Guild Wars

"Welcome ladies and gentlemen, to Umbra's 15th Monthly Player Auction !" Amber announced to a crowd chock-full of waiting buyers made up of both powerful NPC factions and player guilds.

Unlike before, the Rank 7 Shop no longer exclusively sold Umbra items, rather it functioned like most normal auction, taking items from sellers and advertising them for sale. Then, upon sale in the monthly auction, they would take a cut from the proceeds.

Naturally, the majority of goods sold were still from Umbra. Also, because it was a player auction, most of the items were vied for by players, since most of the items were provided by Umbra's players.

Case in point, when Amber started the auction, most of the items being auctioned were at the Rare-Rank at the minimum. This was because even the basic Tradeskill members of Umbra had long reached the Expert Rank of their main Tradeskill, with the majority hitting the Master Rank.

The only problem was that they were new to the Master Rank, so their success rates for Epic items were quite low, around 45% despite all the various boons Vita Kingdom granted them. As such, while they targeted Epic rank, there would be some flaws that would drag it down to either Semi-Epic or Rare Rank.

However, due to the fact that such Tradeskill players never used items below the perfect grade at the Epic Rank - thanks to the work of the Rank 7 Warehouse and Rank 7 Refinery of Vita Kingdom - the Semi-Epic or Rare items were infinitely close to the next Rank and were the absolutely best at their tier.

And yet, to undercut the market and go along with the Evil Duo's plan to strengthen the player force, these items were sold even cheaper than the lowest Rare tier items at auction, as if Umbra was some starving guild trying to create demand for goods by lowering price.

As you could imagine, this infuriated NPC sellers because Umbra was simply acting too shameless! They already had one of the only Rank 7 Shops in the world and certainly one of the only ones easily accessible on Cario Continent, yet they dared to act as if they were some honest merchant underdog who was trying to compete with bigger foes?!

Fortunately, the suffering of these types of merchants made the true ruler of Umbra's economy – and, in fact, the Main Plane in general - truly happy.

It was the almighty Money Lover!

This fellow was usually so low key among Umbra's core members that many would often forget to count him among that elite group of people that had grown large enough that some people might need a comprehensive list to remember them all.

Nevertheless, his contributions to Umbra's current wealth and finances were unmistakable and a loud reminder of his presence.... and yet ironically Money Lover was no longer on Cario Continent. Nor anywhere on the mapped zones, to be precise.

Rather, he had been taken by Draco's Ultima Sunt Avatar to explore the unmapped zones and see what unique merchandise they could acquire from the place the world did not know.

Along with that, the Avatar had also taken the recently acquired World Map Divine item Draco and Eva had received from their Divine Treasure Chests, so getting lost was no longer an issue.

The auction heated up as Epic items were brought out, the successful ones that Umbra's Tradeskill players made or that others had put up for sale. Since Vita Kingdom gave bonuses to final items made by players, they were better on average that Epic items of the same category even if they were poorly made or barely passed the mark.

And, they were also sold at around 40% of the standard price of an epic item of the same tier. You could imagine that both players and NPCs fought over these items crazily. However, the question you would ask was where the heck did the broke players get the fund to compete with the rich NPCs?

That was a good question.

It was a direct consequence of these same auctions and Draco and Eva's actions.

Let's take this random Uncommon-tier guild leader, Crazy Kachow, as an example to answer it. He was an Archer with a Hidden Class called the Turret. This was a Rare tier class that focused on the speed of launching arrows rather than quality, distance or accuracy.

When he started the game, he had done so by purchasing the Master package, receiving two Rare tier bows, and a Common light armor set. The rest of the stuff he had sold for some starting capital. He had joined the game around the time of the First Guild War, and was present for all events thereafter.

He had been a middling character at the time, strong enough to lead a small adventurer team that had a success rate of 35% on their dungeon crawling and field expeditions. At this rate, by the time he hit Rank 3, it would be 7-8 years into Boundless' launch.

However, as stated before, he was a person present for a good amount of events that had either never occurred at all, or at least not as early in the previous timeline, and he had greatly benefited from them despite being suppressed by the AI.

This grew exponentially when Draco came out of the Refinement God's Treasury and changed his whole outlook on life, no longer half helping the players and half suppressing them to assist the AI, but fully supporting them as best as he could.

Vita City-State had turned into Vita Kingdom and Crazy Kachow had taken his team to lodge there with what little money they had. They enjoyed the benefits of clearing out Area Zones around Vita Kingdom which had hefty commission paid the kingdom.

Using those same funds they were able to strengthen themselves by purchasing the items which were sold cheaper than outside despite being at least 30% better than the same types elsewhere due to the Kingdoms boost. This meant a significant drop in the difficulty of defeating the same monster without that equipment.

To illustrate, the cycle went like this; Accept Vita Kingdom commission --> kill a few monsters --> claim reward --> use reward to buy Vita specialty equipment --> accept commission again --> kill even MORE monsters, much faster, much easier, less causalities --> buy even better equipment --> rinse & repeat.

The cycle was virtuous and bold, allowing those who stayed at the outer city to be able to eventually afford to live there permanently through their earnings. The best part was that Vita had a double exp boost that accumulated after resting for a while, so you could work during the day, sleep at night and the next morning when you went out to kill, you would get twice the experience for the same effort!

Now, it should be clear when it is said that Draco and Eva were seriously bumping the power of players compared to the previous timeline, and this was only a part of it!

The next big change in Crazy Kachow's life was, of course, the first Vita Kingdom war! Back then, Vita had been raiding an occupied Area Zone called the Unity Area Zone in order to annex them. It was there that the core members found the blade of Purita that Deployed Soldier now wielded.

In that event, even the trashiest players who did not get a kill would receive 5 points which could redeem rare level items! How much more Crazy Kachow who had some skill, made some skills and survived till the end?

The gains from that event set him up and his team as well, allowing them to open their small scale guild. They eventually reached Rank 3 when the Vita Tournament came around and participated.

Crazy Kachow got into the top 300, and his rewards were more than generous, allowing his guild to expand beyond his wildest beliefs, reaching the Rare Rank.

And now, he was here, in this auction house, vying for Rare and Epic items. In terms of liquid funds for his guild? They had over 120,000 platinum on hand!

Jesus!

In the previous timeline, a Divine Guild like Hellscape didn't have more than 5000 platinum in liquid funds. Now, in this timeline, a mere Rare guild had more than 20x that!?!

Okay, calm down, calm down.

Since platinum was more available now, its value should have depreciated accordingly, right? Right?

Wrong!

An economist might explain it better, but an economy can experience three scenarios. The first is when there is too much fiat currency in circulation compared to the population, leading to inflation. The second is when the population and physical presence of fiat currency is balanced, leading to a healthy economy.

The third is what the entire world of Boundless - and even the real world - was suffering from now. There was not enough physical presence of Fiat currency compared to the size of the population, leading to a shortage of money, thereby increasing its value in comparison to goods and services.

Look, a single Cario City had a population of billions due to geographical size.

Just one big city in one average Kingdom on one single continent had almost the entire population of earth. There were only 900 million or so players at this time, and even if EVERYONE had 100k platinum, its value would not budge an inch unless they spent it all at once place.

That was why Sublime was using the Rank 7 World Bank to practically throw money as far and wide as she could, but it was like fetching water from the sea and pouring it into the Grand Canyon basin by basin.

It was nigh impossible to fill it up.

So a player with 100k was rich, yeah, but they weren't the 1%. They were the 0.(insert at least a billion zeros here)1% of the 1%. So the money they accrued still had great value because Umbra gave them made avenues to spend it on goods and services of higher quality that would further enrich the players, causing a perfect cycle of positivity.

When Umbra collected this money, they then threw it out through loans, subsidies and grants to every new person they could find, making different areas richer and trying to create a positive cycle in such places too.

But even with the Sea Route, the huge income flow was not enough to solve this problem quickly. Sublime could only adopt this method to create a positive cycle that would refresh after X amount of time (ideally, a week) and with each complete cycle, the entire economy of the main plane is strength by a percentage.

Unfortunately, this percentage was deep in the decimals. It was like a savings account or a percentile investment, where each round of the investment would increase the principal, and thereby increase the interest gained from the next round.

But using this same theory, it was like depositing the minimum balance needed to open an account - say, $50 - and waiting for its savings percentage of 4% per annum to make you a millionaire.

By the time you got there, 252,507 years had passed. So as you could imagine, this was not something that would take a short period of time unless an explosive change occurred, which was what Draco's avatar was trying to work on.

In the meantime, the auction had reached the point of Legendary items. Obviously, if Umbra's most basic Tradeskill members were minimum experts with majority beings masters, those of higher ranks would be high level masters and even low level Grandmasters of their main Tradeskills at the least.

This was why Draco had not needed to craft for his guild members for a long time. Umbra had already reached a point where it was self-sufficient and could operate without having to rely on the miracles of Draco and Eva, especially with this new batch of God Serpent core members, among others.

Otherwise, Draco and Eva would not have the peace of mind to be in seclusion for so long.

At the climax of the auction, the most precious item was put up for sale, but it was - shockingly - something unique.

Up for auction this time was something that had been recently introduced and advertised, which was why this month's attendance was more intense than usual!

What could it be?