“That is superb that you have prepared everything, sir,” said the man on the other end of the call.
“So, how soon can we do it?” I asked. “And is it going to be like a recurring thing or do I just message you with just the quantities in the future?”
“What a great question that is,” he said as if he actually believed it was a great question indeed. “You see, the line of work I’m in is very similar to one of those gnome-made engines. They work fine and deliver great results as long they’re kept sufficiently lubricated.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, though I had a suspicion this wouldn’t be as easy as I thought.
“What I can do for you is in direct relation to what you can do for the engine, kind sir.”
“You mean, I have to lubricate the machine?”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” the man said, and for a moment I thought I even saw a glimmer on his snow-white, polished teeth. “You’ve got a knack for word-smithing.”
“I guess I do,” I said and prepared myself for the inevitable. “And how much would such a lubri… actually, I don’t want to use that metaphor anymore. How much do you need?”
“We can either work on an annual agreement for,” he paused for a moment, as if he was considering it, “say one point two million dollars, or a flat fee of two hundred thousand per import, regardless of quantity.”
“That’s absurd,” I blurted out.
“There’s no reason to get upset, my good man,” he said completely calmly. “I am no dwarf, so my offer is not set in stone. I am sure we can reach a figure that would please the both of us.”
“I was thinking of something in the four-figure range,” I said honestly.
“Oh, but that is unfortunately impossible,” TJ replied. “You see, there are a lot of hidden costs to what we’re doing.”
“I understand,” I said. “I don’t want to waste your time. I’m afraid this kind of pricing is beyond what I’m willing to pay.”
“I’m still very much open to a counter-proposal,” the man said. “It ain’t over till we’re both happy with what we’re getting. And that’s our goal here.”
“Thank you, but I think I’ll take my business elsewhere,” I said in a last-ditch attempt to make him drop to what I was willing to pay.
“Once an application is denied, the applicant can’t file a new one for the next one hundred days,” he said, his demeanor now changing along with a cold, informative tone to his voice.
“That’s preposterous,” I retorted, not even being able to remember the last time I used the word “preposterous”. But it felt right now.
“Oh, I am sorry, young man,” TJ replied, wearing his wide smile again. “It seems that you weren’t properly informed by the person who referred you to this program.”
I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself down. Punching TJ wouldn’t bring me any closer to my goal.
“Wait a second!” the man interjected and for the first time, his brows furrowed. “It says here that Leonardo DiFiore is your referral contact for the DEM.”
“Correct. He gave me a tablet and vouched for me using the DEM’s free crafting program. But the point is that now I’d like to—”
“I’m sure you’re going to be the next Apocosmopreneur of the year,” he interrupted. “How well do you know Leonardo DiFiore?”
“Leo? He’s my colleague and… and friend for some years.”
“Do you consider yourself close to him?”
“What is this all about?” I asked, not liking this sudden interest in my relationship with Leo. “What’s with all the questions? Can we do business or not?”
“Perhaps we can reach a different sort of agreement. I will let you import steel from the Cosmos and clear it for use in the Apocosmos.”
“In exchange for?”
“Well this is kind of embarrassing,” the man said, and he did indeed actually look embarrassed. What could possibly make this sales king feel like this? “You see I’m an avid player of the game Dungeons & Dragons. I’m sure you know it?”
“I’ve heard of it, yes.”
“And your friend, Leonardo DiFiore, runs a table that’s streamed live in the Apocosmos.”
“Yes, I’ve seen it,” I said, a bit stunned at the idea that lots of other people might have seen it too.
“If I could get around that table, you’d never have to worry about Apocosmos customs again. At least not for steel,” TJ said and flashed his teeth. This time though, it looked like the most forced smile in the history of smiles.
“I can’t promise you that,” I said honestly, but also enjoying myself a bit. “I don’t decide who plays on that table.”
“How about this then? You talk to Leonardo DiFiore about a person who would like to join his table and you won’t need to pay me.”
“That can certainly be arranged,” I said, happy we were finally reaching an understanding. “But am I to understand that I will be cleared of customs regardless of what Leo decides?”
“Well,” the man said, thinking it over it. “I suppose if you’re honest about recommending me to him, then yes. But if I get to play at his table, you’ll get a much longer-lasting deal.”
“I had no idea Leo’s games were so popular.”
“His table is one of the most popular in the Apocosmos,” the man said, seemingly shocked that I wouldn’t know that already. “It’s been broadcast for quite a few years.”
“I see. Then we have a deal. How soon can I expect the clearing documents?”
“I’ve already sent them,” the man said, his voice now having returned to its natural, cool, melodic, default tempo and tone. “You should see them shortly.”
“Thank you,” I said. But I didn’t want to hang up until I got the answer to another question. “Can I ask you something? How do you keep your rating so high?”
“Well, try rating me with a low score,” he said and leaned ever so slightly closer to his camera, “and see what happens to your imports.”
“It was a pleasure doing business with you,” I said, not wanting to tempt my luck any further.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” the man said and ended the call as he’d initiated it, with a wide smile.
I realized that the deal meant that at some point I’d need to speak to Leo about this, but the amount of steel I’d already cleared for use was more than enough for what I wanted to do. Now all I was missing was someone who was able to craft level 3 recipes. Once again, I turned to the thing that had become an absolute necessity over the past couple of months: the DEM tablet.
I tapped on the Looking For tab and then on the Services subsection. A large list of professional services appeared on the tablet, ranging from divinations and buffs to resurrection insurance and emergency teleportation contractors. No matter how fascinating all of them looked, I still had my mind set on getting back at the guy who thought it wise to stand in my way. I typed “craft” and then tapped on the first available autocomplete result, which was “Crafter”. Another very long list rendered on the screen, though this time, it must have been millions of rows long since the scrollbar on the right side became so tiny as to be almost invisible. The initial view consisted of seven columns.
Name, Level, Max Recipe Level, Realm, Area, Available Recipes, Rating.
Each of the available categories held information on a professional offering their services. There were many exotic names and some I couldn’t even read since they used alphabets I couldn’t recognize at all. Their levels varied greatly and when I tapped on the level column, the results were sorted from highest to lowest. I was curious to see what the highest levels were but I didn’t get a definitive answer. The highest of them held the 43+ value, with their maximum recipe level showing 5+, meaning there were recipes of levels higher than 5. The realms and areas in which these individuals lived were even more of a shock to me. I didn’t recognize the vast majority. Even the names I had heard of were places I knew from mythology, games, or bo
oks.
By quickly scrolling through the listings, I saw that most of the level 43+ crafters resided in one of four realms: Domhain, Nidavellir, Svartalfheim, and Gar-il Drunn. I recognized a couple of those names as the realms where dwarfs lived in Norse mythology. A sudden rush of excitement swept over me as I realized that this probably meant that my favorite fantasy race wasn’t actually a fantasy at all, and was also true to its legendary crafting skills.
There were so many things in the Apocosmos that would normally have led me into a research spiral out of pure fascination, but I wasn’t here to have fun. I had a job to do, and the sooner I did it, the sooner Louie and I would be able to retire in a small villa by the sea. Out of curiosity, I tapped on one of the top-level crafters to read more details about them.
Name : Goiln Stonesplitter
Level: 43+
Max Rec. Level: 5+
Realm: Domhain
Area: Stonesplitter Hall
Available Rec.: Click to expand [+]
Rating: 4.97/5.00 (965k)
This guy had a near-perfect rating from almost a million reviews. The deeper I delved into the Apocosmos and its economy, the more I realized how large this world really was. I tapped the Available Recipes entry and a new list of recipes appeared. I quickly scrolled down to the level 3 recipes and found the one I was looking for. I didn’t know what I expected in terms of pricing, but I was definitely surprised to see that he was asking for three hundred dollars per crafted batch of arrows. With prices like that, I doubted I would ever be able to make this work for me, but I did start to wonder whether the work of a superior crafter like him would mean that the arrows would somehow be stronger.
Yet again, I switched to the browser and searched for an answer to the new question that had arisen, inadvertently derailing my train of thought. All the information pointed toward the fact that crafting was a binary skill. One could either succeed or fail in crafting a specific recipe. With that in mind, I assumed that pricing low-level recipes so highly was probably a way of dissuading users from wasting the crafter’s time with such recipes, without actually reducing the number of available recipes in their portfolio.
Not wanting to waste any more time, I returned to the list of crafters and filtered the results so that only those who had the Steel Arrow recipe available would appear. I set the maximum amount I’d be willing to pay per batch to five dollars. The list shrank considerably and with it, so did the rating of most of the crafters left. There were no available crafters with a rating higher than four out of five in that price range. Their levels too were considerably lower, going as far down as 28, which I guessed was the level they gained the ability to craft level 3 recipes.
I sorted the results by the lowest price for crafting and saw there were a few entries that would take the job for as low as twenty cents per batch. There were two problems though. The minimum order quantity was ten thousand batches and their ratings were very close to, or even below, two stars.
I tapped on one of them at random and read a few reviews, trying to ascertain the reason why their rating was so low. The majority of people who’d purchased their services were saying that they’d been tricked out of their money, never received their order, or that they’d received used arrows instead of new ones. Not wanting to take any chances, I put on another filter so that only those with a rating higher than 3.8 would appear. The list became even shorter but this time the prices looked inconspicuously fair. Again, I didn’t recognize the realms in which each of them resided, apart from the few that had seeped into our mythology, like Tír na nÓg, Elysium Fields, and Takamagahara.
Looking at all of these realms made me realize something that might possibly render this whole search useless. The price of steel sourced in the Cosmos was relative to the amount I would purchase each time: bigger quantities meant that the price per pound would be lower. But the shipping costs would rise, and I was pretty sure that sending steel to another realm wouldn’t come cheap. Neither was it likely that the crafter would send the arrows back to me for free.
Not wanting to trouble myself any further with shipping calculations, I tapped on the Realms selector and typed “Cosmos” before I began feeling too overwhelmed by the thousands of other available realms on the drop-down list. The number of crafters that met my criteria was now less than a hundred and they were spread out all over the planet. Knowing the price of shipping things to other countries or states, I further narrowed down my search to only include results from the USA and New York State in particular. I was so anxious to see the potential crafters whose services I’d employ, that I didn’t realize this was the first time the tablet didn’t render the results immediately. After a few seconds, I tried tapping on the search icon again and only then did I spot the short message at the bottom of the screen.
No results were found. Please try widening your search or removing some of your filters.
This wasn’t looking good. I tapped on the message and the filter screen appeared. I removed the Ratings filter but still got the same message, which probably meant that there were none available for the price I’d input in my state. For the sake of being sure that the tablet was working well, I added New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. It turned out it was working fine but the results were far worse than I’d hoped for. There was only one result that met my price range, recipe availability, and area selections.
Name : Rory Battleforge
Level: 43+
Max Rec. Level: 5+
Realm: Cosmos
Area: Newark - New Jersey
Available Rec.: Click to expand [+]
Rating: 2.1/5.00 (97k)
I knew I didn’t have any choice either way, but this guy’s stats seemed extremely peculiar. For starters, his level was high and he had a lot of reviews under his name, but the average rating of his reviews was concerningly low. And then, there was his name. Suspicious and slightly excited about what kind of person might have such a last name, I tapped on it for more information.
Name: Rory Battleforge
Race: Dwarf
Class: Mastersmith
Level: ???
Holy fuck! A real-life dwarf. In fucking Newark, of all places!
I tried to cool my head for a moment and recalled his crafter stats page. Just because he was a dwarf, that alone wasn’t reason enough for me to choose him, especially with such a low review score. I tapped on his rating and started to read the reviews there. The most recent reviews were overwhelmingly positive, with the occasional mention of the dwarf’s social skills as a negative. For the most part, however, his crafting skills were impeccable. It wasn’t until I scrolled down to much older reviews that the one-stars appeared. And there were a lot of negative ones.
Most of them had no text attached to them, though the few that did, didn’t help me understand much. They were mostly cryptic and aimed at the crafter himself rather than future potential buyers, with phrases like “you know what you did”, “we will never forget”, and others calling him a traitor and a coward. It seemed to me like these reviews might be quite personal, especially since some of the reviewers had the same last name as the crafter himself. Battleforge. This looked a lot like the guy got review-bombed for whatever reason.
Not having any other choice, and making a mental note to mention his low score, I tapped the contact icon to open up a text field and wrote him a message.
Dear Mr. Battleforge,
My name is Alexander MacFie, and I’m contacting you as I would be interested in working with you on crafting level 3 recipe items. However, before we can commence our collaboration, I would like to inquire about a topic that has troubled me as I looked at your crafter profile.
Should you be interested in this business opportunity, and wouldn’t mind answering a couple of questions, please get back to me.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Best regards,
Alexander MacFie
I ta
pped the Send button and waited idly for a few seconds before I realized that the dwarf might not be available immediately, so I decided to make myself a cup of coffee. A frozen glass of freddo espresso would be just what I needed to wake my mind up. Yet before I was even able to fill my glass with ice cubes, the notification light started flashing on the DEM tablet. I set my glass to the side and tapped on the tablet. The dwarf had already replied.
Are you a Celt, son?
I don’t like talking business over texts.
I’ll be at your place in an hour or so.
My place? As if I’d be stupid enough to send him my address. If I’d learned anything about the Apocosmos, it was that it was a dangerous place where the strong preyed upon the weak. Meeting in person in a public place would be a far better idea. And I would probably be able to judge his character better than simply through reading his texts. Perhaps I’d even answer his question about my ancestry. But first, I had to think of a safe place to meet and talk. I imagined a dwarf would attract other people’s attention and that was the last thing I wanted. Not wanting to keep the man waiting any longer, I drafted my reply.
Mr. Battleforge, I think it would be best that our first meeting is held in a neutral, public ground. I can see you are living in Newark so perhaps you would like to meet half-way? I am sure you can understand why I would prefer not to meet in my private residence.
Looking forward to your reply.
Berserker: A LitRPG Urban Fantasy Adventure (Apocosmos Book 1) Page 14
