Slave Harem in the Labyrinth of the Other World (LN)

Volume 5 - Ch 5.07

So, should this be the price that I should give to them? Is that going to be enough to guarantee me a good profit out of this sale?

If only the Knights were willing to do so, they could have always gone and buy the Palmasque Mirrors on their own, using their own hands instead of going for the middleman Adventurers like myself. Even if going alone is out of the question, they could have always formed a full Party of six people and take turns in order to reach Palmasque if they were using Field Walker, and if everything else have failed, they could have always opted for staying in Palmasque overnight. Now, assuming that the cost of one Adventurer staying in Palmasque would be thousand Nars per day and that it would take around two days for each of the Party members to buy the Palmasque Mirror and bring it back home with them, then the total cost od such an operation would be two thousand Nars per Party Member, so by adding the price of the mirror itself, that means that you could get one mirror for a total of five thousand five hundred Nars total.

Looking at it like that it might seem like it is hell of a lot expensive because of all of the accommodation costs, but if it means that they would be able to make a full back and forth trip within a single day, then it would actually be cheaper, considering that they cannot allow themselves to spend too much money on such an excursion without ramping the costs up too high to the point where the entire trip would not be worth it due to too much money being spend to get the mirror, which might be deemed as not worthy of its price.

Then, how about one gold coin per mirror?

Moreover, I cannot allow myself to be too greedy in front of Cassia. I have to admit, it was a pretty smart and tactical move on Gozers part to start talking about business-related things only after Cassia came here. Does he know that I will have to stay my tongue and my demands in regards to money in order not to be seen in an overly bad light in her eyes?

I think it might be a little too cheap. You would have gotten a better price even if you went with it to the Imperial City. But it also costs money to have my men go to the Imperial City to buy them there.

If you had a full Party of Adventurers go directly to Palmasque, you might be able to get them at half the price.

But hiring people just for something like that might be too bothersome and wasteful money-wise. After all, Palmasque Mirrors are not something that we need for our own everyday usage. But since I decided to buy them on the spot like that, it should be a given that they would end up being a little expensive.

So that is how it is, huh? Instead of looking at this whole endeavor as an individual, Gozer is looking at if from the perspective of his standpoint as the leader of the Knight Order of Hartz Duchy. He just cannot hire pretty much anyone off the street to do it because since he has his reputation to consider he would be unable to dismiss them pretty much whenever he would have wanted or when it would have suited him.

As the leader of the Knight Order, if he hires someone to do a job for him, he has no choice but to keep them employed throughout the whole thing even if there is not that much work to do to begin with. From that perspective, I can definitely see where his opinion is coming from. Hiring an Adventurer to run errands for you might seem like a good idea at the beginning, but in the long run it might just not be worth it.

Of course, the most obvious solution to that problem would be to simply go and buy the product that you want yourself, even if you had to consent with the price and sacrifice your own time that could otherwise be saved by hiring help from the outside, but when doing things yourself, you will at least have one hundred percent certainty that the job has been done for good and that no one is trying to deceive you that it has been done in order to just get your money and then run away before you could verify whether or not that was actually true.

However, it is a little different in my case, since I have been invited to do this job of obtaining mirrors by Gozer himself, precisely because I had a certain value to myself: I claimed that I could travel to Palmasque, and I did not claim to have wanted to be compensated for the costs of the travels that I would be doing.

It should be fine, what with the increased number of mirrors and all.

You really are fine with that? Very well then, I understand, and thank you for your understanding.

As expected of Mr. Michio. He truly is an excellent Adventurer.

The Duke praised me again, but I do not know if I should be happy with his praises or not.

I am also grateful to you, Lord Michio. This is a high quality product, and we are lucky to be able to get them at such an affordable price.

I do not care about the praises from the Duke at all, but Cassia can praise me however much she wants, and I will accept her praises any day of the week, even though in reality she should be directing her thanks not towards me, but towards Sherry, since she was the one who was the architect of the prices for the mirrors being so low, but since neither of the people here actually met Roxanne and Sherry in person, I will allow them to think that it is me who they should be thanking, and thanks to this, I will be able to say to the girls that I managed to sell the mirror to the Duke for a pretty good price myself.

I received the gold coin from Gozer and left the Dukes office and the castle while feeling overjoyed that a beauty such as Cassia praised me and felt thankful toward me.

Now, I could go straight back home, but before I do that, I decided to go and pay a visit to the cat-eared amber merchant next to Bodes Adventurers Guild.

My oh my! Welcome, Mr. Customer!

A cat-eared merchant welcomed me after I went through the shops door. I was more than a little disappointed that it was him and not the cat-eared female clerk who was here last time, but she was nowhere to be seen, which was quite a shame, because now that I did not have Roxanne or Sherry with me today, I thought that maybe I could get the chance to play with her cat-ears for a bit, but unfortunately it does not look like that is going to be the case.

I hope that I am not interrupting with anything?

No, not at all. Please, right this way!

Welcome, Mr. Customer.

When I greeted the cat-eared merchant, he eagerly welcomed me to the back of the shop, to the same room where I was sitting with Roxanne and Sherry the last time when I was here, and there, much to my joy, a cat-eared female clerk welcomed me as well!

So she was here after all, just not in the front of the shop! Of thank the heavens for that! Looks like I am going to get to enjoy my fair share of of cat-eared goodness after all! Cassia was definitely a beautiful woman who is in a class of her own when it comes to looks and the aura that she emanates around her, but this cat-eared girl undeniably has a unique charm of her own that cannot be denied. There is just something about cat ears that hits you differently, you know? In a pretty unique way that neither Elven ears nor anything else can possibly hope to replicate.

As I sat on the sofa, the female cat-eared clerk served me herbal tea, just like she did the last time when I was here.

Mr. Customer, I think you will be pleased to know that I have managed to order another batch of raw amber from the amber processing plant, and that we should be able to get you another ten pieces of it if you would like them.

Unfortunately, the one with whom I have to do amber-related business is not the cat-eared female clerk, but the cat-eared merchant.