Chapter 426 - Dealings (1/2)

Mauricio looked like he was in part of the milling process of unhusked rice because dust and soot were all over his clothes and hair. It looked like he was just about to clean up when we arrived at his main shop. However, I surmised that the milling process occurred in another shop because Mona had none of it on her person.

”If you would follow me, I'll guide you to our trading shop just right next to our shop here...” Mona made a small bow before waiting for us to follow her.

”I'll call you over when we are about to start or I'll just join you there if the others are gonna be running a bit late. I'll just clean myself for a bit and take care of some things.” Mauricio excused himself as he slowly closed his office door.

”Do you have a catalog for everything here?” I asked.

”Oh, yes sir. It's not as detailed but I made sure everything was written in.” Mona replied as she handed me a clipboard.

Kaley's head hawked over my side as she tried to scan for the items written though Oscar went ahead and saw for himself. The list could use a bit of organization but her clean handwriting made up for it. I flipped the pages until the end before I handed it to Kaley. Tatiana and Jared nudged next to her to check on the items on the list as well.

”They have guns for trade too...” Kaley whispered.

”I saw… ammo too… let's check the condition first before we try and buy it. Some of them are quite expensive in terms of money too.” I replied.

”What if their asking price is more expensive than ours?” Jared commented.

”Yeah, that's why I said we'd check the conditions first. If the quality is that good, why not? We could make more food but we couldn't manufacture guns.” I replied.

”Yet...” I thought to myself.

”Kid! You gotta see this! Come here! We gotta buy them all!” Oscar raised his voice, ecstatic.

Lois was next to him and he was also excited by the pile of items in front of them. The colorful boxes already gave it away and I was sure I saw a portion of them from the list Mona gave us. They were all placed right next to a wall with a warning sign of no smoking in close proximity.

It was different kinds of fireworks.

”Hmm, we'll definitely have a use for them. The year is also ending so we might use a few that don't shoot up in the air for the kids. We'll just use those for signals to save a little bit on flares. Some of them explode when the propellant burns out too.” I nodded a few times.

”We could also repurpose the gunpowder kid.” Oscar added.

”Hah! Are you dying to use your f.u.c.k.i.n.g musket?!” I chuckled.

”What? No! Let's make the ones on guard duty confused as f.u.c.k when we make them practice with it. I could already see the outcome!” Oscar cackled.

”Yeah, yeah. We'll see, we'll see.” I was shaking my head in amus.e.m.e.nt.

We browsed through the items they have on display but most of them we already have at home or could be easily procured from a scavenging run. However, there were some items that even if we already have at home, we wouldn't pass them up. Also, even if we could scavenge some of them ourselves, it would be the better choice to trade it with the items we could produce because these items would run out, depreciate, or would be difficult to produce in the future.

There were a few units of solar panels, boxes of water filters, different kinds of batteries, cleaning agents, medical supplies, and the hottest commodity as of now, guns. They also have food items in stock but it wasn't as appealing to me and my group compared to the ones Lois was drooling over.