Chapter 45: Information Exchange
Nobody knew how long it would remain closed afterward before reopening again.
Once the marketplace disappeared, different districts and regions within every city would essentially become isolated from one another.
Transportation would become inconvenient.
Information would stop circulating smoothly.
At that point, obtaining supplies would become vastly more difficult compared to now.
Because of that, in the eyes of major factions, these few days represented a period of constant scavenging and stockpiling.
Unless it involved valuable items such as equipment, they generally would not trade away any resources at all.
Joo Joowon knew TheMadScientist definitely had other motives.
He had already prepared himself to immediately leave if the situation felt wrong.
Now that TheMadScientist had finally revealed his true purpose, it still remained within an acceptable range for Joo Joowon.
So he directly asked.
[ Ashfall: What do you want to know? ]
[ TheMadScientist: Thank you, Boss! I want to know what functions unlock at level ten! What talents appear after attributes reach ten points? And what exactly can Dead Man Treasure Chests drop? ]
Because he himself did not possess many valuable items and still needed to keep enough resources for self preservation, TheMadScientist only asked about the most important matters.
After thinking for a moment, Joo Joowon replied.
[ Ashfall: Four bottles. ]
[ TheMadScientist: No problem! I’ll list them immediately! ]
The trading market allowed virtual item transactions.
As long as both parties agreed, one person could trade precious supplies while the other literally traded a bottle filled with air.
Because of this system, many separated family members scattered across different locations were fortunate enough to survive.
This was especially true for students trapped inside school dormitories.
They had neither food nor weapons.
At the same time, schools naturally contained enormous populations.
Without outside support, it would not be strange if only single digit numbers of students managed to escape alive from an entire campus.
Total annihilation was entirely possible.
After glancing at the newly listed item, Joo Joowon continued.
[ Ashfall: Add one more condition. The information cannot be shared with any third party. ]
Although Joo Joowon did not want humanity to go extinct and had already spread certain pieces of information publicly, he was not selfless enough to reveal absolutely everything and completely lose his own advantages.
Because of that, even while trading information, necessary restrictions were still required.
Otherwise, what if he revealed valuable information to the other party, only for them to immediately repost it publicly afterward for mass profit?
Watching someone else make money felt even worse than losing money personally.
[ TheMadScientist: Of course! Of course! ]
TheMadScientist immediately added the additional condition.
Only after carefully checking the item description page did Joo Joowon finally complete the purchase.
He first typed several lines of information and then used his talent to inspect the transaction carefully.
A moment later, disappointment flashed across his face as he withdrew his gaze.
Just like how the trading market did not regulate absurd prices or guarantee authenticity for physical items, information worked the same way.
The market only guaranteed the legality of transactions between both parties.
It did not guarantee the accuracy of traded information, especially vague items such as knowledge and intelligence.
In other words, if one side deliberately lied, then the victim could only silently suffer the loss.
Joo Joowon fell into thought.
Perhaps this weakness could be avoided by cleverly adding more restrictive conditions into future transactions.
Keeping this matter in mind, he finally answered.
[ Ashfall: I don’t know everything either. Reaching level ten definitely unlocks the shop system. Classes probably unlock too. As for talents after reaching ten attribute points, I currently only know the Mental Power talents, which are... ; Each Dead Man Treasure Chest currently only contains two items. One is experience points, and the other is a random item. Maybe higher level treasure chests will contain more rewards later on, but right now there are only two. ]
After delivering the information, Joo Joowon took the Molotov cocktails and left.
He also purchased several bags of cat food and canned cat meals to stockpile before finally ignoring any further replies from TheMadScientist.
He did not believe the other party had suffered a loss in this transaction.
Putting everything else aside, merely the information about the shop system unlocking was already enough to recover the value of the trade.
At present, nearly every player possessed at least some amount of currency.
However, because nobody fully understood its purpose yet, although many people chose to hold onto their coins and wait, there were also many players who desperately needed food and supplies and had nothing else available for trading except copper coins.
Especially in certain special locations where obtaining supplies was extremely difficult while zombies were everywhere, many players practically had no choice except to trade items dropped by zombies.
More importantly, experienced gamers might naturally guess some of the mechanics hidden within this apocalypse game.
However, there were also countless people in this world who had never played online games before.
Many people simply would not realize certain concepts that gamers treated as common knowledge.
That gap in understanding created opportunities for some players to quietly hoard large amounts of currency in advance.
There would definitely be many valuable items inside the future shop system.
But without money, players would only be able to stare helplessly at those items.
The earlier someone learned this information, the greater their chances of gathering resources ahead of everyone else.
Looking at the information sent by Joo Joowon, TheMadScientist could not help feeling pleasantly surprised.
Up until now, he had not encountered a single NPC.
Likewise, nobody within the marketplace discussions seemed to have mentioned meeting NPCs either.
Either NPCs truly did not exist yet, or they were extremely rare.
Because of that, if class advancement required locating specific NPCs, then the situation would have been terrible news for him.
However, according to Ashfall’s explanation, it seemed that the class system simply had not been unlocked yet.
Players likely did not need to find special NPCs in order to change classes.
That realization immediately allowed him to relax slightly.
Before the apocalypse, if NPCs appeared somewhere, people could simply book a plane ticket and travel there directly.
But after the apocalypse, even the distance between the eastern and western parts of the same city might become a gap some people would never cross for their entire lives.
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