The room quieted down again. Roland slowly sipped on the warm water, waiting patiently for Hawk to ponder quietly over this idea.
For a person like Hawk who had been in charge of a large-scale guild, before anything was done, he would ponder it ahead of time. Even back when he was killing nobles, he contemplated it beforehand.
Could it be done and should it be done? What effects will this bring to the organization?
He had to consider all the aspects. It wasn’t as simple as getting a good idea and just doing it—that was the way of a lone wolf. It wasn’t the attitude a deputy leader of a guild should have.
Roland had already finished three cups of water before Hawk finally spoke after contemplating for nearly ten minutes. “It’s not a problem to gather the beggars, but how should we cooperate—how should the power and benefits be distributed?”
“It hasn’t even been done. You’re already starting to consider the power and benefits?” Roland was slightly surprised.
“Of course,” Hawk said matter-of-factly. “Even for a gaming guild like ours, with a mere few hundred people, the majority are still occasional players—there will still be disputes of interest. Not to mention, if we really could gather the beggars, the benefits that arise may be even greater than we imagined.”
Roland nodded; he couldn’t help but agree with Hawk’s point.
It was just as Hawk had said: in places where there are lots of people, there will always be disputes of interest. Even if the members of F6 were all childhood friends, there were still small hidden groups amongst them.
For example, Roland and Schuck had a better relationship with each other, while Raffel and Li Lin were even more familiar with each other than they were with the rest.
There were at least over ten thousand beggars inside this city. Even if they only gathered one-tenth, that would be over a thousand people.
A thousand people would undeniably be considered a large force inside this city.
“Actually, I’m not interested in establishing an organization.” Roland thought for a moment and said, “For me, those things are too problematic.”
Hawk was somewhat confused. “Then why did you give me this idea?”
“As I said earlier, I want you to investigate something for me,” Roland explained. “As for the matter of the beggars, I just happened to see this and came up with the idea in passing. After all, I don’t want to be taken as a pushover and be messed with by the nobles. If they control or force you guys away, Betta and I will have to deal with their malice next.”
“We’re on the same boat, at least that’s what they see.” Hawk sneered in disdain. “Those nobles don’t dare to face us head-on, so they thought of this despicable method to chase us away!”
Roland also laughed and said, “Only once we’re gone will they be able to continue to do evil with impunity. For example, eating human hearts or kidnapping and killing young girls.”
The room went silent all of a sudden.
The three of them all thought of different scenes. The scene that surfaced before Hawk’s eyes was the corpses of the boys and girls drifting on the river, while what emerged before Roland’s eyes were the dozens of bones inside the cave.
“This ignorant, cruel, and primitive world.” Hawk clicked his tongue in disgust. “I really want to smash it to pieces.”
Within his words, there was an indistinct wrath. This was a passionate young man. If he weren’t so, he wouldn’t openly go against a noble for the sake of the corpses of those young boys and girls.
“Then you should recruit more people, and perhaps there’ll be a change,” Roland said with a smile. “As a guild’s deputy leader, this should be something you’re good at.”
Hawk’s thick sloping brows knit into a frown, then somewhat puzzled, he said, “I can’t help but feel that this is a little unfair. We’re doing all the bitter and strenuous work and we have to gather information for you, while you only have to come up with the idea.”
“There’ll be places where I can help,” Roland said with a smile. “I’m currently the deputy chairman of the Association of Mages in this city anyhow.”
Hawk was momentarily startled. He stuck his thumb up in approval. “I thought you simply joined the Association of Mages, but I didn’t realize you were already in the upper echelons.”
Roland chatted with them for a little while longer. He then left after he cast Language Proficiency on them.
Then, he returned to the magic tower and continued to work on the derivative spell Character Proficiency.
As he produced more and more data, he progressed faster and faster.
Another four days passed in the game, then he finally completed the derivative spell Character Proficiency.
Excited, Roland wasn’t in a rush to cry for joy. Instead, he held a book in his hands and lost himself in reading it.
The book’s title was Meditation Techniques and Important Cautions.
This was also the specialty that Roland wanted to learn the most right now. Before he arrived at Delpon, Falken told him that this was a specialty skill specific to mages and one that must be learned.
The so-called Meditation Spell was, in essence, the combined application of mental power and spirit.
Enter a calm state between sleep and awareness by sitting cross-legged or lying down, then condensing mental power, one would be able to enter their own spiritual world.
Afterward, they would be able to mobilize their own mental power and form a mental world within their spiritual world.
Since it was a mental world, one could transmogrify the majority of the physical scenery of the world in the game.
Most importantly, one could conduct magic simulation experiments that wouldn’t cause any substantial harm to one’s own body and spirit.
This Meditation Spell was easy to explain but hard to do.
For the majority of people, after they entered a state of calm, they would immediately fall asleep. Roland was no exception to this. He tried four times, and once he emptied his mind, he would start snoring in less than three minutes.
And then, he would be forcibly ejected from the game world, because after players entered the game, they were already sleeping.
It was absolutely impossible to be in a state between sleep and consciousness, this in and of itself was a paradox.
Moreover, Roland couldn’t help but think it was a little similar to lucid dreaming.
However, Meditation Spell simply had the addition of using mental power.
Could it be that we players can’t learn this Meditation Spell?
Although Roland had this thought in mind, he still tried many times and succeeded in none of them, unfortunately.
After the gaming time for the day was over, Roland got up from the immersive cabin. He first went to upload the Character Proficiency node model illustration onto the forums, and then he went to the game’s suggestion and bug feedback section and explained the effects of the Meditation Spell. He said in his post, “We players are essentially already lucid dreaming, so it should be impossible to enter another kind of state of sleep, right?”
Afterward, he closed his computer, washed his face, brushed his teeth, and ate breakfast.
When he was halfway through his breakfast, his phone rang. He thought it was Schuck calling, but once he checked his phone, he saw that it was an unfamiliar number.
Seeing that it didn’t seem like a disturbing advertisement number, he picked up the call.
Soon, a feminine-sounding male voice came from the other end of the phone. “Hello, may I ask for Roland?”
“This is he, and you are?”
“I’m World of Falan’s head planner, Ma Huajun[1], you can call me Old Ma.”
“Oh, hello, Mr. Ma.” Roland was somewhat surprised, thinking that this person might be a swindler.
“We’ve investigated the bug you submitted, it is indeed a problem.” Ma Huajun’s voice sounded unusually clear through the phone. “Now, we have two courses of action. The first is to change Meditation into an active support specialization. For example, after activation, the next few spells will increase in damage or have their effects amplified. The other is to change it to a passive skill. For example, while out of combat, one will speed up mental power regeneration. Because you discovered this bug, we thought that you should decide whether or not to change it into an active specialty or a passive specialty.”
[1] MC in another book (axed) by the same author