The setup for working as a skill broker was relatively simple. Elise sat in a closed booth, with a hole on the side just large enough for an arm. With the help of another guild employee, adventurers looking to buy or sell skills would place their hand in the hole, allowing Elise to use Skill Transfer without revealing her identity. Just in case she wanted to talk, Leon had also provided her with a skill-tech mouthpiece that changed her voice. It was helpful, as Elise there were a few moments when Elise had to talk during the process.
When the first adventurer came in, Elise was a bit nervous about the whole ordeal. She wasn’t sure why, but sometimes nerves were just like that, inexplicable. From inside the booth, she could hear the receptionist talking to the adventurer.
“Hello miss, are you buying or selling a skill today?”
“I’m selling.”
“Excellent, and what skill are you selling?”
“Raise Flowers, rank D.”
“The going rate for that skill is... let me see...” Elise could hear pages turning, which she assumed was the receptionist flipping through the guild’s current going rate for skills. They could be haggled, but generally that happened in the case of buying, not selling. In this instance, the adventurer seemed to be okay with the cost evaluation, and Elise heard footsteps as they headed towards her booth. A woman’s hand appeared through the hole, and Elise grabbed it gently to begin activating her skill.
> Transfer skill from Target to Self
> Transfer skill from Self to Target
Elise selected the first option this time, and had to wait for the woman on the other side of the wall to confirm with her own interface, before another message popped up for Elise.
Begin Transfer of [ |D| Raise Flowers ] from Target to Self?
The skill name the woman had selected matched what Elise had heard her say before, but just to be safe Elise asked for verbal confirmation that they were indeed about to transfer the correct skill.
“You’re selling D rank Raise Flowers, correct?” Elise asked.
“That’s right,” the woman responded, so Elise accepted the option on her interface and let the skill begin its work. Like before, the energy of the skill traveled in a glowing ball from the woman to Elise, situating itself as a new entry in Elise’s skill tome.
“Transfer complete,” Elise said after double checking the entry to make sure it was accurate. The woman pulled her hand away and walked back to the receptionist to get paid. Elise wasn’t sure how much the skill sold for, but it likely wasn’t much. D rank skills were a dime a dozen, especially those specific to a single profession. There were some skills that were low rank but useful to everyone and thus always in high demand, and those tended to sell decently well. Elise guessed that she’d be getting very few skills like that today, and that most skills would be adventurers offloading whatever initial non-combat they’d gotten from the system.
Technically though, Elise wasn’t actually ‘getting’ the skills. The guild had full rights over the skills and could sell or trade them as they pleased, Elise was simply the medium for storing and transferring the skills. The guild were also the one’s putting up the gold to buy skills from adventurers, and they would be the ones making most of the profit whenever someone wanted to buy a skill from her tome. Fortunately, the commission Elise received for skill sales was quite generous, so when people started coming to buy skills she’d be raking in even more.
Elise wouldn’t have to worry about anyone coming in to buy skills just yet. Since her position as the guilds skill broker had just started, there wasn’t a catalog of skills she had available for adventures to buy. She was sure that after today, once they logged all the skills adventurers had sold to the guild, there’d be a decent amount of interest from people who wanted to buy. The exact amount of interest depended on the rarity and rank of the skills that were being sold today, and after the first few adventurers, Elise thought the only skills she’d be storing were borderline useless D rank skills. She waited eagerly for someone with an interesting skill to show up, listening closely everytime a new customer entered the room.
“Hello mister, are you buying or selling a skill today?”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“Sellin’”
“Great! And what skill will you be selling?”
Every conversation started out the same. The first question the receptionist asked was honestly pointless, since people were only selling this first day. The responses for which skills people were selling continued to bore Elise, to the point where she started trying to guess based on accent what skills each person was trying to sell.
This person sounds gruff, I bet the system gave them a butcher skills they wanna get rid of. Something like ‘dry meat’ or ‘spice meat’.
“I’m tryna sell a D rank Remove Splinters.”
Dang, I was way off. And why is he selling that skill? It’s not strong, sure, but it sure would be nice to have. I bet the guild’s willing to pay quite a bit for that, even at D rank.
Sure enough, the receptionist quoted a sizable offer for the skill, the largest of the day. Elise couldn’t tell but she guessed the man was pleased by the amount he was getting, based on the fact that he accepted and walked over to the booth to perform the transfer.
I hope somebody’s got a C rank skill they’re selling. Or a weak combat skill that I could buy. That was another benefit of being a skill broker. While other adventurers would have to wait until the next day to buy any skills that popped up, and then compete with other adventurers to win the bidding war, Elise had first dibs on any skills that showed up. She’d still have to pay the going rate, which was always more than what the guild had bought the skill for, but if there was some skill that she needed for crafting recipes, she’d be more than willing to spend. Unfortunately, it seemed like she’d have to wait a while for any such skills to show up.
“I’m selling Heat Water, rank D”
That skill’s only good for making tea. I’ll pass.
“I’d like to sell my D rank Befriend Animal.”
Never been much of an animal person myself. Pass.
“D rank Aim Arrow.”
Oh, finally something useful in combat. It’s an archery skill though, I don’t remember seeing any good skill recipes for archer in the book. I’ll have to check with Leon again.
“C rank Hammer”
A C rank skill! And a mighty versatile one at that. Could use it as a blacksmith, carpenter, honestly even adventures could use it as a pretty simple offensive skill. That’s another one to look into.
“I want to sell my B rank Thundershock skill.”
Elise froze. She hadn’t even considered the possibility of someone selling a skill that high rank. Who would do that? She could maybe understand selling a skill if it was specific to a profession you didn’t have or care to have, but then that begged the question of how you got the skill in the first place. Did you rank up your skill to B, then quit your job? It didn’t make sense. And even crazier, the skill was Thundershock! That was a fairly powerful offensive skill, and basically any adventurer would be glad to have it in their arsenal. The only reason she could think of for selling it would be if your skill slots were already full of other, better skills, and you needed to free up a slot for something else, say, a B rank skill crystal that you just got from a monster. Still, it was certainly a rare situation, and Elise would have to see about buying it once she was done. It was sure to be expensive; on her old instructor salary, a single B rank skill would be a year's worth of work. Now that she was a skill broker though, she’d be able to afford it.
The transfer of the B rank skill went the same as all the others, and Elise couldn’t help but stare at the new entry in her skill tome. She definitely had to check with Leon if it could be used in any recipes, because she was sure that if she didn’t buy it now, it would be swept up first thing tomorrow.
The rest of the skill brokerage session went as expected. At level 1, Skill Transfer gave her a skill tome with capacity 100. Leon had accordingly allowed up to a hundred adventurers to sign up to sell their skills, and around forty had taken the offer. Each transfer from start to finish took a couple minutes, and even though there were a few outliers with people complaining about getting a low ball offer for their skill and attempting to haggle on the price, the whole process was done in a couple hours. Elise wanted to go straight to Leon’s office to look at the list of skill recipes, but the guildmaster was busy, so instead she went over her mental todo list.
The first thing Elise realized is that she still hadn’t handed in the quest for yesterday. She did that first, heading down to the guild’s main hall and seeking the same receptionist who’d helped her pick out the quest in the first place. Handing in the quest was fairly straightforward: Elise returned the compass she’d been lent as well as the spare monster finders, then showed the location on a map where the goblin den had been found. After a quick check with Detect Lies, she was given her reward, a relatively small sum compared to her skill brokerage income, but every little bit helped. Especially when she considered her next goal.
She’d put it off for a day now, which was far too long in her opinion. Her sword was fine, but it could use some upgrades, and there was plenty of defensive clothing she’d like to have before embarking on another quest. Plus, her coin pouch was starting to get heavy, so she might as well lighten it while she had the time. Elise beelined for the shopping district, ready to go on a spree.