Chapter Ninety

Artha felt he was a rich man. Look at his bank balance. Millions of credits. And he capacity to earn even more. Only his prudence, limited clientele and limited spending capacity of the said clientele was stopping him. He truly had believed that.

Apparently, it was not so. Even when he sold items cheaply (they were not that cheap) and he sold special items (some times he did sell good and special items) and fulfilled all their orders ( other than the heavily axed last orders, he really hadn't fulfilled the order lists completely), these guilds didn't completely beleive in him. He was only supplying one third or less of the guild needs.

So how much did these guilds need? How many coins, how many credits did these people go through? Every day. Day after day.

Ah! He realised something even more crazy. Millions of credits spent directly or as coins each day was just in one village. These mammoth guilds would sure to have hundreds if not thousands of such villages. Less than fifty of regular members. Hundreds of aspirants and tag alongs. In just one village. At the height of the game, these guilds would have thousands of experts, tens of thousands of elites. The guilds would feel empty if the total was never in millions. Granted that they divided it, used sub guilds, friendly guilds, just a random passerby guilds to hide extra strength. Still ... Less than fifty members, okay few hundreds of members ( we shall count aspirants and tag alongs too), gobbled up millions and millions of credits each day.

These guilds were no less than few countries. Their budget surpassed many small governments.

And he had audacity to think of becoming an investor of such a guild. It's time to rethink that strategy. He did not have enough capital to become an investor.

Being a naive and good guy he was, Artha was forced to disclose his 'naive' thoughts to Sun Lord after his 'continous care'. He spilled beans after Sun Lord gave another order list.

Sun Lord, with a rare moment of good conscience, decided to share some good advice.

"Your thoughts is not wrong. It IS indeed a right time to be an investor. Yet, based on your capital, your target hasn't even appeared before you."

"Who should be my target then?"

"Not the big guilds." The reply came very fast.

"Because... It would break up the system I had started with being equally favorable to all my customers." Artha tried to decode the meaning from Sun Lord's speech.

"That too." Sun Lord agreed. "And another thing is the items you sell. They are pretty much basic. Unless you can upgrade your things to sell..."

"It's entirely out of my hand. So, I really don't know." Even when Artha was bumbling and dreaming big, he would not disclose any matter related to his job. It's the principle, you know. He knows that even Sun Lord has guessed most of it. Yet, he has to follow up what he has done before, even it turns out to be useless. Doing business - never easy.

"O...Kay. So you target Indies. If you don't want to set up a shop or a stall, you become one of the supplier of such place. You become investor of such group."

"Any other options?"

"You wait for few weeks or months. Look at some third or fourth tier guild which looks like it won't disband, and invest in it. By few months, the capital you have would have increased much. You may even be able to purchase one to two percent of guild shares."

"Pass. I don't know what will happen to my capital in few weeks. Any other options."

"Tie up with some workshops for some percentage of shares. This is a bit risky. Workshops may close down anytime and liquidating their properties might not get you much. But a good stable workshop won't even look at the capital you have right now."

"Okay. Right now, I am inferior to these stable workshops. So I risk everything in some flimsy workshop which mushroomed after the game babbled about gift crates."

"Look, I'll be honest here kid. Unless you want to risk all of your capital, you have to wait till you move out of this village. The amount these guilds and workshops spend in village, it's drop in the ocean. We spend billions of credits to move out of village. And what I meant is that we spend so much credits to stock up while moving. Right now...."

Artha just nodded. He understood his condition very well. He had limited capital. It might look too much for a person. But to a team, it's just basic. As people in that team increases, his contribution would become less and less till it comes negligent. He either had to increase his contribution or look for a group with less members but in need of investment.

Oh well, it was a good idea though. Too bad, reality kicked it out of its existence.

With one less thought out of his mind, Artha continued to try to kill steal. As the time for cooperation between him and the guilds was coming to close, these players trying to keep much of the profit to themselves.

That's okay. With all this running around, trying to get last hit to get monster loots automatically, he were learning and adapting faster. If he could play like this for few more days, probably he would lose his title of noob. He would be promoted as newbie. But would that happen? Only time will tell.

Soon, Artha's bag was in near filling stage. He was very shameless while kill stealing. A detour again to dungeon entrance to gather some news and rumours and back to village. He directly walked towards training room. He wanted to see if someone had started working on stamina potion.

And how would he know that? Based on discards. If he was lucky enough, he may get good items to rescue, sorry, reuse. As the profiency of the apprentices increased, the garbage made by them decreased. Oh, if only he was a spy planted to know if apprentices had progressed or not. Dang! Lost another opportunity to make some coins on the side.

But from the look of the garbage he had to sort and salvage, it was not at all easy to develop lifestyle job. The raw materials burnt off. Essence not removed completely. Proportions not exactly right. Something else was wrong in this - ah! Didn't follow the procedure leading to agitation of the liquids. It should have been quite an explosion.