( 4 days later, Terra Nova Online )
It took Leo roughly four more days to reach Crest-Hill Barony from Thumba City, after which his 6 month isolation officially began.
Upon his return, he found himself buried under a pile of work, as having left his territory for the better part of three weeks, there were a lot of matters that needed his urgent attention.
Thankfully, he had been meditating for about six days now and had built up the mental fortitude to work, as although he felt fatigued and lethargic through the day, he could thankfully muster enough strength to sign documents and glance over proposals.
"The most important things that I need to focus on for now are :-
1)The launch of the Anti-Aging cream.
2)Solving The Refugee Crisis
3)The upcoming System Auction" Leo muttered to himself, as he made a list of things that he needed to focus on in the short term.
Leo had already acquired the formula for the Anti-Aging Cream, but before he could launch the product and introduce it to the masses, circumstances forced him to leave Crest-Hill Barony, delaying the completion of his ongoing Chain Quest, which required him to release another viral product.
Because this was a Chain Quest, once Leo successfully generated enough hype around the product and disrupted the traditional cosmetics market, he stood to earn a substantial profit while also unlocking a new product as part of the quest. Therefore, it was crucial for him to complete it as soon as possible.
Alongside that, he also needed to solve the never-ending refugee crisis in his territory, as with the Demon Threat near the borders intensifying and the reputation of the Crest-Hill Barony improving as a land of opportunity amongst commoners, more and more people were flocking to the region everyday, with the rate of immigration now outpacing the requirement for jobs.
On one hand, while Leo was not against growth and saw the improving reputation of Crest-Hill Barony as a good sign, he also understood the dangers of uncontrolled growth and hence wished to stop immigration for a while to first take his time to stabilize the territory before accepting new people once again.
However, this was easier said than done as he couldn't simply deny the citizens of the Empire the right to live wherever they chose within its borders and couldn't drive them away without a just cause, so despite recognizing the strain that immigration was placing on his territory, finding a solution to the problem proved to be difficult.
Finally, with 99/100 system auction tokens having already been discovered and distributed, the probability of the system auction triggering any day now was very high.
Although Leo had never attended a system auction before, with his experience on how useful system events were for players, he assumed that it was going to be something groundbreaking.
Based on his instincts, Leo started to plan on how to secure additional liquid funds to bid on the auction items, before the auction began, as he aimed to enter with the highest possible amount of money.
Leo knew that entering the auction with a large money pool would give him the advantage to outbid anyone attempting to snatch an item from him, and hence he took this step of gathering funds with the utmost seriousness.
As a high-profile merchant, earning money wasn't a significant challenge for Leo, but ensuring it was liquid and readily available was crucial as he couldn't pay for auction items with future earnings; as his bids were most likely going to be limited to the balance in his current account.
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( Meanwhile Jace )
The 99th player to get a system auction token was none other than Jace, who just like Leo was a non-combat class player and a merchant by profession.
For him, this upcoming auction was a huge event and securing a token to it represented an opportunity of a lifetime, as unlike Leo, he wasn't a really well known or prominent player.
As being barely level 140, average looking and not really funny, Jace was the epitome of boring, average player, however, where he differed from others was through his critical thinking.
Where other players failed to notice the weaknesses in the game, Jace recognised and exploited every system glitch that he could and silently made millions of gold coins while doing so.
His most popular scam was the sale of small but high quality leather pouches in bulk, which he generated daily for free.
Unlike common players, who never critically thought about how whenever they wished to pull out money from their inventory, it always came out in a high quality leather money pouch within the game, Jace noticed this system glitch as a money making opportunity.
Summoning a pouch full of money, Jace then emptied the coins and stored the coins once again in his inventory, while collecting the pouch as a good for sale and then repeated the process all over again.
By the end of the day, he would have thousands of high quality leather pouches from this scam, which he then sold in the open markets for dirt cheap rates to turn a profit.
For Jace, this was an ingenious way to make money, however, he knew that the days where he could get away with this scam were numbered, and hence he always made sure to never be too greedy and never hire other people to be in on this scam with him, as he contained this hack to only himself.
To his shock, even after so many months into the game, this bug did not seem to be solved by the developers, giving Jace the opportunity to earn millions from this scam throughout its life.
Unfortunately, others were starting to catch on-to this scam now, with there being some viral posts on Global Forums talking about this hack, however, it still hadn't gotten mainstream.
Nonetheless, the days of the scam were numbered and Jace knew it too, which was why, he felt keen on looking for new paths to remain relevant within the game and had his hopes pinned on the system auction.
For him this system auction represented a chance for him to solidify his future as a hidden powerhouse and hence Jace took this opportunity with the utmost seriousness as well.
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/// A/N- Hey guys, the reader evaluation phase of WSA has officially begun today and the books are open to review on the event page.
There are a lot of books which are randomly arranged for each user, so you may have to shift through 90-100 pages of books before finding Terra Nova Online if you're unlucky or find it first page if you're lucky, but I'll really really really appreciate it, if you could spare 10 minutes and drop a review on the event page and help me inch closer to a win. ///