Chapter 321 – Money, arghhh!
Returning to his Sky City, Fatty was tempted to face the sky and laugh out loud.
He had made a killing. Putting aside everything else, the complete restoration of the Elemental Skill Book alone was more than worth the trip.
And on top of that, there was the Evil G.o.d’s Treasure Codex, which was on the same level as the Water G.o.d’s Mystery Codex. Its value was self-evident.
“What’s making you so happy?” The Alchemy Grandmaster, who was also the vice city lord of Sky City, Reck, leisurely walked over. Ever since Fatty irresponsibly washed his hands of everything, Reck had been addicted to his role as an all-overseer.
“Heheh, take a look at this. How much do you think it’s worth?” Fatty handed the Evil G.o.d’s Treasure Codex to Reck.
“Evil G.o.d’s Treasure Codex?” Reck’s eyes lit up. He quickly flipped through the pages. After checking the book several times, however, he repeatedly sighed. “Pity, what a pity…”
“Pity what?” Fatty asked in surprise.
“You’re planning to feed it to the Elemental Skill Book, aren’t you? Pity that such a codex which records most of the Evil G.o.d’s spells will end up being devoured,” Reck remarked with evident heartache.
“Can only blame it for being so unlucky. If the Evil G.o.d had handed his legacy to me, I wouldn’t have to do this.”
Fatty placed the Evil G.o.d’s Treasure Codex upon the Elemental Skill Book like Wu Junxiao had done and heard a ‘ding’ by his ears.
System Notification: The rank of the Elemental Skill Book is insufficient to devour the Evil G.o.d’s Treasure Codex.
The rank is insufficient? Fatty was stunned. The Water G.o.d’s Mystery Codex was the same rank as the Evil G.o.d’s Treasure Codex, right? Why could the former be devoured and not the latter? Was it because of Wu Junxiao, or because the Water G.o.d’s Mystery Codex belonged to the five elements?
How am I supposed to upgrade the rank of a completely restored Elemental Skill Book?
Since it was impossible to devour the Evil G.o.d’s Treasure Codex, for the time being, Fatty grudgingly stowed it in the Sky City warehouse. A part of the city had been reconstructed, the first being the City Lord Mansion and other fundamental buildings, then the outer defense like the city walls, defense towers and so on.
With the resources provided by the Black Dragon King, Reck spent without the slightest hesitation. The first thing he did was utilize Acceleration to speed up the development of some things. For instance, the Holy Unicorn pack now had several hundred.
Lucas hadn’t been sitting idle either. He had constructed small-scale Teleportation Portals all around the city, making it much quicker and more convenient to travel around town, especially so as to transfer soldiers if problems arose.
“I’m going to alter the way Sky City moves a little,” said Lucas when he saw Fatty.
Sky City, by nature, was a huge meteorite that could freely float in the air. However, a certain motive force was required to drive it to move. The control center of Sky City was the Holy Spirit Island, a ma.s.sive magical formation which provided that motive force. Lucas had no research on motive force whatsoever, but he was a s.p.a.ce Saint Magus. He could inscribe a magical formation that enabled Sky City to s.p.a.ce jump.
Right now, the method of traveling for Sky City was slow flight. If Lucas successfully made his modifications, it would change to short-distance teleportation. And if this was complemented by the Divine artifact s.p.a.ce Sonic, the city could even jump long distances for quite a period of time. At that time, they could move Sky City to wherever they wanted in mere blinks and saved a lot of time.
However, needless to say, that would require enormous resources. Lucas needed materials to draw the magical formation, and impelling the magical formation to operate needed a large amount of energy – or to make it simple, a great deal of magic stones.
“Of course, if I can advance to be the G.o.d of s.p.a.ce, it’d be much, much easier to realize this plan,” said Reck in the end, full of hope.
Becoming a G.o.d? Exceedingly difficult. Just think about Lucas himself, stuck at the rank of Grand Magus for who knew how long before finally breaking through to Saint Magus with the aid of the s.p.a.ce Sonic’s divine power. From that, one should understand what a challenge it was to cross each rank the more powerful one got.
They then ran into Karl the Blacksmith, whose appearance struck Fatty dumb. Karl’s hair was messy like a chicken nest, his cheeks sunken, and his eyes bloodshot. He looked beyond haggard.
“Master Karl, what happened to you?” Fatty asked in shock.
“What else can it be? The Source Origin.” Reck bitterly chuckled.
Karl hadn’t given up on the Source Origin. However, what was the Source Origin? It was something coveted by generations of G.o.ds but had remained unattainable for millennia. As a mere Blacksmith Grandmaster, Karl might exhaust his mind and body, but he would never be able to absorb even just a bit of energy from it.
“Master, the G.o.d Destroyer Crossbow is more important right now. Let me get you a Mega Dragon Skeleton, then you can fix the crossbow and rank up your smithing skill first,” Fatty appealed to Karl.
“No need! I don’t want those low-ranked reptile bones. For the G.o.d Destroyer Crossbow, I want the skeletons of those nine b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!” Karl’s eyes glowed red.
The ‘nine b.a.s.t.a.r.ds’ were indeed the nine Dragon G.o.ds guarding the Source Origin. But they are the nine great Dragon G.o.ds, ahh! Even if they’ve been dead forever, they’re still not something we can provoke right now.
Shaking his head, Fatty decided not to waste any more words on Karl, who was obviously obsessed. Unless the old man came to his senses himself, no one could persuade him.
“Come, let’s take a look at the city wall construction.”
Fatty was a bit surprised when he saw Architect Lin. This guy didn’t look any less gaunt than Karl.
“Oh my, Your Lords.h.i.+p, you’ve finally come!”
Architect Lin instantly grabbed Fatty’s hand the moment he spotted him.
“Resources, I want heaps of resources! I have never seen a major city built with such meticulous budgeting!” The architect’s plaintive tone gave Fatty gooseb.u.mps all over.
“Resources? Weren’t they distributed to you already?” Fatty’s voice was deadpan.
“How the fart is that bit of resources enough?!” Architect Lin threw away Fatty’s hand and said between gritted teeth, “I would have washed my hands of all this nonsense and gone back had it not been the City Lord sending me here. What do you think this is? It’s Sky City, Sky City! One of the nine neutral major cities, not any less famous than Black Tortoise City! You… you actually dared to take out so little resources?! They’re not even enough to build the city wall, let alone an entire city! Have you no shame at all?!”
“But… you didn’t complain about this last time?” Fatty was a bit dejected.
“I thought it was only the first batch and there’d be more!” said Architect Lin justly. “Then I realized there was no more!”
“Well, yeah, it was actually just the first batch. There certainly will be more to come.” Fatty felt kind of miserable.
“Then give them! I’m in need of a large quant.i.ty of resources, otherwise, some structures can’t be started according to plan.” Architect Lin held out his open palm to Fatty.
“About this…” Fatty looked towards Reck.
With his hands crossed behind his back, the vice city lord was looking up at the sky as if his soul had flown away to some wonderland.
“How long can our current supply hold out?” Fatty gnashed his teeth.
“A month, they will run out in a month at most, then all construction will be put on hold if the resources can’t keep up. And it has only lasted this long under my meticulous calculations. I never once had this much trouble in any of the past projects that I presided over. There was always an endless supply of resources that I could even save some for myself. But you, it seems like you’re actually trying to milk me dry!” Architect Lin looked at Fatty with eyes full of disdain.
Architect Lin indeed held the qualifications to diss Fatty; he had never seen such a poor city lord. But again, all the city lords he worked with before were spending from public funds provided by the government, so of course, the resources were endless. Fatty was only a private enterprise whose pocket certainly was no match for the scale of an entire nation. If it hadn’t been for Wu Junxiao’s mark of consciousness who used his last chance to seal a deal with the Black Dragon King, building a main city? Fatty wouldn’t have dared to even think about it.
“Alright, one month it is.” Fatty’s eyes were also bloodshot now. “One month later, the second batch will be here. You can move forth with the construction without worry.”
“Well then, I’ll be waiting for it.” Architect Lin unhurriedly left. Fatty turned his bloodshot eyes to Reck. “Vice city lord, you can stop pretending now. Hurry and think of something.”
“What can I, a medicine seller, possibly think of?” Reck rolled his eyes.
Sighing heavily, Fatty remembered the Celestial items being auctioned in his shop. There’s no other way now, I can’t keep waiting for the prices to rise anymore.
The high-rank Celestial s.h.i.+eld of Pride was on its way towards 50 million gold coins, so 50 million gold coins for an instant deal should be no problem. As for the other Celestial equipment like the Remiges Boots, as well as a sword, a staff, and the two that were crafted by Lin Xi, their bidding prices fell in the range from 20 to 30 million.
All in all, the six Celestial items could yield 160 to 170 million gold coins in total.
This seemed like a lot, if not considering the fact that the bag of resources from the Black Dragon King, which was worth several billion gold coins, was unable to last very long through the city construction.
“Ahh, money, arghhh!!” Fatty roared to the sky.
In the real world, there were real estate developers who squeezed income out of no investment: taking advanced payment from customers who wanted to buy houses, then building the houses with that money, and selling them for the remaining payment. However, this was obviously not applicable for Sky City, for there’d certainly be no endless stream of money if others knew of its location, but an endless stream of guilds coming to besiege it. The current Sky City didn’t have any power to defend at all.
Gather the materials, refine the pills! Fatty made up his mind to be a hard-working laborer for several days and refine the Hundred Poison Pill.
Naturally, he was not refining the best version of the Hundred Poison Pill, but a more commercial version of it with normal snakes’ gallbladders, which would make the pill a tier more poisonous than the existing ones in the market.
Beep beep. The system notified that someone was pestering Fatty in real life.
He took off the helmet with a yawn before he saw his little sister Qian Xiaoqian standing next to him.
“Do you know what time is it? Don’t you plan to eat at all? Today’s the last day of the year!” Qian Xiaoqian dragged Fatty out.
“What’s the deal with the last day of the year? Isn’t there one every year?” Fatty mumbled.
“Hurry and eat! Don’t forget my guild is establis.h.i.+ng our base at 12 am sharp.”
In the living room, the table was already full of steaming dishes, apparently just prepared by Qian Xiaoqian.