Chapter One Hundred Thirteen: The Engineering Apprentice

After sorting through the junk gear, Zhang Shan opened the auction interface and listed the Invincible Slash skill book with a starting bid of 100 million gold coins, no buyout price, and set the auction duration to twenty-four hours.

Done. Now all that remained was to wait for the results. He wasn’t sure if any generous big spenders would place bids or follow the auction.

“Is that it? What if no one even sees it?” Boss Wu said anxiously.

“Don’t worry. Even if you list a blank material with a starting price of 100 million, someone will see it. People always filter by price,” Zhang Shan reassured him.

“But just seeing it doesn’t mean there’s demand. We want it to be seen by those who actually need it,” Boss Wu pointed out, which made sense but there was nothing they could do.

Zhang Shan wanted to run some ads but feared backlash since the skill book’s price was set so high. If people found out he was the seller, they’d probably call him a ruthless merchant—even though he didn’t really mind the criticism.

Still, it wasn’t time for that yet.

He decided to let the auction run for a few days. If no one bid by then, he’d consider advertising.

Unfortunately, the cursed New World Forum was tied to character names, making it difficult to create alternate accounts. Otherwise, Zhang Shan would have long ago used a mule account to promote the auction there.

“Well, never mind. I’m going to sleep. It’s already late,” Boss Wu said. It was nearly midnight, which was quite late from his perspective—definitely not the time to be playing around.

“You go ahead. I’ll play a little longer and then log off,” Zhang Shan replied.

Boss Wu logged off, and Zhang Shan pondered what to do next. It was late, so he didn’t want to grind monsters. Traveling to the Ant Hill map alone would take over forty minutes, and at this hour, he might fall asleep on the way.

He decided to get an engineering profession certificate first and try out a life skill to pass the time.

From the start, Zhang Shan had wanted to pursue engineering, but he’d always been either grinding monsters or traveling to grind, leaving no time for it.

Today he finally had time to see how life skills worked.

He also needed to share information about the second floor’s boss in the Demon Suppression Platform dungeon with his guildmates and ask when they planned to run the dungeon next.

He called Fengyun Yidao and sent the attributes and skills of the Demon Tribe Strongman Commander.

“Brother Yidao, here’s the info on the second floor’s dungeon boss at normal difficulty. When are you guys planning the next run?”

“Brother Liuguan, you’re incredible! Who did you run the dungeon with to get to the boss?” Yidao asked.

Actually, reaching the second floor boss wasn’t easy. Otherwise, the forum would be flooded with such information.

Besides the three orange-tier bosses in the dungeon, there were thousands of elite monsters that most players couldn’t clear.

Even a team of fifty wasn’t enough if they weren’t skilled.

“It was just me and the Taoist leading the charge. He came online at night, and we did a run together. Otherwise, the dungeon attempts would go to waste,” Liuguan explained.

“Seriously? Just two of you made it to the boss? That’s insane!”

“It was alright. There were a lot of elites, so it was exhausting. We spent the whole night clearing them,” Liuguan replied.

“Damn, thousands of elite monsters and you say it’s just ‘a lot’?!” Yidao laughed.

“Heh, just take it slow. It’s just a bit time-consuming. Normal mode isn’t dangerous.”

“True, in normal mode you can handle mobs one by one, so it’s not difficult. But how’d you get past the three orange bosses?”

“Level 30 orange bosses aren’t hard. We can kill one in three to five minutes.”

“Respect, no further explanation needed.”

“When are you guys going to run the second floor next? Don’t forget to bring me and the Taoist.”

“That’s a given! Even if I forget myself, I won’t forget you. Without a big shot like you, there’s no way we’d clear the dungeon.”

“But the second floor boss is pretty tough, way overpowered.”

“Don’t worry. I’m melee and not scared. If I have to, I’ll just fall halfway and then chip away slowly. Bosses aren’t that easy anywhere,” Liuguan said confidently.

Zhang Shan had always treated bosses like normal mobs, so encountering such a monstrous boss was a bit unsettling.

“Talk it over among yourselves. I’m just a humble fighter.”

“Come on, we’re all just extras. The boss fight depends on you. I’ll discuss with the leader and others. We’ll probably wait a few days before running again to level up a bit first.”

“Alright, just give me a heads-up.”

Zhang Shan checked his experience bar. He was nearly twenty million experience short of level twenty-nine, and level thirty was still a ways off.

Level thirty was also the requirement to enter the second floor of the dungeon. After level thirty-one, players could only enter the third floor.

Leveling was getting slower now, so maybe he could run the second floor a couple more times before moving on.

After ending the chat, Zhang Shan bought an engineering profession certificate at the auction house and quickly gathered some materials useful for engineering.

He then teleported to Dangyang City’s workshop and submitted the certificate, officially becoming an engineering apprentice.

With that done, he headed to the guild workshop to make bullets.

Typically, after registering a life skill apprentice, players had to rent a workstation from an NPC to craft items.

But Zhang Shan’s guild, Fengyun, already had its own workshop building. He just needed to spend some personal guild contribution points to use it, saving a bit of money.

Teleporting to the guild base, Zhang Shan entered the workshop, spent ten contribution points, and approached the workstation.

He learned the blueprint for ordinary bullets, then gathered the materials—wood, iron ore, and copper ore.

The rest was simple: place a batch of materials on the workstation and start crafting.

After a short while, a burst of flames flared—crafting failed.

Zhang Shan checked his life skill proficiency—no increase. Failures didn’t count.

He still needed a hundred proficiency points to graduate from apprentice to junior engineer.

First try failure was normal; he kept going.

He placed another batch of materials on the workstation. Again, failure.

Damn, this was harder than expected. Couldn’t even make ordinary bullets?

Try again.

More materials, more failures.

Zhang Shan mechanically repeated the process, growing a little frustrated. Thankfully, the materials for ordinary bullets were cheap.

Otherwise, he might have given up.

One failure after another—how could anyone endure this?

And this was just making the most basic bullets. What would it be like crafting higher-tier bullets?

He pressed on, determined to use up the materials he had first.