Alexander Smith
"Brothers, this is the last chance to change our mind. Are you sure that we should be going to Tolena?" Joshua plead. "What makes Dan pick Tolena in the first place? Given the wealth at his disposal, he would do great in any other frontier town. What I find even more unbelievable is he somehow managed to convince both of you to go along with his crazy idea. Why do you have to drag me along to this hellhole!?"
Alex, his two brothers and Daniel are now waiting to board the airship that will soon be departing for Tolena.
"Now that the three of you has also made it to peak of the first major realm, the cold won't kill you guys. At worse, it will just make you feel bloody uncomfortable. It's exactly because it's a hellhole that we are going there. Tolena still has less than two hundred pioneers at this point in time. Given how much it is falling behind the other settlements, it's exactly the land of opportunity that we are looking for. Henry and I agree with Dan's analysis. The sect leader won't let Tolena delay the arrival of the third batch of players. Sooner or later, he will have to increase the compensation to make sure Tolena's spirit gathering array upgrade can catch up with the upgrade progress of the other eleven settlements. It's the only solution we can think of at this point in time that has a fair chance to help us quickly secure enough contributions to secure all the close beta slots before all twelve level two spirit gathering arrays are fully upgraded."
Looking at the crowd that will also be joining them on the journey to Tolena, it would appear that they are not the only ones who have the same idea. As a matter of fact, Tolena population has always been struggling to attract new pioneers and the settlement has less than fifty players before the latest major announcement. It was only after the major announcement that Tolena saw an increasing arrival of new pioneers.
"Stop complaining too much. At the very least, the dormitories and mess hall are now up and running. You will never have it as bad as the first batch of pioneers." Henry chips in. "Given how late we are venturing to the frontier, Tolena is the only settlement we still have a chance to grab a few acres of decent land within the future town proper and as much industrial land as we want near the town. This will be a good site to setup our secondary factory site. The sparse population means there won't be too many players that will compete with us for a private spirit gathering array permit. More importantly, most of the key minerals needed for creating magic machineries can be mined on this continent. I don't think it will be too much of a problem for us to get the mining rights for a few of those key minerals if we are willing to stay longer."
The mountain range that can be seen from the south side of Tolena is just the edge of a vast and complex network of mountain ranges covering a third of the continent. Just within the yellow zone, there are four types of magic mineral deposit that the family needs. The remaining five types of magic mineral deposit needed are found in the red zone. However, mining those said deposit will pose some challenge since the lair of a third major realm demonic beast usually sits atop of one. Nonetheless, it will definitely be a very lucrative undertaking if his family have the means to defeat even one of those demonic beasts. Such demonic beast will only build their lair on very rare mineral deposit that will command a decent price even in the immortal realm.
"Have you overlooked the downright hostile environment down there? Even if we can somehow get enough manpower to run the whole mining operation, keeping them alive from the extreme cold alone will be expensive. In my opinion, we should just leave the mining to the experts." Joshua complains.
"I have already thought of a solution for that. Aren't your undead army resistant to extreme temperatures? Once you have reached the second major realm, Death Knight, you should be able to command an army of a hundred skeletons, right? Each minor stage will increase your undead army limit by another hundred and reaching the peak stage will increase the limit by two hundreds. That will come to a total of five hundred undead. Humanoid corpse might be rare now, but I am sure you will no longer have any issue getting all the humanoid corpse you will ever need in the lower realm later. You just need to assign at least half of your undead army to be miners and our problem will be solved. Once you reached the third major realm, Baron of Death, the issue of manpower is even less of a problem." Alex happily suggests.
"Come on, bro. My undead army should be out there conquering the lower realm. Mining is just so beneath them." Joshua counters.
"Aren't you always complaining about how the game has to make everything so realistic. Your freshly raised undead doesn't come with any equipment and I'm sick and tired of hearing you complaining how broke you are just trying to arm your undead. Any undead you can't properly arm are just useless baggage in a battle against a professional army that is fully armed. Don't expect the family will sponsor you any time soon. The business is in the growth stage and money is needed everywhere." Henry joins in to lecture Joshua. "I suggest you split your undead army into undead warriors and undead laborer. You can adjust the ratio depending on how well you can arm your warrior undead. Personally, I think it will be much better for you to keep a small elite squad of undead fully armed with superior weapons and armors. As for the rest, just put all of them to work in a mine. The more undead you assign to mining, the more mining income they can help you generate to buy superior weapons and armors. Just to sweeten the deal, the family will pay above market rate for the minerals you mined. It's a win win scenario. The family solve its labor problem and you can complain less about being poor."
"Fine, Henry. I will do as you say. I can already foresee this will be one miserable trip. All of you are spiritual root cultivator and can rely on fasting pills just to make do. Unlike you guys, I need a healthy intake of quality meat as well. I have to fill up most of my storage bag with meat just to make sure it doesn't hinder my cultivation progress." Joshua grumbles in the defeat to his brother's logic.
"I highly doubt Tolena will attract too many immortal bone cultivators anyway. There are pockets of boreal forest north of Tolena. Though wildlife is sparse, I think there should be enough game to feed the town's small population of immortal bone cultivators." Alex tries to appease Joshua. "Just hang in there, it's not like we are planning to relocate to Tolena permanently. The faster we secure all the beta player slots, the faster you get to go back to Oryn."