Elvis and Caelithia took a cab to the location where Caelithia had bought their equipment.
Elvis kept his eyes on the streets streaming past the window.
Before long, they arrived at their destination. The cab drove into the parking lot of a high-rise building with the words Universal Trading Center displayed above the gate.
Elvis and Caelithia got out of the car.
Caelithia led the way while Elvis trailed behind, watching people in a variety of attire, ranging from casual clothes to battle armor, flock in and out of the entrance.
At the entrance were two separate doorways, each with a nameplate above it: Selling, and Buying.
Caelithia strode through the entrance marked Buying, with Elvis in tow.
They walked into a long, wide passageway lined with doors. In front of each door sat a person dressed in a professional suit, whom Elvis assumed to be an agent. Each doorway was surrounded by a half-ring of short, dark glass panels.
A few agents had customers entering the rooms behind them, while others sat at empty stations.
The attendants smiled at them but said nothing.
Caelithia slowed as she approached the second station, seemingly about to stop there, but quickly continued forward. Elvis followed in silence, his eyes roaming over the unfamiliar surroundings.
She finally stopped in front of a station where a slender female attendant stood up with a professional smile upon noticing them.
"Good morning. What would you like to sell?" she inquired.
"Monster carcasses," Caelithia replied.
"Come with me." She pressed a button, and the half-ring glass barrier slid open.
Caelithia walked into the station, followed by Elvis.
The attendant pressed the button again, and the barrier shut.
Using her access card, she unlocked the door and led them into a large, brightly lit room with no windows. A table stood in the center, equipped with several unfamiliar apparatuses.
"I’m Natasha. Thank you for choosing my service. I’ll do my best to satisfy you and offer you the best selling rates. So, how many monster carcasses are you selling?" she asked, her professional smile never leaving her face.
"Um... more than ten," Caelithia said after a brief hesitation.
"More than thirty," Elvis interjected.
"Okay. You can dump them on the floor. I’ll take care of the rest," she said before moving to the side, wearing black gloves, a mask, and a black, nylon-like protective coverall.
Elvis and Caelithia followed her instructions, piling up heaps of arctic wolf and snow rat carcasses, but the enormous body of the blue orc stole the show. Elvis had decided not to sell its spiked club, though.
"You had a good hunt in the Frozen Forest dungeon," she complimented them.
She then retrieved her tools from the long metal table, including a blunt, dagger-like attachment connected to a long, extendable neck on a machine left there. Using it, she scanned the carcasses one by one, documenting each scan with a beep.
They were professional tools designed to detect the rank and level of dead monsters.
It took some time to finish scanning the entire heap of carcasses.
Once she was done, she returned to the computer on the table, typed in some information, printed a sheet of paper, and handed it to them. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
"This lists the standard rates at which I buy monsters, the total sum, and the tax that will be deducted."
Caelithia accepted the paper and quickly skimmed through it before nodding. "Okay."
"Wait!" Elvis stopped them before taking the paper from Caelithia.
After reading through it, he saw that they would receive a whopping seven hundred thousand Terris Credits after taxes were deducted.
His eyebrows furrowed as he noticed the price difference between monsters with monster cores and those without them.
Raising his head from the paper, Elvis looked at the attendant and said, "Ma’am, I think your price is problematic."
"Problematic? Sir, please, that’s a very serious allegation. Those are the standard prices," she argued.
"That’s what makes it problematic. For your information, my sister and I are about to leave Vinegard City to hunt, so what makes you think we’ll return to you to sell our monster carcasses when we can get the same prices everywhere? What makes your pricing unique?" Elvis lectured, wearing the expression of an advisor rather than a haggler.
The attendant fell silent for a few seconds before saying, "I can give you seven hundred and twenty thousand, minus tax."
"Seven hundred and ninety thousand," Elvis countered.
"That’s my limit." She shook her head.
"Seven hundred and eighty thousand," he haggled again.
Caelithia watched from the sidelines with a fascinated expression as the two went back and forth for several minutes before finally settling on 740,000 Terris Credits.
The attendant then gave them her phone number.
Elvis was grinning from ear to ear as he shook her hand.
"Nice doing business with you."
They left her in the room and headed to the Selling section, taking the elevator to the next floor.
"You see that? You don’t just settle for the first price like a greenhorn. You nearly threw away forty thousand Terris Credits," Elvis admonished her along the way.
Caelithia nodded.
Unlike the Buying section, the Selling section had very few attendants. Various pieces of equipment were displayed on shelves behind transparent glass covers. The weapons ranged from daggers to bizarre weapon types.
Although the weapons seemed to be within easy reach and could be stolen without anyone noticing, Elvis had a feeling that more Awakeners might be hidden nearby.
After all, the Universal Trading Center was the largest trading hub for Awakeners, with branches spread across the Terris Federation.
Following Caelithia’s instructions, he tapped on the glass, and a system-like interface appeared on the screen.
[Equipment: Reaper Scythe]
[Rank: Common]
[Description: Despite being among the lowest ranks and grades of equipment, it is considerably sharp.]
[Price: 10,000 TC]
"The lowest-ranked equipment is on the bottom floor. Let’s go up." Caelithia climbed the stairs.
The higher they climbed, the better the quality of the equipment and the more expensive it became.
They stopped at the section for Grade IV Common equipment. Every rank of equipment had four grades, ranging from Grade I to Grade IV.
Grade IV was the highest grade of equipment.
The first thing they bought was a storage bag.
[Equipment: Storage Bag]
[Rank: Common]
[Grade: IV]
[Description: A five-cubic-meter storage bag with a self-repair function that consumes very little mana when out of battle.]
[Price: 600,000 TC]
The price made Elvis feel abnormally hot despite the air conditioning. He even considered not buying it, but Caelithia’s glare when he took a step back and the voice of reason in his head forced him to steel himself and make the purchase.
With his heart bleeding at the thought of parting with so much money, he slid open the glass cover and retrieved the bag.
They then went downstairs to purchase other essentials, including sleeping bags, two hunting watches, high-energy canned food, and packs of water.
Afterward, they headed to the terminal and handed their purchases to the middle-aged female cashier. Beside her sat a man in a suit, his head resting on the desk as he slept.
As the cashier calculated the total, Elvis grew bored and decided to scan her.
She was unawakened.
He then scanned the man.
———?Race: ????
?Status: ????
?Dominant Attribute: ????
———’Huh? Like Caelithia?’