BXBX NOVEL Chapter 231:
Chapter 231:
The casual suit-like outfit he was wearing was designed and made by another renowned manufacturing player “Gentle and Elegant Lady Aqua” and her apprentices. It had already gained unanimous approval from the glorious Transia civil servants.
Lady Aqua alone had earned over 1,000 gold coins from this single design task.
This was enough to prove that manufacturing seemed to be the “version’s darling” in the current version.
Professor Chen also gained new insights into the game at this moment. Just earlier, he had a conversation with Regent Miriam and Professor Malcolm, easily impressing the two officials with his solid decades of professional knowledge.
Especially Professor Malcolm.
As a proper professor from Shaldor Engineering Academy, he could easily distinguish between a true master and a charlatan.
Therefore, when Old Chen left, Professor Malcolm had already started addressing him as “Master”, and Regent Miriam didn’t hesitate to grant “Construction Site Old Man” the very formal title of “Transia Chief Architectural Master” and full authority over the territory’s planning and construction.
This made Professor Chen leap to become the “front runner” of administrative professions, surpassing the three old brothers Dump Truck Iaido, Bulldozer Man Charging, and Half Off With Full Coverage. However, the three old brothers had no complaints about this, after all, Old Chen was a truly capable big shot.The only problem now was that Old Chen was essentially still a player. Although he came to Transia to “guide the work”, his career path still had to follow the “kill monsters and level up” routine step by step.
“8 points in Intelligence, 6 points in Charisma, five character traits, teacher, you’ve got the ‘chosen one’ starting template,” Grayman said, looking askance at Old Chen fiddling with the character interface projected from the Computation Bead in his hand. Although it was also 30 points in total, this kind of situation where one attribute was at maximum value was still very rare among little players today.
Even rarer were Old Chen’s five character traits:
【Master Builder】, 【Master Designer】, 【Educator】, 【Worldly Wise – Charisma Check +2】 and 【Erudite – Learning Ability X1.5, Learning Time -20%】.
None of these were combat traits, but they were definitely top-tier for administrative professions.
The most impressive thing was that Old Chen was probably the only player in the game who was born with a “profession”. His main profession in the three profession slots was fixed as “Architect” at birth, and after switching to an administrative profession, his second profession also became “Reserve Village Chief”.
“I’ve been working on construction sites all my life, isn’t it normal to have these traits?” Faced with the surprise of Grayman and Bricklayer, the old professor himself looked nonchalant.
Although he didn’t say it, he was actually very satisfied in his heart.
Especially the respectful attitude of the two NPCs greatly satisfied his self-esteem as an intellectual. He himself was also in the master category and could easily judge whether the person opposite was truly capable or just a numbskull.
Miss Miriam was obviously a bit inexperienced, but Professor Malcolm was definitely an academic researcher like him.
It was said that he was a history professor from one of the three major universities in this game, no wonder talking with him felt like attending a seminar at school.
“Oh, as you say, the map isn’t open yet, otherwise I’d really like to go and see the Shaldor Engineering Academy, how different is it from our universities?” Old Chen was in a good mood. He glanced at his main quest.
Although he had just entered the game, his first triggered quest was to make an overall plan for the construction of five collective farms, which already surpassed the difficulty of all quests that had appeared in the game so far.
However, this wasn’t much for Old Chen, he had done similar work many times before.
Designers of his era always had to do a lot of practical work. Although they were often ridiculed by the new generation for lacking style and imagination, from a pragmatic point of view, Murphy would rather trade 100 postmodern designers for one sufficiently practical Professor Chen.
“Let’s go, first to the designated areas of those farms to have a look.”
Old Chen waved his hand, intending to walk.
But Grayman had already arranged everything for his mentor. A black carriage, not luxurious but very practical, was parked at the entrance of the Administrative Building. Grayman’s two assistants, the Palen sisters, and his three apprentices were all waiting by the carriage.
“This is my mentor, Professor Chen, a true master of architecture.”
Grayman proudly introduced to his apprentices and assistants. The five of them bowed to Old Chen in unison, but the old man easily noticed that these two very similar-looking girls seemed to be closer to his student.
He shook his head and glared at Grayman.
Obviously, with his integrity, he disapproved of such behavior.
But Grayman had his own difficulties that he couldn’t express. He really didn’t intend to do anything weird. Given the current situation where even players’ dicks were controlled by Lord Murphy, even if he wanted to do bad things, he didn’t have the ability!
“Teacher, I’ll go apply for guards for you.”
Bricklayer had already realized something was wrong and immediately took off. As he ran, he shouted:
“The Regent has specially assigned two elite Witch Hunters as your guards. I’ll go get them for you. We’ll meet at the farm!”
He ran off in a flash, leaving only the stern-faced old professor to board the carriage with his student.
The scolding along the way made Grayman miserable, increasingly feeling that bringing the teacher into the game was a mistake.
But it was too late to regret now.
——
Over the next few days, everything proceeded as planned.
The combat profession players were clearing gnolls in the wild at an extremely fast pace, and as their levels increased and they became more Proficient, just the 30-person team of Onboard Joy Stick had already challenged several large lairs in a row. Other individual players also actively formed teams to tackle similar places.
They quickly discovered the second joy of this activity besides the leaderboard.
You see, the main role of gnolls on the land of Transia is as robbers and thieves, right?
Since they are bandits, they must have loot!
Although the gnolls’ style of robbery is to take both people and money, and for them, robbery is only to satisfy the most basic physiological needs, that is, to fill their stomachs, over time, the plunder in some gnoll bandit lairs has accumulated to a considerable amount.
The chaotic state of the Transia region doesn’t provide gnolls with channels to “fence” their goods. Even the craziest underground gangs don’t dare to do business with gnolls. Who knows when they might become meat in the gnolls’ pot?
Under these circumstances, the subsequent search after players conquer some large lairs can bring them extremely rich “profits”.
Although there isn’t much currency among them and occasionally they might find “suspicious meat” which makes people tremble with fear and sends chills down their spines when they think about it carefully, those looted goods found in the lairs can all be exchanged for money from NPCs!
How could this be!
Not only can they farm the point pool, but they can also get gold coins?
Oh my, the gnoll brothers are too kind!
“These items are of average value, but they can indeed be used in the reconstruction of Crimson Citadel. Warriors, this is the reward you deserve!”
In the temporary camp established by Kadman People’s Army on the edge of the Baroness of Shadows’ territory, Maxim, who had brought new recruits for training, handed a bag of gold coins to three eager little players in front of him and watched them turn away with beaming smiles.
A very strange and helpless expression appeared under Maxim’s face mask.
He looked back at the three large boxes that the three little players had delivered on a flatbed cart. The dried blood stains on them proved that these must be spoils found in gnoll lairs. The boxes contained stacks of slightly damp fabric due to poor storage, which should be handmade cloth rolls from the Ice Bay region.
Another box was preliminarily tanned leather, of quite good quality.
These three boxes of goods could have sold for about 60 gold coins in the former Kadman City, with the box of leather alone worth 40 gold coins, and that’s at the purchase price. But just now, he only gave the little players 10 gold coins plus a few dozen silver coins, which was enough to make them beam with joy.
“So useful,” Maxim murmured, instructing his quartermaster to register and store these supplies.
At the camp entrance, a squad of disheveled new recruits was returning with several Black Iron rank gnolls tied up with ropes. They were the supporters borrowed to Onboard Joy Stick’s team this morning, and from the looks of these recruits, their battle had not been easy.
However, fortunately, there weren’t too many casualties.
It seems the warriors had adhered to the agreement and hadn’t used the new recruits as cannon fodder.
This discovery made Maxim even more satisfied.
Although Lord Murphy’s warriors were very useful, there were too few of them. To truly protect the territory, they still needed to train elite local soldiers.
This large-scale gnoll extermination came at just the right time. All 300 people in the Kadman People’s Army now must pass this real combat test before they can be entrusted with more important missions.
Maxim planned to cultivate the loyal and brave soldiers he had personally trained as future commanders. Once those captured armed Blood Servants were sent back, large-scale army building would be put on the agenda.
With these 300 veterans who had experienced the Kadman disaster and various real combats as the core of the new troops, Maxim was confident that he could train an army capable of fighting for Lord Murphy before the Black Disaster arrived.
“My lord, we have enough new gladiators,” said a descendant named Norbert, reporting to Maxim. In the twilight, he wrapped himself tightly to avoid direct sunlight and spoke in an uncomfortable hoarse voice:
“The Blood Rat Gang has come to receive them. Lady Dorothy wishes to speak with you. She says she has a task from Count Murphy.”
“Hmm?” Maxim made a puzzled sound.
He assigned a task to Norbert and then went to meet Dorothy. At this time, four carriages were parked at the rear of the camp, with metal cages mounted on the wagon beds. Soldiers were putting the elite and Black Iron gnolls captured in battle into the cages.
These fierce creatures had all been injected with weakening potions, enough to ensure they wouldn’t cause trouble before being delivered to the Fight Club.
Some shifty-looking fellows wearing black uniforms were standing guard with whips. These were newly recruited members of the Blood Rat Gang, and their leader, “Razor” Dorothy, was leaning against the first carriage, playing boredly with a strangely shaped dagger.
Maxim had never seen such a peculiar short blade before.
The thing was clearly modeled after eagle claws with a recurved blade and a ring at the end, looking quite odd. Dorothy wore the claw dagger on her finger, demonstrating her impressive dexterity like a butterfly flitting through flowers.
She quickly noticed Maxim’s gaze and casually tossed the black claw dagger, which had undergone annealing and had beautiful cloud patterns, to the vampire warrior to hold.
“It’s a nice weapon, isn’t it? Very suitable for an assassin’s style. I occasionally saw those mountain blacksmiths forging similar weapons in the camp, so I ordered 50 at once for my subordinates to use.
I call it the ‘Rat Claw’, as the new symbol of the Blood Rat Gang.”
Dorothy said with her hands on her hips, then said to Maxim in a low voice:
“You’re the operator of the Fight Club. Tonight is the opening day of the second gladiatorial competition. Aren’t you going back to the city to preside over it personally?”
“I have more important tasks, and you’ve promised to run that place well. If you can’t do it, it proves you have no value! In Transia ruled by Lord Murphy, those without value won’t live long.
The master’s mercy is a virtue of the superior, unfortunately, I don’t possess it.”
Maxim’s fingers moved, reverse gripping the claw dagger and slashing it through the air with a piercing whistle.
He made a few combat moves, very satisfied with this vicious weapon, seemingly already envisioning its fierce stance as it sliced across an enemy’s throat. He casually put it into the combat pack at his waist.
He looked up and said to Dorothy:
“Speak, what task do you have?”
“It’s a strange task,” Dorothy pouted, saying to her temporary superior in a low voice:
“Some of the lord’s warriors found me, wanting me to cooperate with them on something.
They brought a strange gnoll, saying it was a new servant Lord Murphy had taken in. They want me to sell them the gnoll gladiators who have survived three battles at a low price, to build a clan for that skinny, talking, odd gnoll.
I don’t know what Count Murphy means by this.
But such a thing has never happened in Transia before, so I’m taking the opportunity of coming to receive the gladiators to ask you about it.
I heard you’re the person Lord Murphy trusts the most, perhaps you could explain the deeper meaning of this matter to me?”
“Lord Murphy’s warriors are supremely loyal, you needn’t doubt them. If they say it’s the lord’s order, you just execute it,” Maxim shook his head and said:
“If the lord thinks you shouldn’t know, then there’s no need for you to come ask me.”
“But I’m not actually interested in the truth, I just want to find someone to pass the buck to,” Dorothy shrugged, saying very frankly:
“Look, I’ve reported to you, so if this causes trouble later, it can’t be blamed on me. This is the survival rule for us underground rats.”
“So cunning, not befitting a warrior,” Maxim waved his hand and said:
“But this has nothing to do with me. I’m just temporarily managing you. Once Adele returns, you’ll be her problem. How’s the situation on the third level of the sewers now?”
“Same as usual,” Dorothy pouted and said:
“All the warriors who don’t fear death have gone to exterminate gnolls. No one’s managing the ghouls on the third underground level. They’re always wandering around and occasionally charging up to the second level. This is the second reason I came to find you.
I hope you can assign some veterans to form a defense line on the second level.
The newly recruited people under my command are all novices. It’s a bit too much to ask them to deal with ghouls.”
“I said, those without value won’t live long,” Maxim said coldly:
“I’ll give you 30 veterans, but they’ll only do defense. Clearing out the ghouls is the Blood Rat Gang’s task, and you must find a way to complete it! We’ve already cleared out the leaders of the underground ghouls, leaving only scattered troops.
If you can’t even pass this hurdle, what qualifications do you have to serve Lord Murphy?”
“Ah, this…” Dorothy was a bit confused by Maxim’s unreasonable and overbearing attitude. She asked in return:
“But shouldn’t loyalty be rewarded? I’m just asking for help. I can’t do this—”
“Reward? Loyalty itself is the best reward you can get!” Maxim interrupted her question and said:
“You have to figure out how to complete your work yourself! There’s no room for negotiation on this point. If you really don’t know what to do, why not ask those warriors for help? Aren’t they asking for your assistance?
But you need to be careful.
If you can’t provide them with the reward they deserve, the result won’t be too good.”
“?”
Dorothy blinked her eyes. She seemed to understand what Maxim meant.
Several hours later, in the sewers of Crimson Citadel, near the Fight Club where this week’s gladiator tournament was about to begin, in the Blood Rat Gang’s stronghold, Dorothy, who had hurried back covered in dust, played with her eagle claw dagger while looking at Little Ashina and Lumina before her.
She said:
“You want those elite gladiators who can survive three matches. Of course I can give them to you, and you don’t even need to pay. But as you can see, my Blood Rat Gang is severely understaffed right now, and Lord Murphy requires us to deal with the ghouls on the third underground level.
This troubles me greatly.”
The cunning thief sister put her hand on the Computation Bead on her chest, blinking at the little players in front of her and saying:
“So, let’s make a deal.”