"Hmmm? Interesting..."
The Citizenship Granting had failed, but it wasn’t like I had gained nothing from the attempt. If anything, the System’s notification had given me some valuable clues about the conditions required for the skill to work.
So...
First, the target had to be intelligent enough to understand my existence.
Second, it needed to have a sufficiently high affinity toward me. In other words, it probably couldn’t fear me or have a negative impression of me.
And third, it had to recognize me as its Sovereign.
When I put all three conditions together, Citizenship Granting started to look less like a conventional skill and more like a consent agreement between two parties.
In other words, I couldn’t simply force someone into becoming my citizen. They had to willingly accept me as their ruler.
Huh...
That’s actually pretty reasonable.
I had no problem with the first and second conditions.
But that third condition though... it seemed to be the most troublesome one.
Because I was a castle. How exactly was I supposed to get someone to "recognize me as their Sovereign"?
I mean, in order for someone to recognize me as their ruler, they first had to recognize that I even existed as a living being.
If I were a human or even a monster, that would be easy enough. I could simply introduce myself, talk to them, and establish some sort of relationship.
But here, I was a building.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even make a facial expression.
So how the hell am I supposed to make someone recognize me as a being in the first place?!
I see...
So this is the puzzle the System wants me to solve, huh?
Anyway, with the skill having failed and me having no way to make this goblin my citizen for now, there was no reason to keep it alive anymore.
I placed a small apple beneath the portcullis and lured the goblin underneath it before bringing the heavy gate down.
A swift, painless and humane death for the goblin.
Cha-ching!
Another 17 Points into the bag.
Combined with the Points from the two other goblin corpses, and after subtracting the Points lost from the failed Citizenship Granting attempt, I now had a total of 124 Points.
And with that, I finally had enough!
It was finally time to upgrade the System Shop!
*****
"System!" I called out. "Upgrade System Shop."
[Ding!]
[System Shop Upgrade Initiating.]
[-100 Points]
[Points Remaining: 24]
A few seconds later, the upgrade was complete.
[System Shop Upgrade Successful!]
[System Shop Level 2 Unlocked!]
Seeing my balance once again drop below 3 digits hurt more than being struck by lightning.
Haha, back to being broke again, I guess!
Anyway, several new menus smoothly unfolded in my mind.
[New Basic Material Unlocked: Iron!]
That sent a fresh wave of excitement coursing through me.
Hell yeah! Iron!
This precious metal was literally what I’d been waiting for!
Because if I had iron, that meant I could finally get my hands on real swords, spears, and proper metal equipment!
So far, all the weapons available in the Item Shop were made from wood or stone, practically Stone Age junk. So I couldn’t help wondering whether the addition of iron would finally change things for the better.
I immediately checked the Item Shop.
Unfortunately, nothing had changed yet.
I’d already used my free daily refresh, so I’d have to wait another day before I could see whether any new iron equipment would appear.
But then...
The moment I went back and checked the price of Iron in the Construction Shop, reality came crashing down on me.
[Iron ×1 — Cost: 30 Points]
...
I closed the screen and opened it again, thinking there must have been some kind of error or miscalculation.
But no.
It was real.
[Iron ×1 — Cost: 30 Points]
"What...?"
"Are you serious, System-san?"
"Thirty. Freaking. Points?!"
"For what? One piece of iron?!"
"ONE?!"
To put that into perspective, I could buy three Stone or three Wood for just 1 Point.
That meant one unit of Stone or Wood effectively cost only about 0.33 Points.
Iron was literally one hundred times more expensive!
"Hmmmmm..."
I tried to come up with a reasonable explanation for the ridiculous price.
Maybe it’s because wood can be obtained directly from trees, while iron has to be extracted from ore and then smelted before it becomes usable?
The more processing required to produce a material, the more Points it costs. Thus, Iron would be much more expensive...
Yeah... that’s probably it!
At this kind of price, I was now expecting nothing less than pure iron bars.
Still, I couldn’t complain too much.
Having iron available was already a huge improvement. It would open up countless possibilities for construction, equipment, and all sorts of other things.