Chapter 7: Hidden Treasure
Zhang Nu got a large rusted treasure chest.
[Decrepit Black Iron Treasure Chest]. Treasure chest gained from a player conquering the Darkness Ruins. It contains random rewards.
There are two kinds of treasure chests.
The first is fortune chests.
These chests can appear anywhere in the world. Generally, they tend to appear in some utterly desolate locations. The chest's quality is also random. It basically all depends on luck.
The second kind of chests are reward chests.
These chests are basically completion rewards. When a player conquers an area or dungeon, it is one of the possible random rewards that might be generated. The quality of said chest is proportional to the difficulty level.
This particular case is obviously the second type.
[You've opened the Black Iron Treasure Chest. You gained "Gold" x200, "Blueprint: House of Bones" x1!]
[Blueprint: House of Bones]. Costs undeath gem x1, wood x20, stone x30, gold x300. You can construct a House of Bones in your territory.This is something quite good.
All blueprints that a Demon King can get are worth a lot.
This "House of Bones" blueprint allows one to construct a House of Bones anywhere within their territory. With it, they gain the ability to summon a certain number of skeleton soldiers.
These kinds of buildings are basically barracks type buildings.
They can grant the Demon King in question a certain number of soldiers from a different race.
Zhang Nu doesn't particularly care for skeleton soldiers. Those things have no intelligence and they are super weak in terms of combat power. However, that doesn't mean that skeleton soldiers have no value.
First of all, as undead, they don't need to eat or drink, so they won't end up being any kind of burden on the territory itself. They're basically perfect as dumb labor.
This was quite a good turn of luck.
He got a lot out of this excursion.
Even without this blueprint, the 30 skeleton soldiers yielded him 150 gold and a skeleton mage got him 50 gold. In total, this was an income of 200 gold and in the early game, every single piece of gold is very valuable.
This will allow him to summon 40 laborers or 4 soldiers.
If it was any other player, they'd probably be completely satisfied with that and have gotten ready to leave.
Zhang Nu didn't leave though.
Based on his appraisal message, this Darkness Ruins has a hidden treasure. He's not going to miss out on the extra gains there.
After some exploration, Zhang Nu finally found it.
It was a basement hidden under the ruins.
It was full of all kinds of vials and bottles, as well as all kinds of random books.
The potions and herbs have long since rotted away.
The books are mostly intact though. Although they're not especially valuable or anything, they can be used to whittle away the time with. It will also help him gain a better understanding of this world and that will be of great aid to his future battles.
Zhang Nu finally found a chest hidden away.
[Lord's Treasure Chest]. Contained within is the Village Lord's main inheritance.
Found it!
This is what Zhang Nu really wanted to find!
After opening it up, what appeared was bar after bar of gold, all neatly lined up and shining.
Besides the gold bars, there were also various coins and gems. The riches on display were dazzling.
"Holy shit!"
"I'm rich!"
This is the treasure that his cheat pointed out to him.
It's the main inheritance of the village's lord. In the current period of the game, this is no small fortune.
[Gained level 1 undeath gem x1, gained level 1 earth gem x1, gained level 1 water gem x1...]
The gems are quite valuable. They can be used for forging or construction.
[Gold discovered. Would you like to convert?]
[Gold successfully converted. Gold +1200!]
The shining gold bars all disappeared. What replaced them was an insane increase in his amount of money. It increased by 1200 in a single go!
That's awesome!
Zhang Nu had spent quite a bit of time clearing the ruins, but his gains from that were a full decimal place less than this particular haul.
Plus, besides the gold, he also got a haul of fairly valuable gems. This was super worth it.
After heading back to the altar, the 15 laborers were working furiously.
They've made quite some progress. They managed to hunt several dozen bigfoot birds and unicorn deers within half a day. Beyond that, they had also put up a temporary stone house.
[Simple Stone House]. Recovery speed +1%.
It is rather simple, but it's still somewhere to stay in. He is a full blown Demon King after all, so he can't go sleeping out in the ruins or wilderness like some kind of hobo.
It'll do for the time being.
Zhang Nu wanted to have his own Demon King Castle though.
He wanted neat military barracks, high castle walls, perfect defenses, etc.
This requires an enormous amount of labor force. Plus, some buildings with special effects can't be built with just draconian laborers. Those require blueprints to construct.
Thankfully though, he has plenty of money now.
A huge fortune of about 1500 gold.
Zhang Nu first spent 500 gold to summon up 100 draconian laborers at once. Then he spent 400 gold to summon up 4 soldiers, bringing up his territory up to 5 combat units.
The soldiers don't have any real production ability. They also require double the food upkeep that the laborers do, so it's far too much of a burden to support an overly large military right now. Just having enough to use should be sufficient for now.
Thus, compared to combat power, in the current period, the labor force for building up the territory is far more important.
Zhang Nu had 600 gold left and he also has the materials as well. Thus, he decided to build the House of Bones to unlock the ability to summon skeleton soldiers. This will help to continue to build up his territory.
After a bit of time, he managed to assemble the required wood and stone.
Now, the gems, wood, stone, and gold have all been assembled.
[House of Bones successfully constructed!]
[Successfully unlocked skeleton soldier summoning. Unit summoning limit +100!]
T/N: 200 gold gets him 40 laborers, that checks out at 5 gold per laborer, but 4 soldiers when each costs 100 gold? That's what the raws say though... This won't be the last time that math mistakes will show up either. Still, I guess I'm translating this to match the raws for now...
Comment if you have an opinion on it. Should I simply translate as the raw state or should I make my own edits to actually correct any math errors I find (as much as I can anyways)? Thoughts? Opinions?