Chapter 112 Trouble in the Magical Dimension, Forcing the Shadow Dragon to Hand Over Magic Crystals

He reopened his character panel and carefully checked the confirmation prompts for the cross-dimensional effects. All skill icons were lit up, and the shadow crystal in his inventory lay quietly in the third slot. The item description read: "Source energy crystal of the Shadow Plane, can be used to strengthen the Cross-dimensional Decay Domain or as a forging core material for Magic Era exclusive equipment." Below that was a small note: "This item can be synchronized for use in reality. After synchronization, the reality effect of the Talent will double, and the duration depends on energy consumption."

Lin Ye closed the inventory interface and opened a cross-dimensional voice chat with Ghost. The signal wasn't very stable, and Ghost's voice came through intermittently, saying he was monitoring the data stream of the Magic Era server. He had confirmed that at least half of what the Shadow Demon Dragon said was true—Magic Era had indeed secretly implemented a hidden dungeon entrance called "Plane Rift" in the recent version update, which used the same underlying protocol as the cross-universe channel that had just opened in God's Domain. Another unconfirmed piece of news was even more intriguing: players on the Magic Era forum had already discovered abnormal activity in the Shadow Demon Dragon's territory. A player had recorded a video and posted it on the forum with the title: "The Shadow Demon Dragon moved on its own just now, it seems like it was talking to something."

Lin Ye chuckled. NPCs in holographic games didn't move on their own unless someone modified their behavior scripts in the backend. The person capable of modifying a World Boss script was either the game officials themselves or an existence with higher authority than the officials. Since the Magic Creator God could make the Shadow Demon Dragon act as a mouthpiece, his actual control over the game Magic Era was likely even more thorough than the God's Domain officials' control over their own version.

He switched the voice chat back to the Shadow Demon Dragon. The dragon was still lying in the valley, its massive dragon head resting on its front claws, its two dark purple eyes half-closed, looking as if it were dozing off. But Lin Ye noticed that the tip of its tail was constantly tapping the ground gently, the rhythm perfectly matching the speed of its speech earlier—the dragon was nervous.

"You say your boss is willing to provide shadow crystals regularly every month, but who gets to decide the quantity, him or me?" Lin Ye walked to the edge of the valley, found a flat rock to sit on, crossed his legs, and spoke in a tone like he was bargaining with a street vendor.

The Shadow Demon Dragon opened one eye, the purple light in its pupil flickering: "One per month, this is the base supply amount set by Lord Magic Creator God. If you can assist us in repelling the Abyss Council's advance force in Magic Era, the supply amount can be doubled."

"One per month? Are the drop rates for bosses in your Magic Era all this stingy?" Lin Ye took the shadow crystal out of his inventory and tossed it in his hand. "You said this thing is a top-tier material, but I just took a look at the crafting recipe—it takes three to forge one piece of cross-dimensional equipment. One per month, and I have to wait a quarter to gather enough for one piece of equipment. Will the Lord of the Abyss wait three months for me?"

The Shadow Demon Dragon's tail stopped tapping. It was silent for a long while before it spoke again, its voice significantly lower than before: "The condensation of shadow crystals requires the consumption of the Shadow Plane's source energy; excessive mining will disrupt the plane's balance. Lord Magic Creator God had considerations when setting this quantity."

"The plane's balance is your business; my needs are my business." Lin Ye put away the crystal, stood up, and brushed the stone dust off his pants. "How about this, I won't take them for free. Besides the Shadow Demon Dragon, are there any other World Bosses in your Magic Era? Dungeon bosses or field bosses, as long as they can produce magic materials."

The Shadow Demon Dragon raised its massive dragon head, the purple light in its eyes suddenly brightening a bit. It likely realized what Lin Ye was planning, but for some reason it didn't want to admit, it still answered truthfully: "There are twelve top-tier World Bosses in Magic Era. There are four field bosses in the Shadow Plane jurisdiction and three final dungeon bosses. What do you want to do?"

Lin Ye wore a smile that was recognized by players across the entire server in God's Domain as being rotten to the core. He opened the management panel for the cross-universe plane channel and created a new subdirectory under the Magic Era tab, naming it "Magic Plane Protection Fee Business." Then he clapped his hands and said to the Shadow Demon Dragon: "Send me the locations of the two closest field bosses. Start with your neighbors."

The Shadow Demon Dragon hesitated for a full ten seconds before finally projecting a translucent map in front of itself using magic energy. Two red dots flickered on the map in the northwest direction of the Shadow Plane jurisdiction—one was the territory of the Corrupted Treant King, and the other was the Rock Giant Lord in the depths of the Shadow Mine. The Shadow Demon Dragon pushed the coordinates into Lin Ye's party channel and added a final remark: "The Corrupted Treant King controls the largest Corrupted Forest in the Shadow Plane; the Corrupted Tree Heart condensed within it is a core material for crafting top-tier magic scrolls. The Rock Giant Lord guards an entire vein of shadow crystals, but it has a very violent temper. Last time, a max-level, fully geared player party was wiped out in less than three minutes after entering."

Lin Ye said alright, then pulled Su Qinghan and Fatty Wang directly from the God's Domain main city into the cross-dimensional channel. The two people's loading screens flashed for a few seconds, and Su Qinghan landed first. She took a look at the dark magic forest around them and the pickup truck-sized dragon lying in the valley, and only asked one question: "Another World Boss?"

"This time it's a supplier." Lin Ye shared the map the Shadow Demon Dragon had just sent with the two of them. "Fatty, you follow me to the mine. Qinghan, you stay here by the Shadow Demon Dragon and keep an eye on its HP for me. Although its attitude is okay right now, if it turns hostile, just heal it back to full HP and let it drop back down on its own, repeating until it calms down."

Su Qinghan nodded expressionlessly, found a clean spot next to the Shadow Demon Dragon, sat down, and began checking her healing skill panel. The Shadow Demon Dragon looked down at her, then at Lin Ye, and silently tucked its tail away, curling it under its belly, its posture more obedient than ever before.

The entrance to the Shadow Mine was at the base of a black rock wall, with bone-chilling cold air pouring out of the cave entrance, and the air carried a sour smell of metallic rust. Lin Ye and Fatty Wang walked into the mine one after the other. The rocky path under their feet had been mined into a winding mess, with waste ore piled up on both sides. On the mine walls in the deepest part of the pit were embedded translucent dark purple crystal clusters, each emitting a faint fluorescent glow. That was the raw ore of the shadow crystal.

The Rock Giant Lord stood in front of the mine wall, nearly ten meters tall, its entire body pieced together from black ore and solidified magma. Every step it took made the ground shake. The moment it discovered Lin Ye and Fatty Wang, its two eyes lit up with a scarlet light, and it lifted a stone arm thicker than a person and smashed it down.

Lin Ye dodged to the side and backhanded it with five hundred stacks of Decay Debuff. The Giant Lord's arm smashed into the ground, creating a half-meter deep crater, with gravel flying everywhere. However, its rocky shell had already begun to show fine cracks under the erosion of the Decay energy, and when it lifted its arm, it was noticeably half a beat slower than before. Lin Ye added another five hundred stacks, and the cracks spread from its arm to its chest, the friction of the stone joints becoming harsh and raspy. The Giant Lord roared and tried to step forward, but the moment the rock structure of its leg bore its own weight, it suddenly disintegrated from the inside. The entire right lower leg shattered into seven or eight pieces of stone, and its massive body lost support, crashing onto the mine floor, shaking the shadow crystal clusters on the mine walls in unison.

Fatty Wang squatted down beside it, watching the struggling giant, took out a pickaxe from his inventory, and tapped on the raw crystal ore on the mine wall, shouting without looking back: "Brother Ye, the quality of this vein is completely incomparable to the shadow crystal you just got. This is raw ore, it needs to be refined, and the ore layer is very thin and can't withstand large-scale mining. We still have to get that dragon to supply us regularly."

Lin Ye walked up to the Rock Giant Lord and squatted down, temporarily locking the stacks of Decay. His tone was as calm as possible: "You've been neighbors with the Shadow Demon Dragon for so many years, you must have saved up quite a few ready-made shadow crystals. I don't want your ore; I want the finished product. Hand over three every month, and once you do, I'll remove the Decay Debuff from you. If you don't, that's fine too; you can just keep it on until your rock structure falls apart on its own."

The Giant Lord hammered the ground three times heavily with its only remaining hand, and after finishing, it completely gave up resistance. It spat out a fist-sized finished shadow crystal from its mouth, slightly smaller than the one the Shadow Demon Dragon gave him but with a deeper purple glow. Lin Ye picked it up, wiped it clean, put it into his inventory, patted the Giant Lord's stone head with satisfaction, and said: "Very good, pay on time every month from now on, and this mine will be under my protection."

After coming out of the mine, he also made a side trip to the Corrupted Forest. The Corrupted Treant King was smaller in size than the Rock Giant Lord, but the surrounding area was full of vines and spore traps it controlled. Lin Ye directly activated a simplified version of the Cross-dimensional Decay Domain, decaying all the vines into withered branches within twenty seconds and purifying all the corrupted magic attached to the Treant King's main body into basic life energy. The Treant King regressed from a clawing and gnashing corrupted ancient tree back to an ordinary old banyan tree, with fresh moss hanging from its canopy. It used its last bit of consciousness to hand over its Corrupted Tree Heart, then stood quietly in the center of the forest, no longer moving.

As Fatty Wang put the Corrupted Tree Heart into his inventory, he remarked: "When we farm bosses in God's Domain, we at least have to move around to dodge skills. Here, you open the Domain, and the boss directly degrades into a mob. This cross-dimensional crushing is too ridiculous."

Lin Ye said, "That's why protection fees must be collected."

That evening, he posted a system announcement in the Shadow Plane region of the Magic Plane that could be seen by the entire server. The content of the announcement was very simple: "Any players and guilds farming monsters or materials in the Shadow Plane region can obtain safe farming rights by paying 100,000 gold coins or equivalent magic materials per month. Those who pay will enjoy three privileges: bosses will not attack proactively, material drop rates will be doubled, and they will be free from disturbances in field PVP. Those who do not pay will not enjoy any protection, and being chased by bosses or camped by hostile factions will be their own responsibility."

Less than half an hour after the announcement was sent out, the Magic Council, the largest player guild in Magic Era, blew up. The guild leader spammed several server-wide broadcasts in the guild channel, saying how could an outsider account collect protection fees on Magic Era's territory, calling on all players across the server to boycott and not pay.

Lin Ye didn't reply to the broadcasts. He called the Shadow Demon Dragon over and had it take him to the Magic Council's guild territory. With one flap of its wings, the Shadow Demon Dragon covered the entire sky above the main entrance of the guild castle, and Lin Ye stood on the dragon's back, looking down at the more than three hundred max-level players gathered below.

The leader of the Magic Council stood on the city wall, looking up and shouting: "You people from God's Domain come cross-server to collect protection fees, do you have any sense of reason?"

Lin Ye crouched on the dragon's back and shouted down: "No sense of reason. Let's just talk about one thing—the slogan you were shouting when you gathered just now was to clear out the outsiders. I've brought the strongest field boss in Magic Era here now, so clear one for me and let me see."

The Shadow Demon Dragon cooperated very well and spat out a breath of shadow, hitting the open ground next to the guild castle, blasting out a crater twenty meters in diameter, with purple smoke still rising from the bottom of the crater. The weapon durability of the three hundred max-level players collectively dropped by thirty percent under the erosion of the breath's aftershock.

The leader of the Magic Council was silent for a long time, and finally typed a line in the guild channel: "Forget it, let's pay. We've been trying to clear that dragon for half a year and haven't beaten it."

The first day's income from protection fees in Magic Era was equivalent to over twenty million God's Domain gold coins. When Fatty Wang reported this number to Su Qinghan over the cross-dimensional voice chat, his tone was floating, saying: "Brother, we collected protection fees in God's Domain for half a year, and it wasn't as much as one day in Magic Era." Su Qinghan calmly replied: "That's because you were collecting from players in God's Domain, but here, you are collecting from the entire plane's economic system."

Lin Ye called the Shadow Demon Dragon back to the valley, took out the three shadow crystals he had just obtained from his inventory, stacked them together, and placed them next to the dragon's claw. The Shadow Demon Dragon looked down at the three crystals, then looked up at Lin Ye, the purple light in its eyes flickering several times.

"The condition you negotiated with that Giant Lord was three, and it gave them. The quota you applied for from your boss yourself was one per month, and now you have three." Lin Ye clapped his hands and stood up. "So it's not that the supply can't be increased, it's that you weren't pushed to that point. Go back and tell your boss, I don't want one per month, I want ten per month. In exchange, I will help you clear out all of the Abyss Council's advance force in Magic Era."

The Shadow Demon Dragon was silent for a long time, finally slowly gathering the crystals into its dragon claw, and said in a low voice: "I will relay this to Lord Magic Creator God." It paused and added another sentence: "But Lord Magic Creator God might not be very happy about the method you used to collect protection fees just now."

Lin Ye had already walked to the entrance of the cross-dimensional channel, and waved his hand without looking back: "Him being unhappy is his business. As long as I'm happy, that's all that matters."