Weeks passed, and the average level of players steadily increased past twenty, and Alex herself had reached level 30.
Various updates had also occurred which included the addition of titles, and the addition of cloaks as a piece of equipment.
The various organisations that she had set up had already become quite well-renowned in the gaming industry. People were wondering where all these people had come from, and many gaming assassinations groups had been acquired by her forces.
The workforce under Alex had increased swiftly reaching 5 million, and the subordinate organisations numbered in the thousands. Her younger cousin had also joined the game thinking it would be fun. He was only 17, but he was quite sharp when it came to scheming, and his business talent was certainly nothing to scoff at.
He started a guild for fun, and it was called Gentlemen's Parlour, specifically it was a merchants guild, and had many sources of income. Despite being cousins they were raised to never give benefits for free so although they were friendly with each other they would fight tooth, and nail over contracts, and conditions.
Eventually it was settled that Alex would obtain 40% shares of the Gentlemen's Parlour in exchange for the protection of the Great Underground on the condition that Alex wouldn't interfere with the guild unless it was related to war measures.
The guild had branches in many kingdoms, and empires, and had amassed itself a massive fortune inciting the jealousy of many superpower who declared war against the Gentlemen's Parlour.
In turn, Alex sent off many assassination groups to assassinate the higher ups of the various powers, scaring them into submission. They knew clearly that there was someone backing the Gentlemen's Parlour, and it was certainly someone they didn't wish to offend, and as such the Gentlemen's Parlour's status in the gaming industry stabilised.
Many of the subordinate organisations had offended many superpower, but not a single one of them fell due to the power backing them.
The Great Underground grew steadily, and Alex's father praised her for managing the organisation so well.
Alex herself actually managed to obtain many powerful skills, and equipment replacing her old equipment. However, since she had been armed with the knowledge of how bad skill books are, many other superpowers also found out, which leaked to the public, and eventually nobody bought skill books, instead opting for tutoring crystals.
Although they cost more, and were rather difficult to obtain for ordinary players, it was far more worth it than to use skill book skills.
Alex also had created many small subsidy merchant, and lifestyle guilds backed by the Great Underground in order to make sure that the organisation's funds kept up. Even though her various subordinate powers could run themselves, if something major happened it would require many funds, and so Alex was keeping a stockpile just in case.
Within these few weeks Alex had had many people search the various lightning-element maps in order to find the Travelling Lightning Merchant because she had obtained the 500,000 thunder stones only to find that the merchant had long since left the map for somewhere else, and on this day he was finally found in the level 40-50 map known as the Mines of Miramind.