"Have you guys hunted that many Gremlins?!" Intervar asked, completely shocked, staring at the nearly 100 eyes Lohan had placed above his counter.
And unlike the eyes other hunters brought in, which were roughly cut off, sometimes damaged during harvesting or extraction, these eyes that Halon and Lisa had brought him had been perfectly extracted, not only without a single cut mark, but with all crucial parts intact.
Even the important connections of the eyes to the nervous system were perfectly intact, with Halon, as if somehow he knew exactly where the part of the eye he needed ended and where it didn’t.
Looking at it this way, just based on the care taken in extracting the material, these 46 pairs of Gremlin eyes were 10 to 20% more valuable than normal ones."Okay, guys, you really outdid yourselves this time... I can’t believe you managed to hunt so many without falling into a trap.
So many hunters have died trying to hunt these little monsters; normally, only Level 21 hunters or higher venture to attempt a head-on confrontation with them, but here you surprise me again!" Intervar said, adjusting a magical monocle to his right eye, adjusting the zoom so he could see the eyes, growing increasingly surprised by what he was seeing.
Lohan, who was holding the pair of artificial eyes to his "face" while looking at Intervar, blinked them excitedly, showing gratitude for the compliment, while Lisa remained cool and distant, merely observing cautiously.
"Right, considering the market price of 7 silver coins per eye and 15 per pair, the original total I’d need to pay you would be 6 gold coins and 90 silver coins, but given the quality of these, how about we settle on 8 gold coins?" Intervar suggested with a smile.
Since they decided to form a long-term partnership, with the constant influx of rare and hard-to-find materials coming into the shop, business at the Silver Crucible had increased greatly.
Now, whenever someone needed alchemy materials, Intervar’s shop was likely the first place they’d come to.
And with more customers, Intervar was able to raise the selling price slightly and stopped being stingy when paying the supplier for these rare materials, which pleased Lohan and Lisa greatly.
Sure, Lohan knew that as more Players arrived, this advantage would diminish significantly, since depending on the number of Players, at some point the market might even be flooded with excess materials.
But for now, while the vast majority of Players were still in the Newbie Villages and only the Top Players had reached Level 11, he was going to make the most of it.
Knowing the price was more than fair, Lohan didn’t even try to haggle. "For us, those 8 Gold Coins are great! Thanks, Intervar, it’s getting more and more enjoyable doing business with you, haha."
As he said this, Lohan blinked his big white eyes and picked up the coins from the counter.
Intervar understood what the Slime meant, but didn’t deny it, smiling back at the creature’s joke.
As one of Thalendor’s most powerful alchemists, he had immediately noticed how much Halon’s structure had changed recently, and considering that high hunting rate, he had obviously evolved.
’Unfortunately, I can’t study its structure... I wonder if, for the right price, it wouldn’t give me a little of its jelly?’ Intervar wondered, watching the pair leave the shop.
Lohan looked at the 8 Gold Coins earned today with immense excitement.
While other Players were still struggling to earn 1 to 5 Copper Coins in a day, after splitting the loot among themselves and deducting 10% for guild maintenance, there were still 3 Gold Coins and 60 Silver Coins left for each of them, or, if Lohan wanted to sell this directly to the game system, the equivalent of $36,000 Credits!
But selling that to the system would be crazy; even crazier would be selling that amount to Lisa, who wanted to pay him at a 3:1 rate, so that would be equivalent to $108,000 Credits!!!!
Sure, Lohan definitely wouldn’t sell all those coins right now, considering he was living a "stable" life in the real world and could use that money in Thalendor to convert it into even more power for himself, further accelerating his own growth.
’If I sold a Gold Coin to Lisa, I’d already have enough money to pay off my debt, but what if an opportunity to spend coins arises? The debt can be ignored for now...’ Lohan thought decisively.
Leaving Intervar’s shop, Lohan felt a tingling sensation throughout his body.
"Lisa, are you feeling this?" he asked suspiciously.
Lisa kept walking without arousing suspicion, but the movement of her tails became slower and more deliberate, while her ears stretched upward slowly, listening intently to her surroundings.
Lohan kept his body steady on Lisa’s back, but internally his Parallel Processing Core was already working at full speed. Through Instinctive Perception, he picked up subtle vibrations that didn’t match the rhythm of Thalendor’s ordinary pedestrians.
There were at least three Mana signatures following us since we left the Silver Crucible.
"Lisa, three targets. They’re maintaining a constant distance, about twenty meters behind us." Lohan transmitted through the mental link, while discreetly preparing the Partial Division to expel clones in case a quick ambush was necessary.Lisa didn’t change her pace, maintaining the posture of a noble fox, but Lohan felt her Mana heat up beneath her membrane.
Her two white tails swayed in a way only he would recognize as a sign of readiness for the Spectral Step.
"Do you think it’s Gideon’s group looking for revenge again, or thieves?" Lisa asked, her mental voice laced with a cutting coldness.
"To be honest, after what we did to those spoiled tamers and the other group, anyone with half a brain and strength close to ours would avoid us," Lohan replied, activating the Obsidian Exoskeleton just enough to harden its inner surface, turning it into a rigid, black armor. "But in this world, greed usually speaks louder than the instinct for survival."
[NunuNote: Sorry for posting only one Chapter yesterday; my mind was really tired. Don’t worry, this Chapter counts as yesterday’s second one, and the bonuses are still noted.]