Chapter 66: A Bear’s Worth!

Not long after that, the goblins finally finished butchering the entire bear.

"Hell yeah! Good job, everyone!" I cheered.

All the goblins cheered as well, putting their asses on the ground and wiped their sweaty head.

The System then promptly absorbed the final batch of materials and distributed the Powerstone rewards.

Looking through my inventory, I felt another overwhelming rush of satisfaction.

The pure joy of being rich!

The sheer amount of resources I had gained from this single colossal bear was honestly ridiculous.

1,820 Meat (1 kg per unit)

340 Bones (1 kg per unit)

220 Fat (1 kg per unit)

4 Bear Fangs

15 Bear Claws

1 Colossal Bear Pelt

1 Colossal Bear Liver

1 Colossal Bear Gallbladder

60 Fur (1 kg per unit)

15 Powerstones (F)

The bear’s skull and heart were missing from the list, but those were the two materials I’d already sold to the System to help evolve my four goblins.

Interestingly, the regular bear meat, bones, fat, and fur were still worth roughly the same amount of Points as their counterparts from the Horned Gray Wolf when sold to the System.

1 Meat → 3 Points

1 Bone → 1 Point

1 Fat → 2 Points

1 Fur → 10 Points per kg

However, everything else fetched a considerably higher price.

Bear Fang → 15 Points each

Bear Claw → 20 Points each

Colossal Bear Pelt → 400 Points

Colossal Bear Liver → 200 Points

Colossal Bear Gallbladder → 150 Points

I quickly did the math in my head.

The meat alone was worth 5,460 Points... The bones gave me another 340, while the fat added 440.... The four fangs were worth 60 Points, and the fifteen claws added another 300...

Then there were the special materials like the fangs, claws, pelt... etc. Adding everything together... I now got a total of 7,950 Points worth of materials!

And if I sold everything right now, with the System taking its usual 10% fee, I’d still walk away with 7,155 Points.

That was an absurd amount of Points from a single bear! Such a number I had never expected to ever see before!

Nearly eight thousand Points’ worth of materials was now sitting in my inventory.

"Haha, guys! Looks like a whole bunch of new upgrades are coming our way!"

Then, while the goblins rested, I prepared some more water for them so they could wash themselves off later. After that, I opened the System again and checked my current shops.

For now, I had:

- System Shop Level 2

- Construction Shop Level 2

- Item Shop Level 2

- Sovereign Shop Level 2

- Castle Core Level 2

With the amount of wealth I had accumulated now, I should have no problem raising everything to Level 3.

However, there was still an order to things.

The Construction Shop, Item Shop, Castle Core, and Sovereign Shop all required the System Shop to reach Level 3 before I could upgrade them further.

So, naturally, the System Shop came first.

I opened the upgrade interface.

[Upgrade: System Shop Level 2 → Level 3]

Cost: 2,000 Points

Unlocks:

New Basic Material: Elemental StonesNew Function: Advanced Material Exchange

Prerequisites:

All other Shops have reached Level 2At least 5 Citizens

...

Now that I had six Citizens, all the prerequisites had been fulfilled.

Meanwhile, looking at the unlock section, both the Elemental Stones and the new function immediately caught my attention. I couldn’t wait to see what they were all about.

Well then...

It was time.

"System!" I commanded. "Upgrade System Shop!"

The System immediately popped up a confirmation window asking me to confirm the purchase.

I confirmed it without hesitation.

The upgrade went through smoothly.

[Ding!]

[Upgrade Successful!]

[Congratulations! System Shop Level 3 Unlocked!]

[New Basic Material Unlocked: Elemental Stones]

[New Function Unlocked: Advanced Material Exchange]

I immediately opened the shop to take a look at the new material.

"Woahhh!"

I couldn’t help but exclaim when a series of colorful icons appeared before me.

"So these are Elemental Stones!"

Just like Powerstones, Elemental Stones took the form of crystals. The difference was that instead of being pure white, each one shimmered with a distinct color corresponding to a different element.

There were six in total.

Fire — Red

Water — Blue

Earth — Brown

Nature — Green

Light — Yellow

Dark — Purple

With each purchase, I could only choose one specific elemental type.

The only problem was the price.

Each Elemental Stone cost a whopping 300 Points.

This time, however, I had no real frame of reference. I had no idea whether that was cheap or outrageously expensive, mainly because I still had absolutely no clue how magic worked in this world.

Interesting...

Does this mean I’ll be able to unlock elemental magic soon? Or maybe use these to craft something with elemental powers?

Well, guess I will find out soon!

I filed those questions away for later and moved on to the other newly unlocked function.

[Advanced Material Exchange]

And as it turned out, this function was just as useful. It allowed me to convert basic materials into other materials within the same category.

The first option was [Advanced Material Exchange — Metal].

Through it, I could convert iron into copper, silver, or even gold. The exchange rates, however, were absolutely brutal.

10 Iron → 1 Copper

1,000 Iron → 1 Silver

10,000 Iron → 1 Gold

After that, it was basically just a matter of adding more and more zeroes. And naturally, the System would charge its usual 10% transaction fee every time I made an exchange.

Still, having access to these precious metals was pretty nice. It already gave me quite a few ideas.

For starters, I was going to create a currency system very soon.

Next came [Advanced Material Exchange — Rock].

Through this function, I could convert ordinary stone into various other geological materials.

1 Stone → 1 Clay

1 Stone → 1 Sand

2 Stone → 1 Chalk

5 Stone → 1 Limestone

10 Stone → 1 Marble

10 Stone → 1 Basalt

And there were plenty more options beyond those.

This one was particularly useful. If I needed a specific material for construction later, I wouldn’t necessarily have to go searching for a natural deposit somewhere in the wilderness.

I could just turn the mountain of stone around my castle into whatever I needed.

Next, there was [Advanced Material Exchange — Wood], which allowed me to exchange ordinary wood for different types of timber, such as maple, pine, blackwood, mahogany, and several others.

Unlike the rock materials, though, I had absolutely no idea what each type of wood was best suited for. My knowledge of wood was... severely lacking.

Well... I guess I’ll just have to experiment with them.

And lastly, there was [Advanced Material Exchange — Elemental Stones].

Just as the name suggested, this function allowed me to exchange one type of Elemental Stone for another elemental attribute.

That meant if I ended up with too many Fire Stones and needed Water Stones instead, I could theoretically convert them.