Close Combat Mage
chapter-375-30041322

Chapter 375 – A Major Transaction Pt.2

Suo Jia made some rough calculations: if there were around 500 people outside and each person had 5 pieces of equipment, then he’d have to enhance 2500 total. In other words, as long as Suo Jia had the energy, he could continue doing it forever.

He went out and bought 20 rank one gems, and two each of gems from ranks 2-7. Although Suo Jia only had about 40 million coins on him, he could also get bank overdrafts on his merchant card!

Upon returning the room, he sat down and silently focused on restoring his spirit and magic power while also waiting for news from the Adventurer’s Union. Without a task given to him, he wouldn’t be able to start. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have [high-ranked] equipment to enhance even if he got a chance to; if the opportunity after five successive failures was used to enhance mere rank one equipment, it would be a major loss.

Time always seemed to crawl when waiting. Even though only ten minutes had passed, it felt like several hours. Based on Suo Jia’s calculations, there was no way a request from far away could reach here yet. After all, shipping items over long distances took time. However, Suo Jia believed that there were definitely people within the city that also needed these advanced enhancements!

Just then, a staff member from the auction house came over while carrying a wooden box. He lowered his head to say a few words to Suo Jia, then passed the box over into Suo Jia’s hands.

Since he only had half a year, Suo Jia was limited to sending out ten offer notices, and he could only accept one piece of equipment per offer. Whether he’d continue sending out notices or not would depend on how he allocated his remaining time!

With the box in his arms, Suo Jia returned to the room and closed the door behind him. He then began to enhance equipment from the people outside through his window and soon…the first successive failure appeared! Then three successive failures, and four! The phenomenon of four failures occurring in a row appeared about once every twenty attempts.

“Ding!” Suo Jia looked over in satisfaction at the equipment that was now glowing gold. The first request had been completed. Even though enhancing all that rank one equipment was a waste of money, the value of that single piece of rank seven equipment was still a bit under two billion. When subtracting production costs, he had still managed to earn a net profit of 1.8 billion in 20 minutes!

With the box of equipment in his arms, Suo Jia turned around to leave so that he could hand the items over to the auction house. Their communications sector would then be able to coordinate the transmission of this completed task!

But as soon as he left the room, he was surprised to discover that a member of the staff was anxiously waiting outside the door with a huge pile of different sized boxes!

Suo Jia stared at the nine boxes before him in astonishment, and realised that before the offer he’d sent had even left this city, Illusion City’s people had already accepted all of them. At the moment…the Thunderbirds carrying the message were probably still far from reaching their assigned destinations!

Upon seeing Suo Jia walk out, the staff member’s eyes lit up as he quickly said, “Mister, these nine pieces of equipment have been transported here, please take them!”

Suo Jia nodded and reached out to accept the boxes. “This is the equipment that has just been enhanced, can you help me transfer it?”

“Mhm!” The worker nodded and looked at Suo Jia in admiration. “That’s right, the president of the auction house wants to meet you, would you be able to…?”

Suo Jia narrowed his eyes slightly. He could reject this request, but he was currently living and eating in the auction house, as well as operating under their protection. Although he had paid for all this service, it was still undeniable that he was under their care; he couldn’t refuse this request.

Suo Jia agreed, “Alright. Please help me carry these boxes in and watch over them for me while I go meet the head right now!”

The staff member nodded excitedly and after giving Suo Jia directions, bent down and started to move the boxes. Meanwhile, Suo Jia swiftly strode towards the president’s office.

As soon as he entered the room, a stout middle-aged man with golden hair warmly welcomed him with a friendly handshake. “So you are Mister Suo Jia? I’ve heard from the workers that you’re currently accepting requests from outside; they said that you can enhance equipment to rank seven with just 2 billion?”

Suo Jia couldn’t help but grow excited. Based on what the president had just said, Suo Jia could already deduce the underlying intent. And as a merchant, Suo Jia obviously knew how to negotiate prices as well.

Suo Jia frowned slightly and with a bitter expression, sighed, “I won’t bother hiding anything from President; the reason I’m willing to lose so much money to enhance other people’s equipment is for the sake of trying to find a pattern in the process. I’m accepting these rank seven enhancement tasks only to figure out a correlation in the enhancement success rate. Honestly speaking, I’ve been losing money this whole time and yet I still haven’t found any regular trend!”

From the president’s somewhat doubtful and questioning gaze, Suo Jia could tell that the opposite party clearly didn’t believe that Suo Jia really wasn’t making any money. No matter what, Suo Jia was still a merchant after all; what kind of merchant would do business that would only give losses?

Suo Jia’s heart sped up slightly as he continued, “Perhaps you might not believe me, but you can go inspect it yourself; I earned nearly 9 billion just from shipping pickaxes here, yet I’ve wasted all that money in these past few days alone. By this point, I’ve already reached a negative amount on my merchant card!” Suo Jia pulled out his card and passed it over to the president!

“Oh?” Doubtfully accepting the card and swiping it across a groove on his desk, the president saw that indeed, the number on the card was negative–in the hundred millions even!

He stared at Suo Jia in astonishment and exclaimed in disbelief, “Heavens! What exactly are you thinking? I know you earned over 8 billion before; you’d really be willing to spend all some imaginary pattern?”

Suo Jia nodded and bitterly laughed, “That’s right, I can only bet now. If I can’t find any pattern, then my efforts the past year or so will be wasted. Just paying back my overdraft would be a nightmare.”

The president returned the card to Suo Jia. “Originally, I was planning on discussing business with you, but it looks like my hopes have been destroyed!”

Suo Jia inwardly laughed to himself in amusement but his expression didn’t change. “However, my investments haven’t all been wasted. I’ve just found a tiny hint of a trend, but…enhancing one piece of equipment for just 2 billion is still a clear loss. After all, I spent about 3 billion on each equipment enhancement!”

“What?!” The president stood up in shock and asked incredulously, “You mean to say that you really did find some pattern? How could that be possible?!”

Suo Jia nodded firmly and confidently answered, “I can pretty much guarantee no losses if I spend 2.3 billion on an equipment, and I can even earn a bit if I do it for 2.5 billion!”

Suo Jia then resolutely declared, “It’s decided, I’ll ask for 2.5 billion the next time I send out my offers. I’m sure that I can definitely earn money in this field!”

“Very good!” The head slammed the table and stated, “In that case, I’ll get straight to the point. You want 2.5 billion, right? Then I’ll accept your offer for 2.5 billion per piece of equipment. How does helping me enhancing some equipment sound?”

“Hm?” Suo Jia asked in confusion, “What? President also wants to enhance equipment? If President is personally asking for it, I’d enhance it for just 2 billion, haha. I only hope that President will continue to take care of little me in the future as well!”