Chapter 325: Alliance Merchant Guild |
These two abilities looked like they hadn't changed much, only that their levels had increased.
But after the guild upgraded to Level 3, Qin Ziwen noticed an additional Allied Trading Hall.
He opened it to inspect, and found this Allied Trading Hall was somewhat special, a bit like an in-game auction house.
Except it was restricted to guild members, essentially an internal "local trading network."
Only guild members could list and trade supplies within the guild.
Its sole practical benefit seemed to be saving time on transporting goods.
But all the Home settlements in the residential complex were in the same complex; it was merely a matter of going downstairs, crossing the courtyard, and climbing a few stairs.
"It still feels a bit useless..."
Qin Ziwen paced, walking back and forth, then his steps suddenly stopped.
What if allied members in the guild were not limited to members inside the same residential complex?
Could it work across complexes, even across maps?
If so, recruiting just one member from another complex would enable cross-region trading.
Could this be the guild's real playstyle?
Light flickered in Qin Ziwen's eyes.
Testing it wouldn't be hard; he only needed to recruit a member from another complex to join the guild to find out.
Suppressing his eagerness, Qin Ziwen continued to take out the Function Card · Node that dropped from the Mosasaur after completing the Hunting Ladder task.
Use card
[Activate function: Level-5 Node]
[Authority increased, current authority: Level-4 Authority (8/16)]
[Level-5 Node: Can establish five spatial nodes outside the Home. Nodes are two-way passages, limited to the current map. Once established they cannot be changed within seven days. New 'Node Exclusion Zone': within a ten-kilometer radius centered on a node, a second node cannot coexist. If multiple nodes already exist in an area, retention priority is determined by authority level; if authority levels are equal, node level will decide retention.]
Progress on Level-4 Authority finally passed the halfway point.
Qin Ziwen estimated inwardly that if luck favored him, he might actually have a shot at pushing into Level-5 Authority before this map cycle ended.
Then the node level would be upgraded, and adding another node would be straightforward.
The node's cooldown time hadn't changed, but the new Node Exclusion Zone feature had been added.
A ten-kilometer radius was not small, and in the wilderness that covered a very large area.
It could also suppress other people's nodes. Using one node could temporarily prevent enemies from activating nodes nearby, though authority comparisons would still be decisive.
The importance of authority was becoming ever more pronounced.
.....
Downstream of the forest, on the plains, a city.
Trees covered the city. In a partitioned room on the top floor of a three-story building in the city center, a faint blue anchor mark on the wall pulsed with a rhythm like breathing, brightening and dimming.
The mark slowly expanded, and a rotating blue channel materialized out of thin air.
Two figures stepped out, one after the other.
The leader wore a large fox-fur robe, hands tucked into his sleeves, hair loose, thick eyebrows, a hooked nose, and a pair of upturned eyes that shone with shrewd coldness.
A woman followed him, in her early thirties, slightly yellowish complexion, a dangling ornament at her forehead that swung gently.
The thick-browed man turned back and spoke in a familiar tone: "Sister Ya, the food-bone trees you have here are growing really well. This year's harvest might double. How about giving me some wood-bone cores?"
Xie Ya looked up. "What do you need wood-bone cores for? Those won't be useful over on your map, right?"
After a short silence, the thick-browed man tightened his mouth. "Don't laugh at me. The Giant Rock Dragon I was keeping in the desert map got killed, and its corpse was hauled away clean. Not only that, the soul-devouring fungus was cleared out too!"
A flash of surprise passed through Xie Ya's eyes. "That unlucky? So you want to buy wood-bone cores to make up this year's tax?"
"Yeah." The man sighed. "I don't have any stockpiled. It's hard to gather the required 'Rare Treasure' offerings this time. Among people I know, you're pretty much the only one who can help me."
Xie Ya nodded slowly. "I do have extra wood-bone cores and can sell you some. But I remember you kept that Giant Rock Dragon in the desert map, the low-intensity map, right? The kind of place only new players from Shedding Abyss can enter. Can a newbie handle a Giant Rock Dragon? Are you sure some veteran didn't return to their old territory and wipe it out for you?"
The thick-browed man twitched at the corner of his mouth. "I can be certain it was definitely a newbie, because I was watching that map constantly. I kept trying to return, but it always told me the map had Shedding Abyss and couldn't return. On the second day I finally made it back, the Giant Rock Dragon was already gone. I checked the surrounding battle marks; the fight was definitely carried out by residential complex players."
The man's cheek muscles twitched. "I even spent a card to track it, and you know what happened?"
Xie Ya was curious. "What happened?"
"Right when I was about to succeed, it suddenly told me I lacked sufficient authority!"
Hearing that, Xie Ya froze for a moment, then burst into loud laughter. "You lacked authority? You're Level-4 Authority — a newbie map's newbie can reach Level-4 Authority?"
The thick-browed man let out a long breath, his tone complicated and inexplicable. "Yes, that guy definitely broke through Authority Level 4 at a critical moment."
At his words, an odd light flickered in Xie Ya's eyes, and she became instantly interested. "Shedding Abysses within the first five maps are all newbie Shedding Abysses. Even if the desert map was his fifth map, he reached Level-4 Authority after only five maps? That Shedding Abyss is impressive. He must have filled every function card on the early maps."
"Yep." The thick-browed man nodded, a bit dejected.
Xie Ya chuckled lightly. "No wonder you didn't keep pursuing it. Looks like that Shedding Abyss has huge potential."
The thick-browed man looked toward Xie Ya. The initial quality of a Shedding Abyss's founding members largely determined its growth curve.
For instance, this woman before him was not simple. She joined the guild later than most but overtook many and was climbing rapidly, almost reaching higher ranks now.
She had grown so fast because the members of her Shedding Abyss were highly capable. As far as he knew, she came from an ancient feudal background; her Shedding Abyss had been a bandit mountain stronghold planning an uprising before it became a Shedding Abyss, stockpiling grain and building tall walls.
With that background transplanted into newbie maps, they slaughtered everything in their path.
They scored extremely high in comprehensive ratings and other areas.
Then the snowball effect took over, and after only six maps they had successfully reached Level-4 Authority.
It wasn't that the more maps a group experienced, the easier it was to obtain function cards.
Later maps raised the Hunting Ladder task difficulty, and the environments grew more dangerous. Many Shedding Abysses barely survived in later stages.
But facing an opponent with boundless potential like that, unless you were certain you could completely crush them, he thought it was better to drop it. While the situation hadn't worsened, leaving this matter alone would avoid a mortal enemy.
He'd just chalk it up to bad luck and take this silent loss.
......
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