Chapter 297: Various Influences (1)

Chapter 297: Various Influences (1)

Regardless of the complaints, the final outcome wouldn’t harm Zheng Yichen’s interests. His interests were easy to satisfy, since mana was something practically every Magic Weapon Summoner possessed. Even if it was used up, it could be refilled the very next day. Zheng Yichen even thought to himself that this way, he was helping them exercise diligently. After all, even regular blood donation was beneficial for health.

Those Magic Weapon Summoners wanting greater profits naturally had to work hard at constantly training their mana. By every measure, that was good for them, wasn’t it?

So, Zheng Yichen was quite optimistic about this kind of constructive ‘haters’. Just as Dan Marina said, merchants and national councils might clash because of this. But as long as the Magic Weapon Summoning Book created such positive influences that outweighed the negative ones – or even influences they had to support – they could never band together to resist its existence. More importantly, they couldn’t even consider rebelling.

The very nature of the Magic Weapon Summoning Book doomed any united boycott!

In short, the development model of the Trading Module within the Magic Weapon Summoning Book was already shifting towards a degree of formalization. Once Zheng Yichen established the highest-level rules, he really didn’t need to put much effort into crafting the specific rules tailored for merchants. Unable to resist this trading model any longer, they would inevitably embrace it rather than fight it and thus forfeit potential gains!

After that, the merchant guilds started to act. The negotiation process wasn’t all that complicated, mainly because they simply didn’t have the time. This novel trading model was already public knowledge. Zheng Yichen wasn’t a merchant and certainly couldn’t be collectively squeezed out by all the guilds. The bottom line was…you could take part if you wanted to, or stay out if you preferred.

It didn’t interfere with their physical store transactions anyway; they couldn’t exert control over it. As for a united effort to suppress it? If they knew enough about the Creator’s background, perhaps that might work. However, the Creator’s identity remained incredibly mysterious. No one knew the Creator’s background, not even their strength level. Someone capable of creating the Magic Weapon Summoning Book, a unique product utterly beyond anyone else’s ability, couldn’t possibly be weak.

The consequences of such suppression? At best, they would lose the Magic Weapon Contract, becoming excluded from any future new models connected to it. Worse, the reporting function was a devastating weapon against rule-breakers. The graver consequence would be fully angering the Creator. The Creator might not be able to dismantle all the guilds, but smaller ones truly lacked the strength to resist. Would the big guilds protect them then? More likely, they would turn a blind eye, sacrificing the small fry as scapegoats to appease the Creator’s wrath.

Therefore, when the gathered guild representatives finally met and read the rules of the Trading Module, they realized these rules were brilliantly structured in regard to the overall situation. They measured public acceptability perfectly while ensuring consequences too severe for wrongdoers to bear. The punishment rules gave those accepting the system extra reassurance. Once accepted, behaviors harming merchant interests within this rule-protected system would diminish significantly, requiring less vigilance.

All they needed to do was embrace these main rules!

As for other types of influence, the representatives had no time for prolonged arguments. Every minute lost meant a minute of lost opportunity. So, the negotiation wrapped up swiftly. Finding new representatives later to squabble with national representatives was a matter for another day. If they waited until they finished haggling, others leveraging the Trading Module would have already seized the best head start.

For those starting later, there’s the saying about ‘latecomers surpassing the early starters,’ but this wasn’t building houses. Losing the first-mover advantage made it genuinely hard to catch up. Just like in sports, people only remember the outstanding champion!

However, after the negotiations, when the guilds rushed back to get ready, they were stunned to find the Purple Vine Guild had already prepared their Online Store in advance, complete with certification badges! Some immediately understood and inwardly cursed, but it was futile. The Purple Vine Guild must have started preparations before the negotiations even began. Thinking it through, they knew this negotiation would pass quickly anyway! Taking action early carried no real risk.

—

Within a certain tribal settlement:

The young chief, who hadn’t been in power long, looked down at the Magic Weapon Summoning Book on his table. This world had cities, but it also had people living in tribal forms, like them. Unlike humans, those adopting the tribal system were overwhelmingly Alien Races – eight out of ten, perhaps nine. While humans didn’t strongly oppose Alien Races, relations weren’t exactly harmonious.

Communication mostly happened through Itinerant Merchants and the like, but that was the extent of it. If a large number of Alien Races settled in a city, the City Lord would grow wary – afraid they might stir trouble. A small group was tolerable, but the entire tribe? What were they planning?

“An opportunity…” the young chief murmured softly. Though Alien Races lived tribally, sometimes far from human-populated regions, this didn’t mean they were barbaric. They possessed their own cultural heritage; indeed, they had their own glorious eras in ancient times!

As for rebuilding that former glory? True, some tribal leaders dreamed of it, but they all inevitably failed. The times were different now. The population disparity between Alien Races and Humans was enormous. Take his current tribe – they couldn’t even fill half of a minor human city, let alone sustain its development.

The opportunity he saw resided within this Trading Module’s effect on their tribe. They had their cultural heritage, yes, but their isolated location left them severely disconnected from human society. They still needed supplies for living, and they weren’t primitive people merely hunting for survival. This necessitated commerce. Yet, their business acumen paled compared to human merchants. Several attempts had ended not only unsuccessfully but also with significant losses.

They were forced to revert to the old ways: waiting for human merchants to come and purchase the specialties their tribe produced. Being the buyers, the merchants set low prices. But even that was better than letting those specialties pile up and rot. Low price or not, if they couldn’t sell them off, it yielded no profit at all!

Now, with the advent of this Trading Module, he saw a possibility to break free of this cycle. After all, those specialties were hard-won by tribespeople risking their lives hunting – unlike simply picking vegetables from a garden. High risk indeed; people could die.

Lacking business experience? It didn’t matter. They could simply learn by observing other Online Stores. He had scrutinized the trading rules. One stipulation expressly forbade malicious underpricing or overpricing to disrupt normal order. You could sell goods cheaper in your Online Store, but this cheaper price had its limits – it couldn’t be a loophole for undermining an entire category.

With underpricing off the table, they could compete via quality at similar price points! Given the strict rules, few would choose to price maliciously low anyway. The absolute minimum was above cost. Who willingly wanted to lose money? Without many loopholes, attempting a ‘lose-first, profit-later’ strategy usually doomed your own investment.

Exceptions like stores seeking publicity through sales promotions existed, but that was irrelevant to them. For this young tribal chief, though, he saw a new path forward. Specialties produced by the tribe could now be sold this way! Unclear on pricing? No problem. They could reference others’ prices later, even buy competitors’ products to assess quality. After comparing theirs, they could set a revised price…

Furthermore, they might even avoid the need to form expensive procurement teams traveling to nearby cities for essential tribal supplies. They could buy everything from Online Stores. Aside from spending money, it only cost a bit of mana. Contrast that with procurement teams: a single round trip could vanish over ten days. And during those ten-plus days, the tribe lost at least over a dozen of its strongest warriors!

Procurement team members needed to be formidable fighters. A weak team risked being ambushed and robbed halfway. Encounter reasonable robbers, you only lost valuables. But encounter the ruthless ones? Lose everything, get captured and sold into slavery, or even worse – simply killed off!

He definitely considered the risk of being cheated online. But thinking it through logically, countless people trusted it already. Plus, unlike major merchants rolling out large Online Stores, their initial interaction wouldn’t be on that scale. They’d mainly buy daily necessities and sell native specialties like surplus furs or medicinal herbs from the tribe.

Precious items related to their ancestral heritage wouldn’t surface for auction anyway. Who’d casually auction such vital artifacts?

After some contemplation, the young chief created a Confidential Post, specifically tagging a number of individuals. These were leaders from other tribes connected to his, several located relatively close. They held gatherings near year’s end to discuss matters like hunting territory divisions.

Usually, due to transportation hassles, gatherings were rare for anything less than major events. Trivial matters were often ignored, sometimes causing minor issues for one tribe to escalate into serious problems for another. The Magic Weapon Forum, however, drastically reduced such incidents. Even if his tribe members couldn’t cultivate mana, their innate physical aptitude gave them a high likelihood of cultivating Battle Qi!

Other Alien Race tribes? Some couldn’t cultivate Battle Qi at all but possessed unique, inherited powers. The Magic Weapon Summoning Book’s astonishing adaptability amazed them; it could interface with any extraordinary power source. Had it required specific mana or Battle Qi, most Alien Races couldn’t have used it. But bypassing power types, any being with a brain – even Magical Beasts – could theoretically use it! Provided they possessed sufficient intelligence to decipher the characters…

Another point irked the young chief slightly: recently, his Magic Weapon summoning proficiency had plummeted drastically. He had been capable of summoning High-Level Magic Soldiers, yet now his proficiency in them remained stuck at the absolute minimum. Even in Intermediate Magic Weapon summoning, his proficiency felt sluggish and weak. Only the Basic and Low-level Magic Weapon proficiencies, comparatively less affected, were still excruciatingly slow to regain after the drop!

It reminded him painfully of the bottleneck he’d faced years ago under his father’s forced physical conditioning – that feeling of painfully slow progress where days felt like years. He couldn’t increase proficiency in higher-tier weapons until the lower-tier ones reached an adequate standard again. Initially thinking it was his personal problem, consultations with chiefs of other tribes revealed everyone faced the same issue.

This reassured him significantly. Since everyone started from square one, why worry? The only issue was the steep fall in status – plummeting from an Advanced Magic Weapon User to effectively a Low-level Magic Weapon User. The consolation? He could still summon High-Level Magic Soldiers; their power remained unchanged, though further proficiency gains were impossible. This lingering ‘privilege,’ however, seemed like an overstep, consuming immense extra energy!

While this irked many, they just had to bear it. The fundamental frustrations remained: no way to track down the Creator, and impossible to challenge the Creator. Crucially, while proficiencies dropped, regaining them actually made the Magic Weapons stronger! Particularly the overlooked Low-level Magic Weapons. After every Magic Weapon Summoner’s proficiency was reset, these re-emerged brilliantly. Many found that re-using these Low-level Magic Weapons felt surprisingly smooth. Despite lacking numerous extra attributes, their power proved just as formidable. Furthermore, in many battles, summoning Intermediate or High-Level Magic Weapons wasn’t always practical or necessary.

Ultimately, these changes shifted the landscape. Among Magic Weapon Summoners, Advanced Users no longer reigned supreme as the undisputed ‘top dogs’. The mainstream had shifted back down to the Low-level tier, bypassing the Intermediate. Any genuine Intermediate Magic Weapon Users who surfaced now drew significant attention. As for Advanced Users? They were the true big leagues. Magic Weapon Summoners reaching this tier amounted to perhaps one in a hundred! They were practically as rare as pandas.

Even the young chief himself had only barely clawed his way back into the Intermediate User tier a few days prior. Despite this, his Low-level Magic Weapon summoning proficiency lingered at the absolute minimum. Possessing past experience with tier advancement, he dared not recklessly progress. Ignoring lower-tier proficiency to desperately climb higher, disregarding the foundation? Countless glaring examples existed of the disastrous consequences. With this rare chance for everyone to reset and rebuild properly, foolishly neglecting the basics would be entirely on him!