Mining and herb gathering in the Divine Realm were a path to wealth for many players.
For ordinary players, there were very few channels to earn money. Most of the time, rewards from quests made up the bulk of their income. Ordinary monsters rarely dropped money—only once you reached the Elite tier did the drop rate increase, but even then by just two or three percent, and the money that dropped was always copper coins.
As for earning money from materials dropped by monsters, that rate was even lower than the money drop rate.
When players first entered the Divine Realm, simply grinding ordinary monsters was almost enough to cover weapon and equipment repair costs. But as levels rose and equipment improved, the money earned from grinding ordinary monsters was nowhere near enough to cover repair bills. Generally, only by farming Elite-tier monsters could players barely sustain their weapon and equipment repairs. And if you got lucky and a piece of Bronze-grade equipment dropped, you'd not only cover a full day's repairs but also make a small profit.
Unfortunately, that sort of good fortune only existed in the early days of the Divine Realm.
Every time the Divine Realm evolved, the Main God System lowered the equipment drop rates. Now that it had evolved so many times, even Elite-tier monsters had a very hard time dropping Bronze-grade weapons and equipment. You could generally only obtain them from field bosses or inside dungeons.
It was precisely because of this that life-skill professions had become so popular.
And the development of life-skill professions relied mainly on various materials.
Any player who ventured into the wild was always on the lookout for their surroundings—not just to guard against monsters and hostile players, but more importantly to find ore deposits and medicinal herbs.
A gathering player who was familiar with the environment could earn more in a single day from collecting raw materials than an Elite member of a guild.
In the Divine Realm, Shi Feng had often heard stories of gathering players who, simply by mining ore and harvesting herbs, could exchange their earnings for a full set of top-quality weapons and equipment. Even many major guilds and trading firms would sign agreements with these expert gathering players—as long as they guaranteed a sufficient monthly supply, the goods would be purchased at market price, and a certain amount of Credit Points would also be paid out.
That was why, in the Divine Realm, players' mining and herb-gathering levels were generally quite high.
If the Source Iron Ore Vein was real, it would be easy to hire a large number of players with respectable mining levels to come mine. The Magic Crystals earned from the operation would far surpass what Stone Forest Town could produce—after all, Stone Forest Town merely allowed players to pay their repair fees with Magic Crystals. The quantity of Magic Crystals it could generate was nothing compared to what a large number of players could earn by entering the Stone Claw Mountains.
"My original plan was to acquire a large amount of gold coins through the Dark Arena, but Zero Wing Guild's foundations have far exceeded my expectations. It's not that I haven't considered cooperating with a superguild—only that superguilds are far too powerful. So powerful that even our Dark Crow Guild might not be able to hold onto this town. And even if we did cooperate, given those superguilds' appetites, Dark Crow's share of the profits would be far smaller."
"Besides superguilds, there are a few other forces we could partner with, but none of them can offer as many gold coins as your Zero Wing Guild."
"So, what do you think? If you cooperate with us, Dark Crow, then not only will Zero Wing no longer lack Magic Crystals, but Torch Fire Trading House will also have plenty of Source Iron Ore. The gold coins earned at that point will far exceed this hundred thousand gold."
Blood Fang felt that the terms he was offering were extremely generous. For an up-and-coming guild like Zero Wing, there was simply no reason to refuse.
Right now, Zero Wing Guild's assets were limited. Investing in and purchasing prime real estate in other kingdoms and empires was extremely difficult—those properties had long since been carved up by the local major guilds, so how could they leave anything for outside guilds? As for the golden lots in imperial and royal capitals, while there were some vacancies, without a sufficiently high city reputation, you couldn't buy them even if you had the money.
By the time someone in Zero Wing managed to earn that level of reputation, those lots would have been snatched up long ago.
In other words, Zero Wing currently had a lot of surplus cash on hand, but couldn't put it to effective use—couldn't make money from money and let it multiply.
But there was nothing to be done about it. After all, Zero Wing was a newly established guild, and its money-making channels were inferior even to those of veteran second-rate guilds, let alone top-tier and superguilds.
If the gold coins just sat idle, the end result was simply devaluation.
That was why superguilds, despite their vast enterprises and enormous gold income, didn't actually have much liquid currency on hand. They had already converted those gold coins into things of greater value—especially potential real estate lots in major cities.
Investing Zero Wing's surplus gold into Dark Crow was, in Blood Fang's view, a win-win that Zero Wing had no reason to reject.
"Guild Master Blood Fang, I'll say the same thing again—hundred thousand gold coins is not hundred thousand copper coins. That sum isn't something even a superguild would hand over easily, let alone our Zero Wing Guild." Shi Feng shook his head. "Besides, your profit share is only twenty percent. There's no telling how many days it would take just to break even. The Divine Realm changes by the day, and we at Zero Wing can't afford to take that kind of gamble. How about we try a different form of cooperation?"
"If you're thinking about contributing manpower, then forget it. At players' current levels, this town simply can't be defended. The sheer number and level of monsters means you can only rely on NPC guards—and you'd need to hire an enormous number of them. Once the fifteen-day protection period expires, players alone won't be able to hold it. You'd need to build extremely powerful defensive magic arrays and defense turrets—and all of that requires a huge amount of gold." Blood Fang shook his head.
If he weren't so desperately short on a large sum of gold, he would never have cooperated with Zero Wing in the first place. He would have simply kept all the town's profits for himself.
In the Divine Realm, no faction ever felt it had too much money—let alone Magic Crystals, a critical resource.
"As expected—the monsters are no ordinary threat." From Blood Fang's words, Shi Feng had caught a vague hint of the true reason the town had been destroyed, and the corner of his mouth curved upward.
In his previous life, towns near rare mineral deposits and rare herb fields had frequently been harassed by monsters.
And for something as precious as a Magic Crystal ore vein, there was no need to even mention it—monster attacks came almost every single day. For the guilds that controlled these resources, such assaults were simply par for the course.
In the early stages, every major guild had been driven to headaches when occupying these towns. Virtually all the money they earned went straight into the town's defensive engineering, and many even took a loss.
Just as Blood Fang had said, establishing a Tier Three defensive magic array inside the town required thirty-two thousand gold. It could withstand any monster below Level 200 and Tier Four, though it consumed a considerable amount of magic power.
As for the defense turrets, building a single one cost seven thousand gold.
When monsters attacked a town, they typically rushed in from every direction. Even placing one defense turret per direction meant you needed four at a minimum. And the turrets' ammunition was expensive—at market price, a single shell cost five gold coins, and higher-quality ones ran to dozens of gold coins. Once those turrets started firing, it wasn't a battle anymore—it was literally hurling gold coins away.
Moreover, one turret per direction wasn't enough. Two at minimum per side was the bare requirement.
That brought the total to roughly eighty-eight thousand gold.
No wonder Blood Fang had asked for a hundred thousand gold just to buy in.
But players' ingenuity was limitless. In his previous life, the major guilds had gone through countless rounds of experimentation and exploration before finally discovering a method—one that required no enormous construction costs yet could still effectively repel the swarms of incoming monsters.