Chapter 257: Astral Artisans

Shane didn't think that it was necessary to be bothered by some idiotic students' behavior.

As such, he walked outside the classroom before sending a message to the small group chat he had established with his artisan group.

Aimy and Olivia were also a part of this group because they would enter his faction though Aisha and Frer were not included.

Only five minutes after he had asked about everyone's exam result in the group chat, Shane found out that everyone had passed their exams, which was to be expected.

He didn't share his own result, but based on the way Shane wrote his messages, they could sense that something was weird.

In the end, he told them that he had been too engrossed, and had been thinking about other stuff so he had failed to even realize that the exam had already started.

After that everyone went silent, not sure what to think about what Shane had told them.

Now that everything about the exams was concluded, Shane wanted to focus on his body refining in order to attain a perfect Apprentice physique as soon as possible.

During the last two weeks, he had purified a little bit of his mana. It had been enough for him to enter the Expert stage, which he did successfully.

This increased the price to awaken Hidden Paradise's mana heart from 5 million gold coins to 40 million.

It was a huge increment but it was still less than what Shane and Talia had expected because the discounts provided for certain stage tags like [Apprentice] to [Expert] stage wouldn't be that low.

Nevertheless, it was a good sign, despite the fact that it was a huge sum.

In the end, it was possible as long as everything was done properly!

After they had figured out how many gold coins they had to accumulate, Talia could tell that it was time to increase their member strength to a lot more than the initial 8 Artisans. 

The most important or rather most profitable occupations for the group, currently, were all kinds of craftsmen because they were required the most.

At the same time, they were also the only non-combat-oriented occupation that was somewhat acceptable, yet also frowned upon.

Neither Shane nor any of the other artisans could tell why the same didn't apply for other occupations, but it was not like there was anything they could do about it, at least not right now!!

Only time would tell how valuable some occupations were, and Shane was confident that they could prove this to everyone, soon enough!

Talia was of the opinion that they would need an organization, an Artisan hall or at least something similar because she would have to release their contract terms somewhere.

At the same time, it was important to increase the exposure of their organization as soon as possible. This was not really difficult and Shane could just share a screenshot of the ballistae, created by his group members that had been sold at a competitive price.

He could also add the terms and several more screenshots about all kinds of purchases he had done so far, including several dozen Tier-1 reinforced cement blueprints that craftsmen could learn and many more.

Most blueprints would disappear upon being learned, and there were only a few exceptions like the 'Unique ballista' that Dyr's occupation had revealed to him.

Dyr could share everything about his occupation with someone, but the responsibility to learn everything about how to manufacture them fell upon them. 

The system wouldn't provide any support or even help someone memorize everything directly!

Shane had already expected that he would have to establish an Artisan hall or similar organization. Fortunately enough, it didn't cost him too much to create a small Artisan hall that could later be associated with the faction he would establish in the future.

[Astral Artisan] was the name he gave to the Artisan hall he created, and it was nothing special, but still unique enough to attract others' attention.

He had yet to figure out what kind of emblem he could use to make an interesting banner and profile picture for everyone to see within the forum.

However, this task was given to Maya who was the best artist in their group.

In the end, they didn't need a magnificent banner for now, because they had yet to look out for people to join them from somewhere other than the academies.

This was important because the artisans he was looking for couldn't be those who had already liquefied their mana. They would disqualify Shane from entering the basic Primordial Dimensions as long as such a person with liquefied mana remained inside the Hidden Paradise.

To prevent such a hassle, Talia thought that looking out for other students with non-combat-oriented occupations, who had been in a similar situation as she and the others had been, would be much more efficient.

They were much easier to lure to the Hidden Paradise and at the same time, it was safe to say that their occupation's quality was high, and at least around the [Gold] quality!

Otherwise, most academies wouldn't have accepted such students without any combat prowess.

There might as well be students who had attained a certain degree of combat prowess, but it was relatively obvious that most combat-oriented occupations allowed students to become stronger than others.

This became even more apparent after combat occupations obtained affinities that allowed humans and other natural affinityless races to become much stronger than they had been before.

Shane was able to fight against other youths with occupations, but that was just because he had yet to find someone similar to Aisha at his age.

He doubted that he would be able to defeat someone at his age if the other person had an affinity and a high-quality occupation.

That was if this opponent was at par with his combat experience.

It was an undeniable fact that he had many advantages, even if he didn't have a combat occupation, but the same applied to someone who had already chosen an occupation!

After Shane had founded the Astral Artisan hall there was not much for him to do anymore, and it was Talia's first large task to browse through the contact details of more than a thousand students that had picked non-combat oriented occupations.

This was a large number, but compared to the sheer number of combat occupations, it was merely a drop in the ocean.

Yet, this drop would be able to cause ripples and Shane was sure that those ripples would turn into huge waves in the future!

Time was all that they required and something they had more than enough right now!

There was nothing pressuring them and it was the finest period for humans at the Basic Primordial Dimensions to give their best in order to earn a huge fortune. 

Many new shelters had been built recently, while a few of them were still under construction.

Meanwhile, other shelters required restoration and Shane was sure that the craftsmen he would acquire were his best bet to take care of the same.

As long as he had enough connections or the government wanted to fix their shelters soon without having to wait until they nurtured their own craftsmen, his Astral group was the best choice to take care of everything!

If that wouldn't be enough to earn a huge fortune, why should he hold back and stay within human territory? 

There were more than enough young races that were in need of strong weapons, better constructed and durable shelters, and much more!

Yet, the capabilities of several races weren't good enough and they failed miserably in creating weapons or building a shelter!

For example, the Elus-race didn't have a physical body, which meant that it had to use huge amounts of mana in order to move around objects.

They had spatial rings that were bound to their mana core, but manufacturing huge, complex weapons and a shelter with several layers was most likely constructed by another race that was more proficient in such tasks!

The human race was definitely not as talented as dwarves and similar races, but Shane was sure that his Astral Artisans' prices would be more than feasible!

He had heard that dwarves demanded a payment of several million Platinum coins in order to construct a simple shelter! This didn't include any weapons, unique defensive mechanisms, and all kinds of similar necessary constructions to overcome a beast tide of groups consisting of superior awakened beasts!

In the end, not many races that were unable to create a shelter with their own capabilities used the dwarves' high-priced service to construct a large, complex shelter.

Instead, there were many other cheaper races that one could hire to construct shelters, individual buildings or to manufacture a large number of weapons for them.

Shane's plan was not only to become one of those races but to turn the Astral Artisans into something all races that couldn't afford to hire dwarves would look up to!

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