After leaving the Forging Life Guild, Kaito first headed straight to the bank vault. He stored the two hundred or so advanced whetstones he had just crafted safely inside the bank vault. With those items secure, he checked the inventory of his remaining Flint Steel Core Fragments. There were still a good number left, enough to last him for a long time.
Even so, Kaito didn't tell his second uncle to stop purchasing more fragments. He knew that while the current supply was enough for him, things would be different in the future. As Genesis continued to grow and more members joined his team, the demand for whetstones would also increase. At that time, no amount of stock would be enough. Because of that, he decided to keep buying as many fragments as they could gather.
Once he was finished with the bank, Kaito opened his system messages. The moment the chat window popped up, he saw it filled with dozens of unread messages. Most of them were from Mei Rin and the others. He had been so focused on forging that he hadn't noticed them earlier. Not only had he failed to check the chat, but he had even turned off the system chime for a while.
The reason for this was simple, every time he forged a whetstone, the system would prompt him with a notification. After forging hundreds of them, the constant chimes had begun to give him a headache. To concentrate on his work, he had muted the prompts completely. Because of that, he had also missed the messages from Mei Rin and the rest.
Now that he opened the chat, Kaito finally saw what they had written.
The first few messages were from Mei Rin.
"Brother Kaito, why didn't you call us when you went to fight Elder Faelion? Why didn't you let us come back for that NPC battle?"
Her words carried envy, but also excitement. Previously, when she had joined Kaito in fighting the demon cultists, she had enjoyed the fight far more than she expected. It wasn't like fighting the usual monsters in Glory. The battle against an NPC had given her a thrill that was on another level entirely.
At that time, Mei Rin had even thought to take on bounty missions. The Adventurer's Hall in South Glade Town allowed players to accept missions that involved hunting down NPCs marked as criminals with bounties on their heads. The idea had tempted her.
But she had shelved that thought after Kaito explained the truth. The NPCs who still had bounties on them were terrifyingly strong so strong that many of them could single-handedly destroy an entire guild of a thousand players. It wasn't something a small group could take lightly.
Even so, her desire for that kind of battle remained. And when she saw that Kaito and others had fought Elder Faelion, the demon fanatic, she couldn't help but feel envious.
While Kaito and the Genesis members were fighting that NPC, Mei Rin and the others had been running the Misty Palace dungeon. By the time they finished their dungeon runs and came out, the battle was already over. Only later did they see the videos on the forums of Glory.
Those videos showed the fight from start to finish hundreds of players including Genesis members surrounding and fighting against a single silver-level NPC boss. It had shocked them, excited them, and made them envious all at once.
Aika was the next to send messages.
"Big brother, remember to call us the next time you have such an exciting battle," she wrote.
Aika and her brothers and sisters had already been envious of Mei Rin before, knowing that she had been part of the earlier fight against the demon cultists. But now, after seeing that Kaito had led a team of a hundred players to face a silver-level boss NPC inside the town itself, their envy grew even stronger.
Normally, towns were safe zones where players weren't allowed to fight freely. For them to witness a massive battle in such a place was thrilling beyond measure. Just the thought of being part of such a fight filled them with both resentment and longing.
More messages followed one after another. Hiroto and the others also joined in.
"Big brother Kaito, please don't forget us next time."
"Yes, big brother, consider us too. Please!"
Reading through all their words, Kaito could only smile. He understood what they were feeling very well. Glory was unlike any other virtual reality game they had ever played before. The battles here were not only challenging but also exhilarating, so much so that they made players crave more.
He could see why his siblings and Mei Rin felt this way. Even during their dungeon runs in the Misty Palace, if not for his control and careful instructions, they would have already rushed headlong into fights against the Wraith soldiers. Even if it meant dying in the end, they wouldn't have cared. That was how thrilling and real the battles felt to them.
Looking at the chat, Kaito typed a simple reply.
"Okay, okay. Don't worry. Next time, if the need arises, I'll definitely ask you all to come along."
Even though he sent the message after a long delay, Aika instantly replied.
"Big brother, you have to promise that you will do so!"
Seeing her quick reply, Kaito couldn't help but think she might have been staring at the chat window the entire time, waiting for him to answer. He chuckled softly and typed back:
"Okay. I promise."
With that, he closed the system chat.
In his reply, Kaito wasn't just trying to brush them off. He truly meant what he said. Deep down, he knew that once they reached the city in Glory, that was when the real game would begin.
In the cities, players wouldn't only face monsters. They would also have to fight against large numbers of NPCs. There would be wars between powers not only against players but also against some NPC led powers, and battles where strategy and intelligence mattered far more than raw strength. At that stage, players would finally begin to see the difference between Glory and other virtual reality games.
It was during that time that players had truly started treating Glory as more than just entertainment. To many, it became a second world something that felt as real and as important as the lives they lived outside the game.
Kaito also remembered what would happen then. That stage marked a turning point. When players began reaching the cities, there had been a massive surge in the game's population. The number of active players inside Glory had skyrocketed from two billion to six billion almost overnight. That was an increase of four billion players.
And if that didn't sound significant, one only had to compare it with the real world. The total global population at the time was around twenty billion. That meant six billion people more than twenty-five percent of all humanity were inside Glory alone.
It was then that the game had truly shown its dominance, stepping onto the world stage without question.
At that time, the Earth Federation had also begun its own plans. They launched operations to purge and shut down the many other virtual reality games that still existed, clearing the way for Glory to reign as the undisputed leader.
For Kaito, that was also the time when his own plans would begin his moves to acquire various workshops, studios, and guilds that would rise during that chaotic period.