Tower Defense: Public Enemy

Chapter 55 A Few Years Less Struggle

"There really are skeleton miners, but the prices... why is there such a big difference?"

Lei Chi's Ramblings: On the surface, the Skeleton Miner is not as good as the other three types of slaves, but its price is fifteen times higher, which shows that the Skeleton Miner's rarity is extraordinary.

On second thought, it makes sense. If the skeleton miner actually digs up a gem or some kind of archaeological tool, he'll really make a profit.

Unfortunately, Lei Chi was short of money; he only had 26 gold coins in his backpack, and he hadn't even bought insurance yet.

Lin Donglei and his group happily bought slaves. For every slave bought, the slave market was refreshed, but the type remained the same.

Lei Chi stood by and watched.

He figured he couldn't afford skeleton miners, so he'd buy human slaves, orc laborers, gold wisps, or something similar. He didn't expect them to dig for gold in the mines; he just wanted them to die when players invaded. That was insurance fraud, wasn't it?

Of course, he can only buy one now. Judging from the "suicide" attribute, buying human slaves seems to be a good choice. After all, human slaves can become militiamen. If the enemy invades, they can become militiamen to fight the enemy and die faster.

With this in mind, Lei Chi finally made his move and purchased a human slave named "Sol" from the slave market trading panel.

"Ding! You have gained the allegiance of the human slave Thor. This slave has been assigned to your secret camp. He has a simple personality setting, can automatically collect gold coins, and his default respawn point is a gold mine. When he transforms into a militiaman, he can wield a pickaxe, pitchfork, hoe, hammer, etc. as weapons. Please explore the details yourself."

Just as Lei Chi finished listening to the system notification, Hua Tianbao, carrying two gems in his hand and smiling, strolled over.

"Second Master, the gems you requested have arrived, and they're still warm."

Hua Tianbao said with a smile that he had indeed gone to Leichi specifically to buy gems, and judging from his appearance, he must have succeeded.

Lei Chi laughed and said, "How could I possibly accept this? How could I possibly accept this..."

"Don't be shy, I'll help everyone, and everyone will help me. It's a win-win situation for everyone!" Hua Tianbao said. "Besides, it's just two gems, they're not that valuable. Keep them. Lin Donglei and the others have taken a lot of things from me."

"Then I won't stand on ceremony!"

Lei Chi thought to himself that Hua Tianbao could become his second cheat code. With two gems in hand, and indeed they were a critical hit gem and a heavy hit gem, [Pat Bear] could now be upgraded to the second tier.

"Is my slave market doing alright? It's only LV1 right now, with only four types of slaves available for purchase. But you can upgrade them later, and then you can buy higher-tier slaves. Second-in-command, are you short on gold coins? Do you need my help?"

Lei Chi asked, "How will we provide support? We can't just give away gold coins directly, can we?"

Hua Tianbao said, "That's easy. You've opened a trading hall, right? Just list any item on the auction house, and I'll buy it instantly at a fixed price. That way, the gold coins will be yours, right?"

Lei Chi frowned: "Will this work? Won't the system flag it as reselling gold coins?"

"As long as it's not too outrageous, it'll be fine!" Hua Tianbao said. "The system doesn't want whales to rise up, hehe, unless everyone plays single-player games."

Lin Donglei raised his hand and said, "Chief, Second Boss, the system charges a 20% handling fee when we buy items through the trading house. Why don't we open a permanent shop and trade directly there, only paying a small amount of tax?"

"Open a shop?" Hua Tianbao said. "I've already opened one, and it's already upgraded to a level three shop. You can find it by searching for the player's ID in the trading post. How about this, Second Boss, I'll open a player shop for you later too. The lowest level permanent shop only costs 1,000 gold coins, which will make it easier for us to trade resources in the future."

"How could I possibly accept that? How could I possibly accept that..."

Lei Chi felt like he was being kept, as if he could skip decades of hard work in his life, which was incredibly exciting.

This kind of thing probably only happens in games.

Lei Chi already has an item listed in the auction house, namely the [Crazy Gem], with a starting price of 50 gold and a buy-it-now price of 1000 gold.

He spoke to Hua Tianbao, who immediately went to the trading hall and bought the [Crazy Gem] at a fixed price. He then returned it to Lei Chi, saying, "Go and list it again. I still have over 1,600 gold coins in change. Set the price to 1,600!"

"Isn't this going too far?"

Lei Chi was somewhat flattered.

Hua Tianbao laughed and said, "What are you afraid of? Let's have as much fun as we can while we still can! I reckon the system will update again in the future, and sooner or later we won't be allowed to play like this anymore. If we don't play a few rounds now, we'll definitely regret it later!"

"That makes sense!"

Lei Chi stopped being coy and quickly returned to his own camp's trading hall. After a series of transactions, he had money!

After selling the [Crazy Gem] twice and deducting the auction house's commission, Lei Chi's actual profit was 2080 gold coins.

"You'll save yourself twenty years of hard work..."

Lei Chi returned to the guild camp with a smug grin and spent 900 gold to buy three skeleton miners in the slave market.

"In this way, all four mining sites in the gold mine can be filled with skeleton miners, and if we add some human slaves, they won't be digging but will just become militiamen sent to their deaths..."

Lei Chi spent another 80 gold coins to buy four human slaves.

At this point, Lei Chi had 1100 gold coins left. He used 100 gold coins to buy invasion insurance, and with the remaining 1,000 gold coins, he followed instructions and opened a permanent LV1 shop in the trading hall.

The shop's number is the player's number. A LV1 shop only has three item slots, meaning you can only list a maximum of three items for sale. To get more item slots, you need to spend gold to upgrade the shop. It costs 2,000 gold to upgrade it to LV2, and another 3000 gold to upgrade it to LV3, and so on.

Lei Chi doesn't need this shop for the time being, so it will remain vacant for now.

At this moment, Hua Tianbao spoke up in the chat group again: "I'm logging off. Tomorrow night at 8 PM, let's do guild quests together and open the Otherworld Farm territory, is that alright?"

"no problem!"

See you tomorrow night!

"Brother Bao, get some rest..."

Lei Chi also spoke in the chat group to say goodbye to Hua Tianbao.

At this very moment, in the main hall of the Morality Gang, Zhang Daode had just finished reviewing the information about Lei Chi's secret camp.

"That little bastard's camp is under protection, so he must have deliberately hired someone to bot it, right? I can't vent my anger without giving him a good beating!"

Zhang Daode said through gritted teeth.

Standing next to him was a tall, thin player, who was waving a goose feather fan. He was Wen Taoliang, the vice leader of the Morality Gang.

With a smile on his face and his small eyes narrowed, the deputy gang leader said, "Gang leader, professional matters should be handled by professionals. If you trust me, leave that deputy gang leader of the Beast Gang to me."

"Oh, what do you plan to do about it?"

"I know a professional team that specializes in hacking into other people's secret camps. They're called the 'Thug Gang.' They can even delete someone's account after hacking into them. The vice leader of the 'Beast Gang' is just a small player now. If you hand him over to the 'Thug Gang' and hack into him ten or eight times in a row, he'll definitely question his existence."

"A professional team? That costs money."

"I know their gang leader, so I can get a discount."

"How much do you estimate it will cost?"

"Ten thousand yuan should be enough! For you, boss, it's just a drop in the ocean."

"One hundred thousand? Okay, I'll transfer the money to you in a bit! Make sure you get things done smoothly."

Wen Taoliang cupped his hands and said, "Don't worry, Chief."

He was secretly delighted, thinking that he could make some extra money!