Chapter 138 – Beat Heaven Breaker!
Having killed yet another Elite Scaled Frog, Nie Yan walked up to its corpse and picked up the drops, a Level 30 Gold-grade Mage staff and an Intermediate Alchemy Recipe.
Elemental Convergence Potion Recipe
Requirements: Intermediate Alchemist
Properties: Elemental Magic Cast Time −10%
Materials: Windspirit Grass, Congealing Gel, Diffusing Agent, Quicksilver
If Still Grieving, Quiet Nannan, or Bird—whoever reached Intermediate rank first—learned this recipe, he would be able to put Elemental Convergence Potions up for sale in his shop for 2 silver a bottle, a considerable price for today’s playerbase. He had already given Bird permission to access his personal storage, so all of the recipes he picked up from the Zombie Foremen earlier should have already been withdrawn by now. Presumably, Bird had already put them to good use and was now well on his way to stocking the shop up with new goods.
With this potion recipe dropping, his shop would gain another source of income. The potion would attract plenty of player interest, and at the same time, it would also bolster the sales of the other goods in the shop. Aside from the experience, another benefit of hunting high-level monsters was that he would be able to obtain the recipes for potions, pills, and other concoctions that had yet to appear on the marketplace.
After storing the recipe into his bag, Nie Yan handed over the Gold-grade Mage staff to Tang Yao.
As the pair ventured forth, Tang Yao suddenly began receiving calls. He furrowed his brows but would answer them anyway, and more often than not, an awfully grating high-pitched voice would come out from the other end.
「Young Sparrow Hawk, bring me levelling with you!」
「Can’t be bothered, I’m busy training in a Level 50 zone right now.」In an unprecedented event, Tang Yao flatly rejected the advances of a girl.
「Wow, training in a Level 50 zone must be really fast! Come on, take me with you!」
「No, I already told you, I’m busy.」Tang Yao hung up the umpteenth call. Women really were a conundrum! When he boasted of levelling in a Level 20 zone, none of them believed him. Yet now that he entered the leaderboards, they suddenly began begging to come along even after he told them a ridiculous lie. They really were too fickle! He still had his sense of reason when dealing with these type of women. When there were no important matters to attend to, he was fine with playing along with them. However, if they actually believed he would let them leech off of him, then they were wasting their breath.
Tang Yao had always been this way.
From when they were kids until they were full-grown adults, Nie Yan had always had a good understanding of Tang Yao’s personality. Even though Tang Yao appeared fickle-natured on the surface, he was never someone to blindly fall for a woman’s manipulation. In this life or the previous, he more or less remained the same.
Tang Yao was happily whistling to himself. After raising his level, he felt quite at ease. When friends of his, like Yu Lan (Blue Feather), inquired about his recent levelling speed, he simply told them that he was training together with Nie Yan, and then, they would no longer consider it to be out of the ordinary. After all, an existence such as Nie Yan couldn’t be judged using the logic of an ordinary player. In the end, they could only feel envious of his position.
As Tang Yao’s level rose, the damage he dealt to the Scaled Frogs became much more noticeable.
As flames danced in the air, the third Elite Scaled Frog breathed its last. After glancing at his experience bar, Nie Yan noticed he still had a bit to go before hitting Level 13. Since Tang Yao received most of the experience, he was gradually surpassing Nie Yan in level. With such an event occurring, Nie Yan couldn’t help but sigh with regret. Mages were simply faster levellers than Thieves whether it be in solo grinding or dungeon runs. Even though Scaled Frogs gave additional experience to players branded with red names, he was still falling behind his brother.
After killing all of the Elite Scaled Frogs in the zone, they would have to wait for the daily reset for them to respawn. Thus, Nie Yan and Tang Yao went after the Sub-Elites which didn’t slow down their levelling speed in the slightest.
“Hm, the item I want still hasn’t dropped.”
“What are you looking for?”
“An accessory called Killer’s Demonic Medallion. It only has a chance of dropping when a player is branded as a PKer. So we can only find it while my name is still red.”
“Killer’s Demonic Medallion? What does it do?”
“Killer’s Demonic Medallion is one of the best accessories you can obtain in the early levels. It increases all of your stats by quite a bit,” Nie Yan answered. If he had the Killer’s Demonic Medallion, levelling and PvPing in the future would become much easier.
His current gear wasn’t good enough, and he didn’t have enough skills. The main cause for this was that he wasn’t running dungeons often. Hence, he needed a rare item like the Killer’s Demonic Medallion to improve his overall stats.
Tang Yao’s levelling speed was quite ferocious, and many players began to take notice. Not long after reaching tenth place on the leaderboards, he had suddenly levelled up again, and then, a little later, he levelled up yet again. By the time the servers were about to shut down, he was already Level 14 and only a small step away from toppling Heaven Breaker from his number one position. Nie Yan had also managed to keep up, but he declined to reveal his level on the leaderboards.
In the Viridian Empire, Tang Yao was currently the talk of the town.
「This Young Sparrow Hawk guy… is he on drugs? How is he levelling so fast!?」
「It looks like he’s going to snatch away first place from Victorious Return’s guild leader, Heaven Breaker.」
「Go Young Sparrow Hawk! Knock him out of first place!」
At a time when most players were slowly levelling step by step, Tang Yao’s progress was absolutely terrifying.
Although Victorious Return was a rich and powerful guild with many connections, they had disgruntled many players by cornering off entire zones for their private use. This arrogant behaviour of theirs was also why so many players were supporting Tang Yao.
Things over at Victorious Return’s side were also quite hectic. Under Heaven Breaker’s orders, they began investigating the background of the player known as Young Sparrow Hawk. However, the only information they managed to dig up was that before this event, this player was completely unknown. Thus, they came to the conclusion that his fast levelling speed was only due to a stroke of good luck such as finding a very suitable levelling spot. As such, Heaven Breaker didn’t consider this newcomer a serious threat. Without true power, that Young Sparrow Hawk’s levelling speed would gradually start to decline. There was nothing to worry about. At the moment, no one was able to shake Victorious Return’s dominance nor would they be able to shake his. After all, being number one in level didn’t necessarily equate to being number one in power.
From his perspective, his rivals were Sleepy Fox, Kill Love, and a few others, but definitely not this nobody named Young Sparrow Hawk!
After slaying their last Sub-Elite Scaled Frog, Nie Yan and Tang Yao both decided to call it a day when they were just a hair away from hitting Level 15. Right now, there was still half-an-hour before the servers would shut down.
“I’m gonna head back to Calore. It’s too dangerous for you to be here by yourself, so you should go offline. Then, we’ll meet here again when the servers come back up.”
“Alright. Oh, do you have any plans for today?” Tang Yao asked.
“Not really. Why, what’s up?”
“A few of our friends from middle school told me they want to meet up. They also play Conviction. If we’re going to establish a guild, we might as well get them to join too,” Tang Yao explained. Those several friends were upperclassmen. They, Tang Yao, and Nie Yan used to all fool around together, so they were pretty close to each other. Even after entering university, they always made sure to contact each other every so often.
Nie Yan thought for a moment and then replied, “I have no problem with meeting up. When I think back to those days, they sure were carefree and relaxing. It makes me feel all nostalgic…”
“I’ll give you a phone call later. Anyway, I’ll be heading off first, see ya!”
“Later!”
As Tang Yao went offline, his silhouette gradually faded away before disappearing entirely. Afterward, Nie Yan retrieved a Return Scroll from his bag and began channeling it. As a brilliant radiance enveloped him, he was teleported back to Calore. His bag was now filled to the brim with equipment, but almost all of them were for Level 30s. Thus, at least at present, no players would buy them. He planned to use all this equipment to pad their guild warehouse. After all, if a player saw that their guild’s warehouse was full of high-level Silver- and Gold-grade equipment, they surely wouldn’t doubt their guild’s strength.
Depositing the gems and other miscellaneous items from his bag, he did a little organizing in his personal storage. Afterward, he headed toward the Starry Night Potion Shop. It had been a long time since he had last checked up on the shop, so he had a lot of catching up to do.
His first impression after entering the shop was that it was incredibly crowded. There was a constant stream of people coming and going. Especially now that the servers were about to shut down, everyone was doing their last minute shopping.
His eyes scanned over the shelves of the shop. It seemed Bird had done a pretty good job while he was away. They were stocked with potions, elixirs, pills, and all sorts of concoctions. The vast majority of them were commonly seen goods, but when his eyes passed over the front counter, he also noticed quite a few that were fairly rare.
After coming down from the second floor, Bird noticed Nie Yan among the crowd. He quickly whispered,「Boss, you’ve come.」
「How are things going? From the looks of it, business seems to be booming,」Nie Yan replied. After looking at the shop’s revenue, he was given quite a shock. It had already earned 56 gold in his absence. These profits were considerably good. It could be best described as an endless stream of money. No matter how much he spent in a day, more would flow in. Nonetheless, the sudden influx of customers had much to do with the opening of Medusa’s Lair, since the majority of the shop’s sales came from selling Anti-Petrify Potions.
「Work is fairly normal. In the last few days, we’ve recruited many Alchemists. Now we have twenty-seven Junior Alchemists and over a hundred and thirty Apprentice Alchemists. We’re already running out of space on the second floor, not to mention the first floor is too small. Sometimes it’s so crowded that new customers can’t even squeeze in!」Bird explained in a troubled tone.
Nie Yan began contemplating. If I want to upgrade the shop to Tier 3, it’ll cost me at least 20 gold. Hmm, that should still leave enough money for me to buy one or two prime real-estate properties in other cities.
Many of Calore’s properties had already been bought up. Although there were still a few left, they weren’t likely to appreciate in value very much in the future, so investing in them wouldn’t be all that worthwhile. Good steel needed to be used on a proper blade; his money would be better spent in other cities.
「I’ve heard that Victorious Return, Radiant Sacred Flame, and Holy Judgement have also opened potion shops, but theirs are still only Tier 1. Also, it seems like they’re getting as many customers as they have Alchemists,」Bird proudly informed. They were such large guilds, but they had only recently opened a potion shop. Meanwhile, their Starry Night Potion Shop was already far ahead of the pack.
「Be cautious of the Alchemists under you. You have to look out for the ones that have malicious motives,」Nie Yan cautioned. It would be a huge blow if the Alchemists he painstakingly nurtured were poached by someone else.
「Understood, I’ll keep that in mind! I’ve made all the Alchemists on the second floor sign contracts. If they want to leave to work somewhere else, they’ll have to pay back at least five times what was invested into them. We’ve already given them so much, they won’t even dare to think of job hopping.」Bird really did seem to have the mind of a businessman.
「I’ll upgrade the shop,」Nie Yan said. Since Bird seemed to be doing well in managing the shop, he had nothing to be anxious about.
Are you certain you wish to upgrade Starry Night Potion Shop to a Tier 3 Shop? The upgrade will cost 20 gold.
Yes!
The shop has been upgraded.
Shortly after the system notification appeared, the Starry Night Potion Shop began rapidly expanding, becoming more than twice as large as before. It was now a three-story building with the second floor dedicated as an Alchemist workshop and the third floor as a warehouse. The first floor suddenly grew much more spacious, and the overall appearance of the shop was even more grandiose.
The Starry Night Potion Shop grew at a rapid pace. It was well on its way to dominating Calore’s alchemy market and becoming the kingpin of the industry.