Somewhere in the forest, a group consisting of six people is wandering around searching for food or anything edibles.

Among them, a male with a black mop-top hair, pair of sunken black eyes, and visibly dark circles under the eyes is muttering ominous thing under his breath over and over again.

"We're gonna die. We surely gonn-"

"Oh shut up! No one is going to die for fuck sake!" a woman snapped, her frustration evident.

"Be patient with him Aisha, El hasn't slept for more than a day" A burly man replied to the woman.

"Ugh! I know! I know! fucking hell.. I just.. you know, we're trying our best looking for food and shelter. Yet he keeps saying ominous things for the past two hours!" Aisha said, exasperated.

"Don't be to hard on her garnt, you know that she got a valid point" Said a disheveled looking man.

"Look, I get your point but we can't blame him. There's no way he can predicted to get thrown into a death game called "tutorial," if he somehow can guess it, he'll not end up like this" Garnt said, looking straight at the group.

Before being transported into the tutorial, they had a sleepover at a friend's house. They were college students, with Garnt being the oldest and Aisha the youngest. They had planned to play Dungeons & Dragons all night, but two hours into the session, they fell asleep from snacking too much. Garnt and El stayed up all night playing a random sandbox game, but as morning came, they both felt a sudden drowsiness and passed out.

"You know, Garnt," a chubby man joined the conversation, "didn't the system heal our bodies and minds to put us in the most optimal condition before we arrived here?"

Before Garnt could respond, El suddenly freaked out.

"I smell food! food! We're safe! We're-"

Aisha, being the one nearest to El, clamped her hand over his mouth.

"Shut the fuck up! You will alert the monster nearby!"

"Mpfh! Mph!!" Muffled, El started to flail around like a fish out of water.

The group ignored El flailing, they're more concerned when they heard Aisha last statement and immediately they took their battle stance with a frowned expression on their face, preparing for any beast that might emerge because of the commotion. They stand in formation, tensely holding the weapon on their hand. A few minutes passed, nothing happened. The group showed collectively confused expression on their face.

"Look guys, i don't want to jinx it but I think.. we're safe, for now at least." The chubby looking man said with a hint of hesitant tone, breaking the silence.

"We can't let our guard down yet, if we're careless even for a moment we're dead meat" Garnt said, scanning the surroundings vigilantly.

The reason why Garnt being so vigilant is because their group had been attacked continuously by some rabbit monster and a few hostile survivor for the past five hours. Garnt being the oldest one in the group, felt a sense of responsibility to protect the group so he tried to be as vigilant as possible in case some threat decided to ambush them again.

"Can't we just knocked him out? We can't stop everytime this happen" Aisha asked the group in a low voice.

The group fell into silence once again. When their friend El started to freak out around two hours ago, they thought of this solution but none of them can do it. Garnt is the first one to refuse to do it even though his punch can knock out an average person, the reason why is because he can't control his strength just yet so it's a no go, and as for the rest of them, they either lack the strength or technique to do it properly.

"Wait guys did you smell that? It's smells like roasted meat" This time the disheveled looking man is the one who broke the silence.

Aisha upon hearing this immediately snap her head at him and said:

"Did you also gone crazy Patrick? We're in the middle of unknown forest! There's no such thing as-" She stopped mid-sentence, her nose catching the scent of roasted meat.

The group look at each other for a few seconds and nodded, confirming they also smelled the same thing.

"It seems there's a shelter or a camp nearby let's approach it, perhaps we can ask them for help." Garnt said and finally put the sword on its sheath.

The group voiced no objections and moved toward the source of the smell. Soon, they saw a small camp.

Near a campfire, a man was roasting meat on a stick. He had disheveled short dark hair, brown eyes, light brown skin, and wore a bloodied leather tunic.

The group begin to approach the man slowly and carefully, just in case the man in front of them is a murderer or will suddenly turn hostile.

The group approached cautiously, wary of a potential threat. When they were ten meters away, the man looked up, smiled, and waved.

"Welcome fellow survivor! What're ya trading? I got some good stuff here, feel free to take a look!" The man said warmly and cheerfully.

The group stopped and looked at each other, the looks in their eyes showed a sense of bewilderment about this weird situation they found themselves into, the man in front of them is looking really suspicious from the way he's acting. Who in their right mind starting a trading business in a forest filled with monsters?

Stolen story; please report.

They decided to carefully form a plan in case things goes awry. After a few moments passed, one of the group member steps forward and greet the suspicious man.

~~~

"Hello, is this your camp?" The woman ask.

She had brown hair in a ponytail style, green eyes, and wore a slightly tattered dark blue cloak. Her posture was tense, almost in a battle stance, with her hands hovering close to the daggers on her hips. Sam mentally shook his head and replied.

"Calm yourself down fellow survivor. I'm not looking for a fight, I'm just here to trade my stuff, and yes this is my camp." Sam said to the wary woman in front of him, still wearing a smile on his face.

"How can we know you're not trying to harm us using this "trade" of yours?" The woman retorted.

"Me? Harm you? With a bunch of meat? Are you crazy? You're the one who came here uninvited, I should be the one asking you that." Sam said, clearly bewildered.

"There are many ways, don't think we're stupid. Who knows if you're intentionally luring some "fellow survivor" here and ambush them or even tried to poison them using food" The woman scoffed.

"Listen here lady, whatever things you're thinking or your group guess is not true. I will say this once again, I'm just a man looking to trade with other survivors, if you don't to trade feel free to leave." Sam replied , dropping his cheerful tone.

"Alright, prove it then. Call your friends out from their hiding spots, and I'll believe you," She challenged.

"What are these "friends" you're talking about? It's just me here, i'm alone in this camp. There's no friends or ally hiding here." Sam said, frustration creeping into his tone.

"Ha! I don't believe you. How can you explain all of these meat then, are you gonna tell me you obtain it by yourself? Don't be delusional." The woman said, glaring at Sam.

"I hunt all of these meat all by myself, if you don't believe me I don't care. Now either you leave or trade, your choice." Sam said, while looking straight into her eyes.

The woman met Sam gaze and flinched for a moment to the point she's about to reflexively draw her daggers, but fortunately she stopped herself the moment she felt the daggers handle on her grip. She close her eyes and took a deep breath, seemingly trying to calm herself down. When she calmed down, she opened her eyes and calmly said:

"Alright then, let's trade. What's your offer?"

"I'm offering you food for equipment" Sam flatly said.

Her eyes widened in surprise by the utter ridiculousness, "Are you insane? Food for equipment? Why don't you go rob someone else huh?"

"Once again I don't care, take it or leave it the choice is yours. Oh, you can choose the meat by the way, I got raw meat and meat jerky." Sam replied, ignoring her insult.

The woman didn't immediately reply. She seemed deep in thought, then headed back to her group. They backed away a few meters from the camp. Although Sam couldn’t hear their discussion, he could see it was lively.

~~~

"So? What's the situation?" A disheveled man asked Aisha.

"Basically, even though he's looking really suspicious i'm sure we can strike a deal with him. There's a bit of an issue though" Aisha said to the group.

"What issue?" Garnt replied.

"...he offered us food in exchange of equipment." Aisha said, sounding a bit irritated.

"Is he crazy? Why don't he just rob us then? This is ridiculous!" The disheveled man exclaimed, clearly fuming.

"Calm down. Even though it sounds ridiculous, this might be the only chance we can get supplies." Garnt said, patting the disheveled man on the shoulder.

"But Garnt, this offer is not fair. If we give him our equipment in exchange for food, we're basically running the forest around naked." A looking chubby man added.

"I know, that's why I will negotiate with the man regarding the offer from now on." Garnt said.

With that, Garnt turned and walked toward the man.

"I assumed your little discussion is over, so what's the decision?" The man asked.

"Let's negotiate about the offer" Garnt said.

"Sure, let's hear you out" the man said, busy roasting meat over the campfire.

"How much meat are you willing to give us?"

"Depends on your offer, if you're offering a sword I will give you 10 kilograms of meat, and yes you can choose the type of meat between raw meat and meat jerky."

Garnt frowned. Ten kilograms of meat might sound like a lot, but with six people, it wouldn't last long.

"...20 kilograms of meat and I will give you my sword"

"20 kilograms? Are you insane?? Why don't you rob someone else then? The best I can offer you is 15 kilograms for your sword."

"I think it's a fair price don't you think?."

"Fair price my ass. 15 kilograms, take it or leave it."

"How about 18 kilograms?"

"No."

"Hrmm 17 kilograms and we offer you our help to killed some monster how about that?"

"I can do these all of things myself, so no."

At this moment in time Garnt racking his brain trying to give the meat dealer a good offer in exchange for some meat, however, it seems like there's nothing Garnt could offer to the man in front of him. Trading his sword for some meat is already a heavy loss.

~~~

Sam observing the burly man in front of him wondered, 'i wondered what's going on inside his head, oh well not my problem. All it matters is that now, I'm a step closer to my initial plan.'

Seeing Garnt growing more stressed, Sam decided to swiftly take his chance.

"Alright man how about this, give me a sword and a single dagger then I will give you 30 kilograms of meat, how about that?"

Garnt looked at Sam and didn't reply immediately, thinking hard about the offer.

"I'll discuss this with my group for a moment. I’ll be right back," Garnt said, turning around without giving Sam a chance to reply.

Sam watched the group discussion from afar and saw the female rogue throwing a tantrum. Satisfied with the scene, he turned back to his cooking with an amused expression. A few moments later, Garnt returned with a single dagger in hand.

"Here's the sword and dagger, now it's your turn to bring the meat."

"Excellent, what type of meat do you want? The raw meat or the meat jerky?"

"Meat jerky"

"Alright, you can take the meat jerky on your left, it's in a skin sack, you can't miss it."

"You sure I can take it myself? I might took way more than original amount we agreed upon."

"Nah don't worry, I said that because you can take the whole thing. That sack weigh around 30 kilograms. Oh and before you do that leaves the sword and dagger here first." Sam said while smiling.

"...Sigh, alright" The burly man said and put the sword and dagger on the ground.

The burly man then walk toward the skin sack and check the content, he tried to eyeball the weight by lifting it up and down. Seemingly satisfied the man walk towards his group and left without words.

Upon seeing this, Sam shrugged and shake his head, "well that was something. It sure is a good first trade experience for me, I don't know about them though haha."

When he saw the group for the first time he had hope to get a sword by offering them 20 kilograms of meat, but when they sent the woman to negotiate with Sam he decided to be petty, not because it's a woman but because she's being so rude in their first encounter, so yeah no more Mr nice merchant.

"A group consisting a rogue, two caster, one warrior, and one healer, a pretty basic lineup. But there's one thing bugging me though, I wonder why some of them seems to talk with someone or something behind the sickly looking guy. Meh whatever not my business."

Unknowingly, the seemingly innocent choice Sam made that day by ignoring this weird phenomenon will soon make him regret by not doing anything at this point in time.

At the Same time, without Sam knowing, everytime he made a trade with someone, his reputation in the forest started to spread far and wide due to words of mouth among many survivors as time passes by. At some point the news reached an unknown group in unknown part of the forest.

"Meat Dealer you say? How dare he started his filthy business on our territory. Let's pay this dirty rat a visit and have a "nice conversation" with us."