Draco felt the urge to cough up blood, but managed to swallow it back down. How dare this dog altar bully him like this? How could it be so arrogant and wicked? Had it never heard of kindness before?
Suddenly, Draco felt the aura of maturity well up in him. After losing his gacha v.i.r.g.i.nity, he felt like he had seen the true nature of the world and human life. He had finally become a true gamer, one that had gone through the ups and downs of gaming!
Draco sighed and gave up. In truth, he was just fooling around a bit, as this Divine Energy Converter was definitely useful for many purposes. It might not be useful for him, but for Tradeskills, it was probably the greatest auxiliary tool.
He was sure he'd find many uses for it when he returned to the main plane.
Draco turned to leave. He had already expanded his Tradeskill slots to triple their original number and removed the useless Tradeskills in exchange for this Divine item. From top to bottom, this Altar of Crafting was a truly heaven-defying thing.
Upon exit, Draco met up with Hoover, who was standing watch outside the chapel like a royal guard. Draco found his behavior amusing, as it was clearly due to the fact that the old goat had been moved by his generosity.
"Take me on a tour of the Evergreen Village." Draco requested lightly.
Hoover bowed solemnly and lead the way. "At once, Sir."
From the chapel, which was close to the Evergreen Manor, also near the northern outskirts of the village, they slowly re-entered the heart of the village.
As one could expect from a game called Boundless, even a 'village' was about the size of a city in the real world. One could only wonder if the AI was just bad at numbers or really just liked landscaping a lot.
"This is the work district. It is near the Evergreen Manor so that outsiders who pay us a visit can interact with our local workers and experience our depth of expertise." Hoover spoke with pride in his tone.
Draco nodded. There were many open area workplaces, with many benches, furnaces, alchemy cauldrons, and whatever else the workers needed for their different Tradeskills.
Honestly, it kind of resembled those open crafting zones in older MMORPG games, one that players using a keyboard and mouse used to visit during their adventures to do their daily quests.
Draco saw many of the citizens hard at work. Despite the many people here, it did not feel overcrowded as all those people kept to their designated areas. They were extremely focused and showed no frivolity.
To see more than a hundred alchemists, enchanters, blacksmiths, cooks, brewers, and all others working diligently at their own pace in silence was a mind-blowing scene to Draco.
On the main plane, it would be inconceivable. Almost every workplace was within a closed-off building which was meant for one person at a time.
After all, they couldn't let others see their crafting techniques and methods. In the current era, doing so would be no different than throwing your data out to advertising companies willingly.
It was clear from this practice that in the old era, such things were not a problem at all. However, this was something Draco should have thought of long ago.
In the old era, which was the pinnacle era of all time, there were trillions of Tradeskill masters of various grades, and many new recipes or designs were created per hour.
Back then, all of Draco's creations minus the Advanced Spatial Creation Device, Dragon's Blessing Potion, and his Dragorugio armor would not have garnered an announcement.
Even with these three under his belt, he would not have been hailed as a genius of a new era, but merely a slightly promising young chap. Designs, recipes, and such things were given out freely if they were below the Rare Rank.
Rare Rank required some small currency to purchase and Epic and above could be acquired with enough effort. It wasn't like now where Common designs and recipes were the universal standards while everything else above that was regarded as heaven's blessing.
None of the people there even noticed Draco's presence, that was how immersed they were in their own work. As Hoover led Draco along, the fellow was left speechless.
That open-area crafting square he just saw? Well, take it and copy-paste it like two dozen times, and you got almost the entire northern area. It was a shocking thing to see.
When Vishad had lead Draco and co here, he had used a different and more private route. Draco was unsure if the Lizardman didn't want Draco to interact with his people or that Vishad wanted him to be properly shocked when he decided to explore.
Honestly, it might have been both.
Draco felt his horizons broaden as he glimpsed at the lifestyle of the old era. It really made him feel like the current era was full of frogs in a well who hoarded trash, thinking it was gold.
Outside the northern area was the eastern and western areas. The western area was the business district, which was where Draco and co had entered from.
They had only seen one part of the huge business district, which was only one avenue of street vendors. In truth, the western area had many such streets with thousands of raw materials above the Epic Rank being peddled per day.
Draco was stunned to discover this. It turned out that the resource zones attached to the villages were each multipurpose and very prolific. To put it bluntly, they produced more raw materials than they needed, so there was an overflow.
According to Hoover, this situation was mirrored by all the other villages, so it wasn't even useful to trade with each other. As such, many raw materials had been carefully stored in a vault beneath the town hall.
Draco's breathing became rough when he thought about that. Even if their overflow was 5% of resources per year, over the many millennia that had passed, just what number would that amount to in the end?
Draco made it a life goal to raid that vault at some point! Even if he would be able to loot it when he completed the quest, it was not nearly as euphoric as emptying it when it did not belong to him!
Hoover led Draco through the various avenues, where many natives were happily trading. There was little bargaining to be done, as most materials were in abundance.
In fact, the semblance of trade was only kept up to maintain a healthy economy. No one person could claim to own any resource that got produced, as it was more of a case where it was for everybody.
But the traders here needed to level up their Tradeskills and these hands-on crafters needed materials, so everyone kept the ruse up.
When Draco heard some of the prices being traded, he suddenly felt like he was truly a dog by the roadside. For example, the Primal Papyrus that Eva and Zaine had acquired at 400,000 platinum during the Divine Auction was going for 50 gold. 50 gold!
To make matters even more absurd that item was tied to a promotion where if one bought 10 of these items, they would receive the 11th for free.
Sigh, such was the brutality of economics. If supply was high but demand was average, the price would be low. If demand was high and supply was low, then the price would be high.
If these resources were to be taken outside, they could be sold for terrifying prices that would be enough to inject this small world with a heavy flow of cash to improve the spending power of the average man.
Of course, this was not feasible to Draco, as he planned to use everything here to groom the descendants of the Refinement God once he claimed them, as well as the Tradeskill players of Umbra.
The overflow would turn into a deficiency in that case, but the end result would be worth it. After all, all this talk about how these natives were geniuses of Tradeskills and how they had abundant raw materials had left out one important point.
When they crafted items, where did those items go?
"We normally send them to the items vault, which is also located in the center of each village, right below the town hall. It's where we've stored most of our creations that don't have a direct use in our daily lives." Hoover explained once he received Draco's questioning.
Draco had already reached the pinnacle of desire for this whole Treasury, so nothing could make him fall deeper into his greed anymore. In fact, he simply smiled and nodded, accepting this as a fact.
Though, he did have another question.
"I can understand storage for Tradeskills like Blacksmithing, Alchemy and co, but what about the creations of Privateers, Builders, and Engineers? Where are they placed?"
After all, how could one construct a building or ship and then stuff it into a vault? How would that even work? With the many builders over the many eras since this Treasury had been in existence, how had they not run out of space?
Hoover smiled. "Well, one thing I forgot to mention is that the vault for the excess materials and created items is directly connected to the core area of the treasury. When one finishes their project, they only need to inform the Lord of their village, and special procedures would be carried out to have it stored."
"Most of the bigger creations - that may or may not be fixed - are not manually carried away, but automatically teleported away by the remnant of the Supreme Ancestor's consciousness."
Draco nodded in understanding. He wasn't surprised by the knowledge that there was a remnant consciousness of the Supreme Ancestor here. When he was in the Flora and Fauna Quest, hadn't there been the remnant consciousness of the Elf God and Flora?
If even they - mere True Gods - could do so, why not a Semi-Origin God? Not to mention that this was an artificial small world created and refined by the Refinement God.
This was a realm he would have absolute control over. To decide to open the treasury once every thousand years, to be able to move three specific resource zones from the inner section to the outer one to test the newcomer, and to create monsters like Fruity and Rexxy to test him while preventing them from slaughtering the natives, did these things happen because of a mistimed cough?
No. As a gamer, it was easy for Draco to see the meta of the situation, but the AI tried its hardest to promote immersion, so there was always a reason that adhered to in-game lore.
Draco left the business area satisfied. He wasn't going to buy anything from here. He might have done so if it was impossible to complete this quest and he had a limited time here, but since Draco was determined to take this whole Treasury away, doing so would just be too impetuous.
Even if he failed, he could quickly rob this whole Treasury of many of its goods before he was kicked out. One should never underestimate the trio of human, Dragon, and lion. They could rob faster than The Flash could run 100 meters.
The next area was the residential area of the eastern district. This was where most people lived, and every family in the village had their residency. Of course, some preferred to sleep in the business district, near their shops like those of the trader Tradeskills, as well as others who preferred to sleep near the crafting areas of the northern district.
In the northern area, there were many inns around as those with service Tradeskills geared towards that end also used it to increase their levels. As for the western business district, the vendors naturally had small cottages there for themselves behind their stalls.
The eastern district was just there to show that these people had an actual home to live in. It was also where their kids and such mostly lived and played around, so it wasn't like it was deserted.
This left the southern area of the district, which was the service area. Here, hospitals, restaurants, entertainment centers, schools, and whatnot existed, painting it with a pretty sight.