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Volume 8 Chapter 3 Part 4

「Even though I can most definitely expect that weapon to be sold out immediately with multiple people aiming for it?」

「Even if you fail, you can always look for other weapons. Should you decide to switch to a different weapon after all, I can search for weapons that are going to be even better than The Holy Spear.」

「I see.」

「Before engaging in bidding war, you should also better evaluate if the price is high or not, in my opinion. The thing that can definitely be said now is that the Baradam family thinks that The Holy Spear is going to be sold for a lot of money, and that is why they are doing everything in their power to ensure the selling of that one weapon is going to be as big of a success as possible.」

That sounds like a reasonable plan, but… can we really be sure that the Baradam family came up with such a well thought-out story? Because if you asked me, then it would be more probable that the family that was on the brink of collapse so much that they had to sell most of their equipment would not have the luxury of thinking ahead with anything when the proverbial knives are right against their throats.

But is selling one Holy Spear really solve all of their financial problems? Shouldn’t they try to fuse more of them? Maybe they should, but such a solution has one fundamental problem: Although the raw materials remain even if 「Monster Skill Crystal Fusion」fails, there’s no guarantee that the fusion is going to be a successful one, which makes every attempt at fusing weapons with Skill Crystals a hazardrous endeavor? And what if the fusion fails and the remade weapon is going to be worse than the original?

Now if it were us, then  I don’t think it would have ended up as a failure now that we have been succeeding with Sherry’s fusions for a few times in a row. After all, the success of fusion is based on luck. If you can’t identify Empty Skill Slots via 「Identify」, that is. Now that I have access to that Skill, we no longer have to worry about guessing if equipment has Empty Skill Slots in it or not.

「What about Skill Crystals? Do you think they’re also going to be featured on the auction? And if so, would, let’s say, Scissoresque Carnivorous Plant Skill Crystal be available at around six thousand Nars?」

The topic of the conversation has once again changed.

「Could you get it then?」

「That all depends on the business pattern and the participating bidders, but generally speaking, you can only be sure of one thing: that no matter what happens, the price of the Monster Skill Crystal is definitely going to be high. I think that six thousand six hundred Nars might be the minimum here.」

*Sigh* If I knew that we were going to talk business instead of having just a friendly chatter, I would’ve come here with an entirely different mindset. And that price… I think that Sherry was right after all: the middlemen cannot be trusted.

However, there can be no doubt that the Scissoresque Carnivorous Plant Skill Crystal is definitely going to be useful, so it might be worth it to get my hands on it, since when I fuse it with Kobold Skill Crystal, it’s going to give me the 「MP Absorption Skill」, and since I now tend to use magic more and more often, then having more weapons that can recover my MP in a reliable way would not be an unwelcome thing in the slightest, even though it might be a little bit of a bummer if the efficiency of the fighting with that other weapon with 「MP Absorption」might decrease due to it not being as strong as Durandal currently is.

「Also, you might want to know that in the case of the auctions, you don’t have to pay the usual fee even if don’t manage to get anything that you wanted from the auction, so I think that such an arrangement should be quite beneficial for you.」

Every time I ask Luke to make a bid for something, I am also charged with a commission fee which is five hundred Nars. But he’s saying that I won’t have to pay it if I commission him to get something from the auction. So that means that as long as the price of the Scissoresque Carnivorous Plant Skill Crystal doesn’t go above six thousand Nars, it would be a better deal than buying it normally where I would have to pay not only six thousand Nars, but also the five hundred Nars fee, so such a price is actually pretty competitive….

No, wait, it’s not like that at all. Hang in there Michio, and don’t be fooled!

The reason why the price for that Skill Crystal exceeds six thousand Nars is because there are people bidding for it. Without that, the normal market price of the  should be much lower.

In other words, if only you go and wait for a bit, then you might be getting that Skill Crystal at a much cheaper price, so there’s no need for me to be placing a bid for a Skill Crystal that might cost six thousand and six hundred Nars.

Yes, that’s true, there’s definitely no doubt about it. Hah, and to think that I have almost fell for such classic blunder! No wonder that Sherry is so wary of each and every broker. They might act all nice and friendly, but the truth is that they are all shrewd businessmen at heart. What a shrewd and cunning tactic!

Well, if that is how it’s going to be, then I guess that I don’t have to get in on that deal at all, since it’s definitely not profitable enough for me.

Now, since I don’t actually know when there’s going to be the next time when the Scissoresque Carnivorous Plant Skill Crystal is going to be available to me, if I wanted to get it as soon as possible I could opt to get if for a few thousand more Nars extra, but like I said, that’s an option only if I wanted to get my hands on it urgently. And since its’ not urgent, then there’s no need for me to go for it, especially since I still have Durandal and it’s still doing its job perfectly. And besides…

To most people a difference of just a thousand or two thousand Nars might not be such a huge deal, but to me it is definitely a big one. That, and also the fee of five hundred Nars. So as you can see, going for it at the auction might really be a bad deal for me at the end of the day.

「In any case, if you’re planning to fuse the Scissoresque Carnivorous Plant Skill Crystal together with the Kobold Skill Crystal, I could get both of those for you and then you would buy them from me at the same time. How about it?」

「At the same time you say?  And what would the price be?」

「The price for the Scissoresque Carnivorous Plant Skill Crystal would be six thousand six hundred Nars, and the price for the Kobold Skill Crystal would be five thousand four hundred Nars.」

「I see. The fee for dropping the Kobold Skill Crystals at the auction should be enough to make you buy them a lot cheaper.」

I was wondering if the price of the Kobold Skill Crystal stayed at the level of five thousand four hundred Nars, but thankfully Luke has stated that for me without me actually having to say anything.

That being said, even with all of the remarks he just made, I have to wonder if he really has a reliable way of obtaining those Skill Crystals as cheaply as possible? I guess it all ultimately boils down to the question of how much money he himself is going to be making from that transaction.

「Hmm, I wonder what should I do here?」

「Of course, I won’t force you to make a decision right now, especially since I cannot give you any guarantees as to the possibility of obtaining said Skill Crystals. Still, I think that this direction is the one in which we should be heading.」

If that means that you can get your hands on those Skill Crystals cheaply, then sure, why not. If Luke also decides to make a bid for the Kobold Skill Crystal at the auction, then I wonder if he’s going to be able to win it this time as well?

It would be great if he could, but I won’t be holding my breath here.