Chapter 165 – Asura’s Strength

Frenzied Soul sighed in relief when he heard Hidden Soul’s decision.

Hidden Soul was the strongest among the former Flower of Seven Sins members that had joined Asura. If comparing purely in terms of techniques, some Tier 6 God-ranked experts weren’t even her match.

If it were on the main continent, Hidden Soul definitely couldn’t pose a threat to the Flower of Seven Sins since she never managed to reach Tier 6. However, it was a different story in the Miniature Ancient World. Now that everyone was still at Tier 3, Hidden Soul was undoubtedly one of the strongest experts in the Miniature Ancient World, and even the Flower of Seven Sins would have difficulty dealing with her.

Meanwhile, the benefits the Asura Mercenary Alliance offered were incredibly attractive to them, experts who couldn’t reach Tier 6. If they were to leave Asura now, it was almost impossible for them to find another holy land like Abyssal Star City’s primordial tower.

So, now that the Asura Mercenary Alliance was willing to shield them even at the risk of offending the Flower of Seven Sins, it’d be too much of a waste for them to give up without a fight.

“Guild Leader Black Flame, we might not have to worry about getting targeted since we have Abyssal Star City as our base, but if the Flower of Seven Sins decides to go after our customers, I’m afraid there is very little we can do about it. Many of the experts that have recently joined Asura might even decide to leave as a result…” Liu Wusheng suddenly said. “This is an especially worrisome problem considering many of our customers have been commissioning quests to acquire Mounts recently. This leaves the mercenary alliance’s experts with no choice but to head for the surrounding NPC Cities to raid Team Dungeons for the primordial secret land’s entry tokens. Meanwhile, this is the perfect opportunity for the Flower of Seven Sins to hinder our members from completing their quests.”

Whenever the Flower of Seven Sins decided to go after a power, it would typically go after the power’s core experts and executives. Either that, or it would target the power’s various income sources.

However, the Asura Mercenary Alliance’s main development area was centered around Abyssal Star City. Meanwhile, Abyssal Star City was a stronghold that the Five Great Super Guilds could not destroy even if all five of them worked together. Naturally, there was no way the Flower of Seven Sins could do anything about the city by itself.

Hence, it was obvious what method the Flower of Seven Sins would choose to target the Asura Mercenary Alliance. The Flower of Seven Sins would target Asura’s various businesses and crush the mercenary alliance using its vastly superior manpower and financial strength.

Currently, the Asura Mercenary Alliance relied mainly on commissions made by leisure players to earn Credits and sustain the livelihoods of the mercenary alliance’s independent experts.

The main goal of every independent expert in joining the Asura Mercenary Alliance was to earn Credits and resources in God’s Domain. However, if these independent experts were prevented from completing their quests and could not earn any Credits, it was only natural that they would withdraw from the mercenary alliance. After all, these independent experts needed to live.

Meanwhile, if the customers who had commissioned the quests saw that their quests weren’t being completed even after a long time, they would definitely choose to take their business elsewhere. If this situation persisted, the Asura Mercenary Alliance would eventually crumble due to a lack of customers.

Of course, there was also the option of Zero Wing and Witch’s Sin sending their experts to complete these quests. However, the problem with this solution was that experts weren’t cabbages. It might be fine to do so once or twice, but Zero Wing’s and Witch’s Sin’s development would definitely be affected if this method was employed over a long period.

Fortunately, not all was lost. There was still one method Asura could employ to counteract the Flower of Seven Sins’ obstruction: having stronger experts take on the quests. For example, they could have Refinement Realm experts take on a quest that normally needed only first-rate experts to complete.

The Flower of Seven Sins could also be regarded as an independent organization in a sense. Whenever the organization had its members do work for it, it would pay them according to the job’s difficulty. Meanwhile, a simple obstruction job would naturally yield a small pay, and powerful experts naturally wouldn’t be interested in taking on such jobs.

Hence, if Asura raised the overall strength of the experts taking on its quests, the experts the Flower of Seven Sins sent would naturally fail to obstruct Asura’s experts.

However, if the Asura Mercenary Alliance chose to take this route, it would have to spend money and resources to subsidize the customers’ quests. Only by doing so would stronger independent experts be interested in taking on these quests.

After all, the primordial tower’s environment wasn’t attractive to most independent experts. It was only attractive to Tier 5 experts who had trouble reaching Tier 6.

“As I thought, it’s still going to come down to a competition of wealth, huh?” Hidden Soul understood what Liu Wusheng was trying to say. Immediately she said, “I can provide a billion Credits to the alliance to subsidize the customers’ quests.”

“Although I can’t offer as much as Commander Soul, I can still provide roughly two hundred million Credits. If I get the others to contribute some, it shouldn’t be difficult for us to get another one billion,” Frenzied Smile said.

“Witch’s Sin can provide five billion Credits, but I’m afraid that even this amount of Credits wouldn’t last us very long,” Liu Wusheng said, shaking his head. “Currently, our customers are only offering 100,000 Credits per Basic Mount, which is equivalent to 1,000 Gold. However, it takes at least a 100-man expert team to procure a Common Mount. Assuming they manage to complete the quest in a day, each player on the team will only receive 1,000 Credits. A daily salary of 1,000 Credits will only tempt first-rate experts.

“If we want to get the independent Refinement Realm experts interested, we’ll need to bump the daily salary up to 3,000 Credits. In other words, we’ll have to subsidize 200,000 Credits per Common Mount. I’m afraid it’s going to be even worse for higher-ranking Mounts. We’ll have to subsidize around one million Credits for each Bronze Mount and three million Credits for each Mysterious-Iron Mount.

Currently, we are receiving over 1,000 Common Mount quests, 70 Bronze Mount quests, and 30 Mysterious-Iron Mount quests per day. That’s around 400 million a day in subsidies. Moreover, this is only the initial estimate. If the Flower of Seven Sins also increases the rewards for its quests, we’ll probably have to spend even more money…”

Hidden Soul and Frenzied Smile felt a little stressed when they heard Liu Wusheng’s words.

Even a conservative estimate placed them at spending 400 million Credits a day. If the Flower of Seven Sins were to increase the rewards for its quests, Asura would also have to respond by further increasing its rewards.

This was already beyond the level of throwing money away.

It was true that Abyssal Star City was making a lot of money every day. Currently, the city was earning over 100,000 Gold per day in entry fees alone. If they included the income generated through the city’s Shops, the city should have no problem ensuring a daily income of 200,000 Gold.

However, that was before they included Abyssal Star City’s upkeep cost. Not to mention, the Asura Mercenary Alliance also needed to use a portion of its income to purchase Lands in NPC Cities to expand its sphere of influence. Simply put, Asura couldn’t afford to waste so many Credits every day, especially not over a long period.

Yet, a competition of financial strength with the Flower of Seven Sins was fated to be a long and arduous process.

“There’s no need to offer such a large subsidy,” Shi Feng said, shaking his head. “Moreover, none of you need to contribute any Credits. We can simply use the alliance’s Contribution Points to replace the Credit subsidy. Since this is the alliance’s problem, it will naturally be up to the alliance to deal with it.”

“But the alliance’s Contribution Points have limited attraction over independent players. Most independent experts are only trying to acquire a Bronze membership to enter Abyssal Star City freely. They don’t have much interest in the primordial tower,” Liu Wusheng said with a bitter smile.

It would naturally be wonderful if they could use Contribution Points as a subsidy instead of Credits. After all, one Contribution Point was equivalent to 40 Silver Coins already. Moreover, Contribution Points could only be spent in the mercenary alliance.

So, by using Contribution Points as a subsidy, not only could they reduce the burden on the alliance’s finances, but they could minimize the actual outflow of funds. After all, purchasing a Bronze membership in the alliance cost 5,000 Contribution Points, while offering a Bronze membership cost the alliance next to nothing.

However, the freedom of entering Abyssal Star City wasn’t particularly tempting to most independent experts right now. After all, most players couldn’t really benefit from Abyssal Star City before reaching Level 110. Currently, the only players visiting the city were merchant players and the various powers’ management personnel.

“No. These independent experts will soon become very interested in Asura’s membership,” Shi Feng said, smiling. Then, he took out a light-blue crystal from his bag and said, “Starting today, members who have reached Bronze status or above in the Asura Mercenary Alliance will be allowed to exchange for this item!”