Close Combat Mage
Chapter 376: Sudden Advancements Pt.1

“Hehe…” The president winked at Suo Jia and lowered his voice to say in a mysterious tone, “I’m not a warrior, I’m just an average person; there’s no way I’d have so much equipment to enhance. I’m just doing this for the Union…”

“Oh!” When Suo Jia heard these words, he suddenly realized the meaning behind the president’s mysterious expression. After some hesitation, Suo Jia replied, “Alright, President, you can decide the price, I only ask for 2.5 billion! I won’t ask for any more!”

The President couldn’t help but smile once he saw how understanding Suo Jia was. “How about this, I’ll hand over 3 billion per piece of equipment, but in reality you’ll take 2.7 billion and I’ll take 60% of the remaining amount and give 40% of it to you. What do you think?”

Suo Jia nodded with a smile. If Suo Jia didn’t take the extra portion of money, the president wouldn’t be willing to make this request of him; after all, refusing to accept the offer would mean Suo Jia wasn’t directly involved, and the president would be concerned about Suo Jia informing others of the offer. Now that both were tied by the offer of money, this concern no longer existed.

The head leaned in to speak into Suo Jia’s ear, “Little one, go out and issue another offer. But this time, ask for 3.5 billion, hehe. I know that nobody will accept, but it’s just for the sake of increasing the price. Otherwise, it will seem suspicious on my part if I accept it for 3 billion.”

Suo Jia agreed excitedly. “Not a problem. I’ll just directly take the equipment you want me to enhance to my room later. It would be great if you could send two people to help me!”

After finishing negotiations, Suo Jia returned to his room to continue enhancing equipment without stopping. Two hours later, ten of the requested items were finished. After paying back all the overdraft money, he had made a net profit of 1.8 billion! At the same time, he’d also enhanced his own trident to rank eight! Enhancing an equipment to rank seven required 4 failures in a row, while enhancing to rank eight required 5 failures in succession.

Once he sent the ten completed equipment back out, Suo Jia transmitted out another ten rank seven enhancement offers worth 3.5 billion each. By the time Suo Jia had returned to his room, the president had already sent a large pile of magic equipment there.

Suo Jia noticed that all of these items were at least Legendary ranked or part of Epic ranked sets. After all, this place wasn’t inferior to Holy Light Empire. A dozen or so Epic ranked heroes appeared on the Greater Trade Routes every century, and Legendary ranked heroes were even greater in number. In other words, high ranked equipment like this wasn’t at all rare. Only the highest ranked equipment sets like the Atlantis set were harder to come by.

However, although there were lots of Epic ranked equipment, completing an entire set was an extremely difficult–almost unimaginable–task. At the moment, only the seven top warriors had complete sets. Suo Jia’s case was special, while he had completed the set, very few people knew of this and the news hadn’t spread.

Because Suo Jia was currently using the Exhaustion Training Method, he spent a large amount of his time every day training. He would first activate a ton of magic to drain his magic power and spirit power, and then spend a long time recovering before finally starting work. Thus, Suo Jia only accepted 200 pieces of equipment per day to enhance 10 pieces of equipment to rank seven. Despite this limit, Suo Jia was still able to gain a huge profit of 3.5 billion each day!

Unfortunately, such days would not last forever. By the time Suo Jia had reached 60 billion on his merchant card, the customers outside his door had all but disappeared. All the warriors that had needed to enhance their equipment to rank one had been satisfied.

Without a large amount of rank one equipment, Suo Jia’s work naturally stopped as well. With lack of better option, Suo Jia could only hang up a sign that stated he’d be willing to accept rank two equipment requests for only 4 million, or the cost of 2 rank two gems.

This news stirred up all the warriors again. Although it was double the price of enhancing a rank one equipment, this amount of money was nothing to these warriors, especially to group captains. The empty hall was once again filled with crowds, and Suo Jia returned to work.

After enhancing an equipment to rank eight, Suo Jia pulled another random item from the box and confidently tossed it into the enhancement chamber and swiftly threw a rank one gemstone inside as well.

“Ding!” A pitch-black fog began to gush out from the top of the equipment. Suo Jia pulled it out in curiosity; this was the first time he’d seen an equipment with the Dark attribute!

Upon closer inspection, he realized that it was an extremely oversized cloak. It had a cross composed of two silver, curved blades drawn on the back with materials of unknown origin, giving it a sinister and terrifying air. Dense fronts of cold air continued to surge out from the cloak!

“This…this is!” Suo Jia gaped in shock at the grey cloak, having fallen for it with a single glance. This was something he just could not bear to part with. He was missing a cloak like this to hide the glow his equipment gave off; after all, it wasn’t something a normal cloak could mask. This piece of equipment was perfect for the job!

With a clenched jaw, Suo Jia swiftly walked over to the president’s office. Recently, he’d been helping the president earn millions of coins. Suo Jia believed that the head would definitely gift this item to him if he asked.

Suo Jia pushed open the door and raised the cloak. “President, where did this cloak come from? It’s caught my eye, name your price!”

“Hm?” The head looked at him in confusion and laughed, “If anything has caught your eye, you can just take it as a gift from–”

Before he’d finished his words, the president finally got a good look at the object in Suo Jia’s hands. His face immediately paled and he exclaimed in a trembling voice, “Heavens! Why in the world did they bring that thing out? Heh…I deeply apologize, but I cannot gift this equipment to you. Even if I sold myself, it wouldn’t amount to even a fraction of this cloak’s worth!”

“Oh?” Suo Jia grew curious. He carefully placed the cloak on the table and asked, “What? Is this cloak super amazing? How come I’ve never heard of it before?”

The head gestured at Suo Jia to sit and poured him a glass of water before solemnly replying, “Have you heard of the Gods’ Nightfall or the Spirit Calamity?”

Suo Jia shook his head. “I’ve heard of Gods’ Nightfall before, wasn’t that the war where all the gods fell? But…what is the Spirit Calamity?”

“Haha…” The president replied with a dry chuckle. “The Spirit Calamity is pretty much the same as rat or locust calamities, but with the root of the cause being departed spirits!”

He sighed in reminiscence, “Ages ago, during the era of the gods, a Spirit Calamity broke out once. Billions of departed spirit armies flooded into the human realm and started the Spirit Invasion Wars. That was also how all the gods died, the Gods’ Nightfall!”

Lowering his head to look at the grey cloak, he continued, “Although this cloak wasn’t an item from the King of Hell himself, it was passed down from the Death God–one of the King of Hell’s two main subordinates. Although I don’t know what its rank is, it should be Superior ranked according to the auction house’s standards, and is probably worth a fixed value of one trillion! A value that will never increase or decrease.”

“A trillion, huh?” Suo Jia murmured, unable to keep himself from licking his lips in greed. In the past, this kind of amount was unimaginable. But at the moment, he already possessed 600 billion; accumulating one trillion to purchase this cloak wasn’t unfeasible!

Of course, Suo Jia was also worried about the possibility of the president pulling his leg, but since there were many informational books that could be accessed in this world, checking the president’s words wouldn’t be hard. With this, Suo Jia left the president’s office and rushed straight to the library. Indeed…this cloak was mentioned in over a hundred books. In addition, its value of one trillion coins had never changed. There was also an item that was worth even more than the Death God’s cloak; it contained a power that the Hypnos had possessed, a power that even Zeus couldn’t resist: the Hypnosis Ring! Its value reached ten trillion coins! However, the most valuable item worth a hundred trillion was the Invisibility Helmet that belong to the King of Hell, Hades! The reason that Hades was known as the unseen god was precisely because of this helmet!

Of course, these weren’t all the items left behind from the Gods’ Nightfall, these were simply some that had been placed at the auction house as awards for merchants that could earn enough money to purchase them. Although these didn’t actually count as Divine Artifacts, these Dark Weapons were not in any way inferior! The reason these three specific items had been placed at the auction house because their abilities couldn’t be better suited for merchants! The Adventurer Union, the Thief Union, etc. had similar equipment, just with different conditions required to be met in order to obtain them.

The Invisibility Helmet, Hades’ Crown, had the ability to keep the wearer in the concealed state forever. The invisibility would never be broken, and no type of searching magic would be able to detect the wearer; after all, this is where Hades’ reputation as the invisible god had come from! This was the Superior ranked equipment of the gods worth a hundred trillion!

The Hypnosis Ring–the possession of Hypnos, one of the two most powerful subordinates of Hades–was created by Hypnos himself using his abilities to induce sleep. Even Zeus was helpless before this ring’s power, giving its value of ten trillion!

The cloak belong to the Death God–Hades’ main subordinate–who was the god in charge of the life and death of all living things. He used his ability to travel through the realm between life and death and gained enough knowledge to create the cloak. It didn’t possess any defensive abilities, and its only power was to make things disappear!

In this case, disappearing meant making a physical body in this world disappear and instead enter that intermediary realm. In other words, the body didn’t exist in either the living world or the afterlife, and instead remained within a nameless gap between the two. This was how the Death God traveled back and forth between the two realms to control the spirits of the dead!

The existence of this intermediate realm was inexplicable, even by the God of Death himself. Where exactly did it exist, and what were its boundaries? Regardless of the answers, the Death God could freely leave and enter this world with the cloak!

According to records, the Death God always mysteriously passed through walls or suddenly materialized. In reality, this was just the Death God discarding his concealed state and entering this realm of the living! It could be said that the cloak was the proof and key of the intermediate realm!

The God of Death never appeared in public places. Typically, he would spend his entire day in the intermediate world. Whenever he did appear in this world, he would appear right before his target, and with a wave of his Death Scythe, take the life of his target!

Suo Jia could only blankly stare at the book. He honestly didn’t understand what the cloak’s ability to make things disappear really meant or what it really did just based on what he read. However, he did know that obtaining this cloak would reveal the answers to his questions.