The name of the buyer did ring a bell, but I quickly dismissed it. I had probably seen it as a buyer over the past few weeks. That wasn’t really important. What was important was putting down an even bigger purchase order for materials so that I could restock my arrows and hopefully double my savings before tomorrow. Not wanting to waste any more time than I had to, I put down an order for thirty thousand dollars worth of materials. This would be my biggest purchase yet, but it seemed like a good time to ramp up production. Since I had nailed the basics, it was time to commence the second part of my plan: scaling.
Once the purchase order went live, I quickly glanced at the prices for wooden birch stems and bone grain in the sales section. The stem prices were at fairly normal levels, considering it was a Sunday. Oddly enough, there were only a few listings for bone grain, much fewer than what the standard for this time and day was, and the prices were all ridiculous. Nobody in their right mind would ever pay that much money for simple materials, but there were always a few of them. Before putting the tablet down and turning on my PS4 to continue my Assassin’s Creed Viking raid, I took a look at the purchases tab to find my order and check the purchase orders that ranked higher than mine because they were offering more money per material. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Consolidated view of Bone Arrow materials purchase orders
Merchant Name : Abrathion Halciu
Level : 22
Bone Grain : $85 (856/999,999)
The top order in the whole New York state was offering almost three times the amount I was for the materials I needed and there was no way his order of almost a million would be fulfilled anytime soon. And that name again. Not only was he the buyer who purchased all of my arrows, but I remembered where else I had seen it. He was the only competitor I had in the state as far as bone arrows went. But his prices were thirty percent higher than mine and he never dropped them low enough to cause me any problems. It seemed that this Abrathion had had enough of me undercutting him and had decided to disable me. And from what I could see from the order he’d placed, he had the means to do just that.
Putting down an order like that meant that he had more than eight million dollars in his DEM account and he didn’t care about binding them all in this one move that probably wouldn’t bring him any profit, if not certainly sustain him some losses.
Is this really the end of my entrepreneurial action in the DEM?
I didn’t have nearly enough money to pay off my student loan, let alone buy a place and retire. Sure, I might find something else to craft, but my earnings would drop to no more than what a normal job would earn me.
No, he can’t keep this up.
At some point, he would have to stop in order to cut his losses, or people would start importing materials from other states. I didn’t want to wait but if I had learned anything from my violent pull into the Apocosmos, it was to avoid conflict, especially with people more powerful than yourself. In this case, it was not just his higher level but the fact that I was fishing for trout while he was whaling.
Perhaps I should wait for him to call off his monopoly and then set up very small buying orders so that I wouldn’t step on his toes and sell at a price similar to his. It would be a slower ascent, but at least I would continue to have a passive income that might eventually bring me to my…
A new notification appeared at the top of the tablet’s screen.
You have a new message from : Abrathion Halciu
Read MessageIgnore MessageBlock Sender
I quickly tapped on the prompt to read the message from my competitor, cursing my luck that I had attracted his attention.
You should consider my purchasing all of your arrows as a gesture of goodwill. I run this market and I don’t like people messing with my business. So cut it out. Next time, I will not be as kind and courteous as I was today.
9
Highway tune
Just who the fuck does this guy think he is? He won’t be as polite next time, my ass. I’d dealt with enough trolls in MMORPGs and this guy was no different than those cowards, flexing their digital arms, or in this case his bank account. I had to admit though, he flexed really well. There was no way around him in the market. The only possible way to bypass his monopoly was sourcing materials from other states, countries, or even worlds.
This was an option I’d already explored in an effort to lower my expenses. Bringing materials from other worlds was completely out of the question, as the cost was extremely high unless you were in possession of a portal that went directly to that realm. These, at least from what I’d read, were only owned by powerful organizations and clans. The Dark Energy Marketplace definitely had access to such portals but charged a very steep price for access to it.
Sourcing materials from neighboring states didn’t bring the costs up too much, but their starting price was rarely cheaper, and never low enough for it to make sense financially. Other countries, or more distant states for that matter, weren’t such a bad option though. Looking at sourcing palm stems from Brazil or spruce stems from Canada along with bone grain from Texas initially showed an increase in my margins by almost 12%. The problem with this route, however, was that I needed to order massive quantities in order to get the low prices I needed. I would also have to cover the transportation costs myself. Quite apart from that, from my research online, it seemed that transports of materials were prone to attack by Apocosmos pirates since the goods couldn’t be traced back to them, and well… there was no police force stopping them. Adding on the cost of security services for the transportation of the goods dropped margins even lower—not low enough to dissuade me from trying it in the future, but at the moment I didn’t have the capital to invest in such large orders. There was nothing I could do but wait.
“What’s wrong, Alex?” a sleepy Louie asked me from the couch.
“I thought you were sleeping,” I said, surprised that I hadn’t heard him wake up.
“I was,” he said and yawned. “But your teeth grinding could wake up Smaug from his slumber.”
“You read the Hobbit?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
“What’s wrong, Alex?” he repeated. Clearly he knew me far too well to fall for such a tactic.
“You remember our only competitor in the state?” I asked. “The one selling arrows as well?”
“I wouldn’t call him a competitor. He was pushing much larger quantities than we do. Abrathion Halciu.”
I was surprised he could recall his name so easily, and as much as I hated to admit it, I really believed that his high intelligence stat was the reason.
“He purchased all of our arrows already,” I stated.
“Oh, that’s not good.”
“No, it’s not,” I continued. “And he also purchased all the key materials in New York state, so we can’t make any more arrows.”
“He did look like he had significant funds. I guess he decided to deal with you before you grew too much.”
“I guess so,” I mumbled. “What are we going to do to get back at him?”
“This isn’t a game, Alex. He’s rich and you aren’t. He can control this small part of the market because he’s wealthy enough, and has been doing this for long enough. We’re new to this. We have to play by his rules.”
“So we should just do nothing?”
“No, not nothing. But we’ll need to wait until he pulls back. Then we can continue with what we were doing but in much smaller quantities. Maybe find a different thing altogether?”
“That is doing nothing, Louie,” I argued. “No! He fucked us over. We need to find a way to fuck him right back.”
“Why?” Louie pleaded with me. “Why waste time in a losing battle? Let’s put our heads together, and I’m sure we can find something that would eventually bring us money too.”
“I guess,” I said, not really meaning it. “I’ll look into it.”
“Okay,” he said and laid his head down on the couch’s pillows again.
“Let me know if you need any help.”
I nodded and immediately picked the tablet back up. Louie was way too naive and innocent. Not that I could blame him. He was practically a baby in this world. He couldn’t be expected to understand how these people act. They either fear you or command you. And right now, this guy thought he was the boss. Louie didn’t have to know about any of this. I would show this fucker who the boss really was.
“Stop grinding your teeth!” Louie called out, without opening his eyes.
“Right, right,” I said. “Sorry.”
This person was dominating the arrow market in the whole state and cutting down the competition before they became too big to hurt him. I tried searching for his name online, through the DEM tablet, but I couldn’t find much more than testimonials about how great he was at deliveries and that his arrows were always top-notch. The closest I got to learning anything more about him was from an old thread in a trading forum where he was described as the new infernal king of arrows in New York. I wasn’t sure what to make of this information so I decided to focus on how I could make the wooden arrow recipe work for me instead. Maybe I could still get my revenge that way? I took down the purchase order I’d placed, brought up the wooden arrow recipe in the free crafting menu, and tapped on it to expand it.
Recipe Name: Wooden Arrow (Birch) x 20
Level: 1
Type: Weapon
Subtype: Arrow
Rarity: E Grade
Success Rate: 100%
MP Cost: 30
Durability : 10/10
Weight: 120st.
Materials: 4x Wooden Stem (Birch)
2x Iron Ore
At the moment, these wooden arrows were selling at almost the same price as the bone arrows, and cost about the same amount to produce. There were only a few people were selling them in the market and all of them were only in small quantities, meaning there was no big dealer to try and stamp me out of business. On the other hand, wooden arrows were heavier and less durable, and they therefore weren’t most people’s preferred option. However, if the price difference was significant, perhaps some of them wouldn’t mind those facts and would simply opt for the cheaper solution. After all, it wasn’t like one of them caused more damage than the other if the user fired them with an E-grade bow. They just weren’t fit for D-grade bows.
Since the wooden stems were their common denominator, it meant that the only thing I had to think about now was the iron ores. That’s when it hit me. The amount of iron needed per batch of arrows was small enough that it would pose no problem if I sourced it myself. There was enough cheap iron available for purchase in the real world… Or rather, in the Cosmos. But then, of course, there were the rules imposed by the DEM free crafting program. In order to use the free crafting services, all materials needed to be purchased through the marketplace and the crafted product needed to be sold in the marketplace. So sourcing materials to craft level 1 and 2 recipes for free was out of the question.
What about higher-level recipes though?
There were no recipes higher than level 2 available through the program but a quick search in the marketplace revealed a plethora of higher-level recipes and to my surprise, the ingredients were listed whenever I tapped to preview them.
A more thorough look into it confirmed my suspicions. It wasn’t enough to know the ingredients for a recipe, or to have an understanding of how to craft arrows. The crafter had to own the recipe. One quick look at the recipe and a bit of technical knowledge would be completely useless. This seemed like one of the weirdest requirements set by the Dark Energy but in a world filled with rules, I didn’t think much of it. This was a different world with different laws. Knowing this, I focused on the recipe that held the most potential to damage our dear competitor.
Recipe Name: Steel Arrow x 20
Level: 3
Type: Weapon
Subtype: Arrow
Rarity: C Grade
Success Rate: 100%
MP Cost: 100
Durability : 120/120
Weight: 60st.
Materials: 4x Wooden Stem (Birch)
1x Steel Ore
Stems were too common a material for him to be able to monopolize so I would have no problem there. As for steel, the prices were very reasonable and there was so much on offer that I would never run out of it. And that was just from hardware shops in the city. When I looked into steel manufacturers themselves, the larger the quantity I purchased, the lower the price would be.
And these steel arrows were even lighter than the bone arrows. They were also extremely durable, meaning they might have a higher chance of being retrievable once they were fired, and they could be used for C-grade bows too. Everything pointed toward the fact that I had found a great alternative to the D-grade bone arrows I had been selling so far, one that would also get a piece of the C-grade arrow market. Perhaps I was blinded by how much I wanted to get my revenge on that asshole, but I really didn’t think a different market altogether would be any better. Of all the consumables, arrows were moving faster than anything else and had great margins.
But I had learned my lesson. I opened the marketplace listings and checked to see if there was anyone who was holding the monopoly in C-grade arrows. Luckily, there were only a few dozen listings and most of those were in low quantities, meaning there didn’t seem to be an organized supplier of steel arrows either.
The more I thought about it, the more having so few available listings actually made a lot of sense. First off, these arrows weren’t covered by the free crafting program, so a lot of people looking for a quick buck, myself included, were out of the game. Second, as these were C-grade items, it meant that they were used by higher-level people, who probably had access to crafters within their clans or organizations, so they didn’t really need to buy them online. And lastly, they were more expensive than lower grades, which meant that lower-level people also shied away from them.
But they were only expensive because of the cost of steel, and steel was only expensive due to the inflation in the Apocosmos economy. For someone like me, who was completely fresh to this world, it still made absolute sense to source this material from the Cosmos where the prices were relatively low. At fucking last, maybe there was one advantage to being a complete newbie in this world.
Immediately, I started researching how to use Cosmos materials for crafting Apocosmos items and I struggled to find much information on it. Initially I thought that was due to how good of an idea it was. Well, it turned out that it was a good idea alright, but there was a reason why not many people bothered sourcing from the Cosmos. It wasn’t as simple as I initially thought. Sourcing steel, or any other kind of material for that matter, from the Cosmos meant that it needed to go through a procedure that looked very similar to customs. Traveler, the DEM-owned browser for the Apocosmos network, or internet, or whatever they called it, informed me that a registered merchant needed to clear my imports.
The procedure was described as fast, with most of the paperwork being readied before I even got in touch with the merchant. I downloaded the forms I needed on my device and went through them as thoroughly as possible. The information I needed to provide looked fairly standard and I guessed that they mostly served to create a merchant profile of me rather than making sure I didn’t import anything dangerous. I sincerely doubted I could import anything from the Cosmos that would be considered dangerous in the Apocosmos.
Once I had all my forms filled—briefly considering how bureaucracy and data collection was a beloved hobby regardless of worlds—I tried to locate the merchant that would need to process my application. I went through the different categories, noting there were different agents for animals, vehicles, materials, weapons, and so many more categories.
I tapped on materials and searched for steel. There were quite a few merchants available so instead of wasting more time researching each one, I decided to trust the good old reviewing system that was
prevalent on this platform as well. The top agent that was available at that moment had an average score of 4.8 out of 5, from a total of over two hundred thousand reviews—well above some of the others on the list. His name was TJ and looking at his information I noticed that he was based in the States, but his city was not provided. I guessed that meant that it didn’t really matter where he or I resided, so I tapped on the Contact Me button and a message appeared, informing me that the agent I had selected would reach out as soon as possible.
Not more than a couple of minutes later, I received what looked like a video call from the merchant. I accepted the call and the person on the other end was wearing the widest smile I had ever seen. His green eyes were stared at me unblinkingly and it was kind of discomforting.
“Can you hear me okay?” I asked.
“I can hear you mighty fine, young man” he said in the most colorful salesperson voice I had ever heard.
“Great,” I said awkwardly when he didn’t say anything else. “Thank you for contacting me.”
“Always a pleasure to serve new people in the market,” he replied and flashed his wide smile again. “My name’s TJ and I will help you in every way that I can.”
I just couldn’t get the feel of this person. The words he was using were pleasant and accommodating, but the way he talked reminded me of so many other old-school salespeople.
“So,” I started. “I want to take steel from this… from the Cosmos, and use it to craft Apocosmos items. I have all the paperwork ready and would like to employ you to clear the materials for use in the Apocosmos.” Louie, annoyed by my talking, moved to the bathroom so he could sleep in peace.
Berserker: A LitRPG Urban Fantasy Adventure (Apocosmos Book 1) Page 13
