Chapter 219 - Level 10 Shelter and Recruiting Villagers

Han Wu and Duan Meng were automatically transported outside Han Wu’s shelter after escaping the second calamity’s designated space.

Duan Meng slumped with exhaustion. “I’m so tired. I just want to go back and sleep for three nights straight.”

Though Han Wu’s protection had kept her from harm, she had remained on high alert the entire time. The moment she no longer had to watch for threats, her brain finally started to surrender to fatigue.

Han Wu chuckled softly. “Go ahead. I’ll call if anything urgent comes up.”

𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

Duan Meng yawned and headed back to her shelter with the remaining lizardmen. Meanwhile, Han Wu ordered his skeletons to patrol and gather resources before entering his. They had spent thirty days trapped in that space, but their shelters had continued operating normally the entire time.

A lot of units were summoned daily, which in turn protected his shelter. Han Wu felt relief wash over him when he saw hundreds of Scorching Dwarves waiting inside. The ones he had brought into the space had all been killed. He had feared he’d need to wait a long time before resuming weapon forging while replenishing the dwarves’ numbers.

He opened the group chat and found only six students remaining, including himself. Everyone else had been eliminated. The second calamity had proven even more brutal than expected.

Now he faced a dilemma. With so few survivors left, who would buy his equipment? Would anyone still be interested in tickets to his training grounds?

The questions gnawed at him until messages from Qin Shuang and Sun Qingnian appeared in their small group chat. Sun Qingnian had sent the first message.

[Sun Qingnian: Thank goodness you survived, Han Wu.]

Qin Shuang responded with a hint of irritation.

[Qin Shuang: Of course he wouldn’t get eliminated. He’s the best.]

[Sun Qingnian: Sure, sure. Your Han Wu is the best. But the second calamity was brutal. Many of our classmates were defeated in space, or their shelters were destroyed while they were away. Such a waste.]

Han Wu agreed.

[Han Wu: Yeah. Only six of us are left in this region. That calamity was terrifying.]

Sun Qingnian read his message and shared a crucial update.

[Sun Qingnian: There are just six of us left here, but other colleges still have students. After the second calamity, the large group chat was unlocked. Han Wu, didn’t you know?]

Han Wu’s shock was immediate. He hadn’t known about it at all. He quickly checked his interface and found a new group chat with 30,000 members.

He opened it and was immediately met with a flurry of messages scrolling past in real time. Every username carried the name of a college as a prefix. When he checked the member list, he found over 600 users marked with

Imperial College

—the largest faction in the entire chat.

Others belonged to the Demonic Imperial College, Tianhai College, and several smaller institutions. Though these factions were noticeably smaller, they were still present. He also spotted students from lesser-known colleges like Greenflight College and New East College. Most of these colleges had fewer than five survivors in the Warring Kingdom Civilization. All of them were elites like Han Wu who had endured the second calamity.

Seeing the large number of students online, Han Wu started selling his tickets into the group chat. He needed more clients and saw no reason to miss the chance to reach all 30,000 students.

However, others soon joined the selling frenzy, offering tickets at even lower prices to undercut him. Many students had apparently cleared ruins on their own. With hundreds of colleges participating in this major class, it was not surprising to find some who managed solo runs.

When Han Wu noticed his competitors drawing away potential buyers, he slashed his prices even further. He cut them so low it was as if he were paying people to take the tickets off his hands.

As he expected, the absurdly low price drew a flood of buyers. Many students snapped up Han Wu’s tickets and entered his training grounds.

The other competitors saw how much he was selling, but none of them felt even a hint of envy. They all had their own training grounds and understood the profit margins well enough to see what was happening. At that price, Han Wu wasn’t making money—he was bleeding it. The more tickets he sold, the more he lost. Some of them even bought in bulk, hoping to speed up his financial collapse.

Han Wu, however, did not try to stop them. On the contrary, he pushed to sell even more tickets. He never intended to profit from the ticket sales themselves. What he sought were the corpses his clients left behind. With that many people passing through his grounds, mortality was inevitable. Whether they passed or failed, some would fall.

Han Wu harvested these corpses to summon skeletons, steadily expanding his army. He even rented them out as laborers, earning far more than enough to cover his expenses and invest in upgrading his shelter.

With a steady stream of resources pouring into his storage each day, he quickly upgraded his shelter to Level 10. Level 7 had granted him a Small Castle, Level 8 a Medium Castle, and Level 9 a Large Castle. Finally, at Level 10, his shelter transformed into a City, which provided him essential infrastructure and gave him the authority to recruit up to 10,000 villagers.

Unlike the summoned units, these villagers were living beings with intelligence and emotions. The first villager he recruited was a man named Er Dan. Han Wu questioned him for information, and Er Dan answered honestly. He used to be a villager in the Yuan Kingdom but fled due to his hatred for the cruel emperor and became an exile.

Er Dan had found Han Wu’s recruitment notice by chance and decided to try his luck here. Although he was initially afraid of the countless skeletons outside and inside the city, he chose to stay because no tyrant ruled this place.

Han Wu listened carefully to Er Dan’s story and pondered deeply. He had never imagined the villagers he recruited carried such complete and complex pasts.

He then asked the new villagers the same question. Despite coming from different places—some from the Qin Kingdom, others from the Holy Church Continent, and even a few from the Black Prison—they gave roughly the same answer. Most could no longer live in their old homes and came here after seeing Han Wu’s recruitment notice.

At the same time, Han Wu learned a great deal about the four continents from their stories. Their arrival breathed new life into the city, which was now beginning to thrive.

He opened his interface to check the requirements for upgrading his shelter. In addition to needing hundreds of millions of each resource, there was another crucial criterion: Approval Rating. Without a high enough rating, he couldn’t upgrade the shelter to Level 11. That rating also affected other aspects of city management in ways he was only beginning to understand.

On the third day of his rule, Er Dan brought him a gift—a completely pitch-black stone. He’d found it near the edge of the city’s territory. At first, he thought it was an ordinary rock, but soon realized it was incredibly durable and impervious to all forms of attack. Convinced it was a rare treasure, he offered it to the city lord as thanks for taking him in.

Han Wu recognized it immediately. The black stone was naturally formed Darksteel, a rare and valuable metal used in weapon forging. When used as a material, weapons crafted from it almost always became Divine weapons. In rare cases, they even ascended to the level of God weapons.

Unfortunately, Han Wu had no one skilled enough to forge with it yet. The Scorching Dwarves excelled at equipment crafting, but the newest batch were all Elite life forms. None possessed the power to handle Darksteel. Thus, he had no choice but to toss it into his storage for the time being.