The chat menu exploded.
"Holy shit!"
"What the heck!"
"Where's my meat? My meat! What happened to my meat!"
"Despicable. Didn't we agree not to buy any? So shameless!"
"[bigfootbird.jpg"
"..."
The game had just started.
Gold should be in very short supply.
But why is the actual situation so different from what he had thought?
Zhang Nu quickly found a rational explanation. This server has a million Demon Kings online. The actual numbers involved were just far too huge.
There's no way that every player is a noob.
There would always be some elites who managed to get a step ahead of everyone else.
Then there's also those who are near areas with lots of monster resources, but those monsters are especially inedible, so they have no choice but to use a portion of their gold to buy food.
Of course, this doesn't exclude those players who just got lucky.
Take those who managed to discover gold mines or similar resources close to their starting areas.
Or if they got lucky and encountered randomly generated game treasure chests. These treasure chests have a certain chance of yielding resources, gold, basic consumables, etc.
All in all, one cannot underestimate the power, intelligence, and luck of the masses.
Zhang Nu decisively doubled the price and put up 10 more bigfoot birds for trade.
[Trade Successful. You gained 10 gold!]
[Trade Successful. You gained 10 gold!]
[...]
[Your items have all been sold!]
10 bigfoot birds were once again all snatched up. This time, it wasn't instantaneous, but instead it took about 20 seconds or so. This showed that there's still a market at this price.
The chat menu started howling up a storm.
"Shit, that's way too dirty."
"Yeah, the price doubled in the blink of an eye!"
"I freaking only hesitated a moment and it was all gone. You animals are too much. Do you have too much money clogging up your base or something?"
"Reject price inflation!"
"Reject high priced food!"
"Get lost. If you don't want to buy it, there are plenty of people who will!"
"I got plenty of gold, so please continue supplying, boss. Even at 10 gold per bird, I'll take as many as you have!"
"..."
Zhang Nu gained some understanding of the situation.
In the short term, the market could accept normal food at a price of 10-20 gold. As gold becomes more plentiful in the future, the price could even rise higher.
Of course, from the mid to long term point of view, food shortage definitely won't be the norm.
When it comes down to it, this is a game of Demon Kings and Heroes, subjugations and defense. If a Demon King can't even resolve their basic food needs, then this is way too low of them. They would end up being eliminated very quickly.
There isn't much food left now, so Zhang Nu won't be continuing.
His territory requires food consumption too after all.
These two trades total to 150 gold of income.
5 gold was spent as the transaction fee. Since the two trades didn't take long at all, the transaction fee ended up fairly low. Right now, he has a total of 161 gold on hand.
He spent 50 gold to summon 10 draconian laborers.
Then he spent 100 gold to summon up a draconian soldier.
His territory already has 15 production units and 1 combat unit. Things are starting to shape up.
Zhang Nu examined the draconian soldier.
The draconian soldier didn't look much different from the draconian laborers. It's just bigger and stronger. Its black scales looked more sturdy and its teeth and claws were sharper. Plus, it had a spear equipped as a weapon.
[Draconian Soldier]: Level 1 elite unit. 50 HP, 30 MP, 7 Strength, 5 Constitution, 6 Agility, 3 Will. Loyalty 100% (Locked), Tiredness: 10%, Hunger: 10%
Skills: Dragonblood Berserk (E rank), Spear Stab (E rank), Lesser Dragonscale (E rank)...
Not bad.
Estimating conservatively, a single soldier could probably beat up 10 laborers.
The most basic level 1 unit is already an elite class monster!
This is probably unthinkable to Demon Kings with relatively lower bloodlines or races. However, this is Zhang Nu's biggest advantage right now.
Next is assigning tasks.
Zhang Nu set the 15 laborers on production work.
A portion of them headed off to the Darkness Woods to harvest, chop wood, and hunt in order to satisfy the basic daily consumption needs of the territory in addition to collecting wood for construction.
The rest were to repair the ruins, create farmland and build defenses to protect the Demon King's Altar and the territory as a whole.
There are no strong monsters in the Darkness Woods, so the normal draconian laborers are enough to deal with any dangers there.
Instead, Zhang Nu took the soldier with him to continue exploring the valley.
After all, he had only explored a small portion of the valley thus far. He needs to explore more of the valley and see if there are any signs of native activity.
Killing monsters will only get him gold and materials.
This could be used to develop his territory, but it won't make himself stronger.
Zhang Nu needs to remove any dangers in the area of his future territory. He also needs to collect souls to satisfy the requirements for his evolutionary goals.
Darkness Valley isn't particularly large or small.
It took a total of about 30 minutes to do a full lap around it.
Messages came up one after another, allowing Zhang Nu to quickly gain a very detailed understanding of his surrounding environment.
[Normal cave]. Low exploration value.
[Normal swamp]. Low exploration value.
[Normal ruins]. Low exploration value.
[Fallen Darkness Ruins]. Level 1 elite area. It was once a forest village established by a mage. It was destroyed due to an experiment going out of control and all the villagers were killed and turned into undead. Relatively high exploration value. Possible rewards: Black Iron Treasure Chest, the mage's inheritance, etc.