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“What should we do?”
“I- I don’t know.”

Katalina and I stood in front of our capsules with wet hair wondering what to do about the situation. Though we should log in right away as Esther suggested, it won’t make much of a difference.

Because we were extremely fatigued in the game, the only way to resume playing the game normally was to go back to our mansion and rest until the next day.

If we were to push ourselves to keep on playing, the accumulated fatigue would lead to our characters receiving various debuffs.

“We’d have to at least login and survey the situation, don’t you think?”
“Though if we connect to the game, our fatigue recovery speed would slow down, and if the guild lord and leader are absent in such a critical situation, they wouldn’t have anyone to follow.”

In the end, we decided that we had to log in.

“Sigh.”

Though I was craving a cold can of beer, it was forbidden for players to enter Blue Sky after getting intoxicated, even slightly. So I simply gave up on that idea as I laid down again on the still-damp with sweat capsule seat.

Going through the usual login process, I connected to the game again.

-Warning. Your fatigue level has been reduced to a warning level. Please keep in mind you would receive a reduction in fatigue level once you leave the safe zone.

Just as I thought, a warning message popped up because of the high amount of fatigue I had accumulated.

“Damn… Looks like I won’t be able to get out of the sky castle for now.”

As we had both logged out in the home office, Katalina standing next to me gave a sigh.

“We just have to hope that the two guilds don’t announce the execution of the siege war against us.”
“Yeah. But why isn’t Esther here ye…”

Creak.

“So you’re both here!”

Looks like Esther didn’t learn the ways of gentlemen. Oh, I guess I should say the ways of ladies¹?

“How is the current situation?”

Katalina skipped the introductions and asked directly. She sounded slightly agitated, and I understood how she felt since she had bolted out in the middle of her shower.

“Oh… sis. Well, nothing has happened yet. They have only announced their declaration of war for now.”
“Really? So you’re saying nothing has happened yet.”
“Yes, for now…”

Esther noticed that Katalina seemed to want to say something she wasn’t going to like, so she paused to let Katalina continue speaking.

“Esther, since you haven’t participated in the siege battles today, you should have very little fatigue, right?”

So that’s what she was aiming for. After understanding her intention, I was happy to just cheer her on internally.

“You’re right.”
“Then I was hoping that you would be on duty for us, just for today.”

That was what I wanted to tell her.

“Hey! How could you do this to me? I haven’t hunted all day long. You both have increased your experience points since you participated in the siege battles but I haven’t.”

Esther refuted pitifully. What she said was perfectly justified. We were at a higher rank already, plus we had our levels often increase dramatically with our concentrated efforts in hunting together, while Esther on the other hand was going through a very plain standard way of hunting monsters for experience, which meant she was getting barely enough experience points per day to keep up with others of her caliber.

On top of that, there was always a dungeon within every castle that only the guilds that owned castles could access which other guilds couldn’t. It meant that even if a war occurred, we didn’t need to worry about slowing down our rate of gaining experience points. It was probably why Esther was refusing this much.

But Katalina gladly answered as if it wasn’t a big deal.

“I’ll help you power level!²”
“Whoa…”
“Amazing.”

A top-ranked user, power leveling a fellow top ranked user? Though it was certainly not impossible…

“S… sis. I have a sense of pride too, you know…”

To receive a power level from another ranked user didn’t make sense at all. There certainly was a huge discrepancy in the number of levels, but all top-ranked users still had high self-esteem.

Though I wasn’t a top-ranked player back when I was in Korea, I still lived with the same amount of pride.

“If Ellie and I give you a power level, you won’t have problems gaining a whole level in a single day.”
“A whole level in a single day?”

Hey, why are you dragging me into this? But then again, I was one of the people enjoying exclusive benefits, so it was a bit too much to say I was being sacrificed here.

In any case, pride didn’t particularly matter since Esther became interested in the deal and started taking the bait.

“That’s right. You know the Red Plains that Ellie and I usually hunt at, right? If you hunt all day there, it would be really easy to fill up your bar quickly.”
“And what role would I have there?”
“You can just stand there doing nothing or kite some more monsters for us.³”
“Ngh… I’m still the guild leader of Sapphire guild, you know.”

Esther was now bringing up the matter of pride as the guild leader.

“No one will say anything. I’m the guild master, and Ellie is the lord. Who would criticize us for supporting our young(?) ranking player both morally and materially?”

Honestly, there were many people that would criticize us for doing it, whether they were from the Chaos guild or the Tempest guild. But it wasn’t like I was going to ruin Katalina’s plans right now. If I ruined them she may blame me instead, so all I could do was wish that the plan succeeded.

In truth, we had plenty of experience points gained from the guild battles so even if we would experience a loss exp gain for a few days, the impact would be minimal.

‘Ugh.’

Thinking about experience points, a painful memory came to mind. It stabbed my heart deeply. I wonder how many experience points I had thrown away back in Manchester City? I felt like crying at the thought of it.

“Okay then, let’s do that!”

Esther was just about to completely take our bait.

“All right then. You accepted our proposal!”
“Yes, but you have to make good on your promise that you’ll power level me later.”
“Heheh, of course, of course.”

Katalina smiled evilly knowing she had gotten Esther by hook, line and sinker. I wonder if Esther knew that she had now been given the fate of surveying the situation all through the night due to the war…

I heard that it was really hard for women to have their sleeping cycles reversed as opposed to men. I was worried that her face might look extremely haggard by the end of the war.

Seeing it was none of my business, I decided not to tell her the truth. Either way, thanks to Esther’s sacrifice we’d be able to have plenty of rest in the night.

Those words kept popping up in my head.

“… is the reason why, so Eva will have all the command rights over the forces during the night. All night-time duty personnel, please follow Eva’s orders.”

I couldn’t worry about the war 24 hours a day after all. All the officers who had gathered due to the sudden declaration of war late at night clapped at the end of the briefing with tired looks on their faces.

Clap clap clap.

Most of them were fine with this duty as all the members that did not or could not participate in the siege battle in the morning were now going to be participating in the night battle.

That was just how fatigued the users fighting the battles in the daytime had become.

The one good thing was that we didn’t need as many people participating in the battle because we were defending the castle from their siege.

Being considerate of the members that weren’t able to increase their levels, I promised that if the whole guild was successful in fending off the attacks, I will distribute the experience points and gold received from completing the castle defense quest equally.

Though they weren’t completely happy receiving just that, it was still helpful so there weren’t many complaints. They just simply accepted it since they would return to normal duty rotation after this.

But if this situation goes on much longer, complaints will definitely start to rise.

We needed to end the war quickly. Both sides would get tired in a war of attrition after all.

On top of that, we had received new guilds into our alliance so we were busy increasing influence over them as well as our internal organization.

“We’d finish off this temporary meeting here for now.”

Completing the short meeting with the officers, everyone except the leader of the night troops and minimum required personnel had logged out immediately. I was also sick of seeing my fatigue level recovering very slowly so I hurried to the home office and logged out.

“Ugh, I’ll have to shower again.”

Though I hadn’t moved my body in a strenuous way, the sweat that had seeped into the seat of the capsule became embedded on my clothes again. All the commotion had begun before I could even leave it to Sara to clean it up so there was no avoiding it.

In the end, Katalina and I simply grumbled to ourselves as we took another shower. Even though I should have gotten used to this by now, I still couldn’t calm down my rapidly beating heart.

No one in the world would understand just how it felt to forcefully calm yourself down like buddha would every time you showered unless you actually experienced it yourself. If I had to keep straining harder to calm and empty my mind any further, I would likely experience an out-of-body sensation.

“But you know…”
“Hm?”

As I was staring at the ceiling since I didn’t know where to look at, Katalina asked me a question.

“How about we try researching that system called ‘Discharge’? We can’t simply just keep defending our cities for a whole week without losses. We regained a good amount of personnel thanks to the Shining guild joining us. So even if we are in a slightly disadvantageous situation, we won’t be pushed over just from having a go at fighting them ourselves.”

I had actually thought about that as well. I agreed that we needed to make sure this war ended as soon as possible.

“All right. We’ll just have a look into it at least once tomorrow.”

Honestly, it’s a problem that we will figure out only by actually doing it rather than researching it. It’s not a skill nor something we can rehearse and practice, so the only way to know is to actually do it ourselves.

The problem is how this system works… I couldn’t predict at all whether it will work favorably for us or not, which was why I didn’t have the courage to try it.

“I know that being among the first people to try a new system isn’t always the best.”
“Agreed.”

Though there was definitely a benefit in being the first to use a system, considering the numerous penalties that could come with it, it was too much for me to try new things most of the time.

It seemed that Katalina was thinking the same way.

But I’m sure the people who employed the system late would say that we were lucky to have enjoyed the benefits of the system first…

1. Translator’s note: It is a comment in that she was being rude for not knocking before coming in
2. Gamer’s Corner: It’s a bit of a unique MMORPG term, so the explanation is that Esther would follow behind Katalina while Katalina hunts down all the monsters by herself, allowing Esther to gain a lot more experience points through the party system than she would when hunting alone in her usual method
3. Gamer’s Corner: Kiting refers to keeping an enemy chasing you while also keeping it at a range where it cannot attack you. This tactic is often used to more safely attack the enemy using a long-range attack or to distract the enemy while others attack it.]