All-out Tower Defense: My Card-Drawing Talent is a Bit Strange

Chapter 146 Steel Smelting Plant

Yang Fei obtained the following in this wave: 8 gray arrow tower cards, 3 black swamp construction cards, 3 gray ordinary house construction blueprints, 3 ordinary spirit field construction blueprints, 7 war corridor extension cards, 10 gray city wall construction card gift packs, 10 basic material gift packs, 12 small true qi rice seed packs, 2 sky island core stones, and one pond and one hill expansion stone each.

Most of the items here can be used directly, except for the core stones and expansion stones that are always mentioned. The only items that are truly unusable are the ordinary quality spirit field construction blueprints. However, it is worthwhile to accumulate some house construction blueprints.

His construction team is currently building new houses. Once they finish this round of construction, Yang Fei plans to give them a break. After all, they have already worked 24-hour shifts twice, and Yang Fei is reluctant to exploit them any further.

Furthermore, Yang Fei did not intend to expand the existing construction team; the standard construction team consisted of 95 inferior demons and 5 humans.

The special construction team consisting of a master elf foreman and 10 inferior demons is enough. Unless you are in a real hurry to expand, these two construction teams are sufficient for your needs.

Yang Fei only opened and used 12 small seed packs this time, and temporarily saved the rest of the items. He finally expanded his True Qi Rice Spirit Field to 10 plots, creating another job for the Elf Hills.

The elves' reaction was no surprise to Yang Fei; they were very excited. Ever since they learned that Yang Fei had placed high hopes on their farmers, entrusting them with the cultivation of the most important cultivation resources, they couldn't have been happier!

It is said that the elven farmers chosen by Yang Fei held a higher status within their tribe than the combat troops of Veranel and her companions.

Therefore, every time Yang Fei expands his spirit fields and obtains seeds, the Elf Hills become abuzz with excitement. If it weren't for the requirement of having a farmer at the Martial Realm, it would take a lot of time just to select one farmer.

After examining the gray treasure chest, Yang Fei turned his attention to the white treasure chest. This time, the white treasure chest did not disappoint Yang Fei. Although there were still no new items, almost all the items obtained were usable immediately.

6 White Arrow Tower Building Cards, 3 White Ice Arrow Tower Building Cards, 6 White Common Quality War Stones, 1 White Quality Power Stone, 2 White Basic Material Packs, and 2 White Wall Building Card Packs.

This time, no core stones or expansion stones appeared that were useless despite being presentable. Yang Fei happily put away all the gift packs and then used up all the new arrow towers, ice arrow towers, and stone slabs, which improved the defense of the Sky Island to some extent.

There are currently 332 white arrow towers, 32 gray arrow towers, 30 white ice arrow towers, and 3 gray ice arrow towers on the floating island. There are also 35 gray defensive towers, and 42 energy slabs. In terms of output efficiency, it seems I'm still short 7 energy slabs.

The output of that gray defensive tower!

However, Yang Fei did not plan to replace the seven gray defensive towers. After the defense ended today, he wanted to see what the Abyss Shop's custom-made, never-before-seen item function was all about.

He doesn't ask for much, just some gray-quality defensive towers that can handle mimics, preferably easy to operate, so that his subordinates can quickly get started and he doesn't have to train specific personnel.

Training relevant talent is too time-consuming. It's okay if it's general talent, but the problem is that such talent is specialized. For me now, such specialized talent is a complete waste of time and energy.

After processing all the treasure chest loot, Yang Fei quickly waited for today's extreme difficulty in Mona's arms. In fact, it wouldn't take half an hour for all the defense towers to fully recover their energy, but Yang Fei forced this rest time to be half an hour for the sake of work efficiency and training efficiency.

After all, with the Elf troops and the Power Plate, the white defensive towers actually had very little time to take action; most of their energy was used to deal with the Mimics that needed to be dealt with quickly.

"Apprentice Lord Yang Fei - 1, your newbie trial's fourth wave of extreme difficulty monster siege will begin in ten minutes. Monster type - a little sprite/slime, monster level - beast level 0/1, monster quantity 12222/65321."

""

"Please adjust the position of the War Slab — the move and rebuild functions will be restarted after the siege ends."

Looking at the total number of monsters in this wave, it's less than 80,000. The 10x limit mode would probably only have 800,000. At the current monster spawn rate, and with some effort tomorrow to reach the 5x limit, I might be able to complete this fourth wave of monster siege by midnight the day after tomorrow or early morning the day after that.

The past few days have been too focused on completing the siege of a million-level monster, and everyone is quite tired. Even with shifts, their bodies and minds are starting to give out. Tonight, our group absolutely must rest, otherwise even Yang Fei, a martial artist, will be exhausted.

This wave of defense was still relatively easy. The elven archers were too authoritative; they fought almost the entire battle, suppressing the monster horde near the blue gate the whole time.

If Yang Fei hadn't deliberately allowed the monster tide to surge into the War Corridor and filled Sephira with souls, these elves would probably have blocked the entrance and killed everyone the whole way.

Secondly, as Yang Fei expected, this wave of berserk slimes has reached 25,000, while the number of elite slimes is only about 7 times that of the easy difficulty, which is already quite low! It seems that the various high-value drops that should have been obtained this time will be reduced again.

Furthermore, with the decrease in elite slimes, the total number of Ice Slimes is also somewhat insufficient, making it impossible to achieve the exaggerated effect of only needing Mona and Sephira to defend against them.

If the rate continues to decrease, the monster respawn rate of around 700 per minute will still be a problem. It seems that I should expand my elf army a bit. Right now, a team of 30 people might not be able to complete the gate-blocking kill.

"Congratulations, Trainee Lord Yang Fei—1—You can start the next difficulty level monster siege at any time."

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"Congratulations, Trainee Lord Yang Fei-1! You have perfectly cleared the fourth wave of the Novice Trial, Extreme Difficulty Monster Siege, and obtained a Basic Building Card - Steel Smelter. It has been sent to your system space. Please place it in time."

"Congratulations, Trainee Lord Yang Fei-1! You have perfectly cleared the fourth wave of the Novice Trial's Extreme Difficulty Monster Siege, unlocking basic lord privileges. The four basic currencies can be exchanged for one gold coin at level 1. You can use gold coins to exchange for the white and gray currencies among the other three basic currencies. The green currency exchange is not yet unlocked."

"Please note — five minutes remaining in the countdown."

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This wave of basic rewards is the best among all the normal waves. Both the steel smelter and the lord privileges for level 1 currency exchange are exactly what Yang Fei needs.

Especially in terms of currency exchange, what Yang Fei lacks most right now are spirit stones and magic cores. For example, the ordinary quality spirit field blueprints he had accumulated before, those spirit fields require spirit stones to build or upgrade; for example, the upgrades of the Abyss Shop and Tentacle Nest; for example, the upgrades of the defense towers later on, all require these two currencies.

Although this permission is currently only at level 1, and can only be used to exchange gold coins for the gray and white qualities of the other three currencies, it may not be of much significance to other lords who do not have enough gold coins, but for someone like me who has enough gold coins, it is really the best function.

Then there's the steel smelter construction card. In the early game, this thing can smelt iron ore and turn it into iron ingots, the most precious type of common resource. You can't even buy this thing in Yang Fei's level 5 Heavenly Dao Shop.

Only after the steel mill is built and the first iron ingot is smelted will the Heavenly Path Shop unlock the right to purchase iron ingots.

The importance of iron ingots goes without saying, as evidenced by their role as a crucial material for upgrading quarries and lumber mills. Various functional and basic buildings also require them; a floating island aiming for long-term development will undoubtedly have a massive demand for iron ingots.

Moreover, the value of iron ingots to lords is not only reflected in their functionality, because the number of iron ingots that a steel smelting plant can produce in a day is limited, but the demand for iron ingots is enormous.

Some wealthy and far-sighted lords (like Yang Fei) will upgrade their lumber mills and quarries in advance to accumulate resources. However, the iron ingots produced by their own Sky Island Smelting Plant are not enough to support the upgrade of these buildings, and the Heavenly Dao Shop charges an extra one-tenth of the iron ingots.

Therefore, they would buy iron ingots on the trading channel at a price higher than the market price but lower than the price offered by the Heavenly Path Shop.

Where there is demand, there is a market. Whether it's seniors or peers, there are people who want to make money from this. At this time, having enough iron ingots to sell will also turn into a profitable transaction.

Back on Azure Star, Yang Fei had heard of the deeds of a "King of Iron Ingots," who possessed a replication talent that allowed him to use it three times a month. He then directly replicated the steel smelter three times.

In this way, he had three more steel mills than his peers. He also frantically recruited smelters to refine iron ingots for him, and then sold them on the trading channel at a relatively affordable price, thus obtaining his first pot of start-up capital.

Subsequently, he used these funds to purchase more defensive towers than his peers and successfully passed the novice assessment, becoming a formal lord. In the following months, he continued to use this talent to replicate the steel mill, solidifying his position as the big brother in the iron ingot industry.

Legend has it that before the world of tower defense arrived, the Iron Ingot King was just an ordinary family of twelve. He was the second son in his family. Because he studied business at school, he was not appreciated by anyone even at the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He could only rely on his parents and older brother to support him. He was seen as a freeloader by his classmates and neighbors and was despised by everyone.

As a result, after the Tower Defense World arrived, he became the Iron Ingot King, sought after by various forces, large and small, on Azure Star. He was not an ungrateful person; his parents, brothers, and sisters were all taken to the Sky Island by him, away from their once crowded home, to enjoy a peaceful life, becoming the envy of everyone.

Of course, that's not the most important thing. If that were all, it would only show that he was a lucky guy who was frustrated in his career. The most important thing is his attitude towards those classmates who used to look down on him. He didn't pay much attention to the male classmates, but the female classmates—

Yang Fei smiled, lay in Mona's arms, and recalled the various scandalous news about the Iron Ingot King, not knowing whether it was true or false.

In short, this guy has the most spouses on the Azure Star lord ranking list.

After telling everyone to rest quickly, Yang Fei checked the time. It was already 9:30 pm. Although it wasn't too late, they could probably still pass the one-time limit, but as Yang Fei said, his group really needed to rest. They were really too exhausted to continue.

After giving everyone a short rest, Yang Fei entered the lord's perspective and used the steel smelter construction card directly, successfully raising five low-rise houses covering a thousand square meters near the iron mine.

Steel Smelter (Initial): A basic building on the Sky Island, mainly responsible for smelting various minerals produced on the Sky Island. Currently, it can only smelt iron ore. It requires 5 smelters to work, working 8 hours a day. It can consume 1 hour and 10 pieces of iron ore to smelt into one iron ingot.

Secondly, the smelter requires one gray energy crystal per week as energy for smelting iron ore, and each worker also needs to be paid two copper coins per week as compensation. This compensation is related to the loyalty of the citizens; the more compensation given, the faster the loyalty of the citizens working there will increase.

Steel Smelter (Upgradeable): Consumes 1000 units of wood, 1000 units of stone, and 100 gray energy crystals. Upgrades the smelter to level 2, expanding the number of jobs to ten and unlocking the smelting permission for steel ingots. It can be used for 1 hour and 20...

Iron ore, smelted into a steel ingot.

Note: This building is a basic building and currently has no color quality. However, its level cap can be increased as the core building is upgraded. Once the corresponding level is reached, its quality can be improved, and it can randomly produce higher quality iron ingots and more steel products.

"This is what you call a smelter?" Yang Fei stood on the city wall, looking at the five low-rise buildings from a god-like perspective. These buildings had no sense of technology or industry whatsoever.

Even the walls of these houses were made of a mixture of mud and straw. If it weren't for the large mud chimney on top of each house, which contained a clay smelting furnace, Yang Fei would never have believed that this place was a building capable of smelting steel.

For Yang Fei, whose Sky Island was just starting out, metallurgy was a relatively technical job. Even including the refugees from Qianwu Star, there were very few people who met the requirements.

Moreover, Yang Fei didn't understand the way the Heavenly Dao AI judged things. For example, there was a steel smelter with thirty years of experience on Qianwu Star who should have met the requirements, but he failed. Meanwhile, a somewhat robust middle school student passed the judgment. This judgment was really abstract.

The explanation given by Tiandao AI is that the steelworker of the past thirty years is a steelworker of the information age, who follows the path of mechanization and intelligence, while the steel smelting plant of the Sky Island is still in the era of manual windmills and manual blacksmithing, and the two are incompatible.