171 Chapter 171 - A Rare Commodity Presides Within (1/2)
The beauty stood on one spot as Brave Surge pulled Foe-herder to the side.
”That woman has been here all along, so she knows our intention. We can't let her lead us on,” Brave Surge said, adding, ”Since we're here together, we should not compete for this and instead split the price to buy this information from her.”
Foe-herder nodded his head, ”That's a good idea. It spares one of us from not knowing this way, as well as from getting hustled.”
”Worse is if she sells this information to one and sells it again to another; that just means everyone gets hustled,” Brave Surge added.
”That makes a lot of sense,” Foe-herder agreed.
”So we must work together right now,” Brave Surge said earnestly.
”We should, indeed.”
After discussing the matter, the two headed back to the beauty's side.
The beauty gave them a faint smile, ”How did the discussion between the two big bosses go?”
”State your price!” Since they were no longer fighting over the remuneration, it was naturally better to let the seller state her price. It was a very safe method in negotiations.
”Oh? I want to hear the price you guys have set for your remuneration first!” the beauty said instead.
The two looked at each other first before saying, ”Darling, don't waste our time. Everyone here knows what's going on so we won't be bidding for it. Just tell us your price and we'll buy it together.”
The beauty helplessly sighed, ”If that's the case, the price will be 1000 gold coins!”
”D*mn, girl! You're quite vicious!” the two exclaimed, dumbfounded.
Although many people had joined Parallel World after its official release and invigorated the market by causing the prices of goods to increase as well as the amount of gold coins being spent, the surge had only been for a few months and the market had since settled back down. Thus, 1000 gold coins was still not a small amount.
Using the current market price for in-game equipment, weapons with skills, especially the ones with unique skills, were priced the highest. This type of weapons could be considered to be of the highest tier among top-grade items. Even if the additional traits on the items were bad, no one would consider them as trash. These items were usually at purple tier with a few that were at gold tier. It was just impossible for blue-tier items to have unique skills. This sort of equipment had no market value to speak of, so it could only be transacted based on the buyer and the seller's agreed upon price. Out of all the officially released transactions to date, 5000 gold coins was the highest price that a buyer and a seller had agreed on. It was unknown, though, if private deals with even higher prices had occurred among players.
Below this equipment with skills would be equipment without skills in the order of purple, gold, blue, and white tiers. The difference between the four tiers lay in the traits that the weapons had. White-tier weapons had no additional traits, blue-tier weapons had two traits, gold-tier weapons had three or four traits, and purple tier had five or more traits. The price would be determined by what traits these items had and the value of each trait. Most items cost hundreds, while the rarely seen and thus termed as top-grade equipment cost thousands.
As for the rumored green-tier equipment that came in a set, it might be as good as a myth. Green-tier equipment had yet to be sighted on the current market, so it naturally had no market price as well.
According to the information that the officials had leaked thus far, the advantage of green-tier equipment lay in the hidden traits that it had once the set entire was collected. Individually, green-tier equipment was no better than blue-tier or gold-tier equipment and could not even compare to the purple-tier equipment.
Hearing that this beauty's opening price was the price for top-grade equipment, the two guild leaders immediately thought that she was insane.
The two had every intention of expanding their respective guilds' influence and might, so they were of course willing to pay thousands of gold coins, provided that the Mage was guaranteed to join their guild. With just his IGN, neither of them felt that the price the lady had quoted them was worth it.
The beauty smiled, ”Is it too pricey? Then, I guess we can forget about it!”
”Yeah, we'll forget about it. It's better off just putting out those posters,” Brave Surge politely declined, tugging Foe-herder along with him.
Foe-herder was a bit reluctant to let go of this source of information, so he used his job class as a Warrior to resist Brave Surge's pull. Brave Surge threw him a backward glance before hurriedly sending him a message: ”Don't be hasty. I'm sure she'll call us back. It's only a name. How is she going to earn anything from that if we pass on this offer?”
These two men did not waste a whole night together for naught and, at the very least, had added each other on their friends list.
Foe-herder saw the logic in Brave Surge's thinking, so he quickly followed Brave Surge outside of the tavern.
”Are we leaving, guild leader?” Foe-herder's men were still on the table, chasing after them once they saw the two guild leaders leaving the premise.
”Let's go! We'll sticking to our plan of making posters!” Foe-herder cried out intentionally.
”Okay!” the men answered as they began to follow the two men outside.
”Still not calling us back?” Foe-herder became quite anxious now that they were almost out of the double doors.
Guess we can't turn back, either. F*cking hell. 1000 gold coins. If you're gonna spend that much, go do it yourself. I would rather stick to the posters. I refuse to believe that she's the only one who knows this Mage in Yunduan City, Brave Surge comforted himself.
The two men really ended up leaving the tavern as the beauty quietly watched them.
”Oh, well. Guess we really gotta put up those posters now,” Foe-herder sighed.
Brave Surge shrugged to show his helplessness. Just as Foe-herder was about to speak further, he saw two members of Carouse walk past him. Calling for Brave Surge's attention, they proceeded to tear two pages off the notepads that they were carrying and pasted them on the wall outside the tavern.
”F*ck, you're really wily. Your boys have already started posting,” Foe-herder yelped as he read the content of Carouse's poster.
[Search notice: Looking for a certain male player who has managed to join Amethyst Rebirth Guild. Please contact me if anyone has information about him.]
What followed after were these words in large font: 'HUGE CASH REWARD AWAITING YOU!' The contact listed below was actually a player's name instead of a guild.
”Mhm!” Foe-herder nodded his head, knocking on the poster and saying to his men, ”Write something like this. Don't reveal our guild's identity since that will be too conspicuous.”
The two guilds had not mentioned even once this black-clothed Mage's prowess in this whole night of questioning and merely described him as deplorable man who had managed to get into an all-female guild, not once indicating that he was a powerful character.
”Quickly get everyone in the guild to get on this!” Foe-herder grew anxious once he saw that Carouse had already begun pasting their posters. While saying this, he took out his notepad and personally wrote out a copy by the tavern entrance. He then instructed everyone on the guild channel: ”We need to move fast. Put posters up everywhere that Carouse has pasted and to the places that their guild hasn't done so.”
”That's pretty good!” Brave Surge commented upon seeing Foe-herder's beautiful penmanship on the two posters the latter had hastily made.
”Hmph! We're having a friendly competition right now, so we can paste wherever we want. But! Don't even think about tearing off the posters from our side!” Foe-herder warned.
”Of course. We need to agree on matters when the need arises,” Brave Surge said as he put forth similar instructions to his guild, ”We have an accord with Cloud Herder. Nobody is allowed tear off each other's posters.”
”We won't tear them off, but we can just paste ours over theirs!” Carouse truly did not lack for cunning schemers.
”Hmm. Everyone should do what they deem as appropriate!” Brave Surge's words implied that he was neither against nor for the suggestion that the member had given. It was important for a guild leader to master the art of ambiguity to give members freedom to do what was necessary. Credit would be given when results were shown, while responsibility could be pushed away if needed be; it was the best of both worlds.
Both guilds became busy from this point onward. The entire Yunduan City – the walls on the streets, the doors of business establishments, the roads of often used streets, and so on – was filled with those little posters.
Foe-herder even instructed his men to climb up the Bell Tower and the City Hall and throw a stack of posters off of them. ”We'll let the wind be the bearer of our message!” was what Foe-herder said when he made them execute it.
In that moment, papers flew all over Yunduan City. Wherever players walked to, there would be posters of this black-clothed Mage. There were so many of these posters that people could now recite their content word-for-word without looking.
The contacts that the two large guilds had assigned quickly received many inquiries about the remuneration issue and the information required.
”Hello, player! Appropriate reward will be given based on the information you have provided. If you have any information regarding the person in question, we hope to speak with you personally” was the contacts' generic response to the public's general inquiries.
Many players quickly began to ask for a face-to-face meeting. Foe-herder and Brave Surge were elated at first and promptly set up rendezvous points, awaiting the informants to come to them. However, these two guild leaders soon felt that something was off, given the quick response that they were getting. With more and more people asking for a meet-up and each saying that they had information regarding the OP Mage, the two realized that they themselves did not know anything about the black-clothed Mage. Therefore, they had no way of verifying the validity of any information. Given how abuzz the whole city was regarding this matter, both were positive that some swindlers would be present in these meet-ups.
This was the drawback of acquiring information through such method. If they had stated a guild was behind this, most of the swindlers would think twice before doing the deed. After all, offending a whole guild was a lot more serious than just one player. Since this was just an individual, the swindlers would not even bat an eye as they cheated their mark, quickly taking off after.