Chapter 198 - 16 Billion Evolution Points for a bucket of water? How about you take rocks instead!

Kaelen spent the rest of the night cultivating, but was surprised when he discovered he made no difference from what he made from Emir’s domain alone: an average of 150 million evolution points.

Mind you, the tower was supposed to be an ancient structure containing several powerful entities, including the Heralds that radiated with evolution spores, according to the butler. Unless each lobby was isolated from the rest of the tower, that was the only way it made any sense, or he’d conclude Emir was stronger than the entire tower itself.

Thanks to the Book of Kaelen, which gave him 50% of each of the Evolution Points earned, by dawn, Kaelen had made nearly 7 trillion in one night.

Not like that was enough for even one advancement now, but it was something.

He rose early and began his daily routine of 10,000 pushups and sit-ups, then spent the rest of the morning running laps around the lobby while the rest were still waking up.

It was only after they returned that he realized there was no water source to wash up after drenching himself in sweat in the abnormally hot weather.

He’d have to do something about that, and for some reason, a strange idea crossed his mind.

Kaelen went straight to the forum to do his research on other lobbies, only to realize they weren’t nearly identical. They had the same structure and outline, but some were blessed with more resources, such as fruits and edible vegetables, while others had streams and lakes sitting in theirs.

Kaelen’s didn’t have any, and from what he could remember, he wasn’t sure if Lysandra’s had any, as he had only looked at the lobby from the angle of one balcony and didn’t have the Infinite Mana ability to scout everywhere.

That wasn’t a problem for Kaelen.

He went to the trade platform to check the price of water, because it was obvious someone would be selling some if all lobbies didn’t have the privilege.

Sure enough, he found quite a few traders listing water in small buckets.

The average price for one was 16 billion Evolution Points. For a bucket that couldn’t bathe an adult man and could barely cover a day of hydration for one person.

Kaelen only laughed in amusement as he messaged the seller, asking if he could pay with items or treasure chests.

His name was being displayed, and whoever the seller was would recognize him from the second floor, where Kaelen got a ton of loot and treasure chests.

Sure enough, the seller replied soon with a list of items equivalent to his bucket of water.

Primordial Weapon Set ×10

Divine Skill books ×10

Mid-grade Health/Mana Elixirs ×10 (5 each)

Kaelen smiled and began haggling the price down, and while he was at it, he returned to the trade platform and began purchasing all the buckets off the market.

The seller was very stubborn and only agreed to drop the rank of the weapons down to Divine and the Skill books down to Mythic. Every other thing remained the same.

Kaelen agreed.

The funny part was, he didn’t have anything less than the Primordial Tier in his inventory and didn’t possess a single mid-grade Elixir—they were all Excellent-grade.

He took out an empty treasure chest from his inventory and found a broadsword to go with it, then stepped out of the cabin and began moving around the lobby, searching for where to dig.

He found the right spot and immediately went down to business, digging up rocks and shoving them inside the large treasure chest while some of the candidates watched him in confusion from their balconies. The ding-dong ditch girl included.

He had met them all in the common room earlier, having a meeting without involving him. Not that he cared, but from the looks of it, they planned on entering the second floor soon, meanwhile, Kaelen was preparing for the third floor, even though the second was a malfunction.

A clear was a clear.

After filling the treasure chest up, Kaelen moved his shadow to hide underneath it and returned to the seller to double-check if his plan was solid.

Me: I’m going to be needing a lot of water, so I’d like to know if your lobby has enough sources?

Seller: Yeah. We’ve got a lake here. Order as much as you want. The price remains the same, with occasional 2% discounts if you buy enough.

Me: That’s great to hear. I’m loaded, and I’ll be sending you the payment for one to see how good your water is before I make the rest of the purchase. I’ll send them in a chest.

Seller: Sure, man.

Kaelen slapped the lid shut and hooked the latch before putting the treasure chest into his inventory and quickly returning to his room before he sent it over.

As soon as the seller accepted the trade from their end, a small bucket of water was sent in trade with his chest, and Kaelen quickly took it out to inspect it.

It was clean and crystal clear.

His lips slowly curled up.

"Switch."

He swiftly shadow-stepped to the nearest dark corner before he could materialize inside the box and watched from the shadows as the seller was about to open the chest, when footsteps and voices came from the hallways, and he nervously hid it behind him, dusted his hands, and held back an excited chuckle before he exited the room after cross-checking that it was hidden well.

From the looks of it, he was illegally selling the domain water source and wanted to covet everything for himself. This made Kaelen almost laugh, though he felt bad for the guy when he realized they were full of rocks.

Kaelen was also aware that there was a report action on the trade platform for petty scams like this, but according to his research, the scammer would be obliged to return the trader’s goods with interest or face the law.

For a bucket of water, the interest might be an extra bucket of something as mundane as that.

In Kaelen’s defense, he simply couldn’t hand out 10 of his Primordial Tier items, which were roughly 10 trillion Evolution Points on average.

As for skill books, he simply didn’t have that much to give away.

It was like Kelsey said: following the rules would make you wind up dead sooner or later. This was the true path to surviving the Tower.

Except, there was just one problem.

Kaelen had exited the cabin and sneaked all the way to the small lake with a waterfall at the corner of the lobby, surrounded by vegetation that covered Kaelen’s tracks.

But now that he was here, there was someone swimming inside the lake whom he never thought he’d get to see again under such circumstances.

It was the white-haired lady who had been with the short guy who had run around barefoot and one-shotted the lycan with his feet.

If he could remember correctly, her name was Lucy.