Chapter 54: Large Purchase

Cassian dismissed Nyxara, allowing her to prepare for the upcoming campaign in her own way.

​As for himself... he had other urgent matters to attend to.

​Morghanna commanded a terrifying force of over one hundred thousand subordinates, and none of them were pushovers.

The weakest among her ranks were equivalent to Advanced ★★ combatants.

​Compared to that legion, Cassian’s own standing force appeared pitiful.

​Twenty-six summons. That was all he had.

​Of course, the raw numbers could technically be expanded. The Deathmark Commander could raise one hundred skeletons using [Hundred Skeleton Summon], and the Gravewing Reaper could manifest three additional undead through [Death Touch].

If Cassian mastered both skills himself through his Lord Seed, he could likely push those numbers even higher.

​But that wasn’t a realistic solution before tomorrow’s battle. Even if he gained an extra hundred or so fodder troops, it wouldn’t alter the tactical landscape.

​Useful? Certainly. Game-changing? Not even close.

​Cassian had always favored quality over quantity, but there came a point in mass warfare where quantity became a quality on its own.

No matter how absurdly powerful his Special Elites were, twenty-six individuals could only occupy so much ground.

​He needed more soldiers, more workers, more support units, and more raw resources.

​And to acquire all of that... he needed summoning cards.

​A calculating thought crossed his mind as Cassian opened the Trade Tab interface. The moment the glowing panel materialized, a sharp smile touched his lips:

​[Lord Coins: ∆1,067,892]

​[All Listed Items Have Been Sold]

​Cassian stared at the digital figure.

​Over one million Lord Coins in a single day.

​The amount exceeded the total accumulated wealth of his entire previous life by more than ten times.

If someone had told his former self that he would hold such a fortune on his very first day within the Lord’s Domain, he would have laughed in their face.

​Yet here it was, displayed clearly before him, very real, and very spendable.

​Still, Cassian wasn’t blinded by the seven-figure balance. Money only held true value when converted directly into military strength, and strength was precisely what he intended to buy.

​"It’s time."

​His fingers blurred across the Trade Market, and countless listings flooded the screen: summoning cards, weapons, crafting materials, and building resources.

Everything a rapidly expanding territory could possibly require was available for the right price.

​Cassian quickly filtered out the noise. Luxury goods, territory decorations, and absurdly overpriced gear were immediately discarded.

​His targets were straightforward:

​Worker Summoning Cards

​Support Summoning Cards

​Soldier Summoning Cards

​Construction Resources

​Fusion Materials

​A sharp grin spread across his face.

​Other Lords purchased high-grade, pre-finished items because they desperately craved immediate, plug-and-play power. Cassian preferred a completely different approach: raw volume.

​To him, a thousand Common-grade materials were often vastly superior to a single Rare-grade treasure.

After all, where other Lords saw a pile of worthless junk, Cassian saw future Rare, Epic, and Legendary items waiting to be synthesized through his Blessing.

​The difference in strategic perspective was absolute.

​Soon, system prompts began flashing in rapid succession:

​[Purchase Successful]

​[Purchase Successful]

​[Purchase Successful]

​[Purchase Successful]

​The massive balance in his account began decreasing at a dizzying rate, yet Cassian didn’t bat an eye.

Every coin spent was an investment, one that would inevitably return tenfold once his war machine started rolling.

​As the bulk purchases continued to process, his gaze turned back toward the dark northern horizon.

​Tomorrow’s war would determine everything. Victory would grant him the vast Kragmar Dominion, a territory several times larger than Lord’s Hollow, the Umbralwood, and the Bonefang Wastes combined.

​More territory, more population, and more resource nodes.

​And if everything went according to plan... tomorrow would mark the official beginning of his true rise within the Lord’s Domain.

The purchases finally ended as Cassian stared at his remaining balance.

​[Lord Coins: ∆1,052]

​A small smile touched his face.

​The amount wasn’t much, at least compared to the massive fortune he had possessed only moments ago, but that was entirely intentional.

The remaining thousand Lord Coins had been reserved specifically for tomorrow’s Fortune Wheel Lottery.

​After holding over a million Lord Coins in his account, Cassian simply refused to return to being a pauper.

One needed capital to make real money, and the Fortune Wheel was one of the rare opportunities within the Lord’s Domain where a small initial investment could yield astronomical returns.

​Fortunately, holding back that thousand Lord Coins hadn’t impacted his purchasing strategy in the slightest.

His buying spree had already been optimized to the absolute extreme.

​Cassian had exclusively bought Common ★ items.

​To most Lords, such a decision would seem completely foolish, why purchase the absolute weakest version of a card when stronger alternatives were readily available on the market?

​The answer was simple: Fusion mechanics.

​Whenever an item advanced to the next grade through Fusion, it automatically manifested as a Three-Star (★★★) variant within that new tier.

That meant buying Common ★★ or Common ★★★ items was a complete waste of capital.

A Common ★ item and a Common ★★★ item would both synthesize into a Refined ★★★ product after one fusion.

​The only difference was the initial purchase price, and Cassian had zero intention of paying a premium for zero added benefit.

​With the market cap of most Common ★ items hovering around three hundred Lord Coins, the cost savings were staggering.

​The result of that mathematical efficiency was equally impressive: he had acquired three hundred summoning cards for every single unit category available to his territory.

​Workers. Support units. Frontline soldiers. Special units.

​Only Champion Cards had been excluded due to their absurd, inflated price tags.

​That single bulk purchase alone had consumed over three hundred and sixty thousand Lord Coins, yet Cassian didn’t regret a single coin.

He already knew precisely how he intended to process them.

​Moments later, he arrived before the Summoning Gate.

​The massive, ancient structure stood silently beneath the pale light of the twin moons.

Cassian looked at the towering mountain of summoning cards stored within his Vault, his mind completely made up.

​He had no intention of fusing the cards themselves.

​That was a strategic conclusion he had reached much earlier. At first glance, fusing summoning cards appeared highly beneficial on paper, a higher-grade card summoned units in larger baseline quantities.

​But after calculating the yield metrics, Cassian realized it was actually a mathematical disadvantage.

​Fusion inherently reduced the total number of physical cards, and for summoning cards, raw volume often mattered far more than initial card quality.

A single Refined card could never compete with the net output of three Common cards when it came to total bodies produced.

​If he possessed thousands of higher-grade cards to burn through, the equation might have tipped. Unfortunately, that wasn’t his current reality.

​At this stage, volume was king. He could always perform post-summon fusions on the units themselves after they emerged, granting him the absolute best of both worlds: massive troop numbers and elite unit quality.

​A sharp grin spread across Cassian’s face.

​"Time to get to work."

​The first summoning card materialized in his hand, followed instantly by another, and another.

​Mana surged violently from his Lord Seed, and the Summoning Gate immediately resonated with the energy. The ancient structure trembled as glowing runes illuminated across its stone frame one after another, drawing the surrounding death energy directly into the archway.

​The largest summoning spree in the history of Lord’s Hollow was about to begin.