I would need to keep track of purchases so that I could sell them again, which might introduce a potentially significant problem. Though I had some more money to move in the market now, it wasn’t anywhere near a safe amount. If, for example, I bought six Greater Haste Potions, I would have spent all of my available funds. Considering that each of these might sell for $1,000 or more, the profit margin was great. If, however, the prices remained low—or even worse, dropped even lower—I would soon have all my money stuck in products that would neither sell nor make me any profit. In a situation like this, I would either have to sit back and wait, hoping the price would hike again, or sell them at their new price and absorb the losses.
Longer term, I needed to figure out a strategy that included a diversified trading portfolio. First, however, I had to take care of my body. Getting involved with trading had sucked up all of my free time. My daily routine normally consisted of work, training at the gym, and streaming a single-player game or two. This routine had been completely destroyed over the past two days and I could already see that I was getting irritated much more easily. The sounds of cars honking would agitate me much more than usual and whenever I walked Louie, I would get mild headaches.
I definitely couldn’t afford to play any video games before figuring out my next move on the DEM, and perhaps I couldn’t afford to go to the gym either. But my body was aching for a workout so I got into my running shoes, put Louie on a leash, and left the apartment with only my phone on a case strapped to my arm, my headphones around my neck, and my keys. Louie had never been a great runner since his legs were a bit too short, but he always enjoyed it a lot as I never let him fall behind.
I tied his leash around my waist and put on my headphones with my power metal playlist on shuffle. No better way to start a run at six in the morning than by listening to great Mongolian metal by the HU. When we returned home some fifty minutes later, I was feeling revitalized and Louie was ready for a nap that would last at least until the afternoon. I took a quick shower and was promptly back on the DEM tablet, searching The Source - Videos for the next step of my plan: gaining bigger margins by utilizing the crafting services provided by the DEM.
As many of the so-called DEM trading influencers—I guess douchebaggery really is a universal constant—pointed out, increasing profit margins by crafting items and trading them was time-consuming and profitable in equal parts. The premise was quite straightforward but required a lot of research.
Crafting recipes were divided into levels ranging from one to nine. The big money was, of course, in crafting high-level recipes on demand, charging a commission for each crafting attempt. I had absolutely no idea where to start when it came to crafting so I had to resort to the free crafting program provided by the DEM. This service offered free crafting of certain publicly available recipes at levels one and two. The only caveat was that the materials had to be bought through the DEM and the crafted item sold in it as well. It was a very clean system that was handled almost completely by the company, since they would take the materials to their crafting facilities and store the finished products until they were sold, with the seller getting a certain amount of storage time for free.
Before I could start researching the available recipes, however, I had to tackle a particularly annoying roadblock. The only way to be admitted into this crafting program was with the consent of the person who had initially signed my entry to the DEM. It was supposedly some kind of protection of the marketplace’s interests and, as much as I didn’t like it, there was no way around it. I would have to tell Leo that, even though I had told him I wasn’t interested in the Apocosmos at all, I planned to try a program focused on crafting items used exclusively by people in it.
Reluctantly, I picked up my phone and called Leo before realizing it was only half past seven on a Sunday morning. But, to my surprise, before the second ring, Leo picked up and I could hear music in the background.
“Hey, Alex,” he said, his voice sounding slightly worried. “Did something happen?”
“Hey. No, everything’s fine. Sorry I’m calling this early on a Sunday.”
“Oh, I didn’t ask because of the time. Just that you don’t really do calls. So what’s up?”
“Yeah… so, look. I’ve been looking into this marketplace and…” was all I managed to say before a stream of words flooded back through my phone’s speaker.
“Oh, that’s great news!” He sounded happy. “There are so many things I’ve found there that I wanted to show you but never could because you weren’t part of the Apocosmos. I guarantee you, you will love some of them. We can create a wish list for you…”
“Yeah, so I wanted to ask for a favor,” I interrupted.
“Sure thing, ragazzo. Anything you need.”
“I would like to try the free crafting program offered by the marketplace and I need your consent to enroll,” I said in
