Book 2, Chapter 94 (1/2)
Background(2)
And thus, Richard started to manufacture the goods he wanted to sell. He wanted to craft two strength runes that worked with magic crystals, the design even simpler than the one he gave Stormhammer while the amplification was controlled to 15%. They took up four hours of his time, costing roughly 2000 coins total. A single magic crystal could activate these runes ten times.
It was a particularly busy night for Olar as well. The elven bard was busy embedding two magic boxes with rubies. Elves were famed for their aesthetic ability, and Olar was no different.
Although embedding more rubies into the box wouldn’t enhance the runes within in any way, Richard had still made him embed more than a thousand gold’s worth of rubies into the boxes. The bard was initially confused about this, but once Richard explained the purpose of these rubies that turned into intense adoration.
Since runecrafting hadn’t been discovered before in Faelor, Richard believed that they lacked an impartial standard for how much a single rune would cost. The stronger and closer to their limit a person was, the more valuable runes became. The magical boxes were actually for the sake of the buyers, who’d never seen a rune before. If even the boxes used to store these runes were worth over a thousand coins, whatever was within would definitely be worth much more.
Early morning the next day, Amon sent someone over with a letter inviting Richard to lunch. It was at a venue not far from the hotel, known for its unique dishes and tribal flavours.
Outside of Amon, the rest of the shopkeepers from the street were attending as well. There was also an obese, sly-looking businessman called Devon and an old man named Kellac who Richard had never met before.
Devon introduced himself as the leader of the Golden Warflag’s contingent in Bluewater Oasis, and a member of the Bluewater Council. Of everyone present here, he had the highest rank. Kellac was a high-ranking member of the Demon Hunting Spears, a group of adventurers, slavers, and mercenaries. Even though they were only a few hundred strong, each was extremely skilled in battle. Since they weren’t a large group, they were swift and flexible, a group that the larger merchant groups did not wish to offend. Others hired them for jobs they didn’t want to make public, like exterminating a rival.
Everyone greeted each other once they entered the meeting, exchanging compliments and sounding each other out. Of course, Richard didn’t manage to get any new information, but that was the same for everyone else. Everyone here, young or old, was a cautious and sly fox. Perhaps Richard’s age made him less mature than the rest, but his caution did not lose out. He kept certain matters extremely well-hidden as he spoke, not allowing any information about his background to leak.
However, who amongst those present was ordinary? Without Richard needing to mention it, his bearing, knowledge, age, level, and following already indicated what sort of person he was. Had he been thirty years old he would not be worthy of everyone’s time, but at the age of sixteen or seventeen any smart person wouldn’t be willing to provoke him senselessly. Everyone present had many thoughts in their hearts, some even guessing that Richard had the backing of both a Marquess-level family and someone of legendary might.
Their guesses were quite close to the truth, except for two things— His background was far greater than even their boldest imaginations, and his legendary backer wasn’t even from this plane.
Once the pleasantries were done with, everyone got down to business. Kellac was the first to express interest in buying the scrolls; he wanted every scroll on offer. He would pay ten gold for a grade 1 scroll, 30 for a grade 2, and tripling again with every next grade. This was a fair price as long as one talked about the more common scrolls that were grade 5 or below. Any grade 6 scroll could easily cost more than 10,000 gold, while anything above couldn’t be bought even if money was not an issue.