Age of Summoner

"Hey, kid, you’ve already turned in one quest. Don’t you want to accept some more?”

After taking a shower to wash dirt and grime off his body, Joke walked out of the bathroom to hand his completed quest to Thomas, for which he then received 500G in return. But instead of accepting new quests, he instead turned down the offer and thanked Thomas, before walking straight out of the bar.

“No, thank you. I already got other things to do.” Joke bowed his head before realizing that he had another question to ask. “Oh, one more thing, Mr. Thomas. Just when I went on the quest, I received lots of Slime Part cards. Can I somehow sell these cards?”

"Oh, sure." Thomas nodded. "In the market area in town, there are summoners with great selling skills opening up shops to trade goods all over."

"The merchants in town are summoners? I thought they were all NPCs."

“Most of them were NPCs, but there are quite a few special NPCs working for summoners who opened up a shop using their Merchant Skill Cards. With the Merchant card, they will then be able to open a shop in a designated town area for trading with trader NPCs acting as merchants on their behalf when they’re offline from Arcadia. Well… it’s kind of like setting a shop and leaving it to run by itself.”

"There’s such a Skill Card?" Joke asked.

“Yeah, there are many more types of Skill Cards used in Arcadia, like the Merchant or the Alchemist cards that can create various forms of items. Then, there are Skill Cards used in Arcadia that are used exclusively on summoners themselves. The cost of each card will depend on its rarity and the level of its profession.”

Joke tried to understand this explanation and noted that he would have to look into its details later on again. But, he now had more important things to do…. especially that particular piece of unfinished business he had to settle!

"Then, I'll excuse myself first. There is an item that I’m having my eyes on."

"Oh, good luck, young man!"

Soon after he was back in his normal state after Game Over, Joke walked out of the Quest Center with a slightly stern look, especially now that he had a new plan he set his mind on—a plan so important he immediately disregarded all of the “quests” he had to do.

The tall figure strode into the market area of this town, Lovera. There were slightly more people inside of the town than when he first arrived. Glancing at the clock, he realized that it was now noon in the outside world and that he had been online in the game for a little more than an hour. It seemed that he could not help but change his plans, calling off all of his quests.

‘If I’m going to do that, I’ll have to do that before more people get online. There are probably more people coming here after one in the afternoon. I have to hurry, then.’

Joke concluded internally before eventually heading towards the stalls in the market area. The place looked similar to a flea market, with stalls set up along both sides of the road. The space was divided into blocks with various kinds of products displayed on each stand, some of which were fascinatingly fantastical.

Joke could assume these stalls to be the ones that were set up by summoners just by looking at the signboards, which were filled with business names that probably were not created by AOS’s staff to ruin the atmosphere. What were they like you might ask?

“Love You Most, Joy”

“The Owner Next Door Is a Loser”

“Buy From Me, Free Merit”

“Cheapest Sh!t You Can Find”

Looking at these splendid business names, Joke could only sigh at the creativity (?) of these human beings. When he saw a stall named “Party Time”, a name which sounded quite decent, he then decided to pay it a visit.

"Hello, I would like some assistance."

"You're welcome!"

When Joke walked over to greet the merchant in that stall, he was met with a tall man in a sleeveless shirt and blue bandana. It could be told at one glance that this man was an NPC… which you might be asking, why?

Because there were loads of NPCs looking exactly like this standing in the other stalls nearby. Some stalls with more funding, or whatever they had, would have better-looking NPC merchants than the others. But, apart from that, every one of them looked as if they had been cloned from the same prototype. If a person were to be walking here passively, they might have a scare seeing all the merchants in the market looking exactly alike!

“I want to sell some items I got. Is this the place to do so?”

“Yes, but only some specific types. What are you selling, sir?”

The NPC merchant grinned while rubbing his hands together, looking like a merchant in a good mood.

“Slime Parts and Heart of the Water. Do you accept these?”

“Yes, we do.” The young merchant beamed. “But we have to first inform you that the items you wanted to sell can be processed into items like Power Potions with an Alchemist card. Are you still willing to sell them to us?”

That matter was still of very little relevance to him right now. Plus, what he needed more at times like this was money; therefore, Joke nodded in acceptance as he opened up his Item Card window to grab out all the Item Cards he received from killing the slime in front of the town and piling it down.

The young merchant then quickly grabbed them into his hands and started counting.

“We accept Slime Part at 5G and 250G for Heart of the Water. There are thirty-five Slime Part cards and two Heart of the Water cards. That makes a total of 675, are you fine with that, sir?”

"Yes."

With that answer, the young merchant then opened up an information window and threw those items into the item window in front of him. During the entire trading process, a pointing-up arrow icon twirling around itself—which was a symbol for “trading”—appeared above Joke and the NPC’s head. If either party were not satisfied with the trade, they could press the cancel button, and the item or amount of money that was agreed on would be returned to its original owner.

Soon, the merchant pressed a button on the item window before a small bag of money appeared in his hand, which the NPC then handed over to Joke.

“This is an amount worth 675G, sir."

"Thank you."

Joke received that bag of money, holding it in his hands. There were sounds of gold coins bumping against each other from the inside of that bag before he threw it into the item window. And with that, his total increased to 1,628G—which was the total amount Joke had made whether from completing the Slime Quest or the coins dropped from the slime.

Nevertheless, he now had some money to spend.

"Is there anything else, sir?" the young merchant asked.

"Well, I want to buy some items."

"Very well, what kinds of items are you looking for?"

"Items that can be used to increase mana power."

Joke had already been taught by Rin that in the Arcadia world, there would be cards that could be used in this world (or game) only. One of them was an item that was used to directly increase a summoner’s life point or mana, which was considered a very important item. Even though they were single-use items, they were considered one of the ways for a summoner to survive the monsters in Arcadia.

“We surely have it. What kinds do you want? We have all kinds of them.”

"The cheapest one, please."

"In that case, here it is, sir."