Chapter 70

The one who topped the fighting list was a player called [The Valiant Ghost Devouring Heaven], but this ID wasn’t listed on the list of the top 20 players who had the highest levels. The name (Order) followed his nickname, thus, Feng Bujue could confirm that he wasn’t one of the two ‘Anonymous’ players. Such professional players, who belonged to the biggest Studios, didn’t need to hide their identity. Moreover, their managers absolutely didn’t want them to be anonymous since with the names existing in the list, they could brag about their Studios’ competencies.

“Oh, it seems the difference between levels in this game doesn’t mean anything.” Feng Bujue thought, “The ranking is just for players’ reference to check out how well the players who always want to level up in their Server have been doing. The dangerous ones are the ones whose names have been listed in this combat ranking list.”

Feng Bujue raked through the entire list. There were no anonymous, and names of the guild were put after the names of the top 20. It seemed using ‘personal’ competence was pretty hard to compete against those players who had their guild’s resources as a big support. This feature was significant at the beginning stage of the game. The components of what was called ‘fighting ability’, besides the player’s personal abilities, were the Specialty Grades, Skills and Items. Players with Studio background could have much better quality items and skills, which made them not just one level higher than others. After reaching level 20, generally, everybody’s specialty grades would be D, and that’s when the differences emerged.

The thing worth paying attention to was that besides the player named ‘Valiant Ghost Devouring Heaven’, the one who was ranked number six also had the word (Order) follow his name. And, at the same time, this player had topped the highest levels list as he was the first player of the Server that stopped leveling up in Close Beta Stage. He was [The Fearless Hero].

From number two to number five of the list, those positions belonged to another Guild. The IDs were namely [Shiva], [Vishnu], [Brahma], and [Yama]. These four badasses came from the same Studio called ‘Immortals’. This Studio seemed to be quite powerful since their names were also listed on the top 10 of the level list.

1After Feng Bujue was done, he came to see the other two lists of the West and the North, which were the list of top ‘Guilds Overall Strength’ and ‘Guilds Combat Competence’. It wasn’t a surprise that (Order) and (Immortals) were ranked at the top. The Immortals was stronger than Order in combat competence, but in general, the Order took the upper hand.

In fact, the ‘Overall Strength’ had a profound meaning. When it wasn’t put together with the combat competence, it represented the overall power of a Guild. Besides finance and the number of members, the best feature of Order was—flawless.

For example, when Feng Bujue had met [The Invincible Hero], he was one of the players who were in charge of Fighting Specialty of Order in Close Beta. Level or items or other specialties weren’t important to him. What he needed to do was to complete his tasks—to provide information and experience to his Studio.

Regarding the other Specialties, there were other relevant players who would be in charge of them. Order used this practical method to harvest precious documents, so that when their core members entered the games (in Open Beta), they could do more with less effort needed.

It could be said that Order had an almost-perfect strategy with high productivity, especially in getting information from the game. They had carried out this task with care. Moreover, it wasn’t just primary understanding as they had to experience and study it to make final conclusions. If they randomly released a part of their data, they could easily blow off the introductions of some players posted on the forum. That, however, was something they wouldn’t do, even if they got paid for it.

The Immortals Studio, on the other hand, wasn’t a loser. Tremendous personal competence was the best feature of this studio. No matter what tricks the other Studios were playing, they didn’t interfere. The Immortals’ strategy was simple. Once the Close Beta opened, they immediately let all of their superstar players play the game. Training first, then talk about other things later. Anyway, their skills were all the aces, and there was no difference in entering the game sooner or later.

Feng Bujue scanned through the top 20 Guilds on both of the lists. These two lists had shared many same Guilds. Besides the Order and the Immortals, there were seven guilds whose players were listed in the list of Level and Fighting Ability. However, their situation wasn’t clear enough. Anyway, the Ice Emperor wasn’t listed on any ranking lists. This meant that there was no problem with the system’s credibility.

After Feng Bujue had finished checking all four lists, he headed to the information tower in the center of the Mall to observe the auction situation. This was a vision-widening experience to him as he could see some garbage items with ridiculously high prices, even more expensive than clothing.

A perfect quality item level 10 got a starting price of 120,000 coins, and it was bought at 200,000. The starting price was actually 60 RMB. Feng Bujue felt it was funny. With this amount, a player could buy a full set of cheap garments that he could wear as long as he pleased. What about that item, to which level could players still wear it? When they reach level 20, they could buy a normal quality item to replace that one.

Since it was just the beginning time of the Open Beta, the players were then worried that they would receive low prices for their items in the auction. This psychology could be explained. One of the ‘thug-life’ situations in online games was that one day, you found out that the item you have trashed away is actually a priceless treasure.

Those players who had spent all day long wandering around the Auction House would gradually form a thought in their minds, which was ‘buy cheap, sell expensive’. The best case was when they find a seller who didn’t know a thing about the market and set the price much cheaper. They would buy the items and set another rip-off, and it was much better if the customer would be someone who didn’t care about his money and got trapped.

There will never be enough idiots for such world since everybody thinks they are smart. The final result was, the ones who could sell items were players that had set up the proper prices.

In Thriller Paradise, items’ attributes would be randomly generated, which limited the chance of having identical items. Thus, there was no way to hoard or speculate goods. It was difficult for players to stash away virtual goods, and it was almost impossible to sell away high-priced items, which they had bought at much lower prices.

In addition, to prevent unscrupulous profiteers from buying consumable goods from shops and then putting them in an auction to deceive newbies, the system had prohibited putting items directly from the shops to the Auction House. Besides, items with ‘Broken’ or ‘Garbage’ quality without special effects or attributes would be rejected in the auction. And, there was no hope for players who were so hopeless that they had picked up something like [Stone], [Organs], or [Dog Poop] and deceitfully sold them with high prices.

In this area, players could browse the Auction House’s menu in any place. Feng Bujue was watching the screen for quite a long time only to see constant updates of various kinds of items, which were all useful priorities of the sorted list. Almost none of them had the appropriate prices as all were set up with unacceptable prices. With the super expensive prices in the Auction House, if Feng Bujue reluctantly put his [Mario’s Pipe Wrench], [the Dance of the Knight] and [the Echo Armor] in one plot and set the price of 60,000, other players would break their heads to blend into the crowd that all wanted to buy his goods. Perhaps he could sell them within only one minute, and even the ones who could buy it would be content and say, ‘It’s great that I met an idiot.’

As he had come up with that thought, Feng Bujue suddenly had a malicious ‘oh’. He thought it was a good trick.

He turned around and returned to the elevator and entered the last area that he hasn’t checked out—the Box of Fear.

Currently, Feng Bujue didn’t have the pressure of lacking items. Moreover, his Skill Value wasn’t small either. Now, he could buy some good quality items and set reasonable prices for them in the Auction House; he could definitely sell them with the Reserve Price, then he could earn more than 100,000 coins. At that time, those expensive costumes wouldn’t mean a thing.

…

There are not too long or too short books. When Feng Bujue returned to his login space, the first thing he had done was to put the flashlight into his bag. Then, he went to receive the bonus from his Fear Rating. As he wasn’t in a hurry to earn EXP and 50,000 coins was sort of nothing since taking the money wasn’t better than selling the item, he chose to receive a random item.

[Name: Kenny’s Parka]

[Type: Defensive item]

[Quality: Excellent]

[Defensive power: Feeble]

[Attributes: None]

[Special Effects: within a certain range, the user can passively become the main target to bear all the injuries for the whole party (including mobs’ attack, accidents or natural disasters); in Multiplayer Survival Mode (Normal), it can resurrect the user at the spot once.]

[Equipment Requirements: Male player. The item will be locked after being equipped.]

[Remarks: Ouch! My god, they killed Kenny!]

This defensive item was set to be worn on the upper body and had nothing to do with the costume. Items were just items, while costumes and appearance or the ‘skin’ could be installed at the same time. However, only one of them was chosen to be the appearance of the player.

For the name Kenny (1), Feng Bujue was well aware of it, thus, even though he couldn’t equip the Echo Armor now, he wasn’t too eager to put this defensive item on.

This sort of thing was like you are finding a way to suicide when putting it on. When you give it away, you are trying to harm other people’s lives. The best solution for this case was to put it in the Auction House and try to deceive strangers.

Now, his bag capacity was 8/10 as it could still store two more items. According to the prices he had memorized, a perfect quality item in the Box of Fear would cost roughly 300 points of Skill Value. In case an item would require 500 points of Skill Value, he couldn’t buy two. So, two unoccupied slots were enough. Anyway, after he had purchased the items, he would then put them in the Auction House.

After the doors of the elevator booth closed, Feng Bujue pressed the button [The Box of Fear]. This time, it was odd. After he had pressed the button, the doors didn’t open, and the system’s notification didn’t play. Two seconds later, the elevator started to move all of a sudden. Even stranger than that, Feng Bujue could feel that this elevator didn’t just simply move up and down, but it was like a roller coaster moving for a quite a long distance in various directions.

After around a minute, the elevator finally stopped, and the doors automatically slid open. A scene that was beyond people’s imagination appeared in front of Feng Bujue’s eyes.

…

[1] A reference to a South Park character.

http://southpark.wikia.com/wiki/Kenny_McCormick