Ramia Elmenor- Greater merchant(Epic)

  Level- 35

  Personality- Calculating, reliable, principled.

  Jack appraised the man much like his own party had been just now, a desire to understand who he was dealing with quite pronounced. Emi no doubt did the same, though because of her class and thus her appraisal being of lower rarity, she received just a morsel of info, something along the lines of name and perhaps the general classification of Ramia's class- trader, or caster in case the appraised person was magically inclined or fighter if they were melee fighter.

  "Victoria from the town guards said this is the place to come if someone wanted to get a fair price and a reliable service." Jack started and Ramia nodded in agreement with the words he spoke.

  "A smart lass she is indeed and everything you have said is true young man. I suppose it is the time for the freshly summoned gifted to finally leave those blasted tutorials as they have named them. A fair price and reliable service I can and will provide. All I ask in return is to be considered with priority in your future transactions."

  "So long as our cooperation goes smoothly, I see no reason not to. Would you look at this and tell me what you could offer for this and if we should keep stuff like this, if encountered again in the future, under wraps?" he asked and fished out one of his latest creations. He then placed a simple ring on the counter that would most likely be passed over as simple, most likely a bauble with sentimental value for someone of less fortunate life.

  Ramia was too experienced to make such grave mistake as to judge an item by it's looks alone, so he immediately zeroed in on it, appraising it. The way his eyes damn near bulged at it was telling that the item was of great value.

  Old ring of growth(epic)- The masters of old knew many, many secrets that allowed their own people to grow faster and reach much greater heights, making their masters proud and calm with knowledge that their legacies were safe. Experience earned +5%.

  "Kid, a word of advice" Ramia spoke in extremely serious manner "Anything that promotes growth is extremely valuable, so much so that there are people, and there is a lot of them, who would kill you without hesitation for something like this. Are you not coming from the tutorial? Where did you get it?"

  "Dungeon boss in our tutorial zone." Jack replied, his voice lowered as if worried someone would overhear.

  "It's rare, but not unheard of, for such a thing to occur- an epic quality item to drop from those creatures. Though never have I heard of experience boost gear to drop. Do not worry though as I am most likely the best person to come with stuff like this." Ramia now grinned, clear joy and assuredness that his approach so far was indeed why he was lucking out like this.

  "I will point out that it is best to auction stuff like this, as it will earn boatload of money- the large guilds will no doubt fight over it. I will, obviously offer to serve as the one to sell it for you, all for the small fee of ten percent of the profit. Now, now. You might be thinking that it is far too much of a"

  "Deal." Jack interrupted the man's explanation. " Having something that the powerful want can be a crime in and of itself. It's best someone with the reach and connections do it."

  "And you are smart enough as well. I am looking forward to your cooperation in the future." Ramia grinned, not the least offended he was interrupted. "Better yet, since you are here because your group is in need of coin to settle in, I will even go so far as to offer you a downpayment of twenty gold coins. Do note I expect that you will earn no less than a few hundred such coins when it's sold, my and the auction houses cut not included, likely more, depending on how many of the large guilds will sniff it out and how impressive fresh blood they would have obtained. Still, those twenty coins will be more than enough to cover your groups expenses for a month at the very least, assuming you pick average inn to stay in."

  "We were thinking about a farm of sorts- a house large enough for us all and with land alongside it." Jack spoke, then pointing towards Alonso and his pals "We have some specialized agricultural jobs after all as you no doubt already noticed. Could we enlist your assistance in that matter as well? For a fair compensation of course." Jack then leaned closer in, whispering.

  "Who knows, I might accidentally find another Old ring of growth or two to auction off eventually, should enlightenment strike of course."

  His implication was clear- a Virtuoso that might be able to reproduce the item, did not matter how harsh the requirements, was an asset that was worth all the effort, though Ramia was also smart enough not to fall for it hook, line and sinker. But since the favour asked when compared to the possible benefits was nothing, he was more than willing to bite.

  "Here is the twenty gold I promised and instructions to reach a decent inn for you to stay at for a night or two. I should be able solve the farmhouse question by then. We will figure out the rest of the payment after the ring is sold. Sounds good?"

  "You don't mind signing a contract for the sale of the ring, would you?" Asked Emi, clearly not nearly as informed as Jack and suspicious of Ramia.

  "A contractor who knows their stuff already. I might have some jobs for you in the future if you would be willing." He smiled "And no, I have no problem regarding the contract, so long it's made fairly."

  The contract Emi cooked up was quite plain, stipulating that Ramia would facilitate the auctioning and sale of the ring with bonus experience gain attribute that Jack had provided, receiving his requested percentage for the job while both side would not disclose their part in the transaction to other parties. Once that was done, the group traveled through the mostly brown city, the numerous people passing by in different colored clothes not included, until they found themselves in front of yet another building made of more brown bricks and possessing the same brown shingle roof as most other buildings. And while surely it made the town monotone and somewhat boring, it was a price most people were wiling to pay if it meant access to cheap, yet solid building materials.

  What made the building in front of them different however was the rather unique sign, a way most other buildings tried to elevate their visual charm among so many sister buildings. This one in particular had bright yellow sign with a rather funnily looking half asleep green frog on it, accompanied by the words 'Sleepy Croaker inn.' A small, wooden fence separated just as small a garden from the rest of the street that in turn distanced the building in question and it's sign further still from said street. A couple of girls, age ten or so by visual estimation, were busy tending to the garden, moving around and watering the numerous flowers that were growing nicely.

  A few moments later still, one of the two girls noticed the rather large group of people who had stopped by the fence, resulting in a cheerful smile gracing her childish face as she addressed them.

  "Greetings honoured guests. Are you perhaps, in need of a place to stay for the night? I assure you our beds are soft and meals filling and not all that costly at all."

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  Jack smiled lightly at the enthusiastic delivery of no doubt memorized advertisement and since the performance was good enough and they indeed were interested he nodded in agreement, asking his own question in turn.

  "If you have the rooms to house the entirety of our group, we indeed are looking for a place to stay for a while." his gaze was locked on the girl that had spoken, awaiting her response. Thankfully, the answer was satisfactory to his ears as the girl beamed even more as Jack's words and nodded her head furiously as she spoke in excitement.

  "Yes! Yes! We have the rooms to spare. Come along so mama can book you all in. Come, come!" she urged as she skipped towards the door, glancing back every few steps, as if afraid his group would suddenly disappear if she did not keep watch. Soon enough, she was in front of the door, pulled on it and hopped inside, not before glancing at Jack and his group for a long and hard few moments.

  "Take over." Jack whispered in Izumi's ear as she passed him by and inside, earning a simple nod of approval from the girl as he disappeared through the door, followed by the rest of his party, with Jack himself finishing their groups entry, soon enough followed by the other girl that had stayed quiet and on her own tasks during his conversation with her co-worker.

  Inside the party was greeted by a rather large dining area, filled with a dozen or so round, wooden tables, each surrounded with four to six chairs of made out of wood. Neither tables nor chairs seemed of particularly high quality, but there was a feeling of sturdiness coming from each piece of furniture, no doubt made to last not only for a long while but to be able to survive some amounts of punishment as well.

  The girl leading them had already skipped over the entirety of the halls floor, stopping in front of a counter, occupied by a middle aged, near two meter tall guy. The fellow manning the counter was polishing some mugs right now, and besides the rather muscular frame of the man, a pair of bovine horns that were protruding from his temples caught Jack's and his groups attention. They had seen a couple of non humans as they had walked through the city, though most people present were still humans. Still, a cat person or two- humans with cat ears and tail, or perhaps extra fluffy fur on their arms had been seen a couple of times. This kind of demi-human though? That was their first encounter, and everyone besides Jack could feel that the guy was strong, stronger than most at the very least.

  The girl had hopped right over to the beefy guy, her eyes shining as she pointed one of her hands towards the door and excitedly spoke of the large group that were following her, looking for a place to stay in for a while. Noticing their party, and Izumi who was now at the very forefront, he smiled lightly and gestured for them to come over.

  "Welcome, welcome. Little Misha tells me you are in search of a place to stay. We have rooms with beds starting from one all the way to five. Any particular needs there?"

  "We don't have specific requirements regarding the number of beds per room, so long as we can get them in arrangement so that guys stay with guys and girls with girls, though we also need one couples room." Izumi spoke calmly, explaining their needs and waiting for the man to sort it out, noting that they would like to save on the costs if at all possible as well.

  Nodding in understanding, the man behind counter quickly did some maths, coming up with the cheapest offer while following the set conditions. In the end, Alonso and his dudes got a room for five, then a room for three was assigned for Izumi, Emi and Fumiko, leaving a couples room for Kenji and Kaede and a single bedroom room for Jack who was left over. Their daily stay would cost the party a few dozen silvers, but thanks to the gold coins they had received, they had no problems on that regard.

  Once their lodgings were secured, the party gathered in Alonso's room to go over their plans for the next couple of days, something Jack immediately reserved for crafting, noting he would most likely not leave the room for anything besides bathroom breaks and food, unless of course the party were in desperate need of him.

  "Do keep out of trouble, but don't allow anyone to take liberties with you either." Jack warned, promising to something about the now lacking spatial storage for the group. They would manage to sell most of their meat supply in mere hours, ensuring they would not have any stuff that could spoil while held outside of spatial storages or cold rooms, leaving only miscellaneous items stacked in the corners of their respective rooms.

  The coming few days were quite calm as the party managed to explore the city without any unexpected, or undesired for that matter, complications or worse still- brawls, though Izumi and Fumiko noted that they were receiving plenty of stares, from desire all the way to caution and even disgust. "There were very few people of asian descent no matter where we went." the girls had noticed, explaining most of those stares with this very fact. Thankfully, no extreme actions were taken, so they left it at that.

  While Jack had holed himself and was still experimenting, he was also solving a rather obvious, yet important issue that would soon arise if no other action were to be taken- namely those who would question the reasons for why someone like Ramia would go to any amount of trouble to assist fresh arrivals with anything at all, let alone acquisition of their own personal property. No tlike the latter was a simple task to perform. Thus, Jack had Izumi deliver a few of his original spice mixes to the merchant for testing and evaluation, having decided to already throw some benefits towards the merchant and more importantly to use this particular avenue as the 'reason' said merchant was willing to go so far to assist his party.

  While still undoubtedly profitable, particularly so if any of said spices were new or similar to exotic stuff imported from over seas, it would not draw the undisguised interest of powerful organizations. What was a few gold coins for a new spice every now and then to ones of their status and power? But drop even the slightest hint of experience gained increasing items, or worse still someone who could perhaps make them and you will have absolute mayhem on your hands. What else could draw all those hidden old monsters and leveling maniacs than a word of more easily accessible items to help with their main problem.

  And thus, Izumi did her part, serving as the face of the party, alongside Kaede and Emi, and doing whatever negotiations and representation for the party as needed, going back and forth to Ramia's shop, negotiating and planning on parties behalf. Much to everyone's joy, izumi's for the most part, the former class rep. was revelling in the task, more than just a little happy to put her skills and previous life to use and proving her own worth. Meanwhile, Jack was becoming more and more unseen by the day, rarely anyone even knowing of his existence and affiliation with the group, the few inn workers at the place they stayed at not included. As days slowly turned into a week, the party had even started to head out for a few hours at a time, diving into the forest that was located nearby and contained plenty of all manner of monsters, acquiring some supplies here and there that were almost immediately sold off to various businesses within town, ensuring their vallet did not deplete.

  Somewhere in the middle of the second week, Ramia finally got through, having found and finalized the deal regarding their would be new home with Izumi and the rest of the girls. Alonso and the farmer four were also asked to come along on the couple excursions to observe and evaluate the potential would be homes and once the two groups found something they all approved off, Izumi was once again tasked with finalizing their choice and hand over the last few tasks to Ramia once again. As for Jack and Kenji? The duo were a bit off their rocker, one too focused on his crafting and experiments surrounding it while the other one was with his head in the clouds, just nodding along with whatever Kaede said. The kid was down bad, worse even than at the start, though as far as jck could see, theirs was safe and secured relationship.

  It had to be mentioned that Ramia had also paid extremely generous amounts of money for a couple of the spice blends Jack had sent over, going so far as forming contracts that demanded Jack to not disclose the ratios and ingredients of said spice blends. In return, Jack's party would receive a certain amount of cash every month and according to Izumi, Ramia had mentioned some of them were worth more than their weight in gold, going even so far as to ask how in the nine hells Jack had come up with that stuff, doubling down in exasperation when he read the spice recipes and proportions.

  "You know, I do remember you saying something about carrying us through tutorial so we could do the same to you once were came here, and yet, the profit your spices had brought in our parties coffers outshine whatever he can hope to achieve." Fumiko sighed as the group had once again gathered in the largest room they were renting in the inn.

  "Emi has spent some time in the local library for the gifted, has she not?" Jack asked, adding the question that explained this part "What say you? Is the coin coming in enough to sustain a growing parties needs and everything?"

  "For now? Yes. If we want to keep growing and perhaps even expand? Not in a million years. Even for a solo adventurer who is chasing the top along it would soon feel lacking. Need I say more?"

  Jack Raja(?)

  Age- 27

  Species- human(?)

  Level- 14

  Class- Twin aspect of Creation and Destruction(EX)

  Stats unassigned: +11

  Attributes:

  Strength- 24 (14+7+3)

  Vitality- 22 (12+8+2)

  Dexterity- 21 (15+6)

  Intelligence-7

  Spirit- 25 (20+5)

  Skills- Wisdom of Creation and destruction(EX), Choice of the creator(EX), Eyes of procurer(EX), Matter storage(EX), Arukain language(C), Spark of inspiration(EX).

  Spells- temporary spatial storage (shrinking)

  Titles(unlocked): The real Monster, Big Game Hunter, The brilliant rookie, The insane Solo. The actor. Executioner. Survivor. Pioneer, Record breaker.The new champion supreme.

  Gear: amulet +2 vit: weapon- Gundao+3 str.