Kanuka wiped the sweat from his face with the edge of his apron, the scent of grilling meat thick in the air as the fire popped behind him. Peak hour at the barbecue stall was brutal, the kind of nonstop hustle that left your arms sore, your shirt soaked, and your patience hanging by a thread.
“Hey Kanuka, how’s gaming going?” someone shouted from across the smoke-filled kitchen.
“It’s going great,” Kanuka called back, still flipping skewers with practiced speed.
“I heard you guys spent 2,000 credits on helmets,” another voice piped up from the prep line. “I heard you even bought TWO helmets?”
Word traveled fast in the slums. Too fast.
“We did,” Kanuka said simply.
“So how much have you made? Tens of thousands yet?” another worker yelled with a laugh, pushing a rack of seasoned meat toward the grill.
“Ha! Hardly. It’s only been a day,” Kanuka said, still half-smiling. “Come on.”
“So how much exactly?” someone pressed.
“Well… last we checked, almost a thousand credits.”
“Ooooooh,” the mocking was immediate and loud. “You almost made a quarter your money back!”
Kanuka kept his hands moving over the grill. “Yeah, but it’s only been a day. It’s still not too late to get in.”
“Oh come on, that’s what you said last time!” someone behind him barked. “Remember the cooking pots? You were all ‘get in early,’ ‘trending hot product,’ and what did you make? Jack. You ended up selling them at a loss and begging the neighbors to take the rest.”
Kanuka’s jaw tightened. “Shut up,” he muttered.
“Now you want us to jump in too? Nah, I think I’ll keep my credits where I can see them,” another guy cackled. “We live in the slums, man. We don’t need pipe dreams—we need rent money.”
The laughter echoed through the stall, mixing with the snap of fire and the hiss of meat fat dripping onto hot steel. But Kanuka stayed quiet, lips pressed thin as he kept flipping ribs and skewers.
‘They’ll see,’ he thought. ‘They’ll all see.’
And with the sizzling meat behind him and smoke rising into the open air, Kanuka let the noise fade, already thinking about the next shift. About Ren. About the Scrap Rats.
About proving them all wrong.
***
POV : DORMITORY
Ren stretched and cracked his neck, feeling the tension snap down his spine.
There was no way he was going to waste an hour just sitting around.
He wasn’t the kind of guy who needed naps.
No — what he needed was planning.
And it hit him fast.
The first dungeon.
The first real dungeon was already starting to open up on the map.
It was a Fire Dungeon — low level, only recommended for players around Level 8, but it was already attracting parties like moths to a flame.
Literally.
Ren smirked to himself.
‘Perfect. That’s where the next money’s going to be.’
Unlike him, who had been splitting experience with his team and running side scams and potion sales, plenty of players had already hit Level 5 solo.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
And even in Greenwild Cross, despite the huge brawl slowing things down, most of the serious grinders would be Level 5 within another 6–7 hours.
Meaning…
Dungeon time.
And dungeons meant death.
Death meant players panicking.
Panicking players meant potions flying off the shelves.
But this dungeon wasn’t going to be about healing potions.
Not at first.
It was about survival.
The Fire Dungeon was notorious for its beginner-level burn debuffs and ambient damage.
Every few seconds you were inside, you took passive fire damage — even without getting attacked.
If you didn’t have fire resistance potions?
You were screwed.
Ren grinned to himself.
Most players were still buying basic healing potions or mana potions.
Nobody was buying mass-brewing resistance potions yet.
But he would be brewing them
He quickly thought up the old crafting recipe he remembered from his first life.
Low-Grade Fire Resistance Potion:
- 2x Scorchleaf
- 1x Emberthorn Sap
- 1x Clearlight Water
All Tier 1 ingredients.
Not easy to find, but definitely affordable right now before the prices spiked.
In fact, he figured, by the time the public realized they needed fire resistance potions, the cost of Scorchleaf and Emberthorn would at least triple.
‘Buy low, sell high,’ thought Ren with satisfaction. ‘Capitalism, baby.’
He pulled out his basic tablet, opened the Towerbound Auction app, and started scanning the listings.
Prices were still cheap.
Too cheap.
He started snapping up every Scorchleaf, Emberthorn Sap, and Clearlight Water he could find at low prices.
The first dungeon wasn’t just going to be a death trap for players.
It was going to be a gold mine for him.
In Towerbound, players didn’t have to live fully in-game to stay competitive. As long as your account was active, you could access auxiliary features like the Auction House and personal mailbox through the mobile companion app or desktop overlay—something Ren planned to exploit to the fullest.
It was one of the biggest advantages he had, and it let him set up a system that looked casual on the surface but was actually a finely tuned machine. The idea was simple: Ren would keep brewing potions whenever he was logged in, but the rest of the 10-man dormitory—the Scrap Rats—would keep tabs on the Auction House from outside the game. Their job? Buy anything under a certain price threshold: cheap reagents, rare herbs, discounted alchemy materials. If it was even slightly under market value, they were to grab it.
And because Towerbound was notorious for its unhackable, ironclad firewall system, there was no way to automate this. No bots. No scripts. You couldn’t just run a price sniping macro. The devs had locked that door tight. In fact, the devs themselves were a mystery—no public announcements, no media interviews, no publisher disclosures. Towerbound had just… appeared. Fully formed. Brutally efficient. And better than anything else on the market.
Which meant Ren’s setup—ten people, rotating shifts, always online in some form—was gold.
The biggest benefit? There was always someone awake and watching. Someone at the laundromat. On break at the bakery. Coming home from construction. Someone with a phone and a task.
To make it work, Ren had split his remaining five gold evenly and mailed coins to every member of the dorm. The mailing fee cost one copper per envelope, so he planned the breakdown in advance, making sure everyone had at least some purchasing power.
Was it clunky? Sure. But until they had an official guild bank or merchant access set up, this was the workaround. It was a trick from his past life—one of the quiet little secrets only serious crafters figured out after months of trial and error.
This time, Ren was using it on day two.
The Fire Dungeon might have technically unlocked… but practically speaking, it was still completely off-limits.
Sure, the entrance had appeared — a jagged, smoking fissure out in the scorched fields beyond Greenwild Cross — but no one was going anywhere near it for real.
Level Requirement: Recommended Level 8+
Minimum Party Size: 10
And there was no cheating it.
Towerbound wasn’t like other games where you could “sneak past” the early monsters or hug the wall to avoid aggro.
The second you crossed the threshold into the dungeon proper, a binding system marker latched onto your character.
If you didn’t meet the minimum level and party requirements, you were forcibly ejected with a system warning, and your gear would lose 5% durability as a penalty for trying to cheese it.
It was Towerbound’s polite way of saying: “Get good or get lost.”
Right now?
Nobody in Greenwild Cross — not even the hardcore solo grinders — was anywhere close to level 8.
Most players were still hanging at level 4 or 5.
Even Prosperous Guild’s elites were only brushing level 6, and that was after pouring real-world credits into potions, repairs, and gear upgrades.
The dungeon stood there, looming like a cruel joke.
A reminder that Towerbound wasn’t going to hand out victories for free.
Still, the buzz was growing.
People were already talking — already planning.
Everyone knew that once the first teams hit level 8, there would be a mad scramble to claim the first dungeon clear.
Guilds were sharpening their blades, recruiting like mad, and quietly buying up any supplies they thought they might need.
Healing potions. Focus gear. Mana restoration.
And guess what was starting to become worth its weight in gold?
Instant potions.
Ren’s early brewing spree had unintentionally created a goldmine — one he hadn’t even fully realized yet.
Back in real life, he was just casually stretching, sipping lukewarm tea from a chipped mug, without a single clue that the market was about to explode.
He’d timed it perfectly, by accident.
And when he got back into Towerbound?
The real fun was going to start.