Chapter 190:

【Ding! Special Hidden Quest “Murphy’s Troubles” has been triggered! Quest Description: Lord Murphy has acquired his own territory, but he is not happy. This unhappiness stems from his inability to fully inherit the offerings from the Blood Vulture family. In the land of Transia, there have always been legends about the ‘Vampire’s Secret Treasure’. Most people regard it as a mere rumor or joke, but Murphy, as a member of the Blood Vulture family, knows that it is more than just a legend. He only needs a few people who are skilled in treasure hunting and trustworthy enough to lend him a hand. Quest Objective: Visit Lord Murphy and inquire about the rumors of the ‘Blood Vulture’s Secret Treasure’. Quest Reward: Treasure hunting gameplay officially updated. Note! This quest cannot be shared, and Lord Murphy hopes you keep it as confidential as possible. Additionally, you may need to demonstrate your burning loyalty to Lord Murphy before he shares information about the Blood Vulture’s Secret Treasure with you. (Obtain the title ‘Blood Vulture Clan’s Eternal Night Knight’)】 Joy Stick blinked his eyes. He immediately realized that he seemed to have caused quite a stir, as his successful treasure hunt prompted the game system to introduce new gameplay elements. Wow! This kind of player-driven game plot progression is truly amazing, and the “server-wide announcement” just now was enough to satisfy Joy Stick’s little vanity. His private messages suddenly exploded. But Brother Stick had no time to reply to them one by one, so he temporarily blocked the private message notifications. He tossed the coins in his hand back onto the coin mountain behind him, turned around, and said to the people behind him: “We’ve got it done! This money is ours, quickly have a few people count how much money there is here so we can distribute the profits.” “What’s the point of counting? When would we finish counting all this?” Chewing on a Nord royal hard candy, Little Ashina retorted while playing with her beloved revolver: “This is a treasure trove of a gangster’s hideout, right? There must be things like account books, right? Any organized group would have such things. Just find it and we’ll know, won’t we?” Reminded by Little Ashina, everyone immediately scattered and soon found a spirit bag on one of the downed ghouls they had defeated earlier. Opening it revealed a string of rusty keys and a dirty account book. Leading Pigeon took it, flipped through it, and then exclaimed: “Their income was so huge? It says here that last month they made 15,674 gold coins from three underground black market deals. Including the initial income from this nearly year-old underground gang, the amount of money in this treasure trove should be around 80,000 gold coins.” “No way! How could it be so little?” Little Ashina immediately questioned: “A simple elementary school math calculation would show that there should be at least 150,000 gold coins.” “Oh, it says here that they used some of the money to buy land deeds in the outer city to set up legitimate businesses, and running an underground black market also requires people to procure goods through smuggling. These bastards were also loaning money at high interest rates! Damn, they really were embezzlers! These bastards, and then when the disaster struck, they still had some high-interest loans that hadn’t been collected. Ha, serves them right!” Leading Pigeon scratched his chin, flipped a few more pages, and then tossed the rusty keys to Joy Stick, pointing to the boxes behind them and saying: “There should be an old safe over there, the land deeds and bank notes from Seicob City Bank are all in there. That’s the gang leader’s personal property.” “Click” Brother Stick quickly opened the hidden old safe, taking out a bundle of land deeds, ten 10,000-gold bank notes, and a small bag. It was filled with various gems, which at a glance was clearly the “little bonus” the gang leader had procured for himself. For a moment, Joy Stick felt the urge to hide these items, but then he shook his head. This wasn’t a real-life opportunity for overnight riches. It’s just a game. No need to be so extreme. “Come on, let’s divide it up.” Joy Stick plopped down on the pile of coins, placed the items from the safe in front of him, and under the illumination of the surrounding torches, he said to the players around him: “Just as we agreed before, one share for each of you who helped, and twenty gold coins for the brothers out there who were busy, no objections, right?” “Um, let’s discuss this.” Leading Pigeon and his brothers talked it over, then turned back and said: “We don’t want our share of the profits, just give us the land deeds, Brother Stick. I’m planning to open a store across from Lady Tris’s alchemy shop too, using a low-price strategy to run her black market shop out of business! Heh, our good Pigeon just can’t stand these profiteering merchants.” “You might want to take it easy on that.” Leaning on her shield, Orchid sighed and said: “That’s the shop of the Blood Vulture Grand Duchess, you really have no workplace experience, do you? You’re on Blood Vulture territory and you’re a vampire yourself. Are you trying to offend your clan leader?” “Ah, this...” Leading Pigeon blinked, then waved his hand sincerely and said: “Then I’ll open it in the camp instead. How could a real man stoop to the level of competing with weakwomen? But we still want the land deeds. Even if we don’t use them ourselves, we can sell them to NPCs who want to open shops later. Who knows, we might even trigger some quests by finding the deed owners.” The leaders of the few small factions quickly confirmed the situation with a few short sentences. Sister Pomegranate went offline to draft the contract, while Meow King logged onto the game forum and quickly sent a private message to the admin Alpha, explaining the situation. Actually, Meow King was quite anxious, after all, offline game currency trading is prohibited in all games unless the official platform allows it. Given the development team’s conduct for 《Reality Realm》, Meow King estimated they wouldn’t care about such petty profits, so it was hard to judge the official stance on their private agreement. What if they screwed up and got their accounts banned? That would be disastrous! But contrary to his expectations, the admin Alpha quickly responded, quite concisely, with just one word: Alpha: 【Okay.】 MeowKing: 【Huh? Wait, Brother Alpha, you guys aren’t even going to discuss this? Why don’t you ask the dev team? I mean, it’s no small deal if this gets you in trouble.】 Alpha: 【Do you think we haven’t discussed this kind of thing in advance? Don’t scare yourself, if offline trading was really prohibited, Feel You Poor and Little Ashina would have been banned when they were brazenly buying gold coins on the forum before. You know, Meow King, our game emphasizes 100% realism, right? So can internal player trading follow the same logic as real-world trading? Let me be frank with you, this is also one of our research topics, and there’s even a dedicated team observing it as a ‘social experiment’. I can clearly tell you! The dev team’s attitude towards this is laissez-faire, you can handle your internal affairs however you want. There’s only one bottom line! Don’t disrupt the normal progress of the testing project. That’s a red line, anyone who dares cross it will be out.】 MeowKing: 【Understood, but even at the 1:1 exchange rate suggested by Sister Pomegranate, it’s still a considerable income for the studio. If they get involved...】 Alpha: 【That’s an issue the testing team needs to consider. But I want to remind you, Meow King, the premise for the dev team not to interfere with internal trading among testers is that the current leading players among you have the ability to maintain ‘order’ within your group. If you can’t maintain it and cause chaos, then we’ll have to intervene. Take this matter of exchanging game currency for RMB, for example. If you can get all the testers to follow this rate and make it an established convention, then we won’t just not interfere, we’ll even use it as a basis for future economic system updates, like designing an ‘official trade certification’ function in the game. Anyway, what I want to remind you is, this is a 100% realistic game. It’s easy for you to find enjoyment in it, but the difficulty of making achievements in Transia won’t be any easier than making a name for yourself in the real world. Oh, and by the way, the NPC intelligence upgrade is underway, so their behavior logic will become more human-like later. What I mean is, not only will you engage in business wars, but they will too. So be mentally prepared in advance. By the way, do you want me to act as a notary on behalf of Alpha Company for your electronic contract?】 MeowKing: 【Of course, that would be great, it’ll put everyone at ease.】 After this exchange, Meow King returned to the game in a pleased mood and told everyone about it. The players had mixed reactions, but Little Ashina was exceptionally happy. Securing this treasure meant she and her little buddies wouldn’t have to worry about in-game economics for a long time, and they could spend lavishly. In the end, they agreed on a 1:10 ratio of gold coins to RMB, which was basically like water to a young millionaire like her. Within twenty minutes, everyone completed the transaction with satisfaction and joy. Although they didn’t earn much, the easily satisfied students were all beaming, each earning a few thousand in profit after their one-tenth share. Not to mention the land deeds in their hands would be worth even more if acknowledged. “Come, come, help load these coins into boxes and carry them upstairs.” Little Ashina waved and shouted: “I need to find a way to store this money. Say, why hasn’t Lord Murphy issued paper currency yet? Gold coins look pretty but are so inconvenient to use.” The others, impressed by the rich girl’s chicken leg rewards, all came to help, but Brother Stick stood alone frowning. It wasn’t that he was unsatisfied with the profits, but because as soon as he opened his private messages, he saw Feel You Poor had sent dozens of messages seeking a trade: FeelYouPoor: 【Brother Stick, sell me your treasure, I’ll trade with you at a 1:10 ratio! 1:15 is fine too.】 OnboardJoyStick: 【Uh, it’s been sold already. Little Ashina took the entire treasure. Sorry brother, and the officials have set an internal exchange rate now, it’s just 1:10, even if you offer 15, no one would dare sell to you.】 FeelYouPoor: 【Ah, why does someone try to outspend me in a game? This game experience is too bad, isn’t it? But Brother Stick, do you plan to keep treasure hunting?】 OnboardJoyStick: 【Yeah, do you want to join? But you better level up quickly.】 FeelYouPoor: 【Nah, I’m a casual player, can’t handle that stuff. What I mean is, if you plan to do this professionally long-term, are you interested in forming an official company? I can invest in you guys! Just convert the profits to game currency at a certain rate for me, what do you think? If it works, I’ll draft a contract now. 3 million investment enough?】 OnboardJoyStick: 【...】 This guy! Can’t buy the gold coins, so now he wants to buy people? Hey, human trafficking and forced prostitution are illegal!