Berserker: A LitRPG Urban Fantasy Adventure (Apocosmos Book 1) by Dimitrios Gkirgkiris (phonics readers .txt) 📕

I didn’t have nearly enough money to pay off my student loan, let alone buy a place and retire. Sure, I might find something else to craft, but my earnings would drop to no more than what a normal job would earn me.

No, he can’t keep this up.

At some point, he would have to stop in order to cut his losses, or people would start importing materials from other states. I didn’t want to wait but if I had learned anything from my violent pull into the Apocosmos, it was to avoid conflict, especially with people more powerful than yourself. In this case, it was not just his higher level but the fact that I was fishing for trout while he was whaling.

Perhaps I should wait for him to call off his monopoly and then set up very small buying orders so that I wouldn’t step on his toes and sell at a price similar to his. It would be a slower ascent, but at least I would continue to have a passive income that might eventually bring me to my…

A new notification appeared at the top of the tablet’s screen.

You have a new message from : Abrathion Halciu

Read Message Ignore Message Block Sender

I quickly tapped on the prompt to read the message from my competitor, cursing my luck that I had attracted his attention.

You should consider my purchasing all of your arrows as a gesture of goodwill. I run this market and I don’t like people messing with my business. So cut it out. Next time, I will not be as kind and courteous as I was today.

9

Highway tune

Just who the fuck does this guy think he is? He won’t be as polite next time, my ass. I’d dealt with enough trolls in MMORPGs and this guy was no different than those cowards, flexing their digital arms, or in this case his bank account. I had to admit though, he flexed really well. There was no way around him in the market. The only possible way to bypass his monopoly was sourcing materials from other states, countries, or even worlds.

This was an option I’d already explored in an effort to lower my expenses. Bringing materials from other worlds was completely out of the question, as the cost was extremely high unless you were in possession of a portal that went directly to that realm. These, at least from what I’d read, were only owned by powerful organizations and clans. The Dark Energy Marketplace definitely had access to such portals but charged a very steep price for access to it.

Sourcing materials from neighboring states didn’t bring the costs up too much, but their starting price was rarely cheaper, and never low enough for it to make sense financially. Other countries, or more distant states for that matter, weren’t such a bad option though. Looking at sourcing palm stems from Brazil or spruce stems from Canada along with bone grain from Texas initially showed an increase in my margins by almost 12%. The problem with this route, however, was that I needed to order massive quantities in order to get the low prices I needed. I would also have to cover the transportation costs myself. Quite apart from that, from my research online, it seemed that transports of materials were prone to attack by Apocosmos pirates since the goods couldn’t be traced back to them, and well… there was no police force stopping them. Adding on the cost of security services for the transportation of the goods dropped margins even lower—not low enough to dissuade me from trying it in the future, but at the moment I didn’t have the capital to invest in such large orders. There was nothing I could do but wait.

“What’s wrong, Alex?” a sleepy Louie asked me from the couch.

“I thought you were sleeping,” I said, surprised that I hadn’t heard him wake up.

“I was,” he said and yawned. “But your teeth grinding could wake up Smaug from his slumber.”

“You read the Hobbit?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

“What’s wrong, Alex?” he repeated. Clearly he knew me far too well to fall for such a tactic.

“You remember our only competitor in the state?” I asked. “The one selling arrows as well?”

“I wouldn’t call him a competitor. He was pushing much larger quantities than we do. Abrathion Halciu.”

I was surprised he could recall his name so easily, and as much as I hated to admit it, I really believed that his high intelligence stat was the reason.

“He purchased all of our arrows already,” I stated.

“Oh, that’s not good.”

“No, it’s not,” I continued. “And he also purchased all the key materials in New York state, so we can’t make any more arrows.”

“He did look like he had significant funds. I guess he decided to deal with you before you grew too much.”

“I guess so,” I mumbled. “What are we going to do to get back at him?”

“This isn’t a game, Alex. He’s rich and you aren’t. He can control this small part of the market because he’s wealthy enough, and has been doing this for long enough. We’re new to this. We have to play by his rules.”

“So we should just do nothing?”

“No, not nothing. But we’ll need to wait until he pulls back. Then we can continue with what we were doing but in much smaller quantities. Maybe find a different thing altogether?”

“That is doing nothing, Louie,” I argued. “No! He fucked us over. We need to find a way to fuck him right back.”

“Why?” Louie pleaded with me. “Why waste time in a losing battle? Let’s put our heads together, and I’m sure we can find something that would eventually bring us money too.”

“I guess,” I said, not really meaning it. “I’ll look into it.”

“Okay,” he said and laid his head down on the couch’s pillows again. “Let me know if you need any help.”

I nodded and immediately picked the tablet back up.