Chapter 256: Loyalty

Once everything was clean, the two girls sat on the only bed in the room and stayed there for a moment, catching their breath.

Having a System and superhuman strength and stats came with the perk that physical tasks could be completed much faster and with far less exhaustion.

They were tired, but they barely needed more than five minutes to recover. Kaho probably would have needed longer, but with Eva doing almost all of the work, she was fine.

"Okay, so how are things going on your end?" Kaho finally asked, slowly getting up from the bed.

"Better than we projected," the queen said with a grin. "Of course, we had some betrayals and quite a few departures, but the core group is sticking together even better than I expected."

The natural problem with what they were doing, was that once a guild was created, its founder immediately gained complete control over its territory. Naturally, many of the people who had exploited the situation during the early stages had no obligation to remain loyal after someone created their guild with Eva’s help.

To begin with, their objective had never been to gain a lot of territory. What they really wanted was to create chaos. But the more people remained loyal to Eva, the more influence they could exert over how things developed.

"But out of the more than five hundred guilds that have been created thanks to us, I would say at least three hundred, maybe as many as three hundred and fifty, are still willing to follow my orders," Eva said with a confident grin.

Kaho blinked in surprise.

"But I thought you were planning on asking the people you considered the most loyal to stay low for now, so we could use them later. How have you managed to keep so many?"

"Apparently, I’m good at my job."

Kaho gave her an incredulous look.

Eva simply smiled and leaned back, her eyes shining with pride. "Well, charisma certainly helps. And once people believe that following you is the way for a greater good, they may go to greater lengths for you...."

Kaho could only smile ironically, her best friend was definitely born for that. She possessed the natural presence of a leader.

She was confident, decisive, and had the kind of charisma that made people instinctively look toward her when something needed to be done. She had been born to be a queen.

But that wasn’t the whole story. She also had gained a new skill from levelling up, it was...

[Queen’s Favor — Passive Skill

Description: Those who receive meaningful assistance from the Queen are more likely to develop trust and loyalty toward her. The effect grows stronger when the Queen’s actions are perceived as genuine and beneficial.]

"Besides, as expected, people are copping us, seeing this as a chance to get money, and a chance to finally have hunting grounds," Eva commented. "But most people don’t plan on assuming such a risk."

"I can get it, I also wouldn’t create a guild, because once the expansion system is back in place, I would probably be killed," Kaho commented. "I’m impressed that so many people are willing to take the risk."

"People are greedy," Eva said with a shrug. "Anyway, there is a last problem we need to speak about, apparently the clans have already started to strongly restrict movements among floors."

"So it’s becoming much harder to send our allies to other floors?" Kaho asked, thinking this was a somewhat good way to at least restrict the chaos.

"Yes, but don’t worry, I had previously asked some people to move in floors, and stay hidden in there, but we can’t act as freely as before."

Kaho nodded, and got up, looking around the now organized documents and book, and she quickly found what she wanted. It was a simplified map, showing basic information about all floors from 1 to 50.

She also took, to other books, and some extra maps, that contained more specific information about other floor.

First Kaho asked for Eva or the latest reports, so she could mark on her map where their personnel were acting. As planed, they had casper chaos on most of the 25 first floors

"Do you think we should go any higher?" Eva asked. "Shin had told me not to risk it, but the higher floor would have more valuable loot..."

"Yes, but that also would mean angering more powerful people," Kaho grimaced. "Let’s just focus on our main enemies for now..."

Kaho made big circles into the 8th and 11th floor, both of them were more or less controlled by on of the great clans, Matra.

"After studying the situation as much as possible, I think these two would be great targets. Matra’s control over the eleventh floor isn’t that strong, so it wouldn’t be absolutely impossible to take it over."

Eva nodded. "But Matra’s control over the tenth floor is also weak, isn’t it? And from what I know, it has better drops."

"Yes. The eleventh floor is known for having shitty drops, but it’s good for XP, especially for lower-level newcomers like us. Most of the monsters on this floor move in packs, with many weaker monsters together, unlike the floors above it, which are mostly populated by solitary, stronger monsters."

Overall, a flock from the eleventh floor would still be stronger than one of the solitary monsters from the tenth floor. After all, the tower’s difficulty always increased with each floor.

However, it was safer for a group of newcomers to band together and face a group of weaker monsters than to gang up on a single one that could end up being too difficult and kill several people.

Not to mention that in the tower, only the person who landed the killing blow received all the XP. Therefore, having more monsters available was better for newcomers who needed to level up.

"Okay, you can leave it to me. I’ll take over this floor," Eva said with a confident smile.

"I know you will. Now, about the eighth floor, we can’t really do anything like taking it over, because Matra’s main guild already directly controls around seventy percent of its territory."

Eva nodded. She already knew that. In fact, considering how low-level the floor was, it wouldn’t have been surprising if they controlled even more of its territory.

"But they do have one glaring weakness," Kaho commented as she opened a book and spread another map across the table, this one showing the eighth floor in greater detail.

"Being a low floor, it doesn’t have particularly good drops, but it’s still very valuable because of its mines. So, if we can disrupt its operations, the damage would be huge."

Eva nodded. She already had some people on the eighth floor. Not to mention that, considering how Matra treated her subjects, she was sure she could find people who already lived there and would be willing to help.