A few minutes had gone by since the Oppressive Pillar became active and started its function.
"Guild Leader, what did the system prompt mean?" At this moment, Carmen, who had gone out to do some exploring, returned to the town.
She held a look of shock, clearly not expecting to receive any achievement.
"You seriously had to ask? All you did was craft one component and managed to get the credit." Crimson Heart quickly intervened and took the lead to explain.
"Oh, you must be fuming then." Having realized the situation, Carmen held a sly expression. "Thanks for the hard work, Crimson Heart. The Guild Leader is a fair person, so you will definitely get rewarded."
If it wasn't for the fact that she was weaker than her in combat, Crimson Heart truly wanted to have a brawl against her. Alas, rationality still took priority over her impulsiveness.
'I should start focusing on my combat skills if I don't want to lag behind.' She thought to herself.
The fact that she spent quite a lot of time under Yaren, her experience points had surely skyrocketed. But the downside was that she no longer had combat experience that could keep up with the mainstream players.
Suddenly, she recalled Xu Feng mentioning something about the Training Hall.
"Guild Leader, can I train in the Training Hall and Arena Combat for free?" Crimson Heart asked softly.
"Huh? You want it for free?" Alarmed, Carmen was about to reject her request.
After all, she had been enlightened by Xu Feng about the importance of the Training Hall. It was practically a haven ground for anyone with poor combat experience to improve quickly.
If words got out that it could be trained for free, then who would want to pay for it?
However, her worries were unfounded when Xu Feng simply responded in a clever manner. "For free is impossible, but as a Vanguard Guild member, you can use your Guild Merit Points to pay. And you already know how to earn them."
Finding it to be reasonable, Crimson Heart didn't argue but pointed at the Oppressive Pillar.
"How many Merit Points did I earn for assisting this construction?"
"1,000 Merit Points."
"And how much will you charge for the training?"
"For 1 hour, you must pay 50 Merit Points." Xu Feng explained and continued, "As for the Arena Combat, you must have a membership to enter."
"Not even if I'm part of the guild?" Startled, Crimson Heart nearly couldn't believe her ears.
"Members of the guild get a discount, but that's about it." Xu Feng shrugged in response.
As he had dealt with similar situations. There were just too many instances where players joined the guild to enter the Arena Combat and provided zero contribution.
Of course, he could have set restrictions where only Member Rank was allowed, but that was just essentially filling up the guild count with unloyal players. Not only would it implode the guild in the long run, but other guilds might even send spies in waves by taking advantage of the swarm.
Having spies was almost a guarantee, so rather than forcing them to be in the guild. He would just have them act as regular players and pay the hefty fee for the membership.
"I only allow discounts for members with the rank Elite Members and above. For those below, they can only use Merit Points to cover the fee if they don't have enough coins." He explained.
Almost immediately, Crimson Heart rolled her eyes.
"I'm just a Member Rank." She exclaimed in anger.
Since she had been absent and missed out most of the opportunity for contribution to rank up due to her apprenticeship with Yaren. It would be impossible for her to reach Elite Member in a short span of time.
"Well, it's not hard to promote you to an Elite Member." Xu Feng suddenly revealed. "All you have to do is sign an exclusive contract with the Vanguard Guild."
A second later, Carmen stepped in and revealed the exclusive contract for Crimson Heart to see.
"Now all you have to do is sign your signature at the bottom of the page here and you can enjoy the benefit." Carmen flashed a wide grin.
"Of course, you can reject the contract and stay inferior to me forever in terms of combat experience. After all, I get a 99.9% discount for using the upcoming Training Hall and Arena Combat!" She continued, gloating heavily about how she would surpass her even further and beyond.
As much as Crimson Heart hated to admit it, she had to accept the fact that she was being swindled hard at the moment. And even though she knew it was a swindling scam, she must sign it. Otherwise, she would definitely lag behind them, and worst of all, she might miss out on more benefits.
'An upstart guild was able to pull ahead against numerous top guilds. Just how many were able to do that in the past? The numbers weren't even at double digits.' She thought to herself.
Sometime later, Crimson Heart reluctantly signed the exclusive contract and was promoted to Elite Member right away. The exclusive contract was rather simple, to be honest.
It was just the equivalent of a non-compete clause that prevented her from trying to backstab or join another competitive guild that the Vanguard Guild labeled as rival and enemy.
Of course, the labeling must be reasonable and if found to be unreasonable, Crimson Heart could ignore it.
"There, I'm now qualified for the discount, right?" Crimson Heart clicked her tongue. She was definitely holding the grudge on being played and cornered by these two devious demons.
As if she would believe Carmen suddenly had an extra exclusive contract in hand and wasn't prepared beforehand.
"Of course, you qualified for the discount. Also, don't feel like you are restricted. You are free to access the guild's resources to improve your Profession level. Simultaneously, you will be in charge of my guild's upcoming chamber of commerce." Xu Feng revealed.