Chapter 33

Ma Le's slum, located about ten kilometers from the main city of Miracle City, was separated by vast forests and wilderness. Fortunately, a road ran through the wilderness directly to the city gate. It was said that there were eight slums around Miracle City, and the city had about eight thousand adventurers, more than half of whom lived in the slums.

Following the road to the city gate, Ma Le saw a magnificent city. Its overall style resembled ancient Chinese architecture, but the city walls and towers were much taller and thicker. The main gate alone was nearly twenty meters high, and the city tower was over fifty meters tall! Even more astonishing was the floating island above the city, surrounded by colorful auspicious clouds that emitted a soft glow, making the island look like a fairyland.

At the gate, there were four guards. Ma Le paid 30 credit points as the entry fee and finally entered the main city of Miracle City. The buildings inside were numerous, and the overall style was primarily Chinese, with occasional European or Islamic influences, and even some primitive thatched huts and bamboo houses.

Not only were the architectural styles diverse, but the people on the streets also varied in appearance: some carried swords and knives, others carried rifles, some wore ancient metal armor, and others wore futuristic power armor... In short, their attire revealed the different directions in which the adventurers had enhanced themselves.

Walking through the streets of Miracle City, Ma Le noticed that, like a real city, there were restaurants, shops, and entertainment venues. Most of the items for sale were new and unique, unlike anything in the real world, and they were varied and eye-catching. However, Ma Le was more interested in the various auxiliary facilities in the city. Some facilities helped adventurers simulate battles, some provided information queries, some exchanged rare items, and some repaired equipment... However, as a commoner, Ma Le could only use the basic facilities. He spent 10 credit points to buy a map of Miracle City, which listed the basic facilities: the初级 training ground, equipment repair station, automatic vending machine, and information inquiry counter.

From the map, Ma Le learned that the main city of Miracle City was divided into three parts. The floating island in the sky was the first part, called the "Champion Sanctuary," where the highest-level champion adventurers lived.

The ground-level city was also divided into two parts. Directly below the "Champion Sanctuary" was the center of Miracle City, where there were towering palaces, the inner city of Miracle City, where the elite-level adventurers lived.

Ma Le was currently in the outer city, which surrounded the inner city and occupied 80% of the entire Miracle City, where adventurers below the senior level lived. The map only labeled the names of the inner city and the Champion Sanctuary, without detailing their internal structures, suggesting that low-level adventurers were not qualified to know.

As he walked, Ma Le suddenly heard a noisy commotion, as if he had reached a market. Checking the map, he found himself near the largest open space in Miracle City, the Miracle Square. According to Old Dog, the Miracle Square was a free market where adventurers could set up stalls to buy and sell equipment and items!

Ma Le was excited and hurried to the square. The view suddenly opened up, and a huge square appeared before his eyes! In the center of the square stood a massive statue of a beautifully dressed woman with outstretched arms, and above her floated a large crystal ball. The crystal ball continuously displayed images, and Ma Le noticed that it seemed to be showing... the news?

Indeed, the square was showing news, but it was all about the latest events in Miracle City. Every day, thousands of adventurers were sent to different worlds, and many of them recorded their adventures and submitted them to the news screening area in the square. After review, the news could be broadcast, providing other adventurers with new insights. The adventurers who provided the news also received rewards, with more valuable news earning higher rewards. This policy even gave rise to a group of dedicated "journalists" who were willing to abandon main quests to capture high-value news.

Ma Le did not come to watch the news. His attention was more focused on the bustling square below the crystal ball. At least a thousand people were gathered in the Miracle Square, and there were hundreds of stalls on the ground, selling everything from weapons and equipment to potions and food. All the items on the stalls were set to shared mode, with a laser screen floating above each item, providing detailed descriptions of the item's attributes and features, making it easy for buyers to understand and choose.

As Ma Le moved between the stalls, examining the items and reading the descriptions, he gradually gained some understanding of the equipment system in Miracle City.

First, Ma Le noticed that different equipment had different color names, similar to a game, where colors indicated the equipment's quality. Currently, the most common and cheapest were white or gray equipment. White equipment generally had no special effects, often referred to as "white board" equipment, while gray equipment was even worse, usually with prefixes like "rusty," "worn," or "old." These items were usually very cheap and sold in bundles of ten or twenty.

Slightly better than white was blue-quality equipment. These items generally had higher attributes than white equipment and sometimes had special effects. Blue-quality equipment was the mainstream in the market, better than the low-quality white and gray items, and more affordable than the higher grades. They were suitable for beginner and ordinary adventurers, with prices ranging from one to two thousand credit points. Some with special attributes or rare effects could even be priced at five thousand credit points!

Higher still were the silver-quality items. From this level, the equipment was considered high-end. Ordinary and beginner adventurers could still show off with blue equipment, but senior adventurers needed at least one or two silver items to be taken seriously. Silver equipment had significantly better base attributes than blue and almost always had practical special effects. Some even had multiple built-in skills, allowing an adventurer to transform into a powerful mage in seconds, dominating the scene! Of course, high-quality silver equipment was expensive, often costing tens of thousands of credit points, with better ones priced at thirty to forty thousand or more! The price tags on silver equipment made Ma Le feel poor for the first time, as he was still a beginner with limited resources...

Better than silver, Ma Le only saw one item after a long walk. From a distance, he saw a crowd gathered around something, and a hint of gold light could be seen through the gaps. After much effort, Ma Le squeezed through the crowd and finally saw the most precious item in the market, the only golden-quality equipment!

This golden-quality equipment was a dagger. It had a high base attack and increased the holder's agility by twenty points, reduced skill cooldown by 20%, and had a special effect that added 180 points of random attribute element damage with a chance to cause triple physical critical hits. Additionally, it had a practical active skill that created two illusions lasting ten minutes, each with half the life and attack power of the original. The weapon's attributes, special effects, and skills were all extremely powerful. At least six senior adventurers were competing for it, and it eventually turned into an auction. In the end, a tall, masked man bought the dagger for 250,000 credit points plus three silver-quality smoke bombs. Ma Le overheard that the masked man was a well-known agility specialist in Miracle City, and the other bidders did not want to ruin their relationships, so they did not bid as high as they could have, which would have made the dagger even more expensive.

As for equipment better than golden, Ma Le heard that it existed but had not seen any in the market. Besides these grades, Ma Le also noticed green equipment, but the quality category was labeled as "set." This made sense, as it indicated that the equipment was part of a set, and collecting all the pieces would grant hidden attributes. Additionally, Ma Le saw some black equipment, labeled as "famous" in the quality category, which puzzled him. The attributes seemed higher than blue, and some could rival silver, but he did not understand the classification.

Besides the equipment grades, Ma Le also noticed some other details.

Equipment, in general, was either armor or weapons. After examining numerous pieces of armor, Ma Le found that they all increased armor, not defense. Occasionally, he saw armor that provided additional damage reduction, but that was a special effect. As for weapons, the primary attribute was damage. However, Ma Le noticed that under the damage attribute for melee weapons, there were three additional attributes: sharpness, hardness, and strength requirement.

At first, Ma Le did not understand what these meant, but after seeing more, he realized that the basic damage of melee weapons was the product of these three attributes! For example, swords and knives generally had high sharpness and low strength requirement, while hammers and axes had high strength requirement and low sharpness. The attributes Ma Le had seen so far were mostly single digits, with some heavy weapons having a strength requirement over 10, but sharpness and hardness rarely reached double digits.

By listening to people haggling and discussing the performance of items, Ma Le gradually understood. His guess was correct: these three attributes fundamentally influenced weapon damage. Sharpness and hardness had a maximum of 20, and the materials in the real world could only produce weapons with 10 sharpness and 10 hardness. Anything higher was legendary or sci-fi. The strength requirement indicated how many times the strength of an average person was needed to use the weapon effectively. For example, a weapon with a strength requirement of 5 did not mean 5 points of strength were needed, but rather 5 times the strength of an average person, or about 15 points. If the strength was less than 15, the weapon could still be used, but it would be less effective and cause less damage. The strength requirement was generally related to the weight, so theoretically, increasing the weight could infinitely increase the weapon's damage. However, no one would deliberately pursue weapon weight, as everyone knew that a hammer was more powerful than a dagger, but in a fight, the dagger user usually had the upper hand. Therefore, the strength requirement for most weapons was a single digit, making them easy to use and not tiring.

Additionally, Ma Le noticed that weapons with sharpness greater than 3 generally had an effect that ignored 50% of defense, while weapons with a strength requirement greater than 3 generally had an effect that ignored 50% of armor. Indeed, blunt weapons broke armor, and sharp weapons cut through defense.