The Fourth Calamity: Starting with Dungeon Slimes

Chapter 140 Lilith's Small Business

This is roughly the general development path for players at present.

If you want to develop something and you're short-handed, you'll likely need to ask the Bloodlust Lizard Clan, as well as races like the Demon Wolves and Little Skeletons for help.

First of all, the cost is much lower than hiring other players, because most players don't care about the small amount of money you pay them; they want profit sharing.

All things considered, the cost-effectiveness is naturally incomparable.

Moreover, if it's not a large-scale battle, but just a small-scale fight, a small group of people can still handle it. If they bring along these two races, the chances of winning are relatively high.

If a large-scale battle occurs, hiring some players will not be of any use.

For this reason, most newcomers and Jumping Dragons have similar ideas and go straight to these two races.

Meanwhile, the trading market was bustling with activity, mostly filled with new players who had just entered the game.

It's basically the same as the situation with the Jumping Dragon.

There was a flurry of bargaining and haggling.

Every time Lilith saw the grand spectacle here, she was very unhappy.

Jiang Chen had previously entrusted him with managing this place, but he was dismissed because he embezzled public funds.

Lilith now deeply regrets her actions.

"I was too young and naive back then. If I had been more cunning and only embezzled a little each time, I definitely wouldn't have been caught."

"Who would have thought that I had embezzled so much money? It was discovered in no time. If it hadn't been discovered then, I could still be making a lot more money now."

While thinking about Lilith, he felt indignant, but there was nothing he could do.

Of course, Lilith now has new avenues to explore.

After all, she has learned a lot these days, and if she puts these things to use, she can earn a lot of money.

"The security team has started taking orders."

"Exploring new areas can be very dangerous, but as long as our security team is there to protect you, you will not be at any risk and can collect materials with peace of mind."

"This will not only improve your collection efficiency, but also reduce your losses to some extent."

This so-called security team was naturally created by Lilith and Athena.

Both of them are currently short of money, so they finally came up with this solution.

Lilith wants to enjoy a high-quality life, so she needs to spend money.

After all, buying various daily necessities is a considerable expense, not to mention other expenses such as food and drink. If you include all these things, the daily expenditure alone is a large sum.

Because there are no more jobs that bring in quick money, it's definitely impossible to make money through normal means. At least based on Lilith's earning power, she roughly estimated that she might never be able to live a good life in her lifetime.

After some thought, she came up with this idea.

Provide security for new players so they can mine successfully.

After all, no matter how bad things are on their side, they still have a giant dragon.

They could easily bully ordinary magical beasts. Of course, Lilith wasn't stupid; the contract clearly stated that they could choose to run away in the event of force majeure.

As for what constitutes "force majeure," there's a lot of debate about it. Even very weak monsters could be considered force majeure. However, under normal circumstances, Lilith would never do that. After all, she'd finally come up with this method, hoping it would help her make more money; she absolutely wouldn't ruin her reputation so quickly.

The situations of Athena and Lilith are actually not that different; in fact, Athena is even more short of money than Lilith.

How could they not be short of money?

When playing cards with other players, the amount of money involved can vary greatly. It's not something that can be solved with just a few gold coins a day. Sometimes it can be dozens of coins, and sometimes it can even be hundreds.

Fortunately, her skills are now quite good. With both wins and losses, the gold coins last much longer than before, but they still don't last very long.

Ever since she took to playing cards, Athena has never had enough money.

Although she lost more often than she won, Athena still enjoyed it immensely.

That's roughly the situation now. In short, both Lilith and Athena are quite short of money.

Neither of them had a particularly good way to make money, but after some discussion, they came up with this relatively reliable method.

At least in their eyes, this method is quite reliable. It requires almost no investment, and you can make a lot of money while not having to worry about much else.

As for whether players believe it or not, the two are not worried at all. The reason is simple: veteran players may be a little bit skeptical, but new players certainly don't know.

By the time new players realize that the combat strength here is weak and they are unlikely to be able to protect people, they will have already collected the money.

"So, Athena, do you understand? This is a one-time deal."

"Our main targets are the new Pata. The old Pata know our situation, so they definitely know we can't protect them and it's impossible to make money off them. Only the new Pata who know nothing are our targets."

The latter nodded, but still had some concerns.

"Are you sure this method will really work? Are they really willing to spend the money?"

"Of course they'd be willing. What do they call this? They say they've already spent all the extra money, so who cares about a little more? Think about it, they arrange so many things, investing at least one or two thousand gold coins at a time. Do you think it's difficult for them to spend an extra 200 gold coins? No, it's not difficult at all. Spending an extra 200 gold coins to ensure their safety is well worth it for them."

"Whether they can keep it or not, they don't know, but they'll definitely spend the money. After all, I've advertised it so well, they're bound to fall for it."

Lilith was very confident about this matter.

Although it seemed a bit far-fetched, Athena still believed Lilith's words.

And so the two continued to wait for business to come to them.

Sure enough, things soon took a turn for the better. The Jumping Dragon, which was almost ready, suddenly stopped while watching Lilith making her announcement.

"How did these two get together? Are they teaming up to provide security services?"

"Is this a new service launched by the official team to provide us with a better data collection experience?"

It's no wonder that Jumping Dragon would think that way. After all, it's a newly launched map, and it's normal to want to add other game features to it.

The group exchanged glances and began to whisper among themselves.

"I said, 'Should we ask them for help? This thing feels a bit like insurance in other games. Simply put, it's a kind of extra protection for us.'"

Hearing what Jumping Dragon said, the others also began to ponder.

"Actually, we can consider hiring one. I checked the cost, and it's only 200 gold coins a month, which isn't too high. If we have a security team, our mining will be much smoother. The security team should be able to clear out any monsters for us, which indirectly improves our mining efficiency."

"Moreover, the resources we bought are so abundant, which indirectly improves our gathering efficiency. We'll definitely earn more than just a couple hundred gold coins."

Hearing his teammate's analysis, Jumping Dragon agreed and nodded.

"That makes perfect sense."

"Since that's the case, then let's buy an insurance policy. It's not much money anyway."

.

After some discussion, the Jumping Dragon team decided to pay for the service.

Upon receiving the money, Lilith and Athena were overjoyed.

With this successful experience, the two became even more motivated.

So they started drinking even more vigorously.

Keep in mind that there are a total of 30 newly joined players.

Of the 200 players who had development ideas, more than half formed teams and took action, with an average of about 5 people per team.

There are more than 20 teams this time.

More than 20 teams, totaling over 100 people, had more than half of them choose to purchase this insurance.

Although Lilith didn't know what insurance was, the players were willing to call it that and pay for it, so Lilith naturally followed suit.

In conclusion, Lilith and Athena gained a lot this time.

A total of 2400 gold coins were credited to your account.

Then the two of them divided the coins, and each of them had more than 1000 gold coins.

After doing all that, the two of them went back to enjoying themselves and playing cards.

As for why these two didn't go to provide security, well, if they were, why didn't they? The contract clearly states that they must be there within 7 days of payment, and there's still plenty of time.

Moreover, Lilith herself intended to do a perfunctory job, so she planned to outsource the task.

In short, after being here for so long, Lilith has learned a lot of the players' tricks, and the one that she finds most useful is outsourcing.

And just like that, Lilith quickly found several veteran players.

"Let me tell you, the fee I'm offering isn't low. You only need to patrol the area once a day to get a full 3 gold coins, and you can get 90 gold coins a month."

"If you encounter danger, fight those monsters if you can beat them, and run away if you can't."

"After you run away, all you need to do is come back and tell us what happened."

Upon hearing what Lilith said, the players nodded repeatedly.

"Don't worry, leave this task to us. We'll definitely handle it perfectly."

This task is too easy.

Although the patrol area looks large, it doesn't take long to reach by car.

Just taking a stroll around every day guarantees at least 3 gold coins. You can also use the rest of the time to do other things and earn a little extra money. Why not do something like this?

The two apparently gave the four players a small sum of money and then outsourced the task.

The players they selected were from the second batch of players who entered the game. Compared to the first batch of veteran players, these players had relatively less money and resources, so they were happy to take on such tasks.

After doing all that, Lilith and Athena went about their business.

As for what to do if something goes wrong later?

This was completely outside of their considerations.

Watching these two perform their actions, Jiang Chen felt a headache coming on.

"Isn't this just the prototype of a security company? And these two have ruined it like this."

"Improving security is a viable option, and it will definitely be useful in the future. This industry is worth pursuing."

"We can't let those two mess it up."

It's obvious that Jiang Chen will have to clean up the mess in the end.

However, this matter definitely cannot be handled by these two in the future. As for establishing a security industry, Jiang Chen is only thinking about it for now, as the number of players is simply too small.

If we expand into too many industries, it's obvious that we won't have enough manpower, and the entire system could easily run into major problems. So we can only proceed step by step.

There's no need to rush this.

"Ultimately, manpower is the biggest problem. Once the manpower issue is resolved, everything will be much easier."

"However, compared to before, the number of players is quite good now, at least for things like developing new dungeons, unlike before."

There used to be only a small number of people.

If you do this, then you have to put another thing on hold. But now it's different. Now at least many things can be done at the same time.

Meanwhile, on the side of amateur welders...

The amateur welders haven't done anything big lately; aside from running their business, they've spent all their time building mechs.

After all, they had accepted a big order from Jiang Chen, so naturally they needed to create a powerful mecha.

Moreover, amateur welders are well aware of the current situation.

To put it bluntly, when they fight against those powerful races, they always suffer from a lack of manpower. As the saying goes, if you don't have enough manpower, you can make up for it with equipment. Therefore, war weapons such as mechs naturally play a very important role.

"It's amazing that the NPCs in this game could think of this; otherwise, they would never have invested so much money to let us build mechs."

Looking at the mecha that was almost finished, the amateur welder sighed.

"Once we get this guy out, we should be able to get the full reward, barring any unforeseen circumstances. Although we might lose money even if we get the full reward this time, the good thing is that as long as we raise the NPC's favorability and trust, they will think of us first for similar tasks in the future. So, in the long run, we will definitely profit."

The amateur welder continued to check the progress of the mecha while making calculations.

The amateur welders had come up with everything they could think of for this defensive mech.

From the selection of materials to the depiction of various magic spells and the choice of functions, every aspect has been carefully considered.

The manufacturing difficulty of defensive mechs is far greater than that of offensive mechs.