The Hunter's Guide to Monsters

Redlands didn't have land ownership.

Not for another six months, anyway. Most players rented and leased.

But there were two buildings that were the exception: a warehouse, a workshop. They were currently the only two properties available for player sale and purchase.

Krow tapped and flicked at the layers of items he was now going through.

Starfall Tunic. Starfall Trousers.

Of all the things to sell, why the ones that didn't take up an equip slot?

New players were that hard up for money?

There weren't a lot; maybe a dozen on the kingdom market all told, selling for 3-10 drax.

Of course no one bought. 

The top players were barely earning 50 drax a day at this point.

He gestured the [Exiled Seafarer's Bracers] closer, bought it.

45k drax. He now needed 5k more to gain access to the Bourse, the Infinity Catalogue.

Who knew how many players in the whole of Redlands were even now throwing away their starting gear? 

"Weapons. Add Starfall gear."

Weapon after weapon appeared in the holoframe.

Whoa.

Of the draculkar players alone, there were hundreds replacing their starting weapons and selling them.

Enchantable, levelable weapons, hundreds of them, from various battleclasses.

Most costing less than twenty drax each.

Even at those prices people currently thought it was extortionate. Who'd buy starting gear? Only a fool.

He glanced at his post-vault, grimaced. As a Silver Token member of Orddet's, he had 500 slots. Unfortunately, they didn't stack items.

How many towns and cities were there in the draculkar kingdom, anyway? Maybe if he bought enough, every town would pile the items in crates rather than individual packages before delivering to Krow's trade-vault?

Kingdom accounts had to deal with delivery fees, so he reserved 10,000 drax for that.

Then set up public buy-orders for every Starfall weapon and item possible. The Orddet's branches in various locations would gather the items to fill the buy-orders before delivering.

A couple thousand of the things would only make a semi-massive dent in his current budget. Less by far than the Bracer's cost anyway.

When Yhulanve entered the room with a soft knock, Krow was standing, his arms crossed, and watching as players lowered their prices to match the public buy-orders that had been announced to the kingdom catalogue. 

He'd qualified for the Infinity Catalogue and the Bourse already, as four hundred items and rising were earmarked for him by the system.

There were so many that he'd transferred 1000 ecru from his living expenses to support the order. That was another 100,000 drax.

It felt a little like excitement, a little like disbelief, as he watched the numbers rise.

It felt like, what was he doing?

He wasn't planning on learning Enchantment for at least two months. He also needed ethermica cubes or ethermica dust to level up an item without spirit-binding it.

Ethermica, a crystalline material colored ice-blue and lavender, currently, went by 10 drax per fist-sized cube in the Bourse. He had buy-orders for that too.

He was pouring out cash by the buckets for this, and wouldn't see profit for months on months.

Not to mention, his living expenses budget was now down to the 600 ecru or so that was his whole bank account. That meant he'd need a realworld job in three months if his hunting couldn't become profitable.

He'd experienced something close to poverty. 

It couldn't be called poverty, what with his refusal to sell the apartment he was still considered a property-owner.

He'd nearly starved himself for that apartment, the memories within. Even preserving the shkav-ridden furniture!

Obsessed with the past.

He never wanted to be that close to starving again.

But these numbers….

Now he was seemingly throwing away everything. His fingers drummed agitatedly on his crossed arm, eyes a little frenzied behind the blankness as he stared at the orders that were filling, the numbers that were ticking down.

He probably should look away. Armor. He should check the armors again, now that he had a greater selection in the Bourse. The accessories and Spells too.

He couldn't look away.

"I have your Tradebook." There was something odd in Yhulanve's measured tone. Alarm? Concern?

Who would know, her face was as ever like stone.

"Thanks," Krow mentally gripped his thundering heart, ordering it to calm down, and prodded his brain into working. Space! That's right, he needed space. "Orddet's doesn't sell deeds?"

"We can assess property, and yes, we handle deeds." She placed the Tradebook on an end-table near the door. Not moving closer. "But here, by the Cyzar's laws we can't deal in property sales. You'll have to check the Kingdom Realty for that."

He blinked. "What?"

That was a thing? He knew he bought his first warehouse in Zushkenar off the Catalogues. But the local markets here in Nyurajke didn't have the familiar roster of deeds.

"The Cyzar likes to keep his lands in draculkar hands." An unreadable smile briefly curved Yhulanve's lips. "And Orddet's is not a draculkar business, as it has its roots in several other nations. The Kingdom Realty is the only public agency allowed to buy and sell property in the Cyzar's domain. Private sales and transfers of deeds are of course allowed, provided the buyer is draculkar. Only the low borderlands can be sold in freehold to outsiders."

What.

Okay, there was obviously something he was missing.

He remembered very clearly Gojo saying he sold his city estate to a crazy mafmet before he then bunked from the draculkar highlands entirely. One of the rare few moments where there was time to laze about, and people were telling stories in the dying light of afternoon.

There were no draculkar cities in the borderlands.

This was true in both game and game-made-real.

Obviously there were differences between the game and real Zushkenar.

How much of his memories were actually applicable to Redlands?

He glanced at the holo, anxiety again threatening to overwhelm.

He breathed slowly, rhythmically.

"Thanks for the clarification," he forced a smile at Yhulanve. "I suppose I'll return here to sign something designating which warehouse to take the vault overflow?"

"You can do that by entering the warehouse number and address into your records using any terminal."

Krow glanced at the tradebook. "Speaking of which…"

"In all, 1500 drax will take care of everything."

Ah, there was the gouging he expected. He only paid 100 drax to upgrade his Bronze Token before. And a tradebook…actually he bought an old one from Craftmaster Ortholian.

It was easier to earn money in Redlands.

He paid.

"If there is nothing else?"

Krow shook his head.

"It is my understanding that you've not been in Nyurajke long."

"Not two hours."

"Then I wonder. You seem to have made yourself interesting to someone." Yhulanve bowed briefly. "Welcome to Orddet's, Ilas Krow. May we prosper eternal."

The portiere dropped as she left, the embroidered cloth swayed slightly before stilling from the activation of the security measures.

Krow walked to the doorway, his fingers touching the cloth softened it again. Boldly, he walked out, stretched imaginary kinks in his muscles, turning this way and that with brief calisthenics.

Aha, yes, there were a couple of people eyeing him. There was only calculation in their gazes. Before they could move, Krow finished twisting his waist here and there, and returned to the private room casually.

They were loitering at all access points to the gallery.

He had a feeling he'd be tailed to his visiting-house.

He already knew something like this could happen, but Yhulanve's warning was appreciated.

Krow took up the Tradebook as he passed.

Tradebooks were portable trade terminals. They weren't 'books' precisely, but a metal and crystal tablet protected by a book-like cover.

He opened the Tradebook. It was a single slab, with a recessed area for the Trade Token.

He placed it in his Inventory.

He waved away the buy-orders, leaving them to continue running in a corner. He'd capped their allocated funds at 100,000 drax in any case.

Because of Stormglide, his MND was in fact the most important. As a rank-six spell, it needed at least 500MP to activate.

He only had half that, with 19 MND. 

Krow eyed the items in the holo, face slowly falling.

To have 500MP at his level, he needed 41 MND.

With an Aptitude of 11, that was still lower than what others needed to gain 500MP.

But still!

With the cheapest +12 MND item in the Bourse costing 85,000 drax, he'd spend practically all his game money just for Stormglide!

What about his armor and Spells?

Gah.

This was like being gifted a car, then realizing your license expired five years ago and then being told at the licensing office that there'd been new policy and road laws since then, and because of that you need to retake driving lessons, both theory and practical, for three months. Of course, you had to pay for everything yourself.

Krow exhaled a long breath.

Cars were really expensive, huh?

The cheapest +12 MND item was [Whisker Necklace]. It was cheaper by 20,000 drax from the next cheapest MND item. Krow suspected it was because it was…well, it was ugly.

He test-equipped it.

A life-size figure of him appeared in the holo, feet and thighs sunk into the table surface.

Krow laughed at the bursting mass of bristling hair around his neck, like he had a gristled white beard on his jawline and hair was growing out of his neck.

Horrifying.

It didn't go with the lean youthfulness of his draculkar avatar at all.

He gestured to a mask he had on watchlist and added it to the test-equip holo.

Not very much changed. But at least this way, people didn't know the face of the person who'd wear bushy scraggy hair under his chin?

He spied a gorget-necklace, one of the larger ones.

Hm.

He added it, curious.

A smirk grew under the mask. That didn't look so bad, actually. The gorget hid some of the lower neck hair.

If he added a particular style of studded leather pauldrons, ones that were layered and bulked a bit higher at the neckline…he took a random set from his watchlist.

He grinned. It looked like he was wearing furry armor instead of a beard.

The white even went with his gloves

He tilted his neck side to side, up and down.

Not bad?

Eh, who cared.

Did he join this game for a beauty contest?

He waved everything away, and decisively bought the [Whisker Necklace]. 

He also bought a gorget necklace in dark grey and white. No armor capability, but with a pretty nice HP recovery.

Add his watchlisted [Dusk Illusion Mask Earclips] and just those three items was 100k down.

He had to look a little harder to find a pauldron set he could buy, but soon the grade A+ Rare [Lightless Kraken-skin Pauldrons] joined his soon-to-be armor set at the cost of 58k drax. It was a shadow item, which was all the better. 

The moonlight pearl inlays that accented the pauldrons were concerning, but Krow didn't worry about it long since the pauldrons were classed as stealth equipment.

Whoever made the water-aligned [Seeping Coral Greaves] was kind enough to include knee protection.

He got the air-aligned [Mindflayer's Belt] for its MP-recovery and floral-aligned [Bonewood Gauntlets] to replace the [Plague Doctor's Gauntlets] he was still wearing. The new gauntlets were white, which he only realized after buying them for the +6 VIT.

After those purchases, Krow had to replenish his account with drax from his inventory to buy the [Firecoil Spell Scroll] [3 Rank], [Double Jump Spell Scroll] [2 Rank], and the [Shadowbind Spell Scroll][3 Rank] – all costing a total of 28,000 drax.

He wanted to buy [Shadowbind II Spell Scroll] [5 Rank], which was the mastery upgrade for the rank-three Shadowbind spell, but he now had less than 50k drax left for the warehouse.

That had to be enough. A warehouse….there was literally nothing in it, right?

How could it be as expensive as armor?

He retrieved his Silver Trade Token from the terminal, walked to the balcony and breathed.

His items would take a day of delivery, according to the system. As for the buy-orders, they'd keep buying until the 100,000 drax ran out.

No need to stress for now.

No stress at all.

Krow breathed.

He rested his arms on the balustrade, eyed the space below the balcony.

Orddet's was on the very edge of the floating platform. There was a hanging bridge that ran under said platform, and  below that, about thirty meters below where he was, actual ground. 

Satisfied, he straightened, took out a grapple-hook, and vaulted into free fall.

*

End Chapter

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