My first day of creating and selling matches was, under no uncertain terms, a massive success.

They were especially profitable since in this new world, the most convenient source of fire are rather slow and cumbersome flint and steel sets.

Unlike the little match girl on my earth, match selling was a very lucrative endeavor which earned me a not insubstantial amount of gold and silver currency. Though this starting success can’t last forever, and if I want to continue to create profit I would need to make the whole supply chain more efficient.

And to do that I had to start from the beginning, the suppliers.

To make matches I currently needed four crucial ingredients— charcoal, sulfur, horse dung and wooden twigs.

The horse dung would then be converted into potassium nitrate which alongside sulfur and charcoal would be used to create a sort of paste. This paste would be applied to the wooden twigs and dried to create the final product— matches.

I currently had enough of the raw ingredients and the paste to create maybe two hundred more matches. Though this paltry sum would probably not last me until the end of the week, so I needed to get more of the raw ingredients from the suppliers.

To effectively negotiate with the suppliers, I would have to be assisted by my employer Qaton.

I was currently allowed some time to see how far I could go with this idea, and he also had a stake in the success of my business which is why he agreed to help relay my intentions to the people I was about to meet.

But in order to do any of that, I first needed to track down the suppliers which had given me the ingredients for the initial test run. And for that I needed to track down Shur, the merchant who had supplied everything I needed originally.

I asked Qaton to follow me and at first he was rather confused, but once he noticed the distinct storefront of Shur’s shop he understood what we were for.

When we went inside the store Qaton greeted Shur with a look of recognition on his face, they obviously were acquainted. This was probably because Shur was somewhat connected with our smuggling ring, evidenced by the fact that Darat knew and trusted him.

After initial pleasantries, Qaton went straight to business, “ Where *** *** *** the materials?”

While some words were lost on me, I was able to recognize the fact that he was asking Shur on where he got the resources from.

In response, Shur began listing off some unfamiliar words while hand counting— probably to list off the suppliers of the materials.

Once he had finished Qaton seemed to have understood where to go.

After finishing up their conversation Qaton began leading me to a spot just outside the village by walking through a dirt path; a place where many logs were stacked up in a pile for some unknown purpose.

By reason of deduction I concluded that it was either the source of charcoal or of the small wooden sticks due to them being the only materials that were involved with wood.

After closer inspection I noticed that it resembled a charcoal pile on earth, leading me to conclude that we were trying to source charcoal here.

As Qaton and I searched for a person to speak with, we happened upon the dwelling of a rather haggard old man, who in pleasant terms, smelled like the “wild”.

He seemed to live on his own in this camp and had grown used to the peace it gave, because when he started talking to us, he seemed rather anxious.

Qaton asked him if he knew Shur by mentioning his name, and the charcoal burner’s face lit up with recognition when we mentioned him.

They obviously were acquainted.

I requested Qaton to ask the man about the price of his charcoal, and when he did, he gestured the number two with his right hand.

This meant that it cost two silvers to purchase the same amount of charcoal as last time, which was quite a lot.

Though I thought that I could get it down cheaper.

I asked Qaton the question of whether it would be cheaper if I had a more consistent arrangement with the charcoal maker, that way he would get a more consistent stream of income while I would get cheaper prices. How is it as a BM student- economics student supply and demand

Depends if the old man has a surplus, if he sells out instantly then he would make the price remain the same

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

He relayed this proposal to the man, and surprisingly he didn’t seem opposed to it. From his gestures and the words that I could pick out, the price would drop to just one silver if I ordered on a regular basis.

I asked Qaton to tell him that I would order for the next four weeks, with each shipment costing one silver, and I would pay when the four weeks had ended.

This posed some amount of risk if I didn’t attract enough business to pay the man, but I was confident that it wouldn’t happen.

The charcoal seller seemed satisfied with this arrangement and escorted us to the exit, not before greeting us goodbye.

When we got back to the town we visited the local horse tamer which sold us his extra horse dung, the local lumberjack and the merchant that imported sulfur from faraway lands.

We did the same thing with them and offered them continued patronage in exchange for a discount on their wares, which they accepted.

The lumberjack and the horse breeder each accepted one silver every week in exchange for their supplies of horse excrement and small wooden sticks respectively.

But the sulfur merchant was different because apparently it was harder to acquire than anything we previously had purchased, so instead of being worth one silver per crate like the rest of them, it was worth two.

The next day we collected all the supplies we needed and used the stock we had left to create one hundred additional matches.

The main limiting factor was the supply of sulfur and charcoal, because the sticks and the potassium nitrate weren’t used as much compared to those materials.

A week later…

After making and selling matches for a week, Piyan eventually was able to sell around three hundred matches which gave us around six gold coins in income.

One gold and five coppers went to Piyan for his wage, with the remaining four golds and nine silvers split between myself, material payment and Darat and Qaton for their share of the profits.

While this match making endeavor brought levels of wealth that a regular peasant could only dream of, I feared that it was not enough. If I wanted the wealth to become untouchable, I needed more markets to sell to.

With this in mind, I asked Qaton about the neighboring towns

He described two neighboring villages that were within close distance from here.

The village of Mifar was a coastal village known for its salt production in addition to the town of Shuben which is surrounded by a natural formation of large stone pillars which jut out from the earth.

When referring to Mifar, Qaton said something that went along the lines of, They **** *** best salt ** Spania.”

Spania.

Spania?

That name seemed rather familiar to me, could it be referring to something like Spain or Hispania as it is sometimes called?

I dismissed the notion thinking, “It’s probably a coincidence.”

Getting back to the topic at hand, I thought of ways to increase my reach in order to spread the sale of matches farther while watching Piyan sell the product in the stall he had.

As I thought of a possible way to do this, I glanced upon some traveling merchants that Piyan had sold to.

That’s it.

I can use those merchants to spread awareness of the matches.

Based on my knowledge from the previous Earth, traveling merchants usually just bought goods and sold them to other places with no need to disclose where they got the product. But if they had an incentive to share this knowledge, like a monetary one for example, then they would be encouraged to spread the source of the matches to places far and wide.

And if some local merchants wanted to source matches directly from me, then I didn’t have to make the effort to actually set up locations in other areas. Instead I could act as their supplier and would be able to sell to more markets without any of the work that would come with it.

In addition, if the news spread about the matches in other places, then traveling merchants would come here and increase the income that we made. And if one of the peddlers that we paid to spread the information didn’t show any results then we would simply stop dealing with that person.

I thought it was the perfect solution to help grow the matchmaking business.

I explained to Qaton my plan and told him that in order to make it work, we needed Shur’s connections as he was the most well-acquainted with these matters out of everyone we knew.

We went to Shur’s usual spot and Qaton explained to him, I gave him two gold coins that he could use to pay off the merchants and gave him nine silver pieces as thanks for his efforts.

He pondered for a moment, not before leading us to a location in the opposite corner of town compared to the smuggler compound.

It was an enclosed, square space where the chatter of around forty men who seemed to be traveling merchants filled the air.

It seemed like this place was where the vendors met up, brokered information and exchanged goods between one another.

As soon as we got there, Shur went to work.

He began chatting up the merchants one after another, which went on for a good thirty minutes. While doing so, I noticed that he was slipping some of them silver coins at the end of their conversations, probably to entice them to spread the word of the matches amongst the people.

In the corner of the square, I saw a man with similar robing to the one that we saw in the match shop, but I just dismissed it as being a man who wore a similar outfit as him.

After Shur had done his magic, Qaton and I watched as an influx of traveling merchants bought our product and set off for other villages and towns. This was a good sign that the plan had worked, and for now all we needed to do was wait for its results.

Though out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something very suspicious.

I saw the same prominent looking man as before observing the commotion which the peddlers had brought. I thought I noticed him in the merchant’s square before, but I chalked it up to me seeing things.

But now that I look closer, it is the same person as before. He must have been observing us all this time ever since we started selling the matches.

But why?

I needed to figure it out.

I beckoned for Qaton to follow me and approached the hooded man. I had Qaton relay the questions, “Who are you?” and “Where are you from?”.

The man talked with Qaton for a bit, then Qaton agreed to follow him to his employer. We followed him into a rather grand-looking building, for a village at least, which seemed to be some sort of administrative center.

We walked into a rather long hallway, passing many doors until eventually we met a rather short, fat man who looked like he was in his forties. He wore robes somehow even more expensive and extravagant than the man who observed us while giving off a somewhat greedy and self-indulgent aura.

Qaton had me introduce myself to the man, so I introduced myself as “Hamet”. The name that I had chosen for myself in this new world.

My associate seemed to have recognized him and talked to him respectfully, referring to him as the “Yad”. They had a long discussion where Qaton seemed to have been asked about some topics which the Yad would like to clear up which my language skills were too poor to understand.

After what seemed like forever, the Yad’s worker interrupted their conversation to bring his attention to other matters. And so after that, they said their goodbyes and Qaton and I left the building.

While heading back to the compound, Qaton manages to relay to me that the Yad works in the king’s stead to govern this town.

Apparently he has let the smuggling group to its own devices as long as he gets a decent-sized donation every so often, which meant that he wasn’t a stickler for the rules and cared more about his wealth than any moral or political obligation.

How interesting.

I wonder if he could help us with the Zi problem in the future?