Abby replies.
"Of course. Good luck."
I walk out the door again, but this time, I use extreme speed and wind magic to quickly fly through the desert back to the canyon.
Once I set foot in a dungeon, I teleport to the dungeon hub in Vice City.
I change my face and appearance to that of a D-Grade hunter with average gear and allow my Qi Barrier to emit the tiniest amount of mana, making it seem like I'm just at the cusp of level 250. My new appearance is that of a very strong hunter, but nothing crazy enough to turn any important heads.
With a confident stroll, I walk out of the gates and make my way to a part of town I've never been to before.
It's a sectioned-off corner of the city near the forest region that has many factories and processing plants. They create many non-magical materials and ship goods to various regions all over the main continent.
Some of them still run on electricity.
It's the remnants of the old world before the Great War, and before dungeons began popping up in this world. The lumber, stone, and metal industries are still thriving, which most of the world relies on for the infrastructure and construction of cities and for maintaining roads and buildings.
While over 50% of this district is just warehouses filled with raw materials ready for processing and sold in bulk orders, the other half are the plants that process, ready, and ship these orders out. A very tiny percent of tall buildings are lined up near the border of the factory district and the main city. They act as a bit of a smog guard for the lower income housing and forest region nearby, these large buildings house offices for company managers, ensuring everything continues to move smoothly in the processing plants and warehouses.
I walk up to the busiest office building I can find with large white lettering on the side of its building spelling out [Unity Building Supply Co.] in bold print.
As I walk into the front office, many men in suits wait in the lobby. After a quick inspection and appraisal, I find none of them are leveled high at all. Some aren't even awakened, to my utter surprise. They're level 0 with no skills or systems, meaning they've never even killed a monster in their life.
It's been quite a while since I've seen people like this...
The smell of cigarettes fills the air, and the old carpeted floor is soft beneath my feet. Outside, the sounds of saws cutting wood and metal being clanged fill my ears. The warm yellow light of the room is a change of pace for me too, as I'm used to very bright white mana-imbued lighting.
I walk forward and approach the man at the back of the room behind the wooden lobby desk.
His name, on a small golden triangle propped up on his desk, reads [Leonard Mayson III]. He speaks up while looking me in the eyes with a steady and professional gaze.
"Welcome to The Unity Building Supply Company. What can I help you with today, sir?"
I feel the glares on my back from the businessmen waiting patiently in the lobby behind me, but ignore it and just continue to do what I came here for, placing the sheet of paper with all the supplies I need on the table in front of the man.
"I'm sure there's a normal process to place orders through your company, but I'm in quite the rush, so I decided to come in and ask in person. Is there any way I can place this order, pay in full, and walk out of here with these supplies today?"
The man nods and takes the sheet of paper from me, pulling a pair of glasses from his shirt collar and placing them on to read it.
"I'm sorry to tell you, sir, we don't take orders in this manner. Our company has very strict—"
He stops mid-sentence once he begins reading the page.
His eyes widen as they move back and forth all the way down the sheet of paper, then he looks back up at me.
"You said you're able to pay in full today?"
I smile and nod, reaching into my item storage beneath my fake hunter's gear and pull out a few shiny platinum bars for only him to see.
"Of course. I'm ready to pay right now if you'll confirm you can fulfill the order."
His gaze tightens on the bars of metal, then he realizes what material they're made from and immediately rings a bell at the side of his desk. An older woman about the same age as him comes out from a door at the other side of the room.
"Tracey, could you bring this young man up to meet the Boss? He has an urgent order that needs to be taken care of. We may have a way to meet our quota this month after all."
"Yes, will do."
She looks at me and motions for me to follow.
"Right this way."
The elevator at the back of the room opens, and I thank the lobbyman while following the older woman into the cramped elevator.
It shakes as it slowly rises up 8 floors before reaching the top, then a large office with a beautiful handcrafted wooden desk sits at the back of it. A tall office chair is behind it, and the walls surrounding the room are lined with hundreds, if not thousands, of books, maps, and stacks of paper.
There are two large windows on opposite sides of the room. One that faces the factories is shut, while the window that has a view of the forest and the rest of Vice City is open, and a cool breeze comes in.
A very old man, seemingly on the edge of death, sits behind this desk in the chair, and a name tag is displayed on the table [Leonard Mayson II]. He lifts his head up while putting out a cigarette in a small dish full with other bright orange butts.
I smile and walk forward as the woman speaks to introduce me.
"This young man has an urgent order to be filled out. Leo told me to send him up."
She backs up into the elevator again and leaves to go back downstairs.
The man looks at me with disgust as I walk forward and speaks in a raspy breath.
"You're a contracted hunter, aren't you? No fancy getup today? You are with the Association, right? I told you we'd get everything settled by the end of the month. What do you want, kid?"
I smile and shake my head.
"No, no... Trust me, I'm as far from the Association as you can fathom. I don't know what business you have with them, and quite honestly, I don't care to find out. I just need a large amount of building supplies and assumed your company was the best place to ask on short notice."
I stop in front of his desk and give him the sheet of paper just like I did what I can presume to be his son down in the lobby.
He does the same exact action, taking the list from me and attempting to read it while taking his glasses from his collar and placing them on his face.
"Well, if my boy sent you up here, it must be for a good reason... Let me see here..."
His eyes track the page up and down while he mumbles to himself in a grumpy tone with words I can't understand.
I'm left to wait in my own thoughts while he checks his papers and looks at my own, writing down things on a new sheet right by its side.
Finally, after a few minutes, he gets to the bottom, then looks back up at me.
"Well, first things first, I'll tell you the price. Then we can see if this conversation will even continue. You're looking at 558 Gold, 62 Silver, and 19 Bronze in raw materials here. To get them moved from warehouses into a general location, plus processing some of the more unique items, it's going to be more. Plus, our company and city tax will be added on top of that too."
He scribbles down more on a small piece of paper, adding numbers up before looking up at me again.
"We're looking at just over 604 Gold, but I'll round it down and call it 600 even. With an order of this size, we'll take care of the loading fees for free if you bring your own trucks over or have item boxes big enough to carry a small town's worth of building materials like this here."
I nod and think to myself if asking for the exact pricing on each item to haggle a few gold is even worth my time right now, but the old man breaks my train of thought.
"So, you still interested, kid? This is a serious order, I don't have time to play around."
I look up at him and respond, pulling 6 platinum bars from my item storage and placing them on his desk lightly. Even though I'm careful, the bar's weight still makes a loud thud that echoes through the room for a moment.
"Yeah, let's do it. What's the fastest you all can process this order? I'd like to get things moving as soon as possible."
The old man's eyes don't open wide with surprise like his son's; he just nods and pulls out a scale from beneath his desk, then starts weighing the bars one by one.
"Exactly 600 gold worth of Platinum, it seems. How interesting. It's not everyday I see this kind of metal used as payment in the Vice Region."
A grin shows on his face.
"Where are you from, kid? Who do you work for? With supplies like this, you could build an entire city ready to house a few hundred people... I'd like to ask for your ID, or at least a name I can write down here on our balance sheets, as that's company policy for any and all orders—"
I place a 7th platinum bar on the table before he finishes his sentence.
He changes his tone.
"Well— It looks like I have all of the identification I need."
I smile and take a step back.
"I thank you for being considerate of my privacy needs. I hope this will be the first of many purchases I make with you all. So, I'll ask again, when is the earliest I'll be able to pick these goods up?"
As these words leave my lips, a rush of memories hit my subconscious, and I see my body double get slaughtered far out in the desert.
I can't help but to exhale with surprise and step back while more visuals rush into my mind.
A massive brown bird with a wingspan of at least 10 meters soars through the sky rippling with dense wind magic and soul energy. On its back, there is a black suit of armor and they are flying high in the sky coming from the same direction as Sector 1.
My body double managed to confront them and get a clear visual before its sliced into too many pieces to count by an invisible wind energy attack.
The last thing it managed to see is a number 6 glowing bright orange on the underside of one of the large bird's wings.
I shake my head and step forward, keeping my composure as I'm in the middle of a meeting.
"Sorry, go on."
The man responds to my question as a bead of sweat drips down the side of my forehead and I try to estimate how fast that bird was flying and how far away from the town my double was.
"We have all of these materials on site; we can have them processed and sorted by the end of the day if you'd like."
I nod back to his response, but my mind is somewhere else coming to the conclusion that however fast this bird is flying, I have no time to waste thinking about it any longer.
My gaze turns to the open window at the back of his room, and I quickly reply.
"Alright, perfect. Get everything ready for me and I'll be back after sunset. I look forward to doing business with you, Mr. Mayson."
Leaving the old man with a curious look on his face, I run toward the window and jump out without saying another word.
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Author's Note:
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Thanks for reading:)
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