[NR] Finding Food - Chapter 624

Helina laughs, “Fifty? You have nine pelts.”

Jason, “Nine fifth-break pelts for first-break and maybe second-break untreated hides.”

Helina, “Not like your pelts are treated either.”

Jason shrugs, “True, let’s just call that factor a wash.”

Helina, “But you want untreated hides.”

Jason nods, “And you wouldn’t want them after my ‘attempts’ at treating them. Plus, this way your leather workers will get experience working with the material.

“Now, I’m sure pelts of this level aren’t rare, but you’d have to actually go out into the unstable regions to get them. Compared to the harvest you can get around the settlement of the low level hides? The difference is obvious.”

Helina, “Fair, we can drop that part. Now anything else? Because the deal isn’t looking all that attractive.”

Jason frowns, “Well, all I want are those hides. If I’m careful, I can probably manage with just 45 of them. I can’t really go much lower than that.”

Helina, “And 300 gold.”

Jason shakes his head, “Out of my price range! I can do 80 gold.”

Helina, “Well then you can get by on 30 hides.”

Jason, “35, the pelts are good training. Even if they do mess up the high level pelt, whoever is doing it will likely gain a level. On the other hand, those hides are just going to be shipped out. You’re making a profit on this either way because it isn’t being sold at a set price. Those things are commodities and the profit margin must be paper thin.”

Helina, “Five more gold.”

Jason squints at her before nodding, “I can do that.”

After that, Helina brought Jason down to the warehouse to pick out the hides he wants. This was not a quick task, even after Courtney and Rosha got involved to help sort things out. While Jason was only getting 35, there were hundreds of them being stored in a combination of a walk-in fridge and a stasis enchantment.

Now, in theory, the stasis enchantment would be enough on its own. Except to save on expenses the settlement was only running it off of passive Mana gathering instead of having a battery they could fill with Mana. To make up for this, they also included formation running off of passive Qi to cool the room down to near freezing.

Plus, sometimes you have people who need to sort through the hides for, like, half a day. In theory, Jason wasn’t too picky about the hides he wanted. However, since he was being given the chance he was going to try and make sure all 35 hides were from the same kind of monsters. If only so they all have about the same amount of water resistance. Otherwise, each page might end up reacting to the ink differently.

Other than that, it was simply a matter of finding matching hides that weren’t too damaged. While most lacked damage from when they were killed, there were still scars and such from their life. Not that those hides didn’t have a use. In fact, some of the final products from them will be the most expensive barring the largest unblemished hides.

Why? Because they are used to create vellum for formation flags, talismans, and seals. However, this doesn’t mean they’re magically worth more. Rather, it is just that those are the only potential uses for them. People still prefer to create those things out of bigger sections of hide, if only for a good grain and better shape.

So while all three and a few other items are possible, the scarred hides often end up as battle talismans. You don’t need to worry about the durability of the vellum if part of activation involves burning it up. Well, as long as the vellum is strong enough to activate in the first place. Therefore, such things tend to be made of vellum despite paper being a viable option. You simply need a much higher quality paper.

And so after sorting through all the hides, organizing them by source, and picking out the ones that are damaged, but not too damaged, the party settles on 34 they want and another that is a bit too scarred. That last one being all they could find for this type of monster and Jason figures he can use it straps and such. Besides, it doesn’t hurt to have a practice hide to work on first.

Satisfied with the hides, Jason hands over his pelts and with a grimace, the 85 gold coins. His wallet is feeling quite light at this point as even after gathering some money from selling the bones and such, he only has 14gp and change. The lowest he has been on cash in a while.

He can only sigh, though. Sometimes you have to spend money to make it, and this was certainly one of those cases. The Energy Tome made with the hides will be worth magnitudes more. All that was left is processing the materials into vellum, inks, book boards, and whatnot.

Jason wanted to get to work on it all right away, but it had gotten much too late for a trip back to the clearing. If only because the gates were closed. Good thing the local inn still had a couple rooms. Though it was a challenge for Jason to find some leafy greens for Lily.

While the inn's food was pretty good, it leaned heavily on a hearty stew that had likely been bubbling around since before the inn was even fully built. Jason ended up paying an entire gold coin for her dinner. Of course, the idea of a rabbit having specific meal times isn’t exactly true to reality, but NeoRealm papers over such things by saying the world energy helps satiate everyone.

Not that they cared about how much a rabbit eats or anything. That explanation was built in to justify all the monsters roaming around. After all, they have to eat something. In fact, the more unnatural a creature is, the less food they need. For the higher level monsters, most hunting is about eating the power within their prey instead of the meat.