Ajax was very happy with the deal he had made, not as happy as his grandfather and Judy were however as they had made some great gains in their skills after their hard work.

“I got an Epic skill.” Judy tried to keep her excited whisper as quiet as possible as they were making their way through the hall.

“What did you get?” Elija asked, interested.

“[Firm Price].” Judy said with excitement. “That’s one of the best seller skills out there!”

[Firm Price] was one of the more limited Epic merchant skills. It did only one thing minimize the effect of any other skill on getting a seller to lower their price. It was also one of the most coveted skills by any merchant organization, though mostly they looked for it in their lower level employees who were selling items with a posted price instead of a haggled trade.

“That will be really good if we ever start creating high end items with any regularity.” Elija said as he stroked his beard. “Once we get back home you should probably spend a few months behind the counter to grab the easy levels for it, that way once your brother starts making high end potions you can keep some healthy margins selling them.”

“How do you think we did on the deal?” Judy asked Ajax now that they were alone.

Ajax didn’t even have a chance to start answering before Elija cut him off. “Not on the second one, we know how you feel about getting those seeds, the first deal the one we actually reached an agreement without going outside the normal conventions.”

Ajax took a moment to consider that. The end deal got them some valuable trade agreements and a decent amount of mana gems. Both of those were good for their future, if a little lackluster in the short term. The trade agreements would grow their budding merchant organization internationally and the gems would eventually be used by any promising non-alchemy focused crafters to improve, like his father’s smithing. Both of those things were good.

The delves were the main prize. Because the agreement had been for each of the dungeons in Sylvanthal instead of just the best three as most people cared about, Ajax had only gotten nine slots.

“I think we made out rather well, three slots in each dungeon along with the gems and trade agreement should be enough to help us prepare for the future as well.” Ajax answered the question.

The kingdom had taken their share of the reward, since they had little use for the trade agreements at a national levels and the royal family had plenty of mana gems they had taken a bigger share of the slots, in exchange for providing the booster the royal family had walked away with five of the remaining slots while Ajax was left with three. The only question was who could they sell the two empty slots for the most?

“You two should go and relax for the rest of the day, I’ll go do some physical training.” Ajax said as he took off towards the training grounds, his mana hadn’t yet recovered from his pre meeting training.

“He’s right grandpa, you should go rest.” Judy said with a caring innocent voice. “You did most of the heavy lifting in that meeting.”

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“And what are you going to do?” he asked with an eyebrow raised suspiciously.

“I’m going to go train my skills as well” Judy said with as much determination as she could muster. “Not my new one since we don’t have all that much to sell on hand but my others should work just fine here.”

Judy was gone before Elija had time to object to her. “Aurora, you shouldn’t have thought her about that at this age.” Elija stayed there shaking his head for a moment before he started making his way to his own room to relax.

As for the training Judy was going to be doing she was heading straight for the local casinos. Unlike her grandfather or her partner Alana Judy wasn’t a strategist merchant. What she specialized in was finding the hidden value in what seemed to be ordinary items at first glance and her skills helped her in that endeavor.

None of the skills would help with any of the house games, casinos would have quickly gone bankrupt or banned merchants if that was the case. They did however work in poker, if only slightly. With her value appraisal skills Judy could get a sense for how good a hand was, not only that but she could use her skills on other players cards as well. The only issue was that she could only determine the current value, more than once she had been sure of victory only for a bad beat on the river to cause her to lose most of her winnings.

“Ten gold coins.” Judy said as she handed the employee a small back and picked up a rather full rack of chips.

With chips in hand Judy quickly made her way over to the Texas hold’em tables in the casino. With her youthful looks and large amount of chips she was quickly welcomed by the players at the table, all of them happy she had come, for the moment at least. Judy settled in ready to spend the next few hours training “Can I get a cherry cocktail please!”

“So what’s it going to be?” the muscled adventurer asked as he looked towards Judy as she furrowed her brows and looked at her cards.

In the past hour Judy had managed to grow her pile of chips from ten gold worth to twelve and the bet was heads up to her on a one gold coin to call.

“I call.” she finally said as she threw a chip towards the pot much to the adventurer’s disappointment.

“Gods damn it.” the adventurer mucked his bluff without even checking what Judy had. “That’s it I’m done for the day.” he stood up from his chair and walked away.

“You’re a pretty good merchant for someone so young.” An elven woman to her right said as she racked in the chips.

Despite her best efforts to hide it the more experienced players had picked up that Judy was a merchant, she had done her best to hide it giving her social skills a true workout but even if she didn’t give the game away with her reactions the facts would do that for her. After all, merchants would never call a value bet on the river and lose.

“You’re a better scout.” Judy answered back, the elf in question had taken a few of Judy’s chips over the past hour.

Merchants weren’t the only ones that had an advantage at the poker tables. It wasn’t feasible to swap out the deck for every single hand that was played so while they did go through four separate decks in the past hour a good scout would be able to surreptitiously mark a few cards and use that to their advantage before the deck was replaced. Not only that but with their high perception they could better read their opponent.

“You’ll get better returns at the lower tables.” the elf suggested. “They aren’t as good, not only that but they’ll underestimate you because of your age you’ll be able to get away with more of your bluffs.”

While betting when you had the better hand was simply a matter of merchant skills, there were situations when a skilled merchant could win with the worse hand as well. So long as they knew the winning hand was also low value, just a better low value they could bluff their way into getting them to fold it.

“I’m here to train,” Judy answered as she shook her head. “The money is just a bonus.”

“If you say so.” the elf said as she looked at the two new cards she had gotten leaving a small nail scratch on the corner of one of them that only her and the other scout player at the table would be able to notice. This was actually a trap she was making since she had hidden her hand from the sight of the other scout as she made the marking in the exact same spot as the mark he had made on a different card the previous hand. “But you’d best get that skill under control.”

“What?” Judy was actually surprised since she didn’t know what the elf meant.

“It’s subtle, but by your reaction it is also probably new.” the elf said. “It’s a subtle instinct to all call instead of raising against you.”

“Would you like to make a complaint?” the dealer asked instantly. The rules of these tables were clear, the house even warned you, you can observe anything and you can mess with the cards so long as it’s not anything obvious but any skill that influenced the bets made would get you kicked out quickly.

“No complaint.” the elf waved her off with a smile. “I’m just helping with her training.”