BXBX NOVEL Chapter 117 The Trading Post
The main base was divided into five floors, following the ranks. Being a green rank member, Zick could enter until the fourth. The other floor was unavailable to him until he rose to the purple rank.
Climbing the stairs, Zick reached the fourth floor. A guard stood in front of him.
The fourth floor was different from the fifth floor, the wall and ceiling were made of cheap marble.
Looking past the guard, Zick could see a pillar in the distance which was connected to the ceiling. Seeing that there were no more stairs to climb to the third floor in front of him, he could tell that the pillar was the way to climb higher.
"The seal."
Hearing the guard's voice, Zick brought his concentration back to him. Lifting his hand, he showed the seal to him.
Nodding his head, The guard moved aside and let Zick walk past him.
Zick knew the way through the round crystal that he touched earlier, so he knew where he needed to go.
The pillar was where the trading post was located.
The trading post was huge and was located beside the Mission Area. However, it was rather chaotic; many black-robed people set up stalls, with an erect signboard stating the items and conditions that they wished to sell or trade.
Once in a while, a few people would engage in haggling, it was extremely bustling.
Zick browsed through the stalls as he headed to his destination. Some of them were set up on the floor, similar to the Earth's street vendors, and looked to be a little dirty.
The floor stalls' items belonged to the miscellaneous category; most of them were bows, knives, darts, and so on. There were also the fur, livers, and eyes of living organisms, and some still had traces of blood. The rest were some other items that Zick could not identify.
Finding nothing interesting, Zick fastened his pace and reached the huge shop below the pillar. A single man giving out the presence of a peak-rank knight sat there.
'The exchange shop....' Zick could see only a few people making any deals in the shop.
"What do you need?" The man spoke rudely and had a grumpy look.
"Show me the list of the item sold here,"
"Here." The shop owner passed a sheet of yellow paper to Zick lazily.
'Thought as much.....I can't read it but I need to find out the value of merit points.'
Zick looked through it seriously.
Fortunately, there were images of the item giving him an idea of what it was.
A normal sword was one merit point. If he needed a low-rank sword it rose to 50 points and as the quality increased, the merit point increased exponentially. A high-rank sword was sold for 1000 merit points. There was no higher level of the sword than this one.
"Is there no higher-rank sword than this one?" Showing the sheet to the shop owner, Zick asked.
"No, for higher rank items, you will need to go to the higher floors."
Hearing this Zick continued looking through the sheet.
'The cursed sword should be either peak rank or legendary rank I guess.' Zick himself didn't know the rank of his cursed sword.
The only reason he knew that the cursed sword was lower than mythic rank was because every item at the level of mythic forms a sentient of its own. Aeiron had gotten his hand on one of them in the novel.
The sword of the hero who fought the giants. The story of the hero who fought against the giants was spread throughout the continents. It was mainly mentioned in kid story books, but it's true.
The story's validity was proven by Aeiron.
Passing the sheet of paper back to the shop owner, Zick took out a mana bomb from his space ring.
'This mana bomb could affect people of high rank so its value should be near 1000 too.' Knowing the value of merit points somewhat, he could estimate the price of this mana bomb.
"How many merit points can you give me in exchange for this item?"
Picking up the black mana bomb, the shop owner looked at it closely.
"800 merit points....." Some energy returned to the eyes of the shop owner.
"It can go higher than, this mana bombs would at least sell for" Zick's shameless haggling was cut off by the shopkeeper.
"It seems you are new here so you don't know. I am under an oath that stops me from lying about the price of items."
Zick nodded his head not feeling anything even though his haggling failed. He was as shameless as ever. He took out another eight mana bombs and put them on the counter.
"Nine high-rank mana bombs...It's 7,200 mana bombs in total."
"Deal."
Zick showed his seal to the shop owner without hesitation. The shop owner brought his hand up too, exposing the seal. A black light left from the seal on the shop owner's hand and entered Zick's seal.
Merit: 7,230
Seeing his merit had increased, Zick started heading towards the teleportation post. It was located beside the trading post, where a huge house stood alone. The house was three stories high and was connected to the wall behind it.
It was the teleportation centre.
Zick arrived in front of the house shortly.
Ting~, opening the door he entered it. The house interior was clean showing that it was maintained properly. A huge map was on the wall right in front of him and reception was right beside him too.
Zick walked in front of the map and started looking through it.
'There is a base of organization in almost all the cities and capital it seems.' Seeing this, Zick felt that he could move a lot more freely than before.
Zick looked at the place where the mana crystal mine was located.
It was in between the Gorthect empire and the Hevertec kingdom located in the south. A mountain region was located there.
Zick found a city near to it soon.
'Jeleat city....' Zick started walking towards the receptionist getting to know where had to go.
The receptionist was a woman with long black hair. She looked to be in her 30s.
"How many merit points are needed to teleport to the Jeleat city located in the Gorthect empire?" With an indifferent look, Zick spoke to the receptionist.
"It would be 1500 merit points, sir." The receptionist spoke in a calm voice.
'That is less than I thought.....I will be needing 3000 merit points in total then.'
Zick started heading towards the trading post again. He had some extra merit points so he wanted to buy the ingredients needed for performing the unorthodox method to increase potential. He could collect the mana crystals within a day so he wasn't in a hurry right now.
Seeing Zick walking back towards his shop, the lazy shop owner looked at him with interest.
Arriving in front of him, Zick stated his need: " I need fire crystal poison, water crystal poison, mana crystal poison, and 10 hearts of any mammalian monsters if you have it...."
"....." The shop owner didn't say anything and started rummaging through the shelf. Buying poison was considered normal around here.
The shop owner put three vials in front of Zick.
"It would be 700 merit points."
Zick passed on the merit points to the shop owner and put the vial into his space ring. Next, they exchanged 10 mammal hearts through the space ring.
Monsters' hearts were usually used for enchantment so the shop owner had some of them.
Getting what he wanted, Zick headed toward the lodging area. There was a slave center too, but he wasn't interested in it.
'This place is quite big, the Everlor organization must have paid a huge amount of resources to make this.'
Zick soon reached the lodging area and brought a room in one of the inn-like houses. All the houses in the lodging area were positioned in raws, and most of the houses looked alike to each other.
He just picked the nearest one and paid 10 merit points to stay for a single day.
The room was small with a single bed in it. Not bothered by the cheapness of the interior, Zick sat on the ground and took out the materials needed to perform the unorthodox method. He wasn't nervous or excited in any way, only tranquillity remained in him.
Increasing his potential was just the first step toward his goal. A bright light passed by his eyes.
Picking up the via with red liquid in it, Zick performed the same action he did while 8 years old. First sipping the fire crystal poison, he next took a sip of the water crystal poison and then the mana crystal poison.
Feeling the rising pain in his stomach, Zick took one of the red hearts and started chewing it. Unlike the one brought by Butler Von, this one was huge, the same size as Zick's palm.
Performing the same process another nine times, Zick felt a certain kind of energy traveling throughout his body. This energy would be adsorbed by the mana nerves, which would in turn increase his potential.
At least that was what was supposed to happen. This energy started travelling through his blood vein and headed towards his heart. Not even a bit of it was adsorbed by the mana nerves.
"What is happening...?" Zick did his best to find out what was happening. He had no control over this energy, he could stop it using his mana but he was curious about what was happening.
After a few seconds, all the energy was gathered in his heart.
That was when something changes started happening.