Bree was currently driving the carriage along the rough street of the plains on their way toward the capital of the human country Litgern, while Eisen and Komer were sitting in the back of the carriage, talking about business.
"What we should do first is give you a rough sense of the value of items. I'm sure you know why the items you were selling yesterday were priced so cheaply, right?" Eisen asked, leaving Komer to nod basically instantly in response.
"Yeah, because they were all basically failures. At least that's what Mister Hastings told me."
"Exactly. Which brings us to the first point. Quality. Together with the item's rank, it's probably the easiest way to get a rough idea of what something should cost without even looking at the effort to make it or the material. But again, you should only use it as a rough base point. Do you know how item ranks and quality work?"
The young man with vibrant red hair shook his head while crossing his arms. "No, I don't really. And I'm guessing it's not random, right?"
"It's not, yeah. There are eight different qualities, Lowest to Perfect, at every rank. And it's still a fact that a Lowest Quality Rank 1 item, is still of better quality than a perfect quality rank 0 item. But the actual quality rating only slightly influences the price compared to the rank. The difference between an Average Quality item and a Perfect quality item may only be a few coins, while the difference between a rank 0 item and a rank 2 item is like the difference between copper and silver coins. And that is because you need to be of a specific rank in the skill that you're making something with for the item to be that rank. Because it only gets harder to rank your skills up over time, rank 7 items are obviously quite rare compared to rank 1 or 2 items."
Komer took in all of this information, even taking notes on a piece of paper to make sure he wouldn't forget anything, before turning back to Eisen to listen to the next part of what he knew about how to sell items.
"The quality will make the price of items vary the most. It's like an amplifier. Let's say you have a base item with a material worth of 1 copper coin, but it's an incredible rank 10 item. The item with a base worth of 1 copper will suddenly be worth 1 platinum coin. So, taking that into account, if you take materials that are worth 1 silver coin at the start and make a rank 10 item out of them, they will be worth a crystal coin instead."
Nodding in resposne to this quite useful revelation, Komer noted this down as well. Of course Eisen also added that this was just an example, and those were not in the slightest accurate numbers.
But at least this helped Komer understand how quality really influenced the price of items, and that was the most important part about it.
"Next, there is of course the workload and complexity. Aulu here will cost a lot more than other items with the same rank, quality, and material cost. And that's because it took me quite long to make her, at least for my standards, and because I used multiple different skills and crafts during her construction. That brings the price up as well. But that's something that you'll have to look into for every different type of item, of course I will also tell you how hard it was to make it and how long it took. Since I doubt I have to explain supply and demand to you, I'll move on to the something else, another important part that you even mentioned before." Eisen explained while setting up another flower pot with seeds in it for Caria to continue practicing her skills, and Komer scratched his chin while thinking about it, before he seemed to have realized what Eisen was talking about.
"Ah, do you mean the brand?" Eisen sat back down on the floor opposite to Komer and nodded, since that was exactly what he meant.
"Of course. You said before that we could just sell items for a higher price by telling everyone they were made by me. That would definitely bring up the price, but we shouldn't jump into it too quickly. Reputation is probably the most important thing for a merchant, don't you think? If you had kept scamming people, your reputation would have dropped, and then even if you had sold actually god-tier items for a few copper coins, people would mistrust you and just not buy anything from you anyway. You have to slowly raise your reputation as a merchant, and then with that you can think about slowly raising your prices. Of course not by a lot, but a little bit is alright."
"So why don't we just sell items you made and tell everyone who you are then? Couldn't we instantly raise the price, then?"
After Komer asked this, Eisen sighed loudly and nodded. "Yeah, of course we could do that. But if you tried selling items by advertising they were made by someone that peaked, not your reputation would rise, but mine. You would basically just be the clerk at the front of the store to people. We don't just want people to think that you're working for me, but rather that you're an amazing merchant that sells high quality items."
"Oh… I didn't think about that. But that does make sense, yeah. Since the people here see you as such an amazing being, it would be like 'The big guy helping the little guy'."
"Exactly right. So let's keep my identity a secret for now until you're more successful as a merchant." Eisen told his young, new companion.
But Komer seemed to have something on his mind, and chose to just ask right away. "Eisen… why are you helping me like this? I tried scamming you, most people would just completely ignore me."
Although Eisen was still hesitant about him, he knew that he wasn't a bad kid deep down. And Eisen knew quite well that people could change, so he wanted to give Komer a chance.
"Well, just because you're like this now doesn't mean that you'll always be like this. I have three kids that I had to raise on my own, so not all of them ended up doing too great in life at first. But now that I have grandchildren, I have a lot more people to worry about and became more conscious of everything again."
Eisen explained while trying not to let Bree hear since she may ask some questions about it, and Komer was quite surprised himself. After all, you don't hear the sentence 'Three kids that I had to raise on my own' every day. "Thank you Eisen. You've already been amazing help to me, without you I would probalby still be sitting on the street trying to scam people. And you're doing all of that just because you've become more conscious about your grandchildren that I don't have anything to do with? That's incredible." The young man smiled, and Eisen began to chuckle while scratching his beard, before starting to whisper.
"Haha, you see, I'm not necessarily doing this out of complete goodwill… My oldest grandson will finish High School soon and enter College, so it can't hurt to have a contact in the largest tech company in the world, can it?"
"Ah, I see… Well, I can't guarantee anything, but if your grandson needs a job after college, you can tell me and I'll try to hook him up with something." Komer answered with a wry smile, while Eisen simply grinned back.
Of course that was only an excuse. While it may be true that having a contact in such a large company would be amazing for his grandchildren's futures, Eisen didn't yet feel completely comfortable to tell Komer all about the real reason. It would basically be just like running his mouth about Tony, after all, since Eisen couldn't really say anything good about that phase in his youngest son's life. But in Eisen's opinion, it was still a good reason to help out Komer with fixing his behavior.
After a bit of silence, Komer looked at Caria who was currently sitting in front of Eisen cross-legged while holding a wooden flower pot. "Erm, Eisen, what's she doing? Her name is Caria, right?"
Surprised at her name suddenly being called, Caria looked up and then at Komer for a few seconds before turning her head to look at Eisen. "Ah, it's nothing. Just keep practicing, okay?" He smiled, and the small Myconid girl nodded before looking back at the pot.
"She's practicing some skills of hers. She's a 'Myconid Druid Disciple', so she's pracitcing the control she has over plants. Although nothing is happening right now… What are you doing there?" Eisen explained while looking down at the soil that Caria seemed to be currently pouring her mana into. It somewhat made sense that barely anything was happening when her Plant Control skill was still rank 0, but now that it was rank 1, it should be possible for Caria to quite easily make at least a small flower grow. She has done it before, after all.
Once more, Caria looked up at Eisen, who once more chose to ask. "Caria, are you actually practicing?"
Immediately, she nodded her head quickly before turning back toward the flower pot, and continuing what she was doing. At first, nothing seemed to be happening, but after a bit, Eisen did see a change. The soil was slowly bulging up at the top, as if something was growing inside the ground, some of it even flowing over the edge of the wooden pot. But what Eisen gave her was simply a seed for a regular flower, so it shouldn't be growing under the ground. And after a few seconds, something shot up through the top layer of the soil to reveal a dark root standing up perfectly straight and vertical.
"Erm, you know how flowers work right?" Kommer muttered out, and Caria frowned at her angrily before tapping Eisen's leg and motioning toward the root and pretending to be pulling on something.
"Ah, do you want me to pull it out of the soil?" The old man questioned, and Caria nodded happily. So, Eisen did as she instructed and slowly pulled on the root. While the product of Caria's practice slowly revealed itself, Eisen immediately became surprised.
At first, it simply looked like a ball of roots that was created by Caria, until he took a closer look. It was hard to see at first since the whole thing was covered in dirt, but when Eisen actually removed all of that, he saw that the roots were formed into a thin grid to protect the small red flower growing inside.
"Oh, wow! So you had the flower grow inside of there? Quite an amazing Idea, honey!" Eisen praised with a smile and pet the top of Caria's head, while she happily leaned into his palm.
"So how did you get that Idea?" Eisen asked, and Caria immediately jumped up and pointed at the round egg lying on its wooden pedestal by the side of the worktable. "Ah, so this is supposed to be an egg, then? A flower egg?" He asked, before Caria nodded furiously and hugging Eisen tightly, practically leaving Eisen no choice but to praise her even more. "Haha, you're quite amazing, aren't you? That was a pretty good idea to practice! And it looks quite nice as well!"
With a smile, Eisen stood up and set this small sphere of roots down next to the first flower that Caria made grow and blossom completely, before sitting down next to her and Komer again.
Seems like Caria took after Eisen when it came to making things.