Black Market!

Knowing a person with power and shady identity in a city where there are too many different organizations fighting over is sure useful. After I contacted Starisk with a device similar to the mobile phone of my previous world, we met near somewhere I encountered the sacred medicine.

The mobile phone of this world was a magical tool named Bonder. Bonder was a magical stone that can only be created by a few ancient clans in the world. Small stones are connected to the mother stone, and it would carry the voice through these connections and transfer it to the target stone. These ancient clans put their reputations on the line to guarantee the secrecy of calls made by their stones, but there are some ways to intercept the Stone Calls.

To buy a stone, one needs a legal ID. Stones bond with the blood of the person, and one only needs to will to call a person they had 'exchanged their information before.' which is tapping two stones each other.

With the fake ids, Starisk prepared for my girls and me, we bought Bonder stones. I called Starisk through the stone and still talked with the codes he taught me. After waiting 15 minutes, he arrived and we moved to an alley to exchange.

He didn't want to take me to the shady business partners of him at first, but when I said I wanted to sell a Level 10 Troll King core, he took me willingly.

"Hey, Wulraazz, I brought you a customer. You are gonna like it." Starisk shouted loudly as soon as we entered.

"Oy, Starisk, it's been a while since I have seen you." a goblin woman with a good figure walked out of the back room and looked at Starisk. "What do you have for me."

"It is my friend who has the goods. Let me do the introduction." Starisk said and pointed to me, "My friend here is Connor. He has some, let's say high-level cores cannot appear in the market, for you."

"And this lovely lady is Wulraazz. Goblin trades almost anything illegal."

"Hey, Starisk, don't sully my name, I only trade legall-"

"He has a Level 10 Troll King core, you sure you don't do illegal stuff?" Starisk said slyly.

"I do, I do. I am the only illegal core store in the city." Goblin beauty said hastily, and looked at me, "Especially Troll Cores such as in your possession, my dear friend Desmond!"

I wasn't surprised to hear her figuring out my identity. I wasn't secretive in Goblin Village, and from her hatred to Trolls, I can guess she has some connections to the village. In the age of technology where there are devices such as Bonder Stones, it is a no-brainer. But Starisk didn't know my deeds in the Goblin Village, and my exposure was a surprise to him.

"I swear I didn't mess up with your ID." he turned to me and pleaded.

"I know, it is nothing to with you," I said calmly and turned to the Goblin Beauty. "I have around 20 Troll Cores, one being Level 10. Give a price in the beast core, please."

Beast cores, like elemental abilities, were separated in tiers. The rarer the element, the higher the value of the core would be. But not all the time. For example, the poison cores I acquired from Forest Snake, even though common were valuable because of their usefulness in alchemy. But Iron Muscle core of Troll King was rare, yet not so valuable because of its low strength.

Cores had a few tiers, namely Trash, Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary, Mystic.

Uncommon Level 10 Iron Muscle core earned me 100 Uncommon beast cores, which was equivalent to 10.000 Trash core, 1.000 Common cores, 10 Rare cores, 1 Epic core, 0.1 Legendary core, and 0.01 Mystic core. Of course, no one would trade a bunch of lower-tier cores with a higher one. This was just a market price. Also, 1 Trash Core was equal to 1 Gold Coin.

By selling Level 10 core, I earned 10.000 golds. It was not even close to winning sacred medicine, but it was enough to enter the Auction house, which was my goal. Why would I spend lots of gold on something I could create on a whim?

The other 19 troll cores earned 5.000 golds all together. After that, I left the store with a new connection with the black market, and a card with 15.000 credits inside.

The auction house was quite a distance away from the district I was at. Even though from the outside the city looked like a community with many races in harmony, on the map there were distinct separations between said races.

Humans had a corner at the east side of the city, close to other humanoid races with less human skin. Such as elves, dwarfs, giants, dryads, etc. 'Human Race, as always, is a big, vain community so haughty to notice their inferiority. I stayed with the Goblins for 3 days and never discriminated against. Even the question they asked was which God I was believing at, not which race I was. But humans flag other creatures based on their religion and races, their colors and heights, their beliefs, and ideas to segregate.'

We had to take a taxi to go to the auction house. According to Starisk, people have to flaunt their statuses when they go places like that. Even with wealth like mine, I could be stopped at the door if I were to just walk in. Thus, he called a luxurious car to take us to the venue. I paid 50 gold coins just for a 15 minutes ride.