Undead Mage: I Have a Skeleton Clone-Chapter 531 - 379: Alchemy for Wealth, Black Iron Tier Simulation Battlefield!

Every Marvel had two uses per day, which would be enough for Fang Zhou’s emergency escapes in future combat missions. These Marvels not only greatly enhanced his survivability but also provided him with more tactical options on the battlefield.

As for the fifth Marvel—the Skeleton Warhorse Reins—Fang Zhou had successfully created it by engraving a specialized universal skill for Magic Professionals into the item. This skill was based on the concept of summoning an undead mount that Master Sandro and Silvanas had developed.

Under Instructor Su Xinyan’s guidance, Fang Zhou successfully crafted this universal Marvel.

The Skeleton Warhorse Reins might not provide powerful boosts for Magic Professionals in direct combat, but it represented an important experiment for Fang Zhou, Su Xinyan, Master Sandro, and the other Undead Mages.

The [Skeleton Warhorse Reins] is engraved with the skill [Summon Undead Mount], a variant of the universal skill [Summon Mage Mount].

Unlike the other four Marvels customized specifically for Undead Mages, the most unique aspect of the Skeleton Warhorse Reins was that it had no usage restrictions. Not only could Magic Professionals of other Attributes use it, but even ordinary Combat Professionals could purchase and use this item.

Therefore, according to the estimates of Master Sandro and Instructor Su Xinyan, these Skeleton Warhorse Reins would be very popular among Professionals below the Black Iron Tier. For Professionals who had experienced long marches, the fatigue and hardship of long-distance travel were unbearable. Therefore, almost every Professional with practical combat needs would be willing to purchase the Skeleton Warhorse Reins to alleviate the pressure of marching.

As Fang Zhou and the others had previously analyzed, the Skeleton Warhorse, as an Undead Creature, possessed a formidable advantage over other living mounts: it felt no fatigue and feared no death. This advantage alone was enough to make the Skeleton Warhorse stand out among the many Black Iron Tier Mage Mounts and become the top choice for Professionals.

For Fang Zhou and the other Undead Mages, an even more important point was that, compared to crafting Marvels exclusive to their profession, the Skeleton Warhorse Reins only required a small amount of Undead Attribute alchemy materials to activate the built-in Array. The remaining components could be substituted with ordinary alchemy materials. This greatly reduced the consumption of Undead Attribute alchemy materials, which were already exceptionally rare, and also laid the foundation for introducing the Skeleton Warhorse Reins to the mass market.

If crafting each piece required a large amount of precious Undead Attribute alchemy materials—as was the case with the exclusive Marvels—then Fang Zhou could not possibly mass-produce them to sell for a profit.

Of course, Alchemy Marvels with such specialized skills could not yet be mass-produced on an assembly line. Currently, within the Undead Mage research group, only Fang Zhou and Su Xinyan possessed the ability to craft the Skeleton Warhorse Reins.

As a Golden Lower Rank Great Undead Mage, Su Xinyan’s time was extremely valuable. Aside from personally crafting a few as demonstrations to guide Fang Zhou in the beginning, she did not participate any further in the actual crafting process of the Skeleton Warhorse Reins. Thus, most of the production tasks fell on Fang Zhou’s shoulders, meaning he had to bear more responsibility and pressure to meet the potential market demand.

Based on Fang Zhou’s current skills as a Basic Level Alchemist, crafting one set of Skeleton Warhorse Reins required roughly 100 contribution points worth of Alchemy Raw Materials. Most of this expense was for the rare Undead Attribute alchemy materials. Considering the operating costs of the Alchemy Workshop and Fang Zhou’s own labor and time, the cost to produce one set of Skeleton Warhorse Reins was about 200 contribution points.

After consulting with Silvanas, Gu Yueyuan, Liu Diewu, and Yue Pengfei—his fellow Black Iron Tier trainees—Fang Zhou decided to set the price for the Skeleton Warhorse Reins at 500 contribution points. It wasn’t that he was being greedy; this was just how crudely simple the methods for making money were in the world of Magic Professionals.

In fact, this was the result of a technological monopoly. Since the [Summon Undead Mount] skill was jointly developed by Master Sandro and Silvanas, the patent rights were in their hands. It was only with their authorization that Fang Zhou and Instructor Su Xinyan were able to develop the universal Marvel that engraved this skill into an Array. One could say that at this stage, theirs was the only place capable of crafting the Skeleton Warhorse Reins; there were no other alternatives.

Of course, to be fair, a price of 500 contribution points would likely be quite expensive for the average Black Iron Tier Professional. However, Fang Zhou himself didn’t actually care much about the profit in contribution points. What he truly cared about was whether he could barter the Skeleton Warhorse Reins for useful Cultivation Resources or Undead Attribute resources.

Therefore, Fang Zhou didn’t plan to spend too much effort crafting the Skeleton Warhorse Reins. He crafted about ten sets of Skeleton Warhorse Reins and listed them on his personal terminal’s trading channel, clearly stating his preference for bartering. He took a "cast the line and wait for a bite" approach, waiting for any interested Professionals to come to him for a trade.

Over the past two months, Fang Zhou had not only made significant progress in deducing and refining his skills and improving his Alchemy level, but after breaking through his bottleneck to reach the Black Iron Lower Rank, he also began exploring Sea City Military Academy’s Black Iron Lower Rank Simulation Battlefield.

The Black Iron Lower Rank Simulation Battlefield at Sea City Military Academy was rather special, as it was divided into solo and team modes. The solo mode was open on odd-numbered days, while the team mode was open on even-numbered days. For Fang Zhou, who had effectively become a one-man army with a well-established combat style, it made no difference whether he participated in solo or team mode.

Moreover, he now had two reliable teammates: Silvanas, who was also a Black Iron Lower Rank Undead Mage, and Liu Diewu, a Black Iron Lower Rank Natural Druid. The three of them reformed the Calamity Squad and made a grand return. They once again swept through the team Simulation Battlefield, continuously dominating the top spot on the leaderboards across four different difficulty levels.

At the same time, after a few attempts, Fang Zhou also successfully topped the leaderboard in the solo Simulation Battlefield, [Deceiving Demon Beheading Battle], once again continuing his own legend.

「In the Abyss Difficulty [Deceiving Demon Beheading Battle] Simulation Battlefield.」

A prompt appeared on his personal terminal: "Quest Issued: Kill the Deceiving Demon Commander."

Having cleared it many times before, Fang Zhou was already extremely familiar with this Simulation Battlefield. He skillfully closed the system prompt and gazed at the heavily guarded Demon camp before him, a sense of eager anticipation stirring within him.

During his first run, Fang Zhou’s combination of Black Iron Tier Undead Mage skills was not yet perfected. As a result, the process was quite awkward, and he needed to rely on specific strategies and tactics.

However, times had changed.