Chapter 5：Silver Market

Lin Ke had already realized that the system was only showing him a vague idea of the stats. The more detailed stats existed in the form of Mojibake.

Levels were labeled, but players' Attributes were all in Mojibake.

A weapon's Upgrade Level might be labeled, but detailed information on its Attributes was still in Mojibake.

Lin Ke massaged his temple as he temporarily put this issue aside.

He already had a ton of problems, one more would not matter at this point.

Dra remained alert as she stood guard by Lin Ke's side. Although she cleared out any threats in the vicinity, the blood of all the beasts she killed could have attracted an even stronger predator.

However, her hands were tied in that situation. If she had not killed these guys, they would have become an immediate threat to Lin Ke's safety. On the other hand, if she had chased them off, it could have led to an even more threatening situation in the future.

Furthermore, after killing off these beasts, their corpses could become food to the stronger predators, stalling them momentarily. Once the Fortress was completed, she and Lin Ke would have a place for them to rest in.

In addition, the gory deaths of these beasts might also ward off another wave of threatening enemies. These enemies understood their own strength, they would retreat on their own account knowing that they were going to be outmatched.

Lin Ke was not concerned at all that Dra might not be able to protect him. Lin Ke had no doubt that Dra wielded terrifying levels of power as a Red Dragon.

Her "Disaster" Rating was proof enough for that.

Unfortunately, the crux of her Attributes was shrouded behind Mojibake, so he could not tell accurately the extent of Dra's true power.

With his safety accounted for, Lin Ke opened his in-game Inventory to check out the rewards from the Starter Pack.

The Starter Pack gave quite a lot of stuff, but it was mainly the Hero and the Weapons. Once he had taken those, what remained were just some Silver, resource packs, and some unique trinkets.

There were three types of resource packs given - 10 Wood Packs, 10 Stone Packs, and 1 Special Resource Pack.

The Wood Packs and Stone Packs were Basic Resource Packs. Each pack gave 1000 units of Basic Resources, which are the key materials needed to build the foundation of a Fortress.

On the other hand, Special Resource Packs only gave 100 units of resources. After a player selected the type of Fortress they were building, it would give them the corresponding type of Special Resources.

These resources were only needed when building Special Facilities in the Fortress or summoning Special Combat Units. To Lin Ke, these were still useless at this point.

If he did not mind the sacrifice, Special Resources could be converted into Basic Resources on a 1:1 ratio.

However, the difference in the value lost would be absurd.

This was because 10,000 units of Basic Resources were of equivalent value to just 100 Units of Special Resources. It was a difference of an entire 100 times, of course, there would not be anyone who would try this.

Lin Ke was once again thankful that he got the Starter Pack. If he had come here empty-handed, he would have been digging his own grave.

That was due to the fact that Lin Ke did not have a single resource to his name after building the tower, the Wood and Stone in his Resource Panel were at 0. All he had was the 50,000 Silver he got from the Starter Pack, so at least he was not at rock bottom.

That was all the Starter Pack gave him. Lin Ke also took the opportunity to check the Market - one of the game's most important mechanics. Unfortunately, Lin Ke could only window-shop as he perused through the Market's catalog.

The first thing that struck Lin Ke was the item currently on sale on the Market. It was a dark black demonic costume. It was a universal cosmetic outfit that would give players a lot of Attribute points.

After taking a closer look, he was not shocked to find that the attributes of this outfit were all in Mojibake too.

However, seeing that this outfit was priced at 4888 Diamonds - though it was lowered to 299 Diamonds from the discount - Lin Ke knew how much of a power-up this outfit would have provided, especially after glancing over at his measly 10 Diamonds.

Although Lin Ke could only afford to window-shop, he did still manage to get an understanding of the games just by looking at the descriptions of these items.

The Market had a huge variety of products, all listed down in the dozens of pages in the catalog. As expected, all their prices were also extremely expensive.

At one point, Lin Ke even saw some Limited-time Sale items. They were all cheap items that were given a 30-40% discount. From the name of the items, they were probably important resources for the early-game.

Unfortunately…

Lin Ke once again glanced over at his 10 Diamonds.

'Screw it, let's look at other things.'

Lin Ke noticed that other than the Diamond Market, there was also a Silver Market here.

In other words, it was a Market that allowed players to purchase items with Silver.

This piqued Lin Ke's interest quite a bit as he took a closer look at the Silver Market. A lot of the items here were in the catalog for the Diamond Market he had seen earlier.

In other words, in the Silver Market, players could use Silver to purchase items that originally required Diamonds.

"Umm, but isn't the selection here a little too limited?"

Lin Ke helplessly looked at the Silver Market catalog that listed out 8 items. Furthermore, all the items listed here all had extremely limited stock.

After he fiddled around a bit, he realized that he could buy every single item listed here with around twenty to thirty thousand Silver.

Then, he saw the small question mark at the corner of the Silver Market. It was an introduction to the Silver Market.

"So this place refreshes every 12 hours?" Lin Ke mumbled involuntarily to himself. This Silver Market would refresh the stock every 12 hours. It had very limited selection and stock, all of which he felt did not have a lot of utility.

At the top of the Silver Market, the refresh timer for the Market was displayed. There were nearly 10 more hours till the next refresh.

Lin Ke was not sure about the actual time of this place, but he guessed that the Silver Market resets at Midnight and Noon. Hence, he hypothesized that the time of his current location should be around two in the afternoon.

Taking a look at the prices of the items, Lin Ke calculated the rough conversion rate between Diamonds and Silver.

The value of Silver to Diamonds was approximately 1000:1. In other words, 1000 Silver would have the same purchasing power as 1 Diamond.

In turn, that would mean that the 50,000 Silver he got from the Starter Pack was equivalent to 50 Diamonds. Adding the number of Diamonds he already had, it would total up to 60 Diamonds…

"Why do I feel that the difference is still too big…"

Lin Ke could not help but sigh at the sky. However, one thing he knew for sure was that once the Fortress was completed, the Silver would be produced automatically by his facilities. At that point, he could just slowly accumulate it.

Now, as he looked through all the interesting items in the Silver Market, he decided to hold himself back. There might be more important uses for Silver, Lin Ke had to use them wisely.

When resources are limited, one cannot just simply waste them.

After taking a thorough look through all the items in the Market, he had researched all of these items' attributes to their utmost limits, using the information to check the validity of his own understanding.

With that, time flew as he continued his research.

A long while later, a "ding" rang out in Lin Ke's ear, causing him to jolt up. Looking up, he realized that his Elemental Tower had already finished being constructed.

Elemental Tower, Level 1, Allows player to earn an additional 50 points of EXP Points at Midnight every single day.

This extremely simple attribute gave Lin Ke a weird sense of comfort.

Finally, he could earn some EXP!

Despite using the technical term for Mojibake, which is the usual "garbled-up script/gibberish" due to decryption errors, the author in the last chapter used punctuation marks instead