Infinite Realm

Black Rock province's Riverdale Town.

It didn't take long for Sato to return to 'base'. It took him at least an hour since his departure from the group before he could reach Riverdale. This was because with the Caventry's authority and with a [Teleportation Rune], he was able to jump directly to the 1st floor of the Outer region or even the entrance. Sato had chosen to go to the 1st floor before wearing a black cloak to hide his identity and departing the area.

Originally, with one of the highest authorities in the Caventry, Sato was granted a [Void Opening key] that could not only send him to the Great Hall but could also open wormholes to close locations. However, he needed to 'store' the destination within the [Void Opening key] else he wouldn't be able to locate a stop. It was because of this that Sato had taken 'too long' to reach the town. If it were with the [Void Opening key], he would have done so almost instantly.

'I will save a few locations but they'd probably be not more than 3. I don't have many spots left on the key and I will need to use most of them in the city so 3 spots will be the only quota I can assign.' Sato decided on what to do with the key.

Riverdale town, as one of the 3 player towns in the Black Rock province, was bustling with players and more active than it was before. This was because, with the constant passage of time since IR's release, the developers never stopped giving updates on the current affairs in the game as a form of advertisement. Even some of the recorded battle scenes and videos from players especially those of large-scale events like the Goblin incident at Gnorka or the predicament at White Valley town were all uploaded and used as an advertisement for the game. This led to the player population steadily rising as some casual gamers and pro players had their interest drawn towards the game.

'It's only a matter of time before IR officially steps into the top 10 games.' Sato sighed.

The top 10 games were the most amazing VR games in the world with a strong player base as well as massive popularity and tons of sponsor-ships. Various gaming competitions were held in these VR games and a lot of players had made their grand debut on them. The rank of top 10 was tough to beat, especially the top 5 which was pretty much described as immoveable and unbeatable by the gaming society.

While Sao felt that IR's chances were optimistic to make it to the top 10, he wouldn't say the same for the to, at least not yet.

The west side of Riverdale, which was Sato's destination, was the financial district of Riverdale town. It could be said to be the financial bloodline of the entire town and crippling the services here would be the same as damaging the town's economy.

Sato's intention in coming here was to find the town trade-house and sell some of his equipment.

Towns were much smaller than cities and also had fewer facilities when compared to the latter. This was easily seen when one recalls that a majority of the complex subclasses like Engineering, do not have a branch in any of the towns. Apart from that, cities had auction houses where players could simply put their goods for sale and wait for the outcome but towns were riddled with markets and stalls for such business. The disadvantage of this was that one wouldn't be able to sell their item for the highest possible price but at least, half a bread was better than none.

To sell an item in the town market, one would need to purchase either a store or a stall, with the former being more expensive than the latter but comes with better features. For example, in a store, one has a much higher chance of garnering the attention of a potential NPC customer than with a stall. Normally, it was only players who focused on the [Merchant] subclass or those who had a lot of goods to sell but weren't in dire need of the money, that would bother to rent a stall or a store.

For players who simply wanted to sell a single item or a few, but had no interest in renting out a store or a stall, they would either consign their goods to other players to sell on their behalf before deducting fees, or they will simply sell the items to NPCs. There was another method though, which was to consign the goods to the trade-house.

A trade-house could be said to be the auction house of towns but the core operation of the two was fundamentally different. Auction houses sold off goods in an auction and operated by the rule of the highest bidder gets the goods. A trade-house, however, had a tagged price to the item and operated by the rule 'first come, first serve'. In other words, while you can flaunt your riches in an auction house and get whatever you want, in a trade-house, you had to make sure that you were the first to place an order on the item otherwise, even if you were an in-game Bezos, you wouldn't get the item. Despite this, trade-houses weren't so popular amongst players.

The reason why players would rather consign their goods to a merchant player rather than the trade-house was usually that trade-houses had a recommended fixed price for each good. In other words, one can only set the price of their item to a certain range provided by the game after a simple appraisal of the item. But in player-owned stores and stalls, one could sell their items at whatever price they wished. You could even place a price tag of 1 million gold coins on a loaf of stale bread. Of course, no one would be foolish enough to spend such a large amount of money on that and this included even the NPCs. In fact, among all the means of trading, auction houses ranked first on the table, followed by player-owned stores and stalls, NPC-owned stores and stalls, and finally, trade-houses.

However, since Sato did not personally know any player who owned a store or even a stall, he decided to sell his work in the trade-house rather than in an NPC store. If he were to sell it to an NPC store, while it was true that he would make a bit more money than in a trade-house, God knows when the NPC would finally put his work up for sale in the store.

Sato's intentions in coming over here weren't just to make some cash but to sell off some of his handmade swords and create a name for himself as a [Blacksmith]. This idea was connected to his master plan and since Sato would soon be leaving for the city, he had to make sure that it will work out as soon as possible, otherwise, he would have sold his creations at an NPC store.. At least there, he could get a better price for them there than in the trade-house.