Chapter 54: Ragebaiting With Wealth?

Uhtred’s voice had gone cold at this point. There was no threat in his voice, and perhaps that was what made it even more chilling. The way he was casually talking to them made Dennis, Diya and Minh Quan nod immediately.

"Good."

Uhtred squatted and continued his explanation from before, as if he had not just sent a deep fear into the heart of the three just moments ago.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust them. Dennis, for one, was an individual he had grown to like because of how sensible the man was. Minh Quan struck him as someone who really didn’t care for things like being a blabbermouth. And while Diya was more open and jovial, she also didn’t strike him as someone who would go around telling secrets.

But he needed to lay down the ground rules in words himself so that they would know how serious he took things that were personal to him.

Of course, just because he had told them this didn’t mean he was going to begin showing all his cards in front of them. Him laying down these rules was just for the situations where he had no choice but to display things that would otherwise have remained a secret if he were alone.

Uhtred continued to explain what their next steps would be going forward. And by the time he was done, everyone had a clear understanding of how they were going to move for the next few days and even the incoming weeks.

Essentially, because they were following Uhtred didn’t mean he was going to be with them all the time. This early, he was going to be more involved because they didn’t have enough levels for him to be confident they would survive on their own.

But as they gained more levels, he would begin to venture deeper into Zone 1 alone, only coming back to their agreed-upon location at the midpoint the further they progressed forward.

The currently running global quest was their main goal as they pushed forward. But since getting to the ancient variants’ camp in Zone 3 was a long-term goal, the main objective right now was to search for their traces within Zone 1.

Besides that, however, Uhtred also had a secondary goal to find a dungeon.

He had ended up still visiting the dungeon in Zone 0 anyway, just to see how it was. And despite the fact that he cleared it in less than ten minutes from floor 1 to floor 5, he had still been impressed by what he had seen.

Unlike the evolved beasts that roamed the surface of the planet, the beasts that the dungeon provided were entirely alien. In fact, some of them were very similar to fantasy creatures. There were even things like goblins, though they were not really goblins.

And even though these beasts had been low-leveled, they had still provided a level of variability in the powers they possessed and their manner of attacks that Uhtred quickly understood the point of these dungeons.

No matter how powerfully evolved the beasts on the surface of the planet were, they were still limited to creatures that already roamed the planet before the integration or creatures that had once roamed the planet in the geologic history of Earth. There was only so much the System could do with that.

For the creatures inside dungeons, on the other hand, they were entirely alien and different enough that it would spur anyone fighting against them to think outside the box in a way indigenous creatures could not.

Just the thought of what Uhtred could learn from such creatures in regards to unique uses of cosmic essence already made him giddy with excitement.

More importantly than that, though... or perhaps "importantly" was too strong a word. Rather, "personally" was a more correct word for this...

Uhtred pulled up the global ranking panel for the umpteenth time today:

[World Ranking]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 1

Name: Red

Level: 10

Territory Owned: Nil

Dungeons Owned: Nil

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 2

Name: King Alexei

Level: 7

Territory Owned: 1 (Tsar’s Dominion)

Dungeons Owned: 1

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

It was crazy enough that this King Alexei guy had already gained a territory and a dungeon to boot despite being at Level 7, but that in itself was not what bothered Uhtred to this extent. Rather, it was the new panel that was right beside it:

[Global Wealth Ranking]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 1

Name: King Alexei

Level: 7

Total Wealth Value: 3050 Multiversal Tokens

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Rank No: 2

Name: Red

Level: 10

Total Wealth Value: 305 Multiversal Tokens

━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Uhtred didn’t even know when this new panel had popped up at all, but he guessed it had something to do with the fact that this King Alexei guy had gained a territory and a dungeon.

The fact that Uhtred’s total wealth value was listed as 305 Multiversal Tokens pointed to the fact that it wasn’t just the available Multiversal Tokens he had in hand that were counted here, but rather the total value of everything he possessed.

That included his Star Metal Battleaxe and his black attire, and even the Biological Inspect Modification he had gotten along with the Language Translator and everything else.

Still, the fact that this King Alexi fellow was this much higher ranked than he was on the wealth ladder left Uhtred with a bitter taste in his mouth.

He wasn’t one to be mindful of things like these, but this King Alexei guy really knew how to push someone’s button.

3,050 multiversal tokens?

There was no way the guy’s total wealth value was exactly ten times Uhtred’s. King Alexei had surely found a way to bring his wealth exactly up to 3,050 multiversal tokens just so Uhtred would notice this fact.

Uhtred let out a dark chuckle as he stared at the number again.

"This guy... Is he trying to ragebait me with wealth?"

This was now a matter of personal pride. Even with the ongoing quest, Uhtred needed to find a dungeon, not just to level but to show this guy up right back!