Chapter 16 Upgrading for the Coming Crisis
The hut's deciphering work was swift. Lan Chi recorded the translations while contemplating which magical beast would be suitable for his needs.
Soon, he noticed a creature called "Shifting Mold."
[Shifting Mold]: Capable of mimicking other species.
"Shifting mimicry... looks promising." Lan Chi put down his pen and had the hut pause the translation. He opened the system trading channel and searched for listings selling Shifting Mold.
There weren't many sellers of Shifting Mold on the channel. The creature was available in large quantities but wasn't valuable—one Phosphorus Crystal could buy nearly a kilogram of the stuff.
Lan Chi glanced at the unit of measurement. "This system is pretty thoughtful, even converting the weight units to kilograms for me. Saves me from guessing the natives' measurement systems."
He directly purchased the Shifting Mold, along with a piece of meat called [Flame Hoof]. According to the information he had gathered, Flame Hoof was a common mount used by the local natives. This magical beast was obedient and had some defensive capabilities. His plan was to have the hut consume both types of magical beast meat and then transform into a Flame Hoof for the next phase.
After the hut consumed the two types of magical beast meat, it evolved a Flame Hoof in the living room. The creature was entirely dark red, interspersed with some brown-striped mixed fur.
The Flame Hoof paced back and forth in the living room, with a vine connecting its hoof to the floor.
"Is this right?" Lan Chi pointed at the vine.
"Can't help it. I'm controlling it—I can't cut off the connection," the hut replied. "When we transform into the wagon form, I'll connect it to the axle."
"Fine." Lan Chi shrugged and asked, "Besides the scorpion-tailed bees, can you generate other animals or magical beasts that can move freely?"
"Not yet. I only have the scorpion-tailed bees because I ate that bee. Why? What are you thinking?"
"Look at our combat strength—it's pathetically low. And we can't openly show Little Axe and Little Pickaxe to people. I'm thinking about how to increase our combat power without making me stand out too much," Lan Chi explained. "We're basically going to be wandering through war zones. If I don't have a powerful person or animal accompanying me, people will get suspicious."
The hut thought for a moment, pulled out the [Class Introduction] that Lan Chi had bought earlier, and said, "You could buy a puppet."
"A puppet? The kind puppet masters make?" Lan Chi certainly knew what puppets were. This world happened to have a class called puppet master—a rather morbid profession that used powerful living people as materials to refine into their puppets.
"There's something called a contract puppet. According to the introduction, you just need to drip blood on it and it will obey your commands. The Merchant Confederation probably sells them," the hut said.
"Oh? They sell things like that? Let me check." Lan Chi quickly opened the trading channel to search.
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He searched for a while but didn't find any information related to puppets. On second thought, it made sense—any puppet brought into this world was probably a powerful tool, otherwise people wouldn't have brought them. Naturally, very few would be available for sale.
Lan Chi thought for a moment and opened his chat with the gnome merchant Gil Hammerforge. Truth be told, he didn't really want to cooperate with this merchant again. People like him generally lacked integrity and enjoyed cheating others. However, they did have one advantage—if you had enough money, they would dare to sell anything, even contraband.
"I want to buy a puppet. Do you have any connections?" Lan Chi's message was concise and clear.
The gnome merchant replied quickly: "This is hard to get. I'll need to grease some palms."
"Tsk, looks promising." Lan Chi tapped the table, thought for a moment, and asked, "What kind can you get? What tier of puppet?"
"What tier do you want?" Gil Hammerforge countered.
"Give me a price range," Lan Chi said.
"Tier 1 costs 10,000 Phosphorus Crystals. Tier 2 costs 50,000. Tier 3 costs 100,000," the other party replied.
"Damn, that's expensive." Lan Chi's head hurt. He could still afford a Tier 1, and a Tier 2 would be barely possible, but a Tier 3 would require mass-producing cloned meat on a huge scale. Selling that much meat would definitely make him a target. "Got anything cheaper?"
"Nothing cheaper. This is cheap because we're in the early stages of the trial. If these were sold outside the trial ground, the price would double," the other party replied. After a few seconds, he added, "If it weren't for the early trial phase when everyone's short on supplies, I wouldn't be selling these either. These are good goods. We merchants don't have much combat strength—these are important defensive resources."
Lan Chi nodded. What the other party said did make sense. Moreover, this was currently the only seller willing to deal in such items. He had approached other merchants before, but none dared to sell merchant passes. "What kind of puppets are these?"
"Combat puppets. There aren't other types in the trial ground. Outside, I could get butler puppets, maid puppets, animal puppets, magical creature puppets, etc.," the merchant replied.
"Alright, I'll think about it," Lan Chi replied.
He closed the chat system and started calculating his Phosphorus Crystal reserves. From the six thousand cloned meat portions sold yesterday, he had earned approximately 58,000 Phosphorus Crystals. After spending 12,000 on purchases, he now had 46,000 left. It looked like he would need to sell meat in large quantities again.
Lan Chi's target was to buy a Tier 3 puppet. The Bloodstained Cultist who had attacked him before was Tier 1, and he and the hut had barely managed to kill him. If it had been any other tier, they would have been dead long ago.
Lan Chi took out two thousand Phosphorus Crystals. "Little Hut, here's for you. Produce ten thousand meat portions. The rest is yours."
"Okay!" the hut replied happily.
Soon, the meat portions were produced, and Lan Chi listed them in batches on the trading market. When the trading channel saw these meat portions, another uproar ensued, with everyone probing each other to figure out which faction was behind this.
Just as Lan Chi was carefully controlling the pace of his meat listings, one of the scorpion-tailed bees that had been sent out suddenly contacted him.
"Did something happen?" Lan Chi asked.
"I saw them fighting," a young voice sounded in Lan Chi's mind.
"Is it far from here?" Lan Chi continued asking. The scorpion-tailed bee's intelligence was still quite low. Although communication was possible, many things still needed to be taught slowly.
"About five distances from the last fight location," the scorpion-tailed bee replied.
The last fight location? Lan Chi thought for a moment and asked, "You mean the place where we were attacked?"
"Yes."
"Are there other races active nearby?" Lan Chi continued asking.
"Yes, I saw some like you, but with pointy ears, carrying bows and wooden sticks."
Pointy ears, bows, wooden sticks? Wasn't that the Elves' standard equipment?
"Are they far from us?" Lan Chi asked anxiously.
"Not far, about three distances?" the scorpion-tailed bee replied uncertainly.
Three distances—that was actually quite close. Lan Chi silently calculated the distance. After the attack, the hut had moved for nearly a full day to reach this location. But the hut's movement speed wasn't very fast—he had calculated it before, roughly the walking speed of an average adult, covering about 11-12 kilometers per day.
Three distances would be about 30 kilometers. The battlefield at five distances would be around 50 kilometers away.
It seemed he needed to speed up the modifications and leave this area as soon as possible.
