At the dungeon entrance, the twenty-odd players from the expedition were already back — hauling in eight dead subterranean spiders, roped together and dragged along as a set.
Sharlock hadn't expected them to bring back eight subterranean spiders after just a few hours.
Along with the spiders came four player corpses — clearly killed during the push — and the surviving players were nursing wounds of varying degrees. Looked like it had been a real grind of a fight.
Seeing the third push squad return with loot, the players crowded around, firing off questions about everything, all talking over each other.
xX_ShadowBlade_Xx launched into a colorful retelling of the battle. The first two fights had gone great — zero casualties — but on the third, way too many subterranean spiders had poured out at once. Still, after paying the price of four dead and several wounded, they'd beaten the spiders back. After that setback in the third fight, they hadn't dared linger at the Spider Nest's gate; once the spiders withdrew, they'd grabbed their loot and their fallen teammates' bodies and headed home. The corpses were naturally for reviving, of course. Sure, they could always reroll a new character instead — but rerolling meant starting the rep grind from zero, and after all these days of grinding, there was no way they were giving up their rep levels to start over.
While the players celebrated, Sharlock went over, healed the wounded, and repaired the dead. Then he watched the players start dissecting the subterranean spider corpses. Their prime point of interest was the spiders' bellies — not because they were eager to cut out spider meat, but because last time they'd seen Sharlock pull a strange metal orb out of a belly and carry it off to Frostlake for appraisal. To the players, that read as: kill a mob, score a special item, unlock a hidden storyline.
Maybe the other spiders had similar items inside them?
Besides, even if no hidden items turned up, everything else on a spider could be traded for rep and rewards! Sharlock had already set the prices in his head: spider meat, for instance — twenty pounds of it would fetch ten rep points and ten coppers. Spider legs were raw material for food and weapon-forging — ten rep and ten coppers per leg. As for spider silk, that was a key material for crafting all sorts of items, plus weapon enhancement — one bundle of spider silk went for a hundred rep and a hundred coppers. Spider silk output was just scarcer, and somewhat luck-dependent on top.
Once he'd collected all this stuff from the players, Sharlock could get food production going — plus he'd have Simba the blacksmith use spider legs and spider silk to forge higher-tier gear, then turn around and sell it back to the players, reclaiming metal currency that way. To get better gear, the players would have no choice but to take more backbreaking labor quests, or farm more subterranean spiders for money and rep — a healthy economic loop for the dungeon!
Working quick and clean, the players had all eight subterranean spiders dissected in no time — spider legs laid out one by one off to the side, spider meat cut off in chunks and stacked into piles. Spider silk, as expected, was scarcer.
Even from way off, Sharlock could smell the rank stench rolling off those spiders. The players, meanwhile, had zero complaints, cheerfully diving headfirst into spider bellies to see if anything good was in there.
After all that hustle, nothing good came out of the spider bellies — at best, some unidentifiable creature's remains. You can't get lucky every time; digging valuables out of these subterranean creatures just wasn't in the cards today.
Hands clasped behind his back, Sharlock watched the players tally the loot with impressive organization. He'd assumed they'd bring the loot over to trade for rewards — but once the tallying wrapped up, instead of hurrying over, they started holding an auction. An in-team auction, mind you.
"Spider legs! Opening bid, twenty coppers a leg!"
xX_ShadowBlade_Xx was running the auction. Once he opened bidding, the third-push players started calling out prices, and the numbers quadrupled in no time — Arthur snagged five legs at forty coppers apiece, while some of the other big spenders, like BurningChestHair, ShrineNeko, and Sylvana, bought up the rest of the spider legs at high prices too. Visit novelping.com for the full chapter.
This page repeats a chapter taken from the official publication without approval; readers support its author through that version.
The spider meat found some buyers too, though at modest prices. Last up was the spider silk — it wasn't a full bundle by weight, so bidding opened at eighty coppers, and before long it got hyped up to three hundred. Arthur bought it.
The other players watched from the sidelines as the dungeon world's first loot auction unfolded, and quite a few got to musing:
"My GOD, that is whale behavior on a cosmic scale. One copper's gotta be worth at least ten to twenty bucks these days, and he just drops THAT much? How are the rest of us supposed to live?! I gotta grind harder so I can join a gold run too!" (Gold run: MMO slang — all loot gets auctioned off, then the team splits the take evenly.)
"Gold runs ain't easy either. You think YOU can fight subterranean spiders for two hours without taking a hit? I know I can't."
"That's what practice is for!"
"Get grinding that gold, boys! Stack that cash — I've already earned my kid's college tuition from gold farming these past few days."
"Don't even get me started. I'm literally planning to quit my job and go pro once this game hits open beta — a few hours of playing and the copper I earn beats my whole salary!"
"Hard pass, dude, and here's why: coppers are only expensive because we're in CBT1 with a tiny player base. Once open beta hits and hundreds of thousands — millions — pile in, gold-farming studios will be sprouting like weeds. You think coppers will stay this pricey? Prices are only heading down. Milk it NOW, before open beta, that's the play!"
"Yeah... that checks out, actually..."
The players kept the commentary rolling. Sharlock, meanwhile, was lost. What was this? What were these players doing? Were they... trading with each other?
He'd seen the players exchanging currency among themselves before, but back then he hadn't thought much of it. The way Sharlock saw it, the players were more like helping each other pool funds faster so a few of them could buy weapons and armor for the Spider Nest push — he'd never registered the currency trading as actual commerce. But now, watching the players not only trade but run a full AUCTION — and then, when it wrapped, watching the twenty-odd push participants split the auction proceeds evenly — well.
The players who'd bought spider meat came hugging it to Sharlock to trade for copper and rep rewards — he could follow that logic, trading metal currency for extra rep. But the few who'd paid premium for spider legs and spider silk? That Sharlock couldn't quite parse. Did they even know what that stuff was for?
Because keep in mind, Sharlock's plan was to take these materials, enhance the gear, and sell it back to these very players at a markup — reclaiming the metal currency and keeping them permanently broke to motivate them to work hard. The source of this chapter is novelping . com.
Seeing the players start trading these materials among themselves, Sharlock figured he'd first consult the expert on the other world — the dungeon core "Bru."
"Bru, do you know why these otherworld players skipped my buyback process and started trading these items among themselves?"
"Most likely hoarding stock. After all, Simba apparently let slip a while back that spider legs and spider silk can be used to make gear — and these players chase equipment with religious fervor."
So said the dungeon core "Bru."
Sharlock's brow furrowed:
"So these players plan to skip me, stockpile materials themselves, and go straight to crafting and enhancing their own gear?"
"That should be it, yes. And honestly, this works out fine — let them swap materials among themselves. Whenever they want gear crafted or enhanced, they still have to go through Simba. Set the prices on Simba's end, and we reclaim the metal currency all the same. As a matter of fact, these past few days I've been working out a great way to accelerate how fast they burn through their coins." So said the dungeon core "Bru." "How about we give weapons and gear an enhancement-level system?"
"Enhancement levels?" Sharlock wasn't deeply versed in otherworld gameplay. "Bru" explained:
"After a weapon or armor piece gets enhanced, we append data like +1, +2, and so on to its stat sheet, with each level raising the corresponding Attack Power and Defense values. We set how many spider legs and how much spider silk each enhancement costs — and then, when Simba does the enhancing, past a certain level, he can occasionally smash the gear on purpose. We call it an enhancement failure: weapon and armor destroyed. The higher the enhancement level, the higher the chance of the gear breaking. Broken gear means buying new gear, means starting a fresh enhancement climb — that recovers currency WAY faster than just selling weapons. We can even add a bonus item on the back of it, call it a gear enhancement ticket: use one when enhancing, and your success rate skyrockets! And the smashed weapons and armor? We take those back too, re-forge them into fresh weapons and armor, and sell them right back to the players!"
Once Bru finished, Sharlock saw it plainly: the scheme was genius. It would massively jack up the rate players burned through metal currency — and with the weapons and armor getting recycled, no diamond raw materials would go to waste either.
Sharlock accepted Bru's proposal in short order, then called Simba the blacksmith over to the dungeon core hall to talk business.
When Simba arrived, Sharlock walked him through the gear enhancement scheme, and instructed him to hang a new sign outside the smithy — 【Gear Enhancement】 — with the price of each enhancement posted. The spider silk and spider leg costs for each level would scale up level by level, and with every level gained, the failure chance would climb too. How much it climbed, of course, was up to Simba's own mood — and to how good the players were feeling.
Simba the blacksmith found it odd — why His Lordship wanted gear enhancement made this convoluted, he couldn't fathom — but His Lordship was the boss, so Simba did as told. Soon enough, the 【Gear Enhancement】 sign hung out front. As of now, with spider silk and spider legs, the maximum was five enhancements, so the failure threshold was set at the third level — meaning after players had enhanced three times, any further attempts carried a chance of wrecking the weapon or armor.
The moment the 【Gear Enhancement】 sign went up, a player nearby spotted it instantly and charged over to the crowd still splitting the auction money like a rabid dog, yelling:
"Damn it! The goddamn devs dropped gear enhancement!"