CHAPTER 25: UNKNOWN MARKET PRICES

“Right, right, so what’d ya want to know, Naru-han?”

After showing his overwhelming delight over his ticket into the Dark Guild, Goya finally calmed down enough to get back to business.

I cough.

“Ahem. Well, it’s not much, actually. Three things. One, I want to improve my Item Bag. I think I’ve already maxed it out at level for a normie, but I want to know how to optimize it, or if there is a way to optimize it. Two, I want to know what you know about [Scribe] and the other found Talents so far.”

“Mumumu… Understood. Then, when ya say that ya maxed out your Item Bag at a normie level, ya mean ya bought all the biggest additions ya can get right now from the NPC vendors? What’s that put ya at?”

“Um… 5 slots at 30 each, plus the original 20, so 170 slots.”

“… Naru-han. That’s ridiculous.”

“Well even if you say that, I was running out of slots in the end.”

“If ya didn’t take all the trash drops, ya wouldn’t have that problem!”

“Even if you say that, you never know when a drop could be a quest item.”

Although there are still some quest items that don’t drop until you take the quest, I’ve noticed that

Since this game doesn’t have any ‘available quest’ indicators, you can’t ever know when a useless drop might turn out to be necessary.

It’s all about efficiency~!

“Fuu… well, regardless, I can answer yer first question along with part of the second. The key to awesome upgrades is [Crystalographer].”

“…Haah?”

“Oohohoho, don’t give me that look, Naru-han. It’s true. The bag additions might get bigger, but it’s crystals where the best improvements are going to come from, ya can bet on that. It has something to do with ancient technology.”

“… Un. I have to use crystals for [Scribe] … I guess that’s going to be an increasingly important game item, crystals.”

“Indeed. The demand isn’t there yet, but…”

Goya’s eyes squint happily, and he holds his hand up, rubbing his forefinger and thumb together greedily.

“[Crystalographer] sounds pretty good. It supports all the other crafts, and some of the Auxiliary Talents. You’re gonna get a lot of business if ya take [Crystalographer], oohohoho!”

“Sounds overpowered.”

I said sulkily.

“Nonono, it’s just going to be in high demand. [Crystalographer]s will be able to refine crystals, but ya’d still need [Mine] to dig, and the crystals ain’t any use on their own, so the players are complaining that ya’d need to take other Talents to make it useful. It’d be a Talent slot monster. Although being a crystal supplier ain’t bad, there ain’t all that many players who just want to play merchant. And I bet all the merchant types might take [Crystalographer], so I bet the market will be flooded with them so ya can get them for cheap.”

Sounds like Goya doesn’t care to take [Crystalographer].

“Anyway, I’ll take care of yer bag. Ya bring back interesting things.”

“No charge.”

“Of course. If it’s just the bag, I can give ya a freebie up through the first time ya get Avg Lv50, how about that?”

“Tch. So the letter was only worth that much.”

“Ooohoho, yer wrong, yer wrong. At the rate people are leveling, Avg Lv50 might be several years, ya know?”

I bet it’s more like one year, but that’s still a lot of free upgrades.

It’s hard to decide, since there’s no information about pricing and necessary upgrade materials on the market. Maa, I’ll complain if the running price is too low.

“Alright. For now. Let me know when you get the information and materials and I’ll drop by.”

I said.

Goya ignored the “for now”.

“As for [Scribe]… hm. So Naru-han is a [Scribe], then?”

“Yeah. I kind of took it on a whim, though, so I don’t really know what to do with it.”

“Gnununu… out of the 4 found Talents so far, [Scribe] is the one with the most exploration to do, so I hear. Ya gotta look all over the place for ancient recipes and finding all the keys for translations and stuff… well, that’s all I heard from NPCs. I think it suits ya okay.”

I frown and tap my fingers on my arms, saying,

“I guess there’s just too much we don’t know for now.”

“That’s it, yup.”

“Oh right, I guess I’m the first person who finished that quest. Hmph.”

Goya laughs at me and shakes his head.

“Yer problems are enviable for some people, ya know? Nmaa, just go for it. There are multiple paths you can take in every found Talent, according to the NPCs.”

“… How long did it take them to code this game?”

Is the only thing I can think to say.

“Who knows. But there’s a patch every week, no?”

A long-ass one, too.

Well, whatever.

I guess I’ll obediently follow the optional quest for now and go to the library. I feel like there’s a wealth of stuff that each found Talent will let you do, but there’s just not enough information right now.

If there’s not enough information, even if I regret it later, I should just do whatever I want right now.

So why the heck am I coming to Goya for information when there’s not a lot of information out?

Because he still gets to hear about stuff I don’t hear about, and… that was just a side benefit to the real job I need done.

“Alright, alright, so shall we get down to it, Naru-han? Yer third order of business, I mean.”

Goya squats down and taps the floor.

“Right, right. Okay, so I have this green spear, 5 white swords, 3 white pieces of armor, and all these crafting materials.”

I’m selling Minas the NPC-bro’s Turncoat’s Spear and all the uninteresting drops from the bandits. Hm? I guess the bandits where the only humanoids I’ve fought so far… interesting.

I’ve set everything I was thinking about selling to Goya on Display mode. You can look, but you can’t touch, and the stat readout only has durability, attack, and an indication of whether there is a special effect or not.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Hm hm hm… The green spear is interesting. But Naru-han, have ya taken this stuff to the crafters yet?”

His eyes have kind of turned into dots, looking at the… mountain… of crafting materials.

“Un, no. But this is only half of the crafting materials I have, so…”

Goya is speechless.

“But this is an ecosystem’s worth of stuff.”

“Yup.”

“Just half?”

“Yup.”

Goya lowers his head a bit, thinking deeply.

“Fumyu… normally I’d say I don’t wholesale, but this amount is… certainly it ain’t something ya can dump all on one or two people. I can outsource it, but I don’t want to deal with raw materials this early in the game.”

“Ah, I know you don’t really like to buy materials, at least this early in the game, but as you can see… I have some problems with the volume. I thought since there were some material shortages, well…”

“No no, this is good to jumpstart the crafters. They’ve been stalling, since the top rankers are only just now moving out to the next area. It’s just, I’ll be selling it through other people, so the price might not be as high as ya’d normally expect through me.”

Goya shoves the white, common equipment at me.

“I ain’t gonna deal with unidentified goods, and I think the crafters are looking for white equipment, so I don’t want them.”

“Eh… well, I thought you might not, but what do you mean the crafters want them?”

“I dunno. They gotta dismantle a whole bunch of stuff, so I try to stay out of dealing with common equipment. Better to sell a few top quality stuff than fight with my future potential suppliers!”

Goya rubs his hands together and cackles.

“Right right, ok. Do your best with the spear. What do you think you can get out of it?”

I ask.

Goya tilts his head, thinking.

“I bet by next week, if there ain’t an influx of uncommon equipment, we can get 1 gold or more, depending on the auction. But if we go over a week, we’re gonna get under.”

“Eh… is it going to change so quickly…?”

“That’s how it is. Ya didn’t get any equipment from quests yet, but there’s actually quite a lot of equipment swapping. Nmaa, this is a good backup weapon, practically level-less, so maybe the price wouldn’t drop too much.”

“Well, I’ll leave it to you. And then, there’s one more item.”

Goya’s ears perk up as I reach back into my Item Bag.

“Ooohohoho, ya didn’t bring it out with the rest, so I have high expectations~!”

I glance over at him with narrowed eyes.

“That’s fine, but I’m selling it for someone, so don’t you dare skim too much off the top.”

Goya looks away and gives a quiet “tch”.

Yeah, that’s right, I knew, you moneygrubbing hamster.

“It ain’t like I skim that much off the top… But whatever. I won’t, for a while.”

Goya pats his Item Bag. I guess he’s talking about the Mysterious Letter-Black.

I wonder how long a while is…

But honestly, even with him skimming off some of the profit, he still gets me the best prices.

That’s why he’s still the broker I go to for really rare items.

The item I’m bringing out is … Jajaja jaan! Talisman of the Snake Charmer!

“This is…. Oooooooooohohoho! This is quite-!”

As soon as he sees it, Goya almost loses his head over it.

“Right?”

I return his greedy look with one of my trademarked, nasty grins.

Goya laughs creepily.

“Gufufu… ahem. Yes, indeed. I can definitely sell this in a few days, but like the spear, give me a week and I’ll make it quite the amount.”

I don’t think Fen would care at all, so yeah, sell when you think it’s best, Goya.

—-

—-

Although I haven’t gotten anything from Goya yet, I have quite a few coins in my pocket!

After selling off all the vendor trash, I now have 3g 587s 120c.

As for the items I’m selling Goya, normally I’d hold onto the stuff until he found a buyer or got the auction going, but in OriginStory, if you have the Merchant talent, you have a Skill that lets you set an item to Store Display mode.

With the actual owner’s permission, you are able to hold onto and handle the item as if it was your own, except you can’t actually use it or put it on any other display modes except for Display.

It’s basically just something that takes up an item slot that you can show other people.

When you, the merchant, finally sell it, a 3-way transaction window pops up, and the money is divided between the merchant and the original owner.

Seriously, just how long did it take them to code this… well, whatever.

It’s nice that things are out of my Item Bag~!

“Chie-cha~n! How’s it going?”

“Naru- WHY ARE YOU STILL IN BEGINNER’S ARMOR?!”

“… Is that the first thing you say to me? How cold. Even though I brought you souvenirs.”

I found Chie sitting in the middle of Karolstrem’s town square.

There are quite a few people around her street stall, but it looks like she’s not the only tailor with customers.

Although she seems to have a lot of higher level players…

“Hallo, Narunaru! Wait! You’re still in Beginner’s Armor?!”

“That seems to be the popular observation, yes. Hello, Kiriri.”

A blond, twin-tailed bird type siren tilts her head, looking at me. From her frilly outfit, you can tell she’s a magical girl – I mean, mage.

She’s not a super high-ranker nor really wellknown in VRMMOs, but she’s started making a name for herself with Yohtube videos with VRMMO gameplay. Most of it’s social and player-run events, though.

Middle school girl gamers are popular as always. We need to be aware of (and exterminate) perverts who get near her.

That’s what the Kiriri fanclub says anyway.

Me? We’re just acquaintances. She’s cute, but she’s way high maintenance, and cheeky in a maybe-not-cute way.

“Anyway, I need some decent armor, apparently, Chie.”

“I should say you do. Hang on. I’ll get to work on it right away –“

Chie begins to open up her crafting screens.

“Hang on. Here, what can you use out of all this?”

Shaaaaaaa.

After I group-set all the rest of the crafting materials to Display, the sound of items pouring out onto the pavement kept going for a while.

“Ooh. It’s a better pile than I thought it would be.”

Maybe what I gave to Goya was less than half. Now that I think about it, I kept all the high quality stuff and most of the stuff from the new area.

“Woooow, Narunaru, you have so much… ehhhh?! Isn’t this stuff from the next area?! In Beginner’s Armor?!”

“Kiriri. Your voice is too loud.”

Even though I warned her, it was too late.

Zawa zawa

From around us, I start hearing things like,

“Next area?”

“No way… The top rankers are only just now going there.”

“In Beginner’s Armor? Isn’t this a bluff? Maybe she got it from someone else.”

“Like who?”

“Who is that?”

“…Hm? Naru? But the chest is…”

Hrm. We’ve turned into a sideshow.

Aside from the regular noisy watchers, there are also other crafters watching us carefully. Like hyenas.

Let’s reduce the rabble.

I look over my shoulder.

Glare.

“Freakin’ noisy.”

I say in a low, tense tone.

…

Hush~.

The silence over the square is deafening.

“…Narunaru’s glares really are something else.”

“Since she’s a former delinquent.”

Except for these two.

“You two loudmouths, hush over there! Geez, you don’t have to take them if you don’t want them, y’know. I should have dropped them all off with Goya.”

At that, Chie panicked, saying,

“Aaah! No, sorry! How much do you want for them?”

As we get down to business, the normal crowd noise resumes, though at a subtler, quieter level.

I ignore the “You think she’d really PK because we’re noisy?” and “I’m not taking the chance!”

… I make a mental note to ask Chie about my murder face later.

Anyway, Chie asked me about the price, huh? I look over the stack of 200+ tailor pelts. For about a second.

“How the hell should I know? The market prices aren’t known yet. Even if I wanted to rip you off since it’s stuff from the next area, there’s no precedent for how much more I should shoot for.”

This is… weird for the first two weeks of gameplay.

I mean, I didn’t notice since I was off in the overworld map, doing my own thing, but coming back to town…

“Damn, you all are totally slacking. The merchants don’t know the market price, the crafters don’t know how much their materials should cost, and everyone else hasn’t gotten far enough to have any coin worth talking about.”

I say, clicking my tongue in mild annoyance. Normally there’d be a functioning economy by the time I drop back in town.

“… Narunaru, you’re going to make a lot of enemies if you keep that up… well, you don’t care because you’d be all up for PvP, even if you’re in Beginner’s Armor.”

Kiriri sat on her heels and propped her face up, spectating as Chie and I discussed the materials I brought in.

“Anyway, that’s why you brought all this stuff to me instead of selling it to NPC vendors, right? To help the crafters help the players.”

Chie said, sorting through them herself with a sigh.

“Nonono, you’re thinking way too highly of me. So?”

“Oh, I don’t know either. There’s so much, and so many new materials… 5 gold most likely, since there are rare materials in here too.”

“…You can say 5g, but do you have it?”

I mean, I only just got 3g, and even if you say I haven’t been doing every single quest, that romp through the red rock ruins had me completing a lot of quests at once. I bet I’ve done more quests than most people.

It’s hard to amass a lot of wealth right away in this game as well as leveling.

I didn’t really notice it though, since there are some decent, but hard to get, rare item drops and all sorts of ways to get stronger. But because the game tracks your Avg Lv and shows platinum as a currency above gold, I’m sure there are a lot of players who are beginning to get impatient.

Gamers track numbers; imagine that.

“I do have 5 gold, but it will wipe me out… but here. I’ll give you 2, and make you armor worth 3 gold. I assume you want something lightweight?”

3 gold-!

You can almost hear the drool dripping from the players who are browsing the town square for equipment.

I have to ask.

“…Kiriri, what’s the highest equipment’s been going for?”

“About 100-200 silver is decent armor. 300 silver is kinda ritzy. I think a top ranker paid 800 silver.”

Right. Okay.

“Chie. Can you even figure out what 3g armor should be?”

“Yes. I know what I’m aiming for.”

She said it pretty confidently.

“… Alright then.”

Anything’s going to be better than what I have now, and apparently Chie’s right amongst the top of the tailor crafters.

“But will 3g armor eat up all the resources?”

“The 3g also includes prototypes, you know? Even if the trials are inferior to the armor I end up making you, I can probably still sell them, you know?”

Prototypes…

“So the crafting is that broad in this game that you have to make prototypes.”

“Well, yeah.”

I see. Then I guess I’ll just leave it all up to Chie, since I have no idea how any of this works.

… Hm? Come to think of it…

“Kiriri, were you going to do business with Chie? Sorry, I busted in.”

Kiriri tilted her head, giving her screenshot-perfect smile.

Then…

“No, isn’t this actually super awesome timing? Lucky! Now Kiriri can get armor made with new materials too~!”

Right. She was this kind of character.