Inside the ruined defensive magic tower, Shi Feng used the fortress token to bring up the tower's system panel.
"As expected, repairing these won't be easy." Shi Feng clicked his tongue lightly as he looked over the displayed data.
Four defensive magic towers. Repairing just one would require eighty thousand Magic Crystals and thirty units of Seven-Star Crystal Stone.
Repairing all four in full would cost three hundred and twenty thousand Magic Crystals and one hundred and twenty units of Seven-Star Crystal Stone.
For Magic Crystals, Zero Wing could still manage. After all, they possessed a complete Magic Crystal vein plus an attribute-biased vein — their capacity for collecting Magic Crystals exceeded that of any ordinary superpower. But Seven-Star Crystal Stone was a different matter entirely.
While certain team dungeons and locations did drop it, the drop rate was absurdly low. Otherwise, the major superpowers wouldn't have been offering sky-high prices to acquire it.
To date, Zero Wing's reserves of Seven-Star Crystal Stone barely totaled two hundred units. Repairing all four defensive magic towers would consume more than half of their stock.
Gritting his teeth, Shi Feng still clicked the option to fully repair all four defensive magic towers.
Defensive magic towers were a unique defensive structure exclusive to mid-sized fortresses within the Tower of Worlds. Their function went far beyond simply constructing a defensive magic barrier to repel invaders — their greater purpose was to concentrate ambient mana and serve as a Return Scroll teleportation point.
Inside the worlds of the Tower of Worlds, players could not use Return Scrolls freely the way they could on the outside, instantly teleporting back to a town or guild headquarters.
In short, everything depended on your own two feet.
Of course, mounts and flying mounts were an option, but compared to Return Scrolls, they were far more troublesome — especially when it came to stamina management. After all, you needed to reserve a portion of your stamina for the return trip, whereas Return Scrolls carried no such concern.
The defensive magic tower could resist a portion of the world's suppressive force, allowing Return Scrolls to link directly to it. That meant players inside the Tower of Worlds could use a Return Scroll at any time and teleport straight back to the defensive magic tower.
Although the tower's effects only applied to the current floor — it would be useless elsewhere in the Tower of Worlds — it remained the overwhelming favorite among players. Every floor of the Tower of Worlds was enormous, and traveling back and forth was incredibly inconvenient.
This was precisely why mid-sized fortresses inside the Tower of Worlds were far more profitable than small-sized fortresses.
Beyond earning large sums of player currency, a mid-sized fortress could also earn money from NPC merchants thanks to the defensive magic tower. The tower dramatically increased a fortress's defensive value, and for NPC merchants who disliked risk, that value determined whether they would even consider entering a fortress.
Earning player currency and earning NPC merchant currency were worlds apart.
The currency in Dragon Heart City was Ancient Gold Coins, but players typically used Ancient Copper Coins and Ancient Silver Coins — Ancient Gold Coins were rarely used. So even though the Thirteen Royal Courts held a fortress in the Earth Core Mountain Range, the Ancient Gold Coins they could earn remained minimal.
NPC merchants were different. Because they rented fortress storefronts, they paid exclusively in Ancient Gold Coins. The more NPC merchants that came to the fortress, the more Ancient Gold Coins one could earn.
Shi Feng was in desperate need of Ancient Gold Coins right now, and after slaying the Ancient Demon Lich King, that need had only grown more urgent.
Generally speaking, the items dropped by fortress bosses were fairly unremarkable — something clearly evident from the Legendary-tier Undead War General kill. Compared to the boss drops, the fortress itself was the real prize.
But the Ancient Demon-tier Lich King had dropped something beyond the Fortress Management Token — a remarkably precious item.
Blueprints for a Freedom Inn!
When Shi Feng saw those blueprints, he thought his eyes were playing tricks on him.
A Freedom Inn!
It was one of the top-tier town structures in the Divine Realm. The value of its blueprints was something not even Legendary-grade item fragments could compare to.