Wandering Merchant Alliance (5)
Hyun Si-woon's instructions were, in a sense, inefficient.
It would have been far cleaner to gather every member of the alliance at once and distribute the goods in a single sweep. Instead he had ordered them to make separate rendezvous and manage everything individually.
It was clearly the more cumbersome way.
Yet a precise intent lay hidden beneath it.
A wandering merchant has to remain a figure wrapped in mystery.
Not some specific person or guild, but an unknown trader who could appear anywhere, at any time, offering miracle goods. That aura of mystery was itself authority—and power.
The members were merely agents who conveyed the wandering merchant's will, the faceless hands and feet of an unseen power.
"Heh-heh. So you're deifying yourself? Well, authority that doesn't exist can sometimes prove stronger than any power that does."
Nothing that grandiose.
The mystique was secondary.
The real core was trust.
This was a probationary period—a testing ground to separate gold from dross.
How faithfully would they follow the rules he had set?
Were they a group reliable enough that they would never betray him, no matter what crisis arose?
Hyun Si-woon had to confirm it with his own eyes.
If they passed?
Someday they might even knock on the gates of Eden Camp.
Until that verification is finished, a cell structure is ideal.
The five guilds would know only that they belonged to the alliance; they would never learn who the other partners were.
There would be no public announcement, and for them, keeping their partnership secret was the wise way to avoid pointless quarrels or terrorist attacks.
And above all—
I can cut annoying problems off at the root.
The calculation was simple: never create a situation where they banded together to demand larger quotas.
As long as they remained ignorant of one another, they would have no choice but to compete in loyalty to the wandering merchant alone.
Every piece of the board had been set that way.
A few days later, the members loaded the goods, rode Pungjo, and each visited their appointed meeting places.
The reviews, they said, were all decent.
Gathered once more in the strategy room, they began swapping after-action reports from the rendezvous.
"The Owl Guild master seemed like a good sort. Said he'd keep every term of the contract even if a knife was at his throat, and asked me to trust him."
"Solidarity Guild's full of soldiers, so they were pretty wary. Real sticklers, too. But the second I laid the goods out, the way they started bowing and scraping was something else, hyung-nim."
And the rest.
Midas's Hand had launched into a speech about its vision, while Medalist Guild had kept bowing, promising to repay them with growth no matter what.
The Dandelion Seed Guild master, in particular, had sobbed openly, swearing that no matter what happened he would never forget this grace, and had even offered a prayer.
"You all did well."
Hyun Si-woon nodded, satisfied.
It finally felt as though the system had automated itself.
All they had to do was supply bulk goods once a week and collect eighty percent of the sale price in advance.
Of course they couldn't take that large a sum from the very first shipment, but he expected things to stabilize quickly.
They would receive the payment; the partners would handle everything else.
The market itself would do the policing.
"Don't obsess over any of it. Partner management can't become the main job. Our real role is still that of Climbers. What matters is training. Stamina nineteen—we need to hit that number fast. Starting tomorrow morning, group training resumes. I'll look at your martial arts, too."
They had rested long enough.
It was time to grind again.
The launch of the Wandering Merchant Alliance brought immediate change to the market.
The old "buying frenzies," where one person scooped up hundreds of items at once, vanished.
In their place, the five partner guilds—under the official title of ★Wandering Merchant Partners★—began releasing fifty items every hour in rotation.
If Solidarity Guild put goods out at one in the afternoon, Owl Guild followed at two, and so on.
The market stabilized.
With a steady supply, the resellers lost their foothold.
Hoarding fifty items meant nothing when another fifty dropped an hour later; there was no longer any pretext for jacking the price up several times over.
The Climbers' reactions shifted as well.
Failing to buy no longer meant despair or rage.
The total volume of opportunity itself had changed.
Where Hyun Si-woon had once released a little over a hundred items a day, the market now received a full twelve hundred across twenty-four hours.
The brand was established and the partners were in place; it was time to expand the TC business in earnest.
Of course, against more than ninety thousand Climbers the quantity was still nowhere near enough.
They couldn't manage three full meals a day, but at least they could secure one.
Prices rose as well.
Combat rations and snacks were now priced the same as potions—ten TC each.
Market reaction was surprisingly favorable.
The majority opinion was that as long as you could actually buy the goods, the price was acceptable.
Whatever the cost, it was still vastly cheaper than the gouging resellers.
The Climbers were happy.
But the one who truly ought to be happy was Hyun Si-woon.
The TC he now raked in every week was enormous.
Shall we run the numbers?
First, revenue.
He supplied goods to the partner guilds and received eighty percent of list price.
He began calculating by category.
Combat rations, snacks, potions
Sale price: 10 TC
Supply price (revenue per unit): 8 TC
Daily supply: 1,200 of each, total 3,600 units
Daily revenue: 3,600 × 8 TC = 28,800 TC
Two types of scrolls
Sale price: 20 TC
Supply price (revenue per unit): 16 TC
Daily supply: 1,200 of each, total 2,400 units
Daily revenue: 2,400 × 16 TC = 38,400 TC
Daily revenue alone came to 67,200 TC.
A jaw-dropping figure.
And the cost of goods?
Combat rations, snacks, and potions cost 2 TC each.
The scrolls cost 5 TC apiece.
That worked out to a total daily cost of 19,200 TC.
Which meant—
Daily net profit of 48,000 TC.
Hyun Si-woon held his breath for a moment.
And once the system stabilized and the partners had enough capital?
That TC flow—that cash flow—would arrive, week after week, without fail.
48,000 TC × 7 days…
A full 336,000 TC per week.
"Haha…"
A dazed laugh escaped Hyun Si-woon's lips.
More than thirty-three times the Tower Coin reward for clearing the fourth floor, flowing in every single week.
"Do you remember what I once told you? A Climber who monopolizes Lumi is all but guaranteed to become a Ranker."
"Yeah. This is straight-up insane."
And it wasn't even the end.
The value of the bags that cost 10 TC to produce was climbing by the day, and once you factored in the monthly unique items…
"Whew."
A shiver ran through him.
Was this how the real-world conglomerates felt?
Tower Coin earned by hunting monsters was labor income—honest money that required grinding time and effort, but with a hard ceiling.
The present TC stream, by contrast, was capital income.
Even while he slept, even while he trained, the Tower Coin kept flowing in without pause.
This is Lumi's true value.
A value even Rankers could not possess—something only a Climber could enjoy.
…And.
Hyun Si-woon's eyes gleamed.
He had no intention of letting that TC sit idle.
Time to start stockpiling crafting materials.
He had mentioned it before.
Past the tenth floor, they would be needed in endless quantities.
The reason was the life classes.
Climbers who cleared the tenth floor could choose one of several life classes as a side profession—blacksmith, alchemist, tailor, cook, and so on.
Back when he had played Tower of Despair, the life classes had been a love-hate affair.
Raising proficiency had been a grind beyond imagination.
You had to gather thousands—tens of thousands—of materials and fail over and over before the level budged even slightly. Nightmare difficulty.
The time and cost of securing materials had been no joke either.
It was a domain no solo player could even contemplate.
Which was why, for Hyun Si-woon, the life classes had remained almost completely unexplored territory.
At the time, it was no exaggeration to say he had been the only person playing Tower of Despair.
But things are different now.
Once he had been a lonely solo player; now he was a member of a massive server with ninety thousand Climbers.
And he was the whale who held that server's economy in his grip.
Right now, nobody understands the value of crafting materials.
Most of the materials listed on the exchange were trading for dirt-cheap prices.
The tenth floor was still a distant future.
To lower-floor Climbers fighting simply to survive, crafting materials were nothing more than junk clogging their inventory slots.
This was the perfect window.
While everyone still undervalued them, he would keep buying low and piling them into storage.
As if purchasing future gold veins for pennies.
Later, when Climbers besides us start clearing the tenth floor one after another… those materials will skyrocket tens—hundreds—of times in value.
When that day came, he would be the exclusive supplier.
Moreover, with that enormous stockpile he could rocket his own life-class proficiency sky-high in a single push—by sheer volume of materials that could absorb any number of failures.
The thoughts linked one after another.
Use the stockpiled materials to raise life-class proficiency and mass-produce items.
Dump those finished items back onto the market and earn more TC.
Use that TC to buy still more materials and invest in higher-tier crafting.
Click.
He could almost hear the giant gears meshing and turning inside his head.
"Yeon-ho hyung."
Hyun Si-woon called Baek Yeon-ho at once.
"Yeah?"
"Contact Midas's Hand. Separate from the gear we need, tell them to buy up every single crafting material that hits the exchange—no exceptions on type. Unlimited budget. Keep the prices as low as possible."
"Crafting materials? Why…?"
Baek Yeon-ho looked puzzled, then his eyes lit up.
When had Hyun Si-woon ever spoken nonsense?
Clearly they would be needed later.
"Right now you could offer 1 TC for a bundle of a hundred and still find a thousand sellers… I'll tell them to scoop up only the dirt-cheap stuff."
"Perfect."
Hyun Si-woon smiled.
Everything felt as though it were clicking into place exactly according to plan.
Another week passed.
Every morning the training grounds of Eden Camp filled with scorching heat.
Once the hellish group drills ended, personal training followed—each of them polishing their own martial arts.
Hyun Si-woon drove himself especially hard.
"Hraaaah!"
He swung his sword and ran until his vision blurred and his lungs felt ready to tear.
Not yet.
He deliberately ignored every limit signal his body sent and kept swinging—and in that exact instant!
A permanent stat increase has occurred.
Stamina:18 → 19
Thud.
The sword slipped from his hand.
At last…
He had broken through the wall of eighteen.