Chimichangaroo? This is the guy buying all my Mirdabon mats?

I stood up, straightening my front legs first, balancing my heavy upper body, and extending my hind legs next. Turning around to witness the aftermath of the powerful spell, I saw the forest had been cleared of snow, trees, and Mirdabons, both elite and normal ones.

A curtain of smoke dissipated to show a small collection of craters on the ground like the unrepaired street in front of our house years ago when Egret was far from the prosperous city it was now. Golden crystals remained with more of their mass revealed as the explosion excavated the earth.

“Hello there.” I gave the player a salute as a greeting, mimicking him to foster friendliness. “Thank you for your help, erm, Chi-Chimi…” A tactic to make people give me their nickname.

“You can call me Chimi, sure. Most do.”

“Chimi then. Thanks again. I was in a tight spot there.”

A long-ranged DPS player, likely magic-based, that was my assessment of him. Wealthy, very much so given he had no hesitation topping all other bids for my items. Did he need plenty of Mirdabon materials for crafting? He must be looking for me for more supplies.

His gears looked impressive. Besides the staff in his right hand, he held what appeared to be a scroll with his left—a normal-sized roll of parchment unlike those on steroids carried by SpartanDonkey. Instead of hard armor, Chimi wore layers of robes in red, black, and white colors. They had golden writings all over, similar to those I had seen among the ruins of the Scholar's Lodge.

Three streaks of fire circled him. Upon closer examination, they appeared to be tiny creatures. Spirits? Fairies of fire? Were these related to Mehubanarath’s Asipu Form Ocadule? However, Chimi was using a staff; he wasn’t in an Unarmed State build.

"I'm sorry for destroying your farming spot," he said. "I could've chosen a less bombastic spell, but I do love my explosions. It was kind of a split-second decision when I saw your predicament, and I used my favorite spell more on instinct."

"Farming spot?" I asked. Did he know I was leading Mirdabons off the cliffs? Unlikely, unless he had been spying on me. He was referring to this destroyed patch of the forest, probably assuming I was farming Elite Mirdabons.

"Isn't this the place you're killing Elite Mirdabons?" he replied, confirming my hunch. "It looks like a good spot—looked…again, sorry about that. The trees here were of the perfect distance from each other that you could pass through while the Elite couldn’t. I bet it was enough to slow it down real good so it couldn’t reach you. Nice thinking there, partner."

"I was trying to kill it, but I messed up," I said with an embarrassed shrug. My 'special' farming methods weren't worth much to a DPS character—which most future Mardukryons were predictably going to be—but I didn't want to ruin Chimichangaroo's feel-good moment of supposedly 'saving' me. I was about to log out anyway, so I wasn't in any trouble. "I should've first hit the golden crystals to drive off the small Mirdabons. The Elite ate some of them and became too strong for me."

"Is this how you're farming Mirdabon mats?" he asked. "Elite Mirdabons do more have loot than the normal ones, and they're higher-leveled to boot, but it's better to stick to the small guys. That’s my advice, partner. If they're still dropping a one or two loot per pack, I say concentrate on them and avoid the Elites."

"I learned that the hard way," I said, jabbing my thumb back at the craters.

"Anywho...I was looking for you.” Chimi's staff and scroll disappeared, and he clapped his hands. "When I logged in, I saw that you had accepted my order requests at the auction house. I hoped you were still online. If you were, you must be farming Mirdabons. Turns out I was right. I suppose you know why I want to talk to you?"

"The Mirdabon materials?” I said. “Do you need more of them?"

"Precisely." He leaned down and cupped a hand near his mouth as if someone was going to overhear us. "You see, I have a Relic Quality Dreamweaver Ocadule. A secret upgrade of a quest reward. And I need to weave plenty of cloth to level it up.”

"Wow, I haven’t heard of that Ocadule before," I said, pretending to be amazed. To be fair, I hadn’t heard of most things in the game. Was he bragging to me about this? He could've simply told me he needed Mirdabon drops for crafting and left it at that. However, the customer is always right—most of the time, sometimes. Given he was technically my customer, I had to indulge him.

He also gave me valuable information about crafting Ocadules—crafting was the way to level them. A no-brainer, actually, but the important implication was that it wouldn't cut a slice of the Gli pie I’d get from killing monsters. I could level it along with combat-related Ocadules.

The question was what crafting Ocadule should I go for? If I cultivated a good relationship with Chimi, would I be able to pry his secrets from him?

“There are several choices of what I can weave,” continued Chimi. “However, the robe that gives the most Gli for my Ocadule needs fur from Mirdabons and their higher-leveled variants. Their fangs and spikes I use for trinket crafting, but that's more of a secondary job for me. I want to max my Dreamweaver Ocadule as fast as possible."

“Well, I’ll be farming Mirdabons,” I said. “Then I’ll just put them up—”

"I'm proposing a Contract for you to directly supply me with Mirdabon materials," Chimi said. "A simple one so that there's no room for any shenanigans, no misunderstandings in the future—just a basic purchase order. Let's say, two thousand pieces of the three Mirdabon drops priced at a thousand Artas each?"

"But people can buy and sell those at the auction house?" I mentioned 'people', but I meant myself.

"The auction house just takes our money," he said with a sigh. "Five percent from the seller's earnings, and five percent from the winning buyer on top of the bid. That's ten percent of the price we're losing to the system. Now, money's not an issue for me. But I'd rather give that money to other players than the NPCs."

"Hmm, a Contract?" I said. I folded my arms across my chest, signaling reservations, and tapped my front hoof while looking at the sky to show I was considering it. "But I don't know much about pricing Mardurkyon items since I'm new here. That's why I think it's best to put them up on auction." Reading between the lines, I was telling Chimi I might fetch a better price if I sold my items in the open market.

"I assure you that my bids will be more than anyone else's," he told me, animatedly waving his hands. "After your first auction ended, you put up Mirdabon loot for sale again, correct?" I nodded. He said, "I'm going to bid a thousand Artas only on the fur—I'm confident no one will top it. I won't touch the fangs and spikes so that you'll see how much they'll fetch. It's going to be far from a thousand Artas each, I can tell you that now. But if you make a Contract with me, I'll also pay a thousand Artas each for them all."

"That's going to cost you a lot of Artas!" I exclaimed, subtly showing I was impressed with his wealth to stroke his ego. It didn't hurt to butter him up, but there was probably no need for it. I could understand why he was willing to spend more than the market value to secure a supply of crafting materials. If I had a Relic Quality Ocadule, I'd also want to rush leveling it.

"Artas is no problem for me," he said. "Other Mardukryons know about this already, so it's not bragging, but I don't farm these days."

That sounds like bragging, I thought. If he wasn't farming, how was he getting money? I asked, "Are you buying Artas with premium currency?"

"I am," he simply said, almost waiting for my reaction.

"That's insane!" I loudly said, coupled with a jolt of surprise and widened eyes. Meeting my first whale? This somehow made me miss Boady. "I can't imagine how much that'll cost with real money."

"A lot. Just a lot. But I'm bored with killing all the same monsters. If someone could find the way to leave this mountain, I'd gladly pay them too. Right now, since I'm not going anywhere and I don't want to switch to another race, I'm focused on building my character while also helping others...like you. A win-win situation for both of us. What do you think?"

Time to build a facade that I wasn't trying to take advantage of him. It was one thing to want money—most people did—and a completely different matter to be a greedy bastard. "Personally, I'm happy that you're helping me out in a big way. But you're paying me too much." So why don't I lower the price? "I think I should just place my items on the auction."

"No, no, no," he said, shaking his head and hands for emphasis. "Don't do that. There are times I'm swamped managing my business and I can't log in. I might miss your items. That's why I'm paying a premium so that I can readily secure them.”

There we have it, the reason he wanted to have a Contract with me. A new player was the most secure source of Mirdabon loot. I couldn't keep this up forever because I was going to continue leveling up. And so, Chimichangaroo intended to siphon all of my loot for himself while bountiful supplies last to power-level his priced Ocadule.

I realized why this guy reminded me of Boady so much—besides that they were both whale players. In the past, Boady was looking for a specific rare loot drop during an event in Nornyr Online. He commissioned all the Nornyr players who frequented Vanguard Gaming to sell all that we found to him.

The life of a whale... I was tempted to try it too, but it'd go against the spirit of Goal #1.

Having done it before in real life, I was confident I could do it in a game. I was going to build a fortune from scratch in Mother Core Online.

"Think about it." Chimi patted my shoulder. "We can talk again tomorrow after your current auction ends, and you'll see that I’m offering the best prices." He added me as a friend and then logged out.

It was the following day. I was back inside the auction house, standing in front of the Mardukryon NPC. The auction for my items was about to end—a hundred pieces each of [Patch of Fur], [Small Fang], and [Black Spike]. As Chimichangaroo had predicted, no one tried to top his bid for the Mirdabon fur.

The price for the fangs and spikes was a different story—it only hovered around the low four hundred and slowly ticked up a few Artas at a time as people bid on it. At the last five minutes, someone bid four hundred fifty Artas, which no one contested.

[ Received: 180,050 Artas ]

Then I received a notification. It was a message from a friend.

[ Chimichangaroo: Don't leave your counter yet. ]

"Hmm? What's this?" I muttered. "Ah, I get it." The bidders for the other items were going to be outside. He didn't want me to meet them because they might try to contract me for other supplies like what he was doing.

[ Chimichangaroo: Let's meet at the Chief's Lodge for our transaction. I'm going to make you a multi-millionaire. ]