Star Moon Kingdom City, inside the Heavenly Burial Guild's headquarters.
"Guild Leader, word just came in — four senior crafting players from the Candlelight Trading Company have agreed to our earlier terms. Candlelight isn't trying to hold on to them either. As soon as we transfer the money, they'll release all four immediately," Priest Yanxue said excitedly after receiving the message.
Senior crafting players were scarce commodities for any guild these days — precious assets for seizing market share. Every major guild hoarded them jealously, never giving others a chance. They could only develop their own, but the resources and time required were enormous, making it nearly impossible for a trading company to become competitive in the short term.
That was exactly why Yixiao Duzang had used several masters as bait, offering conditions that senior crafting players would find hard to refuse.
He hadn't expected the results to be this good — poaching four at once was no small blow to the Candlelight Trading Company.
Moreover, with Heavenly Burial's resources, even if these recruited senior crafting players had their proficiency reset to zero and every design blueprint and recipe they'd learned was wiped from memory, they could still restore them to their former levels quickly. Compared to building senior crafters from scratch, this would save an extraordinary amount of time and resources.
"This
Four senior crafting players.
Heavenly Burial had dumped so many resources into the World Trading Company, and to this day had only produced five senior crafting players — three of whom had only recently promoted to senior rank.
Candlelight Trading Company just gave up four senior crafters. That was essentially abandoning more than half the World Trading Company's output.
"Guild Leader, what if there's something off about these crafters?" Wuxia, sitting nearby, asked worriedly.
"Unlikely. I personally met with all of them in secret. Their item-crafting skill and success rates are the real deal." Yixiao Duzang shook his head slightly with a smile. "Since Candlelight is being so generous, we shouldn't stand on ceremony. Uncle Qibao, go handle this right now. We can't let any other guild snatch these four away."
With the addition of these four senior crafting players, plus five masters providing support, it wouldn't be long before the top trading company in the Star Moon Kingdom changed its name.
Once the World Trading Company displaced Candlelight and secured absolute financial power, it would be the first step in Heavenly Burial's plan to conquer the entire Star Moon Kingdom.
"Rest assured, Guild Leader. I'm heading over now." With that, Qibao left the meeting room immediately and sprinted toward Star Moon Kingdom City's teleportation hall.
On the main streets of Titan Holy City, Youyu Weixiao and the others were immersed in the rich magic energy suffusing the city.
The dense magic left even first-time visitors like Youyu Weixiao and Shuang Keke visibly moved.
"The magic density in this city probably exceeds even a basic meditation room," Youyu Weixiao murmured, secretly astonished as she felt the ambient magic.
It might look like a basic meditation room only had slightly more magic than a top-tier workshop. But it was precisely this difference in magic density that made it far easier for intermediate-tier crafting players to advance to senior rank.
Proficiency growth for crafting players differed somewhat from how adventure-type players farmed experience points.
Take, for example, an intermediate blacksmith promoting to senior blacksmith. Once proficiency reached a certain threshold, crafting the same-tier ordinary items could no longer increase blacksmithing proficiency. At that point, the player had to craft same-tier rare items to continue gaining proficiency.
But eventually, even same-tier rare items stopped yielding proficiency gains. Then the player had to craft items one full tier higher to keep advancing.