Building the Strongest Undead Empire from Scratch - Chapter 49

Chapter 49: Upgrade Barracks
Alex rolled out of bed and walked towards the wardrobe, her enticing breasts bouncing with each step.

“What should I wear today?”

While Alex was still pondering over her outfit for the day, Sophie was already silenced by her ranking on the leaderboard.

[Your ranking: Fifth Tier.]

Sophie couldn’t believe she didn’t even make it into the top million.

“Are you kidding me? What a crappy system. My castle is at least Lv9, and I can’t even make it into the top million?” Sophie grumbled in disbelief, clearly not trusting the system’s ranking, although her troops weren’t great at fighting, it shouldn’t be this low.

“Right, let’s see if Hamburger is in the top tier!” The top tier only had a thousand people, and it didn’t take long for Sophie to spot the name [Hamburger] among them.

Sure enough, there it was… the gap was so big… But at least, the Big Shot she was trying to please was strong enough to be in the top tier, which somewhat reassured Sophie.

Sophie walked barefoot towards the dining room, her stockings had just been washed and were still wet, so she couldn’t wear them yet. She arrived at the dining room and began to enjoy her exquisite breakfast.

Actually, after eating barbecue for four days straight, Sophie was almost sick of it. She felt like she had gained several pounds, but in this godforsaken place, there were no vegetables to eat, and now the sight of barbecue was starting to make her physically nauseous.

Yesterday, another dozen dwarves came to seek refuge with Sophie, increasing her food expenses again. If it weren’t for Alex generously giving her 1,500 portions of food, she would be worrying about food again.

With billions of Lords, the population was simply too large. Among a billion, there are a hundred million, and with several billion, there are many Lords like Sophie who were lucky enough to upgrade their castles to full level. It was quite normal not to make it into the top million. Although the leaderboard was a comprehensive ranking of strength, it mainly looked at the Lords’ own power.

At this moment, our protagonist Alex was dressed in a black mini dress, her hair fluffy and spread out on her back, and she was wearing a pair of flip-flops as she walked into the yard.

Today, Alex didn’t plan to leave the castle, so she could dress more casually. She went to the yard to check the spoils from last night’s undead.

Speaking of which, Alex found that she hadn’t leveled up after waking up. The triple experience boost overnight didn’t help her break through to the Commanding level; it seemed that the experience needed to go from level 9 to level 1 Commanding was quite substantial.

At the castle gate, there were piles of wood and stone, and the Blackwater Altar was soaking a bunch of animal corpses.

“Recycle!”

[Congratulations Lord, you have obtained 2,000 wood, 4,000 stone.]

“Disassemble!”

[Congratulations Lord, you have successfully disassembled 40 wild boar corpses, obtaining 1,600 portions of food, 160 wild boar tusks, 80 portions of wild boar skin, 60 magic crystals (double drop).]

[Congratulations Lord, you have successfully disassembled 60 rabbit corpses, obtaining 1,200 portions of food, 120 rabbit skins, 80 magic crystals (double drop).]

Just yesterday, she traded some food, and today she gained another 2,800 portions. For Alex, it was too much; she couldn’t possibly eat all this food. She opened the trading post to check the orders she had listed last night.

“Ah, great, all traded.”

Alex clicked to collect all at once.

[Congratulations Lord, you have traded for 4,200 magic crystals, 10,800 wood, 5,400 stone.]

!!!

The Holy Court Novice Knight Set was sold, but the buyer didn’t use iron ingots for the trade, opting instead for the more expensive magic crystals.

It makes sense, as Lords are currently rushing to upgrade their towns, and a small amount of iron ingots is manageable, but no one would want to part with three thousand iron ingots all at once.

Recently, Arthur hadn’t brought back any high-level monster corpses; he probably was leveling up by killing these ordinary animals.

That Lord living next to Alex, who summons Red Blood Gorilla troops, seems to have been scared off from sending his troops outside his castle territory after Arthur killed a few of his troops.

Alex guessed that once she upgraded to a town, she would immediately border him. If that Lord wasn’t friendly, she would deal with him then.

Alex glanced at the current supplies in her Warehouse.

[Warehouse: 12,910 magic crystals, 181 Essence Shards, 62,800 wood, 28,400 stone, 7,010 iron ingots, 3,800 food.]

There were some other miscellaneous resources, but Alex couldn’t be bothered to tally them.

The magic crystals from today’s equipment sale were enough for Alex to upgrade her Barracks again. She couldn’t help but feel a bit emotional; it would have been nice if the other party had traded with iron ingots, then she could have upgraded to a town directly.

[Upgrade Barracks required: 10k magic crystals, 100 Essence Shards]

“Upgrade!”

[undead crystal: lv7 (unique Barracks)]

[Level 7 Barracks can summon: skeleton, zombie, specter, death conqueror, gargoyle, bone dragon, ghost dragon, zombie titan—eight major troops (random twenty), 7% chance of high-level troops, extremely low chance of Race King.]

[Upgrade Barracks required: 12k magic crystals, 120 Essence Shards]

This time Alex was really broke, with only 81 Essence Shards left, and just over two thousand magic crystals, barely enough for a fraction of the next upgrade.

The new troop, zombie titan, directly bolstered Alex’s undead army’s ground force, while other Barracks remained unchanged except for becoming more expensive.

Sell the food just obtained!

Upgrading the town required 30k stone, and because Alex used some for building the Magic Stone Pillar, she was still short by over a thousand.

[Hamburger initiated a trade!]

[One portion of food, trading for eight portions of wood or four portions of stone.]

[Remaining quantity: 2,800 portions.]

Alex still reserved a thousand portions of food, as it wouldn’t spoil in the Warehouse, just in case.

She opened the trading post to check the orders inside, looking for Lords selling iron ingots, hoping to snatch some from the trading post.

Alex searched for keywords, and all the orders that came up were for buying iron ingots. She scrolled for half an hour and didn’t see a single one selling iron ingots; they might have been listed but were immediately snapped up.

The trading post was no help to Alex; it seemed she could only hope for [QuartzStriker] now.

Sophie’s cooperation with Alex was still ongoing, trading two hundred iron ingots for three hundred portions of food, a low price Sophie deliberately offered to please Alex.

Including the two thousand iron ingots Sophie hadn’t processed yet, that totaled nine thousand for Alex. If Sophie traded two hundred a day, it would take five days to gather enough iron ingots…

Too slow, not good.

See if [QuartzStriker] could be negotiated with to prioritize trading 1,000 iron ingots to her.

No time like the present, Alex immediately clicked on [QuartzStriker]’s chat box and sent a message to Sophie.