Chapter 35: Crafting Upgrade!

“Hmm…”

Right now, Axel was troubled.

There was the problem of housing for the new refugees welcomed into the camp, but more than that… “I… succeeded in stripping zombies of their clothes…”

During the last moments, seeing that the number of zombies had dropped by quite a few, he asked Arianne to switch back to her old sword and cut a zombie’s limbs, immobilizing it. Then, he carefully stored the zombie’s clothes before finishing it off with a wooden spear.

This, miraculously, allowed him to keep the zombie’s clothes successfully!

“Although this works, stripping them down is downright hard work…”

They couldn’t use Axel’s weapons, as those killed the zombies on hit. Thus, they could only rely on Arianne’s old sword, the one that couldn’t kill zombies no matter how many strikes landed.

In short, to gather the zombies’ clothes, they needed to use that sword, cut off the zombies’ limbs, place their clothes into the inventory, and then finish them off. It was a lot of troublesome and repetitive work!

Of course, the idea of letting the girls strip the zombies crossed his mind.

However, there was still the danger of getting bitten during work. Although it’s not like they’d turn into zombies if bitten like in movies, with how unsanitary those things were, a bite would practically be a death sentence without potions or antibiotics ready at a moment’s notice.

Thus, even though this was a valid strategy to gain resources for free, it was still unfeasible at the current time.

“If I can brave through the zombie swarm without fearing their attacks, then maybe this will become a valid option…” Axel shrugged.

There were two options to achieve that.

One was to buy full-body armor that left no gaps. Although it was moderately expensive, he could easily recoup his losses using the funds he could get from crafting and selling. The only problem was that the armor was heavy, making his movements limited.

The second option was to improve his body’s defenses to the max. To the point that his skin wouldn’t get damaged by blades.

This became a viable option thanks to the existence of the shop.

While searching, he accidentally found those weird “tonics” sold there that permanently raised a person’s specific stats, like strength, toughness, agility, intelligence, and so on.

Of course, with how poor he currently was, he couldn’t even afford those futuristic tonics. After all, even the cheapest tonic that increased strength by 1 point, equivalent to adding 10 kg of lifting strength, costs a hundred million Colts.

And he only had 7 million or so left in his account!

’But one day, I’ll definitely buy all those tonics and strengthen myself!’ Axel firmly swore. ’Especially the Mana Tonic! I want to use real magic later on, after all!’

All living beings had mana, but as Axel came from another world, his body contained none of it. Thus, unless through doping, he had no other hope of gaining mana for use!

“Anyway, before all that, I need money.”

He sighed.

He did find that the Max Level Substitute Dolls were extremely precious to witches.

However, he also apparently stretched WitchyGura’s budget quite thin. “I don’t think she could afford another batch of that many top-of-the-line dolls…” He harrumphed.

Checking his inventory, there was still the mountain of broken dolls he was offered for free.

Checking them out, each one cost a mere 50 Colts to repair through his system. Even if he fixed all 10,000 of them, he wouldn’t really feel the burden right now. And so, without hesitation, he began repairing all those dolls.

As he was doing so, he noticed that the dolls had minor differences.

Qualities ranged from normal to medium quality, and levels ranged from 1 to 5. The variations increased their repair cost, but only reached up to 1,000 Colts at most.

“Phew… Done!”

Within ten minutes, he finished repairing all of them.

Tallying them by rarity, there were 5,000 Normal Quality low-level Dolls, 1,000 Normal Quality high-level Dolls, 3,000 Medium Quality low-level Dolls, 750 Medium Quality medium-level Dolls, and 250 of the high-level ones.

All in all, Axel spent 3 million for the repair costs!

“Now, let’s put them into my shop!”

Of course, as previously discussed with WitchyGura, he offered all items to other witches at 200% of the market price. This was “fair price” apparently, as Axel was labeling his wares too cheaply before.

Anyway, although he was clueless as to what these items cost, the system automatically did that for him. He only had to double the amount stated by the system, and his items were all ready for selling!

“Still, even a normal one is 50,000 Colts? That’s a lot…”

The most expensive of the dolls cost 250,000 Colts in the market, while the cheapest was at 50,000 Colts. Since he was selling them at double the price, considering his investment was only the repair cost…

“Roughly a 2,000% ROI for each item!”

He did imagine a high income when he thought of this gig, but this income was still way above his estimates!

To add, as soon as he put them on sale, the items began selling like hotcakes.

The buyers were completely random, enough that Axel couldn’t keep track of their names in the logs as they swept down rapidly. One thing he knew was that WitchyGura didn’t buy any. After all, she already had a hundred pieces of maximum-level dolls on hand.

To her, the dolls currently on sale were trash and nothing else.

Not even worth her money!

Five minutes.

That was how long it took before all 10,000 repaired Substitute Dolls were sold out. And with that, Axel’s initial investment of 2 million has now turned into 400 million!

Axel couldn’t believe he could go back and forth to a nine-digit balance so easily…

But even with this much liquid funds, he knew that he was still “poor.” After all, even if he spent all his money, the most he could build would probably be a fortified castle. Don’t mention a city—a castle alone would bring his balance back to zero!

“I still need more money…”

Just then, Navi’s cute figure popped before his eyes, flying through the air as if he were ice skating.

[Congratulations, contractor! You’ve survived the 3rd day! I really didn’t think you would last this long! As a prize, you have unlocked a new system function! Automatic Crafting!]

“…What?”

Axel thought he was hearing things, or that Navi was joking. But then, when he checked the system, his lips couldn’t help but curl up.

“Yes…!” he shouted. “This is it! This is what I’ve been waiting for!”

At that moment, he got one step closer to his dream goal—his goal of having so much money he’d be troubled on how to spend it all!

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