Lucy the Wandering Merchant
This time, too, I'll make the next floor right on schedule.
Jin-soo had just settled on that and was about to move when something caught his eye.
Huh?
Someone in a black robe sat slumped on the ground with a vendor's mat spread before them.
A wandering merchant.
The Tower was not populated by Players alone. Beings rather like the NPCs of a game existed here as well.
Not that they're truly NPCs.
They were living creatures, fully capable of joy, anger, sorrow, and delight, and more often than not they possessed strange abilities unlike anything a Player had. Even so, their roles so closely resembled those of in-game NPCs that Players from Earth simply called them that.
I didn't expect a wandering merchant on Floor 12.
Before his regression, the first time Jin-soo had laid eyes on one was somewhere around Tower Floor 150.
They go wherever the mood takes them.
It would not have been strange for one to turn up on Floor 1 or Floor 2 instead of Floor 12. Even so, this was hardly an ordinary case. Wandering merchants moved for profit, and so they sought Players of a certain level as trading partners. Try to do business with the Players of Floor 12, and there was little worth buying from them—and little worth selling to them, either.
Buy and sell all you like. The margin still comes to nothing.
Jin-soo started toward her.
"Welcome, customer."
The robed merchant greeted him in a bright voice.
"I am a wandering merchant. For the record, it will do you no good to demand why you were dragged into the Tower, or to whine that you want out."
Jin-soo let out a short laugh.
First time around, that was the first thing I asked, too.
Most Players, on meeting an NPC, began by asking why they had been dragged into the Tower and how they could go back.
"Oh? If you're a wandering merchant, what exactly do you sell?"
He asked it with a perfectly calm face.
"Hmm? You're remarkably composed. I rather expected anger as a baseline—and an attack, if things went poorly."
She sounded genuinely surprised.
Attacking your kind is pointless. NPCs were under the System's protection. Swing a sword packed with mana, drive a spear clean through them, and you still could not deal a scratch. And they're absurdly strong besides. A Player's attacks did not land on an NPC, but an NPC's attacks landed just fine on a Player. Start a fight, and the Player lost every time. Not that an NPC would attack a Player in the first place. In exchange for the System's protection, they were bound by constraints of their own. Unless a special condition was met, an NPC could not harm a Player.
"I sell whatever you desire. I am a wandering merchant, and a dealer in all things."
At that, Jin-soo laughed again.
Bold-faced lie, that.
Wandering merchants were treated like NPCs, but they were not true NPCs. They could hardly carry every item in existence.
"Then do you have an Undying Knight advancement tome?"
Her body went rigid on the spot.
"Well? Do you, or don't you?"
"Th-that, I do not."
"A Weapon Destroyer advancement tome, then?"
"I don't have that either."
"A Heavenly Dragon Sword?"
"I don't."
"You said you'd sell whatever I wanted. So why don't you have any of it?"
"And you, customer, hardly have the coin for goods that expensive, do you?"
She shot back, voice thick with offense.
"True enough. But me being broke, and you lying that you sell whatever anyone wants—those aren't related, are they?"
"Nngh..."
Her head dropped.
"Take out every longsword you've got and lay them out."
At his word, she fumbled blades out from within the robe and spread them across the mat.
Would you look at this.
Jin-soo gave a wry smile. Most of the swords on the mat sat in the mid-to-late level 100s, and among them was one blade of exactly level 132.
So that's why the stall is open on Floor 12.
She had been waiting for him. The reason was easy enough to guess.
She knows I killed the Goblin Champion and took the two-handed axe.
Wandering merchants gathered information at an uncanny speed. The axe that had come off the Goblin Champion was level 132.
The scheme is obvious.
She had come to Floor 12 and waited because she wanted that axe, and she wanted the offer to sell it to come out of his mouth first. This was the first time Jin-soo had met her. It was not the first time she had seen him.
Sneaking around like a rat, watching me.
He didn't need to see it to know. She had tailed him and gathered what she needed—that his main weapon was the sword, that he fought with a dual-sword style. She would also know that while he already had a serviceable blade in the Blood-Sucking Sword, he needed one more sword of roughly that caliber. And so she had shown herself first, and dangled the bait.
"Is there anything that catches your eye?"
"More or less. Problem is, I don't have any money."
"Hahaha. Allow me to share one simple piece of information. In the Tower, points are used as money. A Player may also convert the merit they have accumulated into points and spend those. You, however, do not appear to have accumulated very much. If you happen to possess an item you aren't using, do show it to me. Should it be of any use, I might even buy it."
She spoke in a measured tone.
I already know everything you just told me. And she might buy it? She thinks I'm an easy mark.
Fair enough, from her side. Jin-soo was climbing the Tower at a speed without precedent, but he was still a newcomer—short on experience, short on information, easy to fleece.
Let's see how she reacts.
Without hesitation, he drew the two-handed axe from his treasure pouch.
"Mm. Equipment of a level that does not belong on the lower floors. Fortune favors you, to have obtained such a thing already. From the look of it, your main weapon is a sword rather than a two-handed axe, which is why you've been keeping it in your pouch. If you wish, I will exchange it for a sword of the same level."
"Same level. Like this?"
Jin-soo pointed at the level 132 sword on the mat.
"Yes. Rather than carry an item you cannot even use, would it not profit you to trade it for a weapon of a kind you can?"
"Yeah. I don't think so."
He denied it to her face.
"You said it yourself a moment ago. In the Tower, accumulated merit can be converted into points and spent."
"Ah? That is true, but I was speaking strictly with regard to Players."
"Were you? Then items don't accumulate merit? Merit stored in an item can't be converted into points?"
Struck square by the question, she fell silent. NPCs could not give a Player false information about the Tower.
"Nameless two-handed axe or not, this is a weapon used by a Goblin Champion who had never once been defeated since the Tower came into being. Just how much merit do you suppose has piled up in it? Convert that to points, and what would it come to?"
She ground her molars.
"Hahaha. I have made a considerable mistake. You are rather clever. Even so, you are laboring under one misconception. The Tower is vast—immense. The Floor 1 you have experienced is only the smallest fragment of it. Goblin Champions who went undefeated on Floor 1 are beyond counting. Naturally, two-handed axes that have accumulated the same merit are beyond counting as well. I shall do you a special favor. Let us trade for this."
From the several swords on the mat, she lifted the one of the highest level.
"A Flame Sword. A weapon of no less than level 167. I will exchange it for this."
"Hey. You're a rookie, aren't you?"
She shot to her feet.
"A rookie? What sort of insult is that!"
"Flying off the handle that easily—yeah, you're a rookie."
Jin-soo nodded as if that settled it. Too quick to show her hand, too impatient. On top of that, she kept volunteering the trade, and one careless word was enough to send her into a temper. To Jin-soo—a veteran who had steeped in the Tower so long he had gone past aging and all but turned to oil—the merchant in front of him was a rookie, no two ways about it.
She won't be the only wandering merchant who heard I hunted the Goblin Champion.
The Tower was vast, and immense, and Players existed in staggering numbers to match.
Wandering merchants compete with one another.
The one before him had simply been lucky enough to find him first and seize the chance.
The others will be looking for me too.
No telling when a rival might appear. Of course she was in a hurry.
"I am not a rookie!"
"Sure. We'll say you're not."
The word rookie could be read any number of ways, so he let it pass.
"More to the point—you want to buy this, don't you?"
"I do not!"
"Desperate to have it, and still denying it..."
Jin-soo snorted. A wandering merchant could not tell a Player false information, but that restriction applied only to information about the Tower. Any other lie was fair game.
"Fine. I'll sell it."
"Truly?"
Her real feelings surfaced at once.
"Yeah. Ten million points."
Her body locked up like stone. Only after a moment did she recover enough to speak.
"That was a joke just now, yes?"
"No. I mean it."
"As I said before, Floor 1 is enormously vast, and two-handed axes that have accumulated the same merit are beyond counting."
"Even so, this is the only one whose owner was killed, and that then passed into a Player's hands."
"Even so, it is nothing more than a mass-produced weapon without a proper name."
"Which is why I'm selling it for ten million points. If this were a named weapon, I wouldn't sell it even if you brought ten billion."
"Kkhk—!"
At that unruffled reply, she clutched the back of her own neck.
"Earlier you said I hadn't accumulated much merit. Is that really true?"
He asked it with a meaningful smile. Merit was not carried over through regression. Even so, what he had piled up since returning was anything but modest. He had hunted a Goblin Champion that had never once been hunted. He was climbing the Tower while cutting down ordinary monsters and numerous bosses in a single stroke, or two at most, breaking the record for the fastest clear every time. It would not be exact, but convert the merit he had accumulated into points and it would clear fifteen million with room to spare.
"If you want this, you'd better pay a fair price. If you don't like it, leave."
He spun the two-handed axe as he spoke, and she bit down hard.
"Even so, ten million points seems excessive. I have to leave myself a margin, don't I? And besides me, there is no one who would buy it."
She put on a bluff.
"You think so? You're not buying, then? Go on."
Jin-soo waved her off and slipped the axe back into his treasure pouch.
"I'm a little busy."
With that, he walked straight past her.
"Agh! I'm a little short on points!"
She yelped it. Jin-soo ignored her and kept walking.
"Would it be possible to purchase it in goods, perhaps?"
At that, he stopped.
"Then take out everything you've got."
She fumbled open a bundle. Weapons, armor, accessories, elixirs, advancement tomes, skill books—goods of every kind spilled out.
She poured every last point she had into stock.
In truth, if what came out had been junk, he really had meant to just leave. The quality, however, was better than he had expected. The items he truly wanted could never be obtained for a mere ten million points in the first place, and the odds that a wandering merchant would even be carrying them were low. As a rule, expensive goods fetched a higher price at the auction house. That was only natural.
She probably means to buy the axe and sell it to an upper-floor Player, or put it up for auction.
The level was low, but the merit piled into it was nothing to scoff at. There were plenty of uses for a thing like that, and plenty of people who wanted one.
Hm?
He had been about to buy a good-value sword of a suitable level, along with a few other items, when a single dull silver ring caught his eye.
What's this doing here?
The Ring of Revival. Before his regression, it had been one of the primary items of a named Player known as the Moving Fortress.