Chapter 444: Tribal Market

The tribesmen looked at each other in confusion, and then one of them looked back at Adrian.

"What is... trade?"

Adrian nodded slowly. "Well, trade is something like... I give you something, and you give me something in return. For example, let’s say I give you some fruit, and you give me some meat. Or I give you medicine, and you give me food."

Hearing this simple explanation, the guards nodded in understanding.

"Okay, you want exchange?"

"Yes," Adrian agreed. "I want to exchange. We call it trade."

The guard waved his hand dismissively. "Exchange is trade, and trade is exchange. Same thing. You trade, we exchange."

Adrian chuckled. "Yeah, sure, whatever you want to call it."

He lowered his hands. "How do I exchange with you guys? I have a lot of things that I want to exchange. A lot of things."

The tribesmen looked at each other before turning back to him.

"What do you have to exchange?"

"Well, I have a lot of things, but let me see," Adrian muttered.

He held out his hand and showed the guy his spatial ring. "This is a magic item that can store a lot of things, but I am not selling this. I have something else for you."

He tapped the crystal embedded into the top of the ring, and a second later, a bunch of small knives appeared in his palm.

They looked exactly like modern combat knives, just slightly larger and more robust. He basically brought out around four of them.

He held them out and showed them to the tribesmen.

"Go on, you can hold them if you want to inspect them."

The tribesmen looked a little suspicious, but one of them carefully took one of the knives. He swung it around here and there, testing the weight. He ran his thumb over the smooth, polished finish of the blade before turning to look at Adrian.

"How do you make this shine?" the guard asked. "What is this thing?"

He flicked the flat of the blade with his thick finger, and a sharp, ringing sound echoed out.

"Well, that is the exact same material that you have on your spears," Adrian said, pointing to their spearheads.

Those crude spearheads were basically blackish in color due to poor forging, but Adrian’s combat knife looked like silver because it was basically steel.

Seeing the stark difference, the tribesmen couldn’t help but look at the small item in awe.

"Magic metal?" they asked.

Adrian shook his head. "No, no, no. This is not magic metal. This is just pure iron. You just do a lot more complicated things to that black spearhead, and it will eventually turn into this. It is just a different heating process."

He spread his arms.

"That is something that is a very common thing in my tribe. We are from a very far tribe, and in my tribe, we have all of this. We want to give you this, and we want to take your things too. We will share, exchange... and we will become friends."

The guards nodded. They looked pretty excited as they played around with the knife. One by one, the other three guards each took one of the leftover knives.

"Follow," the main guard grunted.

Adrian followed behind them along with his group and Claire leaned over to whisper to him as they walked.

"You are very charismatic, aren’t you? ’Your tribe’, huh?"

Adrian smirked. "Well, tribe, empire, same thing. Just a different scale of management, you know?"

"Yeah, sure," Claire rolled her eyes. "Oh great, the Emperor is here! Wait, since they’re both the same, are you a tribal chief?"

Adrian shrugged. "Yeah, whatever you want to call it. At least it sounds kind of good."

Serena chimed in softly. "So you prefer being called a tribal chief compared to an Emperor?"

Adrian thought about it. "Well, maybe? I don’t know. Both sound kind of weird honestly. But yeah, I would rather just be called Adrian."

As they walked further into the clearing, they saw multiple people doing various things.

There was a group of people making pots out of wet clay. There was an entire group of people cooking a massive batch of food over a long fire pit. It was almost like they were cooking for the entire tribe all at once, very similar to the massive communal kitchens that Adrian had set up back in Oresfall. The only difference was that this was outside instead of inside a large stone room.

There were also kids running around and playing. Most of them were literally just naked. They weren’t wearing anything, and they were just running around happily. The one beautiful thing about this camp was that no one seemed to care or stare. There were no creeps in this place.

As for the adults, most of them just wore animal hide to cover their private parts, and the women also used large, woven leaves to cover their chest area. Apart from that, the rest of their bodies were completely bare.

Adrian was guided over towards a small circle of merchants right around a large, incredibly thick tree. The tree itself was around three meters thick, with massive roots all over the place and thick vines hanging down from the upper branches.

Circling around the base of the tree, Adrian saw a bunch of people sitting there with huge woven bamboo mats placed on the ground in front of them.

On top of the mats were various items such as pottery, specifically kitchen items like pots, plates, and bowls. There were also heavy stone mortars and pestles. Some mats had leaf baskets, bamboo baskets, and thick ropes.

Some were even selling spices. Just from one look, Adrian could tell that it was peppercorn. They were selling large quantities of peppercorn, but Adrian couldn’t really see any salt anywhere.

On top of that, there were also stone blades, stone knives, and axes. There were crude wooden mallets and hammers. And then there were also tools made of poorly forged iron, such as hunting knives.