The Way to Unlock the Level 2 Talent Shop
Eagle City's Pill Menagerie was a huge building. With a whopping 46 floors, it could easily be called a skyscraper.
Even more impressive, though, was that every floor was practically an entire mall on its own. With dozens of stores, each with its own purpose, workers, and managers, every floor was its own world.
Adam wasn't planning on going to every floor, though. He was only going up five floors. Being only a Body Refining Realm pup, there wasn't much of a reason for Adam to go up that many floors as well.
Every ten floors were reserved for a realm of martial artists, while the final six floors were entirely reserved for one grand auction house. So, Adam would stick with the sub-ten floors unless he planned to window shop.
Everything that someone in the Body Refining Realm could possibly need was in the bottom ten floors.
Weapons, armor, pills, medicine ingredients, and even special drugs, if Adam wanted something, it would be there, making it pointless for him to go above them.
Another reason he didn't plan to go above the 10th floor was the cost of Tier 2 and above ingredients. Each Tier 2 ingredient costs at least a few thousand dollars, with most costing tens of thousands of dollars. And that was just for one single ingredient.
Adam would need nearly $100,000 for the entire set of ingredients required to concoct a Tier 2 pill.
So, while Adam did wish to eventually start practicing with Tier 2 ingredients, he couldn't do it just yet. He needed more money to do so. The $40,000 he had wasn't enough for him to start spending tens of thousands of dollars on one single ingredient that was useless without a matching set.
Being forced to stick with Tier 1 ingredients, Adam just planned to buy a bunch of Body Refining Pill materials.
Though he couldn't cultivate anymore due to the principal's order, the resale value of the Body Refining Pill was enormous, and he could get a considerable profit from every single one of them. And since he hadn't tried to refine any other pills yet, they were his only choice.
Also, he was extremely good at refining them. It was better to stick with something he was good at and make a lot of money than to switch to something he didn't know and waste money. He would move up in ranks eventually when he had more liquidity, but for now, he would stick with the basics.
Moreover, he wanted to continue refining the Body Refining Pills to make money because he had figured out how to unlock the level 2 talent shop!
Sadly, it wasn't something he could do immediately. His blackhearted system was demanding more money from him.
According to the system, it was extremely easy for Adam to unlock the second level of the talent shop. All he needed was a small amount of money—just $1,000,000.
Once Adam found out the price, he was definitely angry. After all, just a few hours ago, he was a poor man with less than $500 in his bank account. But after thinking about it during the car ride, he realized it was highly reasonable.
In just one pill-refining session, Adam made $70,000. With such huge profit margins, $100,000 was nothing. If he were unlucky, it would take at most another three sessions to get that money.
If he were lucky, it could just take one.
Also, Adam could help his future endeavors by practicing his refining skills. Even if the level 2 talent shop didn't need an astronomical amount of money to unlock, Adam would've still come here.
So it really didn't matter.
Entering the Pill Menagerie's base floor, Adam didn't ask any of the many receptionists nearby for help but instead quickly grabbed an elevator and went to the floor he wanted to go to.
"Adam! Are you back already?" A Chinese businessman dressed in an ancient hanfu-like suit greeted Adam as he entered his usual store on the 5th floor.
As Adam was one of his store's only staple customers, it went without saying that the businessman would be polite and accommodating to him.
Adam might not be one of his biggest customers, or maybe not even in his top 10, but Adam had something the others didn't: potential. If Adam continued to grow, then perhaps 10 or 20 years from now, Adam would become one of his biggest customers without question.
So the businessman was extremely polite to the young boy.
"I'm closer to refining the pills than ever, Mr. Yan." Adam lied with a smile, saying, "Also, I recently came into an influx of money. I'm going to buy it in bulk this time."
Of the many shops on the fifth floor, only this one sold herbs in bulk. The more one bought, the larger the discount they would get. Adam had a lot of money to spend, so he planned to buy a bunch and refine them whenever he was low on cash.
With three months until the college entrance exams, Adam needed a lot of money, especially since the blackhearted system constantly demanded more money from him.
"Oh? How much money are we talking about?" Mr. Yan asked with a raised eyebrow.
Usually, Adam entered the store with just barely $1,000 in hand, but even then, his face looked like he had just eaten a pile of sand during the purchase. So when the boy said he had a lot of money, Mr. Yan was intrigued.
'Adam probably hasn't even seen $10,000 before, so I assume a lot of money should be at most eight grand.' Mr. Yan estimated in his mind.
Other than the minute possibility of Adam refining a Body Refining Pill, there was no possible way for Adam to get more than eight grand in Mr. Yan's mind. And even then, Mr. Yan truly didn't think Adam would have that much money. It was just his upper limit.
How could a 16-year-old have that much money anyway? A scholarship, maybe, but Adam wasn't that special in the grand scheme of things.
Sagittarius High School wouldn't give him that much money, especially if he hadn't done something worth that amount of money.
"I have $10,000. How many sets of ingredients can I get with that much money?" Adam asked, shocking Mr. Yan.
Though Adam had $40,000 to his name, he didn't want to spend it all. It didn't make much sense to do so. That much money could be saved for unlocking the level 2 talent shop.
Also, it would have been far too much even if he had spent the money on sets of Body Refining Pill ingredients. That much money could buy hundreds of sets, and Adam had nowhere near that much time to waste just robotically refining pills.
It would take too long.
So he only planned to spend a fourth of his fortune today and save the other 75%.
However, even that small amount shocked Mr. Yan.
"10?" Mr. Yan thought he had misheard Adam and quickly asked for confirmation. But Adam only repeated his words once more, sending Mr. Yan into recoil.
"Yeah. I have $10,000 to spend. How many sets of the Body Refining Pill ingredients can I get with that much money?" Adam reiterated. Before, he could get three sets of ingredients for $1,000. But now, with $10,000, Adam thought that maybe he could get 35 or 40 sets of ingredients.
Mr. Yan usually sells in bulk. And $10,000 was certainly a large purchase, so it would be reasonable for Adam to get a discount.
But while Adam was wondering how many pieces of medicine he could scam out of the businessman, Mr. Yan, the businessman in question was looking at Adam in a new light.
'I was wrong. He doesn't have potential. He is already an expert!' Mr. Yan thought inwardly.
Mr. Yan wasn't a mortal, but he wasn't a godly talent either. He was only a person with a low-grade cultivation talent. Due to his rather desolate youth, he wasn't able to cultivate very far. And even now, in his middle age, he is only in the Martial Artist Realm, the realm after the Martial Apprentice Realm.
But thanks to a few well-placed connections and some brownnosing, he was able to get a store in Eagle City's Pill Menagerie. So it wouldn't be a lie to say that Mr. Yan had an extremely good eye for talent. And Adam was right now checking all of his bells.
"With that much money, you can buy 30 sets of ingredients, but since we are long-time business partners, I can give you a discount. How about 40 sets? Does that seem good for you?" Mr. Yan spoke after a moment of deliberation.
This was definitely a loss on his part, but Mr. Yan didn't care about the loss on his part. He sees this transaction as an investment rather than a standard purchase.
"Deal!" Adam quickly accepted the deal and agreed.
Adam didn't know much about business and just thought that he was getting a really good deal, not seeing Mr. Yan's deliberate discount.
After Adam agreed, Mr. Yan quickly went into the back of the store and retrieved the 40 sets of ingredients that Adam needed. One quick transaction later, Mr. Yan was down 40 sets of medicine while Adam was down $10,000, but neither of them was saddened.
The two shook hands, gave each other a hug, and went their separate ways.
—
After buying the Body Refining Pill's ingredients, Adam went straight back to campus. He was never a socialite anyway, so hanging around in the city wasn't appealing to him. Also, with an entire crate full of medicinal herbs and other ingredients, Adam couldn't do any partying, should he want to.
When Adam was first reincarnated into the future, he thought that there would be many better-storing abilities, and he was right to an extent. Some items had a much larger interior than the exterior, similar to a time-traveling doctor, but those items cost far beyond his net worth.
Even the simplest spatial item would send Adam back hundreds, if not millions, of dollars. Moreover, those were the bottom of the barrel regarding spatial items.
To have one like the time-traveling doctor, Adam needed, at the bare minimum, a few tens of billions of dollars to his name.
Because of this dilemma, Adam was forced to carry his merchandise primitively—in an old-fashioned way—in a crate.
It was annoying, but Adam could only sigh since he was too broke to do anything about it.
"Taxi man, take me back." Adam sighed.
"Where is back?"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Every little thing helps - https://ko-fi.com/slarbi123.
There is now a Discord for this novel. However, be warned. It is rather bare bones. I suck at Discord.
https://discord.gg/zKyXRvPr