Ke Le felt a wave of confusion upon hearing Shi Feng say this.
Show the strength of Zero Wing Studio?
The three of them had been watched the entire time, so they had stayed holed up in Red Leaf Town without going out to level up, hunt monsters, or complete quests. Their levels were still at 7—only slightly above ordinary players and nowhere near comparable to members of other guilds. If this continued, they might end up falling behind even the average player.
"Are you saying we should go out into the field to level up?" Ke Le thought of this possibility and felt a spark of excitement. "That's great! I've been cooped up in this tiny town for so long I'm about to lose my mind. Getting out there for some real combat would be nice."
"You three wait for me at the inn in the Trade District. I'll be there soon." Shi Feng didn't bother to explain, simply offering a faint smile.
"Brother Feng, what happened? What's got you so happy?" Hei Zi asked curiously when he saw the cheerful grin on Shi Feng's face.
"Something good. You guys keep leveling up here for now. Later, I'll bring Ke Le and the others to join you. Help them power-level to 10 quickly, and then head to White River City for high-level quests," Shi Feng said.
"Don't worry about it, Brother Feng. I'm fully decked out in level-15 Mithril and Bronze Equipment, plus I have Mavis' Guardian. Carrying Ke Le and the others through levels will be a piece of cake," Hei Zi said confidently. After all, he had an Epic-grade staff and had reached level 13. If he couldn't power-level Ke Le's group to 10 in no time, he might as well go play in the mud.
"When Ke Le and the others see our levels, they'll be stunned. Especially your Epic-grade staff, Mavis' Guardian, Hei Zi—they'll be so shocked they won't be able to speak. I'm actually looking forward to seeing the looks on their faces," Jimo Ruxue teased.
"Exactly. Ke Le and the others would never expect it. In just a few hours, we went from being hunted by the Martial Alliance and running for our lives... to hitting level 13 and claiming the top three spots in the entire Star Moon Kingdom. Plus we have Epic-grade weapons now — it's a completely different world from before. If I were them, I wouldn't believe it either." Hei Zi thought about the stunned expressions Ke Le and the others would have, and it made him even happier.
"You guys..." Shi Feng shook his head with an amused smile, took out a Return Scroll, and teleported back to Red Leaf Town.
Red Leaf Town had undergone quite a few changes as well. More and more players were buying equipment and items along the Trade Street, and the shouts of hawkers rang out incessantly. Plenty of well-off newcomers were combing through the street stalls, searching for the equipment and items they needed.
Meanwhile, in an inn within the Trade District.
"So tell me — the Sturdy Stones I had you collect, how many did you actually manage to get? Why haven't you produced even a single Whetstone by now?" Fengyun Wuhui's face darkened as he shot to his feet, turning to glare at the subordinate who had come to report, his tone grave.
"Boss Fengyun, the moment you gave the order, we went all out buying up every Sturdy Stone we could find. But for some reason, there are hardly any on the market, and the ones that are available aren't cheap either. We bit the bullet, and to this day we've only managed to collect a little over four stacks. But the guild just started training Blacksmiths, and their success rate for crafting Whetstones is really low, so that's why..." The subordinate said timidly.
BANG!
Fengyun Wuhui slammed his fist down on the wooden table. Fury burning in his voice: "You useless lot! I told you about this ages ago. Three or four hours have already passed, and you haven't produced a single Whetstone. How is the Elite squad supposed to go level up? What good are you to me?"
"Boss Fengyun, could it be that the other guilds have also figured out the secret behind rapid weapon degradation? That's why we haven't been able to get more than a few stacks of Sturdy Stones?" said the Berserker Wuxing Shu.
"That's very possible. After all, we're not the only guild leveling in high-level monster zones. But Sturdy Stones aren't exactly rare materials — they drop from level-2 monster zones, and normally nobody uses them. By now Red Leaf Town should have accumulated quite a large supply of them, and there should be plenty listed on the Auction House as well. We should be finding tons of them. Our discovery wasn't exactly slow, and even if other guilds made a move, they couldn't have bought up everything in one go!" Fengyun Wuhui nodded, then shook his head, still unable to figure it out.
After they started chasing Shi Feng's squad, they suddenly noticed their weapons' durability dropping abnormally fast. At first they didn't pay much attention — they kept searching for Shi Feng's squad while leveling up. But in the end, they never found Shi Feng, and their weapon and armor durability had dropped to the point of near-ruin. Only then did they give up the search and return to repair their gear.
Even though the constant back-and-forth wasted a tremendous amount of time, the Elite squad members all carried top-tier equipment. If they didn't get those items repaired, they'd eventually break down completely — a loss the guild simply could not absorb. Moreover, without equipment they couldn't kill monsters or level up at all, so coming back to repair was mandatory.
After getting their gear fixed, Fengyun Wuhui heard a wave of grumbling from below. People were complaining that the repair costs were outrageous — they'd spent nearly every copper they had on repairs. As for the plate-armor wearers, they'd had to borrow money just to cover their bills.
Fengyun Wuhui was stunned.
These were all Elite squad members — top-tier players who normally carried a hefty sum. They were, by any standard, well-off. And yet they couldn't even afford equipment repairs?
Then Fengyun Wuhui realized the root of the problem. The lower an item's remaining durability, and the higher its grade, the more expensive the repair. On top of that, the high-level zones out in the wild consumed durability at a frightening rate. Simply traveling back and forth to those zones ate up two to three hours. And when leveling in a high-level zone, you'd have to return for repairs every three to four hours at most — meaning roughly half your time was wasted on the commute.
The result was that leveling took nearly twice as long as it should have.
If they could cut out the travel time, their leveling speed would pull ahead of everyone else's.
Fengyun Wuhui grasped the key insight and threw all his efforts into gathering information, searching for a solution. That solution turned out to be Whetstones. The item could only restore weapon durability, but that alone was enough — compared to armor, weapons were the main source of wear. And repairing a weapon with a Whetstone was vastly cheaper than doing it at a forge. He immediately ordered his people to buy up every Whetstone they could find, only to discover that Blacksmiths rarely crafted them at all. The cost was too high, and Whetstones didn't sell well.
So Fengyun Wuhui had to settle for plan B: collecting the crafting material for Whetstones — Sturdy Stones. The material itself was dirt cheap. Its only real uses were crafting Whetstones and a few engineering parts. A single stack cost just over thirty copper, and a stack contained twenty units — meaning it could produce twenty Whetstones.
Now what shocked Fengyun Wuhui even more was that not only could he not buy Whetstones, but even Sturdy Stones were becoming nearly impossible to purchase?
In truth, it wasn't just the Martial Alliance that had discovered this problem — other major guilds had noticed it too. By the time they went to collect Sturdy Stones, they were startled to find that whether it was the street stalls in small towns or the Auction House, only scattered Sturdy Stones remained, nowhere near enough for their guild Blacksmiths to work with.
Meanwhile, Shi Feng walked along the Trade District street and saw the major guilds all purchasing Sturdy Stones at inflated prices — spending 80 copper per stack, quadrupling the original price. He couldn't help but beam with delight.
He had waited all this time, and it was finally bearing fruit.
But this was only the beginning. He still needed to pour more fuel on the fire to push the price even higher. (To be continued...)
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