When the beautiful NPC said that, a bitter smile involuntarily crossed
"So an epic quest really won't hand you a city that easily." He had found it strange before — that Xia Lian would be so generous as to hand over a City Construction Token just for collecting ten thousand Immortal Souls. For an epic quest reward, that was way too good. "Sure enough, there's a double trial."
This was still the early days of the Divine Realm.
Even a first-rate guild could only scrape together a few thousand gold coins, and that required a considerable amount of time to raise. After all, a guild needed to develop, expand, and upgrade, and gold flowed out like water. Having over a thousand gold in regular operating capital was already an extravagant luxury for a first-rate guild.
Only a guild like
For other guilds, that would be a number they'd grinningly dream about.
But Shi Feng knew perfectly well he was still flat broke.
That amount of money wouldn't even cover the miscellaneous costs of building a city.
The basic construction fees alone were 120,000 gold, and once you added the costs of fending off monster attacks, you couldn't get by with less than 150,000 to 160,000 gold. And that wasn't even counting the buildings you'd need after the city was up — constructing all the buildings inside was where the real spending began.
Shi Feng vividly remembered how things went when the Mana Tower had been built.
A single Mana Tower cost nearly ten thousand gold in basic materials alone, plus hiring a whole crew of NPCs to construct it. All told, building one Mana Tower set you back a full 35,000 gold.
On the black market it was a bit cheaper, sure — but still over 20,000 gold.
And that was without factoring in all the other structures. If you tallied everything up, you'd realize that the hundred-odd thousand gold needed to build a city was merely the first step on a very long march.
Even so, every major guild scrambled to build one — selling off assets, securing financing, even trading away small portions of their guild's shares. Because once the city was finished, it would become a massive gold-generating machine. Just counting the money rolling in each day would be enough to make your hands cramp.
Back when the Shadow Guild had built its first city, it had gone through more than a dozen rounds of financing. That was also when the Guild's shares had been carved up by numerous corporations and conglomerates.
If Zero Wing didn't want to rely on outside help to build its own guild city, it had to earn far more gold.
The thought of needing to earn several times what it currently made made Shi Feng's head throb.
This was the early stage of the Divine Realm — nothing like when the Shadow Guild had built its first city. Back then, players had been much higher level and earning money had been far easier. Now, the vast majority of players in the Divine Realm hadn't even reached level 30. Raising over a hundred thousand gold in a short time was orders of magnitude harder than it had been back then.
On top of that, the Candlelight Trading Company's daily income had essentially hit its ceiling. Pushing it higher would be extremely difficult.
As for Stone Forest Town, its main revenue came from magic crystals, and there was no way to boost its income in the short term either. And guild quest income? That couldn't even compare to the trading company or the town.
"Looks like I need to find a new revenue stream."
Shi Feng thought it over. The most profitable business in the Divine Realm was selling top-grade weapons and top-grade equipment, followed by all manner of consumables. But top-grade weapons and equipment — his own guild didn't have enough to go around. How could he sell them?
Just as Shi Feng was racking his brain over where to find new sources of income, Shuishe Qiangwei suddenly contacted him.
"Guild Master, the post-battle accounting is all done. We've struck gold this time!" Shuishe Qiangwei said with barely contained excitement. "After compensation and rewards for guild members, we obtained 18,456 pieces of level 25 Iron Rank equipment, 3,187 pieces of level 25 Mythril Rank equipment, 549 pieces of level 25 Gold-grade equipment, 84 pieces of level 25 Dark Gold equipment, 1,427 pieces of level 30 Iron Rank equipment, 241 pieces of level 30 Mythril Rank equipment, 53 pieces of level 30 Gold-grade equipment, and 4 pieces of level 30 Dark Gold equipment."