Chapter 284 - Haggling
"Stahl!" The voice of a young woman could be heard as she was looking for a young man, who swiftly turned around from stepping off the ship, noticing Evalia approaching him.
"Oh, hey!" Stahl exclaimed with a bright smile, and Evalia smiled back at him. "So… How about we meet at the market later when you're done with everything?" She asked, so Stahl immediately nodded his head.
"Sure! I'll just message you when I'm going there then." Stahl responded, so Evalia smirked back at him.
"Alright, then I guess I'll see you later?" Evalia asked once more, so Stahl simply nodded again. "Of course." He said as he swiftly turned around and made his way over toward Komer, who was currently talking to the workers at the harbor. Stahl really wanted to finish the trading as soon as he could.
And after Komer finished talking with them, he turned to one of the workers from the ship, told him something, and then jerked his head toward the street to tell Stahl that they should get going now. "What did you ask those guys? The guys from the Harbor I mean." Stahl then asked curiously, before Komer looked at him with a smile. "I was talking about fees, of course… The Harbor's pretty full at the moment, so a big ship like our's is a bit of a hassle to deal with. I managed to haggle it down a bit though. Oh, and I asked for the nearest Bookstore as well." He explained, so Stahl lightly tilted his head to the side.
"A bookstore? Why that? I thought we only needed to get materials and stuff like that." Stahl added, and Komer nodded his head. "Yeah, but we need to know the actual locations of the shops. Most bookstores at least offer maps of the town, and although they aren't necessarily filled in with most information, a bookstore owner is usually someone pretty knowledgeable. So, we'll ask him to fill us in. Oh, and obviously for Sky as well, I told someone to let him know where it is." The young merchant answered, before Stahl quietly whistled impressed.
"Nice, I wasn't aware of that. But just wondering, you're still basically just wearing your starter clothes… Why is that?" Stahl asked, and Komer looked down at his body before shrugging.
"No real reason. Eisen said he'd make me something more merchant-like at some point, but he didn't get to it yet. And as long as I have the money, people don't care about what I'm wearing as long as I'm not completely dirty and somewhat respectable-looking." He explained, before scratching the back of his neck, pointing at the a store at the end of the street with a wooden sign displaying a book as well as a writing pen.
"That's the bookstore. Ever haggled before?" Komer asked with a smile, but Stahl just shook his head. "Not really… Usually I just pay the price people tell me. You can't haggle at McRonald's, after all." He said with a smile, and Komer nodded his head with a smirk.
"Yeah, you don't usually haggle when ordering food anyway, at least not when it's a small order at a restaurant or food stall. If it's what we're getting later, we're hagglin', but otherwise, that's not the norm. Anyway, you have the confidence to haggle, so I'll just show it to you at the bookstore, and then we're going to some random stall to get you the Trading skill." Komer suggested, while Stahl just nodded and followed behind him, before they made their way into the Bookstore.
There, Komer immediately stepped up to the counter and looked at the man behind it. "Good morning, Sir. We'd like to buy a map of town, if possible." Komer said with a smile, cutting right to the chase, before the man nodded his head with a similar business-smile. "Of course, wait just a second." He replied with a nod, before stepping up to the shelf behind the counter and looking at a few different items, making some small talk while he was at it.
"Are you two travelers, by chance?" The man asked, and Komer immediately replied with a bright smile. "Yes, Sir, we're just passing. We're leaving again in the evening." He answered, so the man nodded his head and with a smile pulled a rolled up piece of paper out of the shelf, opening it on the counter and weighing it down with some small pieces of metal at the corners.
"This is our basic map of only Kahn. As you can see, it's quite clear and easy to see the different streets, even the alleys, as well as the individual houses. We also offer a version of only the streets including the street-names, a version with this amount of detail with the street-names, as well as a map of the outside of town so that you can navigate the fields and forest if you wish to." The Man explained with a smile, and Stahl just shook his head.
"That's fine, this map here is more than enough." Komer answered, and at this point, Stahl noticed the situation change immensely, as if a lever was switched that tensed up the atmosphere.
"Gladly. That would be 50 Copper coins, then." The man said, before Komer began to slightly shake his head and blink quickly as if surprised, or even borderline insulted.
"50 Copper? That is quite a sum, isn't it? I'm more inclined toward 5 copper, personally." The merchant answered, and now it was the man's turn to act baffled, although Stahl was rather unsure whether he was acting as well, or actually baffled.
"Sir, I'm sorry that we can not sell this map for only 10 Copper coins. We can put the number down to 40, though."
"How do 10 sound?"
"…I offer 30, but I can not go down any further, Sir." The man replied, all the whilst keeping up a bright merchant-like smile, although Stahl noticed that he was most likely not nearly as calm as he was showing himself to be, but Komer just continued.
"15?"
"Sir, my last word is 20. I will not budge any further than this." The man exclaimed finally, and Komer smirked as if he got the man where he wanted him.
"Alright, let's go for 25." Komer said with a smile, before the man looked at him confused, although glad that he got to sell the map for a higher price than he would have settled on. But Komer still wasn't finished, "But on top of the 25 for the map, you mark down the locations of a few shops that we need to visit after this. Deal?" Komer asked with a smile, before the Man nodded his head, feeling somewhat relieved that he wasn't asking for anything else major.
And after Komer then asked about the exact locations of different shops to be marked down on the map, he and Stahl made their way back out of the shop, before Stahl turned to the young merchant with a wry smile. "Damn… You're really a Devil, aren't you?" Stahl asked, and Komer just shrugged. "Hey, I got us a 50% discount, stop complaining. He wouldn't have sold it for that price if it had brought him to ruin. And I'll give you a little tip here…" Komer said, before quietly looking around and speaking to Stahl in a low voice.
"With my element, I can see a rough price range of what an item is worth when I infuse it into my eyes. The range for that map was 20 to 40 copper. He was asking for far too much anyway, so I started the lowest I could go. He knew that I far underpriced it, but he also knew that I knew that he overpriced the map, so he accepted the starting 'bid'. I was going for the lowest acceptable price, because any lower than that will really not bring him any profit, and I didn't want to do that to him. But, because that was the spot where he only barely made profit, I raised the price and asked for a small favor instead. He was aware that we're travelers, because he asked about it at the start, so instead of doing us the favor for free to get us to be returning customers, he could have asked for a fee to tell us the locations of the shops. And instead, I raised the price I would pay him a little into the place I wanted to get to anyway, and then added the favor into it." Komer explained quite lengthily, while Stahl listened quite curiously before scratching the back of his head.
"Couldn't you have just taken the 20 he would have given you and asked for the favor anyway?" He asked curiously, because he was really just unsure how you should normally handle such things.
"I probably would have if I didn't need that favor, but with it, I thought I'd use that chance. I know especially I shouldn't say that, but you know, I kinda wanna turn over a new leaf. So, this is how I deal with things. That way, when we get back to this town, he's going to have positive memories of me as a customer, if he remembers me at all." Komer explained, and that did really seem to make sense to Stahl, although he was curious about something else now.
"You just said 'when we get back', as if it was a sure thing… why that?" Stahl asked, and Komer just turned to him with a wry smile. "Wait, you didn't ask anyone why we're stopping here last?"
"Not really, no…" The young man responded, somewhat embarrassedly, before Komer replied with a sigh. "This is the largest commercial town in the area, and quite coincidentally, also one of the closest cities to the Islands through the regular routes. There are some that are a bit closer, but those are all Military-controlled, because people have been wanting to take the islands over for a while now."
"And why didn't they manage to? Surely they should have stronger forces than we do, right?" Stahl then asked, but Komer just shrugged. "Not a single clue. I think it has something to do with the fact that they're islands of the gods, but I really don't exactly know. You'll have to ask Sky about it, he knows more about them than anyone on the ship."
With a low laugh, Stahl nodded his head before crossing his arms. "He knows the most in general, doesn't he?"
But immediately, Komer shook his head, which surprised Stahl a good bit. "Nope. He and Bree are pretty on-par on the amount of their knowledge. Bree knows most things that you will need in your daily life in any way, and she's pretty knowledgeable about general geography, skills, magic, and so on. Sky just knows a lot more about different myths and legends, because he grew up in one." He explained, and noticing Stahl's confused expression, Komer continued.
"Sky grew up in a Fairy-Forest. That kind of place is inaccessible by regular people or monsters, only those with special permissions can get in there. It's a place filled with all kinds of magic, and it has a lot of really strong, legendary creatures in there. Because of that, the Fae had a lot of information about legends and myths." Komer explained, before pointing at a random stall with a few small items.
"Anyway, get over there and get the Trading Skill, please. We need to get going so that everything will be delivered in time." Komer explained, and Stahl nodded his head. "Gotcha. Any item in particular you want me to buy?" Stahl asked, while Komer shrugged. "I'll take a look around and see if there's anything interesting. Just butter them up for a little while."
"Gotcha, Boss!" Stahl responded before rushing over to the stall he was told to and then took a look at the different items. And to his surprise, there was something else going on. A young woman wearing a beginner-player's clothes was standing behind the stall, acting as a saleswoman.