All colours of the rainbow shimmered in the air, as if a giant soap bubble had suddenly decided to exist in a cylinder shape around the Guild Hall, quickly gaining intensity. Once its visibility was as firmly established as was possible with the overhanging sun, the borders began to move outwards. Although it was expanding at several metres per second, the raw amount of distance covered made it appear like a crawling growth.

“How big do ya think it’ll get?” Rave asked her boyfriend.

“Well, it’s one kilometre across at the moment, so maybe it’ll double to two?” he suggested, as the expanding border passed over and through them. The sizes were always difficult to predict. Such was the nature of things when they were left in the hands of a divine entity who got a rise out of screwing with him.

This was such an instance. Looking at the Mandala Sphere suddenly darting off, accelerated by a whole bunch of mana, the girls raised an eyebrow. “Seems like this upgrade will be so meaty that the Guild Hall borders would reach inland. Gaia seems to not want the areas to overlap.” He shrugged. Ultimately, that was in his interest as well. There were facilities on the shore that would have been a pain to have inside the Guild Hall and even worse to move out of it – the Fusion Trade Tower, for example.

Flying through the border, John moved his Possession’s gaze to look inwards. What he was presented with was a very interesting duality of views. From inside the Guild Hall, it looked like the barrier was expanding normally, while the city around them also visibly grew smaller with every passing second. From the outside, the expanding barrier seemed to be static, but the Hudson bulged out in all directions, causing a visible circle to be created at the heart of the Protected Space.

By the sort of miracle only the supreme deity of creation could work, the surrounding city was unaffected in its layout. Something that was quite ludicrous, given that the Guild Hall it now stretched around ended up at half the diameter the Hudson Barrier would have been on its own.

The Guild Hall had expanded from one to five kilometres in total diameter. Putting aside the fact that this was an absolutely ludicrous increase, it also meant that the Hudson Barrier, combining its own size with that of the Guild Hall, went up to fifteen kilometres across. That made it as big as Rome in surface area.

There was a lack of floating islands and the population of Rome absolutely dwarfed that of the Hudson Barrier, but John felt rather pleased to be catching up in at least this one aspect. “The city is far away now,” Scarlett commented while looking over the railing. Sometime during the expansion happening, John had cum inside Metra, and they were now concentrating on the important things. “Your powers are pure bullshit.”

“Wonder what the final size of this thing will be,” John hummed. “I doubt it’ll go to 25 kilometres, but let’s just assume its 10… this still means the Guild Hall is a teleportable category three Abyssal city… the only limitation is a one-month cooldown and that it has to be conquered territory.”

The fact that the Perk said ‘conquered’ and not ‘owned’ territory was of vital importance. If it had been just owned, John could only teleport in the areas that the Federation had a firm and acknowledged grip on. Conquered included those stretches of land that Fusion occupied during war. The Guild Hall was the wet dream of every military commander. A massive base with integrated supply production that could be relocated at a moment’s notice in frequent intervals.

‘It is quite possible that this is the greatest military structure in the world, even without guns or sentience,’ the Gamer thought. That he could now upgrade and place new Buildings would likely only underline that fact. Even just the resources and respawning Sentry Golems made it a force to be reckoned with. ‘I wonder what happens with all the water if I teleport it to somewhere on land though?’

That question was left unanswered for the moment. John instead headed towards the stairs that led to the bridge. The island in the centre was now in need of another complete overhaul. The Guild Hall had grown to five times the former size and he didn’t really want more than the outer rims of that to be water. Since it would have been bothersome to surround his own position with land and then unable to drive his yacht out, he had to park elsewhere.

Once that was done, John gathered up the girls and all together they started to design what the island would look like. Although John drew up, as best as the tools allowed him, the same circular base shape as he had done for the previous Tier, this was quickly compromised by the many inputs given by the harem present. Each elemental had a number of ideas of what their islands should look like and Eliza supplied some beautiful looking sketches that the Gamer then awfully copied over into reality. By the end of that process, they were less Elemental Islands and more peninsulas.

The Silicate Island to the south went through a simple upscaling and an entirely new island was added to the northeast, simply because John had the space and wanted to put something between the Harbour and the open sea. An extra position from which to defend anchoring ships, if nothing else. Two arms extended from the landmass. At that point it was basically impossible to sell the Guild Hall as circular.

After some more tweaks to coastlines here and there, they got working on the details. A decision was made, for no real reason other than aesthetics, that the star fort and the Palace in the middle of the Guild Hall should stand in a moat. From there, it was decided that there should be rivers flowing outwards. Those would give the scenery some more structure and charm. A particularly broad channel was made between the moat and where the Harbour would be placed. All of the rivers were navigable, given the right size of boat, but that one was the easiest simply because John thought it would be used the most. It would also separate the Industry from the Commercial district.

The presence of the rivers also made the Elemental Islands into islands again. Mostly. Dependent on whether or not one agreed that the rivers were broad and deep enough to count as a disruption of the landmass. John was torn there, since he didn’t want to think of the Guild Hall as an archipelago, but Elemental Peninsulas just didn’t have the same ring to it.

‘Ah, whatever, I make the rules for this space.’ He decided to just call the Elemental Islands what he wanted and still refer to the Guild Hall at large as one island.

With rivers placed, they went onto the finer details. Where which district was, where the already present Buildings would be placed, what to do with empty space, what colour the ground should have, where to place trees and other decorations, and so on. The entire process cost so much money, John first emptied the entirety of his private savings and then most of the federal funds backed up in the Guild Hall. What remained he carefully calculated to be just enough to allow him to place and upgrade the Building he wanted. Since individual ministries had already gotten their funds for the month, John wasn’t too bothered. It would all roll back in thanks to the Guild Hall’s own productions and I.D. grinding.

“Alright, let’s see what we’re working with in terms of available mana and Room Slots,” John hummed and checked how the Tier upgrade had affected those numbers.

The base mana the Guild Heart produced went from 200’000 to 500’000 and the Room Slots went from 757 to 2257. That meant that the space he had to place his Buildings had gone up by 400%, the ability to place and upgrade Buildings had increased by 200% and the mana to keep those Buildings running by 150%. John knew he was looking at a pretty basic trick by game developers, limiting one specific kind of resource so he was forced to optimize what he did with the others.

In this particular case, he could sacrifice Room Slots in order to gain more mana passively through several Mana Factories, or he could put up just a few and have people produce actively what he needed. The former approach was safer, the latter allowed him to place more Buildings that had ‘proper’ uses.

By his cautious nature, John favoured the former approach. Being steadily dependent on other people’s input was more dangerous than he liked. Because he knew he would get a whole lot of Room Slots for free (1000 of them) when he finally finished the Quest to get Fusion a seat in the Divided Gates, the world’s ten strongest guilds, that approach was only further justified in his mind.

Having settled on his approach, John double-checked on the costs of the Buildings he wanted and which ones he had to push back to the next Tier or another time in order to place enough additional Mana Factories by the end of this. Then he started with the Buildings at the centre of it all.

Palace District:

Guild Heart (Room Slot Cost: 0, Mana Production: 500’000): The Guild Heart remained buried underneath the Palace and incredibly difficult to access.

Palace (Room Slot Cost: 0, Maintenance Cost: 0): There were no physical changes made to the Palace’s outside. The new moat kept the three-layer construct of white star fort, main Palace building and Lady Liberty nicely pronounced even in the larger landscape. Under the surface, however, a few things changed. The secret tunnels inside the fort now led to some small piers that John attached to the tips of the star-shape, allowing visitors to come by foot or by sea. Additionally, he switched the Palace from the category Housing, which was a free-form Building category that cost a variable amount of resources, to Central Hall. He could only have one of those and its maximum size scaled with the Tier of the Guild Hall. Tier 4 was satisfactory to cramp the entire Palace in there – and even more. The Central Hall was a compressed space, meaning that John could have more rooms on the inside than physics should allow. If he had a space problem, it would have been solved now. The more immediate benefit was that, as a Guild Perk Building, it didn’t cost upkeep or Room Slots anymore.

Security Station (Room Slot Cost: 30, Maintenance Cost: 30’000): There were now 10 Sentry Golems, all of which were level 50, and they could be set to operate anywhere within the Guild Hall or the adjacent barrier. Additionally, John got the choice to either acquire one level 125 Gatekeeper Golem, which could only operate within the Guild Hall and automatically teleported to situations where there was trouble, or a level 75 Sentry Leader, which would boost the intelligent response of nearby Sentry Golems. The choice had to be made at that time and was non-reversible. John picked the Gatekeeper, preferring the additional defence.

Cleaning Station (Room Slot Cost: 30, Maintenance Cost: 20’000): The amount of active slimes increased from 40 to 60. John was also given a choice here. He could either make each slime a level 10 fighter or give them the ability to fuse into something called Trashpexus. The former would be a swarm that was more of a bother than a threat to any moderately powerful Abyssal formation. The latter would get one level for each blob that made it up, so going up to level 60, and became permanently stronger the more trash the Cleaning Station slimes devoured. A very slow rise in power, according to the description. However, a drip-feeding of power was still a feeding of power. Trashpexus could only form inside the confines of the Guild Hall, but John didn’t much care about that. He picked Trashpexus, because the swarm approach was so incredibly vulnerable to area attacks.

Transport Station (Room Slot Cost: 20, Maintenance Cost: 50’000): The cost for the Transport Station ramped up immensely, increasing by 40’000, but John couldn’t skip out on the upgrade. Endless range teleporters were simply too valuable and he was given another two of them. For the limited range teleporters, their number limit was lifted. This was of minimal consequence to John, since he already had enough in place to reach most places in the Hudson Barrier in a matter of minutes.

I.D. Gate (Room Slot Cost: 30, Maintenance Cost: 30’000): At Tier 4, John finally found a reason to upgrade this Building. Upping the door count to seven was extremely useless, as far as he could see. However, along with that upgrade came another choice between two perks. The first was quite useful, being that any barrier he opened inside the I.D. Gate would have Fateweaving active within it, protecting him from one death per day. An extremely good insurance, yet between Escape Rope and John’s access to Magoi, he found himself more attracted to the second option. With a cooldown of one week, the central door would lead to an unbound place. Examples for such locations were Lady Liquor’s bar or Hermes’ shop. This was unique enough that John found himself taking that perk, even though he had no active choice as to where it would lead or even when it would become active.

Clearwater Fountain (Room Slot Cost: 50, Maintenance Cost: 5’000): This was a huge but quite cheap Building when it came to keeping it running. A large, artistic fountain, over fifty metres across, placed on a plateau, that steadily produced perfectly clear drinking water. It was an extension of the Guild Hall’s ability to maintain the shape John designed it to have. There would always be water where he wanted it to be and the Clearwater Fountain guaranteed that it would stay perfectly clear. By the supernatural mechanics of the place, dirty water would be teleported away, cleaned, filtered and then pumped back out. A waterfall between the two southern tips of the star fort let the excesses flow into the moat and the outwards flowing rivers, then spread it everywhere else.

District Balance:

180 out of 2’257 Room Slots.

PRODUCES 500’000 mana, COSTS 145’000 mana, BALANCE +355’000 mana.