"But what should I trade for? Oh, right, I should upgrade my house, too. A First-level Territory is far too cramped. There's no way it can hold all my loot."
Colin opened the information panel for his shabby Wooden Cabin.
[First-level Territory: Can block the Gray Fog and perform simple synthesis, but cannot move or be stored in the Inventory.]
After he tapped the upgrade option below, four upgrade paths appeared.
[Underground Fortress][Floating City][War Chariot][Level 2 Territory].
Only their functions were listed; the required materials weren't. If he didn't have enough materials, trying to upgrade would simply return a message saying it couldn't be done.
But the prompt let Colin check the required materials directly, without needing a blueprint.
"A Level 1 Underground Fortress requires 3,000 iron ingots, 2,000 clay, 1,000 gravel, 2,000 stone, 1,000 Timber, 200 Thorns of Suffering, and 100 Mist Points. Hmm."
Colin looked at the material requirements, then silently closed the panel using the X in the upper-right corner.
The requirements were far too high. All the materials he had put together wouldn't even cover a fraction of them.
Then he tapped the [Floating City] option. It looked much more reasonable than the Underground Fortress.
[Hint: Level 1 Floating City: Floating Stone 0/200, Thorns of Suffering 4/10, Timber 54/300, Mist Points 20/200.]
Colin had never even seen Floating Stone before, so he could only shake his head and give up on this option.
Then he saw the third option: [War Chariot].
As soon as he opened it and saw the features, Colin's eyes lit up.
[Level 1 War Chariot: Can block the Gray Fog and withstand mental attacks below the Lord level. Can be driven around and equipped with cannons.]
[Note: Driving a War Chariot consumes fuel.]
"Why not give everyone a War Chariot? A million-strong steel torrent, cannons leveling the ground, sweeping through the Gray Fog—what would these Aberrations amount to then?"
Colin thought about it excitedly.
Then he saw the materials it required and silently tapped the X in the upper-right corner.
Never mind.
Still, the War Chariot's usefulness made Colin memorize its material requirements, so he could quietly collect them.
Now, only the final option remained: Level 2 Territory.
[Level 2 Territory Information: The Survivor's territory will expand from 4*4 to 10*10, with an additional 5*5 courtyard.]
[Hint: Required materials: Stone 49/2000, Thorns of Suffering 4/30, Timber 54/1000, Clay 0/500, Mist Points 20/50.]
Compared to the other upgrade options, Level 2 Territory seemed much more reasonable.
Some of the material requirements looked high, but they were basic materials, so they weren't actually that difficult to get. After all, these things were common outside the Gray Fog. He just had to spend some time gathering them and putting them in his Inventory.
The Gray Fog World's main shortages at the moment were two things: food and water.
Of course, Colin had no intention of wasting time gathering materials himself.
After all, until people found a stable water source, water could be considered a monopoly resource in Colin's hands.
Colin quietly calculated how many materials he was missing, then split off several portions of water from his Inventory and put them up for sale on the Trade Market, each one containing 200 milliliters.
[Level 3 Water]
[Item Description: A water source with a slight odd smell, but it should be safe to drink.]
[Type: Consumable.]
[Quantity: 200 ml.]
[Price: 200 stone.]
[Seller's Note: Feel free to message me if you have any other unusual items.]
"Two hundred milliliters of water for two hundred stone. One stone per milliliter—is that unreasonable? After all, my water was made by burning precious Timber from the foot of Crow Mountain."
Colin grumbled to himself.
Meanwhile, the moment people saw this in the Chat Channel, they started cursing.
"Two hundred stone for just two hundred milliliters of water? Why don't you just go rob people?"
"How can someone be so shameless?"
"Absolutely heartless."
"Everyone, don't buy water from these people! Let's unite and stop letting these profiteering merchants get away with it!"
Colin, who had the Chat Channel open, naturally saw all these messages.
But he didn't care in the slightest.
He leaned back in the chair he'd scavenged and let out a soft chuckle.
"If these two thousand stone hadn't arrived in basically a second, I might've thought you were all as steadfast as steel and had formed an unbreakable alliance to join forces and boycott me. Heh. This just proves these materials really are everywhere. I was busy doing quests yesterday and only focused on high-value goods, so I didn't notice them."
Chuckling, Colin shook his head and had the two Servants who were already up toss the 49 stone stacked by the foot of the bed outside the door.
He did the same for the other materials, and soon had the required thousand Timber and five hundred clay.
During all this, the Survivors who'd been shouting about boycotting him split into factions among themselves.
"You bunch of liars! You were telling us to unite and boycott profiteers to force them to lower prices, but you secretly bought the water yourselves!"
"Come on, are there really people who think that garbage you can collect by wandering around for an hour is worth something?"
"To be fair, someone's offering water in exchange for common materials. You'd have to be an idiot not to trade."
"Haha, I got some! I got some! This water tastes amazing~"
"Big shot, wait for me! There's a mine near my house. I'm going to dig right now—save some for me!"
"You've got so much water, so you must've found a water source and have plenty to spare. Yet you don't know how to share it selflessly? How did your family raise you? Doesn't your conscience hurt?"
Colin found it amusing to watch them go from "united" to divided. He made a point of putting up a batch every ten seconds, drawing plenty of people into the spectacle.
Those who had objections to him were too busy scrambling for water to keep talking.
Especially some of the thickheaded ones who'd even spent money on a Megaphone just to complain about this.
Before long, Colin had collected all the basic materials he needed, and it had cost him less than three liters of water.
"So this is what a monopoly business is like."
Colin marveled inwardly. If he'd gathered all these materials himself, he probably would've been digging until tomorrow. But by exchanging goods with other Survivors, he'd gotten them all in less than ten minutes.
Monopolies really were evil!
"All that's left are the more troublesome Thorns of Suffering and Mist Points."
These two things were several orders of magnitude harder to gather. He obviously couldn't trade them at a rate of one unit per milliliter.
But just as Colin was thinking about how to make the trade, he suddenly got a few replies in his private messages.
"Um, friend, I have some stuff called Thorns of Suffering. They're valuable items that dropped from a monster. Could I trade them for some water? If you're willing to trade, I'll tell you what they're used for."
Some? This guy seemed pretty lucky. Colin rubbed his chin. He ignored the last part of the message, because he knew far better than this guy what the thorns were used for.
As far as he could tell, the other guy had probably only figured out that they could be used in synthesis with clay or an axe.
Still, at least one thing the other guy said was right: the thorns really were valuable.
Before you continue