Alexander Smith
The most interesting thing since the start of the campaign is how they have stumbled upon their master's third direct disciple, Conrad Balthazar. The return of Conrad at least partially confirms his conjecture on their master's cultivation realm. Although Conrad has also been not forthcoming with his cultivation realm, at least he has witnessed Conrad surviving in the form of a nascent soul. That is only possible if Conrad is at least in the fourth major realm, meaning their master's cultivation realm can only be higher. The entire experience also reveals that their master's identity in the sect is way more important and higher up on the hierarchy than they has presumed.
Alex believe their master will reveal more when the time is ripe. More importantly, he shouldn't be distracted right now simply because the campaign has been smooth sailing so far with zero player fatalities. The villages are a walk in the park the moment the players reveal their strength. A few villages do have a single cultivator in the second major realm but it will be suicidal to resist. He wouldn't dare to claim there aren't some super talents out there that can confront and maybe defeat more than ten cultivators in a direct fight but if such talents do exist, they are probably heirs of powerful sects in the immortal realm.
The towns aren't much more of a challenge despite the attempt at resistance at the start of every siege. Only the local guards made any serious attempt at resistance. Once the local guards has lost the will to fight, most local cultivation families will choose to surrender the moment the players swore an oath guarantying their safety and not to commit any atrocities in the town. Alex finds the most tedious part attacking a town is in the preparation stage. To ensure none of the natives manage to escape or get any news out, the players will first need to stealthily setup a perimeter and barrier to cutoff the town from the outside world. The whole exercise usually takes four to five hours with little margin for error.
Even Joshua who is the most excited about finally getting into fights with other cultivators find the whole town sieges to be boring and the campaign has quickly turned into a chore. The fight Joshua is looking forward towards never transpire thanks to the warmongering players treating the battlefield as a testbed for a bunch of newly invented weapons. Siege cannons, gatling guns, grenades, mortars, missiles, bombs. The players were literally migrating the concept behind all modern weapons into
Among those weapons Alex has seen, he is most impressed with the gauss gatling gun. Unlike back on Earth, players get to cheat around the need for high technology and material science with runic script. It is now one of the players' weapon of choice due to its overwhelming firepower while ensuring financial sustainability. Hurling a bunch of bullets at the enemy is after all significantly cheaper than missiles and bombs. The only expensive investment is the weapon system itself. With every town being cut off unaware of past defeats, the local guards defending each town will always use the same defensive doctrine. The local guards will first try to lift the siege by launching a direct assault if there are no cultivators above the second major realm. With the assistance of battle formation, the local guards can put up a decent fight and even if things don't work out, they can steadily retreat back to the town and go on the defense. Battle formation is one of the staple where weaker cultivators can rely on their quantity to transform it into qualitative might, punching above their weight class. Normally, this is a sound doctrine in the cultivation world. However, even battle formation has it limits when engulfed by a hail of bullets. Those local guards that came out to confront the enemy will get mowed down within minutes before they get the chance to retreat back to safety of the town's defensive array. With such a devastating defeat, any town will surrender shortly after the defensive array protecting the town is broken as well. It isn't even a difficult task when players are happily blasting away with siege cannons from a safe distance. In some town where the defensive array is proving to be more resilient, throwing in a bunch of bombs and missiles will quickly get the job done.
Despite the resounding success with the town sieging tactic the players have come up with, the sect's managers and supervisors aren't exactly impressed though. The gauss gatling gun will be proven to be ineffective if all the soldiers in the battle formation are made up of cultivators in the second major realm. As a matter of fact, one of the managers has taken the effort to proof this point. Once cultivators hit the third major realm, bullets are just minor nuisance to them. From an Earthling analogy, they are all half a superman impervious to bullets with superhuman strength, speed, reflexes and strength. If a player even deigns to replicate the rest of the power like x-ray vison or shooting beams from the eyes, there are skills that can be learn to replicate it as well. The only ability a third major realm can't pull off is unassisted flight. However, this will not even be a problem anymore when they hit the fourth major realm. It can be safely said that all cultivators at the fourth major realm are literally supermen and superwomen.
Alex believes that even this is just a minor setback for the players in the long term. As the players cultivation realm grows, he believes the weapons they can cooked up will get even more impressive. If modern weapons don't work, there are still futuristic weapon concept found in science fiction novel and movies as reference. Anyhow, this is not exactly his concern since his family is not in the business of making and selling weapons. Inventing and making machineries should be his main focus.
It has already been announced that this will be the last town to be attacked as the weekend is coming to a close. After more than twenty days of campaign time inside the game, the players have successfully migrated more than two hundred thousand natives over to Eldorin. Although the Native Employment Agency have not officially released the number of available adult workforce for hire yet, Alex roughly estimates that it should range somewhere between seventy to a hundred thousand. Hiring a hundred or two workers should get the family business on Oryn on the right track. Their operation on Tolena will be less straightforward given the hostile environment. Something he will have to figure out when the campaign is finally over.
*****
It took another hour before the siege preparation is completed. Gathering in a group with his two brothers and Daniel, he suddenly can't help saying, "Hopefully this will be one uneventful siege and we can finally call it a day. Everything has been going according to plan except for the part where we lure out one of the dukes' armies."
With how the players have been moving outward from the portal's location clearing up all the native settlements, it will be a clear giveaway something is wrong. The sect has been intentionally leaving breadcrumbs for the dukes to discover expecting at least one of them to send out one of their professional armies to investigate the anomaly. Despite the unexpected performance of the players' weapons, a professional army with proper armaments and more soldiers in the second major realm should pose more of a challenge. To date, the dukes have only been sending out a large number of scouts and the players have been happily rounding up every one of them.
Before any of them can answer Alex, the barrier that has been activated started trembling before collapsing. With the sect's paranoia and obsession with contingency, a second isolating barrier has immediately activated. In any case, the collapse of the first barrier is the least of the players' concern now. The trespasser's identity isn't hard to guess when he is actively exuding the might at the third major realm.
"Alex, you and your bloody big mouth!" Joshua grumbles as all players seems to have broken out in panic at the sudden development. All the players will be wiped out if they can't find a way to defeat the duke that has arrived.