Arrival

While Kren was busy these days, Caren was by no means idle.

Because of Kren's breakthrough to the seventh tier, many sharp-nosed merchants around the Undead Market had already begun making various preparations.

Among them, those who regretted it the most were the merchants who had signed commercial street contracts with Caren. This batch of merchants had made massive investments in Caren’s market, only for Kren to reach the seventh tier and even shatter the original trade barriers between the Silver Hand and the Bourbon Kingdom.

Now, it was not just Caren who found himself in an awkward position; the merchants who had poured their money in were also tormented by endless entanglement.

Not many of these money-obsessed merchants could simply stand by and watch their invested fortunes go down the drain.

Yet under the current grand circumstances, unless they could somehow close the trade channels between the Silver Hand and the Bourbon Kingdom once again, or force Caren to spit the money back out, they were destined to take a massive loss this time.

Compared to shutting down the trade routes between the Silver Hand and the Bourbon Kingdom, it was quite obvious to those merchants that the latter option was somewhat easier.

Therefore, for over half a month, the merchants in the market had focused their minds entirely on this matter.

Naturally, these merchants employed rather smooth tactics, attempting to present their demands for a refund to Caren under the premise of avoiding angering him as much as possible. Every single day, they would run over to Ogoron to pour out their grievances, describing how utterly miserable their little lives were.

Faced with this situation, Caren had no intention of forcibly binding them.

He gave them two choices: either they take a refund and leave, or Caren could refund half of their money while they retained ownership of the project—effectively cutting the price in half for them to continue with the commercial street project.

To be honest, Caren sincerely hoped these merchants would stay, but the result left him deeply disappointed.

Over ninety percent of those merchants chose to take a direct refund and leave. Merchants chase after profit; in the eyes of these merchants, Caren's market had only flourished previously because it happened to catch the favorable wind of trade demand between the two nations.

Now that trade between the two countries had been completely opened up, the unique specialty of Caren's market had vanished. Coupled with Caren's previous attempts to lock horns with the Bourbon Kingdom, the merchants in the market believed that the Bourbon Kingdom would certainly never let Caren off the hook. Even if Caren miraculously managed to continue operating this market, it would no longer possess its former uniqueness, let alone its originally bright prospects.

Under such circumstances, it was only natural for the merchants to abandon Caren one after another.

In fact, the ones abandoning Caren at this time were not merely those merchants. Aside from them, Caren had borrowed quite a few people from the Forest Keepers to keep the Undead Market running, and Ogoron himself had brought in numerous friends.

A considerable portion of these people also abandoned Caren at this juncture, finding various excuses to leave the market. Some even seized the opportunity of their departure to embezzle a massive amount of wealth from the market.

At this point, Caren could no longer tolerate it.

If they had simply left, Caren wouldn't have done anything to them. After all, those people weren't Forest Keepers; they had only come to make a living. But wanting to make a tidy sum before leaving was completely unforgivable.

When dealing with these "employees," Caren's attitude was no longer so easygoing.

He directly summoned all the employees of the Undead Market and, right before their eyes, tracked down every single person who had left the market under various pretexts during this period and executed them one by one.

After wielding the big stick, Caren did not forget to offer a sweet carrot to those who remained, distributing bonuses ranging from 50 silver coins to 50 gold coins to almost everyone.

With this combination of the carrot and the stick wielded by Caren, the staff in the market immediately quieted down. Every single one of them poured their entire heart into their work, forcefully conjuring an illusion of prosperity in a market that had been utterly desolate after losing eighty percent of its merchants over the past half a month.

Aside from handling matters at the market, Caren was equally busy within his own territory.

The primary task occupying Caren's attention within the territory was the cultivation of undead technical talents—to be precise, the 121 undead scavenged from Oduo City, each possessing their own unique lifestyle skills.

Given the current circumstances, these 121 undead were his hope for resurrecting the market.

Caren did not dare to dream that every single one of those 121 undead could produce items like [Illusion]. As long as ten of them—no, even if it were just five such products—emerged, Caren was confident he could reactivate this market!

And upon those commodities, he would forge a highly cohesive market!

To achieve this goal, over the past half a month, Caren had practically kept this batch of undead raised within the [Bone Tower].

With 7,200 personal experience points per day, after half a month, nearly every single one of these 121 individuals had consumed close to 100,000 experience points.

Those 100,000 experience points directly fed them up to the fourth tier.

However, although these undead had made significant improvements in their tiers, their lifestyle skills had not improved much.

After they reached the fourth tier, Caren checked their stats and found that among all the undead, only one had experienced a major improvement in lifestyle skills—one that brought him quite a pleasant surprise.

...

Obsessed Skull Blacksmith

Category: Bone Attribute

Strength: Fourth Tier Ordinary

Intelligence: High

Description: An undead transformed from the corpse of a high-level blacksmith. Due to the process of undead transformation, the techniques mastered in life have undergone changes. Although the technique tier has regressed, it still holds considerable cultivation value. With careful nurturing, it may give rise to a high-level or even master-level undead blacksmith.

Skills:

Flame of Tempering Lv2 (A special flame capable of altering the attribute properties and forms of ores and weapons.)

Special Forging Lv2 (Crafting special ores or weapons through the [Flame of Tempering].)

Mastered Special Forging Method: Iron of the Dead (A special material forged from ordinary [Iron Ore], [Whispers of the Dead], [Monster Blood], and several other materials. It can be used for weapon forging, corpse fusion, or sale in the territory shop.)

(Omitted)...

...

Clearly, the reason why Caren attached such importance to this undead—whom he designated as Blacksmith No. 1—truly lay in that last item: [Iron of the Dead].

Upon viewing the attributes of [Blacksmith No. 1], Caren immediately provided it with all the materials required to forge [Iron of the Dead], instructing it to craft the so-called [Iron of the Dead].

Caren's high regard for [Iron of the Dead] this time was not actually for practical use. In truth, once Caren held a terrifying amount of territorial energy in his hands, he began contemplating the upgrading of his territory.

The prerequisite for upgrading the territory was the upgrade of the [Undead Graveyard]. To upgrade the [Undead Graveyard], Caren needed to transform a hundred fifth-tier undead and convert one hundred special undead.

The fifth-tier undead were a minor matter; Caren currently possessed abundant territorial energy, and as long as the corpses were in place, he could successfully transform them.

As for these special undead, things were somewhat more troublesome. Of course, over these past few days, Caren had roughly figured out what all the special undead were.

The so-called special undead actually relied on the function of [Corpse Fusion].

It involved fusing corpses with special items, and then transforming the corpses—which had been fused with those special items—into undead.

It sounded simple enough, but over these past few days, Caren really hadn't found many special items.

Currently, the only special item in his hands was a [Lich Heart]. Previously, there had also been a [Fierce Blood Stone], but Little Green had taken it away as a sacrifice, and the sacrificial ritual still hadn't successfully completed to this day.

It was precisely under these circumstances that Caren held such high expectations for the [Iron of the Dead] produced by [Blacksmith No. 1].

However, [Blacksmith No. 1] somewhat failed to live up to Caren's expectations. Caren had originally thought crafting [Iron of the Dead] wouldn't be too difficult—much like how [Illusion] was manufactured with great ease.

As a result, [Blacksmith No. 1] busied itself for several days straight, producing only failed products without managing to turn out a single finished item for Caren.

Just as it finally had one piece nearing completion, at that critical moment, Kren brazenly barged into Caren's territory, abruptly ruining the forging of the [Iron of the Dead] that was just about to succeed, filling Caren with blinding fury!

Yet Kren remained completely oblivious to Caren's erupting rage—or rather, he simply did not care about Caren's feelings at all.

After appearing above Caren's territory riding a griffon and draped in crimson battle qi, Kren's voice resounded across the entire domain:

"Sinner who has violated the kingdom, are you prepared for how you will die?"

"Get lost!"

Before Kren could finish acting out his profound and dramatic entrance, a bolt of black lightning struck him directly, knocking him straight out of the sky...