Online Game: My Decay Drives the Entire Server Crazy

Chapter 12 Breaking the Monopoly! Unscrupulous Merchants Dare Not Cooperate with Zhao KaiZhao Kai’s actions were faster than Lin Ye had anticipated.

Early the next morning, when Lin Ye logged into the game, he noticed the atmosphere in the Novice Village was off. The prices of all basic materials in the Trading House had multiplied several times—Iron Ore rose from 1 gold to 10 gold, Herbs from 50 silver to 5 gold, and even the common Whetstones used for repairing equipment were being sold at astronomical prices.

[World Channel]

[Player ’Brick-Moving Expert’: Wocao! 10 gold for one Iron Ore? This is crazy!]

[Player ’Solo Player Old Li’: How are we supposed to play? Repairing a single piece of equipment costs dozens of gold. How much can I even make from a day of manual labor?]

[Player ’Milk Tea Without Sugar’: Someone must be manipulating things behind the scenes! All the material merchants in the Novice Village have raised their prices; we can’t afford anything!]

[Player ’Newbie White’: I just took a quest that requires 10 Iron Ores. 100 gold? Where am I supposed to get that?]

Lin Ye frowned as he watched the wailing on the World Channel. He opened the Trading House and took a look; the prices of all materials had indeed risen several times, and the quantities were extremely low. It was clearly a price hike after someone had deliberately swept up the stock.

Just as he was pondering this, a private message popped up—

[Private Message] Master Kai: Brother Ye, do you have enough materials in the Novice Village? Do you want me to lend you some? Hahaha!

Zhao Kai’s tone was full of smugness, his ego practically soaring to the sky.

Lin Ye’s eyes turned cold as he replied, ”Your doing?”

[Private Message] Master Kai: How could I have that kind of ability? I just had some tea and a chat with a few material merchants. They felt the previous prices were too low and decided to raise them on their own. It has nothing to do with me.

Lin Ye didn’t reply further. He closed the private message and glanced at the map. There were six material merchants in the Novice Village, scattered in various corners, responsible for buying and selling basic materials. These merchants were all system NPCs. Normally, their prices were fixed, but now they had all increased—there was only one possibility: someone used a certain method to influence the NPCs’ pricing mechanism.

He walked up to the nearest material merchant, an NPC named ”Old Chen,” who wore a worn-out leather apron and was squatting at the entrance of the blacksmith shop.

”Boss, how much for the Iron Ore?” Lin Ye asked.

Old Chen looked up at him with an expressionless face. ”10 gold each. Take it or leave it.”

Lin Ye frowned and opened his Talent panel to test something—

[System Notification: Target [Old Chen] is a neutral NPC; Decay Talent cannot be triggered.]

Ineffective against neutral NPCs. Lin Ye was a bit disappointed, but he didn’t give up and tried again—

[System Notification: Detected that target [Old Chen] is executing a commercial monopoly agreement issued by player [Master Kai]. This behavior has been judged as ”Assisting Malicious Behavior,” and the Decay Talent can be triggered!]

Lin Ye’s eyes lit up. Assisting malicious behavior counts too? This Talent’s judgment mechanism was incredibly intelligent.

Without another word, he stacked 10 layers of debuffs on Old Chen—

”Ding! Target [Old Chen] has been afflicted with the [Decay] debuff. Current stacks: 10. Effect: Any transaction will result in a level drop.”

Old Chen’s health bar instantly dropped by 10%, scaring him so much he jumped up from his chair. ”You... what did you do to me?!”

Lin Ye ignored him and turned toward the next material merchant.

The second merchant, the herb dealer ”Grandma Sun,” was also hit with 10 stacks of the debuff.

The third, the miner ”Old Li,” hit.

The fourth, the leather merchant ”Big Sister Zhao,” hit.

The fifth, the general store owner ”Uncle Wang,” hit.

The sixth, the weapon merchant ”Blacksmith Liu,” hit.

In just ten short minutes, all six material merchants in the Novice Village had been debuffed by Lin Ye. The effect was simple—whoever traded with Zhao Kai would trigger the debuff and suffer an immediate death and level drop.

Just as Lin Ye finished with the last one, Zhao Kai’s messages exploded—

[Private Message] Master Kai: What the fuck did you do to my merchants?! They all refuse to trade with me now!