Angor frowned at the man’s strange character. For a second, he almost believed that this one was just another untalkative lone wolf like him.
It seemed that he was very wrong.
Even if they knew their items might not attract any buyers, most of the apprentices here would act as politely as possible because this private trading was the only place they could find things that were nonexistent in the other parts of the city.
Yet this man in black just broke that rule by treating the meeting as some kind of underground fair where thugs and alcoholics gathered.
As if to further prove his attitude, the man repeated his catchphrase, “I represent the biggest employment market in Cork Street. Any helpers, slaves, or other talents you seek, I have them all! Here’s my transmitter code...”
Employment market?
Angor wondered if this was similar to the human resource companies he saw from certain movies.
Lantis, who had been sitting at the main seat, stood up and stomped over to the man in black before he ripped his hood off furiously.
Without his hood, the slim-bodied man suddenly grew into an extremely fat guy who was five or six times his original size.
“Pierre!” Lantis bellowed. “How did you get past the guards? Out! Now!”
While Lantis pushed the fat man hysterically, the others watched the incident with smiles as if this were something that happened a lot.
“Ohh, Pierre is pretty good. He fooled the Rune Monitors!”
“I didn’t know he was here. Man, he’s getting better.”
From the whispers, Angor learned that Pierre was a strange businessman from Cork Street who claimed that he owned an “employment market”. Despite his claim, everyone knew that it was actually a slave market sugarcoated with pretty words.
For some reason, this man insisted on coming to every guild meeting to advertise his shop.
The strange thing was, every time, Astute Alchemy Guild would only chase Pierre away but without making further moves. People assumed that Pierre either had some connections with certain guild members or that Pierre belonged to another powerful group. Either way, Astute Alchemy Guild couldn’t do anything too harsh. In fact, someone already started quarreling over this matter right at this moment.
Pierre was a level-2 apprentice while Lantis was a level-3 at his limit. The fat man was easily dragged away by Lantis without fighting back, or rather, Pierre didn’t intend to resist at all.
While on his way out, Pierre was still yelling to the other people, “Trust me, guys, good stuff! If you don’t need helpers, I have maids! Absolutely divine maids smuggled from Manda Plane! Cat ears, kuudere sisters, sweet and soft girls, any type you ever need! Don’t miss out! My transmitter code—”
Pierre disappeared behind the door curtain while the other participants shook their heads.
Some of the newcomers seemed interested in the maids, which caused the more experienced people to laugh at them.
“Give up. If you want a maid on your bed, try the slave auction at Moshi Street. Pierre’s shop has too many weird rules, such as ‘performing high-five with the merchandise is prohibited’. Go study more, young ones.”
Someone voiced a different opinion. “But I must say, Pierre’s slaves are of the best quality. I think they’re all nobles or at least educated mortals. Too bad we can’t teach them wizardry.”
“Pierre got many constant customers who love art. You know, doing art might give mortals a chance to shine in this world.”
Angor quietly listened to their discussion while his eyes twinkled under his hood.
A while later, Lantis flipped the curtain aside and returned to the meeting.
“Heh heh... apologies. Just a small annoyance. But it won’t affect our trading!”
Several people laughed. When Lantis failed to notice what he had done wrong, John Junior reminded him, “Hey boss, this is supposed to be an exchange of knowledge, not actual trading.”
“Oh! My bad! Let’s trade knowledge, yes! So, any of you want to step up?”
A muscular man with brown skin and a tight-fit vest stood up from his seat. “So I’m selling something...”
Lantis looked a little pissed off when someone mocked his tongue-slip so soon. Even so, he didn’t say anything. Everyone knew what this meeting was about, they just didn’t want to point it out openly.
Astute Guild was established by a group of alchemists, so most people would talk about knowledge or items related to alchemy. Angor noticed that he had no problem providing answers to some of the questions, but he never offered to do so because none of the offers seemed valuable enough.
The next speaker was an alchemy apprentice who was blushing badly. She wanted to learn about a critical step regarding the production of an energy stabilizer.
Back at Brute Cavern, energy stabilizers were mostly nonexistent or got sold at the market at an insane price. One could find many of them in Floating Mech City. Despite that, none of the crafters would share their knowledge as it might potentially ruin their future income.
Almost every wizard and apprentice would need an energy stabilizer in their career, thus it guaranteed a stable market price for energy stabilizers. Alchemists who knew how to make one could always earn a profit out of this. Every alchemy apprentices would like to know how to craft this item, and since no one was willing to teach them, they had to purchase energy stabilizers and see if they could recreate one on their own.
This shy apprentice had bought more than one stabilizer to achieve this, but when she reached the core functions, she was quickly discouraged by the extremely complex mechanisms. She knew that an energy stabilizer did not need to be so complicated, which meant whoever designed these devices intentionally screwed up something in order to prevent people from copying it.
This was why she had no choice but to look for an answer here.
It was almost impossible to find someone who would tell her such trade secret, but she still came just to bet on her luck.
When she was feeling disappointed about receiving no attention at all, the transmitter in front of her suddenly flashed.
[I can join you and discuss something regarding an Energy Stabilizer. Meet me at Fingernail Alchemy Shop after the meeting]
She looked up happily and wished to find out who was the offeror, but instead of getting an answer, her careless move told the others that someone accepted the offer.
Which idiot agreed to something like this? They wondered.
Despite the fact that he was regarded as a fool by everyone else, Angor was thinking about the item offered by the female apprentice—a certain monster ant called the Dream Weaver that was believed to be extinct.
Angor never heard about such an insect until today. According to the witch, the ant could weave dreams for people, either good dreams or nightmares.
The ant wasn’t intelligent enough to understand human speech, but one could use a small trick to generally tell the ant what kind of dream they wanted by using the small pair of “antennas” on the ant’s head. Touching the white antenna would cause the ant to create a sweet dream while touching the black one would do the opposite.
To wizards, this sounded pretty useless since the dreams were just dreams. They couldn’t benefit or harm people.
People would consider the insect an exotic plaything, and that was about it.
In fact, many people were interested in the woman’s item when they heard about it. Despite that, they all gave up when they heard what she wanted in return.
However, Angor wished to take a better look at the Dream Weaver because it reminded him of a story Jon told him before:
A drunken man fell asleep at the roadside and enjoyed a heavenly dream. Later, people found out that the man slept on a stone that had an ant nest hidden under it, so someone made up a story that the magical ants helped the man weave his dream.
Angor didn’t consider the story to be anything special, but now that he did see an ant that could create dreams, he decided to check it out.
To him, the secret of an energy stabilizer wasn’t anything too precious. He wanted to present the Dream Weaver as a gift to Jon when he traveled back to Old Earth.