CH 97

“Market Research and New Capabilities.”

Translated by Dawn

“Market Research and New Capabilities.”

The next day, when I got up from bed, the golems were still working. No matter how many golems worked tirelessly throughout the night, they could not finish processing thousands of pieces.

“Mmm. How’s it going?”

“Mrrr”

Stretching out lightly, the work of the golems stopped just as I called out to them. I wondered if they had just finished at this moment, but it seemed that they had used up the magical power of the magic stone they had left for replenishing their magical power, and could not practically work anymore.

At any rate, when I checked the storage, I found that the bracelets processed by the golems had been completed, and the total was slightly over 1,500 bracelets. ……Just how many were they making?

I thought that this would prevent a shortage like yesterday, but in case we ran out, we might be stuck, so I discarded that idea.

“I’d better replenish the golems and the magic stones with magic.”

As I muttered this, I refilled each of the golems and the magic stones for replenishing the magic power. Then, the golems started working again. After all, it seems that they could not work due to a lack of magic power.

I decided to let them continue their work and went downstairs. Today, I had something to do with some people.

“Good morning, Nusana. Can I have a moment?”

“Hey, boy, what’s up?”

“Yeah, can you get Nusa for a minute?”

“Wait a minute. Nusa! Come here a minute!”

Loud voices echoed through the inn throughout the morning. Nusa responded to the voice and immediately came over to us.

“Mother, what’s wrong? Oh, Rolando-kun, good morning.”

“Oh, good morning. I have a little favor to ask you two if that’s all right.”

“What is it? Do you want my daughter for your wife?”

…Why is that? If that were the case, the question of what I was going to do about it came to mind, but I felt like there was no turning back when I asked that, so I decided to shut that question down and get to the point.

“I have a product, but no one has used it yet. So I’d like to give you two a chance to try it out and see what you think.”

“Tch, you dodged it well…So, what’s this product you’re talking about?”

“Before we get into that, let me ask you two a few questions.”

It seemed I was right to ignore the idea of Nusa as a wife, and Nusana, with a sly grin, switched the subject. Nusa, on the other hand, blushed and shouted in protest, “Mom!”

“You both have long hair. Do you ever feel like your bangs are hanging over your head?”

“Well, it happens to women all the time.”

“What do you do when that happens?”

“I wrap a cloth around my head like a hood to keep the bangs from hanging down. But on hot summer days, my head gets stuffy and I feel uncomfortable.”

Nusana answered my first question, and Nusa answered my second. After all, as I had concluded, there seems to be no equipment to hold one’s hair in place in this world. At least, it didn’t seem to have penetrated among the common people.

“Then try this.”

“……this is?”

I explained the hairpin to the parent and child with question marks on their heads. As I expected, they looked as if they couldn’t understand what I was explaining. Then, a picture was better than a thousand words.

“I’ll try it once. So, excuse me.”

“Ah……”

I scraped up Nusa’s bangs so that she could experience the convenience of the hairpin. Nusana saw this and said, “Oh my oh my, you’ve already been showing off since this morning,” which was extremely misguided, but I did my best to ignore it and pinned Nusa’s hair up with a hairpin. By the way, the performance had already been checked with my own hair yesterday, so there should be no problem.

“It goes something like this.”

“Amazing, this is amazing Rolando-kun! It keeps the hair out of my eyes.”

“Is that so, that’s good then. Then Nusana, try it too.”

“Then put it on me as you did on Nusa.”

I inwardly retorted, “You could have done it yourself!” But I didn’t know what kind of retribution I would receive if I disobeyed her, so I did as she requested and attached the hairpins. Yes, I did it. This is the important part, you know?

Both of them were freshly impressed by the fact that their bangs didn’t hang down, and they were touching the part where it was stopped with their fingers to check it out. ……Well, they will get used to it.

“I love this thing.”

“It keeps my head nice and dry.”

“Well, try it on for the rest of the day. I’ll come back in the evening to ask you what you think.”

With that, I left them and headed for the Greg Trading Company across the street. When I entered the shop, I was greeted by Greg, Natalie, Molly, and Letica the slave team. I immediately told them about the hairpins and asked them to wear them for the rest of the day.

“Do I have to wear it too?”

“Yes, because these hairpins work on men too. I want Jean, who has long bangs, to try it too.”

“I understand, but it’s embarrassing, so it’s just for one day, okay?”

Apparently, for a man who was not very particular about his hairstyle, the very idea of wearing a hairpin was embarrassing, and he looked troubled as he fiddled with his pinned bangs.

For the time being, we decided to sell the hairpins on a trial basis and set the price at one small copper coin for one pin and two small copper coins for three pins, referring to the market price that had been obtained from the analysis results. In addition, we set a purchase limit of three pieces per person. Depending on the situation, we would consider adjusting the price.

“Then, please take this. There are sixty pieces.”

“Understood.”

I gave Greg 60 hairpins for sale and we all ate breakfast together. After breakfast, I parted from the others and decided to take a walk around the market today.

The purpose of going to the market was to check what kinds of items were for sale and to find out their price range.

When you want to sell something, you often sell it at a price based on the market price at that time. Keeping in mind what kind of products were sold, at what price, in what quantity, and how many were bought, we used this information as a basis for setting prices when we sell the same or similar products.

In this way, the seller could avoid the risk of losing a lot of money, and the buyer could get the product he wants at a fair price. It was a win-win situation for both parties.

“Come, come! It’s cheap, cheap!”

“These vegetables just came in yesterday. They are fresh.”

Even though it was early in the morning, the market was bustling with activity. Shopkeepers raised their voices to attract customers, and the voices of those negotiating with the stores grew louder as they were caught in the crowd.

“How about two large coins for five!”

“Customer, that won’t even cover the cost of the fare. At least three large coins.”

“Hmm…”

I listened to the voices coming from all over the place as if I were listening to the radio, and occasionally bought small quantities of items that caught my interest. I bought a little too many vegetables and fruits in particular, as I often use them for cooking and other purposes.

Most of the products sold at the market were foodstuffs, but occasionally I saw some stores selling pre-cooked food and hardware such as pots and pans, and some rare spices such as salt and pepper. Of course, I bought a lot! I spent a small gold coin, hehe.

Cough, anyway. I looked at various products and compared the quality and price of the items being sold with the appropriate market price as seen in my Analysis, and then gathered information.

After repeating this process, I arrived at a certain store. Apparently, they deal in cloth as a commodity, and all the shelves of the store, which might be called a fabric store, were filled with clothes.

“Welcome. What can I help you with?”

The woman who appeared was a woman in her thirties or so, with a short brown cut and a cloth wrapped around her like a turban, giving her an ethnic look. I asked her to show me what kind of things she had for the time being, and she offered me a variety of clothes, but to be honest, they were all gibberish.

She would tell me about the details of the cloth, such as “this cloth is made of special cotton from a certain source,” or “this cloth is made by a famous seamstress who carefully crafts each piece of cloth.”

“And also, this one……”

“Ah, that’s enough, enough.”

“…Is that so? There were hundreds more.”

I wasn’t kidding. 30 minutes had passed since then, even though I had only been introduced to only a few pieces. If I listened to her explanation at this point, it would not only be sunset, but I would have to see the sunrise tomorrow.

At any rate, I could not understand her explanation, so I decided to sort them by softness and color when I touched them. As a result, I sorted eight kinds of cloth: white, black, blue, red, green, yellow, orange, and purple. In addition, I also purchased cloth with a pattern that caught my eye and looked good.

“Owner, give me three of each of these clothes.”

“T-that much!?”

“That’s right. And the owner can also choose some clothes. I want five or six kinds of less expensive ones that are commonly used by the common people. I’ll take three of each.”

“I-I-I understand!”

Then it took another 30 minutes to finally settle the bill. Needless to say, the most time-consuming part was the time the owner spent selecting the fabric recommendations.

“Thank you for your patience. There will be eight large silver coins, four medium silver coins, and three small silver coins.”

“Here.”

With that said, I offered him a single small gold coin. It was a considerable amount of money, but I consider it a good initial investment. However, I did not expect it to exceed Greg’s monthly income. Incidentally, after discussing Greg’s salary between the two of us, we decided to start with six large silver coins on a trial basis.

Although I told Natalie and the others that the wages for the other employees would remain the same, I was not that much of an ogre, and I had been a salaried worker in my previous life, so I also have the idea that wages should be commensurate with the work done. Therefore, depending on how hard the four of them work, I was thinking of paying them an additional wage on top of their original salary. This was the so-called “commission system”.

I mean, it would take decades to pay off all the debt if Molly and the others’ wages didn’t change, so I was planning on revising the wages eventually, you know? The Greg Trading Company was not a Black company. Even if there exist no labor laws in this world, it was a matter of course to pay wages within the bounds of common sense.

The products we handled at Greg Trading Company were wholesaled directly by me, so basically we didn’t have to pay the costs required for purchasing them. If a product with a purchase price of zero was sold at a price, the profit would be the same as the price I paid for the product.

The new hairpins sold in the market were made from iron ore, which was the raw material of course, and the processing cost of turning it into iron ingots, the labor cost involved, and all other costs incurred before the product was ready to be sold were zero. Therefore, even a single small copper coin at the lowest price was expected to generate sufficient profit. However, it would be difficult to make a large profit without a large profit margin, so depending on how well the hairpins sold today go, there might be no problem with raising the selling price a little more when selling the product in earnest.

After paying her and receiving the goods, I left the store. The store kindly gave me a large shoulder bag for free, so I used my Storage abilities to make it look like a magic bag and put the cloth I bought in it.

Then, having completed a market survey, circled the market, and checked the products sold, their prices, and the actual market price, I decided to head for the dungeon.

“Well, here we are. The 10th level.”

After arriving at the dungeon, I went through the transfer portal to the 10th level, which was becoming my usual place. The purpose was, as I should have said, to collect materials for my products.

First of all, I went to the riverside at the end of the forest a short distance from the entrance of the 10th level to collect the magic quartz in the river. Incidentally, one day I was curious about the total number of magic quartz in the river, so I used Analysis to find out. I did not know the details, but the number “estimated in the hundreds of millions” jumped out at me in the window that appeared. At that moment, I silently closed the window.

“This process is getting tedious too…it would be a lot easier if I could use Teleportation.”

Although I had muttered so, I had not been able to acquire abilities such as transfer magic or teleportation. As long as Space-time magic and transfer portals exist, there must be the magic that had a similar effect, but I was wondering if there was a requirement to learn it, and I was currently working on it.

“Hm? What’s this feeling?”

Suddenly, an image appears in my mind. According to the image, thrust your hand forward and speak the image in your mind as words.

“[Dimension Gate].”

The words that spontaneously came out of my mouth became a spell, creating a rift in the space in front of me. A moment later, a familiar sight appeared before my eyes. Beyond that, I saw the golems working in progress in the room of the inn where I was staying.

“Mrr…Mrrr”

“Hah, why are you coming over here on your own?”

Proto found me at the end of the door, and without any hesitation, came through the gate to this side. I was not at all comforted by its slow and deliberate steps, but I had to grasp the current situation first and foremost.

It seemed that the end of the gate was connected to the room of the inn where I was staying, and since Proto was able to come here, it must be possible to go to the inn from this side as well.

“I’m a little scared, but if you don’t go in the tiger’s hole, you won’t get the tiger’s cub. Let’s go, Rolando!”

Instead, I slowly put my hands in the gate, then my face, then my body, and so on, in that order. As a result, everything went without a hitch, and there was a room in front of me with a group of golems working diligently.

looked back and saw that the gate was still open. I guessed that it was probably a type of ability that could be turned off at my will. I then used the gate several times to go back and forth between the inn and the dungeon, which confirmed that there was no problem. While I was verifying the gate, Proto, who thought I was playing with the gate, came around under my feet, but the verification was generally completed.

“It’s kind of a very opportunistic situation……well, it’s an ability I wanted, so I’m not complaining.”

Then I put Proto back in the room and close the gate. Now I could come here at any time, which should make it a little easier to collect materials. Incidentally, this ability was classified as Space-time magic, and the results of the Analysis were displayed like this.

[Dimension Gate]: By imagining a place you have been to once, you can instantaneously travel through the deployed transition gate. The distance of instantaneous movement and the amount of magic power consumed depend on the level of Space-time magic.

This seemed to be the case. It seemed to be a specification that as the level of Space-time magic increases, the distance that can be traveled increases, and the amount of magic used decreases. Hmmm, I guess I’ve got a nice ability.

After moving to the mine and retrieving the ore and threads, I returned to the inn in the afternoon after lunch.