Level 1 to Apex: My Monster Templates Defy Reality!
Chapter 80: The trade network

Chapter 80: The trade network

Forsyx closed the chat group for now and focused on the trade interface.

Even though other things were super advanced within the game, for some reason, the trade interface was stuck in a rudimentary version.

As he touched the trade window, two very basic options popped up before him.

[BUY or SELL]

He tapped on BUY; the interface changed, and these old-style lists of items appeared before him.

Some of them had seller names next to them, while most sellers chose to hide their names.

At the top of this all-item list, he saw a few icons that allowed him to sort different types of items from the main list.

He randomly scrolled through the list and tapped on a random tree listed for trade.

The name of the tree popped up before him, along with a few lines of description about the origin and possible use case of the tree.

The one he tapped was a Troll Pine Tree from the 3rd server. This was a special tree loved by Orcs and Trolls.

Mainly, these special trees were something that he could not buy from the terrain map.

The only possible way to have these trees inside his space lab was by either buying them from the trade network or purchasing their seeds and trying to grow them inside his space village.

Though growing a 3rd server tree inside his lab would be a challenge, as his lab environment was more suitable for 6th server flora.

He might need to purchase some soil from the 3rd server or buy a premium terrain from the system lab.

The first would be time-consuming, while the second would hit his pocket.

Well, it did not matter, as these were not the kind of items suitable for him.

From his past life, he knew most of the stuff on this trade network was a waste for a single creature-focused class like his.

There were also things that the trade network restricted for him, like he could not do any big transactions involving monsters.

The most he could find was a batch of 25 monsters, and even then, their prices were super high.

He knew from his past life that people could trade thousands of monsters at a time here.

Heck, even he was able to sell that many creatures to others, but the reverse was not possible for him.

Basically, the trade network adjusted the price of scarce items and placed restrictions on them based on the type of class you had.

Like for a Dungeon Master, having 100 or 200 small monsters was no big deal.

They could buy this stuff at a cheap price, but they had to pay much more for trees or other bloodline- or mutation-related items.

On the other hand, while he could buy those items at a cheap price, he had to pay a massive amount to buy creatures.

What was interesting was this small timer next to the buying option. This timer indicated how long the item would stay on the trade table.

The Troll Tree that he had opened still had around 2 days left.

As he tapped on the buy button, a greyed-out initial price also appeared before the Maple Tree.

This was the real problem, as all items on the trade network were sold through the auction method.

The greyed-out price of 2 silver coins was the listed price for the Troll Tree.

Now, the current price he saw had already reached 5 silver, 50 bronze.

He got the option to bid for the Troll Tree for around 6 silver, as the seller set the minimum bid amount to 50 bronze coins.

So, not only did he have to wait for 2 days until the auction time ended, but there was also the possibility of someone else bidding more than him. That way, he would waste 2 days without getting anything.

While he was just staring at the Troll Tree, he noticed its price increased to 6 silver coins—but the next second, someone else bid 6 silver and 50 bronze.

The moment he saw that, he cursed in frustration.

"Fck, those bastards have already started this monopoly."

Just to make sure he wasn’t wrong, he went back to the list and tapped on the search button at the top right.

He wasted no time and typed: "Troll pine tree."

The next moment, 6 Troll Trees listed on the trade appeared before him.

As he checked their prices, he couldn’t help but click his tongue.

4 out of 6 Troll Trees were listed by unknown traders, and each had the same bid price of 6 silver, 50 bronze.

While the last two, listed by different sellers who chose not to hide their names. Interestingly, the Troll Trees they were selling were going for less than a silver coin.

He could help but sigh.

The infamous trade manipulators had already started working on the trade network.

In his past life, the Trade Manipulator was a title given to players who bought most of the listed items at inflated prices and then sold the same items at a lower price.

The two named sellers of Troll Trees could now be working under the same organization, or multiple groups had already started to compete here.

The manipulators were mainly individuals who had monster-bound classes and were part of some big guilds.

On the surface, this kind of manipulation didn’t make sense, as these people were manipulating the market only to sell it cheap.

In his past life, he only realized later that these manipulators never aimed to make more money from the trades.

No, they were actually after information.

Sure, most players listed their items as "unknown," but the catch was that upon a successful trade, both the buyer and seller would get to see each other’s names.

That one loophole was what this manipulation war was based on.

Every time a manipulator bought or sold an item, they would get the username of that player and the kind of item they were buying or selling.

Over time, that simple, innocent-looking information would stack up and could lead to these guilds pinpointing your location inside the game.

It was a bit of a complicated process that took time, but there were many players in his last life who got their characters erased.

All because they were not careful about their purchases and sales in the trade network.

The big thing about monster-bound players was that each of them was a treasure trove for other players that these guilds wanted to hunt themselves.

These manipulators used this wave of trade manipulation to fish out the location of such players, and then sent their elites to kill them to gain different kinds of exotic power.

The players had even converted this simple trading network into a battlefield full of traps for innocent noobs to fall into.

The only reason he was able to avoid this trap in his last life was that he never had much money or resources to begin with.

This lack of resources helped him hide himself from others.

He just stared at those two listings, as he knew these guys were just surface-level manipulators.

There should be many more like them inside the trade network.

He moved back to the main list, as this was not a war he was interested in taking part in.

Instead, he moved to the list of possible creatures that he could buy.

It was time to decide the core template progression of his template wilder class.