The caravan leader glanced at everyone in front of him as he spoke. He did not know who to talk to.
Sarin smiled and let Ainphent speak. He took out some wine and asked Trish to pour it for the three of them.
"I called you here to ask about the level-8 mercenary group." Although Salin was polite to the leader of this caravan and even offered him wine, Ainphent was very straightforward and questioned him.
"Sir."
"My name is Ainphent."
"Sir Ainphent, we are here at the request of the Qinyin Empire to help with the southern defense."
"Oh? Help with the southern defense? The Yunliu Empire has formed an alliance with Tanggulas? "
"No, no, no!" The caravan leader quickly denied and hesitated. Ainphent said, "Just say it. I'm not from the parliament."
"Ahem!" The caravan leader coughed and said, "Sir, it's an internal affair of the Qinyin Empire. The nobles in the south are rumored to have bad intentions, but Sacred Rock City will not attack just because of a rumor. So, they hired four groups of people from Scotia to go to the Red River to help with the defense. If a war breaks out, these mercenaries will still be useful."
"What are your goods?" Ainphent suddenly asked.
"Weapons and equipment, but no siege weapons. The large-scale equipment is all defensive." The caravan leader did not hide anything. These were all approved by the parliament, so there was nothing to hide.
Ainphent glanced at the two followers of the caravan leader. They seemed to be high-level swordsmen and would probably become sacred swordsmen in one or two years. Mages rarely made mistakes in judging people, unless the other party was a lot stronger than them or had some special equipment.
"Are the goods going to Sacred Rock City or the Red River?"
"Yes, Sacred Rock City. The goods are custom-made. The materials are good, but they are all semi-finished products. They need to be processed by the mages in Sacred Rock City."
Ainphent nodded. The Qinyin Empire usually bought materials like this because there were not that many good mages in other countries. If they bought all the finished products, they might not be as good as the ones processed by themselves.
"I want to go to Sacred Rock City with your caravan. Is that okay?" Ainphent asked.
The caravan leader was surprised and said, "You have to ask Sir Dennis."
"Disney?"
"The temporary leader of the mercenary group is a Black Iron Sword Saint, but he has two Level 6 Mages under him," the caravan leader replied carefully. Ainphent wanted to go with them, but he couldn't make the decision. The mercenary group was responsible for the safety of the goods.
"Two Magi of the Sixth Level? What is the name of this mercenary group? "
"The Purple Smoke Mercenary Corps. Their emblem is a cloud beast. They're quite famous in Scotia."
"There's no need to ask him. I only have around fifty people. I'll only ask him if there are more than a hundred people. Let me show you this, "Ainphent said as he took out his family badge.
The caravan leader hurriedly stood up and walked forward to receive it. He wasn't a noble, but he had studied emblems before. Otherwise, he would be at a disadvantage if he encountered a powerful family while traveling around the world and didn't know the background of the other party.
The emblem of the Clyde family was quite famous. He took a closer look at it and confirmed that it was not a fake. He hurriedly returned it to Ainphent and said, "Sir Mage, are you thinking of …"
"We're just traveling together. When we set up camp, I won't ask to enter your camp. I'll choose my own location."
The caravan leader finally relaxed and said, "If that's the case, I'll go back and let them know. Sir …"
"Haha, don't be nervous. Stay for a meal."
Since Salin's group had returned to the barracks, the soldiers outside were in charge of the cooking utensils. Soon, the roasted meat was sent in. Ainphent didn't let go of the caravan leader and started chatting with him.
The caravan leader didn't want to offend Ainphent, so he reluctantly sat down.
Ainphent only asked for the caravan leader's name after seeing him stay. The caravan leader didn't dare to get angry. It wasn't rude for a mage to treat a commoner like this. Most mages didn't like to socialize. Even nobles wouldn't blame a mage for being abrupt.
The caravan leader was called Julian. He was quite a big shot in the Royal Merchant Guild. In Scotia, his status was equivalent to a baron's in the empire. Of course, this kind of status wasn't very useful in the other three empires. Only the emperor of Scotia would be so shameless as to sell his title at a fixed price without giving him any special treatment.
Although Ainphent was arrogant, he only talked about topics that Julian was interested in. Hearing that Ainphent had property in Metatlin City and could get cheap magic cores, Julian was tempted. In the end, Julian got excited and decided to organize a caravan to buy goods in Metatlin City.
Wood wasn't too bad. It wasn't near the sea, so it didn't need the high-grade wood in Metatlin City. To the north of Metatlin City, there were countless primeval forests. There were trees that were around a thousand years old, and some long-lived trees had more than ten thousand years of history.
In the hands of mages, this kind of wood could be used to make the largest sealed cabin and warships. Some wood was almost as strong as metal. If it could be processed in Metatlin City and transported using spatial equipment, it could be sold to the coast of Scotia and used to make warships.
The most important things were still ores and magic cores. Transporting ores was a bit difficult, but transporting magic cores was extremely easy.
Metatlin City's best products were level-three and level-four magic cores. The price difference between level-four magic cores was huge, ranging from 300 to 1,000 gold coins. If Salin's ship went to sea once, the cost would be less than 200,000 gold coins if there weren't any casualties. It wouldn't be a problem to get tens of thousands of magic cores. If he did it himself and drove the Coiled Turtle alchemy ship, it would be like picking up money.
Even if he used an ordinary warship to hunt, the cost of a level-four magic core was only one to two gold coins. So these magic cores were sold for 200 to 500 gold coins in Metatlin City, cheaper than any shop. Salin filtered out the good quality magic cores, but even so, it was still a huge profit to buy magic cores from Metatlin City.
Even if an ordinary person brought back one magic core at a time, he wouldn't lose money.
However, there was a limit to the bulk purchases in Metatlin City. Merchants also knew that if the number of magic cores was too large, the price would be pushed down. Even so, the profit of one magic core was about 100 gold coins. Selling 100 magic cores would make a profit of tens of thousands of gold coins. Apart from armor equipment, this was the most profitable.
Salin didn't want to set up shops in various places in Qinyin. It was safer for him to let merchants resell these magic cores. Hunting was in the Frozen Sea, and goods were sold in Metatlin City. Salin would give the profits to merchants, and he could just sit and collect the gold coins.
There was another point. Salin requested that at least half of the magic cores be sold through barter. This meant that if foreign merchants wanted to buy magic cores, they would have to transport large amounts of resources to Metatlin City. This saved him the trouble of buying resources.
For example, if he wanted food, merchants would use half of the gold coins and half of the equivalent value of food to buy magic cores. If he had to buy food himself, not only would it be a waste of time, he didn't have that many people.
Scottinya also produced food. Even though Scottinya's farmers were the laziest, the land was fertile, and the land suitable for farming was almost the sum of the three empires.
Most of Scottinya's food was used to make wine and smuggled to the Tanggulas Empire or Cloud Flow Empire. Qinyin had never been able to open a sales channel because people in Qinyin liked fruit wine and weren't interested in the stronger grain wine. Now that he could trade food for magic cores, Julian was very excited.
Thieves rarely robbed food. Food took up too much space and was difficult to transport. For thieves, it was more practical to rob gold coins or kidnap people. Therefore, the merchants who transported food were the safest.
Salin had robbed a batch of food in Star Siding City, but if he wanted to expand his territory and have more people, he had to have enough food reserves. The food he had was definitely not enough, so buying food was still Salin's most urgent matter.
Salin was only worried about one thing now. Would Alchemy City be angry if he set the price of magic cores slightly lower? Even though the sea region controlled by Alchemy City wasn't as fertile as the Frozen Sea, there were definitely a lot of magic cores, enough for all the mages in Alchemy City to train without worry. If he did this, some mages in Alchemy City would definitely be tempted and come to join him.
Julian's wariness gradually disappeared, and Ainphent thought about what he wanted to say.
Rex knew about the situation in Qinyin, but Salin was far away and couldn't contact him all the time. Salin still heard what he needed to know from Julian.
The situation in Qinyin wasn't optimistic. The Red River flowed west and merged into the Great Swamp, bordering Titan and Cloud Flow. The southern nobles here used to be Emperor Charnak's trusted aides. Once Charnak died, the southern nobles were very dissatisfied with Sephiroth's control of Holy Rock City. There was even news that many of the southern nobles were preparing to establish their own dynasty.
This might have been news released by the southern nobles themselves to test Holy Rock City's reaction. If Holy Rock City sent troops just like that, the southern nobles would have a reason to resist and become independent. Prince Sephiroth was quite cunning. On the surface, he was buying war resources in Scotia, but in reality, he had already hired more than ten thousand mercenaries and deployed them in the Red River Region.
Holy Rock City planned to deploy thirty thousand mercenaries in the Red River Region, which saved a lot of military power. But the war in Jialoulan was really terrible. Almost the entire duchy had fallen. The castles that the northern nobles had conquered were all taken back by the Tanggulas Empire.
The only good news was that Alchemy City agreed to send Magic Shooters to the border of Jialoulan to help. With the War Puppets and the support of the mages from Alchemy City, Holy Rock City didn't fall into chaos.
But the war in Cloud Flow Empire was terrible. The Titan Duchy had almost completely fallen. The Redwater River had been crossed by the Vatican's army, and the vanguard had already pushed to the border of Cloud Flow.
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