Blade [1]

Damien directly warped to the reception desk he'd gone to last time, greatly startling the receptionist girl, whose name was Lena.

After Damien's abrupt exit, she had continued doing her job, only occasionally thinking about the eccentric new adventurer she'd met. But who would have expected that only a couple of hours later, he'd reappear out of thin air?

Controlling her emotions, Lena out on her professional face. "Hello, sir! How can I assist you today?"

Damien, as if repeating their last interaction, replied in a flat tone. "I'd like to sell some beast corpses."

However, this time, no idiot wanted to test his patience. Although the bloodstains had been cleaned up, everyone's memory was still fresh on what happened last time.

Lena was once again surprised but continued her transaction. "Okay, can I get a rough estimate of the number?"

Damien pondered for a bit. Although his total number of corpses neared a thousand, he figured he shouldn't pull them all out here. Making his decision, he replied. "About 200 or so."

Lena panicked for a second. "Sir, this isn't a level of transaction I have the authority to handle. Please allow me to take you to the backroom to meet with someone else."

Damien nodded and followed Lena to the second floor of the building. The second floor wasn't much different from the first, only the adventurers were much stronger than those on the first floor. There were even one or two people in the room that Damien felt could give him a good fight.

Damien and Lena arrived at a secluded room and entered before Lena left to call her superior. Damien looked around the room for a bit before thinking about the weapon he wanted to get.

As Damien learned in his reading, weapons, armor, and other utility items that were built through or for the use of mana were called artifacts.

Artifacts were split into many categories based on their strength. The majority of artifacts ranged between F and SSS class just like the adventurer system.

Each class level had 3 rankings of artifacts that represented low middle and peak. F to D rank artifacts were 1st class, C to A rank was 2nd class, and S to SSS were 3rd class.

4th class artifacts were called Chaos rank, but there were only an extremely limited amount of them available on Apeiron, as there was only one blacksmith alive that could forge them. Just like rumors of Demigods, Demigod rank artifacts were only a legend.

As for the rank above it? The citizens of Apeiron could only speculate.

While he was in thought, Damien heard a knock on the door, followed by the entrance of a lady he'd never met before. The lady was around 1.7 meters tall with flowing blonde hair and green eyes. The feature that stood out most, however, was her pointy ears. It seemed this lady was an elf.

"Good evening, Mr.Void. My name is Edea Qihorn and I'll be in charge of your transaction today." She was as professional as senior guild staff should be.

Damien nodded his head, unfazed by her beauty and the faint cleavage she showed off when she slightly bowed to him.

"I have plenty of beast corpses to sell today. A majority are only first class, but there are a few second class in the mix as well."

As he spoke, Damien dumped a pile of 135 1st rank beast corpses on one side of the room before filling out the rest of the 200 with 2nd classes.

Edea immediately held a favorable opinion of Damien. Usually, she could use her charm to rile up male and even a few female clients and conduct more beneficial deals, but it seemed today's transaction would be the straightforward type.

Quickly adjusting to the situation, Edea looked over the heaps of beast corpses in the room as her eyes held a faint hue of gold. This was a special skill of hers that allowed her to see the value of items she looks at. She was a true businesswoman through and through.

The use of this skill only surprised her more. The amount of mana in the corpses was absurd, and the method by which they were killed was both clean and cruel. Even the 2nd class beasts were killed without any useless gore.

Quickly calculating in her head, Edea gave her estimate. "For the 1st class corpses alone we can give you 50 gold, as for the 2nd classes, we can offer 600 gold. What do you think?"

Damien thought for a second about what he knew about the currency system of the world. Supposedly, most 1st class corpses sold for anywhere between 40 and 75 silver, so he was fine with the seemingly small amount of gold he'd get for them. 2nd class corpses are usually sold for between 1 and 20 gold depending on their mana level and other factors.

He realized that becoming an adventurer was truly a rewarding profession. He also realized the only reason he was seeing such high numbers was that he was selling in bulk.

After mulling it over, he decided it was a good price. Besides, he had no use for the money at the moment. Even if he had to spend it all on his new sword, he'd be fine. He still had around 600 corpses stored, even if they were mostly 1st class.

"Alright, let's finish this quick since I have things to do before my qualification mission next week."

Edea nodded as she took all the corpses in her spatial ring before pulling out a separate ring with his money in it. Damien took the ring and emptied its contents into his inventory.

This was how transactions worked in Apeiron. Even if they were common, it wasn't enough for people to wantonly hand out spatial rings. Skilled blacksmiths with a solid foundation of runic knowledge were needed to make them, and for larger storage, more skill was needed.

A spatial ring that carried the same amount of space as Damien's inventory would be reserved for those emperors of the respective nations.

Before leaving, Damien decided to get Edea's recommendation. "Who is the best blacksmith in this city?"

Edea thought for a moment before responding. "That would have to be Sir Vormec. He's the only blacksmith in the city who can forge 3rd class artifacts. His shop is located only a short walk from the guild, so you shouldn't have trouble finding him."

Promptly thanking her, Damien warped outside the guild.

Looking at the spot where Damien was just standing, Edea smiled lightly. "It seems there's another promising youngster in our ranks. No wonder that person was interested in him."

When Damien appeared in the middle of the street, he realized that he never asked for specific directions or even the shop's name, but he'd be too embarrassed if he had to go back and ask, so he walked around the streets for a while in search of the shop.

After half an hour, Damien finally saw the shop. It seems the reason Edea never specified the shop's name was because there wasn't one. It was simply a nameless storefront that held the strong smell of smoke. Damien only found this out by asking one of the street vendors.

This Vormec seemed to be slightly eccentric and didn't care for fame, only his craft. He only made artifacts to sell because he needed money to buy more metals and find more knowledge on forging.

Walking into the shop, Damien could barely contain his anticipation towards his new weapon.