Defiance of the Fall

Chapter 539: Loot

“What? ONE BILLION for some unsealing?” Zac almost roared as some killing intent started leaking from his body.

“Most of it was the cost of materials. Unsealing is akin to array breaking, and we had to spend a lot to get the work done. Just the best version of [Warrior's Heart] cost us almost 45 Million to unseal, in addition to time and manpower spent. The whole process of unsealing this many treasures required half the clan to work arduously through the week, including our elders and children," Calrin said with a sorrowful visage.

"It was quite an ordeal, come look how gaunt the young ones have become from the stress,” Calrin said with a deep sigh, clearly getting ready to summon a bunch of gnome kids once more to tug at Zac's heartstrings.

“Alright, alright,” Zac snorted. “No need to parade the children around again. One billion it is, but you better not have unsealed a bunch of garbage and expect me to pay.”

“Just a pittance for a man such as yourself,” Calrin said with a smile. “Don’t be too surprised when you hear this, but the total value of the treasures in the Cosmos Sack reached almost 100 Billion Nexus Coins.”

“So you took a flat 1% fee?” Zac said, the quoted value of his treasures quickly calming him down.

Zac had actually expected it to be a lot lower after seeing how little treasures there were in the mentalist's Spatial Ring. People wouldn't be bringing items meant for the E-Grade into the tower, but rather leave it with their clans, and F-grade items along with their equipment could only be so valuable.

However, he was happy to be wrong this time.

He had felt a bit like a pauper after [Love's Bond] had swallowed most of his net worth, and much of the remainders were swallowed by [Verun's Bite]. He still had a few billion Nexus Coins, but it no longer felt like a mountain of wealth, especially not after having visited the Base Town. The elites there could throw out over a Hundred Billion Nexus Coins without batting an eye, and all the peak treasures were far out of his price range.

“Indeed, where else can you get such a low fee for work of this nature? Only for friends and family,” Calrin said with righteousness.

Zac snorted when he saw the Sky Gnome's expression, but he knew that Calrin was telling the truth. One percent wasn't a very high fee for this kind of work. Identifying items cost 5% at the General Store that the System provided to all Town Lords, and they could only identify pretty common items. One percent to not only identify, but also tally and unseal was a great deal.

“Well, whatever,” Zac said as he turned his attention toward the crystal with the list of items.

A list materialized as he infused some energy into it, and his eyes widened as one line after another appeared, listing an untold number of treasures. The scions of the clans of the Zecia Sector had really come prepared when dealing with the tower.

“We’ve consolidated items of the same category into the same list item as there are simply too many of some items,” Calrin explained. “For example, both [Second Wind Pill] and [Surging Vitality Pill] are middle E-Grade healing pills, so they are both listed as such. And you have 2348 of those kinds of pills.”

Zac nodded in understanding, and he saw that the list clumped items together by category and grade. For example, there were 84 Low-Grade swords, and 12 Peak Grade swords among the weaponry. However, there were actually 643 High-Grade Swords, which obviously stood out compared to the other qualities.

“Why are there so many High-Grade Swords?” Zac asked with confusion. “Was someone carrying around hundreds of them?”

“Most of them are of the same make, unattuned shortswords with matching inscriptions. I am guessing that the previous owner was either planning on selling some weapons that their clan had produced, or was able to use the swords in some sort of weapon array,” Calrin said.

“Weapon array?” Zac asked with interest.

“A mix of a swordmaster and an array master. It is not too uncommon a path. Rather than just controlling one weapon, you would control hundreds of them like a swarm. Some C-Grade Monarchs command millions. You can even set up arrays to unleash powerful attacks or just overwhelm the enemies with numbers,” Calrin explained.

Zac’s nodded in understanding. He had encountered that sort of fighters before, it was just that he didn't know the name for it. One of the Incursion Masters used flying needles to attack him from every imaginable angle. There was also the poison master at the start of the 8th floor who attacked with a flying swarm of daggers.

Even a few of the visions he had seen when reaching peak mastery of [Axe Mastery] had used sets of flying axes.

Of course, swords were just one type of weapons he had gathered, and Zac realized he had gotten almost ten thousand weapons from his trip to the Base Town, most of them Medium and High-quality E-Grade weapons. This was far more than he had anticipated as there were just a few hundred people he killed. He had picked up a couple of dozen weapons during his climb as well, but nothing that would explain this number.

These were all normal weapons forged with E-Grade materials, but they weren't Spirit Tools. Calrin’s explanation seemed pretty likely, that some of these collections of gear were meant for resale. A lot of people used the Tower of Eternity as an opportunity to make money as it was a way to circumvent the fees to trade through the Mercantile System.

This was even further evidenced by the mountains of raw materials. There were over 50 thousand E-Grade Attuned crystals altogether, making up roughly a fifth of the total value of the loot. They had probably been brought from attuned worlds where there was a massive surplus of certain crystals, intended to trade for other ones that were more valuable back home.

It was the same with there being large stocks of over a hundred different materials and herbs, many of them extremely useful for Port Atwood. All of them were just peak F-Grade or E-Grade materials, but that was just what Port Atwood needed right now to successfully upgrade from an F-Grade force to a legitimate E-Grade force.

Finally, there were was the list of “big-ticket items” at the end, and Zac looked through them one by one.

There was first of all 92 Spirit Tools, though most of them were the bog-standard fare that might not even make it into an auction. At least a quarter of those who managed to get a ticket to the Tower of Eternity would already have gotten their hands on a Spirit Tool, and it was mostly the stronger people of the Base Town who had assaulted him at the end.

Of course, there were still a lot of people who might have the wealth or background to own a Spirit Tool but hadn't found a fitting one. Ogras was a prime example of this, as his spear was just High-Quality E-Grade weapon without any spirituality.

However, there were some good Spirit Tools among those he had acquired too, and two of the Spirit Tools were actually marked as Peak Quality by Calrin. The Sky Gnome assigned two types of grades on each weapon; rank and quality. For example, one of the Peak Quality Spirit Tools was just Early E-Grade, whereas the other one was Peak Quality High E-Grade.

That still meant that they were both good enough to have been put at the last section of the Auctions that Zac attended, with the latter probably being something that would be saved for one of the bigger monthly auctions.

The quality assessment by the Sky Gnomes was a mix of attunement, craftsmanship, and upgrade potential. [Verun’s Bite] would no doubt have been assessed as Low Quality when he got it, but Calrin said it was either High or Peak quality by now. He was unsure though, as Zac had taken an unorthodox path in upgrading it by feeding it a bunch of uncommon treasures.

Who knew what the stone he fed Verun was, and who knew what effect a bunch of Dragon blood and a Dragon Core would have? But it had definitely improved the weapon at a fundamental level, and not just evolved it to a higher grade. The bones that created the axehead looked completely different from how it did before, and its potential had probably shot through the roof.

Just the fact that Verun already had enough spirituality to actually leave the weapon and take form meant that reaching D-Grade would probably just require him finding the right set of materials. There shouldn't be any bottlenecks to mention.

Zac didn’t really care about the lower quality Spirit Tools, and he guessed that some would be sold during the auction while others would enter the merit exchange. But the two Peak Quality Spirit Tools were essentially strategic resources that he wanted to assign himself. They were a bit troubling though, as he didn’t have a clear candidate in mind.

The first one was a bestial claw, perhaps something that could be used by a pugilist. It actually came from one of the leaders of the attack, but he hadn’t even taken it out during the fight as he was busy maintaining that Six Directions array or whatever it was called. It was a bit sad, the man got killed by the cursed blade’s half-moon before he even had a chance to display his ultimate skills.

The highest-graded Spirit Tool was actually a cauldron, and according to Calrin it could both be used for alchemy and fighting. It was much higher in quality compared to the cauldron he had gifted to his sister, and it was likely the most valuable Spirit Tool on Port Atwood apart from [Love's Bond].

His first idea was to give it to his sister as well, but he eventually decided against it. Kenzie had only shown a fleeting interest in alchemy, and it felt like a waste to give something this valuable away as though it was a toy. He would keep it for himself for now, and rent it out in case his force managed to nurture a talented Alchemist in the future.

That would bind him or her to his force, as a good cauldron was extremely important to progress in alchemy, just like a proper weapon was required to bring out your greatest potential in battle.

The origin of the cauldron was a bit baffling though. Zac's first assumption was that he had killed someone from the Zethaya clan, but he felt that he would have been informed some way or another if that was the case. But it didn't come from one of the five leaders of the assault either, but rather one of the nameless faces in the mob. Calrin had found the cauldron inside a normal Cosmos Sack along with over ten thousand pills of middling quality.

Calrin guessed that it was the defining treasure of a weaker or declining alchemy clan, and the elders had lent it to whoever had entered the Tower of Eternity. The scion would probably just use the cauldron to smash through the earlier floors of the tower before he focused on his alchemy and selling pills, but he had perhaps been caught up in the madness that his Projection elicited.

Zac had been shocked to hear from Ogras that the projection of the Stele had turned everyone almost mad, and it had somewhat lowered the anger he had felt over the incident. He remembered feeling extremely confused that a bunch of weaklings dared to risk their lives fighting him even after he reached the 9th floor, but it turned out that the System had essentially shoved a berserker pill down everyone's throats.

Or perhaps it was the Stele itself. It was based on war or conflict, after all, and the power of its impartment might just have been too high. Perhaps all 9th-floor apparitions had that kind of effect.

In either case, Spirit Toos were obviously not the only high-value items in the Cosmos Sacks. There were was one item on the list that was a natural treasure similar to the [Evolution Fruit] he got from Yrial, though it was a shimmering liquid stored in a large crystal vial. Zac was a bit tempted to drink it himself, but he felt it was a bit unnecessary.

It probably wouldn’t work on his Draugr side judging by its name, [Water of Exuberance], and it felt like a waste to use on his human side as well. His human side had almost reached D-Grade Race already thanks to the [Evolution Fruit], and he could just complete the final step by taking normal medicinal baths.

It would better serve someone on his force, perhaps Sap Trang now that his odds of evolving seemed to have improved.