Chapter 39: Profiteering Class

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Li Yi left so early, not because he did not give Chu Nan face, but because the fixed reward for boss first kills in Dark Empire was only fifty thousand. By getting Chu Nan to give him a hundred thousand at a time like this, Chu Tiange was making his intentions very clear. He wanted to rope Li Yi over to his side.

If Li Yi accepted the money, was there any way he could have left Dark Empire after that? So many of his classmates were right there watching, so if he left the guild later, no matter what the reason, it would always be his fault.

That was why he could not accept the money. His leaving early was also a show of his intentions, saying that Dark Empire could not keep him there with money alone.

…

The Pinnacle of Fire Instance Group Dungeon was not open yet, and there was no reason for him to run Frost Labyrinth whatsoever, so Li Yi took advantage of the time when all the players were grinding their hearts out to complete the quests he could access in Shattered Frost City, turning most of the NPC statuses to Intimate.

It was relatively difficult to increase one’s Reputation Value with the major cities, so even Li Yi could only reach that level at this point.

Mortal Enemy, Antagonistic, Indifferent, Neutral, Friendly, Intimate, Respectful, Adoration, Worship.

‘Worship was still quite the distance away, huh.’

Now that he had run out of quests to do, there were only two ways to increase his Reputation Value. One was to get boss first kills, and the other was to complete the few daily quests that were available (quests that could be repeated every day).

Of course, the benefits of increasing his Reputation Value were clear to see. Take, for example, Li Yi’s current Intimate status. If he bought something from an NPC in Shattered Frost City, there was a fixed chance that the NPC would automatically reduce its prices by 5%.

The higher one’s Reputation Value, the more tangible the benefits. The reason why Li Yi was so desperate to increase his Reputation Value was so that he could obtain those benefits.

Once his Reputation Value in major cities reached Respectful, he could buy a mount with no level requirements from certain NPCs. That was the thing Li Yi needed the most right now.

Some special bosses also dropped mounts, but something like that was too much a test of patience. Besides, only special bosses that were Level 30 and above dropped mounts, so putting aside the question of whether Li Yi could actually defeat one or not, simply the matter of probability was enough to make him give up on this option for now.

He still needed more than 2000 in Reputation Value, and his status in the major city would become Respectful. He had already completed all the daily quests and now had no more quests to complete, so Li Yi had no choice but to forego this for now. Instead, he rushed to the Auction House to see if he could buy a few more Fire Leaves and Ice Lotuses.

Fire Leaves and Ice Lotuses only spawned in Eastcloud Valley, and he could pick them as long as his Harvesting Skill had reached 20 points. The number of spawns every day was rather limited, so once someone tried to hoard them, the price would certainly inflate drastically.

The Pinnacle of Fire Instance Group Dungeon had not even opened yet, but the price of these two herbs had already reached 1 Gold Coin a pop. Even so, the stock that remained available in the Auction House did not amount to much.

There was no helping it. After all, these two herbs were not only required in bulk for the Fire dungeons, it was also a necessity for Apothecarists trying to level up their skill mastery through practice.

“I can’t afford it anymore, my Apothecary skill mastery has only reached 10 points, but I’ve already used up 100 Gold Coins. I need 10,000 points of mastery before I can reach Beginner Level, so it looks like I can’t afford to become an Apothecarist.”

“I’m even worse than you. I spent more than 300 Gold Coins, and my mastery is still at 2 f*cking points. Damnit, I just keep failing! This class is really for the dogs.”

Outside the Auction House, the one thing that could always be heard without fail was the complaining of the Apothecarists.

The truth was, by the later stages of King of Pantheon, Apothecarists were even rare and more valuable than pandas.The ones that could withstand the way Apothecarists practically burned their cash to obtain mastery levels were mostly super-sized guilds. For example, the two super-sized guilds, Star Galaxy and Dream Paradise, both had in-house Apothecarists.

To raise a top-quality Apothecarist was even harder than raising a powerful MT who could see and hear everything in all directions.

A powerful MT required skills, but a top-quality Apothecarist required large amounts of money and EXP.

Li Yi had also considered it long and hard before he decided on Apothecarist as his secondary class.

In his past life, King of Pantheon had been going on for eight years and still did not have even one Legendary-level Great Apothecarist. No matter how hard the Apothecarists tried, they still could not break through that last obstacle.

Li Yi chose two secondary classes at the same time, namely Harvester and Apothecarist.

Harvester was the secondary class most players in the game with, for no other reason than the fact that Apothecarists required a large capital whereas Harvesters would only earn without cost. From zero points in mastery, they just kept on earning their way up. It was even more ridiculous in the later stages, when one herb could be worth thousands in Gold Coins. Once you got your hands on it, it was worth an enormous sum. Thanks to the Harvester’s profiteering nature, many large-sized guilds would claim harvest spots in the later days. They would rather kill other players until their names turned red, as long as no one else could touch those herbs.

If a player wanted to increase their Harvester Mastery up to 20 points, the only way was to continuously harvest herbs, and the herbs that were suitable for novices to harvest could only be found near the Novice Villages.

Once they reached 20 Mastery points, they could harvest herbs at other places, such as Eastcloud Valley. To a born-again player like Li Yi who knew the world map like the back of his hand, he could boldly claim that once he got over the 20-point threshold, he would be able to level up faster than any other Harvester out there.

Something like this did not require skills. You just needed to know the general location of the herbs that were appropriate to harvest at each level.

To Li Yi right now, the hardest part would probably be the 20 Mastery points for the Beginner level.

More and more players were joining King of Pantheon. There were several hundreds of thousands when they started, and now there were almost four hundred thousand players. This number was continuously rising, as well. Even in the eight years that the game had run, the number of online players never dropped.

He surely was not the only one going for the Harvester class.

Carrying his hand hoe and making his way to the Novice Village, Li Yi found to his shock that almost all of the herb spawn spots were crowded with players.

‘Ten, twenty… God, these were all the most normal of herbs, how much were they worth? Was it worth going this far for a few sprigs that could be sold for a couple Copper Coins?’

‘I won’t stoop myself to the level of these Earthlings…’

Li Yi jumped into the river outside the Novice Village and swam toward the other villages.

Thankfully, unlike the Wild Boar King boss, the spawning times of the herbs outside the Novice Village did not have a Shared Cooldown. If there were no herbs in this Novice Village, he could easily go to the next one.

This was when Li Yi could put his SPD +2 blue-colored shoes to good use. As he ran all across the mountains, he saved quite a bit of time.

He used every ounce of his energy for over five whole hours, stealing prey from the jaws of death, snatching herbs with his life on the line… After all that, Li Yi managed to harvest 13 Earth Core Flowers (Beginner-level herb), and his Mastery also rose to 13 points.

It was way too hard and even more tiring than when he was grinding levels. If he had known this would happen, it would have been so much easier had he just farmed these when the game first started.

Li Yi was inwardly exasperated. The truth was he had only decided to go the Apothecarist route after he obtained the EXP Pearl, the Harvester job was only to complement that. If he did not persist as a Harvester, there were other easy-earning lifestyle classes that he could choose.

Although he could graduate from the Novice Village once he got just 7 more Mastery points, Li Yi realized that the difficulty spiked up somewhat for these last 7 points.

The situation in every Novice Village was more or less the same. No matter where he went, he had to snatch the herbs from others.

“Block ’em, everyone! That herb-snatching punk is back again, you gotta make sure he doesn’t get in here. He picks these herbs way too quickly, if he gets in here we’ll all end up empty-handed again.”

Just when the Earth Core Flowers respawned, a group of players suddenly formed a circle, keeping Li Yi out.

‘Well~’

‘What a tragedy this is. I just picked 13 herbs and just like that, I became a public enemy…’

“Friend, there’s no need to fight them. I know a place where you can harvest those herbs.”

A simple and honest voice spoke from behind him. Li Yi turned around to look and was instantly stunned.

A middle-sized young man was standing behind him. The character was a Human with short hair, but his most eye-catching feature was that fashion statement of a mustache (for reference, see Lu Xiaofeng). ¹

“You are?”

The man with the small mustache smiled guilelessly. “You don’t know me. I just thought you seemed to be having a hard time, having to fight over the herbs with them, so I wanted to help you out.”

Only then did Li Yi notice the name above Small Mustache’s head.

Snickersnee!

The guy who had once ranked second!