Chapter 299: Hidden Deal

If he really encountered someone like that, he could simply choose to replace them. After all, they had not signed the contract yet.

Fortunately, the first person who had contacted him was very skilled at handling business. Originally, he had already prepared himself to go through this several times.

Joo Joowon glanced at his own star fortune. The other party had voluntarily entered his "calamity," causing his star fortune to rise considerably.

He did not feel much psychological burden about tricking people. Besides, whether the other party was even a human being was still unknown.

He had already realized earlier that the danger in the high-risk zone was not merely a matter of unscrupulous merchants or similar problems. It involved something else entirely.

However, at that time, Joo Joowon had only been able to see the situation through a fog. He really could not predict exactly where the problem lay, so he could only carefully plan his contracts to avoid stepping into traps.

It was not until today, when [Unknown Coordinates] was assigned such a high price by the system, that Joo Joowon immediately realized where the problem was.

The price was wrong.

Merchants pursued profit. Even the cheapest Lord’s Manor sold in the game shop only cost 10 silver coins, and there was even the Apocalypse Finance loan system. This showed that the entry requirements were not particularly high. Yet the shops in the high-risk zone were offering prices that were even much lower than those in the game shop, which almost left them with no profit to make.

This was not something Joo Joowon had simply made up. He had looked at the lord buildings in the game shop. Although there were construction teams and private customization options, in reality, even the highest-priced Lord’s Manor only took less than half a day from placing the order to completion. This showed that construction was not really a problem for the game.

The Lord’s Manors in the high-risk zone were the same. They also promised that if the Lord’s Manor could not be completed within one or two days, the entire payment would be refunded. This showed just how easy it was for people from high-level worlds to construct ordinary buildings.

Lord’s Manors were not valuable. Joo Joowon could reach this conclusion very easily.

Therefore, there was no real profit to be made from this business. It was far less profitable than human trafficking or skill duplication. After all, once a Lord’s Manor was built, some laborers would be needed, right? Once the territory’s residents had been trained, the lord would need to equip his trusted subordinates with some skills, right?

Therefore, in Joo Joowon’s eyes, the fact that they were doing business in Lord’s Manors was unreasonable from the very beginning.

A Lord’s Manor was a necessary step for anyone who wanted to become a lord, yet even the game itself did not make things particularly difficult for players by setting the threshold too high.

Then, looking at the exchange prices of zombie cores, it was easy to tell that the game shop was probably charging nothing more than the actual cost for Lord’s Manors, while the high-risk zone looked much more like they were taking a loss just to attract customers.

If there were no carrots dangling in front of them, they would absolutely never do something like this.

It was not until the price at which [Unknown Coordinates] were sold that Joo Joowon finally realized where the problem lay.

What these people were after was not some small profit. What they wanted was [Coordinates], the resources of a new world.

Although Joo Joowon still had no idea what exactly they wanted to obtain, he at least knew that when most new game servers opened, there were countless business opportunities in areas such as item prices and trade. The Age of Apocalypse was probably no exception.

The only thing that had gone beyond his expectations was that he had originally intended to pretend to be a player who had participated in some kind of closed beta and knew a little inside information. However, judging from the information the other party had accidentally revealed and their attitude toward him, they seemed to have mistaken him for some kind of existence from the "lower realms."

Joo Joowon did not bother correcting them. They could think whatever they wanted. Being thought of as more important was always better than being looked down upon, although it did make it easier for him to expose himself.

He had always felt that pretending to be a weak pig while secretly being a tiger was much easier than having a husky mixed into a pack of wolves. The former could actually pull it off, while the latter was genuinely an impostor and could easily be exposed.

However, with the conditions he had requested, the entire job would take at most an hour to complete. The other party would not be staying for long, so under these circumstances, taking this small risk was worth it.

Perhaps the other party was also suspicious, which was why he had kept a final payment as a safeguard against being tricked.

After all, someone doing business in the high-risk zone could not possibly be an honest and straightforward merchant. And since they had never intended to do business properly from the beginning, if someone traveled the night road often enough, they would naturally eventually encounter a ghost.

Joo Joowon stretched his body lazily, pulled open the curtains, and looked at the sky. The special event had not ended yet, so he climbed onto the bed. "Byeol, I am going to sleep for a while first. Hwi, don’t you dare climb onto the bed!"

He had used up quite a lot of energy during this trip, so he needed to take a good rest while he could. At the same time, this would allow him to be ready to welcome Seong Seungmin, who would be arriving soon.

Judging from the comments about the high-risk zone that he had looked through so far, the designers who came to build Lord’s Manors, as well as the construction teams they brought with them, did not seem to have ever attacked players.