After driving the two uninvited guests away, Chris locked the door securely, returned, and sat beside the fireplace to think.
Chris had been in this world for some time. He had adjusted to his surroundings and absorbed all his predecessor's memories.
Chris was indeed a prince, but this prince had not had an easy life. At nine years old, he had left his country and come to the Bohemian Empire as a hostage.
Moreover, the kingdom Chris had been born in-Bagnia-was tiny. Not only was it weak and sparsely populated, it was a goddamn mountain kingdom with nothing to produce: no grain, no minerals.
The entire country's economy depended on raising goats and its citizens working abroad. The Bagnia Royal Family's annual income was low too, leaving them scraping by.
A low income was bad enough, but the parents Chris had inherited in this life had also been particularly fond of having children.
According to Chris's childhood memories, he had three older brothers and two older sisters. He was the sixth child, the youngest... because his mother had died from complications while giving birth to him.
Perhaps that was why his father in this life had never cared much for Chris, his youngest son.
So when Chris was nine, his father had sent him to the capital of the neighboring Bohemian Empire as a hostage, under the pretext of studying abroad.
Life at someone else's mercy was unpleasant. Chris attended a Seminary of the God of Light, where most of his lessons concerned religion and only a small portion covered science.
With that sort of education, he would certainly have become a priest of the so-called God of Light if not for the adult mindset and additional memories of the Chris who came later.
Chris's school days were miserable. Throughout his studies, the Bagnia Royal Family had never sent him any money for living expenses. They paid only his tuition.
As a result, Chris could only stay at school all year round, with nothing but his school uniform to wear. Since he could not afford the journey, he had never returned to the kingdom either.
That continued until this year, when eighteen-year-old Chris graduated from the Seminary of the God of Light and gained admission to Bohemia University.
Then, that same year, the Revolutionary Party overthrew the Kingdom of Bagnia. Members of the Royal Family either died or fled, the country changed from a monarchy to a federation, and its ruler changed from a king to a Speaker.
With the Royal Family gone, no one remained to pay tuition for this prince "studying abroad." To cover it, Chris had been forced to work while studying.
Then, one autumn night, the young man had died of cold and hunger, bringing Chris into this world.
After arriving here, Chris had his phone and memories of his previous life. He was no longer the pitiful boy his predecessor had been. With goods from the shopping platform, he had managed to survive in the Bohemian Empire's capital.
Not only that, Chris had also used his own abilities, along with a little help from a twenty-first-century Online Shopping Platform.
He had bought himself a five-story apartment building in this city called Inyama, where every inch of land cost a fortune, ready to enjoy a happy, carefree life as a landlord.
Now that Chris had settled down, the supposed royal steward of the Kingdom of Bagnia had popped up to tell him that he could not settle in Inyama-he needed to go to the battlefield and die!
What a joke. Was the guy insane?
Even the Bohemian Empire holding me hostage couldn't be bothered with me. They recruited my dear eldest brother to form their so-called Restoration Army instead. What would a nobody like me accomplish by tagging along?
Get myself killed?!
A wonderful life of wealth and comfort awaited Chris. Why should he risk his neck?
At that thought, Chris stood up and headed for the basement, rubbing his hands.
"Let's have a look-see. How many players have signed up?"
Some time earlier, through the game studio he had already established, Chris had registered the game's copyright and set up its official website, allowing players to sign up for the closed beta.
Chris had named the game "The Sims: Industrial Age."
The players Chris wanted to recruit came from twenty-fifth-century China. By that time, the Chinese had already begun pushing into the Milky Way.
The Chinese of that era were all wealthy thanks to historical developments and inflation, but prices had skyrocketed too. For example... a bowl of beef noodles at a restaurant cost one thousand yuan.
Of course, that was not much of a problem, since the average Chinese salary then was three million yuan a month.
So Chris planned to have twenty-fifth-century players pay him for the game. He did not need much: ten thousand yuan per person each month, merely the price of ten bowls of beef noodles in the twenty-fifth century. Hardly a lot.
Then he would use that money to shop on Chinese online shopping platforms in the twenty-first century.
Making money off the difference between eras-what a sweet deal!
Although this information gap was rather strange, Chris did not worry too much about it, since the twenty-first-century shopping platforms accepted China's digital currency from the future.
Upon reaching the basement, Chris took out the phone only he could see and logged into the game website's admin page. Hmm, roughly a hundred people had signed up for the closed beta. Not bad.
It was not a huge number, but it was not particularly small either.
Chris randomly selected ten people and had them begin filling in their information and customizing their faces, while he opened the system's shopping platform.
Chris had several online shopping platforms on his phone, such as Turtle Dong, whose prices were outrageously high and whose service was especially unfriendly. He no longer considered shopping there.
There were also Tao Knife, Pin Xixi, One Dog, Same City... and others of that sort.
After comparing prices, Chris managed to buy ten sets of large men's clothing, trousers, and socks for fifty yuan a set.
Each set contained a wool sweater from old stock, a thick black cotton hooded coat, two pairs of trousers, a pair of socks, and a pair of extra-thick canvas shoes.
The clothing came to five hundred yuan altogether.
The moment he clicked to pay, ten cardboard boxes quietly appeared out of thin air, then landed on the basement floor with a clatter.
Chris inspected the clothes and pondered for a moment.
Would clothes like these be enough to keep out the cold?
Whatever. Better save where I could. I only had thirty thousand yuan in my pocket, and now that I'd spent five hundred, I had twenty-nine thousand five hundred left.
The players' subscription fee was ten thousand yuan a month. With ten players, that meant one hundred thousand yuan.
Was an income of one hundred thousand yuan a month a lot?
Compared with the average income of the twenty-fifth century, it was not much. In fact, it was pitifully little!
Then Chris opened a frozen-food wholesaler's store on Pin Xixi and bought one thousand kilograms of frozen meat at two yuan per kilogram.
Just as with the clothes, ten cardboard boxes dropped out. Chris stepped forward, emptied out the frozen meat, gathered it into a single pile, then took out some chalk and drew a circle around it.
Summoning players required matter as payment; they could not be summoned out of thin air. Chris had tested it. One hundred kilograms of meat could synthesize a male body between 1.6 and 1.8 meters tall, weighing between fifty and seventy-five kilograms.
As for where the remaining twenty-five to fifty kilograms went, Chris considered that a reasonable loss during synthesis. Clearly, losing only fifty kilograms when frozen chicken turned into human flesh was perfectly reasonable.
"All right, the clothes are ready, and there's enough frozen meat. Time to start summoning players."
Before you continue