Most of Planaria’s kit funds came from the revenue split earned in defense matches. To make up for tonight’s losses, they would have to keep the castle no matter what. And just then, the system announced there were only three minutes left until entry into the defense.
[System: Moving to <Siege: Guild Defense> map in 3 minutes.]
With the system message announcing entry into the defense, Hae-in stretched long toward the ceiling. It was now his second year of dutifully holding the lord’s seat in Parel for the day he could someday hand it back to Ignis-nim.
As a high-schooler lord, faithfully running a defense every week, and on top of that, saying he wouldn’t let go of Chalais’s Ground either, defending a minimum of two sieges a week—honestly, it hadn’t been easy.
Not just sieges—the time needed to handle the tedious lord functions that had sprung up since Ignis disappeared, like maintaining the market board or sanctioning bad-mannered users, wasn’t small either.
There was no shortage of people picking pointless fights. Folks dug for the lord’s personal info, asked “how much do you make off that,” or begged for a guild slot—ridiculous whispers poured in and he had to block people like he was eating meals.
Long story short, Eraha Online’s lord system didn’t make enough money to live on. Sure, as lord you collected a fee on market-board transaction proceeds, but it wasn’t impressive. In keeping with Ignis’s policy, the tax rate was fixed at 5%, and for big-ticket deals players transacted directly without fees, so once you split with guildies at a set ratio, what was left was barely enough pocket money. Any other income came entirely from the high-value items Dohaesal personally sold off from raid and ranking-match drops.
If you weren’t particularly confident at raiding, spending time chasing lordship instead of running raids would put you at a disadvantage—but since most people didn’t know the truth, the challenges arrived to a truly tiresome degree.
[System: Moving to <Siege: Guild Defense> map shortly.]
Hae-in checked the message announcing the siege’s start and set his hands on the keyboard.
[Guild/MidlifeHunter: gogo]
[Guild/AuroraPatient: let’s go let’s go]
The screen went black, then bright again, and crisp silver letters appeared at center-screen.
<Siege: Guild Defense>
The camera angle swept down from sky to ground and panned across terrain shaped like a medieval fortress. There were five small strongholds scattered on the map. The defense used a capture format.
You attacked the enemy’s towers to deal damage, and for the damage dealt, each side’s victory points went up. In other words, you could win just by breaking towers well, if you cracked the enemy’s defensive strategy.
But that was only when there wasn’t a team fight. If you succeeded in killing a character from the enemy side, the teams stole 10 points back and forth. Each tower broke in three stages, awarding 5 points per stage, so even if you failed to protect your towers, you could win as long as you killed the enemy hard.
On top of that, during the last ten minutes of the thirty-minute battle, a “Wanted” target was randomly designated among members; killing the Wanted target stole 30 points (and cost you 30 if yours died).
In short: kill the enemy well, break towers well, and when a Wanted target spawns, protect ours and focus theirs. This simple mode, with nothing to get confused by, hadn’t changed much since launch. Hae-in pursed his lips, just waiting for the countdown to start.
[System: Entered <Siege: Guild Defense>.]
[System: Defender : Defender <Yeonhwa> : Challenger <Migelanzelo> ]
[System: The battle will begin shortly. Good luck.]
[System: Battle begins in 3 seconds.]
[Guild/PleasePunishThem: huff huff thump-thump]
[System: Battle begins in 2 seconds.]
[System: Battle begins in 1 second.]
[System: Planaria lets out a rousing cheer.]
[System: Battle start!]
With the system message announcing the start, huge flags appeared atop the five towers. Each tower’s flag bore three stars; one star vanished for each stage destroyed. Once all three stages were destroyed, even the flag vanished, so in Eraha Online, having a tower destroyed was described as having your flag “confiscated.”
Hae-in checked the defenders’ flags snapping over hills, cliffs, valleys, and ramparts, then checked PleasePunishThem’s location.
[Party/Dohaesal: Hon-nim, where are you?]
As soon as he dropped a location ping on the map, a long beam of light shot up into the sky where it landed.
[Party/PleasePunishThem: Near No. 4 for me]
[Party/Planaria: No. 3]
[Party/AuroraPatient: I’m toward No. 1]
Everyone first pinged their own spots. Random was random, but wow, scattered. It’d be nice if they all started politely near their home base’s No. 5 tower. But then everyone would turtle at their own base and the game would get passive and boring, so with the Chapter 3 update they’d made starting locations random. In bad cases, you even started smack in the enemy’s territory instead of your own.
To ease that, players tried sprinting to a ledge and sacrificing themselves if they spawned in a spot that was unfavorable to base defense, because deaths by accident didn’t count toward score for or against.
“They patched it next update so fall death is impossible within five minutes of spawn.”
All of which was because a siege wasn’t just a simple guild-versus-guild fight—it was entertainment for the entire server. Gladiators, who were supposed to bite and fight bravely, could not be allowed to think of running.
Each castle had an assigned day: Parel’s siege was Friday, Caliphe’s siege was Saturday, Kochen’s siege was Sunday. The most competitive of these was naturally Caliphe. Well… since every castle ran a siege once a week, it’s not like only one was wildly competitive. But since Saturday had the highest login rate, more guilds aimed for Saturday’s siege.
And those sieges could be watched live on the official website and the Eraha Online app. When live coverage was first introduced, complaints flooded in. Sieges hinge on strategy, and if you watch the enemy’s broadcast on a side monitor, won’t that expose gaps?
But the problem was solved by setting about a five-minute delay between participants and viewers. Even if you watched, it was the state from five minutes ago, making immediate responses impractical.
By various clever tweaks, they’d raised this combat content into the game’s top entertainment, and once, in the name of a “Cheer” system, they even introduced a quasi-betting feature. And, as you can guess without being told, it got the gambling-promotion banhammer from the Game Rating Board, and vanished after a single season. A deserved outcome.
Now it had settled into a structure where only the lord and the challenger gambled money over the lord’s seat, but even at this late hour, there was no shortage of viewers. Hae-in checked the spectator count at the top of the UI and clicked his tongue.
[Spectators: 1,273]
Do people really have that little to do at this hour? It twisted his mood a bit to think that a thousand people were watching, hoping to see the upset of a new lord crowned, when this wasn’t even some special event. Yeonhwa would keep the seat this time too, of course. Until the day he could hand the lordship to Ignis. Wearing a bored look, Hae-in called out to PleasePunishThem.
[Party/Dohaesal: Hon-nim, ping your spot one more time]
[Party/PleasePunishThem: Yessir]
The ping PleasePunishThem dropped was midway between their No. 4 tower and the enemy’s No. 2 tower. If they linked up from here, they’d meet fast. Hae-in checked a route that would let him move as hidden as possible and typed.
[Party/Dohaesal: I’ll head your way]
[Party/Dohaesal: MidHunter and Patient, keep vision and go toward base]
[Party/MidlifeHunter: ok]
[Party/AuroraPatient: I’ll chip the tower on the way]
[Party/MidlifeHunter: If there’s an opening, I’ll take it down to stage 2 before moving]
[Party/Dohaesal: ok]
As Hae-in crept over toward PleasePunishThem, keeping his footsteps quiet, he spotted her tucked beside a cliff zone. A Kirran female character set to minimum height—just under 150—was wedged neatly into a gap between two rocks. If she hadn’t dropped a ping visible only to teammates, even Hae-in might not have found her.
[Party/Dohaesal: See anyone from the enemy while you were moving?]
[Party/PleasePunishThem: Yup, over there earlier]
[Party/PleasePunishThem: Saw a Skur]
Hae-in peered toward the spot she pinged and nodded.
[Party/Dohaesal: ok]
[Party/Dohaesal: I’ll bait them over]
Hae-in slid along the terrain and tucked himself into the brush, then teased the area PleasePunishThem had indicated. As a Storm Haste (StH), he could be fatally wounded by a single clean graze from the enemy—his very existence was the juiciest bait in the world. Even if he was the No. 1 StH by win rate.
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