Chapter 415: System Update

[Would Host like to initiate Guild Advancement?]

[YES / NO]

Sage stared at the two choices floating before him while the ruined Old Western Garrison stretched silently in every direction.

Nothing about the district had changed in the few minutes since Mina asked whether all of it belonged to the Guild.

The same abandoned barracks stood beyond the central training ground, the same collapsed warehouses remained half buried beneath decades of neglect, and weeds still pushed through cracks in roads that had once carried military wagons.

Boren was somewhere behind him continuing to mourn the seventy-two million gold coins they had just spent, while Pax had already begun examining the surrounding buildings with the expression of a man mentally cataloguing security problems.

Mina stood beside Sage, looking between him and the ruins without knowing what had appeared before his eyes. To everyone else, the Guild had just purchased an enormous abandoned military district.

To Sage, the translucent panel hovering in front of him meant something much larger.

The Guild had been C-Rank for long enough that its growth across Evergreen had started feeling natural, but this was the first time the System had acknowledged that the organization was ready to step beyond a single Region.

He selected YES.

The panel disappeared for half a second before a clear notification sounded inside his mind.

[Guild Advancement Initiated.]

[Current Guild Rank: C]

[Advancing Guild Rank...]

[C-Rank → B-Rank]

Sage expected the usual series of notifications to follow: new facilities, improved construction options, perhaps an expanded Guild Shop and higher-level missions.

He was already wondering what a B-Rank Mana Cultivation Tower might look like when the interface flickered unexpectedly. The normal blue panel darkened, lines of information vanished, and a new message appeared in their place.

[Major Development Threshold Detected.]

Sage’s expression changed.

[The Adventurer Guild has progressed beyond Regional Development.]

[Regional Development Phase completed.]

[Kingdom-Level Development requirements satisfied.]

[Organization scale reassessment in progress...]

[Second System Update commencing...]

"Second System Update?" Sage murmured.

Mina immediately looked up at him.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Boren stopped inspecting a crack in the old training ground and narrowed his eyes.

"Whenever you say ’nothing’ while staring at empty air, something expensive usually happens."

Sage didn’t answer. His attention remained fixed on the interface as the entire panel reorganized itself. This wasn’t simply a Guild Rank increase.

The System had treated previous advancements as improvements within the same basic framework: more members, better facilities, greater reputation and increasingly sophisticated functions.

This felt different. The Guild had crossed some invisible line the moment it secured territory in the Royal Capital. Evergreen was no longer the scale against which the System measured its development.

For the first time, the Adventurer Guild was being recognized as an organization intended to operate across the Kingdom itself.

Another sequence of notifications began.

[Second System Update Complete.]

[Kingdom-Level Development Framework activated.]

[Kingdom Map — Unlocked]

[Regional Management — Unlocked]

[Kingdom Reputation — Unlocked]

[National Mission Network — Unlocked]

[Kingdom Construction — Unlocked]

[Advanced Guild Shop — Unlocked]

[Guild Logistics — Unlocked]

[Department Management — Unlocked]

[Regional Treasury Management — Unlocked]

[Additional functions will become available as Guild development progresses.]

Sage read through the list twice. The number of new functions would have been overwhelming if he hadn’t spent months learning how the System worked.

Even then, several names immediately raised questions. National Mission Network sounded like an expansion of the mission system that connected individual branches, except now it appeared intended to operate between entire Regions.

Regional Treasury Management suggested that Evergreen’s finances would eventually become only one part of a larger structure.

Guild Logistics was self-explanatory enough, but Sage could already imagine how complicated transporting materials, supplies and personnel between Regional Headquarters would become once the organization spread beyond Evergreen.

Department Management interested him for another reason. The Guild had grown so quickly that many responsibilities were still handled by whichever capable person happened to be available.

Lyana had carried far too much administrative work for months because there had never been a formal structure large enough to divide everything properly. Apparently, the System had finally decided that improvisation was no longer sufficient.

He resisted the urge to open every interface. Doing that here would accomplish nothing except leave him standing motionless in an abandoned training ground while Boren became increasingly suspicious.

Instead, Sage selected the first option.

[Kingdom Map]

The familiar style of the Guild Map unfolded before him, except the scale was immediately different. Evergreen no longer occupied most of the display. It appeared as one defined territory among a much larger collection of regional divisions stretching across the Kingdom.

Sage instinctively focused on it, and the map responded. Evergreen brightened, revealing the network he had spent months building: Greyvale at the center of the Regional Guild structure, established City Branches spreading outward, smaller Guild offices, registered adventurer activity and the roads connecting them.

Riverdale, Stonebridge and Silvercrest were visible among the major branch locations, along with numerous smaller points representing the Guild’s expanding presence.

What had once seemed enormous now occupied only one section of the Kingdom Map.

Sage slowly zoomed back out.

The remaining Regions were there, but unlike Evergreen, they carried almost no Guild information.

Their boundaries could be seen in broad outline, while much of the internal detail remained dim or incomplete.

Major routes and a few important population centers appeared where the System possessed sufficient information, but there were no established Guild networks, no Regional Headquarters, no connected branches and no streams of mission activity.

They were essentially empty territory from the Adventurer Guild’s perspective.

Only Evergreen was alive.

Sage looked at it for several seconds.

He had known, intellectually, that expanding across Evergreen was only the beginning. He had said it often enough.

Greyvale had become the Regional Headquarters precisely because there would eventually be other Regional Headquarters.

The Royal Capital would become the center above them.

Yet seeing the Kingdom represented like this made the difference impossible to ignore. Hundreds of thousands of registered members, more than twenty major branches, countless missions and everything they had struggled to build across Evergreen occupied only one portion of the map.

Mina stepped closer when she noticed his expression. "Did something happen?"

"The Guild just got much bigger."

She looked around at the ruined district. "We already knew that. You bought half a city."

"Not the land." Sage rolled his eyes at him.

Boren approached as well, still holding the protective case that contained a copy of the property documents. "Please don’t tell me you’ve found something larger to buy. I haven’t emotionally recovered from this one."

Sage almost laughed. "No more land today."

"Good. That’s the first sensible thing you’ve said since Pax showed us this place." Boren breath in relief.