Chapter 151: Capital While Unlocking Remote Cross-World Automation

The headquarters of the Ember Knights Guild.

The building was big.

If a small Guild had a HQ this big, then the bigger guilds with influence must have monuments for their headquarters. A good example is the Golden Dawn Guild.

Since the Trials is over, Luke focused on making money for his beast armor mega workshop.

He had one hundred pieces of each of the dimensional items he had promised the guilds. Next came negotiating prices and signing contracts.

The Ember Knights most wanted Insect Metal. The Ox Guild was second in that niche. The Nexus Guild and the Green Grace Guild were eyeing Insect Leather, Insect Cloth, and Insect Thread.

Luke asked Amigo to help him expand his mental capacity.

Using the Mind Refinement Technique combined with the Primordial Assimilation Technique, Amigo could expand a person’s mental breadth—memory, focus, and fatigue resistance all increased significantly.

As for making someone smarter, that required another technique.

Luke was a mere human and couldn’t withstand so many Mythical-level techniques. Concentration alone was enough.

By the end of the day, he successfully negotiated the deals.

The Ember Knights were very generous, but the Ox Guild was closefisted.

Luke was too lazy to beg them to be more persuadable because he knew the value he was bringing. So, he had no choice but to categorize them as Second-list Clients, while the Ember Knight Guild was on the first list.

Meanwhile, Green Grace Guild and the Nexus Guild were sufficient spenders who haggled back and forth in good faith for a fair deal, giving Luke a chance to show off his business acumen.

If not for Amigo’s techniques backing him, Luke might well have been swindled by this pack of old foxes, or worn down by mental fatigue into agreeing on something rashly.

"My first plan was to use Flame as the middle variable to calculate the value of the Insect Metal in Scrips," Luke said, "similar to how I used it to calculate the cost of Beast Armor in Pollen Coins. The calculation showed that Insect Metal Size 1 is worth 1000 Scrips while Man Metal Size 1 is only 50 Scrips. So Insect Metal is twenty times more valuable. But this Ember Knights price is beyond absurd — they went straight to offering 3,500 Scrips for Insect Metal Size 1!"

"At that price, who can afford the finished products later?" Luke asked.

"Whoever needs it, affords it," Amigo answered. "Whoever can’t, they will protest, and the wholesalers have to ask the Ember Knights Guild for a price reduction sooner or later."

Man Metal (Size 1): 50 Scrips | Insect Metal (Size 1): 3,500 Scrips

Man Cloth (Size 1): 60 Scrips | Insect Cloth (Size 1): 800 Scrips

Man Leather (Size 1): 25 Scrips | Insect Leather (Size 1): 500 Scrips

Man Thread (Size 1): 3 Scrips | Insect Thread (Size 1): 35 Scrips

The price is outrageously high.

Luke doesn’t know whether prices will come down once mass production begins in the future, but he hopes ordinary people will be able to afford the byproducts from these items.

However, the higher the price, the more he earns.

These preposterous prices are what will even give him the revenue he wants, a hundredfold.

Selling 500 pieces of Size 1 Insect Metal? That is 1.75 million Scrips. A thousand pieces of Size 1 Insect Cloth? That is 800,000 Scrips.

That is a lot of money when you consider larger quantities and the routine repetition of buying and selling.

And this is only for Size 1 prices too.

But Luke is open-minded to the highs and lows too, because prices can plummet or shoot straight to the moon.

Risk, after all, is the father of wealth.

The next day was sale day.

Luke went to each guild, and left them a happy man, smiling from ear to ear.

Since he brought one hundred pieces of each dimensional item, he got: Insect metal, 350k. Insect cloth, 80k. Insect Leather, 50k. And Insect thread, 3,500. All told, approximately 500,000 Scrips, half a million.

He was happy because every last coin of this money he earned himself.

The guilds wanted to sign contracts with him so they could establish a relationship for future large-scale operations. But Luke didn’t agree to it. Said they’d keep trading like this, for now.

Think it through, Luke was right— signing contracts required knowing who the other party was, so everyone would be transparent. That meant Luke had to lose his anonymity.

He didn’t want to reveal his identity so soon.

Luke must build enough trust first, enough leverage, and enough weight, so that each Guild’s regard for him outweighed whatever obligation they may feel to hand him over to the Kingsley family, the noble family of this city.

But he’s similarly aware that it was only a matter of time before being transparent with respect to his identity.

Otherwise, people’s interest would go from "Where did these items come from?" to "Who is this boy that brings these items?" and then they’d be focused on investigating him to find out who he was.

In the meantime, Luke celebrated his earnings by having lunch at a restaurant.

Besides investing in the mega workshop, he had other plans for this money. For example, he wanted to rent a nice place and get his life in order. Since being kicked out of his home, he’d been living a squalor.

Maybe he’d buy a car for transportation too. And other odds and ends.

It wasn’t that he was after these things. It was that these things create a respectable social image. With a house and a car, people felt you had standing on your own two feet. Hence, climbing the social ladder would be easier.

Luke couldn’t explain why, but that’s how the world works.

And Mr. Blackstone had taught him one thing—in business, don’t try to be different from others, thinking you’re above wanting what everyone else wants.

However, Amigo doused his imagination with cold water.

"Master, this only works with a steady flow of income," he said. "Do you even have that yet?"

"Of course, you clever little devil. The Insect World," Luke replied. "We buy goods from there and sell them here. Haven’t you caught up yet?"

Amigo slapped his forehead: "And how do you buy goods in the Insect World? With Scrips, or with Pollen Coins? Pollen Coins, right? And so where’s the Pollen Coin going to keep coming from?"

Luke fell silent.

"There you go," Amigo said. "The Pollen Coins you have left, you’ll finish them eventually. You only earn Pollen Coins by forging Armor and selling it in the Insect World. Which means you’ve got to stay busy over there too, just to keep the very Pollen Coins flowing in. The System didn’t hand you an easy loop here to become Millionaire-at-18."

"Good catch, Amigo," Luke said. "Well, there’s no other way. The workshop in the Insect World has to be fully operational to maintain the Pollen Coin income."

"Unless you want to reverse the dimensional trade? By that, I mean sell Insect World goods to Earth, and also sell Earth goods to the Insect World. Profit from both ends, creating a chain of trade."

Luke thought about it and replied, "It could work. But the Insect World is rigidly stratified. The Royal Family and the upper ranks hoard everything for themselves, and they don’t share a scrap with anyone below. On the contrary, Earth is different because everyone is working hard to develop and to fight against the apocalypse."

The Insect Realm is plutocratic. Resources are controlled by a few, and the lower classes can’t even get a sip. This means that Man materials won’t have the same market size in the Insect World as on Earth.

"However," Luke said, "I Crossbred Man Thread into armor and gifted it to the Royal Family, and they were pleased with it. So this kind of trade, they’re willing to do. Just not at the scale I want. The Insect World is just a handful of exclusive clients, that’s all. But these clients are extremely lavish. In summary, the Insect World is low demand, but high profit."

He scratched his head: "Fine. I’ll do both. Sell armor for Pollen Coins, and sell some Man materials to the nobles too."

"That’s settled," Amigo said. "Also, Master, I can save you the trouble of running back and forth to the Insect World. Your workshop has a mechanism, so I can stay on Earth and assimilate its mind, just like I assimilated the monster zones. So, even when you’re not in the Workshop, I can still run it for you."

"Really? Kindly try it," Luke said.

Amigo closed his eyes and calmed himself. He began to glow one minute later.

After a while, he said: "Dung Beetle Carapace."

Quickly, Luke Auto-Forged the armor and sent it into his soul space.

Meanwhile, Amigo remotely controlled the workshop, thus receiving the armor and giving it to the waiting customer. After that, Amigo stopped his meditation and presented a handful of Pollen Coins.

Luke was equal parts startled and delighted.

This technique was too useful!

But he was a little curious— what did it feel like for the Dung Beetle to walk into the Workshop and find it completely deserted, yet it was attended to?

He didn’t know how to thank Amigo. With this ability, he felt much more confident.