Chapter 211: Go Crazy for Me Again

[PuddingPuddingLittlePip: Buying Grade D Awakening Stones, price negotiable]

[Everrise: Don’t listen to the person above, they’re a scammer. All the major bases are buying Grade D Awakening Stones right now. One Grade D Awakening Stone can be traded for a low-level item or a healing item.]

[BigCatCub: For real?]

[Everrise: It’s real. If you don’t believe it, you can come see for yourself.]

After watching for a while, Moira Lynch closed the game forum and opened her private messages. In the pinned section, she saw a message from Redlight, dated four minutes ago.

She glanced at the timestamp of the previous message: nine minutes ago.

So, Moira Lynch waited for just under a minute.

As soon as the time was up, a message from Redlight popped up right on schedule.

[Redlight: Mr. Lynch, are you there? That information about the planet...is it...?]

The message was followed by an emoji of someone chuckling and rubbing their hands together greedily.

[SoySauceDrunkard: The planet can wait. I have a few goodies for you.]

On the other end, Redlight’s eyes widened the moment he saw the word "goodies."

After all, anything SoySauceDrunkard called a "goody" was bound to be extraordinary.

[Redlight: I’m in, I’m in! I’m definitely interested! What is it?]

[SoySauceDrunkard: Too lazy to type. Just go camp my shop.]

After sending the message, Moira Lynch listed the Awakening Potion for sale.

「Back at the base.」

As soon as Redlight saw the message, he immediately turned to a colleague beside him. "Quick! Who’s on duty monitoring SoySauceDrunkard’s shop?"

"That would be me." A young woman with a neat, short haircut raised her hand.

Redlight asked, "Did SoySauceDrunkard just list anything?"

Just then, the shop page finished refreshing.

As the staffer assigned to monitor SoySauceDrunkard’s shop, the young woman knew its inventory like the back of her hand. With a single glance, she spotted an item that had never appeared before.

When she saw what it was, the young woman’s eyes widened in shock. "Chief, it’s an Awakening Potion!"

They had already learned about the existence and purpose of Awakening Stones from the Learning Machine.

Due to a recent game error, all players who were teleported to the deserted island and survived for twenty days had received a Grade D Awakening Stone and a game slot. However, searches on the Learning Machine revealed that the success rate of a Grade D Awakening Stone was not 100 percent. Moreover, the awakening process itself was life-threatening.

This "Awakening Potion," with the word "Awakening" right in the name... you didn’t have to be a genius to figure out its purpose.

"Quick! Secure that Awakening Potion at all costs! Get our people on it now!"

Redlight ordered everyone.

"Um, Chief... it looks like this Awakening Potion is a designated purchase, only you can buy it. But it requires a five-Gold-Coin transaction fee."

Hearing this, Redlight froze. He opened SoySauceDrunkard’s [Don’t Miss It] shop and, sure enough, saw the Awakening Potion listed right at the top. And it really was a designated purchase that only he could make.

However, whenever they exited the game, they were required to turn in all their Game Coins immediately. Right now, forget five Gold Coins; he didn’t even have a single one.

This was awkward.

Fortunately, Chase Shepard arrived just in time, bringing five Gold Coins with him.

After he clicked confirm, a thumb-sized test tube filled with a white liquid appeared in Redlight’s hand.

Redlight held the bottle of Awakening Potion, his body frozen stiff. He didn’t dare to move, terrified that one careless slip would send the precious vial crashing to the floor.

At the same time, the name SoySauceDrunkard once again threw the entire world into a frenzy.

Over a dozen countries jointly issued an international statement demanding that Cathaya surrender the world’s only Awakening Potion.

Of course, the demand was met with silence.

Meanwhile, the world’s only Awakening Potion was delivered to a subject who had previously used an Awakening Stone but failed to awaken.

The Grade D Awakening Stone and the game slot appeared to be a single reward, but they were in fact two. The catch was that access to the game was only granted after a successful awakening.

The young man, clad only in a pair of black boxer shorts, had various instruments connected to his limbs and torso to monitor his physiological changes.

He downed the Awakening Potion in one gulp.

"How do you feel?"

The young man was surrounded by experts in white lab coats, most of them past middle age.

The young man blinked, concentrating on the sensation. "I feel something warm," he said. "It’s completely different from the Grade D Awakening Stone."

When he used the Grade D Awakening Stone, it had felt like his entire body was on fire.

Just then, the surrounding machines began to blare. BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

"The subject’s vitals are rising rapidly!"

About five minutes later, the young man seemed to act on instinct. He opened his right hand, and a ball of flame ignited in his palm.

Immediately after, a mechanical voice sounded in his ear.

[Congratulations, you have qualified for the game. Please enter your in-game nickname.]

Seeing the young man awaken successfully and without any side effects, Chase Shepard immediately turned to Redlight. "Contact SoySauceDrunkard now! Find out how many Awakening Potions she has. We’ll buy all of them, no matter the price."

Elsewhere, the furor over the hunt for SoySauceDrunkard, which had gradually died down, erupted once more.

Everyone realized that as time went on, the value of this individual, SoySauceDrunkard, was only continuing to increase.

He was like the goose that laid the golden eggs.

Although no one had yet managed to find SoySauceDrunkard, the player lived somewhere within Cathaya’s borders. And while not even the Cathayans themselves had found a trace of him, they were the ones who got to collect the golden eggs from time to time.

What had just happened was a clear sign that the Cathayan government was already collaborating with SoySauceDrunkard, and this was likely not their first time doing so.

Cathaya was feasting on the main course while other countries were left with only a few scraps. How could they possibly accept that?

They had to be condemned. Cathaya was being utterly selfish.

Of course, Moira Lynch was oblivious to all this. She was busy emailing the game’s system administrators to negotiate some new terms.

It all started because Moira Lynch felt her shop was too cluttered and she was running out of item slots.

Even after an upgrade, it still wouldn’t be enough. Besides, the upgrade cost was exorbitant; the 500,000 she had just earned was only enough to raise her shop to level five.

And even though a level-five shop would be bigger and have more slots, Moira Lynch was still not satisfied.