What does it feel like to buy an island?
Ryu didn't feel it was anything special—it wasn't like he hadn't bought one before.
However, compared to islands in the Pacific Ocean, real estate in another world was slightly more troublesome. This was because a "Dungeon" existed on this island. Not only did it hide the legacy of an ancient kingdom, but it also attracted a large number of adventurers to come and dig, directly driving the island's prosperity.
Previously, this island was just a remote backwater, and the Island Lord was merely an ordinary village chief. But with a turn of fortune, he suddenly found himself sitting on an inexhaustible mountain of gold and silver.
This place was like San Francisco during the Gold Rush; getting the Island Lord to hand over ownership seemed like a difficult task.
But Ryu was not unprepared. On the contrary, he was very confident.
First, the output of the Dungeon itself had already decreased significantly.
When the Dungeon was first discovered, it was said that vast amounts of gold and treasures could be found even on the first or second floors. But as the number of adventurers increased, excessive excavation had gradually exhausted the resources here. Now, apart from monsters, nothing was plentiful.
Second, the Island Lord coveted comfort.
The Island Lord himself had no management talent and knew that his virtue (?) did not match his position. People were constantly trying to make him surrender ownership so that representatives of other factions could manage it. He only gritted his teeth and stayed in this position because he was tempted by the immense wealth.
Now that the speed of money-making had slowed down, and the management costs of the island's towns had risen due to the increasing population—along with endless security incidents—he was already showing signs of wanting to wash his hands of it and quit.
Third, Ryu was offering enough!
This reason was sufficient and moving enough!
Gold is a hard currency in most worlds, and even Ryu couldn't obtain it infinitely. Therefore, it only made up a small portion of the "treasure mountain." He simply had it crafted to be eye-catching enough so that it looked like it took up a lot of space.
The real bulk of the value came from jade, rubies, silver, diamonds, and pearls!
In Ryu's eyes, these things could be tossed around freely. Whether natural or man-made, he could easily get his hands on a huge pile of them. The artificial ones were even purer, and objectively speaking, of higher value.
It was just a pity that this world already had glass; otherwise, Ryu could have saved even more money by hauling over a cart of "crafts"!
He didn't just pile the raw stones together, of course. He had long since had people craft them into magnificent jewelry. The exquisite designs were enough to make these bumpkin adventurers drop their jaws!
The Island Lord's reaction wouldn't be much better, either~
However, what was interesting was that Ryu, having flaunted his wealth on the Dungeon's first floor, didn't rush to meet the Island Lord. Instead, he leisurely followed Laios's squad to the surface to experience the local customs of the island.
Information traveled very fast among adventurers, especially when it was directly related to wealth. So, in less than half an hour, Laios and the others were surprised to find that the attitude of every merchant on the island, no matter what business they were in, had done a complete one-eighty towards them~
Short-changing them on weight? Non-existent!
Forced buying and selling? Absolutely not!
Buying low and selling high? We are honest folks!
—Laios had never experienced such enthusiastic hospitality since he was born, to the point where he began to question his life.
How should one put it? He actually quite disliked humans. It wasn't that he hated any specific person, but rather he had a certain aversion to the species of "humanity" itself, even including himself.
Because ever since he was little, he completely failed to understand what others were thinking, and he simply couldn't learn how to communicate with strangers. This led to him being ostracized wherever he went, feeling like an "outsider" from beginning to end.
Clearly, everyone used language to communicate, so why couldn't he understand the subtext? Why couldn't he make friends?
This was probably one of the reasons he liked monsters:
He couldn't find a sense of belonging among his own kind.
But today, he had finally witnessed just how high human kindness towards strangers could rise... It even gave him the illusion that he was very popular!
"It's good to have money, huh~"
Walking on the street, the expressionless Laios uttered a leisurely sigh.
He was the only one who could remain calm right now. The others, whether it was the Elf mage or the dwarf cook, were not used to being stared at by so many people, both openly and secretly.
"Isn't this too ostentatious?" Marcille hugged her staff, feeling very uneasy. "When we get to a place with fewer people, we'll definitely get robbed, right?"
"Don't worry, Marcille."
Laios spoke up to console her: "We bought too many things along the way. Many were unnecessary purchases, and there was even suspicion of prices being deliberately inflated... Usually, one wouldn't flaunt wealth like this in a place where adventurers gather. Ryu definitely has his own plan for doing this."
"Really?"
Marcille looked up at the back figure in front of them and narrowed her eyes. "I just feel like he seems to be having a lot of fun~"
"Um... Ryu-san?" Falin looked left and right, asking Ryu curiously, "Where did Chilchuck go?"
"I gave him a commission letter. He should have gone to the Halfling Union to issue the quest by now."
Ryu paused in his steps and pointed forward. "Alright, we've arrived!"
—The Lord's Hall.
The front was an office space, and the back was the Lord's private residence. Representatives of various industries on the island would gather here to discuss matters if anything came up, and of course, they would pay taxes regularly. Thanks to the existence of the Dungeon, the facilities of this village town now had the scale and luxury comparable to a noble's mansion.
"Are you really going to buy the Dungeon?" Marcille still couldn't quite believe it. "It's not for the sake of eating monster cuisine, is it? That's completely unnecessary!"
"No, Ryu probably doesn't really want to buy it." Laios calmly refuted the Elf mage's words.
Although he considered himself socially inept, he actually had quite a bit of social experience; he just didn't want to spend that much effort on interpersonal relationships.
So, he could see things in Ryu's actions that Marcille couldn't:
If you really want to buy something, don't make it known to everyone!
In any transaction, it's best if the true price is known only to the buyer and the seller. If one goes out of their way to publicize it, then there must be some specific purpose behind it.
If Ryu wanted this island, he could have just quietly taken the treasure to meet the Island Lord. Perhaps the landlord would have changed in secret, and the adventurers wouldn't have known until ten days or half a month later.
But now, with Ryu "swaggering through the market" like this, everyone on the island knew there was a big spender interested in the Dungeon, and the Island Lord was naturally no exception.
The Island Lord might even jack up the price right then and there, forcing Ryu to pay a price far higher than its true value!
From their interactions over the past few days, Laios felt that Ryu didn't look like a naive young master who knew nothing of the world, so he concluded that Ryu had other motives!
Hearing Laios's words, Ryu chuckled and didn't explain.
He opened his backpack and took out exquisitely shaped gold and red boxes one after another, handing them to his companions one by one.
"Cooperate with me in a moment..."
Listening to Ryu's explanation, Marcille's eyes slowly revealed a look of dizziness. "Why... do we have to do this?"
"Just a negotiation tactic."
"Eh? Wouldn't it be fine to just pay directly?"
Marcille really didn't understand, but seeing that Laios and the others were also baffled, she felt much more relieved:
Thankfully, it's not that I'm too stupid, it's that Ryu does things too unimaginably!
"I'll explain it clearly to you later. Don't ask anything right now; just do as I say."
...
The adventurers watched with their own eyes as Ryu and his group, each carrying two boxes of treasure, entered the hall. They all became excited and couldn't help but start discussing it.
If this island could change to a wealthier lord, perhaps he would be willing to increase the purchase price of monster materials or issue more quests to adventurers, which would be beneficial for them.
Especially since this guy looked like he had more money than brains!
The news flew across the entire island. Before long, representatives from all the guilds had gathered, openly or secretly, outside the hall. Unknown numbers of eyes stared expectantly at the entrance.
However, after a while, the main gate was kicked open violently. Ryu walked out with a face full of rage, his dissatisfaction obvious. Behind him, Laios and the others hurriedly followed, still holding the boxes exactly as they were.
Looking at this situation... did the deal fail?
That stupid Island Lord must have opened his mouth like a lion and asked for too much—the adventurers guessed one after another.
Marcille walked beside Falin, stole a glance to her left and right, swallowed a few times, took a deep breath, and made up her mind—
"Aiyah!"
The Elf mage let out a very melodramatic cry and fell over like a salted fish. The treasure chest in her hands crashed to the ground, and a dazzle of jewels and gold was thus exposed to everyone's line of sight.
—!!!
"Marcille!"
Laios shouted his companion's name in a tenor-like tone and hurriedly wrapped the treasure back up in a cloth.
The acting is too terrible!
—Ryu, walking at the very front, twitched the corner of his eye slightly.
However, he didn't need to worry, because even with just a fleeting glance, the adventurers' hearts were instantly stolen by those beautiful things...
Acting?
No one cared about that sort of thing. Even if a peerless beauty were stripped naked and placed next to it right now, everyone's attention wouldn't be diverted!
Ryu looked around, waiting for someone to come up and rob them... but no one made the first move, which left him slightly regretful.
It would have been better if someone had started a looting frenzy~
He had hoped the "atmosphere" would be a bit more heated. Losing a little money wasn't an issue, but he had underestimated the class distinctions of the other world:
Adventurers were mostly people without property. They were registered as adventurers in the guild, but once they left here, they were vagrants.
The individual combat power in this world wasn't absurdly high. Very few could be a one-man army. Most were vanilla warriors like Laios; there were no powerhouses capable of opposing the system single-handedly, so they obediently paid taxes to the Island Lord.
And these people didn't dare to make a move on Ryu, who looked like a great merchant or a great noble at first glance—at least not in broad daylight!
This was exactly why the village chief, possessing neither martial force nor wisdom, could sit on the gold mine that was the Dungeon without anyone forcibly seizing it for so long.
One had to know that even the powerful Elves mainly used political negotiation when they wanted the land deed here (after all, it was an era of peace; it would have been different in the past).
Ryu left with a slightly disappointed look, but the adventurers' frenzy had just begun. Everyone's topic of conversation shifted to them and that mountain of treasure, and they felt incredibly curious about exactly what kind of conditions the Island Lord had demanded.
"But, don't you find it strange?"
In the tavern, at a table of adventurers, a halfling drinking beer suddenly threw out a thoughtful remark: "Why didn't that Island Lord agree?"
"Hmm?"
"That guy is greedy, sure, but at most he'd ask for a high price. He wouldn't go so far as to piss the person off directly so they leave~"
The halfling furrowed his brows and said hesitantly, "Could it be that he refused outright?"
"Now that you mention it..."
The adventurers looked at each other. "But there's no reason!"
Yes, no reason!
Anyone with eyes could see that the current Dungeon was different from previous years. It couldn't produce wealth in large quantities anymore. It was like a rich mine that had been hollowed out, leaving only some scraps to be slowly developed.
The Island Lord had already eaten the bulk of the rich mine. Now that he had met a tycoon willing to take over, he should have happily handed over the land deed.
Did the deal collapse over the price?
Although that man had low character, he had been a lord for so many years; he should at least understand some trading techniques...
"There must be something fishy in this!"
No further guidance was needed. The halfling had only said one sentence, and the adventurers, blinded by wealth, began to speculate on their own.
"Come to think of it, why would he spend so much money to buy a Dungeon with no profit left in it?"
"Right now, people have explored up to the sixth and seventh floors at most. The lower you go, the harder it gets, and the fewer things you can find."
"Laios's squad was hired by him, right? Maybe we can get it out of him..."
"No good. That guy is an idiot. At most, he accepted a guard mission. There's no way they would discuss matters with him—he wouldn't understand anyway!"
"Yeah~"
"It is Laios, after all!"
"He still can't say my name!"
"An idiot who wouldn't even notice if he was scammed out of money~"
For some reason, everyone reached a consensus that no intelligence could be gained from Laios.
The "deeper" the friendship with Laios, the more they thought so.
"Could it be that some priceless treasure was discovered in the Dungeon?"
"—!"
Everyone was captivated by this possibility. The more they thought about it, the more it seemed right.
"The Island Lord already knew in advance, so he refused to sell!"
"That makes sense..."
"But what kind of thing... could make someone bring out such a huge sum of wealth to buy it?"
"Even a tiny share of it would be enough to live a life of debauchery forever, right?"
Everyone's hearts began to pound.
"Which floor would it be on?"
...Scenes like this played out constantly among the adventurer groups on the island.
Amidst the surging undercurrents, the second day arrived. Unknown numbers of people had stayed up all night dreaming of getting rich, only for the silence to be broken by the ear-piercing sound of a gong in the early morning.
"Quick, go to the harbor and help! A ship has run aground!"
"Hurry! Hurry!"
Adventurers weren't very keen on unpaid labor; everyone looked lacking in interest.
That was until someone ran back with their pockets stuffed full. Then, the crowd exploded into motion, rushing towards the harbor in a panic—
"It's a treasure ship! The ship is filled with supplies and treasures!"
"Where did it come from?"
"Who cares! Hurry up and help!"
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