Berserker: A LitRPG Urban Fantasy Adventure (Apocosmos Book 1) by Dimitrios Gkirgkiris (books for 20 year olds txt) 📗

matter how small the margins were. From my research, I knew that prices in fast-moving goods were at their lowest on Sundays and picked up again on Mondays, fluctuating throughout the week albeit not by as much. Buying today would allow me to get a good head start with maximized margins while continuing to ramp up production through each day.

I scanned through countless recipes of lower-grade crafting materials—multiple leather types, metal alloys, and items I could only imagine being enchanted materials or resources from other worlds—until my eyes glanced upon the most mundane of fighting resources.

Recipe Name : Wooden Arrow (Birch) x 20

Level : 1

Type : Weapon

Subtype : Arrow

Rarity : E Grade

Success Rate : 100%

MP Cost : 30

Durability : 10/10

Weight : 120st.

Materials : 4x Wooden Stem (Birch)

2x Iron Ore

Everyone needed arrows and—at least from my experience with history and games—once they were fired, more often than not, they were not retrievable. This would mean that the demand would always be there. Running the numbers of the cost versus the price trends over the week, I could already see how this might be a profitable choice, even after accounting for the DEM’s cut.

But I wanted to do this right. I looked at alternatives to birch wood and the price fluctuations were pretty much the same across the board. Wooden arrows also weren’t the only available recipe through the free crafting program.

Recipe Name : Bone Arrow (Birch, 20pcs)

Level : 2

Type : Weapon

Subtype : Arrow

Rarity : D Grade

Success Rate : 100%

MP Cost : 80

Durability : 25/25

Weight : 90st.

Materials : Wooden Stem (Birch)

Bone Grain

It seemed that both arrows were low grade, but these were lighter, meaning archers would be able to carry more without hindering their movement speed. A quick bit of research on arrow grades revealed that even an E-grade bow could use S-grade arrows, but not the other way round. This meant that D-grade bows would only be able to use arrows of D grade and above if one wanted to be sure that their arrows’ shafts wouldn’t break when they were fired. Besides, bone arrows were much more cost-effective to craft since they only needed one wooden stem and whatever Bone Grain was. I clicked on it to see more information about it and how much I could buy it for.

Item : Bone Grain

Type : Crafting Material

Durability : 10/10

Rarity : E Grade

Weight : 4st.

Description : Ground animal bones. The quality of the bone powder is linked to the skeleton from which the bones were harvested.

Forty dollars was the lowest price for a batch of this material that could be found at any time and, considering what I needed them for, the price seemed surprisingly high. Taking into consideration that each wooden stem cost $10 on average, my break-even point would be approximately sixty bucks taking into account the DEM commission. I quickly checked the bone arrows on offer in New York state, sorting them by price, and there were none lower than $65.

But I didn’t just want to get a quick buck. Or I definitely wanted a quick buck, but after a long weekend of sleeping only for a few hours, the trip to that extraplanar forest, and all the fighting, my eyes were becoming increasingly heavy. No, I would have to play the waiting game.

I used the tablet to check the price trends for bone arrows on Mondays and saw that pricing a hundred scores of arrows for $120 each would most probably get them sold in the first rush, start-of-the-week purchases. The cost of having a hundred scores of arrows crafted was four thousand dollars, an amount I wasn’t very comfortable parting with, but the thrill of my discovery would let nothing step in its way.

Assuming everything sold by the time I woke up for work tomorrow, at the 300% mark-up I’d set, I would be off to a terrific start to the week. The Dark Energy Marketplace’s commission would still be $1,800, but there was nothing I could do about that. Perhaps in the future, I could search for ways to bypass their monopoly, but that was a long way ahead for now.

I took a quick shower and brushed my teeth, using the last of my mental reserves to calculate how quickly I would be able to fix my life and call it quits. I was determined I didn’t want to be part of this world in the long run. However, this was such an easy way to solve my real problems. Too easy to ignore.

My hospital expenses were roughly $27,000 and my student loan was holding strong at $80,000. Supposing the bone-arrow flipping strategy worked consistently, I could even reach that amount in a month. Perhaps less. Which made me wonder…

What else can I achieve by doing this?

I had no intention of becoming a philanthropist, of course. I’d heard people talk about how liberating it was to help others, but those were always good people. I was not good people. Not anymore.

I could still remember the prices of listings from my daydreaming days, watching YouTube videos of villas in Spain and Greece. Three million dollars would afford me a villa with everything I needed in Greece, perhaps close to where my parents had moved. But not too close. It would be a place where I could be away from everyone, with a gym of my own so I wouldn’t need to see any more “No Pain, No Gain” and “Princess” tattoos on bros and bimbos.

Perhaps another million on the side to be safe and then living expenses. Sixty thousand a year for both Louie and myself for… twenty years? The thought of his time running out tied a knot in my stomach, but I tried to focus on the math instead. $1.2million for us both, bringing the total to over five million dollars. That was a big number, but not one out of reach. As long as I could keep up with the market.

I lay on the couch, ready to fall asleep in an instant when Louie paused the video