Jax’s party fought two more monsters on the way back, defeating them rather easily. Before they could find the third one, they heard the sound of fighting.
There was another party close by.
Normally, if sothing like that happened, one party would leave to go elsewhere so that they didn’t fall into so unnecessary conflict. This ti, however, Sho walked directly toward them, while the others followed him without question.
Jax wasn’t sure what was going on, so he followed them as well.
Arriving closer, Sho slowed down and so did everyone else. Once slowed, he waited for the sounds of fighting to stop.
It took 3 minutes for everything to co to an end, at which point he finally spoke up.
"We’re approaching!"
When they arrived at the place where the party had fought, they were t with a group of 5 people, standing around the corpse of a Venomwing Hawk.
"What do you want?" a big man of the opposite party asked.
Sho quickly judged their strength. "We found Iron Leopard. If you guys want to fight it, we can sell you the location."
The other man’s attitude suddenly changed. "You’ve found it?" he asked. "Where is it?"
"Let’s negotiate the price, shall we?" Sho asked. "How about... 40 stones."
"Too expensive!" the man said imdiately. "20."
"20?" Sho asked. "For 5 Erald stones and 1 Erald tal stone? The tal stone alone costs around 100 Opal stones. And here I am just asking for 40 stones."
The other man frowned. "40 is still too expensive. It’s not like you’re handing over the corpse to us. We still have to fight it. We still have to kill it."
"Sure. And you’ll get 5 Erald Stones and 1 Erald tal stone. Not to ntion, you also get the Black Lead ore. That large an ore can get you 50 stones easily. So, once again, 40 stones."
The other man frowned. "One mont."
He turned to discuss with the others, seemingly debating very hard on whether or not to pay the price. After a minute of discussion, the big man turned around.
"30 stones and we accept," he said.
"40." Sho didn’t budge.
The big man glared at Sho for a while before he finally sighed. "Fine! You win. 40 stones. Show us the way now."
"Sure, but we have to exchange parties first," he said.
Jax looked at Sho, confused about what he was talking about. At the sa ti, Gram stepped forward.
A petite young woman stepped forward on the other side, and with a nod from either of their leaders, they switched teams. Gram walked over to the other party, while the small woman ca to theirs.
Jax leaned closer to Kaya. "What exactly is going on?" he asked.
"Hostage swap," Kaya explained. "Gram is their hostage now, and this young girl is our hostage. Use your spell on her."
Jax looked toward Sho for approval, and used his spell when he got it. The dark-brown threads appeared around the woman’s body, wrapping around exactly 15 tis.
The small woman sagged a little, seemingly confused. "Why is it so heavy?" she asked, a tone of disappointnt carried in her voice.
Gram wasn’t tied or controlled with any spell, but he did walk with his hands in the air, a spear pointed at his back at all tis.
"Co, we’ll show you the place."
Sho traced their steps back, returning to where the leopard was. Only then did Jax realize why he had them mark the location on their map. He had always planned to co here.
When they arrived, the leopard was still on the large mound, made entirely of Black Lead ore.
"Seems to be right," the big man from the other party said. "I’ll pass along the stones."
Sho waited and nodded. "Done. It was a pleasure doing business with you."
"I don’t know if I can say the sa," the big man said, still a little annoyed at the price he had to pay, and gestured to Gram to return.
Sho let the woman return too, and the hostages moved back to their respective parties.
"We’ll leave you all to it then," Sho said and walked away. Having made their money, they had no reason to stay there anymore. They would sit around and watch the battle, but that was disrespectful.
In fact, it was considered common sense to target the people that stayed too close to the boss arena since the chances of them having a plan to ruin the party’s hard work were quite high.
Because of that, Jax couldn’t watch the fight with one of the strongest monsters of the 9th Carriage.
There was also sothing else about the boss monsters that he was curious about. Apparently, each boss monster had sowhere between 8 to 10 possible spells they could use, a similar assortnt of skills as well.
However, during each fight, they were randomly limited to about 5 spells and skills at best. Jax wanted to see what Spell or Skill it was that the leopard would be using today.
He wanted to learn so much more.
Along the way back, they fought so more beasts, but none of them clearly had any of their heart in fighting anymore. Even Jax, who wanted to continue training his Weapon Fortification technique, wanted to be done with everything.
So, they finally decided to return to the village again.
As soon as they arrived back, Sho told them how much they had earned today. After such a fantastic day, they had ended up earning over 180 stones in a single day.
Without the 40 stones Sho landed them, they would have achieved a little over 140, which wouldn’t be such an improvent at all. They were getting an extra 8 stones because of Sho.
Jax saw a transfer request with 36 stones and felt his heart flutter with happiness.
From the looks of it, Sho was receiving 40 stones, but no one complained at all. After all, the man deserved it for everything he did today.
Without him, they wouldn’t have earned nearly as much.
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