Author's note: This chapter is a little shorter than normal since I've been glued to election coverage, but I wanted to get it out. I'll be posting an extra long chapter (or maybe two?) on Friday/Saturday to make the weekly output the regular 6K or so.
[Lodestone access point created! Would you like to set up your inventory for your private market?]
Yes! Logan fist-pumped the air, his excitement through the roof. He felt like dancing, swaying on the balls of his feet, his mouth in a wide grin.
Everything he’d just done had been an experiment, a shot in the dark, but still, he’d figured out how the skill worked and also made crafting advances. Before this, he never would have thought that fire could be used to combine elements and strengthen material.
If he could magnetize a sheet of metal and craft it into a lodestone, what did that mean for [Mimicry Armour]? He’d always suspected that he could use something other than sandstone to craft better armour, but now, he knew that he could, he just had to find the right material. Rusty nails wouldn’t be an option, since his Logan exoskeleton only worked because he had access to a massive pile of sand. To make the same thing work with higher quality material, he’d need buckets full of the stuff.
Still, that was a problem for another day. For now, he needed to figure out how to create a private market.
Logan mentally hovered over the [YES] choice.
[Please select the items you’d like to add to your private market.]
Suddenly, Logan was looking at the contents of his spatial storage collar. He swallowed, his mouth dry. So. A private market was just that. It didn’t give Logan access to anything other than what he could create himself. That meant that he’d have to transfer items from his own spatial storage into the market, effectively losing them.
Fuck. He had a massive ton of crap inside of his collar, volume wasn’t the problem, it was that to make the private market attractive, he’d need to give up things he’d rather keep.
Logan ran his hand over his chin, scratching his stubble as he considered a way forward.
The True Grit Ring he’d earned in the trial dungeon was going to Lara. It was his rarest item, something that could only be earned from almost killing himself in the attribute trials. He’d also nabbed four Silverdagger Clan spatial storage bracelets, rarities from E Grade to B Grade. He wanted to give one to Lara and the kids, which left one remaining, but he’d rather reserve it for Jack and Tasha.
Wait a minute.
He’d killed fifty people in Pied’s Kingdom, and he’d thrown their corpses as well as their belongings inside of his spatial storage. Fifty people had to have a ton of good shit, and hopefully not a ton of cursed skill rings.
Logan mentally rummaged through the contents, grimacing at the list of corpses, before scrutinizing…
Shit. He’d managed to gather twenty spatial storage bracelets! 20! Not to mention the weapons, armour, and food. None of the weapons were above C Grade, but they’d have to be better than weapons most people could find in their kitchens or on the street. If he was right, Pied’s agents only received them due to their relationship with Pied.
All in all, once he’d sorted through everything, he had over 100 weapons that he could add to his private market, not to mention as many frigging green beans as he wanted since he could always get more. The Build an Empire quest required him to collect dues, which he assumed was KarmaCoin, so that meant he’d need a hundred items—at least.
If Logan concentrated on each item, he could set a KarmaCoin price, whatever price he wanted. And if he toggled through the options, he could….
[Would you like to turn on the option for auction buying?]
Logan blinked and then grinned, bouncing on the balls of his feet. According to this, he could either give the item a KarmaCoin cost, or he could auction it within a set time period, allowing people to put in bids. Holy crap, was that ever kickass!
Logan tried not to feel greedy, but he’d been tempted by the empire building description of his [Fabled Creation] class for just that reason. Finally, finally, he could make something of himself, exceed Lara financially, hell, even exceed his shitty boss, Sarah!
There was the question of how this worked, though. Logan had only received KarmaCoin by growing trees and reducing carbon. With the Tree Fridge, he’d tried to convert currency for KarmaCoin with no luck.
KarmaCoin may not be widely in use yet, which would limit who could buy items from his market. But still, he was convinced that it would become the major currency; the only viable option when the internet no longer worked. People weren’t going to cart around their life savings in physical bills; he was convinced of that, which is why he’d been so excited when he discovered the serpent queen’s hoard in the cavern. That meant that although he would have limited customers to start, eventually, KarmaCoin would become routine for everyone.
But for his private market to be successful, he’d have to continuously add new items. With everything else already on his plate, stocking inventory would be challenging. Oh well, it’s not like Logan couldn’t table that problem. To succeed at his Build an Empire quest, he needed to craft ten lodestone access points and collect dues from 100 people. He already had the lodestone, now, he just needed to pick the spots. Preferably spots with a lot of people.
Once that was done, he’d succeed at the quest, and then leave restocking his private market for another day.
***
[Countdown: Day 12 of Day 365 before species culling. Only the worthy survive.]
[Current rank: 2 out of 6,000,015,197.]
[You are currently in the 1%.]
This time, rather than waking up halfway through a nightmare and jumping to his feet in startlement, Logan had a tough time blinking awake, his eyes crusty, his limbs sluggish. He’d stayed up well into the night, inventorying everything he could into his new private market. There was only so much [Undead Stamina] could do, and a lack of sleep was starting to catch up to him.
Stretching, Logan climbed to his feet and then cracked his neck, before looking around at the others. After he’d called it a night, he’d stretched out on the ground close to Lara and the kids, trying to keep them within reach in case they needed him.
Lara seemed worse off than Logan, rubbing her bloodshot eyes, her mouth in a grimace as she stretched and scowled up at the smoggy sun. The heat persisted, that constant, dry heat that hardly decreased in the night. The System had also woken Hunter and Sawyer, but rather than getting up, they glanced around them and then pulled their blankets over their heads with complaining grumbles and grunts.
But everyone had received the same System wakeup call to various effects. Many of Brooke and Chase’s group let out cries and jumped up, staring at their surroundings with wild eyes. Logan couldn’t blame them. For days, the daily wake up call had announced another cut to the world population, and being reminded that you were ranked outside of the one percent couldn’t be a confidence boost.
Logan pulled Lara to the side, lowering his voice. “I need to go back to Jack’s cabin and make sure it’s safe for you and the kids. I’d take you with me, but I left a whole group there, and according to the last text message I received from Jack, there might be a problem. It’s not safe. Not yet.”
Lara bit her lip and stared over at Hunter and Sawyer with a worried frown. “If you leave us alone who’s to say it’ll be safe here?” She gestured to Brooke and Chase’s group. “I don’t trust them. They could have XP harvesters.”
“I don’t think they do. Lara, do you remember Sarah, my boss?”
Lara looked thrown. “The devil woman?”
Logan snorted. “Yep. She’s here, part of the group. She may have been a horrible boss, but I don’t think she’s a horrible person. Or someone who would hang around a group that would participate in murder. Either way, I’ll ask Ernie to stay and protect you while I’m away. He’s level 70; these people aren’t going to mess with you, not with him watching over you. Plus, I’ll be gone and back before you know it.”
Logan had no idea what had happened to Matt after he’d left, but although Logan suspected that he was a psychopath, he was a teenager, all knobbly knees. There was no way he would be any match for Logan.
Logan ran a hand over his head, then winced and tried to straighten his hair. It was standing on end, and with his stubble, he really did resemble a mountain man. “And if worse comes to worse, Ernie has a skill that will allow him to portal you out of here. He’ll take you to the cabin. You can trust him, Lara. I trust him with my life.”
Lara blew out a breath. “This is so messed up. Talking octopuses, monsters, rats. I don’t like not being able to keep my kids safe.”
“I’ll keep you safe, I will. But first, I need to secure your home.”