The Black Market (1)

Arnold had naturally woke up early in the morning. When he sat up, he found his little brother that was holding his hand tightly slightly pulled him back. His brother wrinkled his brows as he whimpered softly, "Gege, come back soon...". Arnold's face immediately softened. He gently tore each of his brother's fingers away from himself. Then, he laid his brother down and gave him a slight kiss in the forehead. Afterwards, he went out in order to grab breakfast for his family. Although, the first priority was to sell his Level 5 zombie cores first.

As Arnold had returned with 9 Level 5 zombie cores, he decided to sell 5 of them and leave the remaining 4 for his brother to absorb, as it would help him with his cultivation. He had originally asked Andy if he could craft a tailored cultivation tenchnique for his brother, but the AI responded, "I'm sorry Master, although your right eye have been installed with many different functions, including scanning capabilities, I'm afraid I do not have enough information on your brother's body to be able to make a full tailored cultivation technique for him. However, within my databank are hundreds of thousands of manuals of different cultivation methods that could be of use. Would you like to take a look?"

Arnold shook his head. "Simply analyze all the five star techniques and give me the most suitable one for him later."

"Acknowledged." Andy said in a monotone voice.

While Andy was searching the cuiltivation technique catalogue within his massive database, Arnold continued walking inwards, from the opposite direction he came from yesterday night. After awhile, the tents that signifies the slum area were all gone. Instead, what replaced them were brick buildings that were only one storey high. Each building was exactly cubic in shape, and none of them had any paint covering the walls, nor were there any decorations signifying the difference in owners between the buildings. Everything looked the same.

Arnold head towards one of the buildings located on the left of the paved road. He reached the front door and gave the door a knock in a rhythmic manner. *tap taptap taptap tap ... tap."

After waiting for five seconds, a person opened the door for him. The person had a strong body odor, as if he did not have a shower for weeks. He looked more like a pile of bones than a human being. His face was shrivelled and his teeth were either black or yellow in color. Arnold ignored him and went in. Directly in front of him was a flight of stairs that went down to the dark abyss. The building itself was actually just a facade masking the stairs.

"1, 2, 3..." As he walked down the stairs, Arnold counted the steps he took inside his head. Then, when the steps reached 50, he abruptly stopped. He took a glance around. There were two smooth walls on both of his sides. The entire corridor was quite narrow, leaving not enough space for two people to stand side by side. As there were no lights, it was completely dark.

Arnold suddenly reached his right hand towards the smooth wall to his right. Then, he dragged his palm horizontally across the wall, as if finding something. Then, after he reached a certain spot, he stopped and pressed inwards. A small section of the wall was easily pressed inwards.

Revealing what was behind the wall was simply a cubic small empty space. At the bottom of the empty space was an indent that had the shape of an extremely flat cylinder. Arnold placed his entire right palm on the indent. The indent suddenly glowed green. Then, after a loud sound, the wall beside him completely caved inwards. Revealing before him was another flight of stairs going downwards. Arnold continued walking down in a slow and cautious matter.

Arnold skipped some steps every time he stepped down in a seemingly irregular pattern. "3 steps, 1 step, 4 steps, 1 step, 5 steps. Then, he drew a circle on the left wall with his left hand. After drawing out the circumference of the circle, his finger moved inwards to the center, also depicting the radius. Then, he continued moving downwards.

After doing motions that seems redundant at different times, Arnold finally arrived at the place he was looking for at the bottom of the flight of stairs.

He walked out and found a huge domed area that consists of the entire space of the base's underground market. The market was located in Level 1, but it was not directly accessible to the rest of the underground floor. Instead, one had to go through a maze either from the surface level, Level 1 or Level 2 that had several deadly traps before arriving at this protected space.

The underground market was divided in neat rows. Each row contain many shops that sell all the things you could ever think of. Some of these shops were simply installed as temporary stalls, while others were built as concrete, brick or even steel buildings. The tallest of which bears 10 stories high.

Arnold walked towards the fourth row and walked along the corridor. Unlike what people imagined, the underground market was not dirty or festered with crime. The whole place was clean, with the road paved neatly and the people walking around without a care in the world. This was only possible due to the administration of the Cabal, the organization that runs the underground market. Headquartered in the 10 storey building.

After passing by several stores, he finally entered a rather sturdy shop on the right. As he pushed open the door, he found the place filled with the smell of tobacco, cannabis and other spices that are not good for the development of the human body.

It was a small boutique shop, containing many different items, from jade artifacts to s*x toys. There was even a liver submerged in a solution of liquid placed on the side of the shop. Arnold did not even take a look at the goods that the shop was selling and went directly to the counter at the very end of the store.

Behind the counter, Arnold found a man snoring. He was sitting on a wooden chair with one leg on the ground and the other placed on the knee of his other leg. He had his arms crossed and his head was bowed downwards, giving out snoring sounds that were quite loud.

"Yo, old geezer! It's morning! Time to wake up!" Arnold shouted at the guy behind the counter.

The person immediately jumped as he completely did not expect someone to suddenly yell at him. He calmed his heart down and stared at the young kid in front of him. "Oh it's just you, kid. You scared me there! Can't you wake me up in a less violent manner?" The man raised his arms to stretch and yawned, still feeling groggy.

Arnold ignored him and placed the 5 Level 5 zombie cores on top of the counter. The old man's eyes immediately gleamed. "Old Dan, give me 5 gold coins and you can have all of these." Arnold said in a cold voice.

"What?! It's just 5 Level 5 cores and you want me to give you that much?! No can do! I can give you 1 gold coin for these and it's already pushing it, but I'll give this price to you since you are a long-time customer." The old man sneered. He stared at the zombie cores hungrily, completely ignoring Arnold's cold stare.

"Didn't you say that last time I sold to you? You gave me 20 silver coins for 1 Level 5 core, then you managed to sell it for the price of 2 golds! How are you being ripped off by me?" Arnold replied, trying to gain the upper hand in this bartering.

The old man shook his head. "Didn't you see the corpses of the zombies outside? There is now a sudden abundancy in Level 5 cores, causing the price of the cores to drop by a lot. If you came here a month later, that would be a different conversation. 1 gold coin and 80 silver coins. Take it or leave it." He said with conviction.

"2 gold coins." Arnold continued to barter. "Even if the demand increased, there are still many people at the top 2 levels that need Level 5 cores. There is always too much demand and too little supply. Also, given how inelastic the demand for these cores are, you dare say that the cores' value have dropped by that much?" He retorted.

The old man stared at Arnold for awhile before finally saying, "Fine. 2 gold coins. But next time, if you find a Level 4 zombie core, you sell it to me, you understand?"

"Deal." Arnold replied.

Old Dan immediately went to the cashier that was located behind the counter and took out 2 gold coins. Then, he took the cores away and put them within the storage room located behind where he was standing. Arnold turned around and headed back out. He held the 2 gold coins tightly, afraid of letting go. He would not even dare to put them into the pocket of his pants, lest he get robbed.