Fighting to be Kind in a Cultivation World

Chapter 144: Increased Efficiency

Seeing the large number of red/overvalued items gives me a bit of a headache. Not from the scan that was already there, but just figuratively.

 It's not all bad, though. There are a few deals out here.

Things that the seller just doesn't want or is not making any money from, so they are just trying to get it out of their stock.

Sometimes, the owner doesn't know the real significance of the item, and is just selling at a price that they've come up with, that is based on what they think similar items are sold at.

If another seller is actually buying such an item that is undervalued at another sellers location, my scan will ping me for both locations with an indication to buy it one place and sell it at the other. It's become the ultimate tool for taking advantage of the market.

The only issue? The prices are arbitrary in a bargaining market like this. They are based on what the seller believes its value is at, not exactly its true value.

 The mere act of showing interest in an item, in the wrong (right) way, can bring up the price or lower it for buyers. Especially for a person like myself, from a country that normally doesnt bargain for prices, except in more traditional markets, I can give off all the wrong cues.

I already stretched my scan to the brink, giving me a migraine that is just barely at the level where I can keep focus on my surroundings, while keeping my protection scan on, and keeping my healing/taming/rat scans on.

It doesnt even include the constant, automatic healing thats being done back on the farms in Gongs caverns, spiders, and the various demi humans. Or the automatic, death saving triggers on everyone close to me.

Ah, I should place that on the hero group as well.

I like them and can definitely sacrifice the mana to keep them safe. Not only that, but theyve helped me so much already.

After placing the new healing triggers on the hero group, I focus back on how I can solve this issue.

 I can't use the scan to make the perfect responses just yet.  

Maybe what I could do is, once I bargain for an item, drop the part of the scan that is pinging for other items, and then use that instead to perform real time scanning on the correct responses to what the merchant is saying.

Ah, wait. If I do that, then there is a possibility I could miss the change in mental price. Not only that, but if an amazing deal passes while Im bargaining obliviously, then Ill be missing that opportunity.

I jump back and forth between these two areas before realizing I was being stupid.

There are no upfront costs to doing either of these behaviors. Visualizing it like a pair of sliders, I can reduce the pinging scan to half its amount, while making the corrective behaviors and scanning on the merchant at a very low, but still intuitive level.

Similar to how I've done in other cases, like my awareness and intuition, I can use the low corrective behavior and reaction scan to train me to recognize patterns and learn how to do this naturally. If I just let it do it for me, its just like searching the result on a search engine.

No thought involved and a high possibility of not being able to replicate it without it.

Unfortunately, this method still has a learning curve, so I may not catch everything. But it will give me the basic aspects of both worlds.

And maybe, just maybe, Ill be able to learn to appraise things without my scan. Thats when the fun will really start.

 With my plan in place, I look at the nearby vendors with expectant eyes. 

The first stall I look at is a cleaning product stall. The seller there is a man with several ingredients and products he seemed to make. Each of them, are in a glass bottle of sorts, in two different sizes. As people pass, he gives various statements, some with some unbelievable, but some valid claims. A significant amount of its products appear to be red, but one of his products actually appears to be massively undervalued.

He seems to get quite a significant amount of business from both businesses and people His stall is larger than the others, and he has two other people working with

Walking up to this seller, I control my expressions, which aren't needed as much because I covered most of my face with only the eyes being shown. He gives me his spiel, putting up a variety of different ingredients and I pretend to consider a few of them, even taking out some coins for some, then putting it away. Once my intuition tells me the time is right, I point out at the glass bottle that I actually want. There appear to be three of them, 1 large and two small. I decide to take the chance and attempt to buy all of them, as all three get a corresponding ping from a location a bit of a distance away.

As we talk, hes already thrown out a few prices, and with the work that went into many of the ingredients, regardless of the actual quality of the result it would give, he's charging an above average price for each of them. They have thrown prices like 20 big copper coins or the like out for some of these larger bottles, with the smaller ones being around 10.  

The large bottles are obviously for the bigger businesses to buy and are about a meter high and half a meter wide, made of extremely thick glass with large handles on the side to facilitate carrying them. They aren't meant to be carried permanently, but to be carted away.

 The smaller bottles are half the size as he sees the bottles I point at, his face twists into a confused look before giving a standard description of what it can do. Basically, the standard item of it can clean stains in the like. He does note that it doesn't do the job the same as some of his other products, but is still a valid option for cost saving person. Instead of the average 20 big copper price, he's going 1 copper below at 19 big coppers.

If this was being used as a normal cleaner to come up, he would definitely cheat me. He is generally an upright man, so he is suggesting other products that can do the job better, but still wants to get this off his plate.

What he doesn't know is that they could use this as an extremely effective wood stain remover. If diluted in water, then this would allow furniture businesses too easily to remove the stain from any of their wood products. At least, for the current stain solutions they are using at this time.

While I get little from the level of scan that I'm using now, my assumption is that they do have other solutions, but they have to scrape off some of the wood. Not only that, I believe they might have to use massively expensive ingredients. Only for very expensive ingredients and will only do so for specialty products.

Giving them this stain remover will change how they run their business.

It will make waves, but hopefully positive ones. I want to establish my reputation as a trader. That way I can have a backup way to make money, but be trusted in the process.

That should make things easier in the long run.

Here goes nothing.