Two days after Castle Wood was launched, all the Poison-Antidote Potions in the market, including those stored by guilds were depleted. Castle Wood was a difficult dungeon. Even if one downed Poison-Antidote Potions non-stop throughout the exploration process, they might not be able to pass through it. Every step must be taken with caution, or else it would be a waste of all the Poison-Antidote Potion consumed previously if the whole team was wiped out.
All players wore bitter looks on their faces when they drank the potions. That was in no way just a simple potion, it's a massive depletion of hard earned money.
The Triumphant Midnight team fared the worst. None of the potioneers belonging to their guild had learned how to make low-level Poison-Antidote Potion before, and hence all their potions were purchased from stores. However, it just took less than one day for them to consume all the potions, and the team had just barely reached 35% of the dungeon.
The prices of the low-level Poison-Antidote Potions surged like crazy!
At that point in time, a place known as the Sky Provisions Shop became famous. Although no one knew who the owner of that shop was, they were certain that the owner must be some extraordinary figure to be able to accumulate such a huge amount of the potions! A lot of people tried to find out who was the boss behind the scenes, but they failed. The furthest they could get to know was just a young counter staff named Seven Ears.
However, this Seven Ears was the most pedantic person they swore they had ever met. Even if they promised to give him benefits in the form of rebates, he wouldn't yield to anyone's requests of buying the potions solely. All the guild leaders were simply maddened. With their status, when had they ever been rejected?
"Either use your reward points to exchange or else you have to pay for the potions with money." Seven Ears adhered strictly to Lin Jie's rules and spoke sternly.
Exchange? Exchange it with equipment that was worth at least 3 gold coins? Who else could play in the dungeon then? Out of no choice, the guild leaders resorted to raising funds from their members just to buy the potions and its recipes.
Witnessing this whole series of events, the other merchants became anxious whenever they saw the Sky Provisions Shop put up stock for the potions. They started to put up their available stocks with lower prices for auction.
"Unscrupulous merchant, you ought to die from poverty!" The guild leader of the Owners of Daybreak Guild, Vicju spat and cursed loudly at the Sky Provisions Shop before rushing off to the auction house. However, even if the other merchants were farsighted enough to predict market trends, how could they win against the prophetic Lin Jie? All they could put up was at most 10 plus recipes, which was too little to suffice the larger guilds' needs.
Once there was stock put up at the auction house, it would be bought away by the headhunters of the major guilds within a few seconds.
After rounds of running back and forth from the auction house, all the players turned back to the Sky Provisions Shop, only to discover to their horror that the recipes' prices were increased by five silver coins, while the potions and ingredients' prices were increased by 10 bronze coins per set.
"Do we buy?"
"Buy!"
Out of no choice, they gritted their teeth, raised funds and bought the recipes and potions. Thus, Sky Provisions Shop reaped huge amounts of revenue. Yet, they had only sold off a small portion of their available stocks. The prices of the potions and its ingredients were simply too expensive even for guilds. Most of them could only just buy enough amounts to suffice their exploration in the dungeon. After gaining some valuable equipment, they would come back to exchange for the potions again, hoping to achieve self-sufficiency of the potions with this method.
To be honest, most of the guilds' gains would end up with Lin Jie after the 10 days of redemption period, as most of them were not able to fork out the money to redeem back their valuables.
Resigned, Vicju passed his money over the counter and said, "Give me two sets of the recipes."
"Sorry, we are not selling them to you," replied Seven Ears flatly, his face void of emotions.
"Damn, what do you mean by this?" Vicju was angered and slammed his palm on the counter, spilling a bottle of the potion. After which, the patrolling guards came by and marched him off to jail.
Players' shops were being protected by NPCs and the laws of the city.
Boom-
The ogre's enormous body fell down. Lin Jie searched for the items spawned beneath the lifeless corpse, forehead creased up tightly. Piecing up the Shemendes Iron Cloak was a long-time effort. The 'lucky' Lin Jie got another broken rag after finishing off the orge for the second time, and that piece… was exactly the same piece he had gotten from his first attempt! It was indeed 'very lucky' of him to get such pieces consecutively! Lin Jie could not help but make a sardonic remark to himself.
Other than that, there was nothing else at all. There was not even any sight of bronze coins, let alone silver coins.
'It's literally, not even a penny left.'
The goblin's curse had come true.
Lin Jie resigned to his fate. 'Well, at least it was guaranteed that the monster would spawn the cloak's rags.'
"Boss, we have sold a portion of the potions, and earned a total of 21 gold coins and 37 silver coins!" Seven Ears reported ecstatically. It was the first time he had seen such a large sum of money, and he nearly couldn't believe his eyes!
Lin Jie brightened up. "Oh, transfer me the money now."
——'Seven Ears had transferred a total of 21 gold coins and 37 silver coins to your personal inventory. You can withdraw it from the Inventory Manager.'
——'You have broken the Goblin's Life Curse! You received 10 silver coins, and you will have 20% more gains in the following 12 hours.'
——'You have made an accomplishment - [Purification], your Mana levels +50, Resistance +2.'
One could get rewards for breaking a curse! Of course, it would not be counted as breaking a curse if one used Dispelling Spells. To be honest, it was not difficult to break the Goblin's Life Curse. One just needed to get an item that had the value of 20 gold coins by killing a monster or earn 20 gold coins directly to break the curse.
In reality, though, that was even harder to achieve than reaching the stars. To earn 20 gold coins at that stage of the game? Most large guilds were still searching for ways to get a few pieces of gold coins, let alone for solo players.
Of course, Lin Jie was the exception.
Other than that, breaking a curse could increase one's Stats. Surely, this must be what was commonly known as a blessing in disguise.
Lin Jie's communication device rang. It was a call from Midnight.
"Brother Fu Sheng, will you be interested in coming with us to explore the Castle Wood dungeon?" asked Midnight in a testing tone. Could he by any chance also know the attack strategy for Castle Wood?
Lin Jie shook his head. "I have searched one round on the official website…"
"And?" asked Midnight hopefully.
"I can't find any reliable strategies. They were all made up," Lin Jie appeared to be exasperated. "The fellow who wrote the strategy for the Cat Demon Lair was even more absurd, he just mentioned that one could conquer the dungeon by using loads of Magic Scrolls. Darn it, why would I still be stuck at this level in the game if I have that much money?"
Midnight, "…"
'What, so this fellow had derived his artful gaming strategies and skills by reading up the posts from the supposedly beta test gamers?' Midnight felt cheated.
He put down his communication device and shrugged his shoulders. "He doesn't seem interested."
Dumb Fox took up his own communication device and called Lin Jie personally. "Brother Fu Sheng, do you remember me?"
"Yes, yes, sure I do," replied Lin Jie. He had not forgotten that Dumb Fox had fought for him against the Ironwall Empire in the past.
"If you come with us to the Castle Wood dungeon, we will give you all of the Berserker Gold equipment spawned." Dumb Fox put forth his offer in a resolute manner. His guild members widened their eyes in disbelief when they heard his comment.
'Is Leader crazy? To give Gold equipment to an outsider?'
There was silence on Lin Jie's side. After a moment, he replied, "I don't need anything from Castle Wood. However, I can offer you some potions, its ingredients and recipes: 5 recipes, 200 sets of potions and 300 sets of its ingredients. Fox Guild Leader, do state a price."
Dumb Fox was shocked. To get such a large amount of the potions and its raw ingredients? What's the real identity of this Fu Sheng, exactly? He probed cautiously, "The Sky Provisions Shop…"
"Oh, that's opened by a friend of mine. I can get some of the items at a lower price. Since Fox Guild Leader had treated me sincerely, I must return your favor."
"Okay, but this amount is too much, I can't take them all," replied Dumb Fox decisively. "How about this, I can give you 5 gold coins, and pay you the rest in cash?"
Lin Jie pondered and replied, "Maybe you could get me a Magus Berserker's Power Skill Book in exchange then? As for the money, it's up to you to decide how much you want to give me."
"I have one of that Skill Book now. I will send it to you straight away." Dumb Fox was delighted.
Three seconds later, Lin Jie received a notification from his personal bank account that was linked to his game account. There was a transfer of 800 dollars.
800 dollars was approximately the amount after deducting the value of five gold coins. This meant that the Magus Berserker's Power Skill Book was given to him for free.
The number of recipes and potions Dumb Fox got was probably enough to support them for two continuous days of exploration in the dungeon. This would help them progress much faster in the dungeon. On the other hand, Lin Jie finally got hold of the Magus Berserker's Power Skill Book.
That Skill Book was bronze in color. There was an image of a six-handed Magus Berserker embossed onto the book cover, making it seem extremely creepy.
Skill Book: Magus Berserker's Power
Casting Resource: Action, Warrior's Roar
Skill Description: You can let out a Primordial Roar, and increase your Strength temporary by 50 points, lasting for 20 seconds. The cooldown period for this skill is five minutes.
Job Restriction: Warrior
There were few Skills that could temporarily increase one's Strength, and most of them could be used directly for dealing damage and for attacking purposes, etc. Most of them also had much better effects than the Magus Berserker's Power.
Lin Jie tried activating the skill. His face flushed red, and his muscles bulged out. Following that, a weird roar came out from his throat!
Strength Increase!
The moment his Strength surpassed 80, Lin Jie equipped himself with the Shield of Courage. When the skill effect wore off after 20 seconds, the Shield of Courage did not come off. However, as a penalty for not meeting its requirements, Lin Jie's Movement Speed was decreased by 5%, and the attributes of the Shield of Courage were also decreased by half.
Even so, that shield was still very strong!
Cladded in a mixture of Bronze and Gold sets, with a shield in his left hand, a sword in his right hand, Lin Jie finally felt he looked somewhat like what a proper Warrior should look like.
Ding~
"Fu Sheng… We progressed to 40% of the dungeon, but we are stuck at the No.2 Boss." A somewhat awkward voice was heard from Lin Jie's communication device. That was the effect of a normally aggressive figure trying to sound more intimate and polite to someone.
Lin Jie nodded his head and replied, "No. 2 Boss is the Viscount of Fear, Mugarh, correct? You arrange for three MTs to stand separately at the corresponding positions, and activate Forward Charge every four seconds. Keep up the pace of the attacks that will do."
This person was The Heavenly Shield! He was now cooperating with Lin Jie. The latter would supply his team with the required low-level Poison-Antidote Potions, while the Ironwall Empire acted as his hatchet man. They would stop before the final Boss and wait for Lin Jie to come and collect the EXP points.
This was cooperation based on the principles of reciprocity and mutual benefit.
"I will be offline for the next three days. You will need to use a few small tactics to conquer the subsequent Bosses. I am going to send a summary of these tactics to you, you can only read them in private. Remember, don't show them to anyone else," Lin Jie instructed and added, "I don't know how much manpower the Kingdom of Glory had arranged in your guild, what I can advise is this—try your best to sieve out the betrayers, get rid of them and their connections to your guild completely."
The Heavenly Shield replied in a stern tone, "Alright."
The Mage Heavens, Dark-robed Knights, and the Kingdom of Glory were like butterflies still in their cocoons—they had made use of Ironwall Empire as their nutrients, and would emerge as beautiful butterflies at the sake of the Ironwall Empire! As such, Lin Jie and The Heavenly Shield had conducted a massive cleanup within the guild, and would rather dismiss anyone who showed the slightest resistance to their orders than to forgive them.
As the saying goes, "I would rather wrong thousands of people, than let off a suspicious figure." 1 . This was a solution that they had resorted out to of no choice.
That incident would happen after half a month. Lin Jie inhaled deeply. He must get enough funds and resources before that!
Walking into the auction house, Lin Jie started to search for Augmenting Gems. The prices of Augmenting Gems did not fluctuate much, and it cost five silver coins per piece. This was Lin Jie's main motive for this trip!
After Castle Wood was launched, the players would level up very fast, reaching Level 10 in no time. At that time, they would need Augmenting Gems to complete their Job-Changing Missions.
Following the normal set patterns of games, changing jobs should be an easy task. However, a job change in The New Age would be similar in comparison to the evolution of life forms in the real world. The difficulty levels of the quests for job changing was simply unimaginable! First of all, the cap for Gold equipment was already sealed for normal players. Unless the players could get hold of Dark Gold equipment, it would almost be impossible for them to improve their equipment.
At that stage, the powers of the Augmenting Gems would come in handy! Whereas one could not afford Augmenting Gem before, now most of them could do so!
At that moment, there was another commotion going on at the auction house.
The monsters in Castle Wood were simply too strong. They would even regain health points with every attack, and thus it required teams to deal team attacks of high damage points. For example, No. 1 Boss Princess Helen was constantly in "Empathy for the Weak" state, and would only take in one attack at any time.
Players required weapons of high attacking power! Other than the low-level Poison-Antidote Potions, the prices of weapons with high Attack Power were also beginning to increase. However, there was a weapon which was the exception, and it attracted the attention of many players—Enhancement +2, with an Attack Power cap of 70 points, it was a powerful weapon known as the Spiked Club!
This was adapted from a famous saying by Chinese political figure Wang Jingwei during the late 1920s.