Selling Potions (2)
Everyone wants an easy life.
Even the awakened were no exception to that particular craving.
For all that they sat at the top of the post-Gate world, hunters could never quite shake the dream of getting rich without lifting a finger. Non-combat awakeners showed the tendency most of all. Their average income lagged well behind those who had awakened combat skills, and the relative deprivation ate at them. We're both awakened—so why is this all I get?
Combat types had their own miseries, of course, but knowing that never stopped the complaining.
They couldn't delve dungeons. They didn't want to grind labor skills, either. That stubborn refusal had birthed entire lines of work that were neither dangerous nor draining on mana. One of them was the middleman who scooped cheap listings off the auction house and flipped them at a markup.
Resellers, in other words.
Lim Yeonsu was one of them. He simply refused to think of himself that way. He was a professional who made his living at it—earnest enough that he had even awakened an appraisal skill to sharpen his edge. So surely a title like auctioneer suited him better than some dismissive slur like reseller.
That was the thought running through his head as he idly browsed the auction house yet again—until his hand froze over something on the screen.
Liquids sealed in recycled PET bottles and old beverage glass. The crude packaging was almost as arresting as the asking price.
Fifty Credits?
Credits were the system's unit of currency for hunter transactions. You earned them clearing Gates, running dungeons, and killing monsters; among the awakened they changed hands so often that people joked they saw more use than real-world money.
Fifty Credits bought roughly one government-issue loaf of bread. Considering potions routinely started in the thousands, the price was absurd.
So Lim Yeonsu decided it was a scam—and that the seller was a greenhorn who had no idea what happened to people who pulled stunts like this.
In the auction house's early days, plenty of idiots had tried peddling mystery slime as "potions." The gatherings of high-rank hunters that would become today's Hunter Association had made examples of them: identities exposed, profits seized and returned to the victims. After that, even joke listings of fake goods had all but vanished. Still, every so often some clueless awakener dumped nonsense onto the market again. Most cases got written off as accidental and ended with a warning. Running across one in person left a peculiar little thrill—a scrap of free dopamine for a man who stared at auction listings all day.
So he bought a single bottle. Not because he expected it to be real. He wanted to confirm the fake, file the report, and watch the Association come down on the seller. Fifty Credits was a fair price for the entertainment, and with his own appraisal skill the identification fee was a non-issue.
Then he checked what he had bought.
◈ Upon drinking, grants Level 1 Vigor for 1 hour.
"What…?"
He locked up completely. Even a common healing potion would have stunned him at that price. But a specialty potion that applied a buff state?
He snapped out of his daze and bought every remaining bottle in a rush. Appraisal confirmed they were all identical.
"…"
Lim Yeonsu's gut told him this was an opportunity.
He immediately purchased clean glass vials from the auction house, carefully picked up one of the potions, and poured.
Glug, glug.
A classic bottle swap. Once the potions were repackaged, he messaged the hunters in his network. He offered the potions at thirty thousand Credits apiece. Inside of ten minutes, every last one was gone. The system balance lit up with a clean hundred and fifty thousand Credits.
"Ha. Haha…"
A full month's profit in the blink of an eye. The dopamine hit rivaled the best day-trading highs from before the Gates.
"Ah—almost forgot."
He favorited the original seller. The seller had hidden their identity, so there was nothing useful to read, but the function would ping him the instant anything new went up.
Whoever this was, Lim Yeonsu decided, they clearly had no idea what their potions were worth. A true beginner.
Please… just let me milk this one more time…
Things, however, refused to stay that simple.
Somewhere in a dungeon, a party of hunters advanced with eyes fixed forward. The lead figure suddenly halted and raised a hand signal: their search skill's duration had expired.
"How long until you can use the next skill?"
"I've already used it four times today, so… about an hour?"
Other skills could fill in for searching, but the mana cost and skill-charge consumption made them inefficient. The party leader gauged their progress through the dungeon and chose to rest.
"We'll take a short break here, then."
"I'll get a recovery skill ready."
Dungeon runs piled on fatigue faster than outsiders ever imagined. It wasn't just the walking and the fighting; you also had to constantly resist the dungeon's ambient mana seeping into your body. That alone drained mana and stacked exhaustion, so recovery skills to make rest count were less optional than mandatory.
"Ah—actually, I've got something better for that."
Someone pulled an item from their inventory and passed it around. The party leader turned the bottle over in their hands.
"A potion?"
"Just drink it. You'll be surprised."
On the strength of that boast, the party decided to play along. Moments later, astonishment lit their eyes.
Reduces fatigue and increases mana recovery rate for the duration.
Duration remaining: 59:59
A Vigor buff. For its full duration it eased fatigue and accelerated mana recovery. Depending on whether a party had access to it, clear times could shrink by half—which was exactly why it ranked as an essential party skill. Even at Level 1, getting that buff from a potion alone, without a healer or buffer on hand, was an enormous advantage. And even with a healer present it stayed useful: every point of mana and every skill charge you didn't spend on Vigor was power you could put somewhere else.
Ha Yun, the party leader, stared at the empty vial.
"Where did you get this?"
"I've got a friend who does proxy buys on the auction house. He messaged me saying something good had come in."
"And he said he found it on the auction house?"
"I'd assume so."
As far as he knew, Lim Yeonsu wasn't a combat type. The auction house was the only realistic place someone like him could have gotten hold of goods like these.
"Then where did the original lister get them?"
"From a dungeon, obviously. Found them and put them up for sale."
Ha Yun didn't look convinced. She sank into thought, and the teammate who had handed over the potions frowned, not following her concern.
Specialty potions of this kind were rare, true enough. Potions only dropped in Gates and dungeons to begin with, and among those finds, buff potions were a tiny fraction. Still, hunters of their caliber could usually acquire one if they set their minds to it. So why the fuss?
Ha Yun held up the empty bottle.
"There's a high chance someone made this potion."
Potions discovered in Gates and dungeons came in every shape of bottle imaginable—so much so that collectors had sprung up, and empty vials sometimes traded on appearance alone, contents irrelevant. This bottle, though, was government factory glass.
Someone had transferred an existing potion into a new container?
Why bother?
Her teammates' expressions finally shifted. If Ha Yun was right, this was not something to shrug off.
"Tell the rear support team to keep a close watch on every potion listing that hits the auction house."
"On it immediately."
Ever since the Gates opened, demand for potions had been sky-high. Yet no class capable of crafting them had ever been discovered. If an awakener who could make potions like this existed—if their clan could recruit a potion-maker—then Yeomyeong would leapfrog every rival and claim the unshakable summit.
"They sold!"
I woke up, confirmed every potion had sold, and whooped with pure joy.
I had made five bottles of Fatigue Recovery Potion in total. At fifty Credits each, that came to two hundred fifty Credits. Government synthetic-starch bread ran fifty Credits a loaf, so I had just earned more than two days of food money.
This could work. Not only living expenses—I might even scrape together an apartment deposit at this rate.
I'd only managed five bottles this time, but if I kept refining the process I could produce more and command better prices.
I need to invest.
So instead of blowing the whole haul on food, I earmarked part of it for the work itself. Water was the immediate priority. Yesterday I'd been stuck using rainwater, which forced extra steps and capped me at five bottles. I'd nearly used it all up anyway, leaving only rusty tap water. Clean water—even if it wasn't drinking-grade—would boost both efficiency and quality.
Packaging needs work too.
While listing yesterday I'd spotted clean bottles on the auction house for five Credits each. I simply hadn't had a single Credit to spare. Proper containers would give me every excuse to raise the price.
I bought what I needed at once and dove back into potion-making. The investment paid off: this batch yielded a full twenty bottles—four times the last run. Having the herbs pre-processed helped, and so did the clean water.
Rather than list them the second they were done, I rested properly first. In an age starving for dopamine, few things delivered like watching an auction price climb.
How much do I ask this time?
Quality had edged up a little, and the packaging looked decent. Sixty Credits? No—seventy felt fair.
I locked in the decision and registered the lot. Almost immediately someone bid. Even at a starting price of seventy Credits—higher than before—they signaled intent to buy the entire stock on the spot.
Yes!
Twenty bottles at that rate meant fourteen hundred Credits in hand. An unbelievable sum to have made in a single day; my brain felt like it was melting. At this pace I'd cover the apartment deposit with money to spare.
I was still grinning ear to ear when my face froze solid.
"…Five thousand?"
The number had jumped units. Seventy had vaulted straight to five thousand. Moments later it ticked to six thousand, then ten thousand. Eleven thousand. Twenty thousand. Twenty-one thousand…
"…Fifty thousand?"
Fifty thousand Credits per bottle, times twenty. The lot closed at a million Credits.
Money I could have worked a lifetime as a day laborer and never touched had just landed in my hands.