054 Transaction

The store manager personally greeted them, warmly leading the two to a private room upstairs.

The manager stated that he would personally appraise the strange artifacts brought by Wallace, asking them to wait a moment while he went to fetch his tools.

This shop appeared to be quite prestigious, with branches everywhere. The female clerks were young, beautiful, and possessed decent strength. Aside from quite a few intermediate apprentice clerks, there were even a few advanced apprentices!

They came in to serve some black tea and pastries before departing, leaving only Wallace and Roland in the room.

Wallace stroked his beard and said, "News of my promotion has likely reached here already. Otherwise, the manager wouldn't have come out to greet us in person. Although the manager can be a bit snobbish, he is a smart man. He knows I will be bringing him big business in the future. Therefore, we don't need to waste our breath bargaining; he will offer concessions directly."

Roland asked with some concern, "Can these items be safely sold here? Will they attract unwanted attention?"

Wallace smiled disdainfully and said, "I've unloaded all sorts of things in the past. What does this little bit amount to? If it were something like the Holy Grail, I probably couldn't handle it. But just these pieces of junk... sigh."

Wallace sighed.

"Junk?" Roland felt a slight tightening in his heart.

Those strange artifacts were items he had risked his life to retrieve from the ruins! If they were all junk... Roland began to feel somewhat anxious.

He currently had only a single magic stone to his name, yet he intended to purchase a large number of supplies.

Furthermore, the Bitter Sleep Crucible was heavily contaminated, and Roland was reluctant to use the Flame of Dawn to purify it. Therefore, he planned to buy some precious potions to attempt its purification.

All of these required spending money.

Thus, if these damaged artifacts couldn't fetch a good price, Roland might have to resort to selling some of his own cherished magical items.

Whether it was the wizard's hat, the gray magic wand, the lantern, or the pocket watch... whichever one was sold, Roland would feel deeply heartbroken.

Soon, the manager returned. He personally evaluated the damaged strange artifacts.

After examining the seven damaged items on the table, the manager took off his monocle, stroked the mustache on his lip, and fell into deep thought.

A moment later, he said, "These strange artifacts have basically lost all practical value. Even repairing them would require a massive amount of capital, and it would be difficult to restore them to their original condition. Moreover, two of them are beyond repair and can only be acquired at the value of their raw materials."

Wallace calmly put down his teacup and said, "Indeed, they are basically some scrap items."

Roland pretended to drink his tea with an air of nonchalance, but inwardly he was lamenting.

He thought to himself: *'I previously thought I could at least sell them for two hundred magic stones... sigh, it seems my expectations were a bit too high.'*

The manager chuckled and said, "Sir Wallace, we are old friends. So let's not waste time negotiating prices. I'll throw out a figure, and you can see if it's appropriate."

With that, the manager gestured with his hand to indicate an eight and then a six.

He said, "As you know, in the region of the Black Abyss, a large number of strange artifacts frequently flow out. Therefore, the prices for such items tend to be lower... The figure I just quoted shows the utmost sincerity."

"Hmm." Wallace slowly nodded. "It is indeed ten percent higher than the market rate. Let's settle on that."

Overjoyed, the manager hesitated slightly before offering some advice, "My lord, these treasures are actually quite remarkable. If you are willing to wait, this humble shop can help you repair them and then feature them in our family's auction house."

Wallace said dismissively, "Time is money. This small handful of magic stones isn't worth me tossing and turning over for three to five months."

Knowing that Wallace currently lacked liquid funds and was eager to offload the goods, the manager realized he was getting a slight bargain.

He smiled brightly and said, "Thank you, Sir, for your patronage. Although these strange artifacts are heavily damaged, items of this tier remain exceedingly rare."

With that, the manager retrieved an exquisite box the size of a mahjong tile from his storage pouch. The box was inlaid with amber and agate, and even featured a magic ruby worth five magic stones.

The manager continued, "The shop just dispatched a batch of payments this afternoon, so there aren't many magic stones left on the premises. This box contains four hundred magic stones, and the remaining four hundred and sixty magic stones will be delivered by me in person shortly."

Roland froze slightly, his hand holding the teacup trembling involuntarily.

How much?

After the manager went out to fetch the rest of the funds, Roland couldn't help but confirm again, "What did he just say the amount was? Eight hundred and sixty magic stones?!"

"Yes, my dear good student."

Wallace stroked the beard on his chin and said with deep emotion, "To be honest, I wouldn't have even bothered with this paltry sum of magic stones in the past. But now... sigh, eight hundred and sixty magic stones. Four hundred and thirty for each of us—that's certainly not a small amount."

Roland remarked with a sigh, "I truly never expected them to sell for so much."

Wallace said, "If you had come alone, the clerks in the shop surely would have fleeced you using excuses like unknown origins and the like—if you managed to get even two hundred magic stones out of them, you'd be doing well."

Roland felt a bit awkward and said, "I thought getting eighty-six magic stones would be pretty good."

Wallace nearly spat out his mouthful of tea.

"What do you take strange artifacts for? Pickled cucumbers cured by your aunt?!"

"These are top-tier magical items used by elite wizards in the Black Abyss!"

"Even damaged and treated as scrap to be melted down in an alchemy furnace for raw materials, they're worth more than eighty-six magic stones!"

After saying this, Wallace fiddled with the damaged strange artifacts on the table, a look of bittersweet nostalgia washing over him.

He said, "Had the dark power within these strange artifacts not been inexplicably purified, even with the damage, selling these items for two to three thousand magic stones would have been no problem at all."

Roland lowered his head to drink his tea, not daring to reply.

As the person directly involved, Roland was well aware that these strange artifacts had been reduced to this state by his own Flame of Dawn.

Ordinarily, the Flame of Dawn wouldn't have been enough to burn away the dark attributes of the artifacts entirely, but these items were already broken.

The Flame of Dawn was inherently the bane of evil forces, and combined with the existing damage to the artifacts, it completely purged their dark attributes.

Through this burning, Roland had indeed incinerated all the abyss pollution present on them. But he had also incinerated the value of the artifacts!

With a single move, he had lost nearly two thousand magic stones!

However, Roland didn't regret it in the least.

Had he not burned them at the time, he undoubtedly would have been contaminated by the abyss.

Who could say whether he would have suffered some terrible curse?

The battle between himself and that demon back then was a matter of life and death decided in a single stroke. The demon could die of arrogance, and he could just as easily die of greed.