Chapter 539: Loot (1/2)

“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.