Chapter 31
After parting ways with the princess whose name I never learned, I headed out shopping as planned.
The place I’d come to was one of the streets lined with guild headquarters: 〈C Guild Street〉.
It was commonly known as C Road.
Guilds were ranked according to their strength and dungeon-clearing achievements, and this street was where the C-rank guilds had gathered.
Guilds started at F rank, but those that rose above C rank were given a large base by the academy as a perk and allowed to open shops.
Here on C Road, C-rank guilds sold items, materials, resources, and crafted goods they’d brought back from dungeons.
Any student could shop here.
I had several reasons for coming, but my main goals were market research and making connections.
Yesterday, I’d sold everything to the 〈General Buyback Association〉, but they only paid the standard price, so I wanted to avoid them if possible.
My goal today was to find a guild that would buy things for more.
So, did any guilds actually pay more? Yes, there were.
Anything bought by the 〈General Buyback Association〉 was put up for sale at the academy store at the standard price—usually five times the buyback price. It was ridiculously expensive.
Guilds welcomed buying directly from students, too, since it cost them less than buying from the academy store at the standard price.
That said, unlike the 〈General Buyback Association〉, they weren’t interested in just anything.
Of course, a guild wouldn’t buy things it didn’t want.
On the other hand, if a guild really wanted something, it might raise its offer considerably to buy it.
It was just like an MMO.
That was why it paid to make connections with lots of guilds. You could get a sense of what each one wanted and what it didn’t need—and they might even tell you directly.
That was pretty important in 〈Dan-Katsu〉, where you were limited in how much you could carry out of a dungeon.
You could only carry so much, so prioritizing the things that sold for the most was an essential technique.
〈Dan-Katsu〉 had a ridiculous number of different drops... And they were hard to memorize. Well, I’d gotten used to that. Every item name was in the 〈Dan-Katsu〉 database—and in my head.
With a notepad in hand, I explored C Road, scribbling down buyback information as I went.
Everyone had posted a buyback list at their storefront, so I checked them and took notes.
Hmm, hmm.
“As expected, buyback prices for drops from the lower-tier beginner dungeons are up. The second-years have long since moved on from those dungeons, so few people bother diving into a low-level dungeon just to gather materials. And the new first-years will be heading in soon, so raising their buyback prices and buying from first-years saves time.”
This is a great time to make money.
Looks like I won’t have any trouble finding a place to sell the materials from the dungeons I’m about to explore.
That said, this is only temporary. Once more materials start circulating, prices will naturally go down.
I’m glad I got an early start.
Since I got my dungeon qualification early, we’re currently the only ones going into the lower-tier beginner dungeon.
No first-years have cleared the 〈Beginner Dungeon〉 yet, and students in their second year or above don’t bother with lower-tier beginner dungeons. In other words, we have it all to ourselves.
“All right, I’ll invite Hannah and head into the dungeon!”
I can make connections another day. For now, I should focus on earning Miel.
However, just as I was about to turn around, someone stepped into my way.
“Hey, hey, could you tell me more about what you were just saying? Are you heading into a Shocker, big brother?”
Apparently, a female student who’d caught my muttering had come over to talk to me.
The girl wore the academy uniform and was about as small as Hannah. The green embroidery on her skirt marked her as a second-year, but she certainly didn’t look it.
The likely reason was her bright brown hair, tied up in twin tails that seemed to crank up her loli factor.
I caught a faintly criminal vibe and immediately looked around. Damn, there was a guard at the corner!
“Are you lost? Where are your parents?”
“Hold it.”
I’d put on the act of a harmless, upstanding young man, but she stopped me with a sharp tone. She sounded pretty serious.
“Hehe, you’re pretty slick, big brother. I’m Marie. I’m with that C-rank guild over there, 〈Patch Seal Sticker〉, and I’ve got a little something to ask you. Could you spare me a moment?”
The tiny senpai pointed toward a gaudy shop with all kinds of logos and character pictures plastered everywhere. From the guild’s name, I guessed they focused on production. Probably.
So Marie-senpai, who said she was a member there, had heard me mention that I was heading into a lower-tier beginner dungeon and wanted to ask me a favor. I see.
Since she hadn’t called me 【Hero】, it didn’t seem like she was trying to recruit me into the guild.
In that case, this had to be one of those: a 〈Delivery Quest〉.
In 〈Dan-Katsu〉, quests would sometimes pop up out of nowhere asking you to “deliver goods that were in short supply.”
The client was usually a guild.
When you completed one, the guild paid you a reward. Combat-focused guilds usually paid in Miel, while production guilds often offered their own goods.
The higher the guild’s rank, the better the reward tended to be.
However, the reward from a production guild depended on what it specialized in, so you had to be careful. If the reward was something strange, it was best to pass.
Still, this was a quest from a C-rank guild, and probably a request to deliver materials from a lower-tier beginner dungeon. That could be pretty lucrative.
If the reward was something made by a C-rank guild, it was sure to be powerful equipment or a useful item for us at this point. Plus, we could take care of it while exploring the dungeon we were heading to anyway.
In that case, there was no harm in hearing her out.
“All right. I’ll hear you out, at least.”
“You catch on quick, big brother. Then come with me.”
Marie-senpai went into the shop with a big, childlike smile, and I followed her.
Those really were magnificent twin tails.