"Epic-grade quest?" Shi Feng looked at the system notification and felt a twinge of surprise.
In his previous life, he had never heard of Horace offering an epic-grade quest. He only knew that Horace's reason for exchanging sea-clan weapons was indeed to take revenge on the sea clan, but it had only triggered a high-grade hidden quest, and the number of sea-clan weapons required was a mere one thousand.
Now it had become an epic-grade quest on top of requiring three thousand sea-clan weapons — the change was anything but minor.
This drastic shift had completely thrown his original plans into disarray.
The original quest reward had been a mid-grade magic array compendium, Heart of the Ocean. Though it was only a fairly ordinary mid-grade magic barrier, its suppression effect against sea beasts was remarkably powerful, even showing notable results against Tier 4 legendary sea beasts. It would have been enormously helpful for the guild's development at sea, and in his previous life it had fetched an astronomical price at auction.
Now that the quest had changed, the reward would inevitably change as well.
"I suppose I'll have to find another way." Shi Feng let out a deep sigh and handed over the three thousand sea-clan weapons to Horace.
Right now, development across the Divine Realm's continent had hit a bottleneck for every major power, and they had all begun competing for dominance at sea. Although Zero Wing possessed a shipyard, had crafted numerous high-grade fast boats, owned a sea-faring city and several coastal towns, and even had its gradually developing maritime guild, Unfading Light — giving it no ordinary naval strength — maintaining an edge against the rapidly advancing major powers was far from easy.
He had originally planned to use Heart of the Ocean to accelerate their growth, but now he had to look for other methods.
As Shi Feng handed the three thousand sea-clan weapons to Horace, the old man's eyes lit up, and his expression grew visibly excited.
"Excellent — precisely three thousand sea-clan weapons." Horace nodded with satisfaction. Then a flash of fire flickered in his hand, and an ancient, weighty tome appeared. "I had a terribly hard time getting my hands on this book. I hope you'll put it to good use. If you come across more sea-clan weapons in the future, feel free to bring them to me for exchange."
After the exchange was complete, Shi Feng not only received the ancient tome, but his experience points skyrocketed as well — leaping straight from Level 71 to Level 72. On top of that, he gained two additional Legacy Skill Points. The reward was truly impressive, considering that at Level 70, gaining even a single level was already extremely difficult, let alone for a hidden class, which required even more experience.
"Forging Tome?" Shi Feng's eyes widened as he looked at the book Horace had given him.
The Heart of the Ocean magic array was of limited use to individual players, but for a guild its significance was immense. If possible, he would genuinely have preferred to spend the three thousand sea-clan weapons to obtain Heart of the Ocean.
But now that he had seen the Forging Tome, that thought vanished entirely.
Within the Divine Realm, a Forging Tome was a comparable existence to an alchemical secret recipe. It was one-of-a-kind, and the weapons and equipment crafted from it were far from ordinary — its value was in no way inferior to an epic-grade forging design.
Shi Feng immediately opened the Forging Tome, unable to contain his curiosity about what it could produce.
"Incredible! I really struck gold this time!" Shi Feng stared at the Forging Tome, his heart surging with excitement.
The Forging Tome Horace had given him didn't just craft a single weapon or piece of equipment — it was for crafting an entire Dark Gold-grade equipment set called the Radiance of Azure. Although the equipment level ranged only from 60 to 80, it was a rare eight-piece set, boasting one more set bonus than a six-piece set.
In other words, a Level 60 player wearing the Radiance of Azure would be no worse off than someone in a Level 65 Dark Gold six-piece set.
A Level 65 Dark Gold six-piece set!
For every major power out there — even the superpowers — that was the kind of equipment they dreamed of obtaining. If word got out, it would absolutely blind everyone with envy.
Of course, crafting a Dark Gold eight-piece set like the Radiance of Azure placed very high demands on the player. At minimum, one needed to be a Master Blacksmith to craft it, and the required materials were exceedingly rare — things like Titan Mithril, Magic Crystals, and high-grade Magic Cores, all materials that even major guilds found extremely hard to come by.
And gathering the materials was only part of the challenge. The real issue was the crafting cost.
Judging by current market prices, crafting a single set of Radiance of Azure would cost upward of eight hundred gold coins — and that was just for one set of materials. Crafting such a supreme-tier set, even a Master Blacksmith's success rate would only be around 30%. An Intermediate Master Blacksmith would be at 35%, and an Advanced Master Blacksmith at 40%. On a lucky streak, producing one finished set would still cost around twenty-four hundred gold coins…
Zero Wing earned a fair amount of gold each day, but the vast majority of it went toward paying off debts. The construction of the Airship Port had racked up far too many outstanding payments, and in order to cultivate more experts sooner, he had also directed Water Color Rose to invest heavily in secretly developing the Town of Desolation.
On top of that came the gold funded to Unfading Light and the collection of epic-grade materials. Right now, the guild only had around twenty thousand gold coins on hand — barely enough to maintain normal operations.
If he wanted to mass-produce Radiance of Azure and equip an elite guard squad comparable to the Senluo Hall's, he would still need a great deal more gold.
Thinking of this, Shi Feng immediately exchanged with Horace for three copies of the basic secret technique Deep Sea Meditation, spending twelve hundred sea-clan weapons and fifteen hundred elemental cores. As for the remaining three copies of Deep Sea Meditation, he would have to come back for those later.
Deep Sea Meditation — a basic secret technique that allowed players to unlock their potential through meditation, significantly enhancing their physiques. Using it would heavily drain a player's stamina and mental energy. (Dropped upon death if killed by another player.)
After completing the secret technique exchange, Shi Feng used the Seven Luminaries Ring to teleport directly to the location of the Four-Star Traveling Merchant.
After five successive teleports, Shi Feng entered a secret realm. He spent over four hours clearing out monsters above Level 80 along the way before finally finding a gray-robed elder living in a small wooden hut — one of only three Four-Star Traveling Merchants in the entire Sea of Illusions, Dor.
Upon meeting Dor, Shi Feng didn't waste a single word — he swept up every last Stamina Gem the merchant had in stock. A total of five hundred Stamina Gems, each costing five elemental cores to exchange. Clearing out the entire supply like this was something he wouldn't have even dared to dream of in his previous life.
The first reason was the sheer number of elemental cores required — five per gem. Had he not spent over ten consecutive days slaying elemental monsters in the Ancient God's Labyrinth and amassed a total of 6,752 elemental cores, he never would have been extravagant enough to splurge on the secret techniques.
The second reason was that in his previous life, the Stamina Gem exchange had been discovered and was almost entirely snapped up by the various superpowers, leaving pitifully few available to anyone else.
Now, exchanging for five hundred Stamina Gems in a single go felt almost like a dream.
In his previous life, the handful of players who had first discovered the Stamina Gem exchange had only managed to obtain two or three hundred gems from the Four-Star merchant Dor, and even that had earned them a fortune that left every major green with envy.
But for Stamina Gems to reveal their true value, one needed to reach a certain critical quantity. Those players had only been able to exchange in small batches due to limited availability, and being free agents, they had no way of selling them at their true worth.
Now, however, with the first five hundred Stamina Gems of this life landing in his hands, he certainly wasn't going to sell them cheap.
Afterward, Shi Feng took out a Return Scroll and teleported directly back to White River City.