Chapter 6: A New Guild Member

It had been a few days since Joshua had been involved in his first territory war. Although it turned out being nothing more than a practice session to see what his town defenses were capable of, it was still more than worth the time to see how things went personally. From what Joshua could tell their town defenses on their own would easily be able to hold off any normal small scale guild. With a little bit of strategy the defenses could even hold up against mid-size guild, but for that some of their trump cards would have to get involved. In the end Joshua was extremely happy with the results.

Another thing that they were able to accomplish was to gain some new allies. Joshua had come up with a plan that could help the members of the Heaven's Star Guild without placing them directly in any of the alliance's guilds. Although bringing them into the Alliance could fix a lot of their problems it wasn't a thing that could be done over and over if Joshua were to run into other similar situations. He couldn't just bring every happy go lucky small guild into the alliance since that would cause a number of issues.

Bringing in so many small guilds wouldn't really help out the alliance when it came to actual power. Then number of members would grow, but having a lot of level fifty members around wouldn't get them far when it came to taking on the high level dungeons or large town areas that they planned to do in the near future. Plus they wouldn't have the resources to provide for several small guilds that wouldn't be getting them much back in return. If they did go out recruiting so many small guilds then it might create some friction with the other larger guilds in the city anyways.

All in all there wasn't really any upside to bringing in a bunch of small guilds even if it would expand the Alliance. So Joshua decided to come up with a plan that would both benefit the Alliance and the small guilds like the Heaven's Star Guild that he planned to help out in the future. His idea was rather simple. He would open the gates to James Town to allow the members of the Heaven's Star Guild to come in and challenge the dungeon. This was a way for the members of the small guild to gain some experience against a tougher dungeon without being in too much of a dangerous situation.

Joshua would be able to give them a detailed explanation of everything in the dungeon from the mobs, to the paths, and every single part of the boss fight. It would be the best situation for the Heaven's Star Guild to grow stronger. When they were strong enough the Alliance could give some aid for them to take over a small town in an area near one of the Alliance bases. In return the Heaven's Star Guild would have to pay a small tax to the Alliance for using their dungeons as training grounds. They would give fifteen percent of the resources they gain from diving in Alliance owned dungeons and taking over territories with Alliance help.

This set up would not only benefit the Alliance in gaining more resources without having to put any of their members to work, but would also make sure the towns near by their bases would be controlled by small guilds that didn't have any plans of causing them trouble. There were other things that Joshua put in the deal such as giving these small guilds blue prints for certain town defenses once they gained one for a price, but that was down the road. He wouldn't want any of these small guilds to lose their territories right away after all.

After hearing Joshua's plan Morning Star went along with it right away and Joshua, Laura, and Madalyn all agreed to have Isabella and Henry look over the smaller details for the agreement. The set up would make it so that the Alliance would gain a lot without having to do too much. They would just have to make sure to observe any groups that they planned to extend this offer to. They wouldn't want to end up bringing in a small guild that would take what they give them only to turn around and use it against them. That was why Isabella pointed out that they would just build the stuff from the blue prints themselves and then sell it to the smaller guilds to help protect their towns instead of showing them the blue prints.

After things were settled they discussed a bit more on some important plans for the situation before heading back to the hub city. Now that the territory war had been concluded Joshua had other things to worry about. Over the past couple of days he had gotten back to his routine of training, studying the medical documents his mother gave him so that he could keep up in the field, and preparing the guild hall for its big recruiting debut. Today however was different. Today Joshua was going to his mother's hospital to meet someone that wanted to become a part of his guild.

Joshua hadn't actually met this person, but his mother had told him about her several times whenever she was discussing her job. The person that wanted to join Joshua's guild was his mother's current assistant. A young woman by the name of Grace Meadows that had been working at the hospital for the past couple of years. According to his mother Grace was getting to the point that she was ready to have a more active role than just being his mother's assistant.

Since Grace was a support job holder she wasn't going to be able to go on dungeon dives and other dangerous things as a member of his guild, but what she could do is operate the hospital in James Town. Support members of a guild don't account for the hundred members of a combat guild. A combat guild could actually have ten support members alongside the hundred combat members when it came to small guilds. The number went up as the size of the guild goes up, but it is always ten percent of the total amount of combat members.

Usually combat guilds didn't get as many support members because now days it was normal for support job holders to want to join support guilds. There were a lot of benefits to joining a support guild that a combat guild just couldn't give, but Grace didn't seem to care about any of that. Joshua was going to the hospital to find out why that was case and get to know the person his mother was recommending for his guild.

It was around mid-day when Joshua arrived at the hospital and it was as busy as ever. Many guilds were trying to challenge themselves lately after the Alliance had completed a large town subjugation and that lead to several injuries that healers alone couldn't deal with. As Joshua walked through the halls of the hospital to make his way to his mother's office he noticed lots of new faces in the hospital proving that more and more people were starting to go the way of support jobs. At the rate things were going he was certain there would be a need for another hospital in the city soon enough and there would be enough people around qualified to work at one. He wasn't sure however if there was another person in the city that was qualified to run a hospital though.

When he reached his mother's office he noticed that she was being her usual self as she was multitasking to keep up with all her work. She was on the phone with someone giving out orders while looking through some documents she had piled up on her desk. When his mother noticed him entering the room she smiled at him before pointing over to a nearby couch for him to sit at. Joshua went over and took a seat so he could wait for his mother to finish her conversation. He wasn't in any sort of rush so he had no problem waiting for her.

After a few minutes his mother got off the phone with a sigh before smiling as she turned to look at her son. "Good you came. Thanks for going along with my request Josh." His mother said with a bright smile as she put the documents she was holding down and stood up and walked over to the couch.

"Sure mom but why does she want to join a combat guild anyways? It seems like a waste of her talents based off of what you have told me about her." Joshua asked with a puzzled expression.

"It would be if she planned to become just another doctor going forward. If that were the case she could continue to apprentice under me and follow in my footsteps." Joshua's mother said with a wishful look. It was clear to Joshua that was how his mother wanted things to go. In the past she was expecting Joshua to follow in her footsteps do to his goal of becoming a doctor, but with all the changes that happened she had given up on that idea. She never expected her daughter Amelia to go into the medical field just based off of how much of a battle junkie she was just like her father.

"If that's the case then what benefits does she get from joining my guild that can be more appealing then what you're offering?" Joshua asked, but before his mother could respond they both heard a knock at the door.

"That must be her now. Come on in Grace." Joshua's mother said with a smile as the door was quickly pushed open thereafter. In walked a woman that was around the same age as Joshua if not maybe a year younger at most. He wasn't surprised by this since she had all the credentials to go to medical school like him before the first phase otherwise she probably wouldn't have gotten the attention of his mother.

The first thing Joshua noticed about the woman was that she was on the rather tall side in comparison to most people he met outside of his own family. She was just around six feet in height, but her hair made her seem even taller by the way she had it arranged. She didn't have straight hair, but instead had curly hair that was rather bushy. She had it combed back and tied at the back so that it created a large puff of hair at the back that somewhat resembled a peacock in Joshua's mind.

Grace was a beautiful woman that seemed extremely confidant by the way she carried herself as she entered the room. She had light caramel skin and wore a pair of glasses that she took off as she walked into the room. Her eyes were a dark brown and held a rather intense stare that Joshua wasn't expecting as she looked in his direction. At the moment she was dressed up in a lab coat with scrubs underneath like most of the higher positioned doctors in the hospital. Before Joshua got caught up staring for too long his mother decided to introduce her assistant.

"Joshua this is Grace Meadows, my assistant. Now that she's here I'm sure she could tell you the reason herself why she wants to join your guild." His mother said with a small smile. She gave Joshua a look that told him that she was trying to play match maker, but he ignored it and stood up to shake Grace's hand.

"It's nice to meet you Grace, my mother has told me a lot about you." Joshua said with a small smile.

"All good things I hope. I can get on her nerves sometimes with all my questions." Grace said with a chuckle to lighten the mood.

"Well now that we've been introduced. I'd like to know why you've decided to join my guild." Joshua said with a more serious tone.

"Well I've been working here at the hospital under your mother for a while and during that time I figured out something that will be needed going forward in the medical field." Grace said before smiling ahead of her next words. "I've decided it's time for the first field doctors to come into play."