(A/N): I LIVE! Been forever since I've updated anything really. Work and FFXIV:ARR have just taken up all my time. Of course now I get Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate and a New3DS so let's see how well I can keep writing. My hopes are high! On to the chapter, review and let me know that I haven't lost you all just yet.

Chapter 7

My First Guild

There was a queue for fighting this immortal monster and the group was currently fifth in line. Already the Leprechaun group and two others had tried and failed to win. No matter what attack was sent its way, the HP gauge of the Terrafang never once decreased. Once they thought a blow had gotten through when they saw the green bar lower but the numeric display hadn't changed.

As they stood by getting ready for their turn, the waiting groups fought off the normal Terrafangs that littered the area. Being simple Group level monsters they were easily taken down by the fully fleshed out parties. This allowed the party fighting the infinite HP Terrafang to focus their efforts on their goal, it also gave the waiting teams something to do to pass the time. Unkillable as the Terrafang was, its attacks were of the same strength as the normal version. What killed a party wasn't the fact they took too much damage in an single hit, it was that they ran out of ways to heal themselves. One group's tank had lasted an hour after the death of the party before he just gave up and let the monster kill him.

Three hours after arriving at the location Ciro and the group got their turn. With four members focusing on dealing damage to the monsters, a support unit, a healer, and a tank, they stood a chance to be able to deal a high amount of damage. This was all provided that they could actually cause the health bar to drop in the first place. The plan was simple enough, Ceres would keep the attention on her with her defensive skills while the four DPS units did what they do best. Ciro's main job was to keep all their MP up with a song that increased passive mana regeneration. Fay as the healer was to keep all of their health up but only by using her weak heals as to conserve her mana.

Filling her role, Ceres took point and banged her sword against her shield. Instantly the Terrafang looked her way and started slithering towards her. The rest of the group waited until the Salamander and snake were locked in combat before making their move. Ceres didn't lash out at the monster, rather she kept it's attention with skills like Warrior's Anger that weakened the target's stats but did no damage as they kept the Hate on the user. By doing this Ceres would be able to prolong her own life, giving the party more time to figure out a way to win.

With Terrafang fully focused on Ceres now the rest of the group sprung into action. Longevity the first thing on their mind the damagers threw every weakening ability they had at their foe. Everything from evasion down to strength down, the monster at this point could be rated a high powered Solo monster. After every stat possible was lowered they ran in with weapons drawn. Ciro's Spriggan friend was the first to make contact, beating even Iris' arrow to the make. As expected, nothing happened to the Terrafang. Even after seeing the others fail, they had a small amount of hope that they might have been able to do something.

They had been right to hope. SacredChief had indeed manage to make contact with the target but he should have waited for Iris' arrow. A meager thirty hit points were taken off by the arrow, but it was damage. Just as they felt a surge of pride, the gauge started to refill. SacredChief started to attack after seeing the HP drop but no matter what he did he wasn't causing any damage. When Serre attacked, the health of the Terrafang once again dropped.

"What is going on?!" Chief shouted when he noticed that even Serre had damaged the Terrafang.

"Iris! Serre! Keep attacking it!" Ceres instructed. Not needing to be told twice to do their job, the two attackers started to unleash their strongest skills, ones with a higher cost and long cooldowns. Deception and SacredChief kept trying to inflict any amount of damage on the snake but didn't reduce the health by a single point.

Seeing that they weren't needed for support anymore, Ciro and Fay switched to attacking. Just like Iris and Serr, they were able to deal damage to the supposed invincible monster. The minor health of a Group monster couldn't last long against the onslaught of attacks that came its way. Even Ceres had switched to attacking in order to speed things along. Not even a full sixty seconds had passed since Iris' first attack before the Terrafang had died.

"Teleport, home!" Lifting up a square blue crystal into the air Ceres caused the whole party to be teleported with her. Reappearing outside of Fay's house, the group was caught off guard by the sudden change in scenery.

"What the hell was that for?" SacredChief asked once he got his bearings.

"I didn't want to answer their questions," Ceres stated simply.

"She did good with that Teleport," Deception chimed in. "I doubt any one of us knows what went on there. All everyone would do is ask us how we killed it."

"No one would believe that we didn't know how we did it." Opening the door to Fay's house Ciro let the group inside.

"How DID we manage it?" Iris asked the obvious question.

"Wish I knew," replied the Spriggan. Making himself right at home he plopped down on the couch.

"About that," Serre spoke from near the doorway, "I think I have an idea on how we were able to do it." All eyes in the place focused on the girl. "Didn't you all notice how only Chief and Deception were the only two unable to cause damage? Of this group, they are the only two not infected with the Withered Tree virus." Holding up her right hand Serre showed off the symbol that appeared on everyone infected by the virus.

"So because we haven't been infected we weren't able to kill a monster?" Not quite believing it SacredChief scoffed at the notion.

"It makes sense to me," Fay told the group. "The monster wasn't an event, it was a bug in the system."

"Virus beats bug then," Ciro joked. "I do agree with Serre and Fay. The simple fact that we alone we able to kill it proves it."

"Next time something like this occurs we should see if ti holds true." Deception looked at the group to see if they'd be up for it again should the opportunity come up. She also sent out a friends request to those who weren't already on her list. With a nod of in agreement everyone accepted the request while agreeing to fight together again.

Serre started looking around the house and noticed how small it was for four people, let alone the seven that now stood in it, was. "You know, if you guys want someplace bigger than this to live in you can sleep in my guild's house. Our guildhouse is renting rooms pretty cheaply, cheaper than most inns at least. If you rather not pay though… you could always join the Hounds of Midgar."

The Hounds of Midgar were a well known guild that brought together players from every race to increase their status. Most guilds in ALO consisted of a single race, in fact each of the nine races could be thought of as a giant guild. Each single race guild normally worked with their race, they simply just gathered like minded players and friends.

Guilds like the Hound of Midgar on the other hand were the ones that power power and could support themselves without help from their race. By gathering players from all races they could have specialists of every skill. Taking in Leprechauns they could have master blacksmiths and at the same time take in Undines who were the best healers. This created a more balanced guild overall that could be more self sufficient than a single race guild.

Iris had noticed the hurt look on her sister's face when Serre called the house small. " We're good here, it's big enough for the four of us." The little wolf girl's ears were pulled back, the system showing her emotions more clearly than what she wanted.

"Alright, alright, fair enough." Serre motioned with her hands for Iris to calm down. "But the offer stands for all of you."

"Speaking of guilds, I should probably report back to mine." Deception said as she left the party. "If you ever need me again just call won't you Ciro?"

"You know I will," Ciro replied. Blue light was cast over the room as Deception used a crystal to teleport away.

"She's got the right of it, back to the Kennels for me," Serre waved goodbye before she to teleported away.

"I'm going to go bask in the glory of being one of the guys that beat the immortal monster." With a two finger salute, SacredChief walked out the door

"Thank you Iris," Fay affectionately rubbed the top of her sister's head.

"Just say it yourself next time Sis," Iris grinned, trying to encourage Fay as best she could.

"That girl got me thinking though, maybe we should join a guild," Ceres shocked everyone with that single statement. Iris' mouth had flopped open while Ciro and Fay stared in disbelief that the most anti-social member of the family suggested joining a large group of people."You don't have to look so surprised."

"But. You. And...PEOPLE!" Iris cried out as her mind tried to process what was going on.

"Iris is right, you tend to stay away from people and all."

"That doesn't mean there aren't advantages to joining a guild. Like for instance, information on if more of these creatures pop up." Looking at her family like they should have thought of this sooner, Ceres left out a huff. "Besides Fayette, the house is really only big enough for two and as much as I love making Ciro sleep on the floor, he should probably have a bed."

"Better idea!" Grinning from ear to ear Iris explained her thought. "We make our own guild. I have some coin stashed away that we can use to buy a guild permit no problems."

"We'd still be only four people trying to survey a game that's had over twenty expansions since it was out and not a one of them were smaller than the base game." Ceres pointed out, always being the one to point out the flaws.

"Mercenary guild," Fay suggested.

A mercenary guild was a guild whose members were for hire. They were generally small and consisted of around twenty members at most. Other guilds would hire either the entire merc guild or a few members for help with raids or to investigate if certain rumors were true or not. Of course some of these rumors could be true and if you hired such a guild you'd have to worry about them taking advantage of it before they reported back if it was a single event.

"That could work, we can use Ciro to gain favors with other guilds to build a reputation." An evil glare in her eye Ceres looked at her brother like he was a tool she'd just found a use for.

"There's a few problems though," sitting down at the table Ciro pulled out a pen and paper, "we need to figure out the costs of being a guild actually. As a Merc Guild we won't have enough members to easily provide the costs needed to keep the guild afloat. We'll have to do a lot of work for little pay at first to gain a reputation which means we'll be repairing our gear often, restock our items, and other expenses. To put it bluntly, we probably won't even make enough to cover that at the start."

"Uh hello, already offered my vast amounts of Yrd." Opening up her menu Iris made her status page visible to the others to show off the amount of money she had both on her in and in bank account. Altogether the Cait Sith had saved up well into the hundred-millions. After a year of playing and rarely spending, it was not much of a shock that the treasure hunter had collected such a vast amount, just that she had kept it all.

"Fay, what's the rent on this place?" Ciro asked as he wrote down the amount that Iris had in storage.

"Only 1.5K," the angel responded, "it's small and in the middle of nowhere so the rent was low."

"Okay, so the cost for a permit is roughly 500,000 and if we use Iris' wealth that will be covered easily. Luckily there's no fees after that for the guild. If we use Fay's home as our guild hall then we only use 1,500 a month for housing. Buying food from vendors would cost about 2,000 a meal for the four of us which comes to 6K a day. 6,000 times 30 would be 180,000 a month." Writing all of this down Ciro kept track of what he figured their monthly costs would be.

"We won't have to send our gear out to be repaired unless it breaks, my blacksmithing skill is high for any race other than Leprechaun. A repair hammer runs around 500 and can restore about 12 legendary items before breaking and 50 basic items." Holding such a hammer in her hand Ceres showed off the durability on it so they could see what each hammer had to start with.

"Let's say that we'll need 10 of those on average for now. Then figuring in the costs of a normal potion and teleport crystal I'd say we'd need about 250,000 a month to cover our expenses."

"So… we won't have to worry about Yrd for a long while," Iris scoffed at the paltry amount that Ciro came up with. "I mean, you guys have some saved up to right?"

"Barely close to two million myself," Ciro sighed at the small amount he had saved up compared to his younger cousin.

"Not much more than you Ciro," looking at her status page Fay shook her head.

"Well you both have more than me, just over 700,000 for myself. Don't take what I don't need so I don't have anything to sell really. All of that's what I got from just killing monsters and finding treasure chests with Yrd inside."

"You all need to collect more," Iris huffed at the three relatively poor people.

The three older kids felt a stab of humility at the fact that Iris had managed to collect more Yrd than the three of them combined multiplied by ten. In the real world Ceres was frugal to the point where she barely spent her allowance. On the other hand, Iris couldn't seem to keep a hold of her money long enough that if it wasn't for her mom purposefully holding onto some of her allowance, she wouldn't have the money to pay for the games' subscriptions.

"There is however two problems we need to address before we create the guild. Who the leader is and our name."

"Figuring out the leader is simple, me." Folding her arms over her chest Ceres, going into her favorite pose to demonstrate power, she challenged anyone to take the title of Guild Master instead.

"Ciro should do it," Fay and Iris said in unison.

"What?" Shocked at the notion of being the leader Ciro was taken aback.

"If we're using you to help get us a good reputation it only makes sense that you are the leader of the guild."

"Besides, you're the best of us at dealing with people. Ceres is to… well Ceres, Iris bombards people with questions, and I'm too shy to be of much use when it comes to interacting with people I don't know." Running her hand through some of her hair Fay openly admitted her shyness. Quickly nodding her head in agreement Iris made her opinion known. Looking towards Ceres the other girls waited to see what fight she was going to say.

"All that leaves is the name then," Resigning to the fact that her brother was going to be the guild head Ceres deftly moved onto the next subject.

"Just leave that to me," Ciro smiled.


May 27, 2095

Three weeks had passed since they had decided to create a mercenary style guild. Turning Fay's house into their guild base had been their first move after establishing themselves, each of them now had the rights of owner over the building and could make changes as they saw fit. After obtaining the guild license from a NPC down on the first floor of the floating castle, which cost a few hundred thousand more than they had anticipated, they had sent out notices to everyone on their friends lists that they had created a new guild. A few replies came in that said if they needed any help their friends would happily lend it but no jobs had come in just yet.

Rather than sitting around and waiting for a job to fall into their lap, both Iris and Ciro had taken to flying around the cities offering their aid to anyone that looked like they were in need of some help. At the moment getting their name out there was more important than getting an actual good paying job. They had of course gotten a few people who asked for help with a random quest or two. While these were paltry things that they were doing, they both got the guild's name out there and gave the four members something to do while they waited for more news from the real world.

Currently they were assisting a group of two friends in taking down one of the earlier dungeons down on the main continent. Having already completed the quest that required the boss at the end to be killed the group was more there for support than anything else. Switching into gear that was more fitting for the monsters of the area. They did this so that it wasn't so much of a drain on their good gear and so that they didn't end up doing most of the work but actually assisted the two friends through the dungeon.

The dungeon, Nidhogg's Lair, was linked to the Salamander area and as such, the two the guild were helping were both fire fairies. As new players they had been a bit hesitant to work with players from other races in case they might upset the race leader. After seeing Ceres still have her racial link to the Salamanders even while playing with other they were quick to accept the offer.

Standing outside the entrance to the dungeon, a cave mouth with runes scribbled over the top, the party was going over their equipment and making sure that they were situated to tackle the area. The two Salamander friends were both wearing commonly found heavy armor and had picked the greatsword as their weapon. It was normal for Salamanders to pick high damaging type weapons at the start until they found something else that caught their eye, strength was after all a large draw for the race.

"Okay, everyone's potions are in their pouches right?" Ciro asked as he put his own into a satchel hanging off his belt. Both new players nodded their heads in the affirmative. "Good. While this dungeon isn't a hard one, it can't catch you off guard if you don't know what you're doing."

"So you guys are going to help us get through this and then we pay you right?" one of the Salamanders asked. He had been the one to make the decision to hire the guild in the first place but it was easy to see that he had no clue how to go about doing so.

"Actually you need to pay half once we get into the dungeon as assurance that we get something for helping out. If we get through the dungeon actually then you pay us the rest, if we don't make it through then you owe us nothing." Explaining how one normally would hire a mercenary guild Ciro finished his preparations. The girls had long since finished since they weren't dealing with the customers and making sure that they were ready. It was decided that when they were with a client that Ciro would do the lion's share of the talking to minimize any chances of the guild getting fired.

"Let's head in then."

Heading down into the starting part of the dungeon a small symbol appeared next to the health bar of each party member to show that they had entered a dungeon zone. Inside dungeon zones passive health regeneration was slowed and teleport spells were rendered useless. In exchange, the levels of your combat related skills would increase faster and as always in a dungeon, you had a good chance of gear dropping.

Being one of the earlier dungeons there was a bit of ease to the layout compared to the later dungeons meant for raid groups. Basically it was a single path from the start to the boss area with a few rooms branching off holding monsters and loot. Letting the new players take the lead, the guild followed after them down the stone pathway. Torches lined the walls granting light to those without the ability to see in low light.

When they arrived at the first set of monsters, a pair of wolves, everyone readied their weapons. The two Salamanders charged forward while the guild hung back a bit to see what was going to happen. Having only two monsters to fight, they weren't worried that the new players would die against them. If they needed it, Fay already had begun casting a healing spell to replenish their HP. The twin fire fairies swung their greatswords awkwardly at the wolves, barely causing the red grid style gashes to appear on the grey fur.

As they stood back watching the fight take place the group of four shook their heads at the antics of their party members. Neither of them were doing much damage to their targets and instead were getting in each other's way with their large swings. With a sigh Iris put an end to the charade with two well placed arrows.

"Hey!" one of the Salamanders yelled as he wolf burst into polygons as it died. "I thought you guys were just going to help with the bosses."

"We were, but that was…" Ciro tried to think of how to nicely put that they sucked.

"Was a steaming pile of crap," Ceres finished for her brother. "Why'd you two choose to use greatswords if you can't even swing them properly?" While there was a system to assist with attacking it could only do so much to help out without completely taking over the body. As such players could be downright horrible with their attacks if they didn't get accustomed to their weapon before striking out on an adventure.

"Cause it has the highest damage modifier to it," the annoyed fairy answered like it was an obvious thing. Weight and speed were key to inflicting damage in ALO so a heavy weapon like the greatsword was naturally a powerful weapon.

"Truly you two new players if you pick a weapon just because it's inherently strong." Taking out her gladius Ceres took the lead. Making sure that her weapon's stats were displayed Ceres wanted to show the other Salamanders that any damage she was going to be inflicting was going to be through raw skill rather than by a stronger weapon. "This time watch what can happen when you are used to using your weapon, something that feels good in your hands."

A small open chamber was the location of the next set of monsters. The ceiling was high enough that tree roots could be seen breaking through. Hanging from these roots were a few imps and on the ground were more wolves. Not even using a shield Ceres walked into the middle of the room and waited until the monsters caught sight of her. Iris and Ciro kept the two clients from rushing in to try and get some attacks in of their own.

Masterfully Ceres dodge the first strike of a wolf before she ducked down to avoid the attack of the other. As she came back up she brought the tip of her sword into the first wolf's stomach. Bring her sword back out Ceres jumped backwards to avoid a fireball sent from one of the imps flying around. The injured wolf came back at her only to meet with Ceres' sword once more, it's open mouth getting cut in two as Ceres had anticipated the attack. Spinning around in time to use her momentum she blocked the claws of the second wolf. With her free hand Ceres sent out a low power fire spell, something that all Salamanders started with, towards the imps in the air.

Repelling the wolf by matching it's attacks with her own Ceres was able to keep it busy while she kept launching fireballs at the imps. With each repelled attack the wolf lost health due to the fact it's flesh was meeting with cold hard iron. Sidestepping one attack Ceres ran her sword through the neck of the beast with deadly accuracy. Jumping into the air she slashed at the nearest Imp reducing it to nothing more than scattered polygons. The second her feet touched the ground Ceres dropped into a somersault to avoid a spear of ice from the other imps. Shooting a ball of flames at each imp she once again leapt into the air to get close enough to use her weapon. Two speedy horizontal slashes later another monster died. Before she had even hit the ground Ceres let loose another fireball to finish off the last of the imps. All five monsters had been taken care of and Ceres hadn't lost a single hit point in the process.

"See," she said to her fellow Salamanders, "I was able to do that because I was familiar with my weapon, my skills, and the skills of my opponents."

"Yup," Iris agreed, "beast monsters will attack in groups if given the chance so it's best to focus on one to weaken their collective strength."

"Magic focused monsters like the imps are normally handled first since most defensive skills focus on reducing physical damage, but if you're confident in your ability to dodge you can actually leave them for last." Explaining the tactics of battle Ciro tried to regain his role as leader of the guild, and currently the party.

"My sword might not be as strong as your greatswords but because I can easily wield it, I can do more damage in a shorter amount of time." Putting her gladius back in its sheath Ceres looked towards the others to see what they were going to do with the information that they were getting. Most people were thankful for getting a lesson in how the game worked but there was always the chance that the people you tried to help would throw your efforts back in your face, thinking they knew better or they got mad at being shown just how little they actually knew.

"I see," luckily these two weren't of the later group.

Heading down through the dungeon the four veterans showed the newbies the tricks and tips they had learned over their time in the game. It was clear that the four had spent some time in the game and learned much during it. While their skills might have been higher than the other two, they were able to fight alongside each other due to the simple fact that they knew how to hold back. By the time they reached the first mini boss of the dungeon they were able to work together a bit better, having taken the time to let the Salamanders get used to their greatswords, to a point where the system was able to lend a hand.

Taking down a group of human swordsman with a heavily armored one as the boss they handled themselves well. After the defeat of the boss a sword appeared in the air for a second before vanishing into a random player's inventory. While everyone got to see the item only one of the was able to collect it. Who got the item was determined by the system, the larger the party the less chance you had of receiving an item but you could also run the dungeon faster for more chances.

It had taken some time due to teaching, but they had finally reached the boss chambers, easily distinguished by the large metal doors that looks out of place in the cave. At the start of the dungeon the monsters had been you basic beast creatures but the further down they had gone, the more humans they had run into. For the veterans, they knew what lie on the other side of the door and the story that went along with it.

"Let's do this," one of the Salamanders said, a new longsword resting in his hands.

Opening the door the room beyond was revealed. Inside there were five men clad in white robes standing in front of a makeshift altar crafted out of ice and bone. Behind the altar was a cliff that dropped down far enough that the players couldn't see what was at the bottom of it from where they stood. Once everyone had entered the room the doors slammed shut.

"You who seek to stop us, your life force shall be offered up to the great one." Taking a step forward the priest in the middle of the group drew a dagger out from his sleeve. "Come, my lord's servants, kill these fools and offer their souls to our master!"

Two portals on either side of the altar opened up and a small wyrm walked out of each. One of them was colored blue with white patches, the other simply had the colors inverted. Both had a ring around their necks that pulsed with magic. The blue's wyrm's name was Nidhogg's Right Claw and the white's name was Nidhogg's Left Claw. A roar from both of the large wingless dragons signified the start of the battle as a ring of fire separated the battlefield from the altar.

"We'll take the Left Claw," the longsword wielding Salamander said as he and his friend started to run over.

"Be sure to keep them apart!" Ciro called out to everyone as he started to play a simple song meant to raise the party's attack a tiny bit.

"Got it!"

Pulling the two wyrms away from one another was the basic plan of attack for the battle. If they were kept close together they could damage more players easily and could even do a joint attack. By splitting the group into two, with the two Salamanders on one and Ceres and Iris on the other, they would be able to pull the wyrms to opposite sides of the circular room. Fay and Ciro would stand in the middle so that the Pooka's songs would reach both teams and so that Fay wouldn't have to run back and forth so her healing spells would reach.

"Lower your DPS Iris!" Ciro called out as he noticed the Right Claw's HP falling rather fast. If one wyrm's HP got too low compared to the other's the priests would start to heal them both. Instantly the archer stopped firing arrows, letting her pet do its damage.

"She just gets so excited in boss battles," Fay smiled at her little sister as she let loose a healing spell on Ceres.

"I know, that's why I still call these things out for her." Sending an attack of music at the Left Claw Ciro tried to help lower the HP of the boss since he didn't have much else to do in the way of support.

Knowing the mechanics of the boss fight made it go by faster as Ciro called out the attacks as the wyrms got ready to use them. There were visual indicators that let players know what skills the monsters were going to use, in early boss battles these signs were more obvious but in the later dungeons they were minute differences that had to be looked for. Part of Ciro's role as support in those later dungeons was to call out the attacks as he saw them, so he just kept at it even now.

Once both wyrms had dropped to 10% of their max health Ciro let Iris deal as much damage as she wanted to on the Right Claw. Once the blue lizard had fallen, Ceres and Iris ran over to help burn down the remaining health of the Left Claw. After the second wyrm had fallen to the ground the flames at the altar vanished and the five priests stepped onto the field.

"Just burn them one after another," not even bothering to keep the song he had going, Ciro started to let attack the priest in the middle. Not a one of the robed men were strong and they quickly fell to the combined attacks of the group.

"Lord….Nidhogg…" the last priest called out as he dropped dead to the floor.

In front of the altar a white light appeared, the portal to the entrance so that they didn't have to walk all the way back. As everyone moved towards it a scene triggered for the two Salamanders since it was their first time clearing the dungeon. While the guild members didn't get to see it, they knew that the new guys were seeing what was at the bottom of the cliff. A large brown dragon gnawing on tree roots. Once they reached another quest farther down the road, they'd get to come back to this dungeon and fight Nidhogg, the dragon at the bottom of the cliff, and explore more of the dungeon.

"Thanks guys," the greatsword wielding Salamander said.

"Yeah really, thanks for taking the time to teach us what we were doing wrong," the other said as he put his weapon away.

"No problem, it's what we were here for after all," Ciro smiled as he moved towards the exit portal.

"Oh right! You're payment. What account do I send it to?" It was possible to send funds to a guild's bank directly if given the option.

"Just make the payment out to the Dryad Vanguard." The four members of the Vanguard vanished into the light as they left the dungeon.