Even though I didn’t get all I hoped for, I would eventually, so it wasn’t a full loss. My original reason for coming here wasn’t complete yet, so I spoke up again. “Thank you for letting me see your journal, but I was curious about what I could buy from you for my travels?”
“I don’t know what to tell you. This isn’t a store. This is a small village. Everything is made to order,” Bolo informed, still playing with my bag. His apprentices continued working in the background, with one of them glancing at me and Bolo curiously.
“You don’t have anything you can give me today that would work? I can pay.” I put my hand down to grab some gold out of my pouch, but I wasn’t holding it.
Instead, Bolo said, “Yes, you do have quite a bit of gold in here.” When he looked up, he was smiling. It was clearly the look of greed on his face. “I do have a great idea. That sorting quiver you have on your back. I could tie it to your bag. Not actually tie it, but you will be able to access the arrows in your quiver from your bag. As it is quite complex, I would say it would cost ten gold, but I could have it done by tomorrow morning.”
Rabbit and I both didn’t know what our gold was worth, so I couldn’t say if it was a good deal or not. However, the way he grinned matched the sparkle in his eyes, showing he was too happy about a deal like that.
The quiver Sophia gave me was extremely useful. It would give you the arrow you were looking for, but it could only give you the ones that were in the quiver. If I were able to tie it to my bag, it would be immensely helpful. That meant I would never run out of arrows as long as they were stored in my extra-dimensional space. Additionally, since it reduced weight, it was a marvelous idea if he could do it. This wasn’t something that could be done without my bag, though, because it was the reason that this idea would work, and I doubt he could sell this idea to anyone else.
“Five gold,” I bargained, gauging his reaction.
“Five gold? I’m going to have to work all night to get this put together. Nine gold,” Bolo quipped.
“Six gold,” I insisted.
“Eight,” Bolo countered.
“Seven is the best I can do,” I haggled, not knowing the conversion of gold to silver or copper, so I couldn’t exactly split it in the middle.
“Okay, final offer. Seven gold, twelve silver,” Bolo said, putting both palms up.
“Deal,” I accepted, and both of us were happy. “One quick question, though. What is the conversion rate from gold to silver?”
Bolo’s face broke into a broad grin. “It’s twelve to one.”
“So, I’m paying you eight gold anyway?” I frowned.
With the exact opposite look of mine, Bolo said, “Yep. It’s always a pleasure to do business, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” I replied. He may have fleeced me out of a bit of gold, but it wasn’t all that bad. I didn’t know how much anything cost, so he could have started at twenty gold, and I would have had no clue if it was a reasonable price or not. “Okay, so that will be for tomorrow morning.”
I pulled off the quiver and handed it over to him. I then grabbed my bag back as I needed some stuff from it before leaving. I didn’t want to leave it, but Rabbit memorized everything that was in it, so I wasn’t worried about anything missing by the time I got it back. I was more concerned about carrying around my money on my person without the bag. It was a lot of money, and I didn’t want to flaunt it around. However, many people in this village would be on my side if anyone tried to take it. It was these villagers who let me keep all of it in the first place. I did save their lives, so it tilted the tables in my favor.
“This is brilliant work,” Bolo commented, stroking the quiver with admiration. “This is Sophia’s, if I’m not mistaken. I’m surprised you convinced her to give it to you.” He gave me a look that was appraising as if he was trying to figure out something he might have overlooked.
When he didn’t say anything further, I asked, “This will work for tomorrow, but what can you do for me in the long term?”
“Well, what would you like? And do you have any stones or pieces to make it with? Supplies are limited,” Bolo replied, and now I realized how much I hated this world. In ours, supply chains made things so easy. The raw materials would be sourced from across the globe, with rare earth elements located on the opposite side. The intellectual property would be where I was from, and the assembly would take place in just about every major country in the world. While incredibly complex, it made getting something straightforward. I wondered if I could mass-produce items in this world, but it would be challenging unless I could get the necessary supplies to me. That was probably why it didn’t start in my world until the time of the Industrial Revolution.
Rabbit chimed in with a suggestion. I relayed it out loud to Bolo. “In your book, you wrote about a healing ring that you tried working on.”
Bolo cut me off, saying, “Health rings are common. The ones to heal a portion of your health are rarer and for a good reason.”
“No. In your journal, you mentioned a ring that aided your current regeneration. It’s not something that heals but increases the speed of healing.”
Bolo’s eyes narrowed. “That was in my journal, yes,” he confessed, flabbergasted, “but there is no way you could have read that even if you knew the language. It was buried in the middle, with my thoughts on the subject. There is no way anyone could read that fast.”
Considering I had already read the whole journal, I didn’t think it would change anything for me to let my hands show. “Well, in the book, you postulated that while it is simple to make, no one would want them because of how slow the natural regeneration is. You also said the only reason someone would possibly buy one is if they wanted to try to heal something incurable, such as a massive head injury. You also left a note saying ‘a good way to get killed.’ I am assuming that means, selling items that might not work to desperate people was an excellent way to get murdered.” I finished what Rabbit said in my head, and I repeated it out loud for the entertainment of Bolo.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
As for Bolo, his mouth was wide open until he finally got a hold of himself and stated, “Yes, well, it seems you have read the journal.”
“Twelve silver,” I said in reply, and then gave my biggest grin.
“Funny,” Bolo said dryly. “Hopefully, anything extra you learned from it will be kept private.”
Since I didn’t know what he was talking about, Rabbit jumped in, “Apparently, he has a thing with someone named Sue. It doesn’t give any context, just ideas for Sue.”
To play with him, I said, “Do you know where I could find anyone that can Sue, I mean sew? I need a cloak for the road.”
“Okay, okay,” Bolo muttered, putting his hands up defensively, and looked up to see if his assistants understood what I was saying, then whispered, “What do you want?”
I wasn’t trying to extort him, just having a little fun. “Nothing. I only want to know how much one of those rings would cost.”
“As I said, you would have to have some supplies to make it.” Bolo pretended to think for a moment, then he spoke, “However, for you, I can make an exception this time. I have enough supplies for one ring, but they are quite expensive and rare. The ones I have here can make quite a powerful ring, but others wouldn’t be nearly as strong unless I had good resources in the future. Or we can wait until you get fewer supplies to make it.”
“Well, how much is the ring going to cost if it’s high-quality?”
People often asked about the difference between high-quality and low-quality items. The truth was, it could not be a simple choice between the two without considering the price. Take a television as an example. A small one could be purchased cheaply, but as the size increased, so did the cost. At the very top end, the price became unreasonable, almost a rip-off. The real solution had always been to find a balance, avoiding either extreme.
“Well, the supplies and soul stones I have are going to cost fifty gold. And that is at cost, have you mind, so I’m not making any money off this venture. On the plus side, it's challenging to sell high-level items out here, so I'd hold onto it until the need arises, which should even things out. A low-level ring will only cost two gold, but you need to provide the supplies to make it, and I doubt you will be getting any soul stones anytime soon. For efficiency, I will say the nicer ring will give a 10 to 14 percent increase in natural regeneration. In comparison, the lesser rings will only provide around a 3 percent increase in natural regeneration,” Bolo explained.
From his numbers, it seemed like there was a real benefit in the cheaper rings. It would cost one gold for a 1.5 percent increase in regeneration, while the other costs about five times as much as the regeneration. If I were purely looking at price, then I would buy a ton of the smaller rings. However, I had to balance the cost-to-benefit ratio with what I could use. If I had a limit on the number of rings, then I would want to pay more to have a significant benefit. On the other hand, if I could have an unlimited number of rings, then I would find some way to wear them all. I was thinking some type of ring chain mail, but I wouldn’t be able to sneak anywhere because I would sound like jingle bells wherever I went, but I would be unkillable, considering that I would heal just as fast as I was damaged.
To get this sorted out, I inquired, “How many rings can a person wear?”
Bolo scoffed at my ignorance again, but then looked at me suspiciously. He remembered the last time he thought I knew nothing, and he gullibly allowed me to read his entire journal. “You are allowed eight magical rings and two magical necklaces as accessories, but they can’t do the same thing. As you may have noticed, magical accessories are not that prevalent in this part of the world.”
I had noticed that. Out of everyone I had killed, I didn’t find a single magical ring that I knew about. I wouldn’t know how to tell if it was magical even if I found one, but at least from my observations, crafted items were unquestionably rare. Of course, Sophia had her fingers filled with rings, but I could have sworn there were more than eight. I would have to ask her about it if the chance ever came up.
“Since I am limited, I will take the nicer regeneration ring for fifty gold,” I spoke, handing back the bag along with fifty-eight gold. It seemed as though my money was significantly lighter after this last trip of the day. The fact that the rest of the supplies only cost me a single gold mark while the crafting store cost me fifty-eight gold was devastating to my finances.
“One last thing, keep the secret of the way quiet. You can’t use it, and as a light mage I can, so please don’t spread it around.”
I was confused, so I asked Rabbit what he was talking about. He was silent for a moment before replying, “I think I understand what he is referring to. He ran an experiment on light to test the temperatures of each color. To do this, he took a prism and laid out several thermometers that met each color, and one for the control that had no light. When he did this, he noticed the temperature was increasing as it went to the red, and the control had the highest temperature of all. He then theorized that there was a light that we couldn’t see. Of course, he was talking about infrared light, but I assume they don’t know about that here.”
“I understand the concept you noted from my world, but I am confused about what the secret of the way is?”
Bolo rubbed his eyes. “You are confusing. You seem well-versed in some areas, yet completely oblivious in others. Whether you call it the way, the path, the truth, or the source, it doesn’t matter. They all refer to the same thing. The fundamental truths of the universe and its unifying principles.”
“What?”
“How would I explain this to a child?” He spoke slowly, “To increase your skill in magic, or any other type of skill, there needs to be affinity, experience, and knowledge. Think of affinity like sewing. Some people have naturally steady hands and are better at sewing than others, and that is just the way they were born. You cannot change that. Experience is easy. Practice and kill animals, and it goes up fast.
“Knowledge, however, is the hard part. If you took someone with acceptable affinity and gave them enough time without teaching them anything, they’d probably only reach near level 20 in the skill before they die. That’s why people often say you don’t really have a skill until at least level 20. It’s as if you don’t know anything, and in a way, that’s true. However, if that person knew everything about that subject, then they could level as much as they wanted. The problem here is that there isn’t enough knowledge. And the way is that knowledge that will help get us to the next levels.”
Trying to wrap my head around everything, I asked to clarify, “So the way are little-known facts?”
“Little-known facts? Maybe. But they are monumental revelations that others don’t know about. Take me, for example. I am a light mage, but how many other people out there know of light that isn’t visible? It is not even thinkable until I came across it. It is one of the basic principles that our teachings are based on. Light is thought of as visible color, but now the question becomes ‘What is light?’ If you can figure that out, you could really unlock the skill.”
Now that he explained, I felt like I had some leverage over him. It seemed my basic physics knowledge would be a decent trade to someone like this who was trying to get to the next level. I wondered what might be valuable enough to trade with other mages.
After handing the bag back, Bolo checked it. I wasn’t sure if he was checking to see if the gold was gone or seeing if the properties had changed now that I had removed items.
At that, I took my leave, heading back to Kibi at the meadow to train.
