, the great garden, the outdoor courtyard, the grand dining hall, outdoor balcony dining hall, trophy and treasure room, and a farming and agriculture floor. On top of that, there are hundreds of NPCs and players we hired to join the guild to do our personal cooking, production, farming, potion production, and cleaning. On top of that, we have our personal pier so we can spawn ships at the bottom of the falls and sail out to sea."

"Wow, that real estate stuff really stuck with you," Sess jeers.

"Shut up, runt. You have to clean the shit of all the animals so you better get started," Margot hisses. We laugh.

"So, is it ready?" I ask.

"Hells yeah man, we've got all our stuff moved in already. I'm sooooo excited to take a dip in that mana lake," Havanna squeals.

"After me," Mack protests.

"Wow what a gentleman," Sess jeers.

"Emphasis on man. I see you still haven't grown a beard," Mack retaliates. We howl at Sess' destruction.

"So you crazy bastards did all of this behind my back?" I ask confused. Honestly, how did I not catch on?

"Ben, how did you, like, not ever notice? Every time we went to, like, "just hang out" at the Capital, the guild was just stripping the place down and moving it here," Rachel explains, laughing at my obliviousness.

"I knew the walls and furniture were disappearing!" I cry. Everyone laughs. I honestly thought there was a thief or a mole amongst us.

I whistle loudly and everyone falls silent. "I just want to say, thank you to all you guys!" I yell at the top of my lungs. It's a lot harder without a magic megaphone or potion. "Take advantage of the sweet stuff we have here! Train hard! Gem-ranks, you guys are responsible for helping the Obsidian guys get to Gem! I want to see leadership and I wanna see hard work! Let's kill some gods!"