The shopping district was separated into three roughly equal-sized zones. It's so that people from the three Clans each had their own place so the conflict between them could be minimized. Anyone even slightly affiliated with one of the Clans would have to do their business in their zone.
I stood in front of one of those shops. It had a red lightning bolt emblem above the door so I assumed it belonged to the Blazing Bloodstone Thunderbolt Clan. Fitting of a warrior Clan, as it sold beast parts.
I entered.
The inside was surprisingly elegant. There were shelves with items, glass or crystal displays, cabinets with vials and bottles, clay jars full of weird powders, as well as various boxes of smaller, miscellaneous things.
Funnily enough, I didn’t see many actual beast parts, despite that being the whole point of the shop, though there were pictures of it above some shelves, with small stone cubes beneath it.
[Oh~! Storage cubes.] That was a pleasant surprise. I never thought I would see one of those with my own eyes since they were mostly theoretical, but apparently, I was wrong. Those were small storage cubes that were a one-time-use item. To open them you had to break them, destroying the spatial enchantment that bound them, resulting in them spitting out the item inside.
They were really cheap to make and not all that useful. Unless, of course, you wanted to pack it with fresh beast parts instead of stuffing them into a crate, apparently. That was not a bad idea, and it would save the problem of storage and the mess that came with it.
“Hello sir, how can I help you?” The shopkeeper greeted me warmly.
[Oh, don’t mind me, just looking.] I answered and slowly scanned the shop until I found the thing that was attracting me.
[How much are these?] I pointed at a display that held basketball-sized crystal spheres inside.
“Ah, sir has great eyes! These Spirit Beast cores are the best quality you can find! They even contain the intact Soul of the slain beast itself, perfect for a boost to Cultivation, as well as a great addition to Beastly Guardian Arrays and Formations.” The man smiled while explaining.
I was already mentally salivating. They had complete Souls trapped inside a convenient vessel. Was it possible to buy Cultivation?! Well, no, but you could buy Soul Essence, which was basically the same thing. So convenient. I’d like all of them, please!
“As for the price, that depends on what kind of beast it is, as well as its Realm. This one, for example, is just 147 Spirit Stones!”
[Gah!] I stumbled back as if the price was a sledgehammer that struck my heart. I looked at the beast's core longingly and then sighed. With the money I had, I could maybe buy five of them… But I needed around a hundred to get to the next level! And no, I was not selling my Spirit Sword collection!
[Well, um…] I awkwardly rubbed the back of my head. Maybe buying Cultivation was not as easy as I thought. That’s when I noticed something on the shelf behind the shopkeeper, half hidden by other stuff.
[What about those?]
“Ah?” The man turned to see what I was looking at. “Oh, those are the ruined products.” He took one core and placed it on the counter. It had a crack down the middle and a big chunk was missing. I still felt a Soul inside it, but it was nowhere near as complete as the pristine ones. It was maybe a third full?
“Cores that have a partially captured Soul inside, a half-decayed one, or are simply leaking over time since the containment enchantment is broken. Ah, it’s also not refined like those others are, nor can it be refined since it's broken, so it can’t even be used for Cultivation.” He explained truthfully.
[Is that so? But they can still be bought, right?] I asked.
“You want to buy them? Why?”
He explained that only a master could make use of such a ruined product, but even then it wouldn’t be worth it due to the time investment.
[Never mind all that. How about I give you a Spirit Stone for it?] I offered.
“You are joking, right?! Even if it’s broken, the core itself is worth at least twelve Spirit Stones!” The man countered, apparently deeply offended.
The material the core was made out of could be used for all kinds of products, from pills and elixirs to bottles for exotic wines and even jewelry. Not to mention it was the main component of Qi conductive ink for all kinds of Formations. Then again, those things didn’t need all that much of it.
[What about three Spirit Stones?] I threw back an offer.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“Ten, no less!”
[Four!]
“Eight!”
[Five. That’s my final offer.]
“Absolutely not. I’m not taking anything less than six!” The man firmly shook his head and clearly wasn’t going to budge. I pretended to be thinking about it deeply and then eventually sighed.
[Alright, fine, six it is.]
I rummaged through my pocket and took out the stones I confiscated from that previous guy.
“Pleasure doing business.” The man smiled and pocketed the money while handing over the broken sphere. It cracked even more as I took it, a small piece falling off, but I didn’t care about that. I quickly slurped up the Soul and stored away the broken core.
“Will that be all?” The man kindly asked, clearly trying to get more out of me.
[Actually… Do you have any more of those? I might need a few extra...]
I could see a glint in the man’s eyes as he turned and presented a whole bunch more broken cores.
“Here. Actually, if you take them all I can give them to you for five Stones each.”
It was a good offer, and I actually considered it for a moment, but then I realized not all of them had a Soul, and some that had, barely had a whisper left. So I proposed my counter-offer.
[How about we stick to six Stones per and I pick those that I like?]
“Sure, that’s fine too.”
And so, after examining, I left the shop with seven cores in my pocket and a slightly lighter money pouch.
The great thing was, that I could resell the broken cores as raw materials and get one or two Spirit Stones back. If I ground them down to dust, I could get two per. That meant four Stones per (20%?) of a Spirit Realm Soul. Twenty for a full one. Two thousand for a new Realm?
A grin spread across my face. While there was quite a bit of variability in my calculation, it shouldn’t be more than three thousand in total even in the worst circumstances. I just needed to sell some trash and I could scrape together another grand or so…
[Man! I love being able to solve problems with money, haha!]
I quickly left the shop and visited one on the other side of the street. After bantering with the person in charge there, we came to an agreement and I got myself five cores for five Stones each! They were slightly worse than those I just consumed, but the discount was worth it!
As more Soul fragments entered my Sea of Consciousness, I couldn’t stop grinning. Who said Cultivation was hard? Those guys were throwing away so much Soul Essence just because they couldn’t use it! I was like a homeless man diving into trash cans only to pull out a perfectly good steak!
The guys selling me those broken cores were so happy to make a deal as well. They tried to sell me other trash, but I wasn’t interested in it, just the cores. Still, they were happy to get rid of some clutter while I was happy to take it off their hands. We were both satisfied. Win-win!
Like that, over the course of three days, I visited half the city shops that dealt in raw beast cores before running out of money.
I then found a place that was this world’s version of a pawn shop and sold all my Spirit Daggers, about two dozen beast cores from Golden Core beasts, which weren’t even worth mentioning really, about a dozen beast skins, as well as some blood.
Altogether it brought me 550 Spirit Stones, with the bulk of it coming from the daggers.
I then left and visited another pawn shop where I sold my Spirit Metal Gauntlets and a Lightning Jab manual, bringing me another 375 Spirit Stones. I was halfway there.
Searching for some time and asking people around me, I found another shop that bought all kinds of stuff. I negotiated with the guy manning the counter and sold him two manuals, the first being Breath of Eternity, a Cultivation technique, and the other Misty Step, a movement technique.
The man was a tough one to bargain with and so I left with an extra 325 Spirit Stones and a stick of worthless incense in my pocket.
Finally, I sold the Heart of Frenzy manual as well as an alchemy cauldron together with a set of tools required for its use. It netted me just 150 Spirit Stones.
That came to 1400 Stones in total, still a bit missing from the approximately 1800 I needed. But I wasn’t too worried. After buying so many cores, I could just crush them down and sell the powder to afford the rest.
The thing was that even after scouring all the markets, I had trouble finding broken cores for such a good price. Some wanted more for a worse product, while the really fancy shops didn’t even carry such sub-quality goods.
I had no choice but to look for more shady markets, spending only 10-20 Spirit Stones at once and almost wasting my time. My last thousand Stones were spent that way, following rumors and making deals with people who liked to avoid the light.
It was also getting harder to acquire the goods, sometimes having to resort to bribing people for the information. Finally, my money ran out, and I was left with 350 broken, damaged, or otherwise ruined Spirit Beast cores.
I drained them of the Souls inside, some of which were even cursed or carried a tracking imprint, but I devoured it all despite that. Whatever games those people were playing, I didn't care about them one bit. By my calculations, I needed another one hundred cores of similar quality to fill out my Soul.
However, even with the size of The City, it was getting harder and harder to find willing sellers. Such things weren’t easy to find, and I had already plucked all the low-hanging fruits.
Lucky for me, the cores I had should be just about enough to get the remaining one hundred.
All in all, I spent two weeks running around, collecting that trash. It was a good pace for growth, but I was beginning to get worried. While buying Soul Essence would be possible after exhausting the cheap supply, the price would skyrocket! No way I was spending 35k just to reach the Spirit Realm! I would have to sell most of my swords for that.
It was so unfortunate I didn’t have a guide. If I had a native who could teach me about The City a bit more in-depth, that would be of great help. Not that I didn’t learn a lot on my own, but it was just hard and time-consuming. Not everyone was comfortable with talking to an outsider, especially when asking for such unusual items.
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I knocked on a door deep into a random back alley.
“Who is it?!” Came a bark from the other side.
[Hello? I have some Spirit Beast core dust to sell. Is this the right place?]
A small window opened and a pair of eyes stared at me for a few moments, scanning me. I let it and didn’t resist, allowing them to see my power level. Obviously, my Aura was contained so they couldn’t know how large it was, but being Golden Core Eighth Layer was nothing special around those parts.
Soon the window slammed shut again and a whole bunch of glyphs around the door glowed for a moment before dimming, and the door opened with a creak. A thin, slightly hunched-back looked me up and down and then gestured with his head.
“Get inside. The boss is expecting you.”