Chapter 257: 257 Favor? Or Oppose?

Ian climbed the stairs and stepped onto the third floor of the guild for the first time.

Compared to the noisy first and second floors, a quiet and chilly atmosphere flowed through the third.

Having received a summons from Rebecca through a guild messenger who visited the inn early in the morning, Ian arrived at the guild with the items Rebecca had requested.

He had been told he would be called eventually, but…

Ian hadn’t expected to be called during this peak period when even Rebecca herself would be incredibly busy. He had assumed it would be for a more personal matter.

The reason wasn’t written down, but there could only be one reason to be called to the guild at a time like this.

Guided by a staff member, he arrived in front of a room on the third floor. Upon knocking, the door opened with a prompt to enter, and Ian stepped into the conference room.

Several people inside the room turned their gazes toward him.

A few familiar faces, and a few he didn’t recognize.

Rebecca, catching Ian’s eye, gave a smirk and a slight wave of her hand.

Perhaps because they weren’t in the middle of a formal meeting, the number of people wasn’t that large, and the atmosphere felt relaxed.

Entering the room, Ian gave a brief greeting to those watching him.

“Ian of the D-rank Ian Mercenary Group.”

“Right. I am Kael. The Vice-Guild Leader here.”

The Vice-Guild Leader Kael’s gaze slowly observed Ian from head to toe before shifting slightly toward Rebecca.

“I heard from Rebecca that you have something to show us?”

“You brought it, right?”

Rebecca gestured toward Ian.

If there was an item involving Rebecca, there was only one. Ian quietly took out the map of the underground sewers and unfolded it.

The Vice-Guild Leader stared down at the map spread before him, then pulled out one of the papers stacked next to his desk.

It was the map of the underground sewers used by the guild.

“Did you draw this yourself?”

“Yes. I drew it while on missions.”

The gazes of the people in the room darted back and forth between the two maps several times.

Though the scale was slightly different, they could all tell that the two maps depicted the exact same terrain.

In fact, rather than precise proportions… what mattered was how much tactical sense was evident in the map.

What kind of information was prioritized and recorded.

Looking at that focus, one could roughly estimate the tendencies of the person who drew it.

Kael could see why Rebecca had taken an interest in Ian.

Most mercenaries are people completely ignorant of large-scale strategy and tactics.

Occasionally, talented mercenaries appear, but such exceptional individuals eventually tend to choose the regular army over mercenary work.

The leadership of the Mercenary Guild is always in a state of talent shortage.

To the point where they would reach out to anyone, whether D-rank or E-rank, if they showed promise.

The Vice-Guild Leader nodded and abruptly pushed the map toward Ian.

“Would you like to try drawing up a defense plan?”

“…Pardon?”

When Ian asked back in slight bewilderment, a staff member watching from the side spoke to the Vice-Guild Leader.

“Let’s not do this out of the blue to a rookie. This is why they all run away.”

Ian glanced sideways to check the man’s face.

Was he an investigator?

His hair color triggered a vague memory, but since he wasn’t a major NPC, Ian couldn’t recall his exact name or title. He only vaguely knew him as a guild employee.

However, despite those words, the Vice-Guild Leader’s fingertip silently tapped the map.

“…How many units will be available for deployment?”

“Two guard companies. The enemy is slimes… in the maximum number you can imagine. For the budget, just do what you can for now.”

On one side of the large conference table, various types of markers meant to be placed on the map were lined up.

At a glance, they were symbols that would be difficult to decipher, but they were all familiar to Ian.

They were the deployment icons used on the maps during monster invasions.

’…I didn’t expect to be doing this already.’

Ian looked down at the empty map.

When you’re a low-rank mercenary group, you just deploy to a desired sector and earn contribution points proportional to your combat power, but that’s it.

Once your fame rises, you can receive ’Defense Consignment’ missions and directly oversee the entire sector’s defense.

Where to build barricades,

where to install defense facilities,

which troops to place in which positions,

and even what items to supply.

If you play this game, it’s a screen you have to look at until you’re sick of it.

It’s different from regular missions where you can retreat and try again if you fail, or give up if it’s too difficult.

If the invasion defense fails, city facilities take damage, the city’s durability decreases accordingly, development stops, and functions become paralyzed.

If a major blow is allowed even once, the city’s power decreases, which in turn reduces the momentum needed to block subsequent waves.

As damage continues to accumulate, it eventually becomes impossible to block the final wave.

“Ask if you need an explanation.”

“It’s fine.”

Ian’s hand picked up a marker representing a barricade and carefully placed them one by one on the map.

The characteristic of the underground sewer map is that the paths are numerous and complex, making it difficult to devise efficient movement routes.

If you block every visible path without a plan, you will exceed the defense budget with that alone.

’For slimes… flamethrower traps.’

Next was the choice of means to damage the monsters.

Since the quantity of slimes is larger and more continuous than expected, one must pay close attention when selecting defense facilities.

If you construct a defense line with simple area-of-effect attacks without considering sustainability, you’ll end up pouring excessive firepower onto minor mobs and get overwhelmed by the subsequent waves of slimes that follow.

By Ian’s hand, the complex paths of the sewers were blocked one by one, gradually transforming into a space designed to hunt monsters.

This defense planning is close to tower defense.

Monsters coming from the Labyrinth generally have set routes to move along according to their species and attack priorities.

The core was to use obstacles and monster tendencies to guide their movement path and lure them precisely into a prepared kill zone.

And to distribute them accurately into numbers that each defense point can handle.

That was the essence of this defense plan design.

Since this defense planning was the content that first-time novice players struggled with the most…

Creating what was commonly called a ’Genealogy’—something that allowed a clear just by placing facilities exactly as instructed without high-level mercenary groups—was what Ian had done most frequently when writing guides for this game.

With Ian’s hand moving the final marker, the defense of the underground sewers was completed.

“….”

The gazes of everyone in the conference room turned silently to the map.

The Vice-Guild Leader, staring at it without a word, pointed to a single spot.

It was a wall blocking the most critical path in the defense line.

“What if this wall is destroyed?”

“Slimes cannot destroy it.”

“What if it is destroyed?”

“…Through this path…”

It’s not like he asked because he didn’t know they couldn’t destroy it.

But how often do unexpected situations happen exactly as planned?

His purpose was to see how Ian would respond to a sudden emergency.

Despite several forced variables and accidents raised by the Vice-Guild Leader, Ian handled them with ease through slight deployment modifications as if it were nothing.

If a wall at a critical path was destroyed, the reserve barricades behind it naturally guided the monster’s path back to the original route.

Traps installed at every bottleneck where monsters were most concentrated steadily thinned out the enemy numbers.

The defense force stationed at the very rear would… likely have no monsters left to face.

No monster could pass through this structure to the end. That was the intuition the Vice-Guild Leader felt through his years of experience.

“…Would you wait outside for a moment?”

To allow the guild staff to speak amongst themselves without Ian, the Vice-Guild Leader sent him out of the conference room for a while.

The staff members, who had been watching Ian in silence, flocked to the map as soon as he left.

“…It looks like this would actually work?”

“It’s better than standing mercenaries there for this kind of money.”

“Where are you going to find C-ranks who’ll come for that pay…”

Everyone added their opinions while examining the plan.

“Installing it is a job in itself, but what if things don’t go according to plan?”

“Theoretically… it seems flawless.”

“Haha. I’ve never seen things go according to the theories of desk-jockeys.”

When the Vice-Guild Leader looked at Rebecca, she gave a hollow laugh and shook her head with a look that said she hadn’t expected it to go this far either.

Checking the map once more, the Vice-Guild Leader’s gaze shifted to the troop deployment chart.

They were markers used universally in any army, but ordinary citizens who never encountered them wouldn’t know which branch each symbol represented or what role they played.

The deployment Ian created had each unit organized precisely according to the textbook to form a standard defensive formation.

“He seems to have… handled soldiers before. Where is he from?”

At the Vice-Guild Leader’s question, the investigator looked up, shook his head, and answered.

“Well… seeing as he doesn’t appear on the registers, he didn’t come from the capital.”

“Isn’t he from the Qin Kingdom? I heard a rebellion broke out there recently.”

“He doesn’t have the face of someone from that country.”

The subject of conversation, which had been evaluating the plan, soon moved to Ian himself.

“He could be from Adrina. Doesn’t that place send all siblings to the gallows when someone ascends the throne?”

“That was three years ago.”

“He must have been hiding since then.”

When trouble occurs somewhere, it was inevitable for people who lost their place to hide their identities and flow into Labyrinth.

While everyone was sharing stories of incidents they remembered one by one, Rebecca briefly made eye contact with the Vice-Guild Leader.

It was certainly a very interesting topic…

But as the conversation about Ian’s background began to heat up, Rebecca quietly tapped the desk to draw their attention.

As if there weren’t dozens of mercenaries in this city with suspicious pasts.

“Favor? Or Oppose?”

At Rebecca’s question, everyone silently showed their hands.

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