Chapter 129: Power Built on Wealth

Lake U City.

Upon returning to this city at the heart of the island, Sunan was surprised to find that the number of slaves in the Lower City seemed to have increased significantly.

While passing through the Lower City, he saw five groups of kobolds and lizardmen, armed with mining picks, being led out of the city by manticores.

Sunan pondered this.

Not long after he returned to the study of Base 2, Karolaina hurried in.

"Master, you've returned."

Karolaina greeted him respectfully.

Sunan waved a hand dismissively, asking, "What's with all those slaves outside?"

Karolaina quickly replied, "I was just about to report to you."

"Kasham's bugs have been frequently hunting around the small tribes nearby. Unable to survive, those tribes have been migrating here. I thought about the three mines we still need to develop, so I captured those people and put them to work mining."

Karolaina spoke as if this was the most natural thing in the world.

In the underground world, it was perfectly normal for the strong to capture the weak as slaves.

In the past, food was a concern, but now with supplies being transported from the surface city of Shimmer, there were no such worries, allowing Karolaina to capture slaves without hesitation.

Sunan nodded, realizing he'd need Base 1 to produce more clay golems to get the remaining three mines operational as soon as possible.

"So, the insect disaster is imminent?"

"It should be soon," Karolaina replied, her expression serious. "Based on past occurrences, it shouldn't be more than half a year away at the latest."

She hesitated, then couldn't help but ask, "Master, should we contact Matu and Osen? Handling the insect disaster on our own might be too much."

"No rush. Let's see how Matu and Osen react before deciding."

Sunan waved off her concern, shifting focus to other matters.

"How much mithril do we currently have in storage?"

"Just over three kilograms," Karolaina answered without hesitation.

As a capable assistant, she was well aware of what Sunan cared about most and had all related information memorized.

"Three kilograms, huh..."

Sunan frowned slightly.

Crafting a simulacrum required at least sixteen kilograms of mithril.

Even with what Base 1 had accumulated through purchases during this time, they were still only about a third of the way there, leaving a significant gap.

"Are there any other silver mines nearby?"

Karolaina thought for a moment and said, "Within a hundred kilometers of Lake U City, there are only two known silver mines. We're currently developing one, and the other is in Matu's territory."

Matu, huh.

Sunan's eyes flickered with thought.

"Continue gathering mithril."

"Oh, and where's Amy?"

Karolaina hesitated, her expression turning a bit peculiar as she glanced around.

She couldn't shake the feeling that Amy had been secretly watching her lately.

Despite Amy's space-warping abilities, as a manticore gifted in illusions, Karolaina could sense its presence.

If it were anyone else, she might suspect they were there to spy on her.

But Amy, being a simple magic pet, shouldn't have such motives.

Who was behind Amy's actions?

It couldn't be the Master; he had no reason to do so.

Was it the apprentices at the base?

They seemed to be the only ones who could influence Amy.

With her thoughts drifting, Karolaina maintained her composure, softly saying, "Lord Amy was just here."

No sooner had she spoken than Amy appeared, landing on Sunan's shoulder.

"Meow, Sunan, you're back! You were gone so long; I missed you!"

"There was a lot to handle, so I was delayed," Sunan replied, smiling as he petted Amy's head, causing it to close its eyes in contentment. "But now there's nothing urgent on the surface, so I'll be staying here for a while."

"That's great, meow!"

Amy cheered, then suddenly seemed to remember something, disappearing with a whoosh. A few seconds later, it reappeared with a cloth bag in its mouth.

"Meow, this is a gift, treasures I've collected recently," Amy mumbled, its speech muffled.

"Thank you."

Sunan smiled, accepting the bag and opening it to inspect the contents.

Inside were over a dozen scattered items.

Magic essence flowers, icewood, and hawkeye agates... all unique to the underground world and rare materials without exception.

Sunan couldn't help but marvel at Amy's particle sensing ability, which was truly advantageous in the underground world, allowing it to easily find rare materials that were hard to come by outside.

"How is it, meow?" Amy's eyes widened in anticipation, its expression begging for praise.

Sunan chuckled, "I really like the gift; thank you. I'll give you some ice mint later."

Amy's eyes lit up, nearly drooling.

Of all the ice mint it had tasted, Sunan's was the most delicious.

It was the pinnacle of flavor, as if all the ice mint had been condensed into one ultimate taste.

Inhaling one could bring a whole day's enjoyment!

"Hurry, meow, I'll wait here for you!" Amy urged excitedly.

Sunan promised with a smile, giving Karolaina a look to prepare some ice mint.

Karolaina glanced at Amy with a hint of resentment, feeling less valued than a cat.

After synthesizing some ice mint and placating Amy, Sunan headed to the golem factory to release the elite Twin-Blade Spider.

In the numerous encounters with the Spark Church, this elite Twin-Blade Spider had been invaluable, its combat prowess not much inferior to the Shadow Dragon, whose dragon bloodline concentration had reached 28%.

As Sunan's strength grew, he encountered increasingly powerful opponents.

Ordinary golems like stone golems and Twin-Blade Spiders were adequate against regular knights but lacked the capability to even serve as cannon fodder against stronger foes.

Even elite stone golems and steel golems, which were one-circle legendary golems, were starting to struggle.

With the future in mind, Sunan realized he needed to craft more advanced golem puppets.

He had three options.

The first was naturally the elite Twin-Blade Spider.

The elite Twin-Blade Spider had proven its worth in battle.

Its exceptional agility made it highly effective against nimble adversaries.

Per his instructions before leaving, Bases 1 and 2 had stockpiled a large amount of tungsten steel, which could be used to craft more Twin-Blade Spiders.

Sunan estimated he could synthesize three to four elite Twin-Blade Spiders.

The second option was to synthesize higher-grade stone golems.

Crafting steel golems required consuming micro soul crystals. Without a stable source of these crystals, mass-producing steel golems wasn't feasible, making synthesis using steel golems impractical.

He had to settle for using stone golems instead.

At least Sunan had a stable source of gemstones.

Before coming to Lake U City, he visited Base 1 to check on the gem nest.

During his absence, Karolaina had regularly delivered collected split catalyst nutrients to Base 1, where the apprentices fed the gem bugs.

Now the number of gem bugs had increased to eighteen, with an annual gemstone yield exceeding six hundred.

Additionally, there were the gemstones periodically acquired from the Fire Fox Merchant Guild.

There was no need to worry about material shortages in this regard.

Moreover, the cost of synthesizing second-circle legendary stone golems wasn't high, nearly two thousand gold coins.

Even with the addition of enchanted weaponry, the cost was just over two thousand gold coins, slightly less than high-grade Twin-Blade Spiders.

Conversely, their combat strength was slightly inferior, but they excelled in battles requiring frontal assaults.

The third option was to craft higher-level golems.

Aiwagni's experiment notes included the design for an adamantite golem.

The adamantite golem was a three-circle legendary golem, its combat prowess surpassing many third-level wizard apprentices.

Rose had been helpless against an adamantite golem, seeking Sunan's cooperation for a resolution.

Even Sunan, at that time, had to push the Magic Rune Core to its limits to merely severely damage an adamantite golem.

Though his abilities had since improved, defeating an adamantite golem still required considerable effort.

With fifty or sixty adamantite golems at his disposal, Sunan felt he could dominate the Starlight Continent.

"But crafting these is a real challenge."

Even among the various golem types, adamantite golems were considered mid-tier, with significant crafting difficulty.

Level 4 [Golem Crafting] was barely adequate; level 5 was the standard.

Sunan glanced at his panel.

Due to his extensive golem crafting, his [Golem Crafting] progress bar was nearly two-thirds full, just over three thousand proficiency points shy of level 5.

Skill requirements wouldn't be an issue for long.

The key was materials.

The primary material for an adamantite golem was magical adamantite, an enchanted variant of adamantite.

An adamantite golem required about fourteen to fifteen tons of magical adamantite.

Coupled with various gemstones, rare materials, silver, and gold, the total cost was estimated at around fifty thousand gold coins.

"Fortunately, we recently profited greatly from the Spark Church, enough to craft an adamantite golem."

Sunan estimated that crafting fourteen to fifteen tons of magical adamantite himself would take a year or two.

However, turning it into a task for Base 1's apprentices could reduce the time to two or three months.

The difficulty of crafting magical adamantite wasn't high, akin to enchanted weapons, and many apprentices at the base could handle it independently.

Noting this, Sunan planned to implement it upon returning to Base 1, then began crafting Twin-Blade Spiders.

After spending over half a month, he turned all the tungsten steel from both bases into Twin-Blade Spiders, ultimately synthesizing four elite ones.

Including the earlier one, Sunan now had five second-circle legendary golems.

He didn't stop there but proceeded with further experimentation.

"While Twin-Blade Spiders are agile, they have a clear weakness: they can't fly."

"They're fine against legendary knights, but against wizard apprentices with Levitation or flying magical items, they become sitting ducks."

To address this weakness, Sunan devised a solution to permanently affix Levitation to the Twin-Blade Spiders.

This idea was inspired by the simulacrum's design.

Using this approach, any golem could permanently affix spells, granting it spellcasting capabilities.

However, simulacrums achieved this with copious amounts of gemstones and mithril in their materials.

Unwilling to expend mithril at this stage, Sunan opted for an alternative: using magical item crafting to grant spellcasting abilities to the Twin-Blade Spiders.

It was akin to embedding a spell storage magical item within the Twin-Blade Spider.

Since Twin-Blade Spiders lacked mental energy, another form of energy was needed to activate the magical item, achieving the spellcasting effect.

Sunan chose magic stones.

The resulting elite Twin-Blade Spiders gained flying capabilities with Levitation, at the cost of consuming one low-grade magic stone per hour.

To other wizard apprentices, this might seem excessively costly.

Expending precious magic stones just to grant a golem flying abilities was seen as extravagant and unwise.

However, Sunan had an abundance of magic stones, capable of being produced cheaply and abundantly.

To others, they were valuable resources, but to him, they were merely inexpensive energy sources.

The real cost came from affixing the second-circle spell.

Simply affixing Levitation added about three hundred gold coins to the cost.

Anticipating the need to combat Kasham's insect swarm, Sunan also added a wide-area damage spell, Shattering Sound Wave, an agility-boosting spell, Lightness, a durability-enhancing spell, Tenacity, and a strength-enhancing spell, Brute Force.

In the end, the cost of a single elite Twin-Blade Spider exceeded 23,000 gold coins.

The total cost for five was over 110,000 gold coins.

This didn't include the consumption of magic stones during battle.

"The strength of third-level wizard apprentices ranges from one-circle to four-circle."

"The combat capability of an elite Twin-Blade Spider is roughly mid-tier for a third-level wizard apprentice."

"Spending 110,000 gold coins for the equivalent strength of five third-level wizard apprentices is quite a bargain."

Sunan nodded inwardly.

He planned to synthesize several second-circle legendary high-grade stone golems as a precaution.

Additionally, he intended to craft a batch of Extreme Protection Rings and Calamity Rings for self-defense.

Having already crafted golem puppets costing over twenty thousand gold coins, he wouldn't skimp on a batch of twilight-grade magical items.

However, this meant that the mining revenue from Lake U City for the next few months would be poured into this bottomless pit.

Luckily, three more mines had recently been developed, or he wouldn't be able to sustain such extravagant spending.

"Power is built on wealth."

Sunan couldn't help but sigh.

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