The innards only drew eateries and medicinal wholesalers, but the scales and wing membranes were hot commodities. Armorers, tailors, jewelers, scholars, merchants, noble envoys, and even nobles themselves were yelling their bids. It was total pandemonium...and all the hype made for a great promo.
We’d sold most of the prime parts, leaving just the meat. We’d sold a ton of it, but there was just way too much, and auctioning everything off was a drag. It’d been hours since the show had started too...
Ending here wouldn’t spoil the meat, since we could just stuff the rest in the Item Box, but we had more wyverns stashed in there already. Plus, we would’ve looked stingy if we stopped prematurely when there were so many eager buyers, and we didn’t want to sour the event. Storing the rest also risked exposing the Item Box, and hauling it back knowing the meat would spoil would raise eyebrows. Some folks would probably hound us to sell the meat cheap if that happened, and I didn’t wanna deal with that.
Hmm, what to do... I know!
“Is anyone from the Commerce Guild here?” I asked.
“Yes, right here!” a group replied eagerly.
Yup, no surprise...
“Could you purchase the rest of the meat in bulk? I’m too exhausted to auction off the rest...” I said. “As for the price, let’s see...we sold the good cuts already, and since there’s scrap meat in there too, how about seventy percent of the last bid price per kilo?”
“We’ll take it!” they shouted immediately.
I figured they would. The last bid hadn’t been maxed out, since I’d closed it pretty low. Seventy percent of that was leaving a ton of meat on the bone for their profits, so to speak. Sure, I was tired and wanted to end the auction early, but we also wanted to build a solid relationship with the Commerce Guild.
The Hunter’s Guild? They’d gotten clout from being involved in the auction itself, so they’d be fine. If we’d sold it to them, they would’ve just flipped it to the Commerce Guild anyway, so it would’ve been pointless.
Some folks who’d waited for cheaper meat later in the auction were complaining, but tough luck. True, I’d sped up closings as the day went on, lowering prices as a result, but it wasn’t my problem if they’d misread the outcome. They could just buy from the Commerce Guild anyway, so it wasn’t as if they were completely locked out of getting their hands on some wyvern meat. The guild would hike up the prices, but that was business; this probably wouldn’t fall under their public service duties of mediating for members. Maybe they could toss their staff members a bonus or something.
After the wyvern-butchering show, we returned to the second floor of the Trader Shop main branch. We’d held the show at the Hunter’s Guild butchery, and we’d sold all the leftover meat to the Commerce Guild. We also dumped all of the cleaning on them, claiming they now owned all of the meat scraps too.
The shop opened tomorrow, but we’d known we’d be exhausted today and had already prepped everything yesterday. Therefore, there was no work left for us to do today.
“Good job, team!” Kyoko said.
“Man, I’m wiped...” I groaned.
Sure, the guild pros had handled the carving, but running the auction and yelling nonstop had been absolutely exhausting. Reiko and Kyoko had handled handing off the parts to buyers, but they’d had it light in comparison. People probably thought I was the shop owner... Well, maybe not, considering I was dressed like a priestess.
Sure, I understood I was the right gal for the job. Kyoko and Reiko were terrible at that sort of thing. Kyoko would’ve screwed up the timing for closing bids, dragging things out, and the bidders would’ve tried to walk all over her. And when her irritation hit critical mass, she’d smile sweetly...and the world would end.
In Reiko’s case...I didn’t even wanna think about it.
“That was an amazing promo! Not only did we get the shop’s name out there, but word spread that we have the connections to source a whole wyvern. Folks will think we can stock other rare stuff too...”
“Yup. And we made it clear in front of everyone that Edith, Can, and Falsetto are tied to your shop,” I said.
“That saves us the effort of explaining later, and it’ll be easier for us to maneuver from now on. But...”
“The pests are gonna be all over us!” we chorused.
That was the problem. The Trader Shop crew were all young girls handling ultra-rare, high-value goods, and we’d just made a massive haul today. We were definitely gonna attract some legitimate and not-so-legitimate folks: merchants, nobles, scammers, thugs, and crooks, just to name a few. We’d known that was going to happen from the start, but dragging it out meant we’d have to deal with a slow drip of those pests, so we agreed it was better to blast through them all at once and clear the air. There was no avoiding it, so might as well rip the bandage off quickly. Our defenses we could use openly included Falsetto’s swordsmanship and Reiko’s pseudo-swordsmanship via enhancement magic. We also had covert options, like Kyoko’s ring, bracelet, pendant, belt buckle, and other personal barrier gadgets, microbeam weapons, comm devices, and more, plus my potions and Reiko’s magic. To avoid danger for us and our allies, we’d be making full use of Kyoko’s tech, Reiko’s spells, and my potions and containers.
Even if people found out about some of them, we could just say the Goddess had worked a miracle to save us, and we’d probably be okay. Maybe. Hopefully...
I mean, Edith was a priestess, stray or not. Folks had been calling me a saint lately too. If bad guys attacked, no one would question whose side the Goddess was on.
If things got awkward, we’d just move again and take the Little Silver kids with us. We could donate the Trader Shop branch to the orphanage if that happened. They could turn a pretty decent profit if they got a shop for free with zero labor costs. The guild in that town was pretty solid, and no one would mess with a small shop run by an orphanage. Hunters, thugs, and low-rank guards all counted former orphans among their ranks, and anyone’s kids or grandkids could end up orphaned in this world...
Well, there was no need to stress over worst-case scenarios now. We could just deal with things once they actually happened. Worrying about things prematurely was just wasting time. After all, a maiden’s time was short...though for us three, maybe it wasn’t so short...
“Why not dangle some bait and wipe them out all at once?” Kyoko suggested.
“Kyoko, that’s entrapment. We can’t do that,” Reiko said.
Huh? We can’t?
“Reiko, wouldn’t it just be giving them an opportunity to commit a crime? It’s not as if we’d be encouraging them to break the law, just showing them a little money or information. Normal folks wouldn’t think to steal just because they found out someone else had cash. Only crooks who were on the prowl would actually take that chance,” I said.
“Exactly!” Kyoko agreed.
“But without that chance, they wouldn’t act, right? At least not that time...” Reiko said.
I’d spent enough time with her to know she was going to be against the bait idea.
“Maybe we don’t need to do anything,” I said. “The wyvern alone will spread word that the Trader Shop handles rare stuff, and sharp folks who saw Edith hanging with Can will link Can’s unicorn horn back to the Trader Shop as well. Naturally, they’ll assume today’s sales will go to the shop’s vault too. And when the shop opens tomorrow...”
“The shop’s stock and product list will be available to the public...”
Yup, juicy bait would be out in the open either way.
Reiko shrugged in resignation. There wasn’t much she could do about that.
“Wh-What?! The wyvern butchering-show that everyone was talking about was run by the Ange—I mean, that priestess?!”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the chancellor said. “That shop had been starting to gain fame among hobbyists as a small backwater business selling rare goods, but then they opened a branch in the capital. And their opening promotional event was...”
“A wyvern-butchering show...”
“Exactly. We thought it would be a fake, such as a big bird or paper doll stuffed with orc meat or cheap candy for kids, or an orc named ‘Wyvern.’ We figured the commoners wouldn’t complain about meat being sold cheaply for promotional purposes, so we ignored it, but...”
“With the priestess running it, it must have been real...”
“Indeed...and about sourcing that wyvern...”
“She must have been involved...”
“Most certainly. Should we inform the troublesome upper- and mid-level nobles and major merchants about her? It would cut down sharply on the chances of trouble arising, and even if something did happen, someone in the know could quash it early,” the chancellor suggested, but the king’s face darkened.