Corpse Rebirth Technique

The ingredients were quickly snapped up. Even the grills that still carried the ingredients' aroma were bought by people willing to pay for them.

Gold, silver, and copper coins piled up into a small mountain before him. There was no need to wonder whether these ingredients were worth so much money. As long as they were rare products of the dungeon, the people of this world would definitely be willing to buy them.

Jack had not even decided how much to sell them for when the customers began bidding on their own.

The commotion naturally attracted even more people, but the ingredients were limited. In the end, most people naturally walked away without buying anything.

Some people then approached Jack to ask where in the dungeon he had found these things.

Jack smiled without saying a word.

He could only smile without saying a word, because Gong Qiying had never told him where the Hidden Map producing the ingredients was.

Everyone assumed he was deliberately keeping quiet so he could make more money later. Quite a few people at the scene immediately ran off to find companions, forming groups to search the dungeon for the place where the Magical Ingredients were produced.

Many ordinary people present looked on enviously. They envied the adventurers who had the strength to explore the dungeon for ingredients. Apart from doing odd jobs around the dungeon's outskirts, they did not dare venture any deeper. They often saw adventurers return with new Harvests and make a fortune, so naturally, they were green with envy.

If the source of these Magical Ingredients was in a less dangerous part of the dungeon...

Probably half the city would be willing to give it a try!

That number was not an exaggeration. To the people of this world, dungeons had already become part of daily life.

More than three hundred dungeons had been identified across the entire continent. Nearly a hundred had already become empty dead cities. The monsters and rewards inside dead cities no longer appeared, and the cities might even collapse. More than two hundred other dungeons were still functioning normally. As long as the geographical environment was not too extreme, intelligent creatures would always establish cities around them.

After all, there had never been an incident of dungeon monsters appearing on the surface to attack people. As long as one did not enter a dungeon, one was absolutely safe. In an even more extreme situation, if an enemy invaded, people could temporarily hide inside a dungeon.

It was said that the Western Continent, occupied by the Demon Race, had at least a dozen undiscovered dungeons. But that was not something the human side needed to consider. The Western Continent was covered in miasma, making it impossible for ordinary people to survive. No matter how good the dungeons there were, how many people would dare go?

Night had fallen, and it was time for Rest, but Jack stared at the pile of gold coins before him, too excited to sleep.

He had never seen so much money in his entire life!

If only this were mine!

Wait a moment. Do I need to give this money to my master for that monster? It lives in the dungeon, so it has no use for money, right?

Jack swallowed, his hands trembling slightly.

But in the end, his fear of Gong Qiying overcame his greed. He sighed and gathered up the coins, only to suddenly realize that he had no container large enough to hold so much money.

Not only had the grills been bought, even the bundle used to carry the ingredients had been purchased. According to the buyer, he intended to use the bundle as a medium to cast Tracking Magic.

They'll never find it, Jack thought.

What he did not notice was that several furtive gazes were watching him from a distance, seemingly plotting something.

But those gazes vanished the instant they saw someone. It was unclear whether their owners had abandoned the idea or merely withdrawn for the time being.

"Hey, sir, please wait."

Just as Jack was planning to buy some pouches, a rough voice called out to him.

When he turned around, he saw a muscular man over two meters tall. It was the Silver-rank adventurer Tel, "Gutsy."

"Can I help you?" Jack asked politely.

Tel revealed a friendly smile, though it looked somewhat frightening on his face.

"Are you interested in joining the Strategy Group?"

While the outside world was bustling, Gong Qiying was designing the dungeon's map.

"Where should I put the Gourmet Area?"

In his design, the Gourmet Area was a map with a lower difficulty than the other areas, but with rewards enticing enough to attract the vast majority of ordinary people.

There would be no rewards such as weapons, magic, or items equipped with powerful Battle Skills. Instead, it would contain things closely related to people's food, clothing, housing, and transportation.

The first thing he thought of was the ingredients from Toriko.

The ingredients in that manga were not only attractive and distinctive, many of them were also somewhat dangerous. Take Lobster Fish, for example. An ordinary Lobster Fish was seven meters long, and a single snap of its claw could crush an adult's head. A creature called Roast Whole Pig was covered from head to toe in steaming roast meat, yet it was also a colossal beast the size of a mountain. It could easily kill three or four people with a single stomp.

Putting all those things together and designing a special area around them as an attraction would be extremely suitable—absolutely suitable.

"Why not put it beside the Swamp Area? I'll add a shortcut too. But the shortcut will have a Toilet Door that Miyazaki Hideo encountered when he had diarrhea as a child, and it can only be opened from the inside. Players will have to run through the normal route once before unlocking it."

To lower the difficulty, he had deliberately moved the monsters near the Gourmet Area farther away, hoping that after dying a few times and gaining some experience, ordinary people would be able to reach the Gourmet Area without taking damage.

After finishing everything, he checked his Mental Power income for the day. It was neither more nor less than usual—still four digits.

"Another half a month, or at most a month," Gong Qiying muttered to himself. "Then I'll be able to upgrade my permissions."

"I hope I get permission to leave. Staying cooped up here every day is too boring."

The next day.

The moment Sain Underground City opened, Gong Qiying noticed that the number of visitors had surged. There were at least two or three times as many as at the same time yesterday.

Don't underestimate my intelligence network. You're here to find ingredients, right?

It was not only adventurers. A considerable number of ordinary people had also entered to try their luck.

Their eventual fate could not be called complete annihilation, but there were almost as few survivors.

The morning passed quickly. Several adventurer parties with decent strength lingered near the hidden entrance to the Gourmet Area, estimating that they would definitely discover it before the day ended.

But Gong Qiying's attention was not on those parties. He was watching another place.

In the Swamp Area, a fierce battle was unfolding.

"Senior, surrender peacefully. You shouldn't have stolen the teacher's research results. Hiding in the dungeon won't help you," said a woman. Although she was tall, she was not alluring, and she was so thin she looked like a rack of ribs. Her skin was deathly pale. She tapped the ground with the staff in her hand, and the eyes of several Skeleton Monsters hidden underground glowed red. They actually obeyed her commands.

This was the first time someone had controlled the dungeon's monsters. Gong Qiying sensed them and discovered that, as long as he wished, he could reclaim control of the Skeleton Monsters at any time. The dungeon City Lord's control over its monsters was absolute and supreme.

"Linna, you should know what the teacher is researching this for. You should also understand that he raised the two of us only for the sake of his research."

A weathered man clutched his chest, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. He looked as though he did not have long to live.

He gritted his teeth and said, "That old bastard wants to steal our bodies!"

"Shut up! I won't allow you to speak of the teacher that way!" The woman's face filled with rage. She held her staff horizontally and shouted, "I'll kill you!"

"Then come at me! Do you really think I'm about to die?"

A dazzling barrage of special effects collided, and the swamp churned violently.

A moment later, Gong Qiying teleported beside the two corpses and began searching them.

Neither of them had carried a Teleportation Crystal. It seemed they were not professional adventurers, but had merely entered the dungeon by chance.

He rarely saw anyone truly die inside a dungeon. Even children knew that they had to bring a Teleportation Crystal when entering one.

The woman was completely clean—cleanly poor. She had only a few silver and copper coins, several opened potions, and a magic staff.

Its evaluation was: inferior to the Meteor Staff.

"What's this?"

The man was just as clean, but he tightly protected a thick stack of manuscripts against his chest. They were stained with quite a lot of blood.

The few large characters on the first page could just barely be made out. They read:

Corpse Rebirth Technique.

Since everyone disliked it, then it was time to put someone out of commission. It was not like he was a beautiful girl anyway.()