Spider Silk Transaction
“Eh!? Spi…”
The receptionist raised her voice and hurriedly covered her mouth with her hand.
Judging from her reaction, spider silk seems to be quite valuable.
The receptionist said, “Please wait a moment,” and stood up, returning from the hallway in the back after a while.
Apparently, she had reserved a room for negotiations. Spider Silk may be more expensive than I thought.
The receptionist took me to the second floor of the Trade Guild, where many doors were lined up.
These all seem to be separate negotiation spaces.
According to the explanation, negotiations are held quite frequently.
I was guided to the room at the very back of these rooms.
Inside the room, an elderly man was already waiting, and as soon as I sat down on the sofa, he prepared tea for me.
It smelled great.
It must be expensive.
“Well then, I’m Warren who will conduct today’s negotiations. Nice to meet you, miss.”
“My name is Lily. Nice to meet you, too.”
“Sorry to be so sudden, but can you show me the actual Spider Silk?”
“Yes. I’ll take it out right away.”
I took out the Spider Silk from my backpack.
Come to think of it, the size of the Spider Silk is longer than this backpack, but is that okay?
“… Is that a magic bag? You should take good care of it.”
“Yes, I will. This is the Spider Silk.”
“Let me see.”
For now, my backpack seems to be okay.
Mr. Warren carefully inspected the Spider Silk from corner to corner and resumed negotiations when he was finished.
“Well, this is a wonderful Spider Silk. The thread must have come from the Large Silk Spider next to you, but it is beautifully woven. We can buy it at a high price.”
“That’s good. How much will it be?”
“Well… how about 50,000?”
50,000 rubies!?
The price was higher than I expected.
As I was surprised by the price and didn’t reply, Warren continued talking as if he was troubled.
“I’d like to buy it at an even higher price, if possible, but there aren’t many opportunities to use Spider Silk in this town. It will inevitably become an export item to other towns. How about I add something a little extra?”
“N-no. 50,000 is fine. By the way, I have four more rolls. Can you buy them too?”
“Five rolls in total? That’s fine. Would you like to be paid in cash or transfer it to your Trade Guild’s account?”
“Um… I registered as a White-ranked merchant and don’t have an account yet…”
“I see. In that case, I’ll rank you up to Green as a bonus. If you can make Spider Silk, you won’t be able to make it with just cash transactions in the future.”
“O-okay.”
“I’ll go and do the rank-up procedure right away, so please wait for me.”
Leaving those words behind, Mr. Warren left the room.
One roll of Spider Silk for 50,000 rubies…
It’s more expensive than I thought.
After a while, Mr. Warren came back and told me that he had finished preparing for the rank-up.
The actual rank-up is done using a magic tool installed in a different room.
At that time, I had 200,000 rubies transferred to my Trade Guild account and received 50,000 rubies in cash.
I was grateful that he also agreed to do so.
“This completes the transaction. Is there anything else you want?”
“Anything else I want? Can you sell me cloth?”
“Cloth… that’s a bit difficult. We can sell, but it’s a bit expensive, and I don’t want to sell it at a price this high to a good customer who sells us Spider Silk.”
When I asked Mr. Warren for more details, he told me that cloth is not produced in this area.
So all cloth is imported from other towns and becomes expensive due to transportation costs.
If I want to buy cloth, he recommended Vardmoi, a trading city about a month away by magic bus.
Since all of this country’s main products and materials are gathering there, cloth can also be bought cheaply.
Also, selling Spider Silk in that city might fetch a higher price.
As befits a trading city, this country’s biggest merchants gather there, so luxury goods are always scarce.
However, even if I want to go there, I have to wait until the next magic bus departs.
The next magic bus to Vardmoi departs in 10 days’ time, so I made a reservation for our ticket.
Until then, it would be better to complete simple requests to raise my Adventurer rank.
It’s too long to just lie around in an inn without doing anything for 10 days.
Finally, we received Mr. Warren’s letter of introduction and left the Trade Guild.
Now that my plans are set, I will train hard for the next 10 days.