Reign of the Hunters

Chapter 224 Mithril (Part 1)

When Ye Ci logged off it was still too early for dinner, so she took the opportunity to take a shower as Bai Mo was still logged into the game. Bai Mo was already waiting for her in the living room by the time she was done with her shower. Ye Nan Tian and Zuo Xiaolan were still online, probably still thinking about how they could recoup some costs.

Ye Ci sat down next to Bai Mo and started drying her hair. She snuck a peek at Bai Mo; his face was very serene. It was so serene that one was unable to tell what he was thinking. Not a word was spoken, as they sat there in silence, accompanied by the background noise from the TV. This created a somewhat strange atmosphere between the two.

Bai Mo spoke up after a long silence, “Was the result exactly as we expected?”

“Yes, and..” Ye Ci hesitated, her voice ultimately fading into nothingness.

“Thousand Sunsets is also involved in this.” Bai Mo laughed. He had already predicted this would happen. It was not possible that a girl who was so powerless and broke had the ability to cover up a fight to the point where even Bai Zixuan could not find out anything.

“You seem to have expected this.” Ye Ci did not find Bai Mo’s ability to predict what was going to happen strange at all. Bai Mo’s father was an official in a neighbouring city. His position wasn’t insignificant and had been rising steadily Ever since Bai Mo’s youth, it could be said that Bai Mo had grown up surrounded by the children of other officials.

Ye Ci knew that Bai Mo had a past she knew very little of. She similarly had a past that Bai Mo did not know of either. When they’re together, they are just siblings, but when apart, only they themselves know, what sort of demons they are.

She could tell that someone with Bai Mo’s background would definitely not be a coddled boy that had not experienced the world. Ye Ci did not know the other side of Bai Mo, nor did she want to know.

The only thing she needed to know was that Bai Mo treated her well, and that was all.

“Green Hill’s Moon told me a very dull story, do you want to hear it?” Ye Ci gently combed through her hair using her fingers, with a light smile on her face, “the end is stereotypical but the process is very dramatic.”

“Well, spit it out. I’m bored,” said Bai Mo as he took out a packet of cigarettes, and began lighting one up with practiced movements.. Although he and Ye Ci had lived together for such a long time, Ye Ci had hardly ever seen Bai Mo smoke, but seeing his practiced motions however, suggested otherwise.

The corners of her lips were raised slightly, and she proceeded to tell Green Moon Hill’s long boring story to Bai Mo. He did not say a word from beginning to end, merely listened intently. After she finished recounting the story, he laughed, “no wonder you said it was boring. This story is indeed very bland.” Saying so, he pursed his lips, “I see why my dad couldn’t do anything about it. It looks like being here in person is better than district magistrate for this case.”

“What do you want to do?” Ye Ci suddenly asked.

Bai Mo shook his head, “You don’t have to worry about it.” Some things were better off not letting her know.

Ye Ci saw how reluctant Bai Mo was to tell her, so she did not pry any further, only passing on the words of warning from Green Moon Hill, “Thousand Sunset’s family background is not minor, and it’s no longer just a matter of money. With our current abilities, it might be hard to deal with him, and Dong Yin’s family is currently rebuilding their empire. You must consider carefully...”

Bai Mo waved his hand, signalling that he did not want to continue this conversation. Thus, Ye Ci did not let a single word slip past her lips regarding the topic.

“Clear Moon managed to get his hands on a recipe for a very good enchantment, but the materials are quite rare.” Bai Mo changed the topic of the conversation.

“What recipe?” Right now, Clear Moon was the only high leveled Blacksmith in the guild. The number of his creations numbered in the tens of thousands. Every month, just the things that he made sold for a large amount of money at the auction, and was now one of the financial supports of Upwards Ho!.

“It’s a plating that adds 38 Strength and 50 Accuracy to a weapon with an additional random attribute, but they’re keeping the recipe a secret.” Once Bai Mo started speaking of matters related to the game, his expression was no longer stiff, but after he reported the stats of the armor he sighed, “there is a material we are short on. Even if it is Upwards Ho!, there are only two in the entire guild.”

Ye Ci raised her eyebrows after she realised what item Bai Mo was talking about. Although she rarely took note of what was in the guild warehouse, once Bai Mo mentioned how rare the item was, she immediately knew. At the moment, Bai Mo only knew that the item was extremely hard to get, but not how important it would be later in the game.

“You’re talking about mithril, right?” Ye Ci laughed.

“Yeah. It really wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call you a god; no matter what I talk about, you always know.” Bai Mo originally wanted it to be a surprise but who would have thought that Ye Ci immediately said the name of the item.

Ye Ci only bitterly smiled. She was not a walking encyclopedia. If Bai Mo was the one who had reincarnated instead, he would know about it too. After all, it was due to this item that Golden Age almost caused the end of Fate.

Mithril was an extremely rare ore in Western Fantasy. It was not only light and sturdy, but more importantly, had a very mysterious attribute that could greatly increase one’s attributes. The mithril itself did not come with any specific attributes,, but it was like a magnifying glass which could amplify the effects of equipment. Equipment with the fire attribute crafted from this material would have its fire damage amplified multiple folds. If equipment with Holy attribute was forged with mithril, the equipment’s Holy attribute would be increased as well..

Most importantly, after the release of the new expansion “New Continent”, players will begin to realise the importance of mithril.

By that time, all the players would find out that all gear dropped from lvl70 and above dungeons required the player to wear a mithril shirt in order to be equipped. As the number of players that reached lvl70 increased, and more people cleared the dungeons, there would be an explosive growth in demand.

Even if one reached lvl80, without being able to equip lvl70 gear, it was impossible to enter lvl80 dungeons. It was in this way that the use of mithril increased exponentially.

It was precisely because of this exponential need that almost caused Fate to collapse. Of course, thought Ye Ci to herself, the introduction of the mithril mines was the developer’s attempt to cultivate a group of top-tier players. Who would’ve thought that it abused by Golden Age instead. Their action almost led to the collapse of the game.

Although the use of mithril was indeed great, but...after all, it was a rare item that was hard to get, not some rubbish on the side of the road. Until this day, mithril was only dropped by BOSSes in dungeons. No one knew where else it could be obtained.

Of course, of course, in the current game, there are only a few players, or players with high life skills in large guilds that understand the rarity and usefulness of mithril. To ordinary players, they have not even heard of it, let alone comprehend its uses.

But, can mithril only be obtained from dungeons?

Of course not, otherwise if it was only obtainable as drops from BOSSes, then how could Golden Age use it to do such heaven defying things? Mithril, a rare and precious ore, was right under everyone’s nose the entire time.

As long as it is an ore, no matter how precious it is, there must be a ore vein. If there is an ore vein, then there must be a mine where it can be found.

Mithril is not an exception.

This is how the game was designed. In the entirety of Fate, there are only four mithril veins spread across the North, South, East and West continents. This has not changed. Even after ten years, when new areas and continents had been opened, this would not change. It was originally designed this way so that the starting four continents would always have players even after later expansions.

Only who would have thought that after the appearance of Golden Age, they managed to find the locations of all four veins, and sent out players to protect each one. Thus, they held a monopoly over mithril.

Once they established a monopoly, the price of mithril was completely controlled by Golden Age. They raised the price sky high. While players from large guilds could grind in dungeons all day just to obtain a few pieces of mithril, while solo players who were without a guild were left at the mercy of Golden age. In order to continue playing, they had to earn money to buy the rare ore.

The number of solo players were naturally higher than those who were part of a guild. With the fluctuation in the prices of mithril, many solo players were forced into the profession of Life Players. With the drastic increase of Life Players, the market in the game was flooded with huge numbers of items, which drove prices down. With their earning becoming more and more meagre due to the low prices, players were forced to real world cash into the game, eventually leading to an inflation.

Golden Age was the sole cause of such a scary chain of events. Instead of using their usual strategy of using overwhelming numbers to slaughter the player population, Golden Age employed a totally different approach against Fate. They seized control of the economy in Fate, and had almost succeeded in bringing the game down.

When things had almost reached the point of no return, Wang Jiangnan stepped forward with determination to stem the tide. He single-handedly managed to turn the tables despite the pressure from angry players. It was a story that would later be circulated in the Glory Corporation in Ye Ci’s past life. She herself heard the story from one of the employees.

This kind of story sounded interesting, but those that had not experienced it would not know how the dark storm started and ended. To people listening to the story, it is only a story, but to those who have experienced it, it was a memory that made people tremble in fear.

Ye Ci took a deep breath. She did not want to remember that storm.

That state of economic collapse and confusion was the greatest test of one’s humanity.

Sometimes Ye Ci thought that maybe, it was in that storm that people no longer became able to differentiate between real life and the game. Was she not one of those people in her past life?

“What’s the drop rate like?” Ye Ci retracted her faraway thoughts and asked Bai Mo.

“Forget about it, the drop rate is awful! When the first of them dropped, I noticed that is was a Purple material. But without any description about the item’s usage, I could do nothing but place it into the guild storage. I’ve forgotten all about it until Clear Moon rushed up to me asking for mithril while holding the recipe for it. It was only at that time that I realised what mithril could be used for, so ever since then I have been carefully collecting it, but the drop rate is just too low. We’ve been clearing dungeons for half a year already but only found five pieces. Of those five, I’ve given Clear Moon three pieces and the other two are in storage as a decoration.” Once this topic was mentioned, Bai Mo shook his head and sighed.

Ye Ci laughed. She did not tell Bai Mo that it was impossible to rely on the low drop rates to gather mithril. She also did not tell him that she knew the location of not only the mithril vein in the East Continent, but also the location of the veins on the other three continents as well.

It was better to pretend to find these things by chance. Only, she had to hurry, as Golden Age would soon enter Fate. If she waited until they entered Fate to do it, then it might be too late.

“Don’t worry. Everything will happen when the timing is right. If the developers designed something like this, then there must always be a reason for it. Anyway, the plating is very precious now; its a waste to use it on lvl30-40 weapons. Isn’t it better for everyone to reach lvl60 and then use it on lvl60 weapons?” Ye Ci explained. After all, these kind of things cannot be rushed.

Bai Mo took a deep breath and nodded.

After finding out about how Dong Yin and Thousand Sunsets had worked together to beat Ye Ci, up, he was exceptionally calm. He was so calm that one would not be able to tell anything had happened at all. As Ye Ci had already gave her promise to not interfere with Bai Mo when he move against Dong Yin and Thousand Sunsets, she naturally would not ask about it. She only considered how could she use someone else to get rid of the disgusting people. For example, just like that time when she stole from their storage. Although it was very satisfying at the time, it created a lot of problems for her, and was unable to harm them. More importantly, if she pulled too many of these stunts then they would definitely be on guard against her.

This time, what Ye Ci wanted was complete elimination.

Until that time, she would hone her abilities and conceal her strength, waiting until the opportunity arose.

Golden Age would soon arrive. But before they came, every player and every guild would still live their everyday life. No one would have trouble eating or sleeping because of this news. They were all living their own life. Upwards Ho! would continue, as would Ye Ci.

It was also worth mentioning that at this time, the official site had organised a player photography competition. There were two types: video and photo. All players could contribute. There were three prizes for drama, skill, and promotional ability under the video category and the photo category likewise had three prizes for scenery, people, and other photos that did not fall into these categories, the miscellaneous. This competition was organised to test the waters, and thus did not give the players much time to enter. However, the organisers did not expect that so many players would participate, nor did they expect the level of excitement generated from this competition. This caused the organisers to consider continuing this competition the next year. Of course, this all happened later.

More importantly, in this year’s competition, the entries were truly a feast for the eyes.

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