It was almost mid day by the time Ajax started heading towards the city. He had spent a good portion of his mana that morning taking care of his medicinal plants that were finally starting to sprout flowers. He knew it was early but his mana had always made plants grow faster and he was outputting quite a bit of it for that purpose on a daily basis.

He hadn’t yet used any of the elemental mana types since he didn’t know what if any effect that may have on the plants and later the flowers. The wide smile on his face however was represented by the fact that he felt some mana take hold in those plants. It wasn’t much, and considering how quickly they were growing by the time they would be perfect for picking in a month they would barely have enough mana to qualify them as mana enhanced plants but they would still be much more profitable.

Ajax had to assume that the reason for this was his [Inject Mana] skill. It was the only one he didn’t have back when he was a child which meant that he wasn’t wasting any mana and ensuring that everything he spent at least made it into the plant initially before being later released.

Out of curiosity he had also tried to use mana injection on a bee but not only was the process much harder but after he put fifty mana into it the bee burst into dust. Clearly you couldn’t make mana enhanced creatures the same way as with plants. Or maybe you just had to go about it the same way and infuse them from infancy? That wasn’t an experiment he was willing to test if the end result was a monster.

Entering the city Ajax headed straight for the merchant section of the city. He wasn’t carrying much this time, just a small bit of gargoyle coal as well as a core from the hellhounds, gargoyles and imps each. He had debated keeping the higher levels cores for Fluffy as he was expecting the shadow cat to have the biggest progress out of his entire family the next time he saw them but he decided against it since he could still feel the curse mana inside the cores. Sure curse was one of the mana types that would go well with the darkness affinity already present in the cat, still everything besides strength was all but sure to take a wrong turn.

Ajax spent the first two hours getting a good look at the place. All he did was go from store to store and big front to big front trying to get an idea of who were the big players and how the organization his grandparents had was positioned.

After a thorough inspection Ajax had to admit he was rather surprised by all the small stores that were found there. What surprised him was that some of them looked to have been there for some time, an idea that sounded ludicrous since the big stores could always target them and put them out of business before returning the market to the status quo.

The market was split up into four levels. The top and the bottom were easy to pick out, the bottom were the small mainly crafter run operations that all specified on one small domain to edge out a profit. The top were split up into two further groups, the local players made up by the ducal houses that were vying for the seat of Archduke Goldmancer and the international trading groups that went so far as to have branches in other kingdoms and used their wider network to compete with the nobles.

Working with anyone from either group was a non-option for him at this point. If he went to the top organizations they would request massive commitments from him just to form a contract, even those that wouldn't have would have members that would be happy to sell any information on him they might have for a good price. The bottom shops were not only too specialized to make them good partners since he would be selling off most of the stuff he didn’t need from dungeons but they were also in a position for someone to juice them for information like an orange if their partnership made the rounds of nobility.

That left him with the low and high levels. Unlike the bottom and top they were actually relatively close together and contained around 80% of the shops in the section. The difference between the low and the high was whether or not they had opened a good size branch in another big city.

Stolen novel; please report.

From his short reconnaissance he found out that his grandparents actually had the best organization from the low level ones, in fact many believed they were a lot better than a lot of the high level ones but they simply never expanded leaving them in the low tier.

Besides investigating the market place he had also asked around and gotten a good idea about what the market price for the coal and the cores should be. Surprisingly, or maybe unsurprisingly depending how you look at it, his cores actually dropped in value significantly every time he mentioned they were from abyssal creatures. The upcoming trial of a curse user was clearly having an effect. In the same vain everyone wanted to get their hands on the gargoyle ore as they thought the idea of burning the remains of such a creature was a good thing.

With all that taken care of he went ahead and entered the shop. Well, calling it a shop is not doing it justice, it was more like the food courts that you found in malls back on Earth, a lot of small sections that had their dedicated space only they weren’t competing with each other as they all offered something different.

In the back center of the shopping floor was a counter that blocked off the stairs leading to the second level. Ajax wasn’t sure if the offices were on the levels above but from the vertical size of the building he was sure that there had to be at least one floor that was dedicated to VIP’s if not more before you got to any offices.

Ajax wandered through the first floor as he saw the man at the counter was busy and had a small line waiting for his attention. In the meantime he decided to take a look at what exactly this place had to offer.

The first thing he noticed when he focused more on the products sold was that all of them were finished, they weren’t selling any materials anywhere. This ofcourse didn’t mean that they couldn’t procure them but more likely that they only dealt in bulk order or previously agreed upon deliveries.

The second thing he noticed was that the range of items was the largest he had seen in any of the organizations he entered in terms of quality. They had a few poor quality beginner gear all the way to gear that was clearly expertly made for level seventies at the very least. Despite the large selection everything seemed to have what Ajax thought was a fair price, at least until the gear started being advertised towards level fifties where he lost his frame of reference.

From what he could see most of the customers that came in went straight for the items they wanted, bought them and went back out, very few were browsing the wares like him. He also noticed the two guards that were moving around discreetly, he was sure they had some sort of stealth skill since had lost track of them a few times even though he was trying not to. He didn’t want to use [Judge Threat] on them so he couldn’t be sure of their strength.

When the Line finally disappeared Ajax approached the counter.

“Hello, sir.” The man behind the counter greeted politely. “Is there anything I can help you with?”

“I am looking to sell a few cores and some other things I pulled out of the dungeon.” Ajax responded.

“I’d be happy to get all that appraised for you.” the man said, though he did give Ajax a surprised look. “ Would this be a one time affair or are you looking for something long term?”

“I want to see what kind of long term deal I could get.” Ajax confirmed. “I would also be looking to buy items I require from here as well.”

“Very well.” the man nodded politely. “Do you have a form of identification? An adventurer’s Guild badge would do.”

“I have this.” Ajax responded as he placed the token his mother had given him on the counter.

The man gave an impressed nod before picking up the token to take a close look at it. The moment he did his eye widened in surprise for a moment so brief Ajax thought he’d imagined it. After that placed the token back in front of Ajax and pulled out a piece of paper to scribble something on, something he hadn’t let Ajax see.

“I’m afraid you’d have to wait for a moment while I get that identified as it looks like one of our older models.” he said as he passed the piece of paper to a man that stood guard behind him at the stairs to take it up. “Could I have a look at what you are hoping to sell in the meantime?”

Ajax compiled and pulled out the three different core types as well as the piece of wrapped up gargoyle ore. The man took his time inspecting all three cores and then unwarping the ore.

“Hmm,” the man said as he rubbed his small beard. “Cores from an Abyssal floor, a low one judging by the strength. I can see why you would want a long term contract, the market price on these just fell off a cliff. The ore on the other hand should net you a tidy-”

Ajax didn’t listen anymore as he dodged to the left as his [Danger Sense] activated, he did so just in time to see the hand of one of the guards that was wandering the floor grasp the empty air where his shoulder had been.

“What is this?” Ajax said as he whirled to see that the other guard had moved into position to cut off his line to the exit.

“The owner would like to have a private talk with you sir.” a third guard said from the top of the steps. This one was better equipped than the other two and a quick [Sense Threat] Put him above Ajax’s power level by a decent chunk, though nowhere near anyone the level of professor Silvertongue. “I’m afraid he insists on it, though your safety for the duration and your freedom following it are guaranteed.”