"Have you found him yet? It's been 12 hours, and someone must have leaked the news about who sold the fire-lit wooden sticks to the other survivors," a grumpy middle-aged man asked his friend in the friends list lit on the chat channel.
"Yes, I found him. His name is Max, and he's the seller we invited to join our merchant alliance. However, we haven't received any response from him so far," the other side a bald middle-aged person replied hurriedly.
"Invite him again, if he knows what good he will agree, if not we will jointly boycott him from selling or buying in our shop for him." The fat middle aged man replied with grinding his teeth in anger.
"Yes, I will take care of this matter, you have to maintain our group stability first, don't make them feel left out and exit our group, yesterday's incident has made many members have a bad impression on us, which might affect us in long run." the bald middle-aged man said and cut short the conversation.
The fat man name was joseph, and the bald man was Blake were both from the same town who were business partners in the BlueStar, they used to work in gray area business, and one worked as manager and other is in charge of recruitment.
They even had lot of complaints on them, if they weren't rich, they would have been sitting in jail, but money solved everything for them.
As soon as they realized they had been transported to another world and grasped the situation, they didn't feel discouraged but instead felt ecstatic, knowing there was no one to control them and they could finally do things their way.
Soon they both searched for each other by the name in the chat area and added friends to keep contact with each other.
One of them soon discovered a system card in the treasure chest that required buyers to agree to certain conditions before purchasing items. They were excited to make their first pot of gold, but Max, who had only sold 100 fire-lit sticks, ruined the business before it could reach its peak. They had expected others to sell goods slightly cheaper to attract traffic, but Max turned the tables by selling his items at ridiculously low prices.
This move pushed others to do the same out of fear that he would undercut them again, painting them as villains in front of everyone.
Before this, they invited everyone selling in the trade channel to join the merchant alliance, promoting the benefits and convincing them to willingly sacrifice a few advantages for the sake of the alliance. However, this failed operation has revealed the negative side of the alliance, causing many to waver between the options of leaving or staying.
Now Joseph needs to stabilize them by distributing resources from yesterday's operation, showing them the real benefits of cooperation, and encouraging them to willingly stay in the alliance, boosting his prestige within it.
As Joseph worked on his plans, Blake was busy reaching out to stubborn merchants, trying to convince them to join the alliance to boost his prestige in the group, all while repeatedly messaging Max.
What is max doing right now?
He has just woken up from his sleep and now blankly staring at the bronze color box hitting his raft from the ocean waves.
Yes, a bronze grade treasure chest, a level above the black iron grade and two levels above the wooden treasure chest.
He hurriedly dragged the treasure chest back onto the raft and put it aside beside the fireplace and opened it with anticipation only to find it has only one item in the treasure chest.
Max with anticipation took that out from the box and found that is blueprint.
When Max unfolded the blueprint, he discovered it was a ship blueprint—a detailed drawing needed to upgrade the raft into a ship.
While examining the blueprint, he received a system notification confirming that the ship blueprint had been added and asking for his permission to store it in the system database, allowing him to upgrade his raft to a ship once it reaches level 10.
Max happily agreed and the blueprint disappeared from his hand and system notified his that the blueprint has been added to the system database.
With something exciting happening right after waking up, Max cheerfully freshened up, had a quick breakfast, and started rowing his raft toward the resources to gather the materials needed to quickly upgrade it.
Max doesn't have time to check the messages he's been receiving and has already silenced their notifications. Unless someone contacts him about purchasing an item, the system won't notify him of any other messages.
By the evening Max has completed his raft upgrade to lvl7 and left with only few woods stock with him.
As he was preparing to stop for today and trade the rest of the resources form trading with the other by tomorrow, he saw system notification.
As soon as he opened the interference, he saw system notification in golden front.
"Congratulations for the all the ship captains to upgrade their raft for at least once and bronze treasure chests and treasure chests of above levels will now start appearing in the ocean surface from now."
"Each treasure chest will be guarded by the ocean life, defeat them to get the treasure chest and gain the resource required to upgrade the rafts."
"Consuming the blood and flesh of oceanic life forms after defeating them enhances an individual's base attributes. They also have additional uses, which you are encouraged to discover on your own."
System issued the notification and went back silent all the while leaving everyone mind in turmoil.
Soon the chat channel began to fill with angry denounces of people and crying others to save them.
Max observed the channel for few seconds and started to produced items he has right now and put them in trade channel to exchange for more resources.
Following the shocking announcement, many were hesitant to trade wood, now a valuable commodity needed to upgrade their rafts. With everyone set to receive ship blueprints tomorrow, the competition for resources is bound to intensify. Anticipating this, Max quietly began stockpiling the materials needed to upgrade his raft to a ship by selling his products and assisting others in trading more wood for scarce resources and blueprints.