Merchants' journey for the autumn harvest

October was a beautiful autumn day.

Standing on the hillside and looking at the golden waves of wheat on the terraced fields, Fente entered into his usual six-month conversation with the abbot of the monastery.

"That's three hundred kilograms of apples and thirty wolf skins, all accounted for, right?". The abbot smiled and held out his hand.

Fente smiled flattered, handing over the agreed payment for the goods in return.

"To be able to purchase such good apples and wolf skins at such a low price, this journey was not in vain.".

"No, only Mr. Fente would want to come to a small mountain village like ours to do business, wouldn't he?".

"Next year, a railway will be built from Karaflog to Loran, which will pass through this mountain pass, and then a railway station will be built. "

"Not at all, Mr. Fente will always be a good neighbor to our Porte village."

Half in jest, half in earnest, but Fente's despondency was unmistakable.

The goods were counted, loaded, the abbess, who wanted to stay, said goodbye, and then drove on to Karaflog.

Fente could spend time in street taverns looking for business when he had no goods, but these ripe apples could not afford to wait, and he had to get rid of them before they became unfit for sale, otherwise the trip would be a waste of money.

Every six months, Fente comes to the village of Porte to buy furs and produce - spring wheat in spring and apples in autumn - and then sells the peasants everyday goods before taking them to Karaflog, the largest city in the south, to find a merchant's house that will buy them. find a merchant's house to buy it back.

Despite the stability, the return trip brings only a few hundred gold coins, which in the previous world would have been from 30,000 to 50,000 coins in terms of purchasing power.

The income from these two trips per year was about 40% of Fente's annual income.

At other times of the year, Fente could make a gross profit of 1,500 gold coins a year, wandering around the country in search of business opportunities and speculation.

The gross profit of 1,500 gold coins per year was not bad, but in the old days it would have been 300,000 per year.

However, for the maintenance of horses and carriages, food and drink, purchase of goods, bribery of guards, kickbacks to buyers of the Chamber of Commerce... and so on, the money could only accumulate about a hundred gold coins.

Seventeen years had passed since the transition to this world of swords and magic, when steam railways had just appeared, and firearms were still simple flint locks that could not yet compete with fireballs and lightning bolts that escaped from the hands of magicians.

And yet everyone had a vague feeling that times were about to change.

Capital, money, new nobles with real power and gold coins gradually suppressed the power of the clergy and the old nobility.

Magicians also registered their various branded spells for patenting, waiting for them to be sold at a price, waiting for the rich and powerful chambers to buy them and rise to the top.

If possible, the magicians would also like to get a share in a small potential chamber of commerce with their proprietary spell technology, so that in the future they can cover all the costs of their magical research with their dividends alone.

A thousand pounds of weasel is no match for a copper plate.

In the year 153 of the New World calendar, it was the very peak of the New Age wave and what everyone was thinking about.

A traveling merchant's license, purchased at a high price, allowed Fente to travel freely through the territories of the lords for trade.

During the previous four years, he had used his traveler's license to speculate, earning a lot of money from the usual trade of a merchant - buying cheap and selling expensive.

Although itinerant merchants were already unimaginably rich for peasants who had spent their lives in filth, a wandering merchant without a shop was at the very bottom of the list of all merchants.

A store in the city costs thousands of gold coins, and the fee for opening a store is very high.

The fees and qualifications required to open a store are also expenses.

Roughly speaking, the store costs at least 3,300 gold coins, and this is only for the worst areas, not counting the cost of inventory and maintenance.

Moreover, now that the railways have been built, and it is printed in black and white in the newspapers that the archmage Frost Frieze has created a new railway for the city. His Excellency Friza sold a patent for a spell that allows you to keep fruits and meat fresh at low temperatures to the Kling Chamber of Commerce.

Soon, when the railway network covers the whole country, the Chamber of Commerce will have a monopoly on the trade in fresh food, using its trains to transport cold products.

Small retailers like Fente, who could only buy a few hundred kilograms of apples, could no longer stand on their feet and would never be able to return.

He had to make one last profit before times completely changed, then buy his own store in the city, become a qualified salesman and open branches to build his own business empire.

That was the deal Fente made with that unreliable, cheap old mother.

If in five years Fente fails to become the owner of a shop in such a big city as Karaflog, then she will have to go back to inherit the only line of magic towers in her mother's family and become a famous lady magician who owns a lot of magical secrets that everyone in high society had to bow to.

Good... become the daughter of a famous magician.

Now there are only six months left until the deadline, and Fente still lacks 1,100 gold coins to open a store in such a big city as Karaflog.

Time was running out.

He didn't want to be a lady, but rather a small trader wandering between the fields and the city, as he was doing now.

Although his old mother with a kind face said.

"It's okay, turning my boy into a beautiful girl is a simple spell with no side effects, your grandmother used it on herself.

It was a simple and understandable spell for the knowledge of Fente, no less than ten rings, changing the law of karma in such a way that Fente was "born a girl" from the very beginning, and as soon as he wants to change back, he can just do it again, and Fente will return to his current form.

But as soon as she inherits the Tower, the beauty spell will have to constantly act on the Fente, and neither the antimagic field nor the non-morphing will be able to counteract its effects.

He didn't want to be a silver-haired, red-eyed girl with a smile as pure as moonlight until he met and made love with bestial, cow horns, chimeras, angels, nine-tailed foxes, slime, dragons and vampires from another world!

As for why Fente knew she would become a white-haired, red-eyed beauty if she turned into a woman, it was from the time when she humiliated herself by casting spells on herself and then gave people drinks to get a deal.

From time to time, Fante manages to make a contract in his favor by treating the big old man to a good drink.

Thanks to this, a legend spread among the merchants of the south about a terrible silver-haired witch who filled people with beer and then rolled them into gold coins.

If you were deceived by a witch, wouldn't it be better to report it to the police?

But the contract was perfectly legal, and the only one to blame was the one who drank too much before signing the contract and agreed to the conditions that were within the legal limits.

These were not the days when you could chase a magician or say "witch" to a girl and put her in jail or tie her to a stake.

The wheels of time and the wheels of Fente were slowly but surely moving forward, and ahead of them there was an abyss of desires that could never be filled.