A naked man could be seen taking a bath in a river in the middle of the wilderness.
Tens of thousand of monsters surrounded him but none of them dared to attack him.
They simply stared in the direction of the young man and awaited his next commands.
All of a sudden, they started to move around and charge outward and away from him.
Nial had given them a mental command using [Dominion].
From the moment he left Alliance City, he had begun to amass a huge army of monsters.
His mission was to make sure that certain types of monsters would consider him as the leader of their group, pack or horde.
Not all monsters had a leader or accepted an alliance with other kinds of monsters. Thus, it took Nial a while to get his hands on various monsters at the Prometheus rank and subdue them.
He altered their mind lightly to make sure that it wouldn't be too difficult for him to control an enormous number of monsters.
This made it a lot easier for Nial to multitask, which was how it was possible for him to refine his body and learn more of the things Runiciers had to know.
More than eight months had passed since he left Alliance city and lots of things had changed.
Nial's knowledge as a Runicier had improved a lot and had reached a level that was enough to give him the necessary theoretical proficiency to become a Grandmaster Runicier. As long as he gained the necessary practical experience, it wouldn't be too difficult for him to create Tier-3 runic armaments.
Time was everything he needed but that was exactly what he was missing right now.
"There really is an auction," Nial mumbled as his head emerged out of the water.
He reached his hand out to pat Ryu, who chirped out in joy when he saw Nial. The situation during the last few months had been rather simple and he did the same thing over and over again.
'Did the Dojo Master know about this? Probably not…or maybe…' Nial was really not sure whether the Dojo Master had given him a big hint that allowed him to gain a huge advantage over others, or if the situation had just coincidentally turned out like that.
Niall didn't spend a single minute advancing his mana core. Instead, he focused on the refinements of Imperfectia, acquiring knowledge and gathering more and more dungeon beasts.
He wanted to complete as many guild missions as possible, conquer tens of thousands of dungeons, and collect all the monsters' corpses, Origin crystals, unique drops, and so on.
All of these provided him with countless contribution points which were exactly what he aimed to achieve, after all, the Swirl of Chaos ability crystal was going to be sold in Alliance City!
The God, who had procured the Swirl of Chaos ability crystal, was interested in becoming the 11th Devon of Alliance City. He wanted to gain the benefits of setting a strong foothold for the races under him before he would descend on the Origin by himself once that was possible.
Alliance City was a favorable place to emerge for a small race with many weaknesses and only a few superior traits.
It was quite easy to get to Alliance City because the 10 Devons had created a permanent world bridge in the middle of their neutral territory.
In exchange for a certain amount of money or unique resources, everyone who wanted to could use the permanent world bridge. This increased the wealth of the 10 Devons and in turn also increased the number of civilians inside Alliance City.
The economic situation was bound to improve as the population of Alliance City increased, meaning that the Devons would earn a big fortune as they received a share of the city's profits.
This was also why it was not easy for the God, who had procured the Swirl of Chaos ability crystal, to become the 11th Devon.
He didn't help in the preparations for Alliance City's creation for several hundred years. The Swirl of Chaos ability crystal was merely one of the things the God had to give the other Devons to please them to a certain extent.
There were numerous other treasures the God was prepared to offer but the Swirl of Chaos was the most popular by now.
This popularity was something that would play into the hands of the Devons, who sensed a great opportunity unveiling itself in front of them.
Thousands of Gods were interested in the Swirl of Chaos and they would have to send their people to the Alliance City in order to ensure that they would earn enough contribution points to join the Alliance Auction, to begin with.
A prerequisite to attending the Alliance Auction was to have more than 500 million contribution points ready to use.
It might be possible to bring lots of things from their native planet but the price to use the permanent world bridge to Alliance city would increase exponentially the more things one would bring.
That meant that all the Gods had to pay a fortune to bring resources and their people to the Alliance City, and they wouldn't have accumulated any contribution points to buy the Swirl of Chaos ability crystal then.
With that in mind, it was quite obvious that Nial had a big advantage over everyone else.
First, he could make use of the Alliance Auction's popularity to create more customized runic armaments, especially after the demand would skyrocket while the supply wouldn't increase as much.
He could attend the Alliance Auction both as a customer and a seller. Selling some of his rarest stuff at the auction would inevitably result in tremendous profits.
Nial was ready to make it big, which meant that he had to start mass-producing Tier-2 runic armaments and start creating Tier-3 runic armaments.
As for the 10,000 Refinements of Imperfectia, so far he had finished 5,000 Refinements of Imperfectia.
It should take him around half a year to finish the remaining Refinements of Imperfectia as long as he was in possession of the required resources and time.
However, for now, he had to focus on gathering contribution points and the creation of more runic armaments.
To achieve both goals, Nial returned to Alliance City for a short time to hire a Master Blacksmith to accompany himself for the next six months, a movable smithy and workspace, and more than a thousand high-quality runic solutions.
His Monster army had collected more than enough precious resources to create all kinds of runic armaments. As a potential Grandmaster Runicier, it was time for him to make some money.
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The blacksmith was not sure what was going on at first and he only realized the true horror that awaited him after tasting the bliss of earning a salary that was equivalent to the payment a Grandmaster blacksmith would receive in an entire year.
Of course, there had to be something weird about this ginormous payment but the blacksmith had been blinded by greed, just to get greeted by tens of thousands of monsters.
Niall smiled when he perceived the shock of the blacksmith, and his heart swelled with pride when the monsters made way for them.
"Are these monsters…under your control?" The old blacksmith asked, not feeling great at the thought of what awaited him in the near future.
"You can say so, I guess," Nial shrugged before he went to the main topic.
"But you won't have anything to do with them. We will just create all kinds of runic armaments in the next six months while they will complete missions from the guild hall.
We will travel around a bit every few weeks but it won't take long for every single mission because I just want to make sure that the Monster army will have enough work to do."
Nial told the blacksmith everything he had to know but nothing more. There were lots of things the blacksmith was interested in but he was not supposed to ask any questions.
The non-disclosure agreement he signed before he received his money made that fact pretty clear.
Thus, the old blacksmith just nodded his head to let Nial know that he understood the deal.
Nial had prepared everything accordingly to make sure that nobody would know about his involvement as a participant in the Alliance Auction.
That would make things a lot easier for Nial because nobody would expect a single individual to turn into a dark horse.
The only problem he had was that the situation in the Forest of Life had started to change as well…and it was not in a good way!