Chapter 196: King of the Frost Chimera
Wei Yan Er passed 3 Yellow-Gold equipment to Zhang Yang, with 2 of them being Furious set equipment and the other being Shanks' two handed axe.
[Histola the Malicious Axe] (Yellow-Gold, Two Handed Axe)
Weapon Attack: 1697 - 2097
Attack Interval: 308 Seconds.
DPS: 499
<Level 2 Socket 1>
<Level 2 Socket 2>
Equip Effect: Creates a chance for you to use the power of evil when you're under attack. Deals 1,000 Shadow damage to the attacking target.
Level Requirement: 60
"What a crazy amount of damage!" cried Zhang Yang after identifying the 3 equipment and returning them to Wei Yan Er.
Delighted at having received praise, Wei Yan Er had a wide grin as she snorted proudly. "As they should be!"
Just as he was done with it and was about to leave, Wei Yan Er stopped him and said, "Wait up! My cousin sister is on her way, you have to help her too!"
Those words reminded Zhang Yang that this little brat had not yet paid him the identification fees. He reached out his left hand and gestured. "That's 180 gold coins for the identification. Pay up!"
"Oh wow! Will you look at that! What beautiful flowers over there!" said Wei Yan Er as quickly as she could. She walked away from Zhang Yang and headed towards the potted plants outside the shop, pretending to enjoy the flowers.
Not long after, Han Ying Xue came as well and threw a heap of equipment for Zhang Yang to identify. Of course, she did not have to bear any costs herself. The moment the female gang logged in, the ever-enthusiastic Wei Yan Er called out to Sun Xin Yu and Daffodil Daydream to make use of Zhang Yang's discounted rate. That too, was free-of-charge.
Muttering to himself, Zhang Yang went into a tirade of complaints. "Damn...I would have to pay to watch a girl strip down naked! Here, you guys wring me dry, and make me pay for everything?! What is the meaning in this?! Sigh..."
"Hey! Big Dummy! What are you rambling about?" said Han Ying Xue as she could see his lips moving.
Zhang Yang immediately replied. "Nothing much. That sh*tty Fatty just logged in and told me about joining a student gathering or something."
"Ehh...boring!" said Wei Yan Er as she stuck out her tongue. She then changed the topic. "Hey! When are we going to raid Poison Fireland! I hear that the second set of equipment is there! I still have the class quest to do!"
"The dungeon would only drop 3 tiers of equipment, Black-Steel, Green-Copper, and Gray-Silver. Yellow-Gold tier gears are only available from a Yellow-Gold tier field boss. You are wearing some Yellow-Gold tier stuff now, aren't you? Why would you still want to farm for Gray-Silver equipment?"
Zhang Yang continued, "Besides, that dungeon is a 20-man dungeon. Only level 50 players and above can raid the dungeon. We have only 8 of us at that level. How are we going to raid the boss?"
Starting from level 50 onwards, all drops from field bosses would almost always be higher tiered than the loots from a dungeon. That is, of course, corresponding to the boss' own difficulty as well. You cannot expect a low level, easy boss to drop something worthwhile, just because of its field boss prestige. If it was not for the free skill point rewards from First Clear Achievements, Zhang Yang saw no other reason to clear dungeons.
Besides that, after the level 50 mark, even when it was said that the entire world would share the same training maps, additional maps would be made to cater for the astounding number of players! There would be enough field bosses to satisfy the entire world! More bosses meant more rewards! Farming field bosses would be the best source of income and power!
"If we can't raid the Hardcore Mode for now, we can always try the Hard Mode instead!" said Wei Yan Er. She had always been this way. After raiding the same old boss for a number of times, she would grow sick of it look to the other bosses for fresh challenges.
"We might as well train for the time being! Let's just train to the point where we can finally wear the equipment still sitting in our inventories! That's the path of lords and ladies! Let's focus on field bosses! Leave the dungeon raids to Endless Starlight and his merry little friends!" said Zhang Yang as he patted the little brats head.
"Let's find ourselves some Yellow-Gold field boss! We can always come back to raid the Poison Fireland in Hardcore Mode, obtain the First Clear Achievement, complete the quest in the highest difficulty, all in one shot!
Thinking about the axe that lay in her bag, waiting to hack through the air and spill the blood of her enemies, Wei Yan Er could not help but smile innocently like a little girl. She summoned her own mount and cried to her cousin sister. "Let's go! What are we waiting for?! To the grinding fields!"
Burning with enthusiasm, the little girl and her elder cousin ran off to who knows where, leaving Daffodil Daydream behind with Zhang Yang.
Watching them galloping away with such enthusiasm, Zhang Yang smiled and was about to leave when Daffodil Daydream quickly grabbed him by the sleeve. Her face was flushed red in embarrassment, and she asked for the identifying fees. "I..erhm...Zhan Yu...I...I want...I want to pay! It's not that I did not intend to earlier. It's just that...little Yan Er didn't allow me to! P-Please accept my thanks!" said the girl as she bowed down politely.
Oh well, since he had already been ripped off on a rather epic scale, a little more or less wouldn't make any difference. Zhang Yang smiled at her earnestness and smiled. "There's no need for such humility! Just take it as one of the perks of having me as your guild master!"
Zhang Yang summoned his own mount and rode to his Little Merchandize Shop. He had a mountain of Green-Copper and Gray-Silver equipment for sale!
Ever since he had auctioned the [Guild Upgrade Order], the shop was gained a burst of popularity in White Jade Castle! His total profits had doubled since then! The total revenue had increased from 100,000 to 200,000! All these were just profits he gained from 20% of the auction house's service fees! The other sales from the equipment had not yet been included! Mostly because the equipment was farm with the cooperation of the party, the sales profit gained had to be shared among the 8 party members.
Zhang Yang put up the Green-Copper and Gray-Silver equipment up for sale. As for the Gold-Yellow equipment, he had planned to auction them! This time, he intent to advertise his sales to all 8 major cities! To spread out the name of his little shop as vastly as he could!
As for [Solid Iron Bar]s, Zhang Yang had already purchased 17,000 stacks of the item, totaling up to an expenditure of 3,100,000 gold coins. However, he had also spent an additional 13,000,000 gold coins to buy the storage expansion to store the items! According to the current exchange rate, 1:3, he had spent close to 50,000,000 dollars!
That being said, the shop storage's capacity had been upgraded to level 10 as a result, so the 6 tabs in the guild warehouse had become a little excessive. When the exchange rate drops down to 1:1, he would have wasted 26,000,000 dollars!
With a surplus of 13,000 empty slots, it was enough to store 13,000 stacks of [Solid Iron Bar]. One stack contained 200 units. These units could be sold for 5 gold each in the near future, totaling up to 13,000,000 gold coins, which was equivalent to 39,000,000 dollars, just enough to reimburse the investment.
However, this was a good investment as it's a one-ff thing. The following investments that require him to store massive amounts of ingredient would not require further spending on storage upgrades!
However, it was a shame. Since the storage space was still insufficient, Zhang Yang could not make a huge amount of profit from this current sale. At most, the return profit would only be equivalent to a free 17,000 storage slots and, earning a little more than 13,000,000,which was far from his initial estimation of 100,000,000 to 200,000,000 profit! However, following the size of the storage capacity of the shop itself, the quantity of the item turnover could raised as well. Since the profit had been growing exponentially for the past few days, earning 300,000 gold coins a day would not just be a dream!
After becoming a city lord, Zhang Yang had gained a new skill: City Teleport. This skill wasn't really all that different from the regular [Teleportation Scroll]. One is used to teleport to the fortress while the other was used to teleport back to White Jade Castle.
Zhang Yang activated <City Teleport> and a white glow formed underneath his feet. A circular magic circle sharpened out from the light and after 10 seconds, a white pillar of light engulfed his character. He appeared immediately at the headquarters of Tukulo Fortress.
"All hail the Lord of the city!" As he appeared, he was greeted by the surrounding maids and guards.
No wonder everyone wanted to be an official1; anyone could easily be intoxicated by the sensation of being respected! Even when he was in the game, he could feel the reverence from the realistic human characters kneeling down to him. Somehow, he felt as light as a feather.
Zhang Yang exited the headquarters and rode out of the fortress, and came into the Frozen Sky Wasteland.
There will be a level 50+ maps after exiting each fortress from all 8 main cites. As the level 50 and 60 maps grew tighter and closer in the center of the global map, there will naturally be fewer and fewer of them as you head deeper in. However, even if the number of maps decreased, each map itself only grew larger!
The name of the map really speaks for itself; everything in this map was either frozen solid or encased in thick ice. The ground was covered in thick snow and walking by yourself was rather troublesome. A gentle breeze persisted in the background, bring the frosty north wind along with it. The sky, the field, and even the forest was completely engulfed in snow, making the map seem to appear completely monochrome. With only the sound of the cold wind and the crushing snow beneath his feet with each step, the atmosphere here was nothing but cold and barren.
In 'God' Miracle', a field boss had its own "domain"; it will only roam around in a very small area within a map, which players could easily find and defeat. However, there were a small number of bosses that could roam a large area with no fixed area. They could easily roam across several maps!
The boss that Zhang Yang wanted to look for was called "King of the Frost Chimera", a Green-Copper tier and it was rather weak. However, this boss was the only boss that would drop the [Level 3 Fire Resistance Potion] recipe! This was one of those bosses that did not have a fixed spawning location. The boss would roam around this frozen wasteland without any fixed pattern. Since it will fly around randomly, player had a hard time tracking it down! Players could simply bump into out of nowhere, or spend half a year simply trying to pick up a trail!
Further, King of the Frost Chimera was rather rare despite being Green-Copper. Once defeated, it would take another 7 days to respawn again!
Maps above level 50 only had one similar map in each server. This meant that the entire china server only had one King of the Frost Chimera! Once killed, every player in the china server would have to wait for an entire week!
Since the boss was only a Green-Copper tier, a small team of rag-tag players could easily defeat it! With many players after this boss, nobody will even know if the boss was alive, or if it was playing hide-and-seek as usual. Other than the first-kill, there was no way of knowing if anyone else has killed the boss for the last seven days! Right now, the time was ripe, Zhang Yang had to find the boss now and farm that recipe before other players start exploring this map!
Zhang Yang rode his horse tirelessly, from the top of trees to the bottom of valleys, he searched every nook and cranny of the map for the boss. But, Frozen Sky Wasteland was just too enormous for him to search! He had already spent an entire morning, and had covered at least one third of the entire map and had no clue where the boss was. It could have easily entered the spots he already checked!
After lunch, Zhang Yang logged back in and continued his quest to search for the boss. Incidentally, he had triggered a few monsters in his wake and killed them in stride, albeit unwillingly.
Two days passed in an instant, and Zhang Yang was still roaming in the frozen land with no trails or clues on the whereabout of the boss. In that time, Zhang Yang had already attained level 53.
So far, beside the 8 players from Lone Desert Smoke including Zhang Yang, the highest level in the guild was only level 48. They might have to train for another 7 to 8 days to reach level 50 in order to raid the Poison Fireland. Besides spending his time searching for the boss, Zhang Yang had brought his party to farm Master Waller for the [Guild Upgrade Order]. The rest of his time was fully spent on searching for the boss.
October the 7th was the fifth day Zhang Yang had spent searching for the King of the Frost Chimera in the Frozen Sky Wasteland.
"Heyyy dummy. The monster that you're searching for...is it called King of the Frost Chimera, Basilisk?" Han Ying Xue's sultry voice was heard in the voice messenger.
Zhang Yang was stupefied for a moment. "You saw it?" he finally asked.
"Yeah! I logged out in an open field yesterday. When I relogged in, I decided to walk around, and then I saw a huge chimera monster flying in the sky! When I targeted it, the name was pretty similar to what you have been mumbling on about these few days!"
Zhang Yang almost felt like crying there and then. He had spent 5 whole days searching for the monster and there it was, chanced upon by an idiot who has a tendency of getting lost all the time!
"Follow the boss! Do not engage, do no engage! I'll be right there!" said Zhang Yang as he quickly sent a party invitation to Han Ying Xue. That way, he could easily locate her position in the map UI.
Han Ying Xue accepted the invitation and Zhang Yang quickly opened his world map. When he had pinpoint her location, he frowned again. "I'd say. You're really a good runner! How could you run off to the edge of the map! You're almost running into the Necrotic Wastelands!"
"Is that so?"
"Is that so? That's all you're gonna say about that?"
"Tsk! Hey! I did you a favor here! I found the boss for you! Aren't you supposed to show some gratitude at least? What are the chances of me walking away from here and having you spend a third of a month wandering around the land like a homeless beggar again?!"
1Officials - The author used the word to refer to the ancient china palace ranking system. Officials were ranking officers that had 9 level of rankings. Normal citizens can become officials by taking a written examination.