Chapter 2035: Nothing Is Free

A day later, and the furor of the early opening had begun to die down, and the line for the arena began to change. Not slow, never that. But it began to change as all the allied Guilds to the New Home Merchant Clan began sending younger members over to earn their own resources.

The dungeon was as good as a Clan Quest, in that they would certainly get something to trade for resources, or directly get the resources that they needed.

They also realized that Karl had massively underpriced it, charging the equivalent of one Clan Credit per Spirit Immortal member per run, when the average haul was closer to ten credits worth of loot.

There was very little chance of losing out.

But the Allied Clan leaders were beginning to realize that the price of entry was not the point. At least, not to the Darklight Host.

Their members wanted more of the rare resources that came out of the dungeons, and for that, they needed as many people as possible going through them. The dungeon seldom dropped items above Rare Grade, unless your group could do a higher difficulty.

So, having all these Spirit Immortals massively increased the customer base for the shops in town selling Epic Grade and Peerless Equipment, while producing the resources that the Darklight Host needed.

You couldn’t buy a Peerless Grade item with money.

You had to buy it with resources.

That was common knowledge long before Karl had ever set foot in this world. The difference was that now Karl was using the elemental resources to make Peerless Grade training items that boosted growth. They were entirely made of dungeon resources, specialty metals, stones and gems.

But the Darklight Guild Shop put up two or three physical element aligned items per day that those with the local System, or a Cultivation type System could use to increase their growth rate by a third.

That alone was insane.

But the fact that the Darklight Host had put them up for sale two days in a row, and didn’t limit the sale to Elders only was even more insane.

If they just stayed here long enough, gathering the sorts of things that the Darklight Host wanted, the forgotten outer members of these Clans and Sects could buy something that would directly increase their growth to the point that they would catch up to the standards for better treatment.

They could stay and get more resources, until they had something that would give them enough benefit that they could go home and get more resources.

A self-sustaining cycle.

Of course, for most of the stronger Immortals, even a third faster was not going to cause any short-term breakthroughs.

The average Immortal took three to five hundred years to go from the start of Ascended Immortal to the Peak. Taking a third from that was no small feat. But that still meant that a newly transformed Ascended Immortal would still need centuries to reach Peak Immortal.

It was the Spirit Immortals, the ones who had just finished forming their Immortal Spirit, that got the most noticeable benefit from the items if their System was compatible.

And ironically, The Moron was one whose System was compatible.

He had missed out on that morning’s offerings because he did not have enough money.

But he had immediately gathered a group to go into the dungeon and try again. They were all Elders of the Clans that Swag had worked with before, and now that he had the power, they were willing to join him on a run, despite his reputation as an idiot.

They all had a common goal, to get the next batch of growth items that Karl put up for sale.

Not realizing that he hadn’t even made them.

Tian and a few of the Lycans made them late in the evening, and Karl had just made a show of putting them on the shelves.

Which was what he was doing right at that moment.

"Ah, Dear Customers. Welcome to the Guild Store. I see that you’re all excited about the second batch of the morning, and it’s barely an hour past dawn. Alright, I won’t keep you waiting."

He took a second to scan the room and see what they had for customers, then placed a dozen Peerless Grade items in the top cabinets, as the staff kept the lower cabinets stocked all day.

The Rare Grade items that they mass-produced were still selling very well, as they targeted the bonuses on them to work together, which led to much better outcomes than the random bonuses of dungeon items.

The visitors were also learning that there were levels to the gear.

A Rare item grabbed by a Spirit Immortal during a difficulty one or two dungeon run was not the same as the Rare items that the Peak Immortal Elders pulled out of difficulty three and four dungeons.

They had the same number of bonuses, but the base stats of the Peak Immortals’ items was higher.

That was a bit difficult for some of the younger Immortals to accept. But it didn’t take them long to learn to check all the stats on the items, not just the type of bonus that it gave. There was a reason that the prices were different even with similar items, and that was the base that the item was working with.

It also applied to the created items if they were made with special materials. But that was easier for them to understand, as they were clearly marked by the System as handcrafted.

They all just expected that those items would be above the average for their apparent rank, simply because of how they were made, without the element of randomness to them. But they were also made out of much more valuable materials than most of the drop items.

If you got a less magically adept enemy, the base stats on the items they dropped could be horrible.

So, while a Goblin dungeon might be predictable and reliable, the loot would be reliably mediocre.