Chapter 7: Chapter7-Auctioning Off the B-rank Shield
By the time John finished collecting his reward and left the blacksmith’s forge, it was already past nine o’clock at night.
The darkness of night hung over the world like thick ink.
John opened his coin pouch and checked his balance. His total funds had now reached 213 Gold Coins.
During the Starter Village stage, every single Gold Coin was extraordinarily valuable.
The exchange ratio between Gold Coins, Silver Coins, and Copper Coins was 1:1,000 at each tier.
Converted into real-world currency, a single Gold Coin was worth 1,000.
The 213 Gold Coins John currently possessed were therefore equivalent to 213,000 in real-world currency.
He had earned more than two hundred thousand in less than half a day since the game launched.
Although that amount was still little more than a drop in the bucket compared to his enormous debt, John was not worried in the slightest.
Repaying the loan would not be difficult for him. There were plenty of ways to make money.
The most important thing right now was to improve his living conditions first.
At the very least, he no longer wanted to remain holed up in that cramped rented apartment.
With that thought, John opened his inventory space.
Perhaps because he had awakened the system, his inventory was different from that of ordinary players. There seemed to be no storage limit whatsoever.
At this moment, his inventory contained a large number of weapons and pieces of equipment he had obtained from the Catacombs.
After all, the blacksmith’s quest had only required ten pieces of burial equipment. There was no way John would hand everything over.
Although most of the weapons and equipment were not particularly high-rank, they were already more than practical enough for the current crop of newcomers.
If he sold all of them, he would probably be able to exchange them for another dozen or so Gold Coins.
Aside from those items, there was also the B-rank shield dropped by the BOSS.
Even for top-tier players who were rapidly approaching Level 20, B-rank equipment was still an extremely rare and precious existence.
John estimated that, at present, there were probably only one or two players who genuinely possessed B-rank equipment.
Furthermore, the attributes of this particular B-rank shield were not bad at all.
John took it out, and the shield’s information appeared before him.
[Gravekeeper’s Shield]
[Rank]: B-rank
[Effect]: Physical Defense +1,000, Magic Defense +1,000
...
An additional 1,000 Physical Defense and 1,000 Magic Defense was no different from a divine artifact to players at the current stage of the game!
The defensive attributes provided by this shield were extremely comprehensive. Even an attack dealing 1,500 damage would only deal 500 actual damage after landing on the shield’s owner.
John, however, had no interest in such a small defensive boost.
This shield might provide high defensive attributes, but it did not possess any special effects or skills.
Meanwhile, John already had as much as 100,000 HP, and he would be able to obtain an endless supply of attribute points to increase his strength in the future.
To him, this shield was little more than a useless luxury. It was hardly of any practical value.
Rather than keeping it on him merely to gain another 1,000 points of defense, he might as well list it for sale in the Open Auction District.
The Open Auction District was a shared equipment marketplace available to all players on the server.
As long as a player listed an item and set an opening bid, other players would naturally compete against one another to purchase it.
With that in mind, John opened the game interface, preparing to list the equipment for auction.
However, he soon discovered that the world channel had already exploded into chaos.
Everyone was discussing his name.
...
"Just who the hell is this Outlander? Clearing a Hell Difficulty dungeon in 4 minutes and 32 seconds is ridiculous!"
"I looked into it just now. Apparently, this guy has only had his account for a few hours. He speedran a dungeon within several hours of creating his account, and he even cleared it solo. How is that possible?"
"Do you even need to think about it? The only way anyone could accomplish something like that is by cheating. There’s no way he could have cleared the dungeon so quickly without hacks!"
"Makes sense. I also feel like this guy must be cheating."
Seeing large numbers of people in the world channel accusing him of using cheats, John could not help finding it somewhat amusing.
CREED had appeared in the world out of nowhere. The publishing company behind it was nothing more than a shell corporation hastily registered to conceal the truth.
There were no actual game officials or technical personnel within that company.
Even the gaming pods everyone had purchased were, in reality, merely equipped with an embedded teleportation crystal.
There was no such thing as fully immersive AR technology at all.
In order to prevent the public from discovering this, the game company had even specifically issued a warning.
They claimed that every gaming pod was fitted with an anti-disassembly mechanism, and that any player who attempted to dismantle one would receive an astronomical penalty bill.
This was a game that did not even have programmers writing code behind the scenes.
And yet there were actually people who believed he was cheating?
How laughable!
John could not be bothered to pay attention to the nonsense spouted by these idiots. Instead, he looked at his private messages.
He discovered that most of them were invitations from major guilds, all asking whether he would be willing to join them.
One guild calling itself Stellar Guild had even offered him an annual salary of one million!
Watching private messages pop up one after another, John gradually became annoyed.
He simply activated one-click Do Not Disturb mode.
At last, the world became quiet again.
Then, John turned his attention toward the Open Auction District function.
He directly listed the B-rank shield and selected the option to sell it anonymously.
As for the opening bid, he temporarily set it at 20 Gold Coins.
For all the remaining equipment he had obtained from the tombs, John chose to dismantle them directly into Gold Coins.
[You have dismantled a total of 132 pieces of equipment. You have obtained 12 Gold Coins!]
Another 12 Gold Coins were added to John’s coin pouch.
Meanwhile, the B-rank shield he had just listed had already caused the entire market to erupt.
Before the B-rank shield appeared, the most expensive item on the market had been a C-rank longsword listed at 12 Gold Coins.
But the moment the B-rank shield appeared, it instantly pushed the C-rank longsword out of the top position, hanging above every other piece of equipment on the market!
"Holy crap! Which rich bastard listed a B-rank shield for sale?"
"And look at those stats! It adds 1,000 Physical Defense and 1,000 Magic Defense. That’s absurd!"
"The opening bid is only 20 Gold Coins? I have to get this! I bid 22!"
"You think 22 is enough to compete for this? 30 Gold Coins! This shield is mine!"
"I bid 31!"
"Forty! I refuse to believe anyone here can offer more than me!"
"Fifty. Poor bastards should stop competing and embarrassing themselves."
Under the fierce competition of the players, the auction price continued to rise rapidly.
After all, B-rank equipment was far too rare at the current stage of the game. Even when such equipment did exist, it was usually reserved for the elite combat players of the major guilds.
Now that a piece of B-rank equipment had suddenly appeared on the market and could be acquired directly through bidding, naturally everyone wanted to spend money to claim it!
John looked at the B-rank shield, whose bidding price had already climbed to 50 Gold Coins in almost no time at all, and the corner of his mouth curved upward.
Just as he had expected, the value of this shield continued to rise.
After watching for a while, John closed the trading interface.
He would let those people compete among themselves for now.
It was still early, and John had other, more important matters to attend to.
"System, allocate points."
John directly invested all of the more than 4,000 attribute points he had accumulated into Agility.
[You have consumed 4,762 Attribute Points. Your Agility has increased to 4,767!]
During the early stages of the game, time was money.
His other attributes were already more than sufficient for the moment. The only thing he was currently lacking was Agility.
His terrifying Agility stat gave him an astonishing level of speed.
Even without possessing any movement-type skills, his movements were now extraordinarily fast.
Even his attack speed had been greatly enhanced.
Whoosh!
John’s figure flickered.
In the next moment, he disappeared from where he had been standing.
Only a faint afterimage remained in the air.
