(Luke's POV)
The first thing that Luke did after accepting the guardian role for the upcoming rankers event, was to look for Cervantez and inform him about the same.
"What? You got invited as one of the four rankers too?" Cervantez said, surprised to see his Vice Guildmaster making the list, however, he was extremely happy that he did.
"You too?" Asked Luke, as Cervantez nodded in pride.
Being invited to be a guardian was proof that they were truly one of the top players in the game and that their levels were not for show only and that the system evaluated them to be one of the strongest players around.
"Take pride in this invitation, SkyLion, only four players get it, and not all four of them are necessarily the top rankers. I'm pretty sure your brother won't be getting one–" Cervantez said, as Luke awkwardly avoided eye contact with him as this topic came up.
As per Leo's wishes, he had not told his guildmaster that 'TheBoss' and 'Leo Skyshard' were one and the same, and pretended as if he were unaware about the whole drama.
"Speaking of your brother, the video he posted on the global forums was a clever one. I can't believe how stupid some players are to believe that Leo Skyshard and 'TheBoss' can be one and the same.
Clearly, they have never met your brother in real life….. he's good but, there's no chance he can be 'TheBoss'," Cervantez said, as Luke choked up on the criticism.
Cervantez was very wrong about his brother, however, Luke could do nothing to correct him.
"In any case, distractions aside, let's focus on this event SkyLion, I think the two of us can easily gain anywhere between 100-150 levels from this event if we play our cards right, or even 200 levels if everything goes our way, but that is more or less a pipe dream" Cervantez said, as Luke looked towards him in confusion.
"Guildmaster, do you perhaps have advance information about this event?" Luke asked with stars sparkling in his eyes, as Cervantez nodded solemnly.
"While I don't know too much, I know what the rewards structure is going to look like at the least.
At first, us guardians will gain 2 levels for every ranker we defeat, so that's 50 levels guaranteed if we manage to defeat just 25 rankers.
However, after every 50 levels that we gain, the difficulty to gain subsequent levels is increased four times, so from then onwards we need to kill four players to gain two levels, or roughly 100 players more to gain 50 more levels.
We can keep accumulating gains this way for a maximum of 200 levels, but that's just a pipe dream.
Also, if we die or eventually fall to the waves of players attacking us, we will lose 50% of our level gains in total, so realistically, we should be happy if we walk out with 50-100 levels gained from this event–" Cervantez said, as Luke nodded in understanding.
"So how many players can we expect to face at once?" Luke asked, as Cervantez let out a long sigh faced with this question.
"Roughly, all four guardians can face a maximum of 2500 players. However, realistically, only 500-800 of them will make it to the end where we guard the doors.
These 500-800 however, will be the cream of the crop, so expect facing the top mages, the top swordsmen, the top tanks in the game all at once in an epic showdown" Cervantez replied, as Luke felt goosebumps run all over his spine when he thought about such a scenario.
Every player dreamed of having a moment where they got to face hundreds of powerful opponents alone and this event aimed to achieve just that.
"Ofcourse, our HP pool will be multiplied by the same number as our opponents, so for example if we face a total of 500 opponents at the end, our HP pool will be multiplied by 500x giving us a level playing field to fight them.
However, while our HP pools will be the same as our opponents, our numbers would not.
They will team up as a group and try to thoroughly overwhelm us, which will always work out in their favor... hence, it will be a tough fight" Cervantez explained, as Luke seemed to understand the whole format of the event at this point.
"So when you say prepare for the event, you mean….?"
"I mean buying MAX HP potions, the kind that can refill our HP bar fully when drunk, also stocking up on items that can provide us with a breathing room when being overwhelmed.
In this event, all guardians will have their critical damage improved by 10x and normal attack damage improved by 5x, making our attacks much more potent than they already are, however, our base stats like our defense, movement speed etc, will remain the same.
We need to be strategic here Luke, you're smart. Think of some ingenious solutions" Cervantez said, as Luke gave him a thumbs up sign.
After all the information that Cervantez had given him, Luke seemed to have pieced together all the details of the event that were necessary, giving him the ability to thoroughly plan for it.
"We need to buy trap mechanisms, bombs and more AOE tools….. before the other rankers ever arrive at our location, we can already rig the fight area to our advantage–" Luke suggested, as Cervantez slapped him on the back with joy.
"Now we're talking— what else?" He asked, as the duo dived deep into the discussion of what to do at the upcoming event.
For the next few hours the duo discussed contingency plans for all possible scenarios that they could potentially face and once they felt like they had discussed everything there was to discuss, they delved into the purchase of all the items that they needed to gather before the event began.
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/// A/N - Mass Release Chapter 2 of 5. Let's go! ///