It was well into the afternoon by the time Phee and I rolled into town, riding atop Lex like a horse. When Phee first mounted the giant cat, using the three links of chain and collar like a set of reigns, I was scared as hell that I’d simply fall off.

I’d been right…at least half a dozen times.

Eventually I just clung to Phee’s waist with a death grip, causing her to laugh while she navigated Lex through the jungle at breakneck speed. Making matters worse was the makeshift thirty pound sack that Phee had crafted out of leaves and vines, which was now slung precariously over my shoulder. It contained a couple dozen sacks of crab roe and a good thirty or so crystals, the spoils of our afternoon killing spree; all compliments of Lex.

The big cat had taken down the crabs ease, obeying Phee’s commands like an attack dog. It was mesmerizing to watch him tear through the giant crustaceans with just a few quick swipes and a bite and I was already thinking of what other large prey we could take down with Lex’s help. Eventually the big cat grew tired of both killing and eating the things and even with Phee’s commands the Lexus became extremely ‘cat-like’ and simply ignored her to lie down and take a nap. It was a reminder that while her pets were loyal, they were not drones or slaves and even they could reach their natural limits.

Taking advantage of the kitty’s nap time, Phee and I finished what we had started and had an amazing love making session in the heat of the afternoon sun. By the time Lex woke back up, we were spent and decided to call it quits for the day. Our lethargy led to Phee’s idea to use Lex as a mount and to my surprise, she managed to cajole him into becoming Battle Cat from He-man to quicken our travels home.

We dismounted Lex just before hitting the city gates and Phee bid farewell to her jungle companions, releasing Lex and Meep to the wild with hugs and pets, raising her relationship points with them before setting them free to roam.

“We should head to the market,” Phee said, taking the sack from me and slinging it effortlessly over her broad shoulder. “Sell these while they’re fresh.”

“How about hitting the inn first,” I said, feeling both the grime and exhaustion of the day zapping the last of my strength. “I could really use a bath.”

Phee sniffed her underarm and grimaced, which was so unladylike but so Phee-like that it caused me to laugh.

“Yeah me too,” she said, oblivious to my laughter. “But we should get to the markets before the rush.”

“What rush?” I asked.

“The other guilds will be retuning to town soon. If we want to get good prices, we need to cash in before they flood the markets.”

That made sense. If we could snatch this much with Lex’s help, I could only imagine what spellcasters like Kino’s crew could pull in.

“What are we waiting for then?” I said taking off, grimy clothes and all. “To the markets!”

* * *

When we arrived I quickly realized that we were already too late. The main square within the stone district was transformed into a massive auctioning block. Banners from rival guilds were raised in all four corners, each holding a crowd of no less than fifty or so members each, all dressed in similar outfits and uniforms.

Guildmaster Kino was easy to spot amongst his red Gi wearing crew, barking orders to his men as they hauled burlap sacks filled with unknown goods towards the center of the market. There appeared to be mostly male practitioners in the Fire Guild, but I spotted a few tough looking women within their ranks as well. What truly caught my eye however was the massive monster they had carted into the city on no less than four flatbed wagons all chained together.

What I could only describe as a cross between a crocodile and a T-Rex lay strewn across the wagons. Upon its scaled hide was evidence of its demise at the hands of the Fire Guild, with huge areas of its skin burned right off to reveal white flesh below. But even more astounding than the creature itself was the boulder-sized crystal that was secured to the top of the carcass by a web of thick ropes. It was obvious why they’d done so, displaying the giant mana crystal like a trophy for all other guilds to see.

But aside from them, the other guilds looked capable in their own rights. The water guild, who dressed in flowing blue robes, had landed a now smoldering lava demon, which was humanoid in shape and about twice the size of Phee’s brother. I had almost expected them to perhaps have killed some giant sea serpent, but it made sense that they would target creatures opposite to and likely weak to their elemental strength.

The Earth guild, who wore a mixture of green and yellow did not seem to have any monsters on display but instead had wagons full of various ores and gems for sale. The smaller guilds too, from the air guild, to the light and dark guild, were present, all trying to hawk what they could to the flurry of merchants and buyers in the center of the square.

It all looked like a scene from the New York Stock Exchange to me, with men from the Commission dressed in official looking blue uniforms holding placards with symbols and numbers yelling out into the throng of screaming guild members. High above them was an even larger placard with numbers that were ever changing, magically. As I stared at it some more, the discernment ability of my amulet kicked in and the squiggles started to make sense.

Tier I 475g per pound

Tier II 1125g per pound

Tier III 2224g per pound

Tier IV 4546g per pound

Tier V 8764g per pound

“Holy shit,” I said perplexed by the numbers. “Are they selling crystals by the frigging pound?”

Phee didn’t need to answer my rhetorical question as I saw porters dressed in Commission Blue collecting the burlap sacks from the other guilds and weighing them. They would then be inspected by another more senior looking dude who would stamp the sack with an officially looking Grade T-I or Grade T-II.

“What grade are these,” I asked Phee, removing the small purse of crystals from my pocket.

“Tier I,” she said. “Most of the crystals here probably are. Only highly refined crystals, which come from higher tier monsters get graded three and above.”

“What makes a monster a higher tier?”

“Where they lie within the food chain normally,” Phee said. “Like Lex would probably be considered a Tier II monster. But the age of creatures is also a factor. There are legends of ancient monsters deep in the jungle that are god like in power, who can even use magic.”

“Holy shit,” I said. “Sounds like a world boss.”

“A what?”

“Nevermind. Just another stupid earth geek reference. So those kinds of monsters would drop higher quality crystals then.”

“Yes. The Commission is always willing to pay highest prices for them—less weight for shipping them to the mainland for the enormous amount of mana they would yet. But the Commission pays the best rates for Tier I’s too. Which is why it’s always good to try and get here early before the prices drop.”

I looked back up at the main board and saw the price for Tier I crystals go down another 10 gold per pound.

“I need to get in there,” I said and left Phee’s side to dive into the fray of haggling merchants are screaming guild members. I held out my small sack to the men in blue and added to the screams with my own. “Yo! I need to sell these! Going rate! No haggle!”

With the rate the price was dropping, getting to sell them at all would be a win. A good five minutes passed and not one of the Commission officials would even look at me. I had to try something different.

“Yo!” I shouted, finally making eye contact with one of them. “Sell Tier I for 2 gold below going rate.”

Negotiation vs Official: Success!

The Commission Official, a portly, older man with an orange mustache, paused for a moment and then looked at the sack in my hand. He wrinkled up his mustache like something smelled bad.

Negotiation vs Official: Failure!

He waved his hand at me dismissively. “Too small. Go to the after markets with that.”

He then went back to haggling with the other guild representatives who were offering him three and four sacks of crystals at a time. I slunk back to Phee and released a sigh.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

I shook my head. “We’ll never be able to compete with this volume,” I said, looking up at the dropping prices. “The commission won’t buy this small amount.”

I could understand now why a guy like Kino would see House Velmar as a laughing stock…because that’s exactly what we were. No way were we even considered players when it came to this side of things. We might as well not even exist.

Phee and I departed and ventured into a quieter section of the market, where sketchy looking merchants were gathered together with even sketchier looking clientele. We managed to hawk off the 30 crystals we had for about three gold each and the roe sacks for about two. I looked at our combined total of barely one hundred and fifty gold and frowned.

“Come on, Phee,” I said feeling defeated. “Let’s head home.”

* * *

When we got back to the inn, I felt like doing nothing more than getting a nice hot bath, a hot meal and going to sleep, but Yunni and Devena we’re waiting for us downstairs.

“How’d it go?” Yunni asked exuberantly, yelling slightly above the gentle din of conversation coming from the dozen or so patrons within the tavern.

“Pretty good I’d say,” Phee said ahead of me and with a big smile she began recounting our afternoon in the jungle. I kept quiet as we made our way to a table where Yunni had already ordered us a meal of stew and hot bread. I avoided Devena’s penetrating glare as I dug into my food, appreciative that Phee was genuinely feeling upbeat about everything that had transpired, even though I wasn’t.

I suppose she had all right to be, though. Phee had leveled up twice and snatched a killer new pet in the process, and I was genuinely happy for her too, but the marketplace scene kept flashing through my mind. We hadn’t scored that many crystals, but it was at least a pound worth and we got barely half the going value for them. How were we ever going to make money if even the market was against us?

“So how did it really go?” Devena finally spoke looking directly at me, as if reading my mind. I knew exactly what she meant and tossed the paltry bag of gold coins onto the table. The dragon lady continued to eye me skeptically as she looked inside the purse. She then began fingering through it, perhaps counting the coins somehow.

“148?” she said, confirming my suspicion. “That’s it? What in the hells were you two doing out there? Bonding the whole time?”

Phee and I’s afternoon romp flashed into my mind and a shared a quick guilty glance with the Half-ogress.

But Phee was quick to respond. “Hey, did you hear anything I just said? We gained a lot more than that. I’ve increased in power and I can get far more than that tomor—”

“I don’t care what you can do,” Devena snapped, cutting her off and the rivalry between the two women became palpable. “It doesn’t matter if you can make three times this amount tomorrow. It’s not going to get us to where we need to be, Phee!”

“Hey, it’s not her fault okay!” I shouted and Devena quickly shut up. I then noticed that even Yunni had gone tight lipped and was looked at me like a kid who’d just heard her father yell for the first time.

I released a sigh. “I’m sorry. It’s just…it’s not Phee’s fault, that’s all I’m saying. She’s doing her best. It’s me who has to step things up.”

Phee rubbed my back. “You did all you could too, Cole. I saw you fighting to get as a better sale.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But it wasn’t enough. These other guilds are way more powerful than I thought and not just in the magical sense either.”

An uneasy silence fell over the table as I ran out of things to say.

“We’ve gathered all the information on them, just like you asked,” Yunni said eventually. “It’s waiting for you upstairs.”

I gave the nymph a smile. “Thanks, Yunni.”

“Devena helped too,” she offered cheerily, but the dragon lady merely rolled her eyes.

“I’ll have a look at it in a bit,” I said rising from the table. “I just need to think for a little while.”

Phee quickly stood and joined me.

“Let me make you a bath,” she said. “I think it’ll help you relax.”

* * *

I sat in the tub of slightly too warm water and stared up at the quickly darkening sky.

Phee returned from the edge of the river dock, adjoined the side of the inn, carrying two wooden buckets of cold water to add to the four buckers of hot she had dumped into the tub earlier. The fresh water balanced out the temperature to a comfortable hot tub level and then Phee slipped out of her Bikini and into the water with me.

“Still pondering?” Phee asked with a smile as she began to soap my back.

I smiled. “Yeah…but this certainly helps take my mind off of it. Thanks.”

“Is that a good thing or bad thing?” Phee said playfully. “I don’t want to be the one to take you off course if you’re soon to have an epiphany.”

I chuckled. “Don’t think there’s any chance of that anytime soon.”

“It will come,” she said. “Do you want to talk about what’s on your mind? Maybe it will help.”

I let out a sigh and figured it probably wouldn’t hurt to say what I was thinking out loud.

“The problem is,” I began. “Is that even if we end up killing more monsters and gathering lots of crystals, the other guilds can still outpace us by cornering the market and driving the prices down. Until we can kill monsters as big as they can, we’ll always be relegated to that aftermarket and earning half as what we should be.”

“Yes,” Phee said. “That is bad. It’s probably why we’ve fallen into so much debt too.”

“Probably,” I agreed. “But this makes it not only hard for us to pay off our debt and get the guild off the ground, but when it comes to the actual competition, we’ll always be at a severe disadvantage too.”

“What do you mean?”

“The other guilds will have the resources to hire as much labor as they need to push as fast as they want. Meanwhile we’ll be left in the dust, struggling to make just enough money to stay afloat, much less afford the labor we’ll need to win the competition.”

Phee rubbed my shoulders with her strong hands. “So…what can we do?”

I sighed. “I don’t know. We need some way to generate money outside the current market conditions. I was thinking this would be easy like an MMO. Just kill monster. Kill bigger monsters. Profit.”

“What’s an MMO?”

“It’s like a game, but that’s not important. The deal is, I didn’t factor in the competition or the cap on the market being a barrier to our growth.”

“I see,” she said. “So how else are we to make money?”

“The only other way would be selling services, like that clinic idea for Devena, I guess.”

Phee blew a raspberry. “Good luck getting her to move a muscle on that one.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Still don’t know what’s up her not wanting to use her powers. Even if it was somehow a hassle for her, she should still be willing to take one for the team.”

“Take one what?”

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s another Earth expression. It means suffering a bit of discomfort or maybe doing something you don’t particularly want to do for the benefit of the group you’re a part of.”

“Oh, I see,” Phee said nodding. “I think Devena would indeed have a hard time taking one for the team.”

I chuckled. “Tell me about it.”

“What about using your metal melding ability? You could certainly make money as an amazing smith.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But it costs a lot of mana to do it. I’m not sure if it’d be efficient. And it’s not like we have easily marketable elemental magic like those other guilds. No air conditioning ice crystals or water fountains for us. Not that we’d even have the resources to even make them if we could.”

I sank into a melancholy and for the first time felt envious of what the other guilds could do compared to us.

“Speaking of water,” Phee said, perhaps sensing my mood and electing to give me a little space. “I’m going to get some more. It’s still a bit too hot in here for me.” She then gave me a wink. “Or maybe it’s just you, heating it up.”

She forced me to crack a smile as she stood and I enjoyed the sleek sheen of soapy water on her naked body as she stepped out of the tub. I watched her as she fetched the buckets and walked the ten yards or so to the edge of the inn and stooped on the pier to dip more water from the river flowing lazily by. She returned, hoisting the buckets on her shoulder to dump the water inside the tub. As I sat there admiring her gorgeous breasts an idea struck.

“I think I got something,” I said.

Phee smiled at me bright eyed. “You do?”

“Yeah,” I said still contemplating it. “But I need to speak with our landlady first.”