“I see. Well, I hope you liked it?” He paused for a moment but resumed talking a few seconds later, once he’d understood he wasn’t getting a response. “Anyway, I wanted to tell you that I’ve already informed the office that you had a bit of an accident and that you won’t be coming into work tomorrow.”
“But tomorrow the next season of Hot N Spicy Digital’s never-ending crunch-time begins,” I said, genuinely weirded out that he would do such a thing.
“And you had an accident with a taxi driver and the doctor ordered you to stay home,” he replied seriously.
“I see. Thank you,” I said, already coming round to the idea that this might be a good opportunity to do some more research on the DEM.
“Also, you’re welcome to come over to mine tomorrow after work if you want to train and gain your first levels in—”
“No, Leo,” I cut him off. “I don’t want anything to do with leveling or the Apocosmos, to be honest. I think I’ll be just fine with the taste I had today.”
“As you wish, man. But I’m here if you change your mind.”
“Thanks. Goodnight, Leo.”
“Bye, man.”
As soon as we hung up, I picked up the DEM tablet again and started browsing The Source. As I expected, there were multiple pages with historic line charts of price fluctuations for many of the products on the marketplace. I took my time identifying patterns and relative fluctuations until I had a good grasp on how prices and demands changed over the course of the day, during the week, and over the month.
It looked like a lot of raw materials were sold at higher prices during the weekdays while their prices lower over the weekend, and I found out that in many cases this was because of storage fees imposed by the DEM. On the other hand, items connected to fighting and adventuring saw a rise in demand and therefore a rise in price over the weekend.
As for the time of day, the highest prices tended to be at lunchtime and at midnight. Seeing that people would pay three times the lower end amounts for certain items didn’t make much sense to me, but then again the cost was probably negligible to regular delvers into the Apocosmos. I could understand how people would buy more things at lunch but was puzzled over the price peaks at midnight until I found an article that mentioned several farming areas resetting at midnight. I was unsure how a whole area could reset as if it was an actual video game, but there were so many things I was unsure of about this new world that I took it at face value and didn’t spend more time researching it for the time being.
Finally, the demand for items was bigger as the end of each month drew nearer, presumably because people were getting paid around that time and could purchase more things. The conclusions I came to from my research were remarkably similar to what I would have guessed for a marketplace operating in our Cosmos. Either the Apocosmos operated pretty much in the same way as our world when it came to businesses, or our world operated in line with the example of the Apocosmos. Not that it really mattered.
Louie’s whimpering brought me out of my thoughts. I must have spent so long surfing The Source and looking at listings in the Dark Energy Marketplace that I completely forgot about taking Louie out before going to bed. Needing the money was no excuse for neglecting him, so I put him on his leash, grabbed my keys, and headed out.
We did our usual walk, making a round of our block, stopping every so often for him to sniff the streetlights and occasional patches of grass. I, however, couldn’t take my mind off the listings and how I could create a regular income stream out of it. The more I thought about it, the more apparent it became. The only way to understand if something would work and whether it would be scalable was to actually try it.
With renewed determination, I led Louie back into our building’s elevator, ready to run my first test. I quickly wiped Louie’s paws and gave him a small dental treat before I grabbed the tablet and threw myself down on the couch. I transferred $1,000, a significant chunk of my savings, to my DEM account and looked for an item that was still low in price but seemed to jump on Fridays. My list of candidates wasn’t very extensive, so I went through them quickly.
Name : Animal Skin (Cattle)
Type : Crafting Component
Durability : 20/20
Grade : E Grade
Weight : 2st.
Description : The skin of a cow, ox, calf, or bull. This is a material used in crafting items.
Name : Animal Bones (Horse)
Type : Crafting Component
Durability : 20/20
Grade : E Grade
Weight : 2st.
Description : The bones of a mare or stallion. This is a material used in crafting items.
The Animal Skin looked like a decent choice in terms of margin. Each piece would cost me around $40 if I bought it from another small seller, or as low as $33 if I waited enough with a purchasing order. With prices reaching peaks of up to $62, in the best-case scenario each piece would net me $19.70 in profit. If I considered putting all of my thousand dollars into skins, I might be able to buy 30 pieces, which would translate to more than 50% return on my investment. That would be a huge deal, especially if it could go on in increments.
However, this was in the absolute best-case scenario, and in one that would need testing first. What’s more, if the prices shifted due to a sudden influx of animal skins, or if someone else was taking advantage of this exact same scenario but in larger quantities, I might end up stuck with items I wouldn’t be able to sell. For
