Chapter 39 Crystals
Chapter 39 Crystals
Fortunately, the source crystals, which are the universal currency in the new era, had a power which exceeded Tang Yu’s wildest imagination. After the endless onslaught caused by the arrow towers and cannon, these source crystals had remained. Even if the demonized beast corpses were destroyed, broken source crystal shards were still left behind for convenient pick-up.
It’d be nice to do this again in the future… What a harvest!
Tang Yu was still distressed about losing all of those materials from the demonized beast corpses, such a waste that those materials couldn’t be utilized to produce equipment. More importantly, however, he will soon be heading to a large-scale shelter. Isn’t there a large market in Lindong? Tang Yu is looking forward to this trip and ready to make a fortune.
Aside from these losses, there were still some powerful demonized beasts whose corpses are relatively intact left from the demon wave, making resource gathering for materials much easier… Tang Yu ordered the survivors to begin collecting these materials as he started counting the profits from this war.
Although the demonized beasts brought in a large number of source crystals, allowing him to come out with a profit. This demon wave wasn’t without its losses.
It cost him two thousand crystals to build all those defensive buildings. This is just counting only the source crystals and not counting in the materials consumed during the construction. Not only that, when the defensive buildings launch an attack, this also consumes energy.
One might wonder where this energy comes from. Of course, it comes from the source crystals. Before the demon wave arrived, Tang Yu had stored some source crystals in the small warehouse located in the castle. This part of the storage area was mainly used for the defensive building’s energy consumption. If the buildings didn’t consume energy, he wouldn’t wait until the demon wave had arrived at the shelter’s gate to build the defensive buildings.
Tang Yu remembered there was a building called the Energy Skywell when the territory reaches level three. This building can absorb the free source energy in the atmosphere and supplement the energy for the defensive buildings. Before this building is built, however, these defensive buildings are all gluttons which consume copious amounts of source crystal.
At any rate, Tang Yu was still in a happy mood after turning a profit. This coupled with his previous plunder of source crystals from the source crystal mine. He must find the time to plan on how to spend these source crystals in the most appropriate manner before heading to Lindong.
The other survivors were also very happy at the turn of events.
They were happy the shelter still stands and they had survived this ordeal.
The city gate has been reopened, and the bolder survivors have begun stepping outside to get a closer look at these demonized beast corpses.
“Oh my God, how can these things be so big?! Such huge demonized beasts are now dead!”
How often can an ordinary survivor come into close contact with demonized beasts? Some of the survivors immediately poked at these corpses and found they were quite tough.
So many terrifying demonized beasts have been successfully resolved by the shelter.
And this is a shelter with less than a hundred survivors.
Who would dare believe such a record can exist? Although most of this is due to Leader Tang. This doesn’t hinder the survivors from claiming bragging rights at what they had experienced.
In the past, many ordinary survivors were forced to just find a way to live while waiting for death day in and day out. But now it was different. As long as they give it their all, they will have a full meal every day. Now with knowing what the shelter was capable of, even a demon wave won’t hinder them. Aside from the large-scale shelters, was there any safer place during the doomsday?
Before they knew it, the survivors truly felt like they belonged with the shelter and felt fortunate to be here.
…………
After the end of the demon wave, Tang Yu wasn’t idle either. Leaving the affairs happening outside to Chen Haiping and Roger. He headed back to the castle alone and came to the rear area used for constructing the system buildings.
In the core of the four-piece building set, the pub, workshop and market have all been built, leaving only the final research institute.
Tang Yu commanded No. 1 and No. 2 to go back and forth to haul all of the required materials to the rear area. After gathering all the materials, he finally saw the construction conditions for the research institute on the system panel light up.
“The construction of the Research Institute: consume a total of 1,000 units of source crystal, 100 units of wood, 300 units of stone and 300 units of iron.”
As with the other system buildings before, a three-story building soon appeared in front of Tang Yu.
He stepped in…
There are all kinds of research devices and equipment in the research institute. Tang Yu looked at some of them and knew he understood very little about it. Looking at a beaker, the kind he used in high school experiments, he still felt some impression of it… Or maybe this item just looks similar to the one in his memory. Anyway, they’re all cups to him.
However, this wasn’t what was important. What is important was the function brought by the research institute.
As a functionally important building, the research institute has an indispensable position in the territory.
The functions possessed by the research institute are research and development of blueprints, the strengthening of blueprints and the transformation of blueprints and so on… Theoretically, through research, the research institute can develop the desired blueprint on its own if given sufficient knowledge and source crystals for the task.
However, this was a long way off in the future.
At present, the research institute is very low-level and Tang Yu isn’t prepared to invest the source crystals as of now to raise it. He will mainly be using the research institute’s function just for transforming blueprints.
For example, the transformation of the basic long sword. This is only a basic blueprint supplied by the workshop, which seemed very stingy. What if the other survivors want to use a blade or some other weapon?!
The function for transforming the blueprint can change the long sword blueprint into a war sword blueprint. Of course, the grade remains the same and still uses basic runes for the equipment produced, but this provides more variability of weapons.
Not only is that, the basic materials used in the long sword blueprint is iron. After using the blueprint transformation function, the demonized beast materials such as claws, bones, etc. can be added… Although the overall blueprint grade hasn’t changed, with better materials, this makes the weapons produced naturally more convenient to wield.
After Tang Yu had designed the first war sword blueprint, he went on to design a rune-free version of the shield, firearm and bullet blueprints which can be produced en masse in the workshop.
After he had finished with the research institute, he didn’t need to create any more blueprints for the time being and instead went to the market.
Tang Yu decided to no longer construct any more of the system buildings. It wasn’t as though there weren’t more buildings left… It was just meaningless at this point in time.
In order to travel to Lindong Shelter, he must prepare by first acquiring a town return scroll. Obviously, this item has a high probability of appearing in the early levels of the market. But for some reason, he hasn’t seen it appear this whole time. For this reason, he had raised the market to level 2 yesterday. Now the counter display raised from 10 to 20 displays. However, after refreshing the market several times, the town return scroll still hadn’t appeared.
A market refresh costs 500 units of source crystal. Even though he’s a boss who has several tens of thousands of source crystals, he dares not treat this crystal lightly by refreshing the market several more times. This money was no longer virtual crystal like the one used in-game, but actual crystals seen in real-life…
Tang Yu felt very fortunate. He happened to solve those awakened one parasites which were plaguing his shelter today. He was also lucky enough to receive a wave of demonized beasts… As long as he can buy the town return scroll, he can begin preparations for his journey to Lindong.
First of all, he took a look at today’s new batch of goods shown in the market. Some of the items are quite valuable, but they were too costly for him to buy. His can’t look at items that had so many zeroes behind them. He thinks he will wait until he becomes a true boss to spend that much source crystal. Otherwise, his heart and eyes will bleed.
It was so painful watching these items appear and knowing he couldn’t afford them.
Brush!
Starting from the first cell, the goods are refreshed in succession.
Medium Wood Resource Bundle (500 units) Price: 49 Source Crystals
Remaining Quantity: 5
Fei Lian (Weapon) Production Blueprint, Price: 3,000 Source Crystals
Remaining Quantity: 1
……
……
Fruit from Another World, Price: 100 Source Crystals
Note: A very delicious fruit.
Remaining Quantity: 50
Skill Rune (Burning Skies and Boiling Seas), Price: 1,000,000 High-purity Source Crystals
Remaining Quantity: 1
……
For his first market refresh, as expected, he didn’t even see a shadow of the town return scroll. But some good items appeared, such as the Fei Lian weapon production blueprint… If Tang Yu had an abundance of source crystals, he would’ve definitely bought this item if he could afford it. He wouldn’t be on the losing end of this purchase since he has a way of preserving its value. He can use the functions of the research institute to study and synthesize new blueprints based on the blueprints from the market.
Unfortunately, his source crystals are far from adequate to carry out this plan.
There were other items, such as fruits from another world. With these items appearing, Tang Yu can only say that increasingly bizarre and exotic items have begun appearing since the market was constructed in reality. However, the probability of high-end items appearing has become much higher as well, such as that skill rune… This is the first time he’s seen a skill rune in the market. But Tang Yu very calmly ignores it.
1,000,000 and high-purity source crystals?
He can’t even afford a million regular source crystals, not to mention high-purity source crystals. He hasn’t even heard of such a thing before!
For the first time, Tang Yu took a deep breath and said: “Calm down, don’t panic. Even if an item worth one million source crystals is sent over, this just means I have to maintain my dignity as a great lord. Those items mean nothing. I just need a town return scroll!”
…………
A few minutes later, Tang Yu’s face turned pale as he was panting for breath while sweat flowed oozed out from his face.
He can’t remember how many times he’s refreshed the market. But the town return scroll never appeared. Is this because the town return scroll’s value was too low, belonging in the category of non-lord items which cannot appear before a great lord such as himself?
What is more exasperating is that after refreshing the market so many times, he still had the misfortunate of being sent some good items. These items are moderately priced and very helpful to him at this present stage in development. In short, the temptation was too great, and he couldn’t back from… grabbing these items.
After refreshing the market several times more in succession, many items were bought in the process. In just a few minutes, the source crystals in his possession had shrunk by more than half.
This is even worse than finding a single treasure!
At least with treasure, he can stop his hand from buying the item. But this stupid market? It was like some flirtatious floozy seducing him to buy more and more. If the town return scroll doesn’t appear soon, he’s afraid he’ll have to go back to the good old days of living in poverty.
No way!
Cooler heads prevailed and Tang Yu returned to the castle, bathed, changed his clothes. He went to burn incense… Wait, he couldn’t find incense. Instead, he rolled up a piece of paper and burned paper as incense…
After doing this, he came back to the market.
“Ancestors, Lord Buddha, Goddess of Fortune, Great Lord, Elder Bai… No matter who, please send me the town return scroll and allow me to buy it!”
Tang Yu closed his eyes and opened them again with determination.
His two fingers came together to form a sword and came down.
Brush!!
Starting from the first counter, the white brilliance swept across and the items have changed into a new appearance.
Advanced Demonized Beast Bones.
Spring Water of Great Vitality.
The Basics of Source Force.
Energy Beam Gun Production Blueprint.
Higher Class Summoning Scroll…
These items are all superb!
But Tang Yu was sad to discover he will end up massively bleeding again.