Berserker: A LitRPG Urban Fantasy Adventure (Apocosmos Book 1)

by Dimitrios Gkirgkiris

  “We dwarfs, especially Battleforges, do not haggle,” he said slowly. “Me first offer is me final offer. I’m not gonna try and get a better deal by using spineless merchant gimmicks.”

  Despite the tingle of fear I felt, I didn’t like his demeanor at all.

  Who the fuck does he think he is? Strutting into my apartment, flexing his scarred muscles, trying to teach me how to do business. And all the while being more condescending than a person who’s read a book and is talking to someone who only watched the movie.

  It wasn’t like I had any other choice though. If I rejected his offer, I’d have to wait until another crafter with his skills moved closer to New York. And judging by his behavior, if I rejected him, he would either hold a long grudge or would ask for something like a seventy-thirty split if I was forced to go back to him later, if not something more outrageous than that.

  But that didn’t mean I’d let him have it his way either. What he was proposing was a partnership and, at least in Cosmos, partners didn’t only share profits but expenses too. If he wanted us to be equals on the pay-out, we’d have to be equals on the pay-in as well.

  “I don’t like the terms one bit,” I said between my teeth and took my own turn standing up, “but I am willing to give it a try. However, you can’t expect me to invest my money into this while you reap the benefits. I would consider splitting the net profits equally if you match my investment in materials and expenses. I won’t be the fool in this relationship.”

  The dwarf regarded me from top to bottom. I wasn’t sure if he was thinking about fighting me or not, though with our difference in levels, he wouldn’t need more than a few seconds to knock me out. But I sure as hell wasn’t just going to sit there and be taken advantage of.

  “Are ye always walking around, talking like that?” he asked in a tone that was more disarming than aggressive.

  “Like what?” I asked, failing to calm myself down.

  “Like ye got something to prove.”

  I had nothing to prove. To anyone. And especially not to a shady-looking dwarf whose only goals in life were probably to drink a sea of whiskey and craft enough gear to outfit an army. What a presumptuous bastard, thinking that he could understand me or even half of what I’d been through. I guessed dwarf life must be a lot simpler. Simple enough to develop a habit of judging other people.

  “Do you agree to match whatever I invest in materials and let me be responsible for scaling?” I asked, completely disregarding his previous question.

  The dwarf stood up again, brought his hand in front of his mouth, and spat into his palm without taking his eyes off mine.

  “Ye got yerself a deal, half-Celt,” he said and extended his open hand toward me.

  Of all the gross macho shit I had seen in movies, why did this one have to be common practice when dealing with dwarfs? Not wanting to show any further disrespect, I followed his example and spat in my open palm as well, all the while thinking about how I was going to soak my hands in bleach afterward. We clasped hands firmly in a way that would surely have triggered a montage if my life were a film. The sound even made Louie flinch.

  “Well then, let’s talk business,” the dwarf said and sat back down. “What do ye want me to craft? I hope it’s not potions or something of the sort. Carrying them is such a hassle.”

  “Arrows. We’re taking over the steel arrow market,” I explained. “The current price is much higher than D and E-grade arrows, so it’s only really people using C-grade bows that purchase them. But if we can drop their price to match those of lower grades, or even only just slightly higher, there won’t be a reason for D-grade or even E-grade users not to purchase them as well.”

  “True enough. Steel arrows are harder to break too so they can be reused. But what makes ye think ye can drop the price so much?”

  “Arrow-ready stems are pretty specific and best purchased directly from the marketplace,” I said as I leaned forward to make my plan sound even more genius than it already was. “Steel, on the other hand, is plentiful and cheap in the Cosmos.”

  “Good luck finding someone to clear it for use in the Apocosmos,” Rory chuckled. “Not that it’s a bad idea, especially for a beginner such as yerself. But even if ye get to speak to someone, the cost will make the whole thing a waste of time. And to think I really believed we might—”

  “It’s been taken care of,” I said, cutting him off.

  “What do ye mean, half-Celt?”

  “I got a person who’ll clear it for me. And it won’t affect the pricing.”

  “Well, well,” the dwarf muttered, and a smile started to form on his lips. “When do we start then? Me hands are itching to create some arrows!”

  “Batches are sold in scores,” I explained. “So for every twenty arrows, we need four stems, which roughly costs forty dollars if we buy them at their lows. Steel costs less than a dollar per two pounds, which is enough for—”

  “A shitload of arrows!” he exclaimed. “I don’t know how ye did it, but this is some great deal ye got going on. Keep it that way.”

  “I will,” I said and nodded. “So I was thinking of starting with forty thousand dollars’ worth of materials.”

  “And forty more from me,” he continued, already rubbing his hands together. “Buy the materials and deliver them to my place.

  “I don’t know your address and…,” I said, but before I continued my train of thought he interrupted to put my mind at ease.

  “I’ll send you my address. And I know ye’re probably worried about buying materials with yer money and sending them to me,” he said and I simply nodded. “I’ll transfer ye my forty thousand so ye can start purchasing with me own capital.”

  “Aren’t you worried, though?” I asked seriously.

  “Why would I be?” he said, between bursts of laughter. “I know where ye live. And if ye’re anything like the other Celts or Olympians I know, ye’ll honor yer word.”

  “I will,” I said as I stood up. “Thank you for coming, Rory Battleforge.”

  “Loosen yer muscles, young man. Ye can call me Rory and I’ll call ye Alex.”

  The man stood up as well and moved toward the door. Before I could get there to open it for him, he stretched out his fingers to Louie’s back and petted him softly.

  “We’ll do good business together, Alex,” he said. “Ye look sharp.”

  “I hope not too sharp as to cut myself,” I replied, and opened the door.

  The dwarf immediately burst into laughter and had I not been very aware of people in the building sticking their heads out of their doors to examine the source of the commotion, I might have laughed along with him.

  “Too sharp to cut himself,” the dwarf repeated between guffaws. “Ye got a way with words, lad.”

  A couple of days later, I was ready to throw eighty thousand dollars’ worth of steel arrows at the market. As promised, Rory had transferred his half of the initial investment into my account just a few minutes after he left my apartment on the day we met. As soon as I saw it, I put up an order to purchase nearly eighty thousand dollars in stems, and also transferred a small amount to my private customs merchant so I could order a couple of hundred pounds of steel.

  The steel was delivered to my apartment since I was the one sourcing it from the Cosmos, though I was able to set Rory’s Newark address as the delivery station for the stems once each of the two big purchases was fulfilled. In the beginning, I was a bit concerned about Abrathion Halciu, my marketplace nemesis, seeing my large purchase order for stems and realizing I was coming after him with a new recipe for arrows, but when I didn’t get another message from him, I just let the thought rest.

  Rory was crafting the whole day and had informed me that whenever he ran out of mana, he would deliver the crafted arrows to the DEM fulfillment center, which is when they would appear on my account as available for sale. I didn’t know much about crafting since the Dark Energy Marketplace handled the process so far and I wasn’t really in the
mood to research it, especially since I was paying quite the price for someone else to do it for me, but Rory gave me a little rundown of how it worked.

  Crafting was a class skill like any other. A person’s skill level would rise as they leveled up, with each skill level unlocking leveled recipes that person would be able to craft. Getting hold of those recipes, though, was an entirely different matter. Most of them were very expensive due to the fact that Dark Energy wouldn’t allow them to be replicated. As crazy as it sounded, even when he sent me an image of the Steel Arrow recipe and I wrote it down, the piece of paper did not magically change into a new recipe-type item. It was still just a piece of Cosmos paper.

  Another reason for the ridiculous price of recipes was that they could only be found in certain—supposedly dangerous—places, something that gave powerful clans a monopoly where they were able to control said places. As much as this reminded me of guilds spawn-farming raid bosses in MMORPGs, I had to remind myself that those games were modeled after the Apocosmos and not the other way round. Having said all of that, Rory had the recipe I needed and that was all that mattered.

  Once he had all the materials in his possession, it was a matter of minutes, if not seconds before he could craft the item. The recipe would remain in his possession while the materials and part of his MP pool would be used up. Once his MP bar was diminished, he would either have to rest long enough that his Regeneration Rate increased again, or take the crafted arrows to the DEM fulfillment center.

  Do your thing.

  I read Rory’s message on my tablet and switched tabs to put our forty thousand arrows on sale. The price of bone arrows had now been set by Abrathion to $130 per batch of twenty. Considering how much more durable steel arrows were, I could have easily pushed the price up to $180, perhaps even higher. But I needed cash flow so that Rory could start crafting again. That, and I couldn’t wait to shove my middle finger in the fucker’s face. Digitally, but still, in his face.

  I put up the sale order for $150 per batch, which meant I was pushing $300,000 worth of product in one move. The amount itself was staggering but I mainly couldn’t help but think about how much of a bitch payback is. I simply couldn’t wait to rub it in.

  Of course, this would have to be the first of many transactions before I reached my goal of retiring. Taking into account the 15% fee of the marketplace, only $255,000 would reach my account, half of which would belong to Rory. Still, that would mean almost $90,000 net profit. If we could scale this in a way that meant Rory could keep crafting without having to wait for the sale and get more cash, it would essentially be a license to print money.

  “The order is up, buddy,” I said to Louie who was lying in the single spot of the kitchen that was bathed in the sun shining in from our little window.

  “Good luck,” he said, not particularly excited. “Are you going to finally sleep now?”

  “Are you kidding? I’m too excited to sleep. You should be excited too. Pretty soon, you might be lying on a beach sunbathing, instead of the kitchen floor.”

  “The sunshine is the same everywhere,” he said and stuck out his tongue, panting in the heat.

  The notification light blinked on the tablet and I tapped on it. The sales were already going through, but the notification was from a message.

  You have a new message from : Rory Battleforge

  Read MessageIgnore MessageBlock Sender

  I tapped on Read Message and a smile formed on my face as I read it.

  Let’s get rich, half-Celt.

  Happy to see more arrows being moved by the second, I typed my answer.

  Why do you need the money anyway, old man?

  And why do you keep calling me half-Celt? I’m half-Greek too, you know.

  His answer arrived before I’d even put the tablet back down on the kitchen counter. I took a sip from my cold coffee and tapped on the screen to read it.

  It’s none of your business, but since I’m in a good mood, I’ll tell you this much. I need to take back something that was stolen from me. And I need money to hire mercenaries.

  And I’m calling you half-Celt because that’s the part of you I like. No offense to you and yours, but your gods have always caused me trouble.

  My gods? Did he mean the ancient Greek pantheon? So Zeus and his gang were still around?

  I wasn’t sure if it was the thrill of the moment but I realized my view on the whole Apocosmos thing had started to change. I was becoming more interested, and even though my ultimate goal would only ever be to create a nice retirement sum, I didn’t think it would hurt to look into whether these gods existed somewhere. Perhaps just buy a book or two.

  I looked at the tablet with the intention of ordering a couple of books but never got there. The incoming messages screen was still open and my eyes were drawn to the only other incoming message I had: the old one from Abrathion. I was sure Louie would have advised me against it, but what did he know about competition anyway. I tapped on the message, gave it a quick read, and then tapped on reply.

  This is a free market.

  How you like me now, bitch?

  11

  Equilibrium

  Another month passed and I had become king of the arrow market in the state of New York. Those were not my words, but those of Apocosmos bloggers. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t have cared less about titles and praises from good-for-nothing keyboard-warriors. As long as the money flowed into my account, I was content. And flow it certainly did.

  In the short period of three months since I’d been introduced to the Apocosmos, I had managed to grow my savings account by over $200,000. I still hadn’t researched how I would be able to transfer these amounts to the Cosmos, but I was nowhere close to my goal yet, so I didn’t worry too much about it.

  Building my savings was a very recent undertaking since the most important thing in my business model thus far had been to have enough cash to keep Rory occupied at his maximum capacity. At any given time, we had between one thousand to ten thousand steel arrow batches for sale on the DEM. We quickly realized that Mondays and Tuesdays put the most strain on our reserves so we made sure that we built our stock numbers over the weekend. Earlier this week, however, Rory had told me that he wanted to talk about production at the weekend. I’d woken up early this Sunday so that I could get my workout done before we had the call.

  I prepared a fresh cup of ice-cold coffee and took a few sips as I changed into my workout gear. Coming back to the living room, I almost spat the coffee back out when I saw Louie had taken my place on the couch, lying with his belly up and snoring loudly. The day before, he’d finally gathered enough money with his allowance to purchase a minor spellbook he’d wanted for quite some time and was very secretive about. Apart from our Saturday run, I’d barely seem him the whole day, as he was locked in the bedroom.

  The skill books and spellbooks sold in the DEM weren’t class-specific, which meant anyone could learn them. They weren’t powerful by any means, but were rather good for making one’s life easier, as long as you had the money to purchase them and fulfilled some basic requirements. For example, most spellbooks—even those for minor cantrips such as creating weak light—required an intelligence score I didn’t possess since I wasn’t a spellcaster.

  Louie on the other hand had enough INT, and so he had spent most of his day yesterday practicing, hence why he was now so exhausted. Of course, even when he wasn’t practicing new skills, half past four in the morning had never been his favorite time of the day. On the off chance that he was awake, it would normally be because he was still slaving away on the laptop, leveling his characters in Suikoden or Breath of Fire, his two new favorite JRPG series.

  “Buddy, I’m going to the gym,” I said and rubbed his belly gently before leaving.

  “Bring me bacon,” was all he said, and he sounded a bit annoyed that I’d woken him up.

  “Really?”

  “Bacoooon,” he howled softly and turned to the side without even opening
his eyes.

  I smiled and rubbed the back of his neck before grabbing my keys and leaving the apartment. I made a mental note to give him some bacon once I returned. Then I put on my headphones.

  What do I feel like today? Something to wake me the fuck up. Something strong and fast.

  I scrolled down my playlist until I found the song that would set today’s mood. I ran down the stairs as “Fury of the Storm” by Dragonforce blasted into my ears. I activated noise cancellation once I was outside of the building and began running toward the gym.

  The sun hadn’t yet made its appearance, but the sky wasn’t completely dark either. The first dark-orange hues of sunrise, the music in my ears, and the soft summer breeze all indicated that this would be a great day. That is, if the gym was empty as usual and none of the mouth-breathing gym-bros had woken up early today. I tried to push the negative thoughts to the side and focus on my running and Herman Li’s solos.

  No more than ten minutes later, I was already pushing my first sets on the bench press. The good thing about working out so early, apart from the lack of douchebags, was that I could alternate machines much more quickly, being able to work out more muscle groups in a shorter time. And so the minutes passed. With every push, my mind became more serene. The familiar breathing and tensing of muscles that had kept me going over the past years was welcomed by my body. Even when I felt weak after exhausting my muscles and having finished the day’s workout, I still yearned for more. But I didn’t want to leave Louie alone longer than I had to and Rory wouldn’t appreciate me being late for our call.