Chapter 43 – The Whale Spender Was Me All Along?

Both Sentinels and Archers are two-star units, and Mu Yuan hadn’t yet evolved any units of this star rating.

When he briefly experimented, the feedback he received was:

“5 Evolution Points, the same requirement as when evolving Skeleton Soldiers and Large Slimes. This suggests the evolved units are highly likely to be Rare one-star units.”

Mu Yuan wasn’t particularly surprised.

The upgraded versions of Sentinels and Archers are indeed Rare one-star units. Both are highly favored by Lords across various regions, being extremely practical unit types.

The real question was what skills the units he personally evolved would acquire.

He’d find out soon enough.

“Tomorrow… by tomorrow before I sleep, I’ll have gathered enough Evolution Points. I’ll try it out then and see.”

“With my current Evolution Point production rate, I can evolve several Rare units per day. Soon, we’ll enter an era of massive Rare unit proliferation.”

The corners of his mouth lifted in a pleased smile.

Those whales and privileged second-generation players now possessed considerable power. It wasn’t impossible for them to capture Remnant Soul recruitment points or get rare Remnant Souls as low-probability drops from underdeveloped rare monsters.

But how could that compare to the joy of watching his Rare combat power rapidly increase while he just relaxed?

Well, he wasn’t completely idle—he still had to lift a finger to bestow evolution power upon his units.

That was quite exhausting.

Indeed, his current achievements were entirely due to his own hard work.

…

Evolution would have to wait until tomorrow. No matter how eager or impatient Mu Yuan felt, he couldn’t just use some cheat tool to modify his Evolution Points to 999+. He had to wait patiently.

He had more important matters to attend to.

Construction.

Ten Miracle Blueprints shimmering with faint white light and one emitting a soft green glow were spread out before him, floating slightly in the air.

Mu Yuan lightly tapped one of them.

「Prompt: Use Miracle Blueprint · Arrow Tower?」

「Prompt: As the current Chosen One does not possess complete Lord authority, remote construction of Miracle Buildings is unavailable. Construction speed will be relatively slow, and damaged buildings cannot be repaired, etc…」

「Prompt: Use?」

After all, new players were only quasi-Lords.

But as long as he could build the Miracle Buildings, these limitations were minor issues. For example, Ranger players couldn’t use Miracle Blueprints even if they obtained them—they didn’t possess their own territory.

And Mu Yuan’s territory…

Was this small piece of land before him that he could view from a god’s-eye perspective.

His area was relatively open, without particularly ideal locations for Arrow Tower construction. However, because his territory was small, no matter where he placed the Arrow Tower, the surrounding areas would be within its range.

“Then right here.”

Holding the Arrow Tower blueprint, Mu Yuan walked to a slightly elevated area that showed as available for construction.

Click, construct.

Just like in a real-time strategy game, an outline of an Arrow Tower woven from light and shadow appeared on the ground before him.

「Prompt: Arrow Tower (Common) under construction. Please provide required Materials promptly.」

——

「Arrow Tower」

「Required Materials: Wood 0/100, Stone 0/100, Soul Sand 0/500g.」

Well, these construction materials needed to be manually delivered too.

Such was the life of a Lord still in the probation period.Fortunately, these materials weren’t hard to find. Wood could be chopped from the surrounding forests, and stone could be obtained by having Deadbone smash a large boulder and having the Skeleton Soldiers collect the fragments.

This was the power of Miracle Buildings—materials only needed to roughly meet requirements, completely disregarding scientific principles.

What mattered were the rules of the Eternal World.

Materials + Blueprint = Building. That was the rule of Miracle Buildings.

The Soul Sand had already been invested. Deadbone had previously gathered plenty of wood and stone, and since Dolai arrived in the territory, the accumulation of “scrap” had visibly increased.

“Guji? Guji guji!”

“Don’t worry, your treasure hasn’t disappeared—it’s just taken on a different form to stay with you. Look, isn’t this tower sparkling?The Arrow Tower under construction shimmered with light, gradually transforming from illusion to solid from bottom to top, filling in bit by bit.

Dolai stared wide-eyed at the shimmering Arrow Tower. After processing it with its limited brain capacity, it realized… that seemed to be true.

It hopped away again, chirping “guji guji.”

「Arrow Tower: Currently 1.2% constructed, ongoing construction…」

…

Mu Yuan instructed Deadbone to lead a group of skeletons, along with Transport Captain Dolai, outside the territory to gather various types of wood and stone.

He himself proceeded to place structures like the Watchtower, Warehouse, and Cottage one by one.

These three buildings only required wood, stone, and Soul Sand. Even though the constructed Cottage included many furnishings, it didn’t matter—the remaining materials would be supplemented by the Miracle Blueprint.

“Among these buildings, the Arrow Tower has the highest construction cost, but it’s still not too expensive… Well, of course, that’s because we just received the association’s welfare subsidy.”

“But the Mage Tower we’re about to build next…”

「Mage Tower (Rare)」

「Description: A defensive structure capable of autonomously attacking enemies without requiring stationed troops. It can launch homing Spell Missiles. Additionally, the Mage Tower possesses basic research functions and can produce a small number of items. The latter function requires stationed personnel with professional expertise in spellcasting to be usable.」

「Required Materials: Wood 0/500; Stone 0/500; Iron 0/200; Soul Crystal 0/5; Black Iron Stone 0/100; Elemental Orb 0/1.」

Mu Yuan: “…”

This cost is just a tad expensive, isn’t it?!

He tried incorporating the remnants of the previous Ruined Tower, which did fill some of the gaps, but only a small amount.

“Setting aside basic materials like wood, we’re still short of 4.5 Soul Crystal Coins, 60 units of Black Iron Stone, and the most expensive item—the Elemental Orb.”

Mu Yuan had never even heard of materials like Black Iron Stone and Elemental Orb, but that wasn’t a problem. His permissions on the Taixuan Forum had been upgraded, allowing him to access many slightly more advanced materials.

After a flurry of searching, he quickly found results.

Black Iron Stone was a Common-grade item, typically used as construction or equipment material, often mined from wild mineral veins.

The Elemental Orb was a Rare-grade material that could also be used as accessory equipment to enhance one’s spell power. This treasure could be obtained through methods such as conquering powerful monster camps, purifying Roots of Filth, slaying powerful monsters, or exploring treasure lands rich in elemental energy.

However, these methods only offered a chance of acquisition.If Mu Yuan relied solely on hunting monsters and exploring by himself, this precious Mage Tower blueprint would likely gather dust in the Warehouse for a long time to come.

Fortunately, he had a massive trading platform backing him.

Rare items that couldn’t be bought with Soul Sand? He could simply exchange them with Contribution Points—after all, he still had a full 3,000 Contribution Points to spare.

Lord Mu was not short on funds; he could easily purchase all the required Materials in no time.

Mu Yuan logged into the Taixuan Covenant Platform and did a quick search.

Indeed, 3,000 Contribution Points were quite valuable.

For instance, 100 Contribution Points could be exchanged for 1 Soul Crystal Coin.

Even relatively common white-grade Miracle Blueprints only cost around 200 to 300 points.

Some cheaper rare-grade Unit Shards could be bought for less than 200 Contribution Points.

Of course, even if newcomers like them could afford rare-grade items, they couldn’t send them to their own territories through intermediaries. The only exception was if the rare item had originally been extracted from their own territory—in that case, it could be sent back.

It was precisely due to these restrictions that ordinary players stood a slim chance of competing with various spenders and second-generation players. One had to applaud the rules of the Eternal World for that.

Wait a moment.

Just as Mu Yuan opened the product page for the Elemental Orb, his expression suddenly froze.

If he remembered correctly, the Elemental Orb seemed, perhaps, might be… a rare-grade item!

He could afford it, no problem, but he couldn’t send it into the Eternal World.

Was he the spender all along?

“Looks like I’ll have to rely on myself to hunt or search for the Elemental Orb,” he thought.

With that, Mu Yuan spread out the rough map he had drawn and pondered where he was most likely to find a destined individual for the orb.

(End of Chapter)