The Sect Leader System
Chapter 260: Pedal to the Metal

With all the pills he needed for the immediate future created, Benton turned his attention to creating the qi sources. He wanted to make one for each of six elements—Fire, Ice, Momentum, Nature, Shadow, and Time. And each required three separate types of materials—beast, plant, and mineral.

Eighteen materials total.

He currently had in his possession three of the eighteen—the Fire aspected core from the Cyclops, the Fire stones Kang Ya-Ting traded, and Nature kernels from the Orange Vigor Spirit Wood. Even better, Benton was expecting delivery of a Fire-aspected plant in a little more than a month, which he’d receive in exchange for letting one of the Poison Claw Sect elders use the Trial Pagoda.

Normally, he might have questioned if the material was worth the five hundred Sect Points the usage would cost, but gaining that Fire aspected plant would complete the set of three, allowing him to actually create the Fire qi source.

He couldn’t wait!

Besides, the qi sources were the key to his plan for building his sect to the level high enough for all of them to be truly safe. No cost was too high.

The Poison Claw Sect elders had offered two more materials for trade—an Ice aspected plant and a Shadow aspected core. Step one of hopefully acquiring those items was to use his crafting abilities to create products to sell at the auction. If he could make treasures that were extraordinary enough, they would be so in demand that he’d have no problem completing a trade for the materials he needed, even if he had to find a third party to make things work out.

Still, out of eighteen separate materials, he only knew of six. One out of every three he needed. One third. Thirty-three percent.

By any measure, that wasn’t a lot.

Finding more wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, though. After all, he’d barely even begun to search. His only real effort thus far had been to send the kids to the city and have them ask around. And that seriously minimal effort had born a decent amount of fruit.

Benton even had two very good potential places to search—the upcoming auction and the mountain. Just because he was currently focused on the auction as a way to trade with the elders, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t find materials for sale there. Which meant it was even more important that he produce as many treasures as he could and make them desirable as possible.

Even easier was exploring the mountain. As far as he could tell, the closer to the mountain one got, the stronger the beasts. Then, upon reaching the slope, the higher up you reached, the stronger the beasts. His spiritual senses indicated that the cyclops wasn’t anywhere near the apex predator there, so as a mere Golden Core, Benton had been extremely reluctant to take a look around.

Besides, he’d been pretty darn busy taking care of the sect, and it hadn’t been safe to leave the kids unguarded.

With his advancement to Nascent Soul, the recruitment of Yuan Yaozu, and the construction of the Grand Defensive Formation, all that had changed. He was more than powerful enough to take care of himself while searching for hidden treasure, and the kids would be just fine if he took off for a few days, especially with all the contingency rings he’d distributed.

Thus, Benton came up with his plan.

His first step, the one he was itching to do, was creating treasures for the auction. Crafting them involved letting his imagination go wild and inventing the best, most interesting and powerful treasures he could think up using all the advantages the System gave him.

That sounded like so much fun.

Of course, like with so many important tasks, there was a precursor activity. Taking treasures crafted by an Expert alchemist or a Formations Expert to the auction would be impressive. Kind of. People would definitely be interested in what he had to sell. But it wouldn’t generate the kind of buzz he needed.

No, if he wanted to trade for the materials necessary to make the qi sources, only masterworks would do, which meant that his prerequisite to beginning was to buy the necessary techniques to raise his level for each type of crafting.

Once he had the trade goods made, the next activity that seemed like the most fun was exploring the mountain. He’d been on the planet for almost a year and felt like he’d done little, if any, actual adventuring. Right after recruiting the twins, he’d followed the System’s nudging to find the village, and from there, he’d journeyed to Sixth Flawless Flowing City and back.

So there had been a decent amount of travel, especially compared to peasants who might never go more than a dozen miles from where they were born. But travel wasn’t adventure. It wasn’t exploring. Flying to the mountain to search for hidden treasures while dodging spirit beasts that might be above even him in cultivation was an adventure!

He couldn’t wait.

Unfortunately, as a responsible adult, he had to eat his veggies before chowing down on dessert. As long as the palace in Vermillion Incomparable Rain Town was relatively unprotected, he couldn’t justify taking off into the woods and playing Indiana Jones.

Benton gave himself a week to work on the trade goods. If he finished before that deadline, he’d teleport to the town and complete his work there. Even if he wasn’t finished with his crafting when the deadline came around, he’d teleport to the town at that time regardless.

There. Decision made. Benton had a full week, guilt free, to dive into thinking up and making awesome toys. He rubbed his hands together gleefully.

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First phase, personal enhancement. Benton used three Foundation Establishment level skills for alchemy—Alchemy Knowledge, Herb Preparation, and Pill Creation. Each had three ranks, Mastery of which brought him to the peak of the Expert Level. To become a Master alchemist, he needed to purchase the rank four technique for each. Which he did.

At eight points each, he spent twenty-four Sect Points.

To create formations at an Expert Level, he used one Qi Gathering level technique and three at the Foundation Establishment realm—Knowledge of Formations, Formation Construction, Formation Construction Acceleration, and Inscription. He’d already bought the first three ranks for all of them. To increase his level to Master, he needed to purchase the fourth rank of each.

He hesitated a moment before purchasing the fourth rank of one of the techniques, however. Acceleration was not technically a requirement. That skill basically let him design and produce arrays at a faster pace, an essential boon for the massive amounts of inscribing that walls and Grand Defensive Formations took. The question was whether he really needed it for Master level work.

Then again, why was he quibbling over a measly eight points when he was raking them in by the hundreds?

He spent the twenty-eight points required to increase the rank of all four techniques.

Blacksmithing was much more problematic than the other two crafts. Benton had cheaped out when buying his initial technique, purchasing only one of them at basically the first rank. He barely had enough ability to properly be called an Apprentice.

To get to Master, he’d need three additional ranks of Blacksmithing, four ranks of Blacksmithing Knowledge, and four ranks of Forging. That was an additional seventy-two points, twenty more than advancing the other two types of crafts combined.

Still, it wasn't like he had a choice. Pills that were as in demand as he needed required herbs that were as rare as the qi materials that he was trying to obtain, and it wasn’t possible to sell his services as a Formations Master given the current political environment. No, he needed to use those two skills to augment his weapon creation, a craft that required blacksmithing.

After dithering about it for a while, Benton finally pulled the trigger and made the purchase. Even with buying all those techniques, though, he was still well above his thousand point floor, so he tried not to let the expenditures bother him.

In fact, as he thought about how to maximize the value of the trade goods he planned to produce, he realized that specializing in a particular type of weapon would be better than making a bunch of different kinds, and since cultivators loved their swords…

He purchased four ranks of a Qi Gathering level technique on the knowledge of sword construction. It was worth the sixteen additional points to become a Master swordsmith.

His first sword needed to be something easy so that he could practice his skill. After a bit of consideration, he decided that a simple, well-built sword imbued with one of the five common elements would be perfect. The idea of the weapon being that a Fire aspected cultivator could more easily channel qi through the weapon if it were already imbued with Fire qi. In fact, if Benton added a simple array, the amount of qi channeled through the sword could actually be multiplied and also made to be more destructive.

Benton liked that idea. An array for self-repair and another to keep the blade always sharp would add to the value.

Yeah. Simple but valuable. Exactly what he needed. Five such swords, one for each common element, would be a good start for his trade goods.

He had a Concept for Metal, which would serve him well in adding self-repair. The problem was that he didn’t have a Concept for Sharpness. Of course, he didn’t actually need a Concept simply to imbue Sharpness into metal, but the array would be a lot more efficient and effective if he did.

Hmm.

Benton would probably be making a lot of swords to sell and, eventually, other weapons, particularly spears, for his sect. He couldn’t imagine not wanting both the self-repair and the Sharpness arrays for all of them.

Besides, a more efficient and effective Sharpness array meant more valuable, which was the whole point of the exercise.

There went another sixteen Sect Points.

He still had two sample ingots of the ten different metals the kids had purchased from Kang Ya-Ting, so Benton used Analyze to study each of them. None of the metals were top tier materials, but they had the benefit of all being easily available from the Poison Claw Sect at a reasonable, if high, price.

In theory, a Master Blacksmith could turn the roughest trash iron into a weapon that any sect would treasure, but in practice, the type of metal did impact the final price. If he would have had access to better materials, he would have used them in a heartbeat, but he could definitely work with what was in front of him.

After his examination, he chose starsteel to work with. The metal possessed a good combination of strength and durability while still maintaining a healthy degree of flexibility. Importantly, it would also easily hold a sharp edge, accept the three arrays he planned to inscribe, and conduct qi efficiently.

Honestly, most of the metals possessed similar properties. One might be a little stronger or more durable or conduct qi better or what have you, but Benton liked the starsteel’s overall combination the best. Of course, it was also the most expensive at one hundred seventy-five greater spirit coins per ingot.

Counting waste, he’d need about one and a quarter ingots per sword, so six and a quarter for the five swords he was definitely planning on making. He wasn’t sure how many swords other than those five he would make, though.

Hmm.

No more than twenty, right? Yeah. That sounded reasonable. So call it thirty-two ingots. Round that up to thirty-five. Perfect.

Assuming a ten percent service fee for Kang Ya-Ting, the ingots should cost him about sixty thousand eight hundred greater spirit coins all in. Not exactly pocket change, but those were easy enough for him to produce.

He fired off a message to the Poison Claw Sect elder.

Friend Kang,

I need another 35 ingots of starsteel. Will 6,800 greater spirit coins work (a number that should already include your fee, btw!)?

Any preference on the qi element on the coins?

Also, do you think it’s safe for your most excellent granddaughter to fly back and forth to the city solo to pick up the metal? If you think there’s any danger at all, I’d rather not risk it and could instead come myself.

Gratitude,

Friend Su

It didn’t take long to get the response back.

Friend Su,

I suppose this nearly destitute old man can accept the measly sum of 6,800 greater spirit coins for the metal, my time spent arranging the purchase of the metal, and the use of my very own granddaughter for transportation.

As for our preference on the qi element, any of the five common ones are always easy to trade. If you also had some Poison or Venom aspected ones lying around, their inclusion would certainly be appreciated.

Considering that Kang Lin’s sect robes should provide adequate protection all on their own along with the fact that she possesses one of the contingency rings you created, I have absolutely no fear of her not having a completely safe and boring journey.

Send her along tomorrow, and I’ll have the ingots waiting for her.

With Respect,

Friend Kang

Perfect. Tomorrow he’d have all the materials he needed. Today, he’d use the sample ingots to practice.

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