The price for the potions turned out to be pretty damn high. Most health potions that were being sold restored about 2000 health, and cost about 1 silver each. They were quick and cheap to make, which made the price low. Mike didn't have any use for potions so weak, so he bought better potions, which restored about 4000 health but cost 4 silver each. Mike bought 10 of the potions, handing over 40 silver to the alchemists. They had also shown him some of the other potions they had made in large quantities, which consisted of mana and stamina potions.
Mike definitely wanted to get his hands on a few mana potions, but they had a few drawbacks that made Mike hesitate. First off, it wasn't like health potions which had an immediate effect, bumping up your health. Instead, they flooded your body with unaligned mana, which meant that your body needed to absorb and convert the mana to something usable. The alchemists had explained that this was accomplished by your mana regeneration rate doubling until you converted all of the mana. Similarly to health potions, they couldn't restore more than 50% of your maximum mana, and any excess instead sped up the rate of regeneration for the rest.
The only thing that made Mike dig into his pockets to buy the potions was the fact that mana was something he frequently ran low on. Between his various skills and abilities, he was burning through his entire mana pool far too often. Thankfully, the potions were cheaper than the health versions, at just 3 silver for a bottle that gave 5000 mana. They were also apparently easier to make, which helped them keep the price lower while keeping the effectiveness higher. He ended up buying 10 of those as well.
As for the stamina potions, Mike saw no need to buy any. He almost never ran out of stamina, as he had no skills that used the resource. Perhaps in the future he would, but for now he was perfectly fine with the resource. He left the store 70 silver poorer and 20 potions richer. He still had 59 silver left, having needed to exchange a gold coin for silver, and he was carrying all of his new potions in a sack slung over his back.
He stopped at his workshop, dropping off most of his potions except for two mana and two health potions he decided to keep strapped around his waist. Mike had a few weeks of waiting ahead of him, as that was all he could really do while Raj was working on the enchantment. He decided to spend at least some of this time cementing himself as rich within his own village, and was ready to get to crafting to do this.
He knew that he could provide the best armor and weapons of any smith in the village, and he was ready to take full advantage of that fact by making the absolute best items he could. He probably wouldn’t be making a lot, if any heroic rarity items, but he could churn out a peak epic ranked item in just 6 hours or so if he bent his mind to the task.
He just needed the coin now to get the materials he would be needing for this endeavor, and he knew just the investor to reach out to. It wasn't long before he was at the center of the shopping district, which he hadn't even realized had been constructed, and was face to face with Mateo, the merchant who had accompanied him to Dune.
“I would like you to invest in a little venture of mine.” Mike said, leaning back in the chair he was sitting in. Mateo sat opposite of him, in another chair that looked more like a throne.
“What might this venture be?” Mateo asked. Mike knew just from the tone of his voice that he was almost certainly going to be onboard with whatever he said.
“I need an investor to help me buy some materials, and you will get a cut of what I make off of selling them.”
“I’m interested. How much are you planning on spending on the materials you will be needing?”
This was where Mike needed to put his convincing face on. “20 to 30 gold to get all of the materials I need.”
Mateo sucked in a breath, pausing a moment to think. “Are you sure that you can sell so many high valued items? You must remember that there is only about 2600 gold circulating through Thudfall, plus whatever has made its way here from Dune.”
“I am sure it will sell. We can make it a public auction, allow anybody and everybody to get a shoe in the door for getting these items.”
“That would help, but let's say you sell enough to make 50 gold, would that be worth the time you put into it?”
This made Mike smile, as he already had an answer prepared. “I know that I will sell a lot more than just 50 gold worth of items. If my plan works, we could make hundreds of gold.”
Just like that, the deal was made. Mateo had been a bit skeptical, but Mike was so confident in the demand for good items that he added the stipulation that 100% of the profit made would go to Mateo until he recouped the losses. From there, it would be a 30/70 split in Mike's favor.
“How long do you estimate it will take you to make all of these items?” Mateo asked before Mike left.
“Two, maybe three weeks.” Mike said. “Why?”
“I just wanted to have the construction workers get a little project done for me in the meantime. Two weeks should be enough time.”
“Alright, have fun with that.” Mike said, leaving with 30 gold in a pouch he kept hidden under his armor. He spent the next several hours making trips back and forth between his home and various shops and stores around the village. He wasn't even sure how some people procured some of what he had ended up buying.
“Where did somebody get shark tooth?” He mumbled to himself as he brought his most recent haul back to the workshop. It was the last one he had planned on purchasing, and the most expensive trip so far. He had bought 6 gold worth of various monster parts and processed hides. He even had a few gemstones for if he wanted to shake things up a bit and make a wand or a staff. Mike was going to get some more Nonmium to maybe make his hammer a little stronger, but he ended up not buying any when he saw the price had nearly doubled since last time he had bought some.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
It seemed like almost everything Mike was buying was being sold for a significant markup, which did make him decide not to buy several items that he felt could have been useful. While shopping he had gotten a look at some armor sets and weapons being sold by other smiths, and he found that making items that weren’t on the lower end of epic rarity still proved to be a significant challenge to almost every other smith in the village. There had been one shop that was advertised as selling items that were more towards the middle of epic rarity, but they were out of stock due to the demand for such good items.
This had made Mike excited thinking about the price tag he could put on some of his items. He would be shocked if anything he would make sold for under a gold. Seeing the various armors and weapons also gave Mike the idea to branch out from the standard he’d been following. He hadn't really made a large variety of weapons, mostly making swords, daggers, and his own hammer, but he wanted to try and make some less used items this time.
Armor was also something he could try and do differently. Currently, he always made entire sets of armor at a time, but besides for the synergy bonus it offered, there was no significant reason to do so. He had seen plenty of people walking around the village wearing mismatched armor sets that gave no synergy bonus. He had even seen one mage carrying around a high epic rarity staff, while wearing a cloak that was only uncommon rarity. She had probably spent a lot of savings on getting that staff if she couldn't spare some of it for better protection.
Mike sat at his forge and began to work. He spent the next 15 days crafting, infusing new coins being made by smiths, and taking short rests to chat with some friends. He had caught up a bit with John, who was now part of the wealthy in Thudfall thanks to giving classes on controlling mana and improving skills with it. Mike had gotten a small boost to his ego when he learned that John still only had a mana controlling skill at heroic rarity. He had even sold John a set of light leather armor that he had made while preparing for the auction.
When he had been infusing the coins that other smiths had made, he had been smarter about it than he had been before. He had the coins delivered to Dune, where he infused them while leaning against the Idol of Surya and drinking mana potions. It made the process a lot quicker, and it only took him about ten hours to infuse the millions of coins that had been made.
Devin had explained to Mike the reason that the coins had been made, and while it made sense, Mike was still a bit sour about it. The prices of everything in the village had been rising due to the population still growing more and more everyday, while the total amount of money never changed. This had also caused the majority of the wealth in the village to be held by not very many people, which most of the village didn't like at all. The growing population was also what had driven prices straight through the roof, as demand was increasing at a rate that supply simply couldn't keep up with.
They were going to be introducing more currency to the system to combat this, and in the future would be trying to keep about 5000 gold in circulation for every 10000 people that were in the village. Ironically, making so much money was expensive, and they had needed to promise to compensate the miners and smiths with some of the coin that was made thanks to their efforts. This would make the average miner a wealthy individual, as opposed to before the system when it was not seen as a lucrative day job unless you owned a mining company.
The reason Mike was a bit sour about all of this was that since more money was going to be put into circulation, the fortune he would make off of the auction would be devalued over time until the economy of the village restabilized. He would still make a significant profit, but he could kiss his dreams of being Rockefeller rich anytime soon goodbye.
The entire conversation he’d had where this had been explained to him had given him a bit of a headache, and he had needed to just sit quietly and infuse coins while he tried to sort all the information out in his mind. When he was finished with that, it hadn't taken much longer before he had used up the last of his materials he had on hand. In his own humble opinion, he had made an amazing armory. There were dozens of weapons, about ten sets of armor, and several shields that he had made. He also made a couple of overkill pickaxes that he figured the newly wealthy miners would love to have.
The weapons included swords, bows, spears, daggers, hammers, flails, a scythe just for the hell of it, and on top of it all was the single heroic rarity item he had made. It was a sword made from glass that had been made from the sands of the desert Dune was in, and its name and description had reflected this. Mike had significantly improved it by infusing his mana, combining a large amount of the glass with Arcane Fusion, and imbuing it with the fragment he had earned from the sand elemental. He identified it as he proudly looked at the weapon hanging from his wall.
Dune Glass Blade (Heroic)
This blade has been crafted from glass that was formed from the sand of the Dune desert. It has been refined and hardened many times by its creator, and has been infused with the fragments of a sand elemental. This sword stores within it 3 cubic meters of sand that can be ejected and controlled by the wielder for a significant cost of mana.
Injecting the fragments of the sand elemental had given the sword the sand manipulation powers that it had. While the weapon itself was not as good as his hammer, at least not when he used it, it would likely be far better than his hammer if the core of the sand elemental had been used in the crafting process. He tried not to dwell on having handed that treasure off, instead being content with what he had made. Of course, it wasn't difficult to be content when all his hard work had resulted in quite a few levels.
*Profession level up x6! Prodigious Artisan of the Arcane (level 45)*
*Race level up x3! Human (level 41)*
He was about to put all of his points into strength like usual when he remembered what had happened in his last fight. The sand that had battered his body cut him up so bad that it had come closer than anything else to killing him. He decided to split his points into fortitude and constitution, reasoning that thanks to his trait he got more out of each point in those two stats than in any other.
When he had finished crafting, he wanted to start the auction as soon as he could, but Mateo had insisted on pushing it off for another week while he got a few more preparations finished as well as giving some time for more money to be brought into the village. The council had been handing out a bunch of quests and contracts for people who wanted in on the new source of income, and the coins were getting integrated far faster than anybody had expected.
Mike had agreed to delay the auction, but he was getting a bit impatient. It took ten whole agonizingly long days for Mateo to get everything set up, which Mike spent killing monsters and earning another two levels to his class and adding more to his constitution and fortitude. When all of the preparations were complete, Mike had gotten dressed up in a nice black suit that Mateo had forced him to wear.
Mike had been shocked when he first walked into the auction hall that Mateo had commissioned, as the inside was far larger than he had expected. From the outside, it looked to only be about two stories tall, but the ground had been dug out from under it to make the main room expand into the earth.
Mike had gotten seated in a booth that was at the top of the room, and when he looked down he saw at least ten thousand people sitting in the seat below him. It was kind of intimidating seeing so many people come to bid on his items, but thankfully Mateo had explained that he had invested in most smiths in the village with similar deals to the one Mike had struck.
Mateo had left Mike in his booth along with Devin, John, the village guard captain, Lila, Lucas, and most surprisingly, Raj. As the first item began getting showcased, Raj leaned over and whispered to Mike.
“We need to talk.”