Chapter 2 : Friendship Town

At the edge of the small river gully, Allen and I sat quietly, our eyes looking at the floats on the surface of the water.

 Now that I had risen to the intermediate third level of the Fishing Technique, when I incorporated my heart into the Fishing Technique, the speed of fishing was no worse than Allen's advanced skill. Later on, I whimsically added Beast Taming to the assist bar, and the effect even surpassed Allen's.

 However, after I finally caught the only Boss Fish in the river, the "Bright Fish", I started to lose interest, and since I couldn't improve my skills any further, what was the point of fishing any longer.

 I stood up and threw down my intermediate level 3 Farming Technique into the river, a skill I had learnt from the Royal Library the day before yesterday, and which was now fully upgraded. However, I still maintain the habit of making up half an hour of Farming Technique every time I fish for an hour, so that there will be more and more fish in the river gorge day by day.

 Suddenly a sound like a cow's bellowing came, and a giant turtle climbed up the bank.

 It's the Genteel Turtle BOSS ah, the Genteel Turtle here has been brushed no less than ten times, according to the players in the village, the refreshing time is no longer fixed now, plus this BOSS explodes poorly, so they don't come here to guard it anymore.

 Scouting, level 29, compared to when I killed it, it has increased by four levels, but it should still only explode silver level equipment.

 Even if it explodes gold level equipment, I'm not really interested in it anymore, there are so many good things sitting at home, and with my crafting skills that have all risen to intermediate level 3, I can make gold weapons myself.

 Of course, the experience of the Xuan Turtle BOSS is still relatively considerable, I touched out the magic staff, was about to take a shot, but I heard the little Xuan Turtle in the pet space let out a wail.

 Hey, my heart was soft, how can I kill my baby's relatives.

 In a moment of hesitation, the Xuan Turtle hit me with a water arrow, knocking out 150 points of my blood, it hurts, it seems that the system has allowed the Xuan Turtle to evolve from a physical pet to a legal pet.

 I hurriedly flashed, turned to the back of the turtle. Unexpectedly, the Xuan Turtle's two back feet slashed and two sand arrows hit me again.

 It's so annoying and dangerous, I had to take medicine while summoning the baby to armour, now the baby is level 25, adding 350 points of blood to me, without it, I'm afraid I'm not qualified to be called "pervert" by my friends haha.

 The big Xuan Turtle saw the small Xuan Turtle on my shield, suddenly ah screamed, eyes showed a friendly look. However, it quickly turned its gaze fiercely towards me, as if it hated me even more than just now.

 Could it be that this guy saw that I was the one who killed the little Xuan Turtle's mother?

 Xuan turtle launched a "charge" to me, can not underestimate it, the evolution of the Xuan turtle, speed is much faster, coupled with it has the same magic range as me, kill will not be as easy as before. However, the most important thing is, I don't want to leave a psychological shadow on my pet baby.

 I helplessly turned around and fled, and Alan also mounted his horse and ran away.

 I can't help but smile bitterly at myself after getting rid of the turtle, honest people suffer, if I continue to be soft like this, how can I still play the game, is this still considered a professional player? This way, when can I earn that 2 million world coins ah.

 Yes, I didn't earn that money from the Haitian Society because I didn't sell the village.

 When I stated that the village wouldn't be sold, Bernie got angry and said that the consequences would be severe.

 But I also told him that he had better not do anything to my village, and that if he got mad, I would sell the village to another group.

 So Bernie had to shut up. Later, through Erin, through Ethan, through others who found Marshall, one by one, they came to persuade me, and finally, for some reason, Master Shi also implicitly persuaded me once.

 When Master Shi helped me build the Temple of Weapons, the Haitian Society offered the price to 50 million and told me that in three more days, a group would be able to acquire the territory, and after that time, my town wouldn't even be worth 500,000.

 However, I didn't pay any more attention to him, I believed that I would soon be able to earn the money to cure myself with my own strength.

 Turning my eyes back to the town, now that my Albert had entered the semi-mature stage and my riding skill was intermediate third class, plus the monsters on the road were already few and far between, and the road had been smoothed out by the players, so it only took twenty minutes to return to the village.

 When I entered the town, I first opened the town's property window to take a look: "Friendship Town, population 371, force 452, culture 341, magic 542, economy 207, security 409, production 297, environment 502. town ranking 157409 (continent has a total of 2 million towns)."

 Well, not much else has changed, the environment and culture have risen some more.

 Friendship Town, this new name is very earthy, but it overpowers all the good and racy names, and was unanimously approved when proposed by me.

 I called out to the "villagers" who were hard at work in the village, "Guys, you're not working hard, I've been there for a few hours, how come the production only went up by 2 points!"

 A guy with a dark face raised his head, "Shit! Lord Lord, try it if you can, we've been working non-stop for six hours!" It was Tom, this kid was born with a low level of enlightenment, his skills rose like a tortoise, and he was only up to advanced smelting and ironworking now.

 A player next to him laughed, "It can't be helped, we are producing low value-added products, now the equipment below the Gold Weapon is already on the rotten market, it's not worth much, it's good to be able to rise two points."

 I actually understand that before these players have risen to expert level ironworking, they can't afford to use high level ores, so of course, they are now just producing things below gold weapon to practice their craft.

 Apart from Tom who was one of my own, all the other blacksmith players were just ordinary friendships or even no friendships, it wasn't good to ask them to consume precious ores in order to raise my town attributes.

 Looking around, Leon Ace and the others are not there, they should have gone to practice, now there are ten magic pillars and arrow towers in the town, even if a company of players comes to destroy them, they are not afraid. That's why I sent even Louis to take my friends to practice.

 Because it's night time, Bill and Erin are not online, but looking at the neat trees and various flowers inside and outside the town, I know how much Bill has contributed to my town. As for Irene, besides singing every day to cheer everyone up, she also sewed dozens of coloured flags for our town with her own hands. The yellow, platinum-grade flag on the high platform in the centre of the town, embroidered with ten folded hands, was the town flag of our Friendship Town, with the additional attribute that players from this town grouped together have a 5% strength and spirit bonus.

 The flag is a good flag, but it cost me 20 gold coins to buy back the precious "moon silk", which is made from yellow rose petals. I used up half of the silk to make one flag, and gave the rest to Erin to make new clothes.

 The sound of reading came from the school. Originally, there were only about 10 kids in town, and most of them were NPCs, so I didn't plan to build a school. However, Bill convinced his parents to buy two new helmets and enter the game as well, and both of his parents are teachers and wanted to experience what it's like to teach in the game, so I allocated 50 gold coins to build a school.

 I didn't expect Bill's parents to be instantly hooked on the place, not only working with Bill as a gardener planting flowers and grass, but also going to fight monsters and play with extreme interest. Of course, they didn't let go of their jobs either, they taught their children with all their heart and made the cultural value of the town keep rising.

 I built a church and a temple each, the function is the same, players can apply for admission to the church inside and get 1 point of luck. At the same time, every time you die, you can lose 1% less experience value by looking for a priest or host right away, and the effect will get stronger and stronger as the buildings are upgraded in the future.

 The town can repair the primary union, the NPC inside can send a small number of profession quests, because the magic furnace attracts a lot of blacksmith players, currently I built a blacksmith union.

 As for shops, I asked Master Shi to help me build more than a dozen of them, all of them are intermediate shops, which cost me more than a thousand gold coins. At the same time, I went to the black market to hire more than a dozen expert NPCs, and even though I used intermediate level 3 "Negotiation Technique" on them, they still cost me hundreds of gold coins every day.

 However, things didn't always go smoothly, although the Haitian Society didn't openly turn their back on me, but behind our backs, they used their powerful forces to create a great impact on us.

 They mobilised all their connections and used a gold coin offensive to make many of the players who had already taken up residence in our village move away. On the other hand, most of the players who had gathered things did not trade them in our village, but went to the neighbouring villages to sell them at high prices to the Sea and Sky Society's buyers, depriving us of taxes and economic value. And the shop I set up at great cost did a lukewarm business and kept losing money.

 Such a situation remained unimproved until the Haitian Society itself already owned the territory; they weren't trying to force me to sell the town, they were purely trying to punish me, the one who dared to ignore them.

 At the same time, most of the players left behind were again intent on grabbing resources, so very few of them would genuinely help the village develop.

 Players belonging to various forces, or players with many friends, have formed "mine protection teams" and "boss killing teams" just like in other places, occupying all kinds of resources and leaving less and less room for ordinary players to survive.

 To deal with these bullies, my means are really limited, just expel their town registration, so that they do not get the town's preferences and additional attributes, at the same time, housing will automatically be returned to the builder to re-sell.

 However, this punishment was nothing compared to the abundant resources, these people continued to occupy the mines and grab BOSSes, and then took the teleportation array to the neighbouring villages to store their stuff. Because they no longer belonged to the townspeople, collecting away things without boosting the town's production value, the loser was still me.

 Bill and Erin had once angrily asked us to go to war with those players, but everyone was unimpressed. As veteran players, we have become accustomed to this phenomenon in the game, as long as we have the strength, it is "legal" to rob the mines and monsters, this is also the unwritten rules of the game world.

 According to Marshall's suggestion, we also want to reach an agreement with these players, as long as they are willing to trade and process materials in our village, they will be reinstated to their village status, and we do not care about their behaviour of robbing monsters. However, this suggestion was vetoed by me, after all, I am the lord here, and I also have a responsibility to the other players in the territory, so I can't not give them an explanation. At the same time, I also don't like this behaviour of the group robbing monsters, I have always played the game with the principle of not robbing monsters and not robbing treasures.

 In this way, the ambition and enthusiasm we had after building the town has now waned a bit, and, with more and more advanced players in the game, everyone must speed up their levelling and skills, or else they will fall behind. As for me, due to financial constraints, I've sacked some NPCs of the loss-making shops and stopped the construction of the town for the time being.

 The town's income was very little, and it was cold and quiet in front of the various newly built facilities, but I didn't regret my decision, and I was confident that I would develop the town well. It's just that being suppressed by the Haitian Society has left me in a rather depressed mood, and just listening to the songs that Lisa plays for me every day can't get rid of it, so that's why I ran off to go fishing with Allen to relax.

 After making my rounds everywhere, I was about to go out to practice, when a silhouette flashed in the teleportation array, and four or five players walked out and greeted me, "Hello, can I ask around?"

 It's been a while since I've seen such polite players, I walked up pleasantly, "Can I help you?"

 The handsome young chivalrous man at the head arched his hand, "My name is 'Tang Clan', we're working on a quest, may I ask if you've ever heard of the 'Sarks'?"

 I froze for a moment, "This, you guys tell us first, what kind of quest is it."

 The five of them looked at each other, one of the big warriors laughed, "Anyway, this quest will only be issued once, so I'm not afraid of him robbing it from us, so tell him."

 Tang Men nodded, "It's like this, this mission is 'liberate the herdsmen', we have to go to the Sac tribe to kill that brutal patriarch of theirs and rescue the herdsmen who are in deep water."