Chapter 11: Chapter nine – Business Propositions

She visibly blanched at the mention of my last name, but shook it off after a second and somewhat nervously came closer. After composing herself, she said “Hello Mx. Ogólny, how may I be of service today?”

Smiling at her, I said “Well, I have made a new product, and after recommendation from the blacksmith Drosk, I have decided to ask if you would be willing to be a retailer.” After saying my piece, I pulled out three phones, instructions on how to use them, and the gist of what I wanted in the end.  “I think that you will need some time to examine the devices, so I will be back by this evening or the next.”

She stared at me, something that I was noticing to be getting quite common, and said “Yeah… I think that would work out well. I assume more business will be discussed at that later time?”

“Yes, that was the plan. Thank you for your time, I will see you later.” I said before turning around and leaving the tiny shop.

Ten minutes later, the process repeated in a large corner store that looked to have a nice house on the upper floor. The owner this time was a Dyrisk crow, covered in glossy black feathers, a mostly bestial head, and had tucked in wings on their back. He was quite the crafter, everything in his shop was made by him or his wife, a raven. She apparently came up with many of the ideas that made them successful, such as using a force enchantment for an indefinite clock, or wind and the same fireless heat that is already common to make what amounts to a hair dryer. They agreed to test my product, and see if they wanted to get in on it.

The third shop was a stone brick building with the store on the second level, a cellar below. It had an Av Utsiden family as the owners, and one took care of business, one took care of people and questions, and one made everything. Talking to them was quite fun, they were lively people, and they seemed excited to see what I had made.

Going back to the first shop, the owner was pacing behind the counter, as much as she could pace in the six foot wide shop. When I came in, she stopped to look at me and her face brightened considerably. Rushing over, she said “Yes please! I will definitely work with you, these things are great!”

Laughing a bit, I asked what she thought was a fair price and what she thought her cut should be. She seemed shocked, then excited, then apprehensive, then excited again. Finally settling on mild excitement, she said “I think that a good price for what you want to do would be about 10 Sølv; not too expensive, but expensive enough to be a sign of good fortune. As for my cut, I would be fine with as low as one Sølv 50 Messing per sale.”

Thinking for a second, I agreed with her. Saying so, she smiled and ran upstairs for the contract she had drafted. Reading over it, there were blanks for how much each product would cost, how much she would get as a cut from the sales, and some ‘no screwing each other over, or else’ clauses. Finding no problems or attempts at extortion, I signed the contract. She smiled at me, and we got down to talking about shipment size and regularity, as well as when to update the price.

30 or so minutes later, I was on my way to the bird’s shop. When I got there, it was much the same in terms of reactions. Everything went about the same, actually. The only difference was that they got less money as a cut, as per their suggestion. I was out the door again in 25 minutes, on to the next business. This one went even faster, their business manager was really great. They ended up with the same prices and cut, but it was a close thing not to give them way more. A seriously good negotiator. I also learned all of their names, the Drage is named Aruna, the crow and raven are Hrōkr and Muninn, respectively, and the Av Utsiden family are Minke for the business side, Rayne for the people side, and Senna for the crafting and creation side.

Getting back home, I told my family of my exploits over dinner. They were quite impressed that I had done this so soon, but still had some advice for later negotiations, saying “Most of the time, kindness is taken advantage of, you were lucky to have found people who didn’t take advantage of that.” They were right of course, I shouldn’t have given that much freedom, at least in the first few negotiations.

The next day, I took to exercising. I hadn’t done anything to get my stats up in quite a while, so I figured that now would be a good time to do more stuff. Hours later, just when I was getting a break, Asken came in. They had been itching to spar recently, and also to get better with their magic. We did spar for a while, but it wasn’t much of a challenge for me, even with their higher stats. Though they did seem to be getting slightly better by the session. After we stopped, we talked for a while, and Asken started asking about ideas for spells in combat. I had just had a nostalgic dream the night before, about my random experimentations with everything. Part of this everything was gallium. Taking the sword that they used, I asked if I could enchant it. Looking at me, they shrugged and assented. 

Taking the sword, I used creation magic to make it so that it would leave a thin line of gallium on whatever it hit. The gallium wasn’t normal though, it was also enchanted. By using the sword as a stamp only applicable to recently created gallium, and making it actively draw Makt to keep itself topped up, the gallium was enchanted to duplicate. This also drew Makt actively until stopped. Creating a steel bar, I rested the edge on the steel for a second, then felt it draw a bit of power. Nodding in satisfaction, I looked up to Asken, telling them to speed time on the bar. Doing so, they watched as the gallium seemed to do nothing other than make the bar slightly shinier. Then I swung the sword down, and I saw Asken’s eyes widen. The sword cut an inch or more into the metal, creating cracks and shattering it around the impact point. Asken just looked on in amazement, then looked at me, a grin on their face. Smiling back, I asked if I could have their off hand weapon, a parrying dagger. I added an enchantment to make piranha solution fire out of the tip on mental command. Then, I had Asken enchant the dagger to make the acid around 75 times faster. It doesn’t dissolve metals much, but anything organic would be gone in a fifth of a second at the accelerated speed.

Showing them the new enchantment on a boar like carcass, we watched as it smoked black and sunk through the meat for about an inch and a half. Again, they looked at me, but this time with that kind of ‘why do you know this’ look. Then they said “Why do you know these things?”

I chuckled a bit, then said “This was relatively common knowledge for scientists, even ones that had nearly nothing to do with chemistry. Plus, I was bored, and there are some amazing databases on virtually everything back on Earth.”

“Common knowledge? And how much did this ‘database’ cost? If it’s that good, it's got to be expensive, right?” Asken exclaimed, shocked.

Now letting out a full on laugh, I said “Yeah, common knowledge. And it was free, only donations and people adding to it themselves kept it afloat. Still shocked about that, so much knowledge all for free.”

They stared at me. Again. Then tossed their hands up and walked off. Catching up, we talked while walking until dinner. 

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