"But safety is not enough for coaxing them into trading with us" replied Lucian "the stairs have a safe zone attached to them, it is small but it is a safe zone nonetheless, if we are selling them safety to reach the staircase we need a very big territory". Yunan shook his head coolly. "That should not be the case, we can make our territory like a big circle that includes the stairs and can offer safety as long as one was inside it, they can not attack or be attacked, what we will take will be mana, a renewable resource that is useless when walking in a safe location, we can even claim that the mana will be used to operate the massive formation that powered the safety zone, as for coaxing them to trade with us, we can start selling two items immediately, access to the spiritual cave for training wisdom and most spirit type magic and skills, as well as Lava wine, an instant boost to all stats that trumps the unbalanced points given by eating monsters"
Lucian and Leader nodded at the same time, using their direct channel with the guild to promote Lava wine was the best idea, have Martin serve his guests with Lava wine and watch as the product become so requested that even Martin himself will be targeted to sell it at great sums of money, when the Lava wine is treated the same as the heavenly jewellery made from starry pearls they could start offering to sell at a moderate pace, they can sell out the lowest quality and slowly create a client base that will be willing to trade anything to get their hands on the best stuff.
As for the spiritual cave, using the guild to advertise it was not a good idea, they needed someone with a high spirituality value that would find obvious benefits from just passing by the cave, let alone cultivate inside it, for that Pope Markus was the best advertisement possible, if a guy like him talked about using a spiritual cave, there will be millions trying to find it and billions willing to spend all their money to be in the same place, the exclusivity trick will again make the useless cave sitting in the mountain unused, the most requested location for spiritual cultivation.
When the trading post opens up in the future, it will sell only two items, the exchange rate is fixed and it would prioritize the trade with materials and fresh monster carcasses instead of gold coins, as for the safety zone it will become an acceptable sacrifice to get hands on any of the two products. Lastly the trading post can be used as a holding safe or auction house, people can deposit things and name a price for it, if someone wants it, he has to provide something of equal value or the things that the seller desires, the trading post will notify the seller when their item is sold and cash in a small sum in return for using the trade post.
Yunan wanted the trade post to be a gate for them to acquire materials whenever possible, they can collect materials that are sold for gold and use these to trade for the other materials and so on and so forth until they accumulated enough to officially create a faction, the trade post will be using the genie and its control interface to interact with the customers, the receptionist position will be just to show the clientele how to operate the interface, or help them use it, the receptionist will also note down the person's name and their faction, if a client wants to, we can offer the a communication ring that can directly absorb mana from them at all times while providing them with news about their items and the possibility to do business without needing to go to the trading post. Membership rings will be costly and they would require mana injections to work, that is what they would be told, while in reality it works a spy tool as long as they are in proximity to mana.
The genie was already capable of operating a network of billions of communication rings and sort them out without much troubleshooting, but Yunan still told the genie to upgrade itself with all the mana in storage, it was better to be safe than sorry, what Yunan was afraid of was someone using the rings to take control of the genie and effectively take away everything from Yunan, the genie was made by Hephaestus and it was no easy feat to take over, but, as long as there was a possibility, it was best to take precautions.
With the ground work and the objective set up, it was time to work on the details, Martin was more than happy to promote Lava wine as long as he could drink it in every meeting, and Markus was willing to give Yunan the Pope position when he first arrived at the cave, after 3 days inside he was so happy to recommend this place to all his friends and colleagues. Why would the two act this way? Because the products were worth it, Martin would forever be the person to suck up to for a swig of Lava wine and the Pope would forever be thanked as the one who introduced the cave of miracles to the rest of the world, how could these two people not recommend something that was of undeniable quality and had tangible benefits from the first interaction.
Martin and Markus were never happier in their lives to be acquainted with a group like Debauchery, who else would grant such useful things to you just because you are friends with them, both knew the term friend of Debauchery was incomparable with anything similar in the whole world, no one gave people things of this massive value without looking for a way to get something back or cheat you out of something else.