The Primal Hunter

Chapter 222: World Congress: On The Flip Of A Coin

The second vote quickly approached its end, and by now, there was quite a bit of nervousness going around. The last hour had contained plenty of closed-door deals and under-the-table agreements on what to vote for.

Miranda told Jake that she and Lillian had gone to reaffirm the vote for herbs with those who promised it before. She even went as far as making binding system agreements with them, not allowing them just to make empty promises.

With the many votes of Haven and at least a few from some of the other top 10 ones, Herbs was pretty much secured as one of the chosen options. Honestly, no one was sure what the other options would be, but Wood and Stone had apparently become less popular over the last hour.

This was due to the ability to sell to other cities using the store, and the different factions had begun just making deals with those who had plenty of a particular resource. Of course, there was the issue that you couldn’t sell to designated buyers based on the description of the store, but it would at least mean some wood or Stone was up for sale.

Haven would likely sell some wood, too, logging from around the outskirts of the forest towards the Fort. They didn’t want to ruin the city of Haven itself, but no one really cared about the outskirts closer to the Fort. All it would do was make less forest between the Fort and Haven… and there was plenty of forest to take from. More than they could possibly log for many years.

There were some worries, though. Such as… what did the system consider an item? Or a material? Many types of wood apparently weren’t Identifiable without some mild processing or until transformed into an item, just like some herbs and fruits didn’t recognize as an item before they matured. Could you just throw a pile of trees into the store? How would the system communicate what you were selling?

He was also aware that he didn’t have full information on this. Identify only worked on items you could actually Identify… like how he couldn’t Identify herbs back before becoming an alchemist. Miranda also couldn’t see the properties of herbs before she got some general appraising skill for magical catalysts from her class that now allowed her to Identify some herbs. On a side note, everyone could apparently Identify stuff like equipment or consumables, but the details may vary. Like how Jake can see how much a potion will restore and others can’t, and how a blacksmith can see details if Identifying a weapon or armor.

The only ones that could kind of Identify everything were merchants. According to Miranda, rather than an Identify skill, they often got it upgraded or get a new similar skill called Appraisal or something like that. That made sense to Jake… as a merchant kind of has to know what the hell he is handling.

Actually, would merchants be able to do something special with the system store? Maybe some additional options? An easier way to sell items?

All of these were questions Jake was glad he didn’t have to really think about, outside of interesting consideration to what an item is. He could just ask Miranda or someone else about it after the fact.

Jake had also considered if he should try and flex some potions and promise to put some up for sale if everyone voted for Herbs… but he didn’t really want to put himself out there like that. He would also seriously need to commission some more bottles soon.

He had Miranda give him back quite a few, and she had even scrounged up some additional ones from a merchant, but Jake still needed a lot. He had this bad habit of sometimes throwing a poison bottle or his potion bottles breaking after drinking them.

Hmm, will potion bottles be a part of Gems and Crystals or maybe Stone? Jake considered.Glass is made from sand, and sand is technically small annoying underwear-invading stones. Which begged another question… were they even made of glass? He didn’t actually know. Maybe it was just some special kind of crystal?

As these thoughts passed through his head, Neil entered the barrier, and Jake also noticed that the vote for the system store would begin in around 5 minutes.

Jake nodded at Neil and asked. “Any progress on getting some teleportation network up and running?”