Close Combat Mage

Chapter 364 - Bustling Back and Forth Part 1

The store boss’s expression turned bitter. “Mister, if I took them for 14,000 each, I’d only be able to earn 1000 per item. That’s just too low. I’m sure you understand that as a merchant, one has to gain at least a 20% profit. Taking them for 13,000 each is already making an exception!”

Suo Jia nodded, “That’s right, I agree with your words. However, you must remember that this is a huge amount of goods. Moreover, you can sell all of these within a year to gain that hundred million in profit. Most importantly, with these pickaxes, you can safely secure first place in this business of gathering tools. This is a benefit that can’t even be weighed in terms of money, am I right?”

Suo Jia glanced indifferently at the boss and continued, “You shouldn’t just focus on the lower individual profit, you should calculate the overall profit. Earning a hundred million a year is something I’m sure has never happened since this store was first established, right?”

“That’s…” The store boss couldn’t help but sweat at this. Indeed…getting an annual income of even ten million was very hard. But despite at all this…nobody would normally purchase pickaxes for such a high price!

Amidst the store boss’s hesitation, Suo Jia helplessly shook his head, “Since you’re so troubled, then forget about this transaction, I’ll just go and purchase a shop of my own. Wouldn’t it be better for me to just earn a hundred million myself?”

“Don’t!” The store boss cried out in panic. He knew that if Suo Jia really went to open his own store, the title of being number one in the business of gathering tools wouldn’t be his anymore. In addition…if Suo Jia sold the pickaxes for the price of 15,000 each, no other shop could possibly compete!

The store boss gritted his teeth and loudly declared, “Alright, 14,000 it is, I want all of them! Let’s start the transaction immediately!”

Suo Jia smiled brightly at these words. Although selling these goods to the store boss meant that Suo Jia would earn a hundred million less, he would be able to gain the money immediately and wouldn’t need to spend the effort to promote his sales. In addition, this saved him an entire year’s worth of time!

With the store boss’s pushing, Suo Jia quickly completed the transaction, and he soon pocketed the fourteen hundred million Trade Route coins. In addition to the money he’d already possessed, Suo Jia’s assets now reached sixteen hundred million. When he saw this astronomical figure on his card, he couldn’t help but sigh. How could he spend this much money!

Suo Jia turned around and asked the store boss, “Um…I’d like to ask you a question: if I want to purchase some Illusion Gems, where should I go buy them?”

The store boss cried out incredulously, “You don’t even know that? All Illusion Gems are put up for auctions. You can check the transaction information whenever you want, and bid for the Illusion Gems to your liking!”

Upon hearing this, Suo Jia immediately rushed out of the shop and headed towards the auction house. However, exactly what style was this auction for Illusion Gems in?

Ten minutes later, Suo Jia finally reached his destination. As soon as he entered the auction house, he was surprised to discover that it was completely different from the ones he’d seen in the past.

The space within the large auction house wasn’t filled with seats, but rather rows and rows of exhibit displays that were each two meters tall and ten meters long, and separated into ten shelves. Every shelf was split into ten compartments each containing an Illusion Gem.

A single row of displays contained 1000 Illusion Gems! In addition, there were at least ten such rows in the auction house!

At the moment, there were a few dozen buyers strolling up and down the rows of displays, scrutinizing and choosing the Illusion Gems they took a liking to.

Suo Jia let out a breath and began walking to the rows of displays to inspect them more closely. Each display was covered with profound and mysterious magic symbols. Although it seemed like the Illusion Gems were just being covered by a crystal exterior, it was actually impossible to steal these gems. Before one could even open the crystal covering, the Illusion Gems inside would move away, and the auction house personnel would immediately surround the culprit for attack!

After closer examination, Suo Jia had a general understanding of how the auction house worked. Under each Illusion Gem was a price tag. On the top of the tag, there was a space for one to fill in a starting price, underneath, a buyout price, and underneath that, currently what the highest price the Illusion Gem was worth. If one wanted to purchase this illusion gem, they would have to remember its location, then go to the front desk and fill out a form with their bid. If nobody else bid higher after a certain amount of time, the Illusion Gem was theirs.

Of course, there was a more efficient method: to directly purchase it at its buyout price. Although this price was definitely higher, it didn’t require waiting time. One could simply slide their merchant card into the machine and directly pick up the good!

After looking at all the Illusion Gems, Suo Jia soon discovered that there were a total of ten grades of Illusion Gems. They could be used to boost the might of magic equipment, as well as the equipment’s rank. In addition, the equipment rank could only be upgraded if the gem’s rank was equivalent.

In other words, once an equipment was raised to the second rank, a rank 1 gem wouldn’t be of any use anymore. One would have to switch to using a rank 2 gem instead. Likewise, once the equipment changed to third rank, a rank 3 gem had to be used.

Moreover…the gems had a success rate. All of them had a success rate of 50%, but the first 6 ranks couldn’t lower an equipment’s rank upon failure to upgrade, but once it hit the seventh rank and higher, a failure to upgrade resulted in the equipment rank falling back down to zero!

Suo Jia did some mental calculations. At the moment, he had the Atlantis equipment set, the Sea God’s Trident, and many ornaments and rings. There seemed to be a lot that he could improve with gems. However, not all equipment could be upgraded.

There was a size requirement for the implementation of Illusion Gems. For example, in the Atlantis equipment set, gems could not be used on the gloves and the arm guards due to their small size. He’d have to combine them into a single hand guard for it to work.

Thus, the entire Atlantis equipment set should actually be split as hand guard (gloves + arm guards), upper body armor (chest plate + belt), lower body armor (leg guards + trousers), combat boots, helmet, and mantle. As for the jewelry like Faerie’s Soul and the interspatial rings, they couldn’t be modified with gems. The gem itself was already several fold larger than these equipment, so there was no way they could be used.

Suo Jia finally decided that he possessed a total of seven magic equipment that could be improved with gems. That meant he would need seven gems each from ranks one to six! If he implemented anymore, there would be a danger of failure.

SUo Jia began to carefully study the prices. A rank one Illusion Gem cost 1 million, a rank two 2 million, a rank three 3 million, a rank four 8 million, a rank five 20 million, and a rank six 50 million! That was a total of 600 million!

By now, Suo Jia’s jaw had dropped down in shock. He just couldn’t believe this number he’d calculated himself. Originally, he’d prepared to even use a rank ten gem, but it seemed now that this would be impossible! Any rank seven and above gems were in the hundred millions. Suo Jia only had 16 hundred million, so how could he get these gems? In addition, the Illusion Gems only had a 50% chance of successfully boosting equipment, and past rank seven, failure would result in all the previous efforts a waste.

After contemplating for a long time, Suo Jia decided to first upgrade all equipment to rank six, and then upgrade his Atlantis Crown to rank ten. The reason why he didn’t do it to Sea God’s Trident first was because the crown increased Suo Jia’s cultivation speed, so the earlier he did it, the more benefits he’d gain. As for the Sea God’s Trident, whether he modified it sooner or later didn’t really make much of a difference.

Upon Suo Jia’s summons, the auction house staff appeared in a flurry and Suo Jia swiftly strode through row after row of display cases to swipe his card. In just a few minutes, Suo Jia had bought a huge amount of rank 1 gems. Then, Suo Jia rented a workplace to start preparing the process of integrating the gems into his equipment…

The Illusion Gems were actually a type of crystallized energy. After millions and millions of years, this energy which had been stored deep beneath the earth under high pressure had condensed into crystals, and as the earth’s crust moved, they were shifted upwards towards the surface to form the Illusion Gems.

The principle behind using the Illusion Gems was to transform them back into energy by combining it with equipment and forming a completely developed energy circulation system within it. This would strengthen the equipment’s ability to gather both its own energy and energy from its surroundings, increasing its magic.

It would be as if the equipment was surrounded by a spiral of energy that had a powerful attractive force, allowing it to absorb more energy from the environment before combining it all in the equipment to boost the might of its released magic.

The success rate of using the Illusion Gems depended on how stable this final, condensed form was. If there was any flaw that broke the robust energy circulation system, the entire gem would instantly crumble, causing the contained energy to disperse and disappear.

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