23 Chapter 23 - Payment

Chapter 23 - Payment

"I will write down the list of materials needed for this upgrade. You just need to find them," Glen picked a piece of paper from the counter and started writing the materials.

Since Glen wanted to keep his formula a secret, he mixed the materials needed with the other upgrade method.

??? Frog upgrade

Material – 1 liter of Rank 1 Colorless Water, 1g of Silver Powder, 1 drop of Red Dye

Procedure – Mix the three materials well and boil the water. Let the Silver Frog beast drink it.

Prediction – Strengthen Skin (70%) or Shiny Metallic Skin (65%) or Red-Eye (50%) or Red-Silver Skin (40%)

Difficulty – Hard

Rate – Unconfirmed Method. 65% success rate.

This was the upgrade method that Glen decided to use on Silfra. The truth was, there was another method with the same material. That method was a bit more complex with a 90% success rate.

Glen decided to use that method at first but then, he figured that beast's upgrade was supposed to be hard and thus, he decided to use a lower success rate method.

He also wanted to confirm many of these methods and decided to use them.

Moreover, if he always succeeded in the upgrade from the start, people would get suspicious later when he suddenly got a lot of failed upgrades to test the other upgrade methods.

Thus, he decided to fail a lot at the beginning and many successes at the end.

Be that as it may, he would not choose any of the methods that looked dangerous to the beast. He chose the safe method to make sure the beast did not suffer many problems after the failure.

Other than these three materials, Glen added more materials from other upgrade methods to keep them to use later in his storage. He decided to do this because he could use them later for research after he got the necessary equipment.

'Since I want to upgrade Bubbly later, I will let Bertha get his materials too,' Glen even included Bubbly's upgrade method's material on the list so that he did not need to waste his time searching for them later.

In the end, there were 10 materials listed on the paper. Glen wanted to put more but he had his conscience too.

Bertha looked at the list of materials and frowned.

"You know, this is not the first time I use an Upgrade Specialist's service to upgrade my pet. Still, they will not list this many materials to hide their formula," Bertha raised her eyebrow.

"For a Tier 2-Star to 3-Star upgrade, they will usually need at least four materials and only doubled the list to 8 materials to hide their formula but you have ten."

"From these materials, I can easily see that four of them are not related to the metal element at all which Silfra has. These four are for Bubbly since they are water elements."

"…" Glen was speechless. 'I need to be careful later!!!' He should have put more believable and related material if he wanted to cheat some materials from his customer.

"Well, since you are the only Upgrade Specialist in this village, I will turn a blind eye this time. However, be more careful later or no one will want your service later," Bertha spoke.

"I am sorry," Glen apologized. He also felt embarrassed due to this.

"Then, based on the usual pay rate, the total payment will be 15 thousand G," Bertha spoke.

"What?" Glen stared at Bertha with wide eyes. He did not believe in the price spoken by Bertha. "15 thousand G???"

Since 1000 G is equivalent to 1 Baz. 15 thousand G is equal to 15 Baz. 15 Baz was more than enough for Glen to spend for one meal.

Glen's family was not poor but now that he needed to take care of his siblings without his parents, he needed to be frugal and had been quite calculating about money lately.

He only did that to himself. As for his siblings, if they needed something, he would give it to them no matter the price because he wanted them to succeed in their studies.

"That's right, you don't know about this. For a Colorless Stage beast, the price will start at 1000 G. With Silfra's Tier and Rank, it will be 15 thousand G. This is the calculation for the base price," Bertha took a paper and wrote about the calculation on a paper.

She gave the paper to Glen. 1000G (Colorless) x3 (Tier 2-Star) x5 (Rank 5)

"You can charge more if you provide the materials but since I gather them myself, the price remains at 10 thousand G," Bertha spoke.

"If you are using a really hard method to upgrade my beast, you can charge more but the price cannot be more than twice the base price. This is the law set up by the Upgrade Specialist Association," Bertha added.

"By the way, the multiplier for rank remained x1, x2, x3, x4, and so on for each rank but the Tier's multiplier will increase a lot more because the higher the tier, the harder it is to upgrade a beast. Same with Rank too, the higher the rank, the harder to upgrade" Bertha added.

"That is why most tamers will choose to upgrade their beasts when they are the weakest because it is cheaper and has a higher success rate," Bertha continued.

Glen was enlightened about something. 'Is the low success rate because Silfra is Rank 5? If she is a Rank 1 or 2, will the success rate be more than 65%?' Glen thought.

This was good info because it did not mention in any of the books he had read or maybe Glen saw it but forgot.

"So, if you want to raise the price, I don't mind. I can pay for it. Business has been good lately, so I have a lot of money," Bertha added.

"Let's keep it at that price. If you want to give me more later, I will accept them. We don't know if my method will succeed and even if we succeed, you may not like the upgrade. So, let's keep it at the base price," Glen replied.

"Sure. The deposit will be 30% of the base price. The leftover will be paid later after the upgrade. Let's write a contract. We don't want any of us cheating on each other," Bertha grinned.

"Sure," Glen replied.

Bertha made a simple contract and both of them signed it. After that, he gave 30% of the payment to Glen which was 4500 G.

When Glen got the money, he was extremely happy. He never had this much money since he started playing the game. Although in real money, it only amounted to 4.5 Baz, this was still the most money he had got from the game.

Moreover, he did not spend any real money to get this money. Other than buying the game, he did not spend even a cent on the game.

"By the way, if you fail the upgrade, 30% of the leftover payment will be cut. So, I will only pay you 70% of the leftover payment which was 7350 G," Bertha added.

Glen was a bit surprised about it but it made sense. Also, 30% of the leftover payment was a bit too cheap for a failure procedure which had a high chance to cause injury to the beast.

So, he did not mind about the cut at all. He actually thought that it was supposed to be a 50% to 60% cut.

After they completed the procedure, Bertha spoke, "If you go to the wild area, be careful. Players from the other villages have been attacking you guys a lot for almost a month now."