Chương 138: Rank One Merchant

Getting back to Westmarket was embarrassingly easy once Meno had an actual compass. He set the Ship Compass toward Veyran, followed the needle until the coastline came back into view, then kept the Blackwake running north until Westmarket's Royal Docks appeared ahead. After the whole just go down and left disaster, having an item that simply pointed toward land felt almost unfair. Meno recalled the ship before entering the harbor, jumped the last stretch to shore, and summoned the Gravecycle.

Blue corpse-fire wrapped around the wheels as the mount screamed toward Westmarket, carrying him through the gates fast enough that most players only recognized PrayerBeadGod after he had already passed. He was not going straight to Northspire yet. With more than five million people watching, anything obvious he did would hit the forums in seconds, and PBG ATTACKING NORTHSPIRE was too clean a headline.

Meno needed competing nonsense around his stream, something loud enough that people would talk about anything else before they figured out where he was going. There was no better way to manufacture chaos than letting people think they could get top tier gear for almost nothing. He wanted to empty his inventory anyway. At the auction house, Meno opened the listing interface and started dumping Masterwork gear with a 1g starting bid, no buyout, and the maximum 48-hour duration.

[Masterwork I | Seven-Day Absolution] [Masterwork II | Jailer's Revenge] [Masterwork II | Jailer's Determination] [Masterwork I | Pale Confessor's Slippers] Chat understood immediately that something stupid was happening. ONE GOLD???? PBG FLASH SALE guild treasurers just woke up sweating MASTERWORK FOR 1G LMAO THIS IS BAIT DO NOT FALL FOR IT EVERYONE OPEN AH NOW"Flash sale. Get in on it." The prices started climbing before he finished the next listing, but that was not really the point.

Nobody serious was getting Masterwork gear for 1g. The low starting bid just gave thousands of people enough hope to click, share the listing, and convince themselves that maybe everyone else would forget about the auction before the timer ended. The big guilds would snipe the useful pieces near the end anyway. Masterwork gear was still rare enough that even awkward rolls could patch somebody's missing slot. Meno kept [Masterwork III | Drowned Pilgrim's Sunker] aside.

Aurelia had spent most of yesterday acting completely unhinged, but underneath all of that she had genuinely tried to warn him about her father. Meno had ignored her until he ended up getting collected from a pizza shop at 4 AM, so that probably deserved something. If she refused the pants, he could always sell them later. Everything else was fair game. Meno kept scrolling through old equipment, materials, recipes, and random junk he had carried for so long that half of it felt like it belonged in a museum.

[Epic III | Recipe: Dreamguard Bulwark] [Rare II | Brinefang Pearl] [Rare III | Shardback Crystal Antler] [Rare III | Dream-Burned Fire Essence] [Uncommon Smithing Tongs] [Uncommon Smithing Hammer] [Infused Grip Wrap] [Infused Binding Pin] [Rare I | Hollow Lich Essence] [Rare III | Leviathan Veil] [Uncommon III | Charmsteel Rune Dagger] [Epic III | Ashen Crown Tail Spike] [Uncommon III | Great Axe] [Uncommon III | Charmsteel Dagger] [Uncommon III | Charmsteel Plate Chest] [Uncommon III | Charmleather Helm] [Uncommon III | Charmleather Vest] [Uncommon III | Charmleather Boots] [Uncommon III | Charmleather Pants] [Rare III | Ashwake Cleaver] [Duneleaf Recovery Draught] Everything went up with a 1g starting bid, and the auction interface filled with bids so quickly that Meno stopped bothering to check individual prices.

AUTHENTIC PBG GARBAGE two gold on the hammer ASHWAKE CLEAVER RELIC ITEM WifeLawyer is having chest pain somewhere SELL THE TONGS WITH CERTIFICATE OF AUTHENTICITY WHO IS BIDDING 50K ON UNCOMMON PANTS streamer tax is REAL"Go ahead, guys. Authentic PBG gear. You can actually afford the Uncommon ones." Meno highlighted the Ashwake Cleaver before listing it.

"That might only be Rare III, but that thing killed Vervenzal. Just saying." Meno was enjoying watching the bid skyrocket way too much. Then he reached [Legendary I | Dreamchain Aegis], and the easy rhythm stopped. He had wanted to give the shield to Oxy. She had even told him she wanted it before everything went to hell immediately afterward, and now Meno had no idea whether she still needed it, whether she wanted anything from him at all, or whether sending it would create another situation he did not understand.

Selling it because he was annoyed felt cheap. Meno had spent enough of his life letting resentment make decisions for him, and it usually meant thinking about those decisions long after the original problem stopped mattering. He closed the auction window, walked over to a mailbox, and sent the shield to Oxy without a message. If she wanted it, good. If she did not, she could send it back. Either way, Meno no longer had to deal with it.

His Swing Master equipment was still sealed by the Challenge Class, so none of those items were available to accidentally dump onto the market. His inventory had been emptied and only the two meaningful items remained. [Masterwork III | Drowned Pilgrim's Sunker] [Unclassified | Morgra Ritual Stand] The ritual stand was still somehow Unclassified.

Meno inspected it again just to make sure Solar had not quietly fixed the thing during one of the recent patches, but apparently nobody knew what rarity to assign to a stool created when a dragon blasted part of a Morgra ritual pyramid across a cave. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. Stool tech remained alive. Completely useless at the moment, but alive.

Before leaving Westmarket, Meno stopped at the bank and finally claimed the old consignment Brad had arranged back when 5, 000g had felt like money. The payout added another 5, 233g to his balance, which reminded him of the merchant contract. Brad had farmed him good with that one. Total scam. The auction house was obviously better, and that gave Meno another idea. His profession panel still showed [Fluxforge Smith — Level 30], a profession that had been dead weight for ages.

Progressing it required rune knowledge he had never bothered learning, and Brad's old promise to provide the necessary runes had never turned into anything useful. Engineering sounded more interesting now that Crownfall had demonstrated it could turn two thrown consumables into a critically damaged 2, 000, 000g ship, but that could wait. On the way out, Meno stopped at Westmarket's Profession Hall and dumped Fluxforge Smith for Merchant.

The profession change immediately canceled the old contract with Brad, which was a hidden bonus. HE FIRED BRAD INGAME merchant arc? RANK ONE SHOPKEEPER brad just lost his cut RIP 30 LEVELS OF SMITHING DELETED FOR NOTHING THIS MAN HATES CRAFTING BUY HIGH SELL LOW META"I am rank one Merchant now." Meno had no intention of becoming an actual market flipper. He was just hoping that selling things through the auction house would generate passive profession XP while he did what he was already doing anyway.

In hindsight, switching before listing his entire inventory might have been smarter. Maybe listing counted. Maybe only completed sales did. A giant wall of profession tutorial text appeared, explaining the merchant exchange, appraisal mechanics, listing efficiency, market history, negotiations, regional pricing, and several systems Meno had absolutely no interest in reading. The distraction was already working.

Forum posts were filling up with screenshots of the 1g auctions, arguments over what the Masterwork pieces were actually worth, accusations that guilds were manipulating bids, and multiple threads tracking supposedly historical PrayerBeadGod equipment. That gave Meno the noise he wanted. He left Westmarket and summoned the Gravecycle.

His viewership had already climbed back above six million now that he was no longer farming the same dungeon for ten hours, and the number kept rising while blue corpse-fire tore across the road. Meno still had not told chat where he was going. Slaying Northspire's King was not going to be as simple as riding through the front gate and kicking him in the head.

The faction patch had removed permanent hostility between Grave Crown and Red Bastion, so Northspire should treat Meno as neutral until he attacked something. Cities were safe zones for normal PvP too, which meant walking in would not automatically start the chaos he wanted. He would have to make the city hostile himself by attacking NPCs, and once that happened, every guard in Northspire would probably come after him.

The capital belonged to Veyran's Level 60 progression range, so Meno expected the strongest regular guards to cap somewhere around there. One guard was irrelevant at Level 70, but hundreds were not. False Hero worked best when Meno entered serious combat with Reactor already stacked, and those stacks disappeared when combat ended. If he rode directly into Northspire and attacked the first NPC he saw, he would be starting at 100x Unstable while an entire city piled onto him. That sounded unnecessarily fair.

Meno wanted a distraction too, something large enough to make Northspire's guards care about more than the half-naked guy trying to murder their ruler. Templefall Hollow had exactly one candidate. The Colossus. It was Level 60, enormous, and worked more like an open-world boss than a normal monster. The ten-level gap meant Meno could probably keep it under control without much trouble, while city guards should still need actual time to kill it. The only question was whether it could leave Templefall Hollow.

Meno aimed the Gravecycle toward the center of Veyran. Very High Speed turned the farmland of Garrison Fields into streaks of color around him. He blasted along the road, crossed the bridge toward Templefall Hollow, and reached the edge of the zone in five minutes. Grey earth replaced farmland while broken strips of road curled upward through the air beneath floating rocks. Most weaker monsters ignored Meno, and the intelligent ones moved away when they saw him. Templefall Hollow itself felt much quieter now.

Top players had moved toward the Pilgrim dungeons and Fractera, leaving scattered solo players and small groups behind instead of organized teams constantly hunting every major spawn. Perfect. Meno circled the landscape on the Gravecycle until he saw a huge stone body moving between the floating rocks. The Colossus was alive. He dismissed the mount, planted both feet, and used Desync to launch himself above it. This was also a good chance to test the new Engulf setup properly.

Meno landed on the Colossus's broad stone back and activated Engulf. Sticky fixed his feet against the rock, and one full contact tick landed before he jumped off again. The Colossus lost roughly 25% HP.

"Okay, too much. Don't want to kill my present." PBG TAMING WORLD BOSS 25% FROM ONE TICK LMAO what is he doing that poor colossus THIS LOOKS SUSPICIOUS bro found a pet rock The Colossus turned and followed. Meno kept Engulf active while moving north in deliberately short jumps. Desync could carry him far enough to lose the monster if he used full power, so he kept each launch controlled and used Jet Lag whenever an arc threatened to open too much distance. The Colossus stayed angry.

Meanwhile, Meno's own HP kept dropping through the normal Engulf cycle until it passed below 20% and False Furnace activated. Another second took him to 10% HP. Meno watched the bar very carefully. This was the part where the whole build either worked or turned into an extremely embarrassing self-kill. The next Engulf tick arrived at the same time as Drowned Pilgrim's Vitality regenerated 10% Maximum HP, leaving him locked at 10% HP while Absorption began growing on top of it. Meno grinned like it was his birthday.

"It works. Was afraid of a self-own there, honestly. If the regen came after the damage tick, I would've died, but they hit at the same time and offset each other." INFINITE ENGULF CONFIRMED 10% HP forever??? false furnace was not bait HE HAS A SECOND HEALTH BAR NOW PATCH 7 INCOMING Meno kept moving north while his real HP stayed locked at 10% and the Absorption Shield built by another 5% Maximum HP every second.

He shortened each jump enough for the Colossus to stay close, then used Jet Lag to kill extra distance whenever necessary. Once Absorption reached the full 100% Maximum HP cap, Meno had effectively built another entire False Hero health bar on top of himself. That was enough testing. He used 0-Lag Pyronucleosis to turn Engulf and Unstable off. The Colossus reached him during the 3-second stun and punched him directly, but the hit barely dented the full Absorption Shield.

When the stun ended, Reactor restored Meno's actual HP from 10% to 100%, leaving most of the shield intact. [Reactor 1 | Unstable 110x]"That's disgusting." With Unstable gone, normal grounded movement returned, which made kiting much easier. Meno no longer had to bunny-hop every few feet; he could simply stay just ahead of the Colossus while keeping combat active enough to preserve the Reactor stack. The northern edge of Templefall Hollow eventually came into view, which made the zone boundary the real test.

Most normal monsters refused to leave their home zones. Cross the boundary, and they reset, turning back toward their spawn area. The Colossus felt different because of its open-world-boss logic, but Meno wasn't sure Solar had actually allowed it to wander across regions. He slowed near the boundary until the massive rock body was only a few steps behind.

"Moment of truth." Meno crossed from Templefall Hollow into Stormcrown Highlands and kept moving only far enough that the Colossus had to decide whether the chase continued. The monster reached the invisible boundary, hesitated for a fraction of a second, then stepped across after him.

NO WAY HE GOT IT OUT WORLD BOSS DELIVERY SERVICE where is he taking this thing Northspire is north from here oh no RED BASTION PLAYERS LOG OUT PBG has a pet colossus Meno laughed and started north again with the Colossus lumbering behind him.

"Yes! This is my small gift for all the Red Bastion players. Prepare yourselves. Your king is about to eat dirt."