The First Legendary Beast Master

Chapter 1973 Middlemen

In one of the side rooms of the expanded meeting room, Karl sat down with the Elders of the Almeixei Sect and a pot of coffee.

”Well, I suppose that we should get right to business, as we have left your Sect Leader unattended around the other Guild Leaders. I can already see that you have an issue with the proposal that I have.

So, letʼs start from there.”

The Supreme who had spoken last smiled. ”Blunt and direct, I like that. The issue is that you propose sending your own merchants to our Sects to make the sales. While that is normally permissible behaviour for allies, when that ally is a dedicated crafting Guild it causes unrest among the other merchants.

If you make it, ship it, sell it and trade for resources in house, it cuts out all the middlemen and puts many people out of work.

That is what the Sect Leader is worried about.

Letting you use your own merchants to sell in the Almeixei markets is problematic, as the Sect wouldnʼt get anything but stall fees. You see where Iʼm coming from?”

”When you put it that way, it sounds more like weʼre coming to extract wealth from your Sect than making an equal trade for goods. Yes, I see where youʼre coming from. I donʼt have any issue allowing your trade Elders to make a deal to bulk purchase and ship the goods themselves.

Or, we can use the general merchant caravans of the region. I know that the New Home does send caravans through your territory, and we could ship goods with them if necessary.”

Karl had wanted to avoid that, as it was dangerous to send such valuable goods with merchants travelling on foot between cities.

Or, on a sword, as so many of them used a flying sword technique to improve their travel speed.

The Elders thought about the options. There were some dedicated trade Clans, as well as their own, and the New Home, of which Karl was a member. So, letting the New Home do it all wasnʼt much different than letting the Darklight Host do it themselves.

They could let the New Home service the region closest to themselves, but not Almeixei City.

That was the core of their Sectʼs profits.

”I think that we can make an arrangement to purchase from your Guild to stock a stall in the Almeixei City market. Or perhaps a storefront, given the value of the goods. However, we would like to have it under the control of the Sect.

What is the Darklight Hostʼs stance on reselling crafted items?”

Karl carefully considered his words before speaking.

”For items Rare Grade and lower, we have no objections to them being freely traded on the market. It doesnʼt matter to us who gets them.

We do maintain a blacklist of undesirable customers for our Epic Grade and higher items that we ask all direct distributors to respect, though I will admit that we have no way to enforce it on items that go to auction or which are resold by the original customer.

However, any Clan that resells items in bulk to an enemy of the Darklight Host will find that they are blacklisted by the Guild.”

”That is reasonable. As long as you donʼt object to our members purchasing your items and marking them up for local sale, the Almeixei Sect does not have an issue with such an arrangement.”

Karl shrugged. ”A manʼs got to eat. Youʼre free to charge whatever the local market will bear. Our deal with the Blue Elves is the same. They purchase from us at a set price, and we donʼt interfere with their resale pricing.”

”Are you not concerned that you might be underpricing your goods going to foreign markets?”

Karl shook his head. ”Not really. Everything is priced based on availability. That is the risk that the merchants take when they buy and sell across the continent. We have strict standards for the treatment of members by our allies, but the Darklight Host doesnʼt have any particular issue with profiteering, unless it exploits the vulnerable or the fluffy.

We have too many Green Dragon followers to let the fluffy creature be mistreated.”

The Elders chuckled. ”That would explain the Immortal Bunnies.”

”That one was actually a surprise to us as well. They follow a fertility god, and those are usually mortal realm gods, as they believe in the process of birth and legacy through bloodlines. So, Immortality is an odd concept to them.

But they seem happy enough, so I guess itʼs not too big of a transgression.”

The Elder shrugged. ”Most of the Immortals barely live a Mortal lifespan anyhow, given the stupidity related death toll. On the Divine Battlefields, itʼs even worse.”

”I have noticed that. Hundreds of years of training wasted because they pick fights that donʼt need to be fought.

I get that resources are scarce, but sometimes they need to learn to back down instead of throwing their lives away. The first time that I went out with a group after arriving on this world, we were confronted by such a group over a low-grade flower of all things.

A pointless waste, and honestly, we didnʼt care about the flower, but they wouldnʼt give up.”

The Elder nodded. ”We heard about it. Honestly, it wasnʼt surprising. That sort of attitude is everywhere. Even among our Sect members. Perhaps especially among them. Being from one of the powerful Sects gives them delusions of grandeur, the whole {You canʼt offend me, do you know who my backer is} sort of nonsense.

As if the Elders actually give a damn about some troublemaking punk whose whole lifespan has been barely a good nap long.

But itʼs been the way of things for so long that no matter what we think of it, there really isnʼt any way to stop the youngsters from thinking that way. You might manage to change it with your Guild, as your culture seems quite different from the usual.

But the Young Master mentality tends to creep in everywhere.”

Karl could see that happening. The Darklight Host members were quite used to steam rolling everything, so the next generation might get arrogant about it without the power to back it up.